God or Girl? Um, Are Those My Only Choices?

God or the Gal?

from Sploid

Catholics are furious about a new "reality TV show" that pits men called to the priesthood against sexy young gals.

God or the Girl? will premiere on Easter Sunday, of all days, on the A&E network.

The five-part series tracks the lives of "four young men trying to decide whether to enter the Catholic priesthood," according to Fox News.

All of the men are in their 20s, and all apparently are sexually attracted to women.

Joe Adair, 28, Dan DeMatte, 21, Steve Horvath, 25, and Mike Lechniak, 24, are the real-life stars of the program.

To either weed out these seemingly normal young men or make them crazy enough to take the Vatican's vow of celibacy, the four would-be priests are commanded to do ridiculous things to prove their faith.

"Adair goes on a pilgrimage with no money or food, relying completely on the kindness of strangers to help him get to his destination - a religious center in Niagara Falls," reporter Catherine Donaldson-Evans writes. "DeMatte builds an 80-pound cross and carries it 22 miles. Horvath travels to a mission in Guatemala to work with people living in extreme poverty. Lechniak goes on a retreat and stays with nuns."

The Vatican invented the "vow of celibacy" for priests in order to keep priests from having children. Without heirs, any property owned by priests would always go back to the church.

(Women were accepted by the church as priests until the 4th Century, and even as late as the 1400s some bishops complained that plenty of women were still ordained as priests and were hearing confessions.)

While some Catholic clergy were celibate in the church's early history, the Catholic law of celibacy arrived in fits and starts over many centuries.

One such law was widely ignored in the 9th Century -- a time of outrageous greed, corruption and depravity for the church, although by no means the last dark era for the Vatican.

"Council of Aix-la-Chapelle openly admitted that abortions and infanticide took place in convents and monasteries to cover up activities of uncelibate clerics," says a timeline of the church's History of Celibacy.

"St. Ulrich, a holy bishop, argued from scripture and common sense that the only way to purify the church from the worst excesses of celibacy was to permit priests to marry."

A century earlier, St. Boniface told the pope that in Germany, "almost no bishop or priest was celibate." Similar reports came from all over Europe.

But by the 1500s, only about half of priests were known to be married.

Throughout the church's history, seven popes were known to be married and 11 popes were the sons of Catholic clergy.

Just in the last 900 years, six popes were known to have children.

Nobody knows how many Catholic clergy lived "in sin" with women, whether nuns or civilians, or how many hundreds of thousands of children have been fathered by priests.

But today - even as the Vatican regularly ordains married priests converting from other denominations -- priests of the Western world are expected to be celibate or at least live alone, "married to the church."

For countless thousands of children molested by these priests living an unnatural life, being married to the church hasn't been nearly enough to keep clergy from molesting kids.


Boobs or bishops - give me a sign!

Dominatrix Given the Boot by Church(Usually, She's the One 'Giving the Boot')

Church Ousts Dominatrix from Vicarage

from Reuters

JOHANNESBURG - A South African dominatrix has given up her battle to live in a vicarage, telling the church's congregation they can "shove" the disputed residence, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.

The Pretoria News said Marianne Ellis had been renting the manse, or vicarage, at the Doornkloof Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk near Pretoria for some time when church elders discovered her sideline as a local dominatrix and asked her to move.

Ellis and her husband at first sought to fight the church in court, but Tuesday decided to back down, the newspaper said.

"It is a long story, but basically I am tired of fighting, really tired. They can take their manse back, in fact they can shove it," she told the newspaper.

Ellis, who said she was promised a long lease and option to buy the vicarage, had earlier showed reporters her "torture chamber" at the house but said she never had sex with her clients and was not running a brothel.

Following the dispute with the church, Ellis told the Pretoria News she was temporarily calling a halt to her career.

"But I will crack the whip again after we have moved. Then I will be back with a vengeance," the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Nice Try

Abortion, Taxes & Demonic Possession

from Sploid

An anti-abortion fanatic on trial for years of evading taxes has demanded his case be suspended because his wife and daughter are possessed by demons.

