2/26/07: The pizza madonna

In Houston, Pew Elementary School cafeteria workers cleaning pizza pans discovered a stain that resembled the Virgin Mary. They took the pan to a nearby home and soon hundreds of people were stopping by to pray to it, leave rosaries and candles and other offerings, and it’s become an overnight Texas sensation.

I gotta admit, the Madonna wasn’t the first association that popped into my mind when I saw it, but I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Garage doors and national defense apparently don’t mix. Residents of Colorado Spring started calling garage door opener repairmen in droves once the Marines started jamming them. Turns out that garage door remotes and homeland security systems operate on the same frequencies, according to a story on CNN.

This isn’t new; these kinds of devices are allowed to operate on “security” frequencies as long as they can be easily overridden. Trouble is, nobody mentioned that to the buyers of garage door openers, they need to buy new, more expensive models if they want to open their garage doors and they’re plenty mad.

Wonder if the Colorado legislature will issue an official apology?

The state of Virginia officially apologized for slavery last week, and while they were at it also expressed regrets over confiscating Native American lands. Following on the heels of the diplomatically but sternly worded (and essentially toothless) rebuke to President Bush for US involvement in Iraq, it kinda makes me wonder if we’re headed for an era when legislatures avoid screwing up their chances at re-election by sticking to trite and powerless statements of opinion-by-committee.

I think I’d take this a bit more seriously if they backed this up where it hurt. How about paying back wages–with interest–to the descendants of every slave owned, sold, traded, abused or captured by a Virginian? Or tracking down displaced Native American tribes and returning their Virginia lands?

Till then, folks, cut the phony crocodile tears and get back to work.

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