"...This Is Porcine Airways Flight 236, Requesting Permission To Land..."

I'd consider voting for this guy.

That slightly maniacal-looking person with his head stuck out of the Armored Personnel Carrier is the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, Arturas Zoukas, or as he's known around town, Clem, and that's a Mercedes Benz he's crushing the living dogpoop out of, and I'll explain why in a moment. (You'd like to know, wouldn't you? Well, tough, I'm writing the story anyway.)

My primary function as your Popemeister, here at the All John All The Time World Church, is to spread the message of the "soothing balm of Johnism", at least, that's what they told me when they interviewed/hired me for the position. (On the AJATTWC employment application, where it asks about my "position" on my last job, I told them "prone".)

My secondary function, other than to ride roughshod over the Church mascot, my roommate, sidekick, BFF and three-times-a-week sparring partner, the Harley Dog, (you can see a picture of the great beast right over there <---, oh, sorry, --->), is to provide guidance and leadership to my flock of loyal followers, all several of them, particularly in the area of influencing, ahh, excuse me, helping them make informed decisions about the various issues that confront us all, all the days of our lives, especially the young and the restless of my flock. (In fact, when I finish this post, I'm headed over to General Hospital to visit one of my "people" who's currently under the weather; it's a minor surgery thing, she'll still be bold and beautiful when she gets out.)

Hey, did I tell you guys I have tickets to see "La Boheme" next week? No?

So there I was, minding my own Pope business, when I received this email from one of my flock of followers, not to be confused with Flock Of Seagulls, a really bad rock band from back in the '80s (actually, the band wasn't that bad, but the hairdos, yike), asking me a profound legal question (yes, your Pope is also a legal expert, holding a JP degree (Juris Poopahkis), as well as my degree from the school of Hard Knocks) that I felt had implications so profound as to compel me to answer in one of my thrice-weekly posts. (Thrice? Whoa, that's a good one.)

("La Boheme" is an opera by Puccini, okay? Soap operas, get it? Geez.)

The email, and the question it contained, came from some John guy's nephew, or at least he says he's John's nephew, although I'm sure only John's sister knows for certain, and it dealt with an obscure and little known legal tenet, commonly known as the "Are You Guys Really That Dumb?", and it requires a little background information to understand the principle.

Many years ago, back in my pre-Pope days, I had occasion to work with a gentlemen who, besides being afflicted with the social stigma of being a Minnesota Vikings fan, clung to the belief that the answer to the question "If a tree fell in the forest, and no one was around, would it make a noise?" was a resounding No. (The company we were working for had no pre-employment requirement of an IQ or any common sense; yeah, they hired me too.)

I learned this fascinating bit of information one day at lunch, when said fellow employee blurted out this amazing theory, just after asking someone to pass the salt.

"Yeah," he explained, "if there's on one in the forest, then there's no eardrums for the sound waves to bounce off of". (And at the next table, another of my fellow employees sustained an injury just then, a sprain of the muscle that allows you to roll your eyes.)

I left the company not long after that; I figured, with guys like that on your team, you're probably looking at a long, losing season.

The legal theory that John's nephew (?) asked about was along the same vein: it involved the crime of "mopery", which according to The Nephew is the "exposing of one's self to a blind person." (I had heard the word defined that way previously, but I wasn't sure that was accurate, so I looked up the definition in my New American Law Dictionary and Explainer Of Obscure Legal Theories but couldn't find it; shit, I'll just make something up; he won't know the difference.)

Where these two very obscure ideas meet is at the junction of "what, are you kidding me?" Allow me to explain. (Good luck stopping me.)

A tree falls in the forest, crashing to the ground in a great flurry of leaves, breaking limbs, snapping branches and small, furry animals, like the ebert, being violently thrown to the ground from their various nests and hiding places. The only reason that the noise attendant to such an event goes unheard is the absence of organs that can receive and interpret the sound waves, which are necessarily produced by said event. (The sound waves are produced, not the organs.) The boy genius at work there even mentioned them, thereby validating the alternative to his theory. Duh.

In a similar vein, the exposure of one's genitalia to another person, despite the fact that the recipient of the "exposure" is a person not having the ability to see, is still a crime, based on intent; the inability of the "exposure recipient" to see and be offended by said exposure does not ameliorate the crime. The "exposer" still has his yaya hanging out, and in most precincts, that's illegal. Or at least a crime against the senses. (Think Rosie O'Donnell naked).

(Not bad for off the top of my head, huh?)

So the answer to the question of whether or not a tree falling in the forest makes noise, and whether or not it's a crime to expose yourself to a blind person, even if it is Tuesday, and maybe to the most profound question that faces us all in life, is this...

...I believe the Dodgers can still make a late season run at the NL West crown; hey, they have Kershaw, who's getting serious consideration for the NL Cy Young, they have Matt Kemp...well, never mind that now.

(You didn't really think I was going to give you some great, profound legal insight did you? What, are you crazy, I'm a Pope, I'm not Robert Shapiro, gimme' a break.)

Oh, the mayor up at the beginning of the article? (See up.) I just used that because I liked the picture. I like Ol' Clem, too; the reason he was squashing expensive European automobiles was to put emphasis on a city ordinance banning parking in "bike lanes", which is where the ignorant douche-bag owner of the Benz parked his car.

Yeah, I like Clem; he wanted to send a message to the city's drivers: "Park in the bike lane at your peril". Then he showed his followers "the peril".

Just as your Pope will just keep trying to show all my loyal AJATTWCers out there the peril of "stupid".

Because maybe one, or even several, of the folks out there who believe in soundless falling trees, or the theory that "well, they can't see me so it's okay" or "hey, I'm important, look at my big car, I can park anywhere I want" will read one of my posts and wake up to what assholes they really are.

(Hey, Nephew Guy, I know you asked me about mopery just to have to have some fun, so that wasn't meant for you.)

You guys ever hear of a comedian named Judy Tenuta? Very funny lady; I have no idea if she's still performing or not, but when she was, she had a line she often used in her act, right after making some thoroughly outrageous statement: "Hey, it could happen."

When pigs fly.

Love and courtrooms,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Party Time At The Zoo

Go ahead: I dare you.

I was "surfing the Web" the other day (does anybody else ever use that term anymore?), which is part of my duties as your Pope Dude, when I stumbled onto this headline:

"Holliday leaves after moth gets stuck in ear".

Since I saw this little blurb in the "Sports" section of MSN.com, I quickly realized that the "Holliday" the headline referred to was Matt Holliday, the left fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. So I clicked on the link to find out how a moth got stuck in Matt Holliday's ear. (I mean, wouldn't you?) On the surface of it, you know it had to be a strange story, even without having all the particulars.

Without getting into all the gory details, suffice to say that Matt, who seems to be a decent human being and is outstanding in his field, was standing out in left field the other evening in a game against my L.A. Dodgers, pretty much minding his own business, doing his left field gig...

...when a moth flew in his ear.

Lemme' run that by you again, in case you missed it.

He was standing in left field when a moth flew in his right ear (Matt bats right-handed). You could see something was wrong with him; they stopped the game and the trainer came out, looked in Matt's ear, and then they took him out. But there was no explanation as to why he had to come out.

So after witnessing this, I immediately called Dr. Bill O'Lading, the director of the All John All The Time World Church-sponsored think tank, the Center For The Serious Consideration Of Weighty Matters, and the resident "science guy" here at the AJATTWC, to calculate the odds of having a moth fly in your ear when you're playing left field for a major league baseball team. (I think the odds change when you're playing for a minor league team.)