David Little, 60, is supposed to be tried in May for not filing tax returns for three years starting in 2001.

Little says he can't pay, because Canada uses tax dollars to pay for abortions.

On Thursday, he told Judge Leslie Jackson his trial must be postponed while his family undergoes "exorcism rituals."

The judge found the whole thing to be extremely fishy. Asked when his family's devil troubles would be resolved, he claimed an exorcism at the Vatican has been going on for 16 years.

Judge Jackson denied his request.

Little will go on trial as scheduled, regardless of his alleged problems with Satan.

Crucifixion.com

Internet Game Site Stages 'Virtual Crucifixion' for Rule-Breaker

from AFP

PARIS - An Internet game site based on Roman Britain has staged a "virtual crucifixion" of one of its players to punish him for breaking the rules.

The site Roma Victor is an online recreation of life in Britain 2,000 years ago, in which players live as slaves and citizens under the Roman empire.

Cynewulf - in real life a 27-year-old electrical engineer from Flint, Michigan - has been electronically nailed to a cross where he will hang "for a full seven days on full public display," the site said on Friday.

His punishment is for "ganking," or repeatedly gang-killing new players as soon as they appear, thus destroying their chance of getting to grips with the game.

Gamers on the site have the opportunity of insulting Cynewulf as they pass by his cross in a public square.

Online game sites usually punish cheats by bans ranging from a few hours, days or weeks, with bad transgressors getting lifetime bans, although such punishments are usually very discreet and never made public.

Who Would Jesus Kick in the Balls?

Minister Kicks Kid in Groin over Dodgeball

from Sploid

Dodgeball has been enjoying renaissance over the past few years. In cities across the country people in their twenties and thirties are rediscovering the game of their youth. Tragically a Liberty, Missouri minister lost sight of the game's simple joys Wednesday.

A 16-year-old boy had minister David M. Boudreaux, 27, in his cross-hairs. His shot sailed wide of its target.

When the boy again got a hold of the ball he launched another salvo at Boudreaux. This time his aim was true. The ball smashed the minister in the face, sending his glasses flying.

The boy immediately offered an apology, but it fell on deaf ears.

Boudreaux went into a fit of rage. Rather than heeding his training manual, he struck back, knocking the boy to the ground.

After clambering back to his feet, the boy apologized again.

Unsatisfied by the boy's expressions of remorse, Boudreaux pulled back his foot and sent it right into the boy's groin and stormed off in a huff.

Since the savage attack, the boy has suffered whiplash and post-concussion syndrome. He's also had quite a bit of blood in his urine.

Boudreaux has since apologized. He is currently on administrative leave from Crescent Lake Christian Academy.

Virgin Mary & the Devil's Dandruff

Virgin Mary Coke Ring Busted

from Sploid

The Virgin Mary's been a busy girl lately. She's been spotted hanging out under a bridge in Moline, Illinois and just avoided being cast into a fire in Janesville, Wisconsin. Now the Feds have caught Mary helping a cocaine cartel smuggle the Devil's dandruff into Brooklyn, New York.

"Like grave robbers who have no respect for the dead, this drug organization used revered tombstones to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine into New York City," said John Gilbride, the special agent in charge of the New York DEA office.

According to a Drug Enforcement Agency press release yesterday, five tombstones in the image of the Virgin were packed with cocaine were seized in a raid of a Brooklyn warehouse yesterday.

"They were dead wrong. We were on top of what they were doing. We seized their drugs and put an end to their organization," Gilbride said.

The DEA's total haul came to over 200 kilos of cocaine worth about $40 million.

Military Chaplains Reverse Course

Chaplains Group Opposes Prayer Order

from Washington Post

An association that represents more than 70 percent of the chaplains in the U.S. military, including many evangelical Christians, is opposing a demand by conservatives in Congress for a presidential order guaranteeing the right of chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus.

The rising calls for an executive order are based on "confusion and misinformation," because Christian chaplains routinely pray in the name of Jesus, in public, thousands of times a week in military chapels around the world, said the Rev. Herman Keizer Jr., chairman of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces.

