One Virgin Too Many...

The Virgin Mary really needs to slow down. Lately, she’s been showing up around the U.S. more frequently than Carla Gugino’s asscrack in Sin City.

The latest appearance is, ofcourse, in the form of a salt-stained mark on the cement wall of a Chicago underpass, and it apparently has hundreds of people flocking to see it with photos of Pope John Paul II, rosary beads, votive candles and presumably, trucker ballcaps writ “Jesus Is My Co-Pilot”.

Many are so convinced of the apparition, they’re even kissing the salt-stained wall. Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out not to be a water stain after all, but instead the salt-stain of some homeless dude who couldn’t find a place to piss in the middle of the night?

There is definitely no shortage of Holy Mother sightings. She’s showing up in everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to picket fences to a soiled bedsheet at the Salvation Army. Yes, a soiled bedsheet. Now the Virgin Mary even comes in the form of a filthy blanket once owned to an incontinent World War II vet who forgot to wear his Huggies to bed.

Which kinda makes ya wonder – how fucking dirty do your sheets have to be before they begin to develop stains that resemble religious deities?

"Yo Crusty, it’s called a laundromat - get some quarters, a box of Tide and give it a whirl once in a while. "

The thing that gets me is why the Virgin Mary is appearing in the form of such bizarre items – y’know, spoiled cabbages, bowls of day-old pudding, piles of ox dung, you name it. If I were the Virgin Mary I think I’d be a little more selective about where I decided to show up.

First, I’d only show up in items of high quality – on the side of a 60-year old bottle of Scotch maybe or charbroiled into the top of a perfectly grilled 10-ounce New York cut steak. I mean a grilled cheese sandwich?! Come on, that hardly sounds like the work of the woman who birthed our Saviour. Are you sure that ain’t Flo the waitress from the old TV show “Alice” grilled into that sandwich? Seems a bit more like her style to me.

All I’m saying is that if I’m supposed to be getting a sign from God or the Holy Mother or my insurance broker for that matter, I really hope it comes in a bigger package than mould on a fermenting peach or pubic hairs on a bar of Zest because to be honest, if it’s divine intervention, it had better be a decent show.

In fact, it better make Live-Aid look like a sleep-deprived Fred Penner singing “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round” to a class of half-witted kindergarten students crashing on low blood suger.

That’s the kind of sign I’ll be looking for.