Out-going Pope Presented With Cheap Gold Watch

Vatican City – In a stately, ornate ceremony befitting an occasion of this import, outgoing Pope Benedict XVI was presented with a gold watch, to his utter embarrassment, if not revulsion.

Bereft of any ornamentation or inscription, not of Swiss origin, and bearing the ignominious imprint “18 ct”, the timepiece oozed tackiness and elicited hushed scorn from the on-lookers.

His soon-to-be-ex Holiness regarded the gift as he might a slug which had crawled upon his shoe, rolling it over from side to side, opening and closing it, before tossing it on the table.  “Maybe they order from Amazon?” he said, his lips curled in disdain.

“It’s a good thing I invest heavily in Microsoft in the Year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-six”, he continued, with a slight smile, “my accountant say my portfolio is – how you say – high six figure?”

“I like that”, he continued, nodding.

Sources close to the soon-to-be prior pontiff could not confirm reports his not-for-long Holiness had booked a Mediterranean cruise, where he’s signed up for scuba diving and rock wall climbing.

With No Precincts Reporting, CNN Projects Obama Winner

New York, NY - In an unprecedented move, CNN has projected President Obama to be the winner of the 2012 presidential election, without a single vote having been counted.

“I knew we were going to win”, a smiling Amy Oosterhaus of Duluth, Minnesota said.  “I knew it.  And, since CNN has already projected him to win, it means I don’t have to bother going to vote.”

”It’s supposed to be cold and rainy that day”, she added.

When asked how the news agency could project a winner in a race this close when polling places haven’t even opened, a CNN official who requested anonymity responded thusly: “It’s easy.  We’ve looked at pre-polling in four or five counties and districts in toss-up states and through the use of special algorithms, determined Obama will shade Romney enough to pull out the victory.”

"It’s not that difficult”, the source continued, “in fifteen minutes I could tell you the brand of toothpaste you use, the number of sport coats in your closet, and the last time you ordered a pizza online.”

“Americans are pretty predictable”, he concluded.

 

News organizations have traditionally striven to beat the other to the punch, so to speak, in predicting presidential election winners, projecting outcomes with as few as 10 – 15% of the results in, but this is the first time one has gone this far out on a limb.

A Romney campaign spokesman laughed off the prediction, stating Fox News projected Romney the winner Wednesday before last, then – in an obvious bet-hedging move - preemptively alleged vote rigging in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

A World Not of Our Making

It seems many of us these days have found ourselves in a world which is increasingly alien.  There are strange doings afoot, bizarre and unsettling to our nature.  You can hear it in the voices of our seniors, an unspoken longing for a time which bears little resemblance to present day.  We see it in the eyes of our young parents, once wide-eyed and energetic, now praying for a bolt from the blue to knock them silly, as the peace and solitude of a hospital bed is preferable to their exhausting existence.  We plod through our endless, unfulfilling workday.  At marketplaces, and parks, and places of worship we congregate, occasionally catching another’s gaze, each wondering how much humanity the other has retained. We read the day’s headlines wondering if the world has lost its collective minds.   We stare blankly off into nothingness, wondering how, and when, things went off the rails. 

We increasingly escape into the relative comfort and predictability of some alternate existence, of video games, and virtual reality, and a cyber-verse of avatars where we can be whatever and whomever we like. 

We populate a world in which most of us have ever diminishing amounts of control, however much we want to believe otherwise.  We rage against a machine which draws evermore power from our efforts; we light candle after candle, and still curse the darkness.  We watch, perplexed, as yet another familiar hallmark of our existence spirals off into the void.

Some have become acclimated to this new world quite well actually.  They have prospered and flourished and found their niche.  But this is not a tale of boot-strapping, and adapting, and seeing the glass as perpetually half-full.  Rather this is a testament to those who awakened one day, looked around, and asked, as David Byrne put it: “well, how did I get here?”  Those whose lives no longer seem to be based on a true story.

For them, this world is one of convergence, as fantasy merges with stark reality, past with future, in an odd mesh of tapestry, constantly being rewoven.

This is not the world we want, or remember, or thought we’d inherit, and we feel powerless to change it.  Whether we actually can or not is the subject for another day, for this rumination is about thoughts and feelings, and a hazy, electrified gray cloud which has enveloped us.  This is not your “feel good” story.  Rather, this is a story about a world which we did not create, but must inhabit; a world which bore, and will ultimately consume us.

 
This is a story about surviving, and existing, and getting by with what’s left.