We're the Fools this April + Comic Con

Hello all!

For those of you who checked out the blog yesterday, we understand you may be feeling confused, if not scared or perhaps a bit titillated. There is, however, an explanation for the silliness: Birthday Pope got ahold of our password and decided to have some April Fool's fun with us by posting a bunch of joke material. And to him we say, as always: Very funny, Birthday Pope. You rascal.

The thing is, if yesterday's posts hadn't been full of lies and sneaky excuses to use the trebuchet-firing minicannon (we almost lost our entire dairy farm yesterday when Birthday Pope got his hands on that) they might actually have been interesting, educational, AND hilarious--- the three key adjectives for any You & What endeavor.

So, inspired by Birthday pope's little prank, we thought today we'd launch the real Space Pope Blog here and the real first edition of Vaticanews, which you can read below. Here's hoping y'all enjoy it, and keep checking back for more of this kind of thing in the future.

Finally, You & What is heading to Boston's Comic Con this Saturday. If you're going to be there too, let us know, and we'll bring you a treat. We'll be the hot young lacrosse team with the devil-may-care look in their eyes, handing out flyers and htting on all the cuties. So keep your eyes and hearts open, and we'll see you there!

One love,
---You & What Productions




Vaticanews for 04/02/09:

BULLETINS:
— What Benedict XVI has in Common with Rock Concerts and Football Games
Black Friday shoppers, soccer fans, heavy metal audiences—these are the groups one usually associates with the phrase "trampled to death." But now, teenage Pope fans can be added to the list. As part of the last leg of his African tour, Pope Benedict XVI was supposed to speak at a youth rally in Luanda, Angola. However, as the gates of the stadium opened to let in the 30,000 youths who had gathered to see the pontiff speak, a stampede broke out and in the fight for the best seats in the house, two of the teenagers lost their lives. It just goes to show you that the old saying is still true today: If you have the power to make a lot of people do something crazy, crazy dancing is better than crazy running nine times out of ten.
(source=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5952029.ece)

— Club Flyer Banned for Image of Drunk Pope
A British nightclub called Club Fire recently produced a flyer to advertise the venue with a picture of the late Pope John Paul II dancing with a blonde woman and holding a bottle of beer. While this may well be what John Paul II is up to in Heaven, it is nevertheless a foolish and blatantly offensive move, and, no surprise, the advert has been banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority. One more point for the censors, friends, and one fewer point for blonde women on posters everywhere.
(source=http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Advert-banned-for-picture-of.5133679.jp)


HEADLINES:
Pope's Feelings not as Important as Feelings of Some Committee of Theologians
Pilgrims from Poland have gathered in Rome this week to honor the death of John Paul II's on this day in 2005. Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI addressed these pilgrims with a prayer for his predecessor's beatification, the first step to achieving sainthood. One would think that this public plea, coupled with the fact that Benedict already waved the usual waiting period back in 2005, would guarantee beatification for John Paul, but that is not the case.

It turns out that the Pope's opinions of other people, although officially sanctioned by God, has very little to do with those people's sainthood. Radio Vatican had an interview with Angelo Amato yesterday, the Vatican official actually in charge of claims to sainthood, and he said that a committee of theologians assigned to John Paul II's "case" in November 2008 was still reflecting on the matter. Until they've reached their decision, it would seem, the rest of the Vatican and the Catholic world will just have to wait.

This isn't keeping anyone from supporting the cause. John Paul II's close friend, former secretary, and difficult-to-pronounce-last-name-haver archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz said he hoped to see this settled in the next several months. Italian film star, sexual icon, and strangely-accented-last-name-haver Sophia Loren wrote of her "devotion" to the late pontiff. And even Nobel Peace Prize winner and title-instead-of-a-first-name-with-the-first-name-next-haver Mother Teresa was mentioned in the article where we got this information.
(source=http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/04/01/09/pope-prays-john-paul-iis-beatification)