17 mar 2012

when i heard today that pope shenouda had died, my first reaction was, "but the pope's name is john paul" and then my next thought was "maybe it's a rapper".

i am telling this to you in order to hold myself publicly accountable for my pathetic narcissism.

firstly, pope shenouda is not the pope of the catholic church. john paul is also not the pope of the catholic church. the pope of the catholic church is pope benedict. pope john paul was the pope of the catholic church a few years back and everyone thought he was the bomb and he died.

pope shenouda is not a rapper.

pope shenouda is the pope of the egyptian coptic christian church. that's right, folks, there's more than one pope in the world.

the founder of the christian church in egypt is purported to be mark. yes, THAT mark. mark went to egypt during the reign of emperor nero. who knew? okay, you probably knew all this. i did not.

in the same way that i would like to be able to play drums or speak portuguese, i would like to be not a complete idiot about the rest of the world. what i mean is, i would like this to happen without my putting forth any effort. i would like to be a drummer. i would like to be fluent in portuguese. i would like to be not an idiot.

and, if i were to want to invest in becoming not an idiot, where would i even begin? by the time i'd get the heads of all the world's nations and churches memorized, someone would die or be displaced. pluswise, i don't think this is a crash-course sort of thing. i think it's probably more of an immersion sort of thing.

and, at this time, my immersion is consumed with myself.