Warning: For those deeply ensconced in the Catholic Church, you may not enjoy this blog. I warn you so you can come back for the next offensive edition, where I bust on fat kids, asthmatics and local televangelists.

So there's a new pope. After having the same pope for a generation, the Cardinals got together and voted for their new leader and the leader of the Catholic world.

And they picked a 78 year old dude.

Anyone remember the guy that was Pope BEFORE JP the deuce? No? That's because JP2's predecessor was elected at age 66 on August 26th, 1978 and died just 33 days later. Not exactly time to get a lot done.

I was hoping "The Church" was going to elect a more foreward thinking next Pope with the energy to tackle The Church's biggest problem: a pattern of child abuse and pedophilia among its priests.

But alas, they named a guy whose over-under on the dead pool can't be very big, and he's certainly got the deck stacked against him with the moderate Catholics.

Oh well. I hope he does some good and lives a long and fruitful popeness until the next guy comes along.

While this whole Pope voting thing was going on, several of us at work were discussing how it works, especially as it relates to the naming of the Pope. There were two schools of thought:

a) There was a list like there is of hurricanes, so the next four or five Pope monnikers were already chosen, or

b) The new Pope gets to pick his own name.

Answer B won out and turned out to be true. My question is, why couldn't you modernize a bit and instead of naming yourself after a Pope from 80 plus years ago, try picking a name like Pope Dee-Oh-Double Gee the One or something?

Oh, while searching for a little info on this blog, I stumbled across the historical list of all the past Popes, and it was pretty cool. The new Pope is 265th Pope. He took his name from the guy that was Pope when he was born back around the turn of the century or so.

I especially like that there were popes named Linus and Cletus. Those are cool Pope names that people can get in touch with and appreciate. There was a Telesphorus, which sounds a lot like "tell us for us," which is kind of what I feel like "The Church" does anyway.

I'm running out of Papal steam here. I'm hoping this guy lives long enough to get our global news cycle back on the right track. NO ONE should be staring so long at a European apartment window. Unless of course it's after the Neverland Ranch trials, and Michael's fled and we're all waiting for his ass to jump.

I must announce that my tutoring of young Nicholas has started yielding results. The last quiz on the exceptionally difficult material at the end of section 11.4 of his text resulted in an 85 on the quiz. Now, it's not perfect, but since the rest of the class ate it on this one, I feel pretty good. Plus, I can see that light flickering ever so slightly hinting that he may finally be grasping the evil demon, Algebra.

More to come. I have to order some Chinese food. Just so you know, I'll be having the sweet and sour chicken, an egg roll, and a bowl of egg drop soup, complete with the deep fried crunchy things I pour on it.

Later, I will be dehydrated, bloated, hungry and finally tired.

Wish me luck...