Get well soon, Pope...

So my friend Adam wrote a post about the pope and I just had to give my two cents on it too. I suggest reading his first.

First off, I think this Pope thing is being way over-publicized. The pope's pulled through alot of stuff and it seems the only info the press have, has been leaked. Big P's tough. He'll make it. I'm crossing my fingers that he'll be OK... Anyway, I feel further elaboration on the pope-ifying process is necessary. I guess how it works is the right-hand man (the camerlengo that is, not Jesus) hits the pope on the forehead with a silver hammer three times, asking after each hit to the holy noggin, "[Insert pope name HERE], are you dead?". After this, he says "I declare that His Holiness [Insert pope name HERE] is truly dead." Full thing here.

Is it just me, or does this whole process seem REALLY open for deception? First: hitting the pope on the forehead with a hammer before asking him if he's dead/conscious, when it's usually the guy who's up next for pope who is the one doing the knocking? Second: How about that same dude counting the ballots, then burning them? If I were this camerlengo character... Well, I've written a quasi-poem about what I might do:

While he's asleep in bed,
I could pop him on the head,
Ask him if he's dead,
Then to the polls I'd tread.

Take the cardinals of the land,
And I could count their votes by hand,
And now the best part -- This is grand,
Cause I could burn them as I'd planned.

The votes, not the cardinals, that is.

Of course, I personally would never do this, I just felt that a first-person poem would best describe what someone could do, were they malicious. You've got to admit, the election system has some gaping loop-holes. These loop-holes are so large that I'm pretty sure you could use them to hang elephants... Or any number of large mammals, for that matter.