After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and then he's the new Pope.
He is then fully armed and rides through the wilderness alone,
day and night in all kinds of weather.
The new Pope chooses the name he will use as Pope,
like "Wild Bill" or "Buffalo Bill."
He wears red shoes with a cross embroidered on the front.

He Stole My Dream ...

... he did, that wonderchicken:

"As many who read my stuff regularly know, I've been travelling around the planet for about 15 years now, and writing about it, when the mood struck me. My semi-secret dream has always always been to make a living from doing so -- travelling, writing, meeting people and drinking their odd, skull-cracking native beverages, writing about that, and moving on, weaving a bit."

I´ve been doing this, sort-of, for the last 5 weeks (two more to go) - London, the Chilterns, Paris, Amsterdam, the Dutch seaside, small-town Netherlands, Berlin, Antwerp (?), Toulouse (?).

Only problem is ... I have been to busy being 'in the present' to do much writing or blogging.

That's a big problem, if I hope to somehow make the living that allows the travel. So far, this has been made possible by the grace of my partner how many women would let their partner go off for 6 or 7 weeks, all on his own, dining with ex-girlfriends in Paris and Amstrerdam, not checking in but once a week.

Some of these repositories have been found. The key figure in their discovery was Severino Garcia Diaz Santa Romana (an alias), who was on the staff of General MacArthur’s chief intelligence officer, General Willoughby. Santa Romana saw a Japanese ship being unloaded and heavy boxes deposited in a tunnel whose entrance was sealed with a dynamite blast.

After the war, Santa Romana and then Captain Edward Lansdale of the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) tortured the driver of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japan’s last commander in the Philippines, into revealing some of the Golden Lily sites.

Hand-picked troops of the US Army Corps of Engineers opened about a dozen Golden Lily sites in valleys north of Manila. They found gold ingots “higher than their heads.”

Lansdale reported the find to MacArthur in Tokyo, who ordered him to brief Truman’s security adviser, Clark Clifford.

According to the Seagraves, MacArthur himself and Henry Stimson flew to Manila secretly to inspect the treasure caves. They concluded that the Golden Lily sites in the Philippines contained several billion dollars’ worth of gold.

In order to keep the discoveries secret, MacArthur decided to have Yamashita tried by a court-martial for war crimes and then hanged on February 23, 1946.

Lansdale was put in charge of the recovery of the Golden Lily treasures. The Seagraves aver that Santa Romana was instructed by members of Stimson’s staff to deposit the gold in 176 banks in 42 countries. The deposits were in his name or in one of his many aliases. Negotiable certificates were issued by the banks against the gold deposits.

It was this money, the Seagraves alleged, that the CIA used to buy politicians in Japan, Greece, Italy, the UK and many other countries around the world. It also paid for the secret rearmament of Japan after the outbreak of the Korean War.

In 1974 Santa Romana died. He left a hand-written will that named Tarciana Rodriguez and Luz Rambano, his common-law wife, as his heirs.

With the help of Melvin Belli, a San Francisco lawyer, Rambano filed a suit against John Reed, the CEO of Citibank, for the “wrongful conversion” of some $20 billion of Santa Romana’s gold. The case is still unresolved.

"Research shows that gold recovered by the forerunner to the CIA--the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)--was deposited in Citibank (and many other banks, too), not in the name of the OSS or CIA but in the name of one of their operatives, Severino Garcia Santa Romana.

On his death in 1974, some--but not all--of Romana's "assets" appear to have been illegally acquired by former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, who was at one time Santa Romana's attorney. According to Santa Romana's widow, her husband gave Marcos a limited Power of Attorney for use solely in the Philippines, since he travelled abroad regularly. It seems that Marcos somehow made use of this to gain control over Santa Romana's gold and other assets.

It also appears likely, based on documents in this writer's possession, that considerable quantities of gold once held by Santa Romana were later placed under the control of former CIA covert operator Major-General Edward Lansdale. However, these assets were lodged with the Union Bank of Switzerland. Again, it is worthy of note that they were placed in Ed Lansdale's name, not in the name of a US Government agency. These assets are very clearly off the books.

Large quantities of gold held by Citibank remained in the account names of Severino Garcia Sta. Romana and José Antonio Diaz de la Paz (the latter being a well-known alias for Santa Romana) under reference codes "Fanerst King Fisher" and "Burgst Harbor King" respectively.3 These have been the subject of a legal wrangle between Santa Romana's heirs and Citibank's John Reed.

The fact that the gold held by Citibank and others may not have been in the name of the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Reserve--but, rather, was in Santa Romana's name--may have been all Citibank needed to wriggle out of a poorly crafted question."