So I've been thinking about Italy

Rome, specifically. I'm going to be there next year, sometime in March probably. I'm pretty excited about the whole traveling thing, though to be honest it's getting hard to keep up the optimism when every single person you interact with asks you the same question. I can't even like get on a bus these days in case the driver asks me where I'll be staying in America, or what I think of the financial crisis. In fairness though, I can't really get on a bus without asking the driver how his life came to this, so I guess it's probably even.

But yes, Rome has been on my mind lately. I think it's worrying me on a subconscious level, more so than any other place on my to-go list. Well maybe not Rome but more the Vatican. Yes, it is definitely the Vatican that is worrying me. It's really just because of the Pope. The idea of being in the general vicinity of the Pope is really wiggin' me out. It's not like an irrational fear of papacy or anything. It's just that if I'm in the same sovereign nation as the Pope, that means there is a definite slightly higher than normal chance that we might cross paths. Which in turn means that the opportunity might arise for me to, you know, assassinate him.

Now the Pope isn't really all that high on my list of popular assassination targets. I mean, you kill a Pope and a new Pope grows back. I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to kill a guy like Ratzinger, but if the opportunity presented itself, I'd really have to think about taking it. It'd be much the same as if you stumbled drunkenly into a cheap motel and found Barack Obama inside. You'd just have to make love to him, otherwise you'd probably regret it for the next seven years. He's just too cuddly.