Some fun today with a RWer and other musings...
Now this one is not entirely unreasonable all of the time, just 92% of the time which, I told him once, makes him in my eyes a Republican Socialist. So he asked me what I thought of the extraordinary security precautions surrounding Philadelphia's July 4th celebration...more on that later...and I told him of course that there'd been a lot of 'chatter' around and that you can't be too careful. Of course we got onto the Pope's visit in late September and he was ruminating as to why this was a bad idea for the city (he's not entirely wrong).
I said to him, "You know why the Pope is coming to Philly, right?" He answered, " Do I...?" I said, "Probably not. You see, the Pope is going to announce the existence of alien life and its contact with the militaries and certain civilian centers of the world. Who better than one of the very few titular heads of an organized religion? Many people might not believe a politician: we all know they lie continuously, but the Pope....now he's NOT gonna lie, right?"
He was stunned...and started laughing thinking I wasn't serious. He asked, "Why in Philadelphia?" I looked around to make sure no one else was around and said, "Because Philadelphia is STILL the REAL capitol of the United States. That Washington business is just a front...we know that there are immensely powerful people pulling the strings and the Command and Control Center is located beneath the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and it entrance is the stairway long closed in the Art Museum which leads down to the subway station that was built but no line technically extended to it from the Broad Street Subway. The huge door on the Kelly Drive side was constructed ostensibly to be able to move railroad cars in but in fact is the entrance for vehicles and other materiel to be placed into the vaulted chasm which lies deep beneath where the Pope himself is going to make this proclamation."
He looked at me as though I were crazy and I laughed and said, "Just kidding." But he spent the rest of the visit looking at me peculiarly.
And I don't blame him....isn't that just nuts?
Or is it?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Anyway...usually we have a small security operation which consists of a black van with a dome which parks on the Parkway when we have these massive events. This time we have what looks like a military communications station being set up near the Art Museum as you come off Martin Luther King Drive. I've never ever seen anything like it before as a civilian. Also, we have new signage on the Parkway where the July 4th Celebration and the Pope will be celebrating Mass. this signage identifies every few feet on the Parkway by code and one could imagine that if someone needed to be somewhere, you could tell them the exact place you wanted them to be. In all the years I've attended events there - although I no longer do because crowds scare me as I've aged - we have never had any demarcations like these. This should be a very very interesting time here. This is a BFD with respect to these events: to paraphrase the KYW 1060 News Station motto: All Pope, All the Time.
