Midnight Rambler V

Constantine the Great

The Midnight Rambler has been too busy to ramble for some time now and his typing fingers have grown rusty. There has been so much buzz about the crazy woman who has spawned 14 children by in vitro fertilization from a stockpile of embryos she had accumulated at a local fetus farm, that there has scarcely been room for other bizare news. The woman, who claims she has never been with a man, said in vitro fertilization was "more exciting than being poked with some dumb-ass peckerhead's tool. You have a handsome, intelligent, well-educated doctor sliding his hands up your vaginal canal to implant the embryo in your uterus. What could be more romantic and exotic than that? I had eight embryos implanted this time which was the equivalent of an eight hour orgy," said the woman.

In the Vatican the Pope issued a papal bull denouncing the procedure. No reason was given for the denunciation. A spokesman for the Pope's spokesman said the Pope enjoys issuing bull so he had set himself a target of 50 bulls per month, or 600 bulls per year which is a great deal of bull. The current Pope is responsible for more bull than the three previous Popes combined. Currently, he is sequestered in the Vatican library where he is boning up on the Koran, the Talmud, the King James version of the Bible, the Kama Sutra, the Book of Mormon and the latest edition of Victoria's Secret, where the Pope shops for personal gifts for the Council of Bishops, the leaders of Opus Dei and the President of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Pope is preparing for an ecumenical conference to be held in the fall, in Constantinople, now Istanbul, which will temporarily change its name to Constantinople as a courtesy, for the duration of the conference. The Turks can be very accommodating. Maybe it's because they all are so laid back and cool from hanging out in Istanbul's opium shops. They do have their own problems with the head scarf thing.

Historically, Istanbul has undergone quite a few name changes. Each new empire that ousted the previous empire, wanted to use Istanbul as its capital, because of its location and because it was such a cool city with all the opium etc., so it would rename it. It was called just plain Bul at one time, then it was called Byzantium for a long time. Then, about 480 B.C., or something like that, it was renamed by the Romans. The Roman Emperor Constantine named it Nova Roma (New Rome), but that didn't stick so eventually everyone called it Constantinople. It's easy to see why when you take a look at Constantine, above. Much later, the Turks decided they didn't want their capital named for a dead Roman Emperor, so they tried to change it back to Istanbul but almost everyone kept calling it Constantinople. The big breakthrough came in 1930, when the Turkish postal service asked all the other national postal services to begin using its official name, Istanbul. They did and finally Istanbul started to catch on again. Jeeez...the things you can think of after midnight. That's when Eric Clapton says, "We gonna let it all hang out." I guess he knew what he was talking about, but he sure had his own head fucked up when he and Ringo's wife started getting it on. The only good thing to come of that was "In the White Room." Helluva song.

jbo