n the wake of the pope’s alleged death last week, the Vatican has released John Paul II’s will and personal diary to the media. Among the juicy tidbits revealed with the publication of the papal diary was the 84-year-old man’s dying wish that the bloodthirsty media would please, please, please keep their grubby mitts off his motherloving diary.

Published in newspapers, and on websites and Happy Meal boxes around the globe in over 90 languages, Catholics and heathens alike thrilled to the pope’s private inner thoughts and the great man’s eloquent musings this week, drinking in the pope’s thoughts on the nature of privacy and his joy at having this one small respite from a life lived on such a public stage.

Hounded all his life by an overzealous media desperate to know what made the pope tick, John Paul II poured his thoughts into the small, leather-bound volume in a scrawl that some have called “Pope-script.� Among the nuggets revealed with the diary’s publication are the details of the pope’s third-grade crush on Margo Holzarian from the Ukraine, and his strange, life-long fascination with American actress Mariel Hemmingway.

“Thank God no one is ever going to read this diary,� the Pope wrote in one of his last entries, dated March 2005. “It is only through this precious cove of privacy that I cling to my very humanity.� According to various sources, the pope misspelled “humanity� in the original text, but newspaper editors have universally agreed that it is highly unlikely the pope was clinging to a humanatee.

Many readers have been especially touched by the earliest entries in the diary, which date back to the pope’s youth.

“Dear diary: Man, being the pope is hard. I miss my mom and dad, and sometimes I just want to go home. Everybody says I’ll get over it though, once I make some new friends. Well, gotta go. Love, The Pope.�

Some less-scholarly Catholics have been equally surprised to learn that John Paul II was referred to as “the pope� even as a small boy, which made for several humorous anecdotes about grade school roll-call.

Garnering somewhat less attention has been the publication of John Paul II’s last will and testament, which some Catholics awaited with great suspense over who would inherit the pope’s collection of pointy hats. In the end, however, it turned out that the pope’s will was written in Polish, so the Vatican instead handed out his belongings on a “first come, first serve� basis to the assembled masses.

“This is fucking awesome,� raved German tourist Himmel Blaus. “I got the pope’s toenail clippers and a pair of boxers with the dude’s initials on them!�

“I got the pope’s soap! The pope’s soap on a rope is dope!� shouted another ecstatic inheritor, dashing out of the room, apparently in a hurry to bathe.

Publishers worldwide are currently in negotiations for the hardcover publishing rights to the pope’s diary, though as of yet, none have thought to tap the gold mine that is the commune’s recent “Pope’s Diary Mad Libs� feature.

nventive sports in Madrid, Spain have made extremely trivial history by performing the tiniest writing ever done, copying the first paragraph of Cervantes' Don Quixote onto a silicon chip. The physicists, apparently fighting their own windmills in the effort, wrote the letters so small they claim the entire novel could be copied onto the tips of six human hairs, though they didn't name anyone who volunteered to do so. Whether the hair would belong to Grace Jones or David Lee Roth, they didn't offer—surely they realize hair is quite relative.

"What a fantastic feat!" exclaimed book critic and hair enthusiast Alameda Ramirez, also of Madrid. "It's an amazing step forward for people who like to copy things really small onto objects not paper."

The physicists performed the chip-writing as part of a 400th anniversary celebration of Cervantes' classic work, and those involved are very insistent no beer was involved. The group used a very expensive atomic force microscope for their frivolity. While some stuffy scientist-types were enthusiastic about the possible use of the microscope for writing more information on smaller chips and revolutionizing the computer industry, intellectual literary-types were more excited about the possibility for easier-to-store books.

"If you could fit all of Don Quixote onto six hairs, imagine how much you could write on someone's entire head?" librarian Marcos Gally thought out loud. "Assuming you didn't kill them in the process, of course. I could carry the entire annotated works of Shakespeare and all the great plays of the twentieth century, in all languages, in my hairbrush. I wouldn't necessarily be able to read them. Which is my second point—we need to get to work on microscopic bifocals right away."

His colleague, bookstacker Londo, agreed. "Yes, but sad that intellectuals like John Malkovich and Michael Stipe would get no books at all. While Pamela Anderson would have them in abundance."

Both then agreed the complete conversion from paper books to hair books should wait at least until better transplant options became available.

Most appealing about the tiny writing possibilities, according to literary historian Bernadette Fopps, is making the wealth of the world's literature available in the least expensive format ever.