"This has been portrayed as though chaplains are not allowed to pray in Jesus's name, without any distinction between what they do all the time in worship services and what they do occasionally, in ceremonial settings where attendance is mandatory," Keizer said.

Known by the initials NCMAF, Keizer's group is a private, 40-year-old association of more than 60 Christian, Jewish and Muslim denominations. It says it represents 5,430 of the 7,620 chaplains in the armed forces.

The calls for an executive order to protect the right to pray in Jesus's name have originated in large part from a rival association, the International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers. Formed two years ago, it says it represents about 800 chaplains, exclusively from evangelical Christian churches.

The Rev. Billy Baugham, executive director of ICECE, said he was surprised by NCMAF's stand.

"It will just lead more evangelicals to leave them and join us," he said.

Prodded by complaints from ICECE, 74 members of Congress signed a letter to President Bush last fall saying that "it has come to our attention that in all branches of the military it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christian chaplains to use the name of Jesus when praying."

In December, Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and three other congressmen unveiled a supporting petition that has since swelled to more than 200,000 signatures. Calls for congressional hearings and an executive order have become a staple on religious radio and television broadcasts, generating protests of White House inaction by conservative Christians, who are usually strong supporters of Bush.

In a letter this month to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Keizer said NCMAF believes that an executive order is unnecessary because the military is "now effectively addressing the current religious concerns."

Keizer, a minister in the Christian Reformed Church of North America, a conservative Protestant denomination, retired in 2002 after 34 years as an Army chaplain. He said the armed services are gradually rolling out guidelines that set a path between "those who don't want any religion practiced in the military, and those who want religion practiced without any limits in the military." An executive order "would just precipitate more litigation," he said.

In a Feb. 21 instruction to commanders, the secretary of the Navy distinguished between prayers given by chaplains at "divine worship services" - on which there are no restrictions - and those delivered at "command functions" that people of many faiths are encouraged or required to attend.

"Absent extraordinary circumstances," any religious elements in a command ceremony "should be nonsectarian," it said. Air Force guidelines issued a few weeks earlier made essentially the same distinction, calling for "non-denominational, inclusive prayer" or a moment of silence at military ceremonies.

Keizer said NCMAF sees nothing wrong with a commander asking a chaplain to offer nonsectarian prayers at such events, as long as the chaplain can decline to participate, with no repercussions.

But Baugham said evangelical chaplains must represent the church that endorses them for military duty, and "they are not authorized to give nonsectarian prayers." He also said he does not believe that chaplains are truly free to pray as they wish in worship services.

"There are chaplains who get their knuckles rapped pretty hard, and we have documentation of this, for praying in Jesus's name in chapels," he said.

Prayer Hurts

Ouch! Owowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowow...

Prayer Making Heart Patients Sick!

from Sploid

In the largest study of its kind, the Templeton Foundation has shown that prayer does nothing to aid those undergoing heart surgeries.

In fact, if a patient knows he's being prayed for, that very knowledge leads to a jump in complications.

A group of 1,800 patients were divided into three camps: those who knew they were being prayed for, those who knew they might be prayed for and were, and those who knew they might be prayed for and didn't get any prayers.

Researchers asked three different Christian organizations to pray for the first two groups. Prayers were to begin the night before patients went under the knife and continue for two weeks. (The patients' friends and families were free to pray or not as they normally would.)

The results laid bare Jesus' hostility towards those who think he can be bothered with their personal problems.

Among those who knew they might be prayed for, 52% suffered complications within 30 days of surgery. Those who knew for certain they were being prayed for were afflicted 59% of the time.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center - who was in no way affiliated with the study - was not surprised.

"There are no scientific grounds to expect a result and there are no real theological grounds to expect a result either," he said. "There is no god in either the Christian, Jewish or Moslem scriptures that can be constrained to the point that they can be predicted."

In other words, do your ailing friends and relatives a favor: Don't pray for them.

