Friday, February 25, 2005

Pope Dust

I'm probably going to offend some people or at the very least go to Hell for this, but oh well... I'll worry about that later.

Recently I have been pondering: am I the only person around here that realizes that the Pope is a very old dude? Maybe it's just the media making a spectacle out of his health - every time I turn on the news and see footage of him speaking from the ledge of his Pimpin' Pope Palace like Evita, he looks like any part of his body could crumble and fall off at any given minute. I'm guessing beneath the Pope Robe is a complex series of pulleys and belts that keep him harnessed to the chair up there and hold his neck up. Every time I see one of his hands go up to wave and almost wish I was there to hold a Dustbuster up to it to catch anything that possibly turns into dust. It could be bagged and sold on Ebay - "Get your very own Pope Dust while supplies last!"

On the Today Show this morning they were interviewing someone about Le Popa-rotza's current status. Apparently he's out of surgery, eating, and writing jokes on pieces of paper. Well that's great - so are a lot of other people out there that are probably in worse shape and have a lot more years ahead of them than he does... but you don't see them on the news, do you?

My point is, HE'S OLD. This is what happens when you get old. Your body stops working and falls apart. There's no need to go into hair splitting details anymore such as "he's eating.. he is breating on his own", "he had a half a bowl of Rice Krispies today and wants to play Monkey Ball", etc. He's OLD! Leave him alone, let him die peacefully, and stop spending so much newstime on it. Maybe until he checks out, all newscasters really need to do is look at the camera and say this:

"And now our 5 seconds of the day devoted to the Pope. Is he dead yet? Jimmy what's the word on the newswire?"
"Um, nope, Dan, the Pope is still alive. Now back to you."
"Thanks Jimmy. In other news..."