"A library of every piece of printed material ever, from the Bible in Esperanto to the latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, could easily fit into most modern handbags. That is, if you didn't mind a purse full of hair. But of course, not everyone is going to want a copy of everything. Personally, as a fan of early twentieth century British psychological literature, I would relish the opportunity to have a complete catalogue of George Orwell's fiction on a single pubic hair. Though, maybe that's more appropriate for the work of Henry Miller—I'm not the one to make those kinds of decisions."

A few detractors weren't ready to get on board the small hair writing train just yet. Such as author Tom Clancy.

"I'm as prone to mistakes as the next guy," said the Hunt for Red October author. "If I get to page 435 and Jack Ryan is about to knock out the bad guy, and I have a few type-O's, is my editor going to be able to correct those mistakes? 'Cause I'm not going to pluck a new hair and start over. I love my craft, but there are limits, you know?"

Also reluctant to embrace the idea was Denny's waiter Christian Meams: "The last added frustration I need on my job is someone's reading a copy of the latest Michael Chabon book, they forget about it, and I get blamed for bringing them the burger with the novel in it."

Okay, I've been accused by my screenwriting teacher of writing movie scripts without plots. This would be forgivable if I could work in some major special effects, or maybe the illusion of a really complicated plot (what they call "Matrixism" now in Hollywood) but apparently I can't do anything like that. My screenplay is a small indie movie, meaning that I only have three car chases and I'm casting actors nobody's ever heard of—besides myself.

My first screenplay was the shark thing, but I got tired of being laughed at every time I read the shark's lines in class—and I admit I didn't think much about it, how hard it's going to be casting a shark who can act. Then I changed him to a bear, but "never work with bears" is, like, Hollywood rule #5, so that didn't help it at all. Then I found out Paramount and Dreamworks are both working on their own underwater bear-attack movies, so I dumped that puppy quick.

Next Nancy suggested I work on something more autobiographical, which I thought meant about the life of my car, but apparently it's a fancy word for just writing what I did today. I'm thinking easy street! But it's a lot harder than it sounds.

Most of the scenes are like: "Fade in. I'm going to the store and shit, just to get hamburger meat because I'm sick of eating at fast food joints because the burger is 90% bun, which is just their way of ripping you off. I also bought a big jar of hamburger-sliced dill pickles, because I'll eat those fuckers like Pez. Anyway, I get to the store and the meat guy—what'cha call 'em? Butchers? He's giving me the eye real funny, because it looks like I'm wearing just a bra and underwear in the store, but it's really a swimsuit, and if it isn't, what the fuck, he can't tell. So I say: "Why don't you do a wall-carving, caveman? It'll last longer."

The script is really flying now. It's just like writing for the commune, because no one's editing me. I figure, 89 more pages of this and I'll have the summer's feel-good comedy all banged out. But I take in about 30 sample pages and, the way everybody looks while I'm reading it, you'd think I brought them Hitler's book. What did he call that? Mein Kampf and Musings. Everybody thinks it's all over the place and not going anywhere in particular—like how I drive. That kind of crack is real personal, and upset me bad, but they had a point about the screenplay. I might watch a movie about me flirting with a mechanic to get out of paying for an oil change job, but you make it somebody not me and I'm walking out.

So Nancy introduced me to plot points. If you can point to a script in a couple places and say, "There, that must be the plot," then that means you've got a plot. You should be able to do it at least a couple of times. The first plot point is where you say, "Aw, shit, what's this asshole getting himself into?" Then the second plot point starts everything toward the resolution, or as the French say, the ending. It's when you can point at the screen and say, "Hey, asshole's got a plan to get out of this!" It's like the two plot points in a Scooby Doo episode are when the gang meets the old caretaker or whoever who tells them to stay away from the old amusement park. The second plot point is when Freddy comes up with the plan with the roller skates and beer barrel to catch the ghost. It's amazingly simple when you explain it in Scooby Doo terms, but that goes for just about everything.

I'm going to have to go back and fake a plot point in my script, and I'll see if that doesn't trick everybody into thinking it's good. If that doesn't work, I'll have to sketch out a new idea. It's a shame, though. I would've loved to act out that part in the script where I catch the drug dealer and break his arm for selling me cheap stuff. But fuck it, as the French say. Hollywood isn't ready for a true Coleman film yet.

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