Popetastic
2005-04-20,

Any time now, I expect to b receiving a Thank You card from the new Pope. I think it no coincidence that I was in Bavarian Germany when John Paul died, to be replaced by a German cardinal, from Bavaria, no less.

Dearest James,

Even though you profess to be an atheist (hey-- let's get together and talk about that one, okay?), I would nonetheless like to sincerely thank you for applying your inadvertent karmic influence on the Bavarian region of Germany, thus opening the door for me to become the most important religious figurehead of the Western World. And, being the mouth of God here on Earth and all (crazy! I'm still getting used to it!), my Thank You should count for something, no?

Let's do lunch.

Sincerely,

Benedict "Benny" Ex Vee Eye

p.s. I had this idea for a new show, "XVI, Private Eye". The tagline: 'Justice has never been this Papal.' Whaddya think?

The Pope, man-- he am closer to me than my Peeps. Which isn't saying much, I suppose, since I don't even like Peeps.

Some of the things that the Roman Catholic hierarchy does in their process are pleasantly archaic. For instance, I learned in Germany while watching Pope-O-Vision (formerly CNN International): to confirm the death of the current Pope, the officialest of Catholic officials gather 'round his bed. One of them takes a small silver hammer, taps him on the head and calls out his given name three times. No response? They do it two more times. Still no response? Dead. I suddenly wonder if this is the origin of the lyrics for the Beatles' song, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'. I feel that there's an amazing similarity between serial killers and checkers of the Papal dead. (And how often do you get to write a sentence like that?)

Anyway, we had our first 'thunderstorm' of spring around here just a little while ago. I enshroud the above word with Quotes of Irony (+2, vorpal, Incite Discussion 2x/day) because, for a thunderstorm, it was pretty lame. Some steady rain and a very few booms of thunder over about an hour and a half, was all. Now the sun's peeking back out. I suppose I should keep my mouth shut about the weather lameness, as I may draw vengeance when the storms start up again on - of course - the weekend.

This last weekend was something of a rough but productive one. We've finally got the walls of our forthcoming 'master' bedroom in the basement going. We got the delivery of supplies - from wallboards to ceiling tiles - on Saturday morning. Then we had to haul everything down into the basement and get building. Please note that none of this would have been getting done without the help of our neighbor/savior, who is in the housing contracting business for a living, and is helping us out as an early baby shower present.

The building part was petty rough on out-of-shape me. Lots of lifting and bending at funny angles while hammering. Over the weekend, we got most of the outer walls up, which makes us about half done with the walls in general. If all goes well, all the walls will be up by the end of this coming weekend. Then, oh, the joy of wall frames! Some have said that drywalling can be a pain in the ass, but, after my frame-building experiences so far - and having done drywall in the past - this is harder, especially since we'e doing it in the basement, which has a sloping floor to compensate for any potential water flow. Ack. But hey, now I know how to build a wall. Surely this will prove handy once the fall of American civilization comes.

Fun with Visio, Vol. 1, Ep. 3:

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