Above: Catholic devotees look at the painted-over stain that they believe is a miraculous manifestation of the Virgin Mary underneath a Chicago underpass. Below: According to the caption for this Associated Press photo, a devotee kisses the newly painted-over stain. The stain since has been restored.
Associated Press photos
Our Saint of the Stain
It's Sunday, so a religious article seems appropriate.
It's my religious duty to update you on the state of the stain underneath a Chicago underpass.
The stain, which Catholic devotees believe is the likeness of the Virgin Mary and thus constitutes a miracle (but which the heathen Illinois Department of Transportation says is from salt runoff), dropped from the news and then came back into the news when 37-year-old Victor Gonzalez of Chicago wrote the words "Big Lie" on the stain with shoe polish Thursday night. He was charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to state property, a misdemeanor, The Associated Press reported.
Gonzalez said he believed that visitors to the stain were worshipping a graven image, in violation of the Second Commandment. (I can't disagree with him, but the Catholic Church is all fucked up, from the new Pope "I Was a Hitler Youth" Palpatine all the way down to the church's sheeple worshipping graven images.)
On Friday, transportation workers painted over the stain and the shoe polish with brown paint "for safety reasons," according to the AP.
Then on Friday, two car wash employees washed off both the brown paint and the shoe polish, restoring the stain and assuring their place in heaven, according to the AP (well, except for the heaven thing -- that's mine).
I sure wish that people would devote the same amount of time and energy to our real problems, such as the fact that neo-Nazis are running our nation and running it into the ground.
While I can't see Jesus expending much time and energy over a fucking stain underneath an underpass, I can see him having a shit fit over us allowing the number of poor people in our nation to increase steadily under the Bush regime and allowing the Bush regime to wage bogus wars in which thousands of innocent people die. (If you don't think that Jesus ever had shit fits, read the New Testament. He had them all the time. He'd have been a fierce blogger had they had blogs back in the day.)
As Jesus said, we strain out a gnat (we devote our time and energy into such vitally important things as stains underneath underpasses) but swallow a camel (we allow evil people in positions of power who blatantly abuse their power and cause untold suffering to continue to blatantly abuse their power and cause untold suffering).
Finally, I have to wonder what would and wouldn't constitute a miracle to these stain-worshipping Catholics who really need to get a life. I'm guessing that if your dog took a shit that was in the shape of the Virgin Mary, or that if your underwear had a skid mark on it in the shape of the Virgin Mary, perhaps no one would come from miles away to light a candle in front of your dog shit or your underwear stain, and that you probably couldn't sell your holy dog shit or your holy stained underwear on e-bay.
Just some Sunday contemplation.
11:41:25 AM 
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