I Have Seen The Face Of The Mantis God

  The most recent picture in NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day clearly shows the face of the Mantis God. His compound eyes gaze benevolently down upon us, his holy mandibles touch lightly as he showers his insecty love upon us.

Click for full size.

Of course, "Big Astronomy" has some half-assed nattering about a possible explanation.

Now known popularly as Hanny's Voorwerp, subsequent observations have shown that the mysterious green blob has the same distance as neighboring galaxy IC 2497. Research is ongoing, but one leading hypothesis holds that Hanny's Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.

  Fear not, brothers and sisters. The Mantis God loves us all. When he returns to us, he will eat all the flies from every backyard, even of those soulless astronomers who gaze upon his holy carapace and see only a "mysterious green blob."

  I have seen the bright green face of the Mantis God. All hail pareidolia.

Seven Year Bitch

  Despite millennia of being consistently mistaken, charlatans and true believers alike continue to predict that the end of the world is just around the corner. The latest entry in the Book Of Inevitable Failure comes from pastor Mark Biltz, of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. Pastor Biltz has determined that a series of lunar eclipses that will appear in 2015 are a likely herald of the long awaited second coming. Why? Because they happen to fall on the same days as his religious festivals.(video)

  This prediction has all the classic elements. Regular, predictable astronomical phenomena, reference to vague bible verses, coincidental timing with arbitrarily dated church holidays, current political unrest and enough wishful thinking to kill a yak at 20 paces.

  My favorite part of this whole scenario is that Hal Lindsey, crackpot and lifetime member of the failed prophets club, dismisses Biltz's theory as "pure speculation." Talk about the 100% non-reflective surface calling the kettle black.

  Someone remind me to send Mr. Biltz a postcard in 2016. I'm sure I'll be way too busy not burning in hell to remember by myself.