Virgin Mary goes down

From the May 18th, 2010 Brownsville (Texas) Herald:

For almost 20 years, a rickety old Cottonwood tree stood on the corner of East Levee and 10th streets in downtown Brownscille, growing int o a landmark in the early 1990s when the image of the Virgin Mary was discerned on its bark.

Amid the discovery, hundreds of believers-including dozens from across the country-trickled into the city to hang flowers and offerings on its branches and place candles by its roots. Some simply came to stand by its side in quiet prayer.

The tree had survived the hands and knives of people clipping its leaves and attempting to remove bits from its trunk for momentos. It had lived through arsonists' fires. But when heavy rains swept through the RIo Grande Valley on Tuesday, winds toppled the tree to the ground and left it restingi n pieces outside the now abandoned boarding house whre it was located. Purple and red plastic flowers were crushed under the soft wet wood.

"It is sad. A lot of people had already stopped coming to see the image (on the tree)" said 51-year-old Roberto Ayala, who remembers gathering with dozens from his neighborhood to see and touch its bark. "Now we are going to forget what once appeared there."

It is sunny out, and I am in a reasonably good mood. I don't feel the bile rising enough to tackle serious religious idiocy today, so instead will settle for ridiculing this hilarious mishap. I have been trying to work 'blow job' into this thing, but thus far haven't had much success.

Thank you Texas. You seem to have no shortage of credulous morons to make fun of. Let's not mention, at this juncture, the State Board of Edumacations redacting of textbooks to remove references to Jefferson, Darrow and their ilk, and substituting instead the likes of religious hacks John Clavin and Thomas Aquinas, a clear attempt to ram religion down the throats of the students. Capitalism itself is being expunged as that word seems to conjure up images of gulags and KGB agents and tall, furry Russian hats. Insted, 'free market economy' is being substituted. One presumes that this agenda, driven by a majority right-wing (and clearly insane) board, is an attempt to fill the heads of children with twaddle in the hopes that Texas will become a theocratic wonderland of ignorance and credulity. But I ramble...

First off, I didn't realize that the virgin Mary was black, or that she had acrocephaly...or no face whatsoever. Still, I get the resemblance. Very similar to the dog-ass Jesus, one of my favorites (see above comparison). Both images are astoundingly...vague. I wonder if that pooch had to put up with a lot of crowds following him around, praying and trying to stick platic flowers up his butt. I find it almost impossible to understand why, barring mental retardation or LSD, anyone would take such apparitions as seriously as they apparently do. Its all down to thinking for oneself, and thinking critically at that. It is hard work, and who wants to do that when you can withhold your disbelief long enough to grab a bit of bark that you can pray to for guidance. It is sad, as Mr. Ayala states.......sad that PT Barnum was right, and there is indeed a sucker born every minute.

So, for the sake of argument, let's say that god, in his typical half-assed fashion, decided to make a vague image of the virgin (Hah!) appear in a tree trunk. Was god incapable of sparing this tree from a blow job (there! did it)? A more miraculous event would have been to blwo down every tree EXCEPT this particular magic cottonwood. But, as the article says, the boarding house onwhich property the tree stands, or stood, is abandoned now. Maybe the neighborhood was going downhill and it was time to move on, maybe try an appearance of Jeus in a Starbuck's latte somewhere in an up and coming 'burb. Fuck you guys and all your plastic floweres. I'm moving on up where the worshippers are able to supply the real deal, and smell better too.