Crucifiction

New Shame for Jesus

from Sploid

Jesus just can't catch a break these days.

Scandalous new scientific and historical theories say the famous religious character wasn't even crucified - and even if he was executed by the Romans, nobody knows how it killed him or if he was hanging upside down like a bat.

"The evidence available demonstrates that people were crucified in different postures and affixed to crosses using a variety of means. Victims were not necessarily positioned head up and nailed through the feet from front to back as is the imagery in Christian churches," Dr. Piers Mitchell said of his heretical new scientific study.

The Imperial College of London doctor says it's impossible to prove exactly how a specific method of crucifixion would kill someone. The only way to figure it out would be to crucify people and study how they die, but Europe has become "anti torture," so it's a tough environment for such research.

"Interpretation is difficult due to the humane manner in which a study needs to be conducted," Dr. Mitchell said.

The New Testament itself can't even decide if Jesus was crucified or hanged to death from a tree; in Acts of the Apostles, Jesus was hanged in the Old West style.

But how Jesus was killed is a less controversial proposition than if Jesus was killed.

Michael Baigent - an author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail who is currently suing Da Vanci Code author Dan Brown for copyright infringement - has released a new book just in time for Easter and the remarkable publicity his lawsuit has attracted.

The Jesus Papers recycles and expands upon the blasphemy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which is one of many books to claim Jesus married his top apostle and financial benefactor, Mary Magdalene, and that she gave birth to his children.

In Baigent's latest work, Jesus doesn't die on the cross (or tree). It's not a new theory, but it will likely outrage faithful Christians who've never encountered Gnostic, heretical and alternative histories of Christianity. (For instance, the Japanese believe Jesus survived and retired as a garlic farmer in Japan. Muslims believe Judas was crucified, not Jesus.)

It's no surprise that the life of Jesus is ripe for speculation and conspiracy - there isn't even a portrait of him, let alone a single word of writing by his hand or a contemporary historical account of his existence.

Worse, even the Christian bible isn't sure which Jesus character of the era was crucified. Was it Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus bar Abbas (Barabbas)?

Were they one and the same? Then who got pardoned? Is it all just a parable taken literally by later Christians who wanted to believe in a human Jesus?

And the one guy credited with spreading the small Jewish cult to the larger world, St. Paul, knew nothing of the Jesus later created for the Gospels.

While most of the Western world -- beyond the United States and Italy -- no longer has any interest in worshipping Jesus, people sure are interested in the character, traditions and contradictions.

Dan Brown has reportedly earned $400 million from The Da Vince Code.

Crybaby Report: Christians Love To Play That Victim Card (To Be Fair, It's the Only Card in Their Deck)

'War' on Christians Is Alleged

from The Washington Post

The "War on Christmas" has morphed into a "War on Christians."

Last December, some evangelical Christian groups declared that the religious celebration of Christmas - and even the phrase "Merry Christmas" - was under attack by the forces of secularism.

This week, radio commentator Rick Scarborough convened a two-day conference in Washington on the "War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006." The opening session was devoted to "reports from the frontlines" on "persecution" of Christians in the United States and Canada, including an artist whose paintings were barred from a municipal art show in Deltona, Fla., because they contained religious themes.

"It doesn't rise to the level of persecution that we would see in China or North Korea," said Tristan Emmanuel, a Canadian activist. "But let's not pretend that it's okay."

Among the conference's speakers were former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as well as conservative Christian leaders Phyllis Schlafly, Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall and Alan Keyes.

To many of the 400 evangelicals packed into a small ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, it was a hard but necessary look at moral relativism, hedonism and Christophobia [Our Word-of-the-Day!], or fear of Christ, to pick just a few terms offered by various speakers referring to the enemy.

To some outsiders, it illuminated the paranoia of the Christian right.

"Certainly religious persecution existed in our history, but to claim that these examples amount to religious persecution disrespects the experiences of people who have been jailed and died because of their faith," said K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

"This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position," said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.

White evangelicals make up about one-quarter of the U.S. population, and 85 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. But three-quarters of evangelicals believe they are a minority under siege and nearly half believe they are looked down upon by most of their fellow citizens, according to a 2004 poll.

