You and the police are entitled to know, since I am going to spend the night near you, that I am both a Humanist and a Luddite. I may hold a Black Mass in the parking garage of the Best Western Hotel, if I can find a neo-conservative baby to sacrifice.

Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.

We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, ''Isaac is up in Heaven now.'' It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ''Kurt is up in Heaven now.'' That's my favorite joke.

(1) The game exists in a lawless world where the hedonistic desire of gluttony runs rampant.

(2) The game mechanics evolve around the acquisition of as much capital as possible, through any means necessary and regardless of the cost to one's fellow player.

(3) Tax collection and usury are obscenely common in the Monopoly world--something that falls far short of proscribed biblical morality.

(4) Monopoly exists in a wholly atheistic world where our lord Jesus Christ is never mentioned even once.