Dr. O'Lading called me back a few minutes later, after I had explained what I wanted, and after he questioned if I was crazy, which of course I assured him I was, but that my sanity had nothing whatsoever to do with having a flying insect becoming stuck in a ballplayer's ear.

According to the good doctor, the odds of having a moth fly into your ear while standing in left field at Busch Stadium, in the first game of a three-game series, are...

...about 800 bagillion to one, give or take a few zeros. (I'm not sure what to make of this, or whether it has any relevance, but on the Dodger's current road-trip, they've played in Miller Field (Milwaukee), Coors Field (Denver) and Busch Stadium (St. Louis). Is there a message in that somewhere?)

And this wasn't one of those little wussy moths, you know, the dinky kind that get into your house when you leave the door open for the one minute it takes to let the dog out, and then they fly all around the lamp until you get disgusted and you smack the little bastard, just so he'll stop flying in those crazy circles like he just fell into a bottle of Jack and swam his way to the top. No, this was one of those "industrial strength" moths; they showed a picture of the villain in a plastic bag after the Cardinal training staff pulled it out of Holliday's ear with a tweezers. (According to the Dodger's announcer, Steve Lyons, they first took Holliday into a completely dark room and tried to coax the moth out by shining a flashlight in his ear, (Holliday's, not the moth's) but the moth, figuring he had stumbled into a good thing, didn't take the bait; true story.) The damn thing was about an 1-1/2" long, weighed about 15 pounds and had a tattoo on his left wing that said, "Newt For President". Nasty damn thing.

Matt was able to return to play in the second game of the series last night, when the Dodgers beat the crap out of the Cards, 13-2. There were no further reported incidents of insect infestation.

You guys ever see "Mothra", the sci-fi flick about the giant moth that attacks Japan? If you're a fan of 1950's monster movies, you know that the island of Japan was regularly visited by evil, giant, radioactive mutant animals, (have you ever noticed how often my ex- manages to sneak into my posts?), like Mothra, Godzilla, Ghidora, Biollante, Oprah Winfrey and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Mothra was, by the way, a giant lepidopteran, which in Latin means "one big effing moth".

I personally thought Matt Holliday was damn lucky the radioactive mutant monster genre of films is mostly defunct these days; you're sure as hell not pulling Mothra out of someone's ear with a pair of tweezers. Or Godzilla, for that matter. (I've never understood that term, a "pair" of tweezers; wouldn't that be two? And apropos of nothing, I once had a friend that used to say "Godzilla" to people when they sneezed.)

So Matt was fine, and I thought things were getting back to normal, although "normal" at my house probably isn't the same as "normal" at your house, when my eyes were assaulted by this headline:

"Hawk swoops inside NYC apartment building".

Run that back, please.

"Hawk swoops inside NYC apartment building".

According to this article, again on MSN.com, and aren't they just full of interesting news and stories, amongst other things, a red-tailed hawk recently flew into an open 5th-floor window of an upscale apartment building in New York. The hawk, being brighter than the average Tea Party Republican, immediately realized that the unit he had  flown into was not "rent-controlled", and flew right back out, after leaving a small deposit on the resident's shoulder.

Has Mother Nature slipped a gear or two here? Are the animals finally disgusted with humans to the point that they're thinking of taking over?

Yeah, you guys think I'm crazy, but what was one of the top-grossing movies from last weekend (8/19 through 8/21)?

That's right, opera lovers, "Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes". You gettin' the chills yet?

So I called Dr. O'Lading back, to ask him to speculate on whether or not, based on the strange happenings of the last few days in the "Animal Kingdom", it was possible that a REAL "Rise" of the animals was taking place. (Okay, I was just screwin' with him, but you know how snooty these "science" types can be. I once emailed Doc to ask him to calculate how much wood a woodchuck could chuck, if in fact a woodchuck could chuck wood; just bustin' his chops again, right? Then I got his answer: 56.3. Not cords, or tons, or pomegranates, just "56.3". Smart ass.)

Dr. O'Lading, understanding my proclivity for tasteless humor, declined to comment.

And in the meantime, while I'm trying desperately to get a handle on this whole "animal uprising" thing, guess who walks in the room with his leash in his mouth and a look of need in his eye?

That's correct, children of the corn, it was my roommate, sidekick, BFF and occasional sparring partner, the Harley Dog. (Harley has more titles than Moamar Ghaddafi, or however you spell his name, and a quick aside to the Libyan rebels who are currently working feverishly to throw that douche-bag piece of crap into the Mediterranean Sea: nice job, guys; how about when you're done in Libya you head to Iran and see what you can do about that bunch of happy assholes.)

And I thought to myself, self, I thought, any time Harley needs to go out, I jump. Any time Harley needs to be fed, I jump. Any time Harley needs to go to the vet, I jump. Any time Harley needs anything, I jump.

(And that isn't a complaint, by the way; anyone with a companion like Harley doesn't mind the aggravation, but it is a reality of having a pet. Actually, women are WAY harder to maintain.)

Harley's activities, on the other hand, where he wears a glove, are confined to going out, eating, lying on the floor, sleeping on the floor, bugging me for Girl Scout cookies, chasing an occasional squirrel or cat and not much else. Certainly no jumping, of any kind.

Uprising in the animal kingdom? Animals making an attempt to take over the world?

Shit, they already run things around my house.

Love and June bugs,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs Inc.

High Heel, Silver, Away

Now, first off, I have to tell you that I like the heels. I'm not crazy about the dress (when was that look fashionable, back in the '70s?), but I really like the heels.

Just not on Sam.

I was sitting at my desk in my office at the World Headquarters of the All John All The Time World Church, which is conveniently located in the bucolic and always sunny and warm San Fernando Valley here in LA (pronounced LAH), working on next month's announcements for the AJATTWC NO BULLetin, when the phone rang. Since it does this periodically during the day, I wasn't surprised by it.

"PJTT...hey, Mike...yeah, last week...hey, did you see where Selig said no go to the Fox TV deal for the Dodgers?...Frank McShitwad, on the first flight outta' of LA, thank you and please pass the artichokes...he's the only owner in the MLB that's worse than the ownership group for the Cubs, and that's a pretty low standard, I gotta' tell you. So what's up?...again?...yeah, actually, it has been awhile. Where they sending us?...what's in Port Orchard WAH?...the kid did what?...oh, yeah, this boy needs help, big time...when do we leave?... then I better hustle. Call you from WAH."

The call was from my consigliore, the Right Reverend Monsignor Michael Jordan (no, not the one who starred in "Space Jam"); he tells me that the Bored Of Elders of the AJATTWC is sending the Harley Dog and I off on one of our "missionary trips", where we go to some god-forsaken outback, like Thuringia, Germany, or Grand Rapids MI, or even, gasp of horror, Lower Zimbabwe (home of the ebert) or even the planet HumidorPrime (home of the Whopper).

Now whenever my sidekick, roommate and best buddy, Mr. Harley Dog (see picture that way --->) and I are sent on one of these missions to spread the message of the "soothing balm of Johnism", we generally take my atomic powered rocket ship, the Royal Unionship Kidding (RU Kidding for short, picture of which is also that way --->), because the Kidding is equipped with HyperAromaDrive, which allows the ship to approach and slightly exceed the Speed Of Aroma. It's a great ship, with a shitload of amenities, including space to sleep 8 adults, or the starting defensive line for the Chicago Bears, an onboard brewery, a gym, a video game room, two pizza parlors, a WalMart, a drive-through synagogue, (hey, we're tolerant) and a hydroponic "lawn" down in the cargo hold so Harley can "go outside". (Going outside, literally, in a spaceship is generally considered a no-no, unless you're one of those crazy but incredibly brave astronaut guys that zoom all around outside the International Space Station in those jet-pack thingies. Keep up the good work, guys, you've got bigger ones than I'll ever have.)