In a luncheon speech yesterday, DeLay took issue with the "chattering classes" who think there is no war on Christians.

"We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity," he said.

Much of the conference revolved around the difficulty of Christian parenting in a culture of sexual permissiveness. Don Feder, founder of a group called Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, urged the crowd not to blame "the liberal, self-hating Jews in Hollywood."

"Remember, the people in this audience are more Jewish than people like Barbra Streisand, because you embrace Jewish values, she doesn't," he said.

Another Jewish speaker, Michael Horowitz, told the conference that the "Christian decency of this country" saved him from becoming "a bar of soap" in Nazi Germany.

"You guys have become the Jews of the 21st century," said Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, just before a false alarm interrupted his speech. Several attendees called the fire alarm suspicious, though a hotel spokesman said it resulted from a mechanical problem in a distant location.

In the session on recent cases of persecution, Navy Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt brought the crowd to its feet by introducing himself as a military chaplain "who prays in the name of Jesus."

Klingenschmitt said he was punished by a commander for offering sectarian prayers at a memorial service for a fallen sailor, and he compared himself to Abdur Rahman, an Afghan man who until this week faced possible execution for converting from Islam to Christianity.

"What do these two Christians have in common?" Klingenschmitt asked, showing slides first of himself, then of Rahman. "Perhaps we are persecuted. Perhaps we are no different than most Christians throughout history."

Lloyd Marcus, a painter, said he entered three paintings in a Black History Month art show at the City Hall of Deltona last month. But because the canvases showed a man wearing an "I love Jesus" cap and a minister holding a Bible, city officials deemed them inappropriate until the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, threatened a lawsuit, he said.

The Rev. Tom Crouse, pastor of a Congregational Church in Holland, Mass., said that after hearing about a gay beauty pageant in California, he decided to hold a "Mr. Heterosexual Contest" in Worcester, Mass., on Feb. 18.

"It was just an event to proclaim the truth that God created us all heterosexual," he said. But to his surprise, he said, he received anonymous death threats, local officials condemned the contest, and "even Bible-believing churches were not on board. They said it wasn't loving."

TV Series 'Based' on Scientology: Must Be a Sitcom, Right? Christopher Lloyd As Xenu?

Is CBS' Cult Pilot Cruising for Trouble?

from Channel Island

Could a CBS pilot be the next flashpoint in Hollywood's growing conflict with Scientology?

With Comedy Central's South Park in a major fracas involving celebrity Scientologists Tom Cruise and Isaac Hayes, CBS is scheduled to wrap shooting in Vancouver late this week on Orpheus, a dramatic pilot by writer and executive producer Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) about an organization that bears a striking resemblance to L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology.

According to a copy of the script obtained by Channel Island, Orpheus concerns Guy (Nicholas D'Agosto), a young would-be lawyer whose whirlwind romance with small-town siren Sue Ellen (Mena Suvari) sidetracks him into a shadowy, menacing group called "Grand Design," or GD. GD attracts new believers with a bestselling quasi-philosophical book akin to Hubbard's Dianetics and, like Scientology, uses a complicated ranking system for followers. To describe spiritual beings who haven't ascended to a higher plane, GD uses the word "Galatean," a barely disguised echo of the Scientology term "thetan." GD-ers even boast of their exploits on behalf of victims of Hurricane Katrina, recalling similar missions publicized by Scientologists.

"If 12 people believe something, they're a cult," Suvari's Sue Ellen says, "but if a hundred million believe it, they're a religion."

Asked about the similarities with Scientology, Lauri Metrose, a spokeswoman for CBS Paramount Network Television, replied in an email, "You are reading an early draft and there have been (as with any pilot) many changes big and small. The cult is an amalgamation of all cults throughout history." The draft that Channel Island obtained is dated Jan. 20, 2006.

Supreme Catholic Values

Scalia Has Hand Gesture for Critics

from UPI

BOSTON - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by making a hand gesture some consider obscene.

