Oh, local news. I lova ya!
I find it interesting just how banal this seems to get when you see all those stains, squiggles, pieces of food, and grain patterns lined up over and over again. I understand that people want to touch the spiritual, to be connected with something bigger than themselves, but even if you are deeply religious is it too much to admit that this all might be coincidence?
I did enjoy the skepticism from some of the newscasters. That was refreshing!
Tip o’ the grilled cheese sandwish to Everything is Terrible!, a blog I now have in my feed reader.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:50 am
The people putting little flowers and pictures around these wooden poles and oil stains seriously need to get a hobby. Do these people have jobs?
March 9th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Whom do I call to have Cheesus come fix my ice maker?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Wow, the very first guy is a local newscaster here in central Illinois! Sort of took me by surprise!
I love whoever put this together.
Couldn’t see Jesus in the ultrasound–maybe they will get better resolution with an MRI! And I’d insist that insurance pay for it.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Silly monkeys.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:19 am
@Sciencegoddess
Sorry, but most insurance companies don’t cover “Acts of God”.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Todd W.
Ironic considering everything being in the power of God would thus be an act of God. Can we start denying insurance to religious nuts now? Might lower my premium a bit.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:44 am
It is my firm belief that Jesus would definitely choose to recreate popular Middle-ages era images of himself in food. Yeah. That seems like something God would spend time doing.
Also I think one of the broadcasters meant “Jesus and the Virgin Mary” Not “Jesus and Mother Teresea” or do people also see images of her in food?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I love how the omnipotent one needs to reveal himself in food and dirty sinks. Low self-esteem much?
March 9th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Maybe this little video is a bellwether that the fad that is running its course? Nobody, I notice, talks about seeing god-figures in clouds (though the smokes from the smokestack came close) — presumably because everybody already knows that seeing faces in clouds is nothing unusual. I’m hoping that eventually everyone will decide that seeing faces in food and waterstains is also utterly unremarkable.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:10 am
ROFLMAO … simply brilliant … here’s another great collection of pareidolia
March 9th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I love the guy who quit smoking and drinking the moment he saw the image in a rock. It must be true!!!
March 9th, 2009 at 10:22 am
At 1:23 there is reference to Jesus having a goatee. We know what that means, JESUS HAS GONE EVIL!
March 9th, 2009 at 10:23 am
“Maybe this little video is a bellwether that the fad that is running its course?”
Not according to Ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/VIRGIN-MARY-JESUS-GOD-MADONNA-STATUE-ART-NATURAL_W0QQitemZ180327647831QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item180327647831&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2|65%3A16|39%3A1|240%3A1318
March 9th, 2009 at 10:29 am
LOL – At 1:04 – “Is it a Holy image, or a bucket of FILTH?!”
I had to play that over several times, it keeps cracking me up.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:39 am
That video amused me, and made me hungry for Cheetos. It also reminded me of Father Guido Sarducci’s “Find the Pope in the Pizza Contest”.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:50 am
So, the weird thing about these images is, no one really knows what Jesus looked like, which makes it pretty unlikely that Jesus looked like the popular conception of him. Which means, these images are of someone else entirely! What we need to do is find out who the heck it is and why they are so important.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:52 am
The spoon looked more like Che. And the sink I thought was Darth Vader.
I once saw Foamy the Squirrel in my beer. Does that mean our savior is acctually a ranting rabid flash animation?
March 9th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Dang! Go out cloud walking one bloody night and every SatCam in space records it.
I just wish Y’All would quit looking to me to clean up your dirty undies. I gave you a brain,,,learn to use it(or lose it).
G
March 9th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Jesus!
March 9th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Okay, enough of you unbelievers!
Jesus is CLEARLY the Son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as you can see in the photo below, taken in the Men’s Room of the radio station I used to work at.
(It’s at LEAST as much like the standard ‘Shroud of Turin’ image as most of the pictures in the video)
J/P=?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:30 am
At 5:01 I see Darth Vader.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:35 am
@John Paradox
I see Russell Brand…
March 9th, 2009 at 11:45 am
no jesus cheetos in my bag, but i did find one that looked like DNA
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/evirus/124422.jpg
March 9th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
” ‘Yes, a sign…’
… I had no idea what she was talking about.”