We have a spacesuit for Harley, specially made no less, in case he ever has to actually "go outside" the ship; he hates it, though, because he has to have his tail tucked inside. With Harley's luck, if he doesn't keep the old tail inside, he'll get radiation burns on his butt. (That's has to be unpleasant.) ("No, numb-nuts, your ex-wife was unpleasant, radiation burns on your butt would hurt like a bitch. And there's your ex-wife again, twice in the same sentence.")

So the guys in back are getting the Kidding all prepared for the trip, (including stocking the 'fridge and making sure my gerbil golf clubs are onboard) and we're off later this morning. This will be a very short "jump", since we're only going to, where the hell are we going again? Oh, yeah, Port Orchard WA. (What the hell kind of name is "Port Orchard", anyway? I don't get the connection; I mean, a port is for ships and boats and fisherman and whales and sea urchins and sea teenagers and the Queen Mary and crab shacks and I don't know what all and an orchard is a collection of trees. Huh??) Anyway, since WA is "relatively" close to LA (pronounced "I'll have my people call your people"), other than with hand grenades or horseshoes, the trip will be short, and we should arrive in Port Collection Of Trees well before lunch (and hopefully in time for a quick round of gerbil golf before we have to get to work).

Now there's an interesting explanation for why the young man above, a ninth-grader in Port Collection Of Trees named Sam Saurs, is dressed the way he is. It seems he commented to his mother one day that he didn't think walking in high heels was that big a deal. (Speaking from experience, I can tell you that, well, never mind that now.) Mom, being one of those types of people (female) that wear high heels with some frequency, apparently took umbrage to this rather cavalier attitude from her offspring towards the difficult act of balancing on thin sticks that are considered to be "fashionable", only because they are "fashionable", and challenged him, according to the article on MNS.com, to "try it".

There's more to the story, but I need to pause here and consider something.

Okay, kid says, hey, high heels, no big deal, Mom, you're a wuss. Mom says, okay, hot rod, you try it. Kid says, (because kids are fundamentally brain damaged), sure.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm okay with the story to here; smart mouth kid, Mom dares him, he says, okay, Mom, I'll show you, neener-neener-neener, yeah, been there, done that, know the lineup.

But then the kid goes and adds the dress.

And then wears the whole ensemble to school.

I don't know, maybe its just me, but I just have this feeling that if you "come out" as a cross-dresser at the ripe old age of 15, you're going to have a long and difficult life.

Or maybe not, because the world is becoming a more tolerant place, hard as that is to believe and good as it is to see. (I saw an ad for a website in support of Sam Saurs right after I found the article.)

Now Sam may be a "crosser", he may be gay, he may just be a kid with a VERY odd sense of humor and a really strong sense of who he is, or he may just be certifiable. I don't know about that. I do know that old Sam, like those astronauts, does have WAY bigger ones than I'll ever have.

Young man, I admire you for your courage and your sense of the absurd.

Sam got his chops busted by the school authorities and was suspended for the remainder of the school year, later reduced to three days.

His punishment also included not being allowed to attend the ninth-grade dance, which is a real shame, because I understand he was going to wear his basic little black dress, or as its known in fashion circles, the LBD, with some very hot Calvin Klein platforms and an oh so tasteful string of pearls to set the whole thing off.

There was another article on the 'Net the other day, and I didn't save it unfortunately, but basically it reported the story of a security guard at a minor-league baseball stadium being punished by the team for verbally chastising two women fans who had kissed each other while sitting in the stands watching a ballgame. The women, lesbians and partners, told the guard something about their rights and to, basically, piss off. He apparently responded that they may have the legal right to act that way, but in that stadium, they recognized the Bible. (There was no attempt by the author of the article to explain what the guard had said, nor to defend it; I'm assuming the author was smart enough to realize that neither was possible.)

Wouldn't you love to hear what Bible Bill would have to say about Sam Saurs and his most recent collection, now being shown in fine stores everywhere?

Is this a great country or what?

Love and size three,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

A New Policy (Auto Or Home?)

In our last exciting episode, your Pope Guy promised you the post that he should have written yesterday, but for reasons beyond my control, I wasn't able to finish.

So I got up REAL early this morning, on a Sunday no less, and buttoned her up.

Just for you guys.

So here's the Saturday, 6/18, post, being delivered to your door at no extra charge, on Sunday, 6/19.

Oh, and Happy Father's Day to all you Dads and almost Dads; I'm a Dad, and I can tell you its a great gig.

(New post begins here.)

You know you have the right computer golf game when a warning comes on the screen while the game is loading that says: "Make sure you time your shots to avoid the scorpions."

****WARNING****

 THERE SHOULD BE A SEQUE AT THIS JUNCTURE AND IT HAS BEEN OMITTED.

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Those of you who are regular and faithful followers of your Pope Guy know that there have been number of occasions in the recent past where both myself and Harley have come under intense scrutiny and even sometimes criticism for some of our actions, myself in particular, from the governing body of the All John All The Time World Church, the AJATTWC Bored Of Elders. (I once wrote that phrase and misspelled "Elders" with an "a" at the beginning, making them the Bored Of Trees.)

We were chastised severely for trying to recreate the "over the subway grating" scene with Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch", you know the one, where she's out strolling with Tom Ewell and she stops walking over the grating just as the air whooses up from below and up goes that great, white dress she was wearing, amen, chunky peanut butter. So Harley, who by the way is my sidekick, roommate and backup navigator when we're onboard my atomic powered rocket ship, the Royal Unionship Kidding, which we call the "RU Kidding" for short, Harley and I decide that we could get the same effect with an air hose that the guys back in the hangar fixed up for us, to use on the various models of the religious "habits" that we're considering for the nuns of the new AJATTWC-sponsored Sisters Of The Society Of Our Lady Of The Holy Fundament, the day they modeled them for us at our headquarters.

We got our butts in a sling over the Girl Scout cookie fiasco earlier this year, I'm still catching shit for the post I wrote back in March about God's wife, and they didn't like the position I took on same-sex marriage, where I opined that gays ought to be allowed to marry just so they could be as miserable as heteros.

They weren't real pleased with my idea to market an AJATTWC-sponsored medicine to treat erectile dysfunction that I wanted to call *Rip-A-Dick*, either.

So I've decided to adopt a new "covering" mode of action whenever I, or myself in collusion with Harley, get my chops busted by the Bored Of Old Guys over some dumb thing I've said or done, or something which they claim is embarrassing to the AJATTWC.

Okay, follow along with me for a moment here, if you would.

Back in the early Nineties, from '91 through '94, there was a show on television called "Dinosaurs"; it was a Muppets-like show, originally conceived by Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, with all the characters being human-like caricatures of dinosaurs. Earl Sinclair was the father, a working class stiff, and there was a Mom and an older brother and a kid sister, all dinosaurs and, best of all, one adorable little guy they called Baby Sinclair.

And whenever Baby did something obnoxious or just something he shouldn't, he had a standard reply when he got reamed for his screw-up...ready?

