Troy Eckonen was eating breakfast at Mack’s Cafe in Pompano Beach last Tuesday when he spotted Jesus’ face on his last piece of French toast.

After studying the toast Eckonen says he and friends also see Christ’s left arm raised and holding a cross, as well as two birds over the left shoulder.

Looks more like Frank Zappa to me.

Thousands of people have flocked to Mercy Medical Center to see the image since a patient first reported seeing it at about 11 a.m. Tuesday, said Mark Fulco, senior vice president for strategy and marketing at the hospital.

Fulco said that the hospital was planning to replace the window, which was originally put in place in the 1970s when the building was built.

“Obviously, we didn’t change the window out when we heard. ... We figure the best thing to do right now is just leave it in place, until it can be fully evaluated and we can get advice” from the diocese of Springfield, he said.

Nobody tampered with the glass or painted anything on the inside or outside, Fulco said. Glass experts have told officials that somehow water got between the two panes of the double-paned glass and the “minerals reacted and caused some type of acidic reaction that appears to have etched the glass,” he said.

“What is unusual is the image that appears to have been etched,” he said. “Many people have said it resembles the Virgin Mary or Our Lady of Guadalupe.” He had no comment on what the image looked like to him.

It’s a faulty window and somehow that’s a miracle? This has to be the worst example of pareidolia I’ve seen in some time. I mean just look at how pathetic this is:

Click to embiggen!

All I can say is that if you see the Virgin Mary in that mess then you’re way more

imaginative than I am. For its part the Catholic church is being non-committal:

A spokesman for the diocese said it could take the church years to investigate, but called the faith of local Catholics “inspiring.”

Inspiring? I think the word they’re really looking for is insipid. “Look everyone! A vague and formless blob in a window pane! It MUST be the Virgin Mary! It couldn’t possibly be, say, Jabba the Hut!“

DALLAS (CBS 11 News) ―  Workers at a marble company in Dallas say they have a slab of natural granite that has the image of Jesus in it.

[...] Those who look at the 6x10 foot slab say they can see the head and arms of Jesus, along with either a belt, sword or glowing book.

The company has pulled the slab from its inventory and put it on display.

[...] The company owners say they feel blessed to have the piece and hope to sell it and donate the proceeds to a struggling church in Madill, Oklahoma.

It looks to me like Jesus is trying for the “Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite” look. One of the worst pareidolias of the year. But at least they’re going to donate the money they get from selling this thing. Too bad it’s going to a church and not something useful like curing cancer.

gullible than the Protestants? There must be because we keep getting news items like this one:

Indians blinded looking for vision of Mary - UPI.com

KOTTAYAM, India, March 11 (UPI)—Reports in India of a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary in the sky have led about 50 people to blind themselves by staring at the sun.

The visions are said to appear over the former home of a hotel owner in the Kottayam area in southeast India, The Daily Telegraph reported. One hospital in the district reported 48 patients had been admitted with burned retinas since last week, the British newspaper reported.

Churches have warned their congregations that looking at the sun will cause permanent blindness and have told them the supposed miracle is not one.

Before moving out, the hotel owner reportedly had also claimed to have statues of the Virgin Mary that cried honey and bled oils and perfumes.

If you can’t believe a hotel owner’s claims of miraculous honey-crying statues well then who can you believe? I mean there’s no way in hell they’d make ridiculous claims like that for fame or money, right?

Can’t decide? Don’t feel too bad because these people couldn’t decide either, but whatever it is they’re sure it’s divine and enough to get them into the newspaper. They were half right at least:

Ten, maybe 15, people have seen the light-colored outline at the bottom of the tree, Donna and Frank say. They ask each, What do you see?

“I don’t put it in their head, like, ‘Do you want to see something that looks like Christ?‘“ Donna says.

One person saw a saint. Others have split between Jesus and the Virgin Mary. The light makes a difference. Donna says it’s most obvious between noon and 2 p.m. when the sunlight hits the tree full on. Other times, the figure shifts a little, but it remains, Donna and Frank say.

They don’t know exactly what to make of it. Donna says she was raised Catholic but doesn’t make it to church that often. Still, a certain balance seems to have fallen on the family since the figure appeared, she says. Family illnesses, the trials of everyday life — dealing with everything seems a little more manageable.

“It just kind of brings us back to our roots,“ Donna says.

The transformative power of a stain on a tree is simply amazing. “We don’t know what the hell it is, but we sure do feel reassured by it!“

These people would be uplifted by pigeon droppings if they thought they could see Jesus in them.

Family Sees Virgin Mary On Living Room Wall - Portland News Story - WMTW Portland

Donna Quintana, of Meadow Lake, N.M., said it’s a much-needed blessing that appeared right before her family’s eyes Christmas Eve. Her husband saw it first.

“He noticed an image there. He said, ‘That looks like an image of the Virgin Mary,‘“ Quintana said.

She said the image appeared during a home construction mishap. Quintana said her husband was putting a special texture on the wall. The spray bottle he was using broke twice, which meant the texture couldn’t be wiped off fast enough. This is how it dried.

“I feel like it’s telling us something, like it’s protecting us,“ Quintana said. “It’s like a miracle.“

Her family concurs.

