Mary, Mary quite contrary
Where does your image show?
On tortillas and toast;
perhaps the occasional roast -
And always with assholes in tow.
FORGIVE the terrible doggerel, but this was the first thing that sprang to mind when I learned this morning that another “image” of the Virgin Mary has made an appearance – this time in a Mexican restaurant in California.
Holy Mother of God decided to materialise on a griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant in the border town of Calexico – and promptly left the cook who first spotted her in tears.
Said Brenda Martinez, who manages the family-owned restaurant:
She started to cry and didn’t want to clean the griddle anymore.
Martinez added that the cook believed that the image – another example of paradolia – had materialised to give her strength after her brother’s fatal heart attack a few days earlier.
The Virgin Mary ... or a condom-sheathed dick? And is the object on the left a holy dildo?
Mary is here for us. She wants to show us her love and tell us to keep the faith.
According to this report, the griddle has now been taken off the stove and is displayed in a room behind the kitchen, which is rapidly filling up with rosaries, flowers, votive candles and other offerings left by visitors from the Imperial Valley and from Mexicali across the border.
Said Joe Acuna, who owns a landscaping firm.
I feel she is here with us. I can feel her presence.
And handyman Mike Breseno said in Spanish.
She looks real, very real.
The Rev Edward Horning, associate pastor at St. Mary Catholic Church in nearby El Centro, examined the griddle but would not say whether he thought the outline on the griddle looked like the Virgin Mary.
He opined, however:
If God wants to do something like this, he can do it.
Yeah, but does God ever do anything USEFUL?
Alberto Lopez Pulido, director and professor of ethnic studies at the University of San Diego, said that claims of apparitions, particularly of Mary, are not uncommon among Latino and Mexican Catholics.
The Catholic Church in Central and South America is Mary-centered, while the church in most of North America is more Christ-centered, Pulido said. Seeing images of Mary in public places or work spaces fulfills the need of Catholics for a personal relationship to their religion outside the church, he said, adding:
It establishes a sense of community, of personal connection and access. It makes their religion real to them.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 5th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I can see where these people are coming from. I looked at the picture before having read the headline or the article. My first thought was…
'Wow, that looks like some Middle Eastern tart who hasn't had sex!'
But now that I've had my coffee…
May 5th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Just put "Jesus in a dog`s ass" into your address bar and see what comes up – you`ll be amazed!!!
May 5th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Those Plymouth Brethren really did mess you up barriejohn!
May 5th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Because I've got f**k all else to do I decided to save the image and invert it (much easier than standing on my head) and to my surprise it turns out to be a likeness of a very famous painting. I need to get a life pdq.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Here is a 'top tip' for anyone affected by the credit crunch.
1. Buy bread
2. Apply butter to some areas only, make it vaguely like some religious icon.
3. Put bread under grill.
4. Phone 'the Sun' and explain the miracle.
5. Sit back and watch the gullible multitudes visit your home.
6. Charge nominal £1 'administration' fee
7. Become rich
May 5th, 2009 at 10:42 am
I acn see the Suns headline now"THE RIDDLE OF THE GRIDDLE"
May 5th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Holy Guacamole!
May 5th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Fajita Fatima!
May 5th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Oh how the gullible clutch at straws! Strange thing is I saw something very similar in my cat’s litter tray the other day; does that make him a saint or is he trying to say something about religion?
May 5th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Such pathetic miracles.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Hey guys, pause a minute! Don't scoff too soon. As our esteemed editor may remember, in another life (well, time) I found the clinching evidence for the third miracle required to make Pope Somebody or other – I forget which one – a saint. In brief: I had lost a new, leather, and expensive pair of gloves. I had stuck them in the fork of a tree while peeing. Forgot them and long searches no use. Even my super sniffer dog couldn't find them. Then I thought about this Pope. And there he was, a figure on a massive rock, in lichen and moss. The fat gut, the unmistakeable profile and his arm, drooping sleeve and pointing finger, and yes he was pointing to my gloves. I advised the current Pope of this miracle and three days later my man became the next step on the way to sainthood. I think at the time it was either fried or scrambled eggs that were making the headlines as V. Mary lookalikes. Lichen and moss on rocks never quite cut the mustard; pity, really, as encouraging walking might have taken off as well.