I love this. "I'm the baby, gotta' love me."

You know, when you think about it in the abstract, he's right. He's the baby, and you have to love him. It's beautiful in it's simplicity.

So I thought, hey, why not? It worked for the little dinosaur kid on TV, maybe I can pull off the same schtick with the Bored.

Hey, I'm the Pope, gotta' love me.

Rating it as a method for diffusing and even out right rejecting criticism and punishment, give it a 1 to 10. Whatta' say, about an 8, maybe?

See, Harley doesn't need this artificial "cuteness" thing; he's already adorable, and he gets away with murder because of it. I'm old and crotchety-looking, so I don't get away with shit.

So from now on, when the Pope Dude steps on the old johnson with the gerbil golf shoes on, I've got it covered.

I'm the Pope, gotta' love me.

Take that, Strudel Boy in Rome. You can use the same approach if you want, although in your instance, I'm pretty sure it won't work, based on your background, but just remember, I thought of it first.

****WARNING****

 THERE SHOULD BE A SEQUE AT THIS JUNCTURE AND IT HAS ALSO BEEN OMITTED.

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK AGAIN!

I was watching a Dodgers/Marlins game a few weeks ago, when the Marlins third baseman, a young man named Moro, came to the plate to bat, and Vin Scully, the venerable play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers, mentioned that Moro and his wife are the proud parents of quintuplets. I considered that for a moment, and then I thought to myself, I wonder if the hospital where the kids were born gave them a "volume discount"?

Just asking.

Okay, so back to the "I'm the Pope, gotta' love me" thing. You guys think this has a chance of working with the Bored, or for that matter, with anybody who possesses an IQ over that of a doorknob?

The "I'm the Pope, gotta' love me" thing received an "8" for "diffusing/rejecting", now let's rate it's actual chances of working. On the old 1-10 scale, whatta' think, will my new policy be successful?

Lets see, a two, a three, a zero, (asshole), another two, a one, well, the scores aren't looking too good, are they?

Maybe I should rethink the whole "I'm the Pope, gotta' love me" approach.

Naw, it's a great idea.

Just like Sarah Plain And Loud running for President as the Republican nominee in 2012; if you think Barrack Obama can't whip her butt with all the baggage and nonsense she brings to the party, I've got some land in Florida I'd like to talk to you about.

Just because its swampland doesn't mean it can't be reclaimed, and I'm pretty sure that's what Sarah is thinking as well.

I can be reclaimed, she thinks, because hey, I'm the Mama Grizzly, you gotta' love me.

Hey, Sarah, to quote another phrase that also began its popularity back in the '90s...

...not.

Love and loving me, for whatever reason,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Never On Sunday, (Except Its Saturday, At Least It Is Here In LAH)

Okay, I can explain.

Every Sunday I run the "Never On Sunday" post, with an update on whatever game I'm going to watch that day, and I take the day off.

Hey, I'm entitled.

I started very early this morning (Saturday, 6/18) to write my essay for today, but I got bogged down and then I had to leave to run some errands (no staff members from All John All The Time World Church are working on Saturday, so your Pope has to rough and do his own grocery shopping; I'll bet Strudel Boy over there in Rome doesn't have to haul it down to the local Krogeritello for a box of pasta and some yogurt. Geez.) and then when I got back I got busy with some other stuff and one thing led to another, as it always does, and now I have to leave again and I STILL don't have today's message of the soothing balm of Johnism ready.

So tell you what; I'm going to run my "Never On Sunday" post today, and then I'll finish today's post later and run it tomorrow.

Hows that sound?...well, tough, I'm doing it anyway.

Okay, "Never On Sunday (Saturday)" begins below.

Phew, that was a lotta' work.

No one is sure what motivated the Creator to suddenly get up one morning and decide, hey, I think I'll start creating the universe today, it's Monday, for once I'm all caught up, and darn it, I'd like to have my own universe, and since I'm the Creator, hey, I'm all over this one.

According to reports from various unreliable sources, such as all those Old Testament prophet guys, TC worked His butt off for the next six days, and after all that work, making planets, and animals, and mountains, and rivers, and platypuseses, and trees, and stars, and moons, and quasars, and quarks, and Miley, and just a whole lot of other stuff, after all that, TC decided that he needed a day off.

"I need a day off," He said to Himself.

(He hadn't gotten around to breathing life into the angels yet, that being the last thing on His list to do, so He was still talking to Himself at that point.)

Speculation amongst other spiritual Big Dudes, like myself, the Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, is that TC was lonely, and wanted some companionship. Me, personally, I would have told Him to create canines, find a likely-looking Golden Retriever to adopt and go from there. They're great companions, (ask the Harley Dog) and not NEAR as much work as women. He could have done the same thing for humans as well, if he would have known then what He knows now. (And FYI, men, unlike women, are NOT a lot of work; why would you work on something that can't be fixed? Man, thy name is hopeless.)

But NOOOooo, TC has to do the whole Adam and Eve thing, and now look where we are. Geez. (Oh, and by the way, "the Harley Dog" I referred to above is the "official" canine of the AJATTWC, my sidekick, roommate and best buddy, Harley.)

Anyway, the Creator decides He's had enough for one week, and thought that if he had forgotten to create something He needed for His universe, He could take care of it next week.

So on the "Sunday" of His "Creation Week", TC took the day off.

"You know, since I'm not working today, I think I'll hang out, do some burgers on the grill and watch the Dodgers embarrass themselves against the Astros." He went over to His workbench, breathed life into the angels He had stored there (hey, He didn't want to watch the game by Himself), and asked the first batch of new angels, "How's that sound? Hey, do you guys like this new "inter-league" play thing they're doing these days?", to which, of course, the newly-minted Seraphim and Cherubim had no answer, because they had just been created, and didn't know from baseball or inter-league play. Or burgers, for that matter.

So the Creator rested on what came to be called the Sabbath, watched the Dodgers annihilate the Astros, surprisingly, and got back to his job of the creation and ruling of His new universe on Monday.

And since the Creator took one day off each week, with pay, your Pope Dude is going to do the same thing.

I'm off today and I'm back tomorrow. (Actually, I'm not off any more today than I usually am, I'm just not working today.) Oh, and the Bored of Elders of the AJATTWC have agreed to pay me for today as well. (Hot damn, another $3.69.)

Try to muddle along as well as you can, oh ye faithful followers of the Pope, without the soothing balm of Johnism, for just this one day. Come on, you can do it.

Hey, how many of you are off on Sundays, huh? Yeah.

Love and triple time,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Never On Sunday (Except Its Saturday, At Least It Is Here In LAH)

Okay, I can explain.

Every Sunday I run the "Never On Sunday" post, with an update on whatever game I'm going to watch that day, and I take the day off.

Hey, I'm entitled.

I started very early this morning (Saturday, 6/18) to write my essay for today, but I got bogged down and then I had to leave to run some errands (no staff members from All John All The Time World Church are working on Saturday, so your Pope has to rough and do his own grocery shopping; I'll bet Strudel Boy over there in Rome doesn't have to haul it down to the local Krogeritello for a box of pasta and some yogurt. Geez.) and then when I got back I got busy with some other stuff and one thing led to another, as it always does, and now I have to leave again and I STILL don't have today's message of the soothing balm of Johnism ready.

So tell you what; I'm going to run my "Never On Sunday" post today, and then I'll finish today's post later and run it tomorrow.

Hows that sound?...well, tough, I'm doing it anyway.