A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.

"You know what I say to those people?" Scalia replied, making the gesture and explaining "That's Sicilian."

The 20-year veteran of the high court was caught making the gesture by a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston's newspaper.

"Don't publish that," Scalia told the photographer, the Herald said.

He was attending a special mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and afterward was the keynote speaker at the Catholic Lawyers' Guild luncheon.


Right back at you, toad.

Update: The photographer was then fired by the Archdiocese for publishing the picture at the Boston Herald.

About to Chuck a Chunk of Virgin!

Virgin Mary Firewood Added to GoldenPalace.com Collection

from RollingGoodTimesOnline

JANESVILLE, Wisconsin – Just seconds away from being cast into the fire of a wood-burning stove, a chunk of firewood bearing the image of the Virgin Mary was saved only to be sold on eBay to online casino GoldenPalace.com for $99.

The seller of the item, coincidentally named Faith, never considered herself a religious person, but was astonished when she found the image of the Virgin Mary complete with halo staring back at her.

"I was about to chuck this into the wood stove when the image in the center caught my eye," said Faith. "This is an image of the Madonna! I could not burn it. It's even got a halo of lighter colored wood around her head! Nothing short of miraculous!"

The holy image will be right at home amongst the casino's ever-growing collection of religious, paranormal, and generally eccentric items bought on eBay. GoldenPalace.com plans to take these items on tour around the country this summer as part of a traveling museum displaying pop-culture Americana, items such as the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Britney Spears' Pregnancy Test, and William Shatner's Kidney Stone.

Buddhiliciousness

Buddhist Temples Dedicated to the Pleasures of the Flesh

from Mainichi Daily News

JAPAN - A certain sector of Aichi Prefecture, says Cyzo, is packed with sordid Shinto shrines and brazen Buddhist temples dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh.

Aichi, the monthly notes, is home to Mama Kannon, the only Buddhist temple in the country devoted entirely to the worship of women's breasts. The same prefecture is also home to the Tenteko Matsuri, a festival featuring a procession where one of the participants carries a phallic-shaped radish and grinds and thrusts their hips in time with the beat of a drum.

Cyzo points out that Aichi is also well-known for the internationally famous Tagata Jinja fertility festival, where a huge reproduction of a male organ is paraded through the streets atop a shrine.

Perhaps the most outlandish of all Aichi's flesh festivals, however, takes place each March 15 in the city of Inuyama. It's the Onnagata fertility festival, one of the few in the Japan to deify the female genitalia - an extremely rare feat in a land where other graphic depictions of the same object are usually treated with Orwellian standards of censorship.

The festival itself centers on a parade. Shrine priests and shrine maidens ride, for some reason, in a convertible that heads the procession. A flattop truck follows closely behind their vehicle.

On the bed of the truck is a huge work of art which, at first glance, bears a close resemblance to Otafuku, the ruddy cheeked Japanese goddess of mirth and merriment.

Closer inspection, however, reveals that Otafuku's mouth is actually an extremely accurate depiction of a woman's privates.

In some ways, the festival is literally a centuries-old Japanese version of a Vagina Monolog.

Up until a few decades ago, Cyzo says, there was little effort made to conceal the body part in a work of art and the areas where the festival was held were festooned with flags covered in pictures of pudenda [Our Word-of-the-Day!].
A portable shrine made to look like the same organ featured in the festival, but postwar values deemed that to be going a bit too far. Organizers decided to go for what the monthly calls a "more sophisticated erotica."

Y'Know, Nice Girls - 'Virgins' - Don't Hang Out Under Freeways...

The best way to clear up a pesky idiot clot? Science books. Makes their skin smolder.

Virgin Mary? Hundreds Gather Under Interstate

from NBC5

CHICAGO - More than 200 people gathered Saturday evening under the Interstate 74 bridge over the Rock River in Moline, where some local residents have reported seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

Authorities said the crowd Saturday evening was the largest since the reports of sightings began.

Some of the curious last night brought lawn chairs, binoculars and cameras. Others flipped out their camera phones to take a shot of what they saw.