May 5th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
In a certain light I see two small images of of Jesus i my bathroom tiles when I am sitting on the w.c., one of "Baby Jesus" and the other one of him with a beard. Do I qualify for a grant to turn my bathroom – actually shower-room, but I did not want to show off – into some sort of shrine. It wouldn't work as a money spinner because only two people would fit into the shrine at any one time. One person would have to be there permanently to point out the images. They are very, very small.
May 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Rosemarie. Give it a try. You could draw a couple of large arrows to direct the crowds the images. You might also need a rottweiler to guard them as christians tend to be theiving bastards.
May 5th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
If you heathens are still unconvinced, you need to go to http://jesusphotos.altervista.org ; the scales will fall from your very eyes, begorrah!!
(PS I particularly like the title: "REAL Jesus and Mary Photographs"! So some of them are fakes, eh?)
( PPS There`s a better site which lists literally dozens of these "miraculous images", and is where I first found the now legendary "Jesus in a dog`s ass", but I can`t find the address now – curses!!!)
May 5th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
this is another case of total stupidity
May 5th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
awesome stupidity!
I saw the picture – (I'm too thick to actually read articles these days) thought – eh? Butt plug surely. Then found heart in the fact that the caption underneath also drew the most obvious allusions that a functioning rational mind would alight upon.
Secretly – they just want it up them.
May 5th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
"MEXICAN CALEXICAN COOK SHOOK BY GRIDDLE RIDDLE!"
May 5th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
So she started scrubbing the grill, then stopped when the semi-clean area looked (to her) like a butt-plug..er, the Virgin Mary? Stop the presses, it's a miracle.
May 5th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Tony e
I am sure that I have seen somewhere on a spoof religious merchandise website a kind of stamp which puts an icon on your toast every time.
On a hardly more serious note, this item should be essential reading for all those who castigate freethinkers for claiming their intellectual superiority over the Godly. Let's face it, these pages do provide us with a fair amount of evidence to back up that claim.
May 5th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
If it's a religious image you want, how about this one – God's message to mankind.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030630.html
May 5th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Doubled, redoubled and in spades.
May 5th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
They can't possibly be real Photographs of Jesus.
It's common knowledge that Jesus was a blue eyed, Blond haired, White, Republican American.
The only similarity is the Mullet.
May 5th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
How superior you all sound. How sniggering and "Hey, I'm not conned!!". Why is it so important to some of you to put crude comments? I don't believe these sightings for one minute but I am thinking if it gives some people support in this hard life we live then so what? I think respect for others (and their beliefs however odd!) is a humanist ideal. Or does being humanist mean we lose our human dignity- defined by how we treat others?
May 5th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
The stamp you mentioned is a real product – and very popular too in my neck of the woods. I have a part-time job in a shop which laid in a supply of these plastic Virgin Mary toast presses last November, and they sold like, erm, hot cakes in the run-up to Xmas.
May 5th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Virgin Mutha on another paratha?
Time to cork the bottle, methinks!
May 5th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Buffy, Check out a genuine Virgin Mary dildo here:
http://www.divine-interventions.com/mary.html
May 5th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Wow. I'm having flashbacks of a certain "Exorcist" quote, though this dildo is the VM rather than Jesus.
May 5th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
The reason organized religion manipulates its mindslaves into seeing a picture of Jesus (or is it Mother Goose? I'm always confusing those two) in a buttered bagel is that it further entrenches their slavery. A person who is conned into believing that a subjective misinterpretation of a smudged image is "proof" that the Great Pumpkin is watching over them is a slave for life. Not speaking out and telling the deluded that they believe nonsense would be like Wilberforce not telling slaves that their condition was indefensible. We cannot force the godphuqt to live in the real world, but we have an obligation to make the facts available to persons with the sanity to comprehend them.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Oh yes… God is all powerful and eternally wondrous. But hey, rather than save humanity from the agony of illness or poverty, he'd rather embed his face on a slice of toast or a rock.
What a god!