Okay, "Never On Sunday (Saturday)" begins below.

Phew, that was a lotta' work.

No one is sure what motivated the Creator to suddenly get up one morning and decide, hey, I think I'll start creating the universe today, it's Monday, for once I'm all caught up, and darn it, I'd like to have my own universe, and since I'm the Creator, hey, I'm all over this one.

According to reports from various unreliable sources, such as all those Old Testament prophet guys, TC worked His butt off for the next six days, and after all that work, making planets, and animals, and mountains, and rivers, and platypuseses, and trees, and stars, and moons, and quasars, and quarks, and Miley, and just a whole lot of other stuff, after all that, TC decided that he needed a day off.

"I need a day off," He said to Himself.

(He hadn't gotten around to breathing life into the angels yet, that being the last thing on His list to do, so He was still talking to Himself at that point.)

Speculation amongst other spiritual Big Dudes, like myself, the Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, is that TC was lonely, and wanted some companionship. Me, personally, I would have told Him to create canines, find a likely-looking Golden Retriever to adopt and go from there. They're great companions, (ask the Harley Dog) and not NEAR as much work as women. He could have done the same thing for humans as well, if he would have known then what He knows now. (And FYI, men, unlike women, are NOT a lot of work; why would you work on something that can't be fixed? Man, thy name is hopeless.)

But NOOOooo, TC has to do the whole Adam and Eve thing, and now look where we are. Geez. (Oh, and by the way, "the Harley Dog" I referred to above is the "official" canine of the AJATTWC, my sidekick, roommate and best buddy, Harley.)

Anyway, the Creator decides He's had enough for one week, and thought that if he had forgotten to create something He needed for His universe, He could take care of it next week.

So on the "Sunday" of His "Creation Week", TC took the day off.

"You know, since I'm not working today, I think I'll hang out, do some burgers on the grill and watch the Dodgers embarrass themselves against the Astros." He went over to His workbench, breathed life into the angels He had stored there (hey, He didn't want to watch the game by Himself), and asked the first batch of new angels, "How's that sound? Hey, do you guys like this new "inter-league" play thing they're doing these days?", to which, of course, the newly-minted Seraphim and Cherubim had no answer, because they had just been created, and didn't know from baseball or inter-league play. Or burgers, for that matter.

So the Creator rested on what came to be called the Sabbath, watched the Dodgers annihilate the Astros, surprisingly, and got back to his job of the creation and ruling of His new universe on Monday.

And since the Creator took one day off each week, with pay, your Pope Dude is going to do the same thing.

I'm off today and I'm back tomorrow. (Actually, I'm not off any more today than I usually am, I'm just not working today.) Oh, and the Bored of Elders of the AJATTWC have agreed to pay me for today as well. (Hot damn, another $3.69.)

Try to muddle along as well as you can, oh ye faithful followers of the Pope, without the soothing balm of Johnism, for just this one day. Come on, you can do it.

Hey, how many of you are off on Sundays, huh? Yeah.

Love and triple time,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Shame On You, Shame On Me

I've had several of my faithful followers ask me to comment on the events of last weekend; you will recall that the Christian commentator, Harold Camping, predicted that, according to his interpretation of the mathematics in the Bible, the world would end on May 21st.

As of May 22nd, we're still all here. Gee, what a surprise.

Camping now admits that his calculations for the original "doomsday" were incorrect and that, after recomputing the numbers, the new date for the final day of our existence is now October 21st. (Hey, he only missed by five months; predicting the end of the world must be a lot like horseshoes and hand grenades, all you gotta' be is close.)

My position as Pope of the All John All The Time World Church requires that I make some observation about Mr. Camping's predictions; however, I'm inclined not to do so. As I told one of my flock the other day, commenting on Camping and his nonsense is like picking a fight with a third-grader; it's not much of a challenge.

But I'll say this much, and then get on to the rest of my life: a very wise gentleman once remarked to me that if you fooled him once, shame on you. If you fooled him a second time, shame on him.

And while I feel some degree of compassion for the families of the people who were already taken in by this lying piece of camel dung, guess what?

If you buy into his bullshit a second time, shame on you.

And maybe I shouldn't say this, but for my money, if you bought into it the FIRST time, shame on you.

Mr. Camping, do all of us that have some sense a favor: shut up and go away. You're wasting good oxygen that one of the rest of us could be using. No one with an IQ of over room temperature believes your garbage anyway, so spare us, okay?

Dean Acheson, who was the Secretary of State under President Harry Truman, and was a highly intelligent and principled gentleman, once remarked, in reference to the First Amendment's "freedom of speech" clause, that "Freedom of speech is a restraint on government, not an incitement to the citizen."

In other words, Harold, just because you have the right to speak doesn't mean you necessarily should.

I suppose the next thing you'll tell us is that the Cubs will win the Series this year, when anyone with any knowledge of the Bible, err, of the MLB and baseball know the Dodgers are going all the way this year.

(Waits until laughter dies down to continue.)

Yeah, and next week Earth will receive a cryptic yet decipherable message from somewhere in deep outer space, explaining how to build an incredible machine that will allow us to accelerate several astronauts to the Speed of Aroma and deposit them on the shore of a mysterious beach that faces a vast, placid ocean on an unknown planetoid in the Aldoran Nebulae, after they all turn a bright chartreuse pink and grow a left-handed tentacle. And a third eye. No, wait, that was the basic plot of the book (and movie) "Contact", except the part about the turning chartreuse pink and growing a tentacle and a third eye; I made that part up. (Hey, I've had girlfriends whose looks would have been vastly improved by turning chartruese pink and growing a left-handed tentacle and a third eye.) (Several.)

Hey, Harold, when you can accurately predict the stock market and this year's NBA Finals winner (Mavericks), lemme' know, because then you're onto something useful.

Unlike yourself.

Love and Nostradamus,

PJTT

Copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

It Wasn't My Fault

Okay, now I'm not trying to impugn anyone here, but there's an explanation for why Your Pope didn't post anything to his blog yesterday, and since that deprived all of you of my daily message, which of course was chock full of the soothing balm of Johnism, I feel an obligation to explain.

The reason I didn't write a post yesterday? I couldn't.

The weinie-heads at Blogger.com had the website shut down all day and I couldn't get logged on. (Yeah, and see if any of those guys get into Heaven..."I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too...". (Thank you, L. Frank Baum, once again.) Harley gets all worked up during "The Wizard Of Oz"; he thinks Toto was the victim of poor management and could have gone MUCH further in Hollywood with a good agent. He also wants me to carry him around like Dorothy carried her dog. I reminded him he that weighs 100.4 pounds, at least according to the digital scale in his vet's office the last time we were there, and that, as a lap dog, he'd make a fine nuclear physicist. I let him sit on my lap one time, a few years ago; imagine being sat on by a pregnant water buffalo. No, Harley Dog, the only thing you have in common with Toto is an attractive human.)

See, even the Pope Dude has situations where he doesn't have all the control he would like to have, and much like the feeling you have when you can't get the lid off the new mayonnaise jar, it was frustrating.

So I stomped my feet and cried really loud and jumped up and down and threw a tantrum and guess what?

I still couldn't get access to the site, so no post for yesterday.

Shit.

I have some errands to run later, after I read my morning paper, as well as a shitload of rosaries I have to bless, and some appointments with other "brother Wizards" that I have to keep, so I'm just not going to have time to write a post until later, or maybe even tomorrow. Yeah, okay, I heard the gasp of shock go up from the crowd, I know you're upset and disappointed, but have faith, my children, it's only one day.

