Episode V: The Holy Roman Empire Strikes Back

Awww yeah y'all heard the news???  The Catholic Church's Papal opening has at long last been filled!  Sorry that came out a bit dirty, but I'm just so excited that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was just elected the new Head Pope of the World, narrowly beating out Rick Santorum!  Bergoglio's papal name will be Pope Francis, presumably because he lost a bet with the other cardinals.  Francis is the first Pope from Latin America, which is surprising considering Latin is the official language of the Holy See.   

As Head Pope, Francis is now the Lord and Master of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, and with their belief that contraception is a sin, expect that number to rise exponentially.  Francis is 76, or in Vatican years, LXXVI years old.  So no one really expects him to be popin’ it up for as long as, say, Pope Pius VII who reigned from 1800 to 1823.  However long he serves for, I hope he's successful in implementing some much needed reforms.  The Catholic Church has lately been mired in controversy and scandal, with many people wondering how a supposedly holy institution could have such a large moral blind spot regarding one of the most pressing issues of our day.  Y'all know what I'm talking about.  It's a disgrace that we're here in the 21st century and the Popemobile still isn't fully electric!  Can you believe that shit?  We're in the midst of global warming on a scale heretofore unknown in recorded history, and meanwhile the Pope is blithely jaunting along in his gas guzzling monstrosity?!?  For shame.  The Popemobile is responsible for 5% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  I beseech you Pope Francis, please do something to make sure that all Popemobiles are fully electric by 2025.  Fail to act now and soon you'll be living on Vatican Island.  

And while we're on the subject of Papal reform, is it too much to ask for the Vatican to come out with a new calendar?  The one we use now was instituted under Pope Gregory XIII all the way back in 1582.  That's a long time to stick to the same one and frankly I'm pretty tired of it.  It's got way too many weekdays and not nearly enough weekends.  We can do better.  Get on that, will ya Pope Frank?  Can I call you Pope Frank? 

So anyway Pope Francis seems pretty cool and all.  His Papal motto is "Miserando atque Eligendo" which if I remember my high school Latin correctly has something to do with Jesus or God or something.  Whatever it means, it surely is more family friendly than Pope Paul VI's motto, "Cum in Ipso Monte."  Poor Monte, he must've been mortified to see the details of his private life revealed for all the world to see.  I have high hopes for Francis's Papacy, he seems progressive enough to try to shake things up a bit.  But seriously he has his work cut out for him because the Roman Catholic Church hasn’t been this unpopular since Titus Oates accused King James II of Popery… and scented candles!  Zing! 
 

With me playing center the Vatican dominated San Marino in the EIMSBA (Enclaved Italian Microstate Basketball Association)

SeQuester GOP

Aww shit y'all I'ma have to take a break from all this Papacy related program activity on account of some doings going on up in the Washington DC.  In case y'all haven't heard, them folks in Congress done passed some kind of Sea Quest or some such.  Now I don't know exactly what that means since I'm not a genius, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that now is not the time to insist on drastic across the board cuts to the gubmint's budget just so the GOP can afford go on some cruise.  

I can't have the fejrul gubmint reducing its funding at a time like this.  Being recently retired I'm more dependent than ever on government checks to survive.  Life is already hard enough without the fat NBA paychecks I'd been so accustomed to, now you expect me to live without my Social Security checks?  That's cold, President Obama.  And let me tell you, doing the halftime show of the NBA on TNT doesn't pay shit.  

I get that Uncle Sam has to pay down his debt, but I don't think that eliminating crucial government services is the way to go about doing that.  If the U.S. really is way over its salary cap, can't we just amnesty the entire South?  Jettisoning the contracts of all those underperforming Southern states would free up cap space so we could sign some better functioning democracies with plentiful natural resources like Canada or Belgium or I don't know Steph Curry is pretty good too.  At this point I'd trade Arizona for Nicaragua straight up, maybe even add a conditional 2nd round draft pick to sweeten the deal.  How about releasing Georgia the state and signing Georgia the country?  

I just hope President Obamacare reads my blog and takes my awesome budgetary advice.  The gubmint would run a lot smoother if it was run like an NBA team.  In the NBA if you're losing you can't just decide to cut back services and expect to start winning.  Back when I was with the Heat, we had one game where our point deficit vis-a-vis the Lakers was out of control.  We were down by like 20 in the 3rd quarter, with a projected 4th quarter deficit in the 40s.  We knew we owed it to our children and our children's children and also all of Shawn Kemp's children to erase the deficit so that they would not grow up in a world where the awesome Miami Heat had lost to stank ass Kobe Bryant and the pathetic Lakers.  So what did we do?  Did we beg Yao Ming to come bail us out?  Did we implement an across the board 10 percent reduction in non-essential bounce passes and alley oops?  Did we decide to go without sneakers and headbands to save a few thousand dollars?  Did we eliminate food stamps so that millions of Americans would go hungry just to save a few billion dollars?  HELL NAW!  On the contrary, Coach Stan decided to not only continue his pledge to feed me in the paint, he actually increased the rate at which I received assistance.  As you probably guessed by now, all that Dwyaneane Wade assisted stimulus helped both of us get double-doubles and of course we came back to win 124-119.  Boo-yah.

Compare that inspirational story with what the gubmint tranah do these days.  I even heard a rumor that the Post Office was thinking about not delivering mail on Saturday no more.  Sheeit.  Can you imagine the outcry if Karl Malone told the Utah Jazz he refused to deliver rim-rattling dunks on weekends?  Stern David and Jerry Sloan would have straight Sea Quested his ass to the Bobcats but they didn’t exist back then so I guess some other scrub team like the Clippers.  The point is, Mailmen, no matter if they work for the USA or the NBA, need to bring their A-game to the court 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 48 minutes a game.  Except from July to November.  They can do whatever they like then, whether it be starring in a classic kid’s movie or recording a hit rap album.