Anyone get that reference?
(Hint: voiced by John Candy)
Anyway – I sometimes envy the people who believe in all this magically mysterious stuff.
I imagine it must relieve tremendous intellectual burden to be able to just reject reality and substitute your own (to borrow a phrase – (no offense, Mr. Savage)).
Ignorance IS bliss…
March 9th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I’m curious,
In addition to pareidolia, is there a term for ascribing theorized attributes to prehistorical artifacts? Think “space helmets” or “rocket ships” as descriptions for Mayan carvings.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I love it how naive these people are.
Most of the stuff they are seeing look like some popular religious paintings by the masters of the Renaissance. So Jesus/Mary looks like how people in the Renaissance painted them? CRAZY!
March 9th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
That was AWESOME. Much better than my lame PowerPoint collection!
I like what the pastor said, although I disagree about it being a wonderful thing.
Acronym Jim: Yes, there is a name: Delusional Thinking
;P
March 9th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Most of them didn’t even remotely look like Jesus.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Actually if only one person saw Jesus, then I might consider a coincidence. But all these people seeing Jesus? It’s proof, man. Proof I tell you.
Now I must adjust my tinfoil hat in preperation for the Rapture.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
The image in the frying pan looked more like Frank Zappa to me.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Jesus k. rastafarian. Why in all that’s holy can’t he appear as a perfect 3d holographic image in the middle of say Times Square? the local church bingo parlor? Hell, the line at Subway even… or the greasy spoon down the corner? Toast? Grilled cheese? A light pole? Sigh… I just gotta believe that if some great deity DID create our universe, he, or his offspring would at least have the ability to make themselves perfectly visible to everyone without resorting to lame splotches in the most unholy of objects. What’s next? The virgin Mary showing up in beer foam?
March 9th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
A bunch of people, who are thinking about Jesus all of the time.
They claim that the somewhat simian shapes, that their pattern-forming mind creates out of random arrangements of stuff, must be what they are thinking about already.
These image, if they look like Jesus, also look like anyone with that same vague appearance. An appearance that may not be even remotely accurate. So, they also look like Father Guido Sarducci (he removed his hat because it was a windy day), Frank Zappa (resurrected), a large section of the hippie population in Woodstock (or anywhere else), but we all know that these are really images of Charles Manson sent to identify the followers of Satan. Manson put some make up over his swastika scar to confuse the easily misled, but he didn’t fool me.
Why does he appear to people with broken ice machines and those who smoke and drink? Because Charles Manson is one very weird guy. Really, he is. Trust me.
When you do not understand how common coincidences are, you see God in everything. The other typical example of this is the conspiracy theorist. They would see Osama bin-Laden in everything.
It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Every time I read a post about pariedolia, I wonder why nobody has linked this. Decency, perhaps. But it may just be the end of the subject.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=24217&in_page_id=2
March 9th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
@ Scott S. “lame splotches in the most unholy of objects.” Awesome!
Yes I am a Christian, and no Phil, it’s not too much to ask. At about 1:39 I see General Grievous.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Even I see both General Grievous and Darth Vader. Now what does that tell you? The Force is strong in wood and kinky red stuff.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
@ Dennis:
” ‘Yes, a sign…’
… I had no idea what she was talking about.”
Anyone get that reference?
Heavy Metal! (Wasn’t that character’s name also Dennis/Den?)
I like: “If you refuse you die, she dies, everybody dies.”
March 10th, 2009 at 4:35 am
A lot of great reminders of why I don’t watch local news! The core of the problem is the anchor who said “I don’t (see it) either, but its still a great story!” As long as these idiots thinks that is a “great story” they are all doomed
March 10th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Who looks at there food this closely?
March 10th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Why is the song “Elvis is Everywhere” by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper going through my head???
March 10th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I liked the reporter who thought that it looked more like John Lennon.
Congrats John (wherever you are) – you’re still BIGGER THAN JESUS!
March 10th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy « Why not just devalue them even more, to say… zero? [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 1:24 am
As I understand it from my art history class, Jesus didn’t have a beard ‘in his life’. It was added in painting to make him more kingly-looking.
March 12th, 2009 at 11:47 am
[...] (Via Bad Astronomy) [...]