Hey, hang on, the Popephone's ringing...

"PJTT...hey, Mike, what's going on?...good, that's great...yeah, I'm working on it right now...why?...okay, but tell the committee I said no sainthood unless they can explain those paycheck stubs she had from that "Hannah's House Of Harlots" place in Vegas...I don't want another "situation" like the one we had last year when we had to explain those compromising pics of me and all those little people from after the "Wizard Of Oz" reunion dinner we got invited to...yeah...yeah, I'm explaining it right now, what a bunch of cry-babies, geez, one day without a post and they're coming unglued, for chrissake...yeah, okay, I gotta' go, I gotta' finish this...yeah...hey, lunch at the Beaver's Den later?...cool."

That was my consigliore, the Right Reverend Monsignor Michael Jordan, (no, not the one who didn't make his freshman basketball team); he expressed to me upset how he was with the utter and complete failure of the Blogger.com people to do their jobs competently, and how bad he felt, as do I, about not being able to post an essay yesterday.

Okay, if I get going and get all my errands done, MAYBE I can write something later; I'm not making any promises, but I'll try.

Hey, there's a Dodgers game on this afternoon, okay? How about priorities, huh? I'm only one man, admittedly an amazingly good-looking one, but only a man; I can't do everything.

Somebody has to staple the Sunday bulletins later today too, and ol' Harley Dog doesn't have opposable thumbs, so he's no help, and that means that I have to do it. So no post today either, now that I think about it. The hell with all of it, I'm just not doing one today.

Just like those Blogger. com people, I'm taking another day off.

With pay.

Love and workloads,

PJTT

Shopping In The Pope's Department Store

As those of you who follow the daily posts on my blog, "...from the desk of Pope John The Tall..." know, I check in with my staff and department heads here at the All John All The Time World Church periodically, to determine the pulse of the world, so to speak, and also to check up on these guys to make sure they're punchin' the old time clock. Hey, the AJATTWC is a charitable, "not for profit" organization, (as opposed to some companies out there, who are "can't make a profit" companies), so we're careful with the benjamins; we throw nickels around like manhole covers. (I started to make a really crude joke there about "manhole covers", but for once, my very slight sense of decorum kicked in...and I didn't. Aren't you guys proud of me?)

(You want to hear it anyway? No, no, never mind.)

So after returning from whatever godless, forsaken shithole the Bored of Elders of the AJATTWC sent us to most recently, the us being myself and the Harley Dog, my sidekick and back-up navigator onboard my atomic powered rocket ship, the Royal Unionship Kidding, I got a hold of my head of department people, and here's some of the reports I received:

-From the Oh, So Now He's A Marketing Maven As Well As The Pope Department:

            I was watching the Dodgers/Marlins game the other evening, and I noticed on the huge advertising sign they have behind home plate at Sun Lite Stadium, where the Marlins play, an ad for the company Waste Management (who, totally apropos to nothing, were once the darlings of Wall Street), hawking one of their new products, an enormous bag-thing that you can have WM deliver to your home so you can throw out all kinds of unusual debris, like old sinks, and rusted pipes that have been removed from walls, construction debris, old mother-in-laws, etc.

            The ad was divided in half; on the right half was WM's name and a corporate message. On the left side, was the following message...

            Part Bag.

            Part Dumpster.

...and that was it. I thought it would be much more interesting this way...

            Part Bag,

            Part Dumpster,

            All Woman.

And now you can understand why they won't let me have sharp objects.

-From the Webster's Dictionary People Don't Need Any Help Department:

            New word whose use I'm promoting: "ralphitate". You guess the meaning.

-From the A New Career In Retirement Department:

            One of my staff members suggested that, after I retire from my Pope gig, I could launch a whole new career as "Mr. Phone Love", which would be kind of a reversal of those 1-900 sex-line places you see advertised all over late night TV. In my version, senior citizens (preferably women) would sign up for my service, and then, unscheduled and unannounced, I would call them up and breathe in their respective ears and whisper disgusting, filthy things I would like to do to them, if they weren't 857 years old and wrinkled like a cotton shirt that was left in the bottom of the dryer after the final cycle. You know, a little cheap thrill for Granny once in awhile, just to keep the juices flowing, so to speak. (Do you think the "manhole cover" joke would have been any worse than this? Geez.)

From the Maybe He Came In To Get Warm Department (In FL?):

            According to MSN.com, a Palmetto FL woman recently discovered an unwanted visitor in her bathroom; a seven foot long alligator, who apparently has a bladder problem.

            Alexis Dunbar, the lady whose bathroom the alligator decided to visit, believes the animal used a doggie door on her back porch to get inside the house (Ms. Dunbar, according to the report, has no dog, but two cats who use the door, both of whom escaped the nocturnal bathroom visitor with no apparent injuries). Dunbar, who lives in Palmetto, which is south of St. Petersburg, told WFLA-TV reporters that she also believes the 'gator hung out at her house for several hours after getting inside; some of her things had been "rearranged" so to speak. Her visitor was subsequently removed by local wildlife authorities, after her boyfriend propped a chair against the bathroom door, trapping the guest inside.

There was a quote in the report from one of the wildlife guys who "rescued" the alligator, to wit: "Spring is mating season for alligators and wildlife officials urge people to be extremely cautious, especially around water." (I assume that means "water" occurring in nature, like swamps and lakes; I suspect the people in FL would like to think their pools, drinking fountains and lawn-sprinklers are safe.)

            You know, not knowing that you have an seven foot long alligator in your bathroom has to make getting up to pee in the middle of the night a much more interesting experience.

From the Is It Loyalty Or Stupidity? Department:

            Last week, on April 22nd, the Dodgers played the worst franchise in baseball, the Chicago Cubs, at their home field in Chicago, Wrigley Field, which is almost as bad a joke as the team that plays there.

            At game time, 1:15pm local, it was raining vigorously, so the game was delayed. (The temperature on the north side of Chicago was also in the mid 40's at this point.) After a 45-minute delay, with the temperature still dropping and the rain abated, the game got under way. There were several other rain stoppages, and the game proceeded haltingly through the sixth inning, with the Dodgers ahead 8-2. That's when I turned it on, and here's how the game ended after nine:

            -it was by then in the low 40's, with wind gusts off Lake Michigan, which is only a few miles east of the stadium (knowing Chicago weather, as I do intimately, the wind chill at that point had to be in the mid 30's);

            -it was still drizzling rain periodically;

            -the Cubs were losing...ready...12-2; yes, you read that correctly: TWELVE TO TWO;

            -it is by now well after 7:00pm, with all the rain delays;

-AND THE STANDS WERE STILL ABOUT HALF FULL OF CUBS FANS.

Einstein is credited with the theory that doing something in the same manner repeatedly and expecting different results each time is the definition of insanity; I submit that a new definition is needed, and fans of the Cubs are happily providing it for us.

Insanity, thy name is Chicago.

-From the And I Can Prove It Department:

            I was looking at my didn't-shower-today-and-haven't-shaved-in-two-days face in the mirror last night, and it suddenly occurred to me, hey, I can prove, unequivocally, that Intelligent Design does not exist. Simply, the intelligence of any entity that can create that face, an ostrich and Rosie O'Donnell has to be highly suspect.

From the What's Next, Blue Light Specials At Neiman-Marcus Department:

            According to an ad I saw in the LA (pronounced LAH, you know, like "Doe, a deer, a female deer, ray, a drop of golden sun", etc.) Times yesterday, 99 Cents Only Stores now have a...bridal registry.

