NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/talk/bizarre/23843

Text File | 1992-07-29 | 1.7 KB | 35 lines

Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!terminator!ajd
From: [e-mail] (Arthur Delano)
Subject: Love is killing...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet Owner)
Organization: there is no cabal
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:07:35 GMT
Lines: 24


I was working a fifteen hour shift at the newspaper when the news hit
that the pope was in the hospital.  I was keylining the page during
the final deadline rush, when there are twenty minutes left and eight
pages to go, at roughly fifteen minutes per page and only three people
doing pasteup.  When all doped up on coffee and lack of sleep, locked
into an unreal environment, it is easy to get trancelike and move
through the actions of assembling the page as if it is a ritual.  The
mind is loosened, and when the last page is sent people often stagger
about dazed.  Anyhow, my mind was plainly in the higher spheres when
the following phrase appeared in it:  "Love is killing the Pope."  It
does make perfect sense, doesn't it?  Never mind, please, the anti-
Catholic sentiment it suggests.  There is sense encrypted in there
somehow.  Does it mean that JPII's self-repression is destroying him
through tenseness?  Does it mean that abstract longing toward an un-
reachable ideal is causing self-doubt and a form of autonomic shutdown?
Does it mean that the love of millions throughout the world are weigh-
ing heavily on his shoulders -- he has, in this sense, not one lover
to please but many multitudes.  Or, more pragmatically, has he simply
buggered the wrong altar-boy?

AjD
anyhow, the phrase fits perfectly in a certain joy division song:
"love... is killing the pope... again..."