May 6th, 2009 at 6:13 am
I've been thinking about making my own image of Mary by spilling some chemicals. Perhaps I can pay off some debts by selling it to some fundie.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:19 am
The problem for me is that I can't respect people who hold and defend absurd ideas. Also, not all opinions etc are equally valid. As Harris, Hitchens et al have all pointed out, no matter how fervently people hold there beliefs or how much comfort they bring, does not raise it's truth value. Some ideas are just wrong. I can't respect anyone who would take a supernatural explanation (which isn't actually an explanation of things at all) over a naturalistic explanation.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:01 am
What planet are you living on mogo? Religious organizations are making literally billions of dollars out of gullible "believers" throughout the world, mainly by lies and deliberate deception, as well as instilling superstitious fears in their minds, and you think that`s OK as long as the innocent victims get some sort of "comfort" from their beliefs! I can also attest, from personal experience, to the damage done to a person`s mind by attempting to cling on to these totally irrational beliefs, and the mental torment caused when one eventually sees through it all and has to confront the fact that one`s whole life has been built on a lie. Don`t gloss over it, or apologize for such wickedness: the perpetrators of this nonsense are just plain evil!!
May 6th, 2009 at 7:40 am
PS As I have said elsewhere, I would in some ways dearly love to believe again that God was in control of the Universe: that everything in my life had a "purpose", and was ordered by Him: and that all would work out for the best in the end. But can you say that this is a healthy situation, when it`s all a lie? Not all of the Bible is rubbish by any means – some of the poetic writings are wonderful – and according to "Jesus" the wise man built his house upon rock!!
May 6th, 2009 at 7:41 am
There seems a misconception here from some subscribers that some of us feel ourselves to be "superior" to these "simple, ignorant" people who believe in all this bullshit. Far from it – I, for instance, was once similarly taken in, hahaha!! We do, however, consider ourselves morally superior to the liars, crooks, conmen and deceivers who are, for various reasons, perpetrating such massive hoaxes!
May 6th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I dropped some acid once. Saw all sorts of weird shit!
May 6th, 2009 at 9:22 am
IF you TAKE acid, you see much more remigius – but then I suspect that`s what Ezekiel and some of the others were up to in any case!!
May 6th, 2009 at 10:22 am
It`s the same with "spiritualism" – they get in touch with these people on "the other side" and do they have the answers to life, the universe, and everything ? Oh, no: "Don`t worry about Aunt Edna – she`s OK" : "Hope someone`s looking after me cat": "Don`t think I hold any grudges over that business in 1953"!! It`s pathetic!!!
May 6th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
As I keep saying on varous blogs remigius, I am NOT making it up (unlike Mr Ratswinger and his chums)!!!
May 6th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
As I keep saying on varIous blogs remigius, I am NOT making it up (unlike Mr Ratswinger and his chums)!!!
May 6th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Yeah Barrie! I must admit, I was wondering what would prompt you to type "Jesus in a dog`s ass" into a search? Religion has a lot to answer for!! Glad you escaped, though I'm not sure if I can wholeheartedly say unscathed!!
lol
May 6th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
William Harwood- If they feet thet the 'Great Pumpkin' is watching over them so what? I know you say we have an 'obligation'?! to tell them how it really is- but I am hey! again I have this uncomfortable feeling of smugness and superiority which we accuse the believers of feeling. Would we all be sniggering(cos that is what it is) if it were muslims or sikhs and not obviously christians/catholics? Having great trouble reasoning this judgement of others beliefs here! HELP!
May 6th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Barriejohn,
That's was got him killed. Yahweh of the old testimate was a murdering, jealous, intolerence bastard. Those who worshipped him imulated those traits. Jesus attempted to change his image to a loving caring forgiving father who loves all of his children. That challenged the infallibility of the existing religious hierarchy, so they used the Romans to kill him as an insurrectionist.
But, give me a break, BJ. Nothing of the morals or wisdom of religious text are any more than common sense to a genuine freethinker. Don't lie, don't steal, don't fuck your wife's best friend, but the biggie, "thou shalt not kill". Followers of the bible and the quran have painted history with blood. Morals are common sense, but holy war is the ultimate hypocricy.