From the Classic Literature Department:

            While I was watching that same Dodgers/Marlins game from FL the other night, the Marlins, who had gotten behind in the score during the later innings, brought in a relief pitcher named Mujica, and I thought to myself, hey, if he's an only child, and has no sons, wouldn't that make him..."The Last Of The Mujica's"?

From the What? Department:

            Remember all those great pirate movies from back in the 1700's (???), where the characters would use phrases like, "hoist the jib mast" and "batten down the barnacles", and my all-time favorite, "shiver me timbers, matey".

            Okay, I give up, how exactly does one "shiver" his "timbers"?

Well, I can see from the sundial on my wall that it's time for my medicine, so I think I'll close for now. Harley and I have to prepare to go to, hell, wherever the Bored sends us next week to preach the soothing balm of Johnism. I hope its some place nice like South Florida, home of the North American alligator, or Lower Zimbabwe, home of the African ebert, a small, furry mammal with an enormous sex-organ. (Harley wanted to get an ebert to keep as a pet, but I said no. I hate to admit it, but I was envious. Hey, some guys are hung like stud horses; I'm hung like a stud chipmunk.)

(Wanna' hear the "manhole cover" joke now?)

Love and Bloomingdale's (departments that is),

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Taking A Stand On The Issues (Second Edition)

(Okay, your Pope, John the Tall, is currently suffering from a severe case of "writer's block" and hasn't a clue what to write about for today's post; however, since I didn't want to leave all my loyal followers without a day where they had none of the soothing words of Johnism to bolster their pathetic lives, I decided to rerun an essay I wrote back in late January. I hope this helps.)

 

As Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, I feel that it is my duty, as I believe it is the duty of all our moral leaders, to take a stand on an issue and actively advocate for that belief. I believe it is incumbent on us all, but particularly heads of major religions such as the All John All The Time World Church, to speak out about injustice, about inequality and about how Frank McCourt, the owner of the L.A. Dodgers, should just sell the team and disappear back into the rat hole from which he crawled several years ago, just before purchasing and becoming the co-owner of the franchise, along with his wife, Jamie, who, subsequently, was apparently caught by Frank while engaged in various adult activities with her chauffer. (Not THE chauffer, HER chauffer.)

Needless to say, Frank took exception to this type of activity between his spouse and an employee, and sued Jamie for divorce, claiming mental cruelty (that one will be hard to prove, given the general lack of "mental" going inside Frank's head), alienation of feelings and severe mopery. (I have heard "mopery" described as someone exposing himself to a parking meter, but I'm not sure that's accurate. I couldn't find the word in Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language. Not to be confused with the English language, I assume. George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, once described the United States and Britain as two great countries separated by a common language.) Yeah Frank, sell the team so you can payoff Jamie and then slink back to Boston where you came from. They would love to have you back, but then, what would you expect from people that are Red Sox/Patriots fans.

As your Pope, I have agonized over an issue for some time now, and I feel that, in accordance with all those fancy things I said in the opening paragraph, I must now come out and speak my peace on...alien induction.

That's right, boys and girls, alien induction. Please do not accuse me of xenophobia or racism; I have absolutely no problem with beings from other planets. Be they the Green Turtle Men of the planet Zatox, my home planet (see my profile to the right <--, oops, sorry,-->), or the Testicles people (for those of you who are not familiar with our other world friends, that name is pronounced "TES-TA-CLEES") from inside the Nebula of Scrotum, nor any other traveler from the Outer Limits or the Twilight Zone. I have encountered many of these fine alien beings during my missions onboard the RU Kidding, my atomic-powered rocket ship, and have hoisted many a fine mug of Rxdytzsdo beer (that's Budweiser in Cerulean; this Rxdy's for you) with my fellow space adventurers. I hold no ill will for any of our brothers, sisters and host surrogate tenderloins from out there beyond our solar system.

But I see no reason why they should be inducted into our military services. Alien induction is not the American way. America should populate its armed forces with strong, red-blooded young men and women of native birth, not green-blooded Fliptans or the three-handed Marplegloogers of the planet Huptwothreefour (the only creatures I know of who can play cards and with themselves at the same time). I believe that alien induction is a threat to...wait a moment, there's an incoming call on my Popephone...JTT...yeah, I'm working on it now...its what?...ABduction...shit...yeah, thanks...

Never mind.

Love and green cards,

PJTT

The Tenets of "Johnism", Part II

Picking up from where I left off yesterday, I will continue with my delineation and examination of the various tenets that comprise Johnism, or the dogma of the All John All The Time World Church, which I'm calling my Sickle, which is short for what the Roman Catholics refer to as a Papal Encyclical, which us Pope Guys use to explain the arbitrary rules to which we subject our followers. Actually, most of my positions, and by extension, those of the my church, are meant to be advisory only, unlike other religions that expect their adherents to actually, you know, follow their rules, live decently and behave themselves. Our attitude here at the AJATTWC is a little different; we believe that you should be good, but if you can't be good, then you should try not to get caught, and if you DO get caught, don't call us to bail you out of jail. (We have no budget for that.)

Once again, in no apparent order, other than as they occur to me:

2nd Amendment Rights-

            The Second Amendment of the Constitution of our great country reads as follows:

            "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

            Okay, for those of you misguided individuals who believe that, just because our Founders wrote in a stilted English language that doesn't translate well to modern day usage, this amendment allows you to arm yourselves as if the Third World War was imminent, sorry, guys, you're reading it wrong. Now, let me make a point right here; at this juncture in our country's legislative history, there's no law that says you CAN'T keep weapons, so knock yourselves out. But don't misconstrue the 2nd; there's nothing in the language of the amendment that says you, as private citizens and non-members of a militia, can "keep and bear arms".

            If I had been the author of this amendment, and wanted to express what the Founders were trying to say, here's how I would have written it:

            "Since there are a bunch of kings and other despots in Europe that might eventually decide to come across the Atlantic and attempt to take our homes, our farms and our businesses away from us and make us all subjects to their nonsense again, which is one of the reasons why we came to this land in the first place, to get away from that kind of shit, and since we don't want to keep a standing army, because strong leaders and armies scare us to death, and besides, we can't afford it anyway, and that the several states need some protection as well from other states coming in and taking whatever they want without being polite and asking nicely, we need to keep a militia, which means you guys need to keep your muskets and powder handy just in case the Brits or some other assholes start something. Since the states are afraid that the federal guys will try to take over, and won't fund the militia, thus leaving the several states with no way to confront insurrection, riots and other shit like that, we'll write this amendment so it says that the federal guys can't take your muskets and your powder from you, ever. But only because you gotta' do the militia thing and be members and come running if we call you up, okay?"

           

            Now, based on MY version, in the modern era, if you're not a member of your local or state militia, and since the institution of militias in this country has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur, given that we now have full-time police departments at the local, county and state levels, as well as professional standing armed forces, keeping personal weapons under the auspices of the 2nd doesn't work. Sorry.

            So here's the official position of the AJATTWC: hey, you want to keep rifles and shotguns for hunting or whatever, okay. We don't particularly like it, but we don't like a lot of things we live with day in and day out, like famine, disease, poverty and Lindsay Lohan. But if you're thinking about getting a synthesized, gamma ray-generating 56mm harmonizing laser cannon or a Glock 9 with a 250 shot magazine, forget it. With my luck, you'll shoot me with it.

