Etch-A-Pope! | The Most Blasphemous Game Since Civilization

The Pope has a book out about the Infancy Gospels of Jesus, or rather his take on the infancy, less the apocryphal texts and the Council of Nicea muddying the waters. This is the back jacket of that book:

To amuse a coworker, I placed the book in front of my face and jostled it as I quoted Return of the Jedi:

 Good! Good! Now, strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the Dark Side shall be complete!"

Apparently, she always imagine Pope Benedict had a squeaky rat voice, which makes sense considering his name was Ratzinger.

Interestingly, since "Ratskeller" is the name of at east one dive bar in every college town, literally German for "rat cellar," it stands to reason that the German Pope's name means "one who [zing]s rats." I'm not sure exactly what German verb "zing" would be the root of, however. Cursory research reveals only that Ratzinger is Bavarian for "one from Ratzing," and there is a Southern Bavarian town called Ratzing. So, basically, the Pope is named "One from the place where rats and Zinged."

Anyway.

Somehow we also determined that the pope would need a new face to match his crazy voices, but since I couldn't come up with just one to waste my time on, I created this:

It's Etch-A-Pope!

Mix and match your favorite pope pieces, or create brand new ones using only a pen and the parts of a Post-It note closest to the sticky strip!

We have Cat Pope!

W. C. Fields Pope!

Derpy-Pope!

Terminator Pope! (Alternately "Robot Baboon Al Gore Pope" maybe?)

 Emperor Palpipope!

 Extra-Derpy-Pope! (Alternately "Hillbilly Pope" or "Pope Cletus.")

And PinochiPope! The Pope who always lies!

(Better known as "Regular Pope.")
Oh snap.

On Religion

I understand that religion draws much of its power from explaining things to people who need things explained. Mostly, these are things like "What is the purpose of life?" and "How do I find meaning in a seemingly cold, finite existence that is but a blink in the eye of the measurable universe?" You know, philosophy.

Then there are people who make me think that if you're going to make the decision to be part of a religion, you'd best pass a test evaluating your competence to comprehend and distinguish things like parables and literalness. Example:

I don't mind having to explain to you that the King James bible is a translation commissioned by the court of King James of England in 1604 in order to further distance the Church of England from the Catholic church, who still performed mass in Latin up until 1965. That's not something you'd be expected to know. Hell, I had to look up the dates while I was typing it just to have something better than a ballpark figure.

I may get a little miffed when I have to explain how the King James Version and the New American, and New International, and Revised editions are all different translations of the four gospels and such, made at different times from mostly the same source material, accounting in newer cases for more accurate descriptions of people and events, as reflected by modern English. The actual differences allude me, so why should you know more than that they are different in subtle ways, but tell the same story in predominantly the same fashion.

I get pissed when I have to take the time to explain to you twice that all Christian bibles will have both the Old and New Testaments.

Listen, I get that you're trying to get your daughter into Sunday School and faith young, but that child is going to have her faith drastically shaken when she turns nine and realizes she's smarter than you. You don't want to risk her getting brainwashed because you didn't know what it was you were teaching her. I have a friend who was taught there were 36 weeks in a year, until I confounded her with math in her early twenties.

If I ever had faith, it would not be in humanity days like this.

On Catholicism

I miss this pope. He looked like Dude Mother Teressa.
New Pope looks like Emperor Palpatine.
Enjoy Pope Classic responsibly.

English is a dangerous language. We steal words from just about everyone, ever since that whole Norman Invasion thing and the bit where English was a dead language for a long time. Yet that's a digression. The point is, we steal words constantly, and sometimes we steal two words that sound close to each other and don't mean anything remotely similar. Case in point:

"Catholic" comes from the Greek καθολικός meaning "universal," from contraction of the phrase κατά όλος, "regarding the whole." 

καθίεμαι, meanwhile meant "to sit." καθίεμαι became καθετήρ, explaining from whence we get "catheter."

You will notice both words contain the root "kath-." Or perhaps the difference is "kat(h)a" versus "katie," I'm not actually an etymologist. The point is, I'm starting to understand.

Worshiping the pope is as painful an experience as shoving a rubber tube up your dick.

Team Jesus

Since my team just came in dead-middle at trivia night, yet again, I'm a little annoyed. Every week is the same thing: 8s and 9s in the first couple rounds, then 6s and 3s, and we make up no viable ground in the bonus round. Getting a little tired of it. Might have to switch teams soon.

In fact, yeah.  Switching teams. Moses has been failing me for too long. It's time to go Team Jesus over here.

Things the Pope Could Criticize OTHER Than the U.S.'s Cuba Embargo

• Sexual abuse of children

  

  "My hand isn't touching Jesus' junk, right?
  I hate it when my hand touches His junk."

• Repression of women

• Hoarding of vast wealth, art and scholarly works deemed unsupportive of an organization's specific agenda.

• Revisionist histories painting oneself in a positive light, despite the exact opposite having been the case.

• … I don't know, the Hitler Youth?

• The international haberdasher monopoly