“I think God is trying to tell us something, like a message from heaven,“ said Mariah Quintana, Donna Quintana’s granddaughter.

You see that pathetic example of pareidolia up there on the left? That’s what passes for a “Christmas Miracle” these days. It’s like the Virgin Mary isn’t even trying in her art anymore. That could be a picture of my big toe for all that it looks like Jesus’ mom, but these True Believers™ are all excited about it. You’d think they’d won the lottery with the way they’re running around ascribing divine intent to a stain on the wall. You’d think a God capable of anything could come up with something a bit more impressive as a sign to his followers that their luck is about to change.

If you’re this

lady in Florida what you see is Jesus and Mary:

Marilyn Smith was making a pancake a couple of weeks ago.

As she was sprinkling it with chocolate powder, the Port St. Lucie woman noticed two figures in the grill marks.

To her and her daughter, they appeared to be Jesus and Mary.

I can’t see it. Maybe some sort of fat headed mutant rabbit, but not Jesus and Mary, but here’s the thing that kills me about this story. They followed in the footsteps of so many other True Believers™ and slapped that puppy up on eBay and some moron out there paid $338 for a FUCKING PANCAKE.

I seriously need to start paying attention to random patterns so I can get in on some of that money makin’ action.

Virgin Mary Draws Crowds - DothanFirst.com

Believers say they can see the image of the Virgin Mary on a garage door in Pennsylvania. Word of the Holy Mother’s unexplainable appearance has brought crowds to the city of Minersville to see it. “It’s amazing. It’s really amazing,“ said Cecelia Sell who traveled from another county to see the image.

She and her family came to see an image of what they believe is the Blessed Mary, the Mother of God. “I don’t know how to explain it because it just appears before you,“ Sell said.

The image appears on a garage door. The image shows up every night around 6:00 and has done so since August 15, the feast of the assumption of mary for Catholics. The reason why is a complete mystery.

Is it just me or are these people way too easily impressed? First we have a Jesus this week that looks like a reject from an old Atari 2600 game on a fence and now we have a Virgin Mary blob on a garage door. What’s even more amazing to me than the credulity of the people gushing over this nonsense is the fact that news crews just lap it up like it’s not just a bunch of delusional people who forgot to take their medication.

If these are the best “miracles” god can come up with, well, let’s just say I’m not all that impressed. You’d think for someone so all-powerful there’d be little need to rely on such vague and amorphous images.

Emily West was doing some meditating over the weekend in her sister’s backyard in central Lodi when something caught her eye.

“I looked up and saw the face of Christ in the fence and I said, “Whoa,“ West said.

She called her sister Ana over to ask what she saw. She too agreed, it was the Son of God.

You see that little picture in the upper left corner here? That pathetic example of pareidolia is all it took to have these two True Believers™ phoning up the local Bishop to spread the good news. You can bet they probably have scores of people lining up to pray/beseech/cry/be healed by their amazing Jesus knot.

Artistically that’s just sad. It’s like he’s not even trying anymore.

Guadalupe Rodriguez, a Pugh Elementary School cafeteria worker, discovered the possible miracle on Ash Wednesday, while scrubbing away the last crumbs from the pizza lunch.

By Friday, a steady stream of people were filing through the southeast Houston front yard of Sylvia Calderon, a PTA member who took in the sheet pan after school leaders decided they couldn’t accommodate the curious crowds.

At dawn, one woman arrived at Calderon’s home in the Denver Harbor neighborhood asking to see the Virgin’s image before her 8-year-old son had surgery. That afternoon another woman came for a blessing bearing a picture of her grandson, who has cerebral palsy.

Scientists call this phenomenon religious pareidolia, when the eye sees religious images in objects such as tree trunks and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Believers say it’s a miracle.

“It was beautiful,“ said Angie Bentancur, who left the picture of her grandson beside the sheet pan Friday afternoon.

Yeah there’s nothing more beautiful than stained cookware. Here’s the part that really cracks me up, though, Ms. Rodriguez admits that she had to really look hard to see the Virgin Mary when she first made her “miraculous” discovery:

It was with the last pan, pulled from the cold rinse, that the Virgin appeared, Rodriguez, 59, said.

“I started looking at it, and started looking at it, until I realized it was the Virgin,“ she said.

Next time try squinting. That worked well for the Virgin Fence Post.

For believers, there is no doubt about Rodriguez’s discovery. It is a message from God. The find created a logistical problem for school officials. When they got home Wednesday, many pupils who had seen the sheet pan told their parents, many of whom returned to school to see for themselves. Pacay propped up the pan near the lunch line.

The crowds grew to include neighbors, and soon district officials, including Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra, who agreed the tray had to go somewhere else. That’s when the PTA agreed to take it to Calderon’s house.

“Right now because it is attracting a lot of attention, we just don’t want it in the school,“ said Rebecca Suarez, HISD spokeswoman. “But we want to treat it with respect.“

I can’t think of anything funnier to say than that last line about showing a stained cookie sheet proper respect. You can’t make up shit this funny. But it gets better:

Some hope to set up a permanent spot for the baking pan in the neighborhood, where anyone can visit, day or night.

Come one come all and pray to the Miraculous Dirty Baking Sheet!