Global Warming-

            Back in 2000, your Pope Guy moved to the beautiful state of California, after nearly fifty (50) years of freezing my butt off in Chicago; great city, lousy winters. No more snow, no more sleet storms, no more scraping an inch of ice off the windshield of my car every morning so I could spend an hour and a half making what was normally a 20 minute drive to work because the snowplows hadn't gotten all the streets cleared yet. I spent fifty years being cold; for my money, the globe can't get warm enough.

Pornography-

            The AJATTWC and your Popemeister have always maintained the position vis-a-vis pornography, or the depiction of slutty people doing disgusting, slutty things to each other, or to sheep or other small animals, such as eberts, with a clarinet, an electric drill and a duffel bag full of pineapples, causing people of the guy persuasion (and, to be politically correct, some female types as well) who view such slutty goings-on to become, you know, "aroused", was sick and disgusting and well, slutty. Further, it is our belief that such slutty behavior should not be condoned, and that if in fact followers of the AJATTWC feel that they must conduct themselves in such a slutty fashion, by the viewing of, for example, slutty porn-sites on the Internet, that said followers should forward the URLs of these slutty websites to me, the Pope Guy, immediately, so that I may review them and determine whether or not said slutty sites fall into the category of "slutty" pornography, and give my approval or disapproval for said viewing.

            You sluts.

The Los Angeles Dodgers And The McCourts-

            Some of you followers of the AJATTWC may not be familiar with Frank and Jamie McCourt, who, depending on whose opinion you believe in the divorce court battle that's currently taking place here in LA (pronounced LAH) between these two ninnies, because Frank caught Jamie doing slutty things with her chauffer (HER, not their chauffer, to give you an idea of the excesses these two twits indulged themselves in, not to mention, just as one example, the two adjacent multi-million dollar homes they owned, and bought with the club's money, in Malibu, using one as a residence and the other as a LAUNDRY FACILITY, and that's a true story, so help me), individually or together own the Los Angeles Dodgers Major League Baseball franchise, much to the detriment of the fans of this venerable club. The only position that the Pope Dude has in reference to these two dumbshits is this: Would you two PLEASE, PLEASE sell the team and go back to Boston or wherever you came from so the loyal fans of this great franchise can have their team back? PLEASE? PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON TOP?

TV/Movie/Video Game Violence-

            The AJATTWC's, and the Pope's, opinion on the incessant shooting, killing, murder, violence, exploding car-crashes, knifings, etc. that permeate our television, movies and video games is simple; anyone, anywhere, that thinks this type of "entertainment" doesn't have a detrimental effect on our society, especially on our youth, is a moron, and the Church urges its members to turn this shit off, or don't go to theatres where its showing, and go do something wholesome, like take a walk, or go to a museum, or go spend the day at the beach, or a zoo, or read a good book, or play a round of gerbil golf or whatever.

            This shit is insidious, and if you further think it isn't, you're a bigger moron. And if you think that the perpetrators of the horrors at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Tucson, just as a few examples, weren't, to some extent, influenced by all this garbage, then there's something fundamentally wrong with you that scares the hell out of me.

Short People-

            Amongst the staff of the AJATTWC there is a general agreement, one with which I concur, that the songwriter Randy Newman said it best, in regards to people who are, to be politically correct, "vertically challenged", when he opined in his song "Short People" that, "Short people got no reason, short people got no reason to live..."

            Further, we believe that any adult person ("adult" being defined as having attained the age of 21 years) of the female gender who is less than 5' tall, and any adult person of the male gender who is less than 5'4" tall, should immediately be stripped of their U.S. citizenship, which is nothing at all like a rocketship, and then shipped (pardon the redundancy) off to an island in the Sargasso Sea, where they can live out their tiny, little lives, produce whatever wee, tiny children they care to produce and not bother the rest of us normal, standard height folks. For adult males, the minimum height requirement is increased to 6' 2" if you are currently playing in the National Basketball Association. (Okay, no howls of protest here, I'm just kidding; some of my best friends are midgets.)

And so ends my Sickle, and its about time, wouldn't you agree?

I will periodically update these tenets of Johnism to deal with whatever issues I feel need to be addressed as they arise.

And from now on, I promise not to hold back so much or to be so reticent to express myself.

Love and papal edicts, again,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Hey, Does The Pope Wear A Tall Hat?

As much as I enjoy my work as the Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, there are drawbacks to being the spiritual leader of so many, as well as a prominent world figure and renown sports fan. I think the one thing that bothers me most is the occasional insult directed towards me, as Pope, by inconsiderate, thoughtless assh...sorry, by people who disagree with my teachings and my opinions on the issues that effect my flock. (Good thing my "flock" isn't sheep; sheep and shepherds are the common building blocks of Old Testament abominations. Like in the Book of Secretions, Chapter 9, Cubs 3.) I realize that, as a public figure and as a man of the cloth (gabardine), I should offer up these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (that's Shakespeare, Book of Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, and the Dodgers/Giants no score, just getting under way here at Dodger Stadium) to whatever higher power exists in the universe, and suffer little children to come unto me. (???) And mostly I'm able to do this, to bear with the personal insults to further my vision of a world at peace, a world free of hatred and malice towards each other, a world without end, amen.

And while the assaults on my lofty and exalted position as Pope I can dismiss, as long as they're made in the heat of a good, clean debate of the issues, whenever an attack on my Popeship becomes personal, it seriously pisses me off, ah, upsets me greatly, sorry.

A few years ago, a trend was abound in our country, and continues today to some varying degree, to use a phrase of frank obviousness, as an ironic rejoinder to a statement of equal or even greater obviousness. To wit, "Gee, does a cat have nine lives?" or "Yeah, no shit, and do the Cubs suck?", etc. But the one remark of this genre that has always rankled me, that I felt was demeaning and insulting to my Popeness was the one that goes, "Yeah, does the Pope shit in the woods?" I'm sorry, but I just feel that a remark like that lacks respect for my ever so lofty office and person.

Why can't we have civility in our discourse, why...hang on, there goes the Popephone again...JTT...Mike, how ya' doin', buddy?...a bear?...and what?...the Pope wears a tall hat...shit...well, I got that one wrong, didn't I?...tell Miller in research he really blew this one...no, don't fire him, but dock him a week's pay, all right?...thanks... According to my consigliore, Monsignor Michael Jordan (no, that's ANOTHER Michael Jordan), I apparently misunderstood what was being said. As far as I know, bears do shit in the woods. (For my money, any animal as big as a bear, with all those really huge bear teeth, hey, he can shit anywhere he likes. And FYI, this consigliore thing isn't like in "The Godfather", okay? Its not a mafia thing, I'm not Italian, I don't run an olive oil import business and I've never made an offer that couldn't be refused, just ask all the women I've tried to get in...well, never mind that now.)

Well, now that I know my Popeosity isn't being ranked as I believed it was, it's on to other more critical issues. Why is it so hard to find a really good pizza place here in the Valley that delivers?

(I was reading about the President of China the other day, a man named Hu Jintoa, and I thought to myself, if he gets a single, then Hu's on first, right? I don't know; he's on third.) (Okay, excellent baseball joke, stolen gleefully from the movie "Hot Shots"; would do you do with an elephant that has three balls? Walk him and pitch to the rhino.)

I'm thinking of dropping a better camshaft in the engine of the Popemobile, and maybe some headers too; you know, looking to gain a higher power.

Love and quotations,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.