NL
May 7th, 2009 at 5:55 am
You don`t seem to have read very much of the Bible then Norman! And as for what "got Jesus killed", I think you need to have a look at http://www.jesusneverexisted.com !!
May 7th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Did you actually take in ANYTHING of what I said mogo?
May 7th, 2009 at 8:26 am
How far does a delusion have to go before a large number of people start to also believe in that same delusion?
It's a small jump from believing you see the face of Jesus in a dog turd to believing that a talking snake was the downfall of humanity.
It's still a delusion.
You cannot have a rational discussion with a person with a strong delusion unless you share it with them. Sharing a delusion is what Religion is all about.
Making fun of the delusional is one way of possibly making them and others see how ridiculous they are.
Humour is one of the few strong weapons in the Secularists Toolbox.
May 7th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Almost half of all biblical scholars (a term that does NOT include theologians) have concluded that there was never a historical Jesus onto whose biography the Christian fairy tales were posthumously grafted. More than half are satisfied that the evidence for a real Jesus, specifically the negative anecdotes that no Jesus fan would have invented, outweighs the contrary evidence. Jesus was a totally insignificant preacher whose name would not have survived if Paul of Tarsus had not capriciously chosen him from about a dozen recently executed messiahs to be the figurehead of his new gentile religion.
For the evidence on which to base a conclusion see my "God, Jesus and the Bible: The Origin and Evolution of Religion", which should be released late May or early June.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I don`t even think "Saul of Tarsus" existed now! If he was such a prominent Pharisee, how could he have been so ignorant of the events surrounding the death of "Jesus" very recently in Jerusalem? There`s too much that just doesn`t add up I`m afraid!!
May 9th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Some competent scholars have concluded that Jesus, Moses and Abraham did not exist. The evidence is too ambiguous to state that they could not possibly be right. Archaeologists have raised some doubt that David and Solomon ever existed, even as village chieftains whose hegemony did not reach beyond a day's march from Jerusalem. Again, I can only disagree, but without staking my reputation on an assertion that they are wrong. But I am not aware of a single legitimate historian, defined as someone who has written a properly-supervised thesis in a relevant area of history, who maintains that Paul of Tarsus never existed. More than one inflexible dogmatist claiming to be a historian has made such an assertion, including a fatuous oaf calling himself "Rook the historian" even though he has never taken even an undergrad degree in hiistory. I thought that citing my forthcoming book would preempt incompetent disputation. It did not.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
So anyone disagreeing with your conclusions is either an "inflexible dogmatist" or guilty of "incompetent disputation" then Harwood? And citing your "forthcoming book" in support of your views is hardly going to convince anybody! I am not an historian, and I did NOT "make assertions" – merely voiced opinions – but I have read a lot in this area, as I was a prominent preacher with the Plymouth Brethren, and wrestled with these problems of Biblical authenticity for decades before I finally saw through it all. Many scholars consider "The Apostle Paul" to have been an invention, possibly of Marcion or other early Church fathers, in their efforts to wrest control of the sect from its Jewish leaders. You must know this. There are, to my knowledge, no reliable contemporaneous references to the Paul of the New Testament, nor any references at all to Saul, the so-called persecutor of the Early Church, both of which facts are totally bizarre. All the "evidence" seems to lie within the Bible itself. (Cont.)
May 10th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
The Epistles are now considered obvious fakes, of later date, and there is almost no correlation between the Paul of the Epistles and the Paul of The Acts of the Apostles – they appear to be two completely different people!! If you have come across reliable, external evidence that "Paul" actually existed, I for one would be most interested to know of it. As far as "Jesus of Nazareth" is concerned, there are several candidates in history, I know, but my own view is that he is only an historical figure in the sense that King Arthur is – in other words, even if he did actually exist we can never know much about him for certain – and the Disciples are about as real as "The Knights of the Round Table"!
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey it-t-t-t-t-t looks-ks-ks-ks-ks-ks-ks more like-ike-ike-ike-ike a but-plug-ug-ug-ug-ug-ug !
January 28th, 2010 at 5:21 am
I saw an image of the entire holy family in cum splatter. Did that count. I didn’t quite know how to report it to the Vatican.