Many wouldn't go on the record as to whether they saw an image or not.

Last year, thousands of people flocked to the Fullerton Avenue underpass on the Kennedy Expressway to see an image that officials believed was a salt stain, but some believed was the image of the Virgin Mary.

A man was later charged for allegedly writing the words "Big Lie" over the image.


Is that...is that little bastard kissing the Virgin Mary's hootenanny?!?! Forcing children to perform oral sex under freeway overpasses on 2000yo dead virgins...there's just so many things wrong with that I don't know where to begin.

'Grow a Pair!' Virgin Mary's Pissed Off

'And go fuc-cue the heavenly music! Now, as I was saying, go fuck yourself.'

Man Just Using Virgin Mary To Get to Jesus

from The Onion

TUPELO, MS — The Blessed Mother Mary said Monday that devout Catholic Anthony Montero is simply praying to her as a way to get to her Son, Jesus Christ.

"People exploit me for my connections, worshipping me as a way to get closer to Jesus," said the Holy Virgin, bathed in a golden light and attended by seraphim. "How would Anthony feel if I called upon him in the guise of friendship, but simply wanted his cousin to do some plumbing work for me? It's just rude."

Our Lady added that, if Montero wants to reach Jesus so badly, maybe he should "grow a pair and pray to Him directly."

Reason I Hate Cellphones #66:Crank Calls from Satan

'Devil' Mobile Phone Calls Spark Panic in East India

from AFP

BHUBANESWAR, India - Authorities moved to quash panic among mobile phone users in eastern India after a rumour that "devil calls" from certain numbers have led to death and illness.

People started turning off their handsets after a rumour swept Orissa state of phones exploding like bombs killing their owners when they answered the calls.

The random "devil calls" supposedly started Sunday from phones with 11 to 14 digit numbers instead of the regular 10, said an official from India's state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam phone company.

"What I suspect is it could be the handiwork of vested interests to subsequently market anti-virus software for mobile phones. We will investigate," said Sunil Agarwal, general manger of Bharat Sanchar Nigam in Bhubaneswar city.

People in Orissa have told relatives and friends about other users becoming ill or even dying after receiving calls from mobile numbers with 11 to 14 digits.

But a state government spokesman dismissed the story as rubbish.

"We investigated and found out that no one was dead nor anybody taken ill. It was all rubbish," the spokesman said.

Ouchie! Parallelixions Look Even Painfuller!

Controversial Christian Faction Believes Jesus Was Nailed to Two Parallel Pieces of Wood [The Onion]

Holy Mackerel!

Allah & Mohammed Bless U.K. Fish Tank

from Sploid

A Liverpool man recently took his children to see the fish tanks at his local pet store. While there he witnessed what can only be described as a minor miracle.

Ali Al-Waqedi, 23, and his two children were enjoying the majestic beauty of the Oscars swimming about. It was then that he saw a fish whose markings clearly spelled "Allah" in Arabic.

"Then I saw that one of them had the word Allah. It was so clear, and it made me very happy," Al-Waqedi gushed.

The blessing was quickly doubled when a second fish swam by with the Arabic spelling of "Mohammed" on its side.

"Then we saw that another one had the word Mohammed, and that was even better. To see the Allah fish was exciting, but to have the Allah and Mohammed fish in the same tank was unbelievable.

"I believe it is a message from Allah to me, a reminder, and it makes my faith even stronger."

He promptly bought the fish and took them to a friend's house for holding until he can prepare a tank of his own. Luckily for the local Muslim community, the friend lives near the mosque.

Over the last week about 100 people have stopped by to witness the watery miracle.

To Sheikh Sadek Kassem, imam of Liverpool's Al-Rahma mosque, the meaning is clear: "This is a proof and a sign not just to Muslims, but for everyone."

Kassem backed this up by quoting the Koran.

"Soon we will show them our signs in the regions, and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the truth."

It's the second time this month that Allah has given us incontrovertible proof of his existence. How else to explain a chicken that squawks "Allah"?