SO LONG, YOUR POPEFULNESS

Pope John Paul II has left the building. Flags outside federal buildings around the country will fly at half-mast until (I think) the funeral next week. I'm not sure what I have to add to any of this. I'm not a Catholic, though a number of my co-workers are, so Friday afternoon was pretty dramatic — especially when Fox News and then CNN started reporting that he'd died. MSNBC alone chose not to run with it. But then, nobody watches MSNBC. And did you notice that Drudge was late updating with the news? When Terri Schiavo passed away a few days earlier, it took him at least two hours to update, and his headline was the decidedly un-artfulDEAD
I don't have much to say about the Pope (and not much I care to get into about Schiavo) but I did wonder how popular are suffixed variations on the word "pope." The oracle Google reveals all:

• popefulness: 4
  ("Did you mean hopefulness"?)


• poposity: 36
  (None of which obviously relate to the pope.)


• popicity: 30
  (Also not pope-related. Seems to come from "pop.")


• popingness: 1
  (A misspelling of "eye poppingness.")


• popishness: 342
  (Pope-related! Even in the dictionary. From "popish." Also, "popishly." But not very popular.)


• pope-a-rama: 5
  (I guess by now I'm just doing Rob Schneider's "makin' copies!" character.)


• popester: about 1,750
  (Might as well run with it.)


• popesque: 422
  ("Did you mean popescu"? Nope.)


• poped: about 67,000
  ("Did you mean popped"? No, and I didn't mean "PopEd.")


• popey: about 35,100
  ("Did you mean popeye"? Neither was I looking for "Shaolin Popey.")


• popousness: 17
  ("Did you mean "pompousness"? Of course not. But like with "poposity," someone at DailyKos did.)

Call that pointless if you must, but I'll call it reporting. And to close out, here's the pope in happier times:

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posted by WWB at 11:02 PM |