I am Catholic! Stop predending that I'm not! Do I have to recite the Hail Mary RIGHT HERE?

Often I try my material out at work before posting it here. This has been certified giggle-worthy by my co-workers. If it's not funny, blame them.

I've been thinking about the Pope lately, as I must, since I am Catholic. This Catholic thing, by the way, was apparently kind of a shock to my co-workers, who had to be reassured several. Times. that I do, in fact, go to Mass every week and can even tell you how the Catholic aerobics (stand, sit, stand, sit, stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, kneel, shake it all about, kneel) of it go. Their ignorance, however, confirms I am doing my job as a Catholic, which is to be chill and non-evangelical. It's good times being a Catholic. I'd recommend that you try it, but you know, whatever. No pressure. Although what I think is really interesting is what one of my friends told me once about converting to Judaism (sorry, I can't remember which Jewish friend it was), which is that the Jews are kind of like, you know, we don't really need a whole lot more chosen people here, so chill out. They make today's Catholics look like 15th century Catholics. Hm, that was a fun digression. Yay Catholics! Yay Jews!

Okay. What was I saying? Oh yeah, the Pope. Right.

Okay, there's the whole process of being elected Pope, and then, all of a sudden, some guy is the Pope, and he picks his pope name and puts on his pope robes and meets the popel people. It's the pope name I'm wondering about. Like, does he have that picked out before he goes into the conclave? "If I become pope, I'm going to be Pius XLXVIII?" Or is that bad luck, you say it and God goes, "Noooo, you shall be Pope Nobody the Nothingth," and then you get assigned to be Archbishop of Antarctica and you spend a lot of time ministering to penguins? I don't know. I just think it's a lot of pressure to pick a pope name on the spot like that. That's probably why we had two John Paul's in a row, because you know John Paul II was a dark horse. John Paul I dies, Carol Wojtyla gets elected and is all, "Uh. What? Pope name? I don't know...John Paul?" And then everybody thinks he's a copycat but they can't say anything because, hey, they just elected him pope. Also, can we get more creative with the names, here, popes? We've had enough Innocents and Pauls and Clements. (And I'm probably going to hell for this, but doesn't Clement make you think of a redneck guy who's missing a few teeth and wears overalls to church? Me too.) Let's go back to the early popes and start picking fun names. May I recommend Zebedee? Pope Zebedee. It's got a certain cachet.

Update: Habemus papem! More when we find out who it is later. If he's Pope Zebedee, you owe me a MILLION dollars.