Ribbed for your partner's pleasure!

Sweet Jesus. Why? Why? Why? What's the fricking point of a "virgin" Mary appearing miraculously on a turtles belly? Are butt plugs ever ribbed?

Looks like an arrowhead to me.

That's not the gender of human-genital-region-associated-imagery that visual representations of the canonical Blessed Virgin generally call to my mind.

Looks like a headpiece for a suit of armor to me.

The Virgin Mary wears hoops under her robe? (That's what the lower bumps look like) Staying with the hooded-figure motif, I'd say it looks like a Muslim woman in traditional head-to-toe cover-up. So maybe God does have a message for this turtle's owner -- but it's not the one she's thinking.....

Seriously: the owner says the patch appeared recently. What would cause a turtle to develop that sort of marking? Disease? Age? Change of diet?

I remember a Carl Sagan TV segment where he's describing a ancient and very bloody battle on a Japanese bay. Hundreds if not thousand of Samurai died and sank in the bay. Occasionally a fisherman will bring up a crab with a perfect image of a Samurai on its back. Locals believe it to be a soul of a Samurai who dies there. Sagan asks how such a crab could be created without some divine intervention. His answer is simple and correct - we did it. Whenever a fisherman hauls up a crab that vaguely looks like a Samurai, they throw it back. Over hundreds of years, only the crabs that have the image survive. And evolution selects those with the best image. It was a beautiful and simple example of the power of evolution.

I think you should put that turtle back and spread the idea more widely. Wait a few hundred years and the turtle will have a very clear, distinct, and voted-on image of the virgin. And people will still think it's a miracle. Sigh.

said holy interpreter of turtle bellies has named one of the poor things "Mary", the other "Joseph". if they are truly female and male (how would the holy interpreter know?), what if they mate? will holy interpreter toss 'em both into the fire because they've violated the direct Will of God?

seems extreme, but, then, asking for your kidney back because the recipient converted to Hinduism is extreme, too.

If you do a google images search for "Our Lady of Guadalupe" you will perhaps understand better what's going on here. The icon of Mary as she is said to have appeared at Guadalupe is well-known to Catholics and famous in Mexico. (I am not endorsing the idea of miraculous images in tree trunks or on turtle's bellies, or in water stains on highway overpasses -- as happened in Chicago last year -- just trying to explain the resemblance some are seeing in the turtle case...)

I have a problem seeing simulacra. They almost always look just like random blobs to me. I wonder if there's something wrong with my brain...

Koo koo koo. We understand what they think they are seeing.
Still don't know what the point would be.

Are butt plugs ever ribbed?

Why, yes. All you have to do is google image search butt plugs and voila! Plugs of all shapes and sizes. Why'd you even bother to ask?

Here's your Carl Sagan video, JbCharleston.
YouTube: Carl Sagan on Evolution - real PBS feel to it.

I had no doubts. I was being facetious...
I'm sure there's even one shaped like "Our Lady Of Guadalupe".

SteveC says

Sweet Jesus

And I say, Sweet Mary. Here's a chocolate cond--er, holy image from a couple weeks back.

I saw it. Looks like a chocolate stalagmite.

No, it's a naked Ted Nugent wearing a collapsed poor barrel. You know the guy. Looks kind of like GeeWhiz.

ah, there's an opportunity here! after all, the shapes of virgins, holy or otherwise, are a body plan.

i wonder what the actual mechanism on turtle bellies is that gives it differential coloration?

Just another example of confirmation bias. They see the Virgin Mary because they want to see the Virgin Mary. The undeniable truth is that that image is obviously Stevie Nicks.

Ethyl: My thoughts exactly. And this woman lives in Burbank, so even with her Anglo-sounding name, she'd be well aware of Guadelupe imagery, even if she's not Hispanic.

I dunno...it looks more like making me believe in Druids or the Nine of Mordor...

Seriously: the owner says the patch appeared recently. What would cause a turtle to develop that sort of marking?

My guess is this was the first time she actually turned it over and looked.

Theron, I think that it's Burbank, IL. Zheesh, is there something in the water in the Chicago area? First the vulva, er, virgin Mary under the overpass and now this!
"I said it's the truth, so now they all believe it," said McVane."
Sigh.

Cheeses crust people see that woman and her son anywhere and everywhere.(shaking my head and laughing)

Mena:
There is a large Hispanic population in the Chicago area, so that it's Burbank IL rather than CA doesn't matter as much as you think. Hispanic population of
Burbank, IL: 11%
Cook County: 20%
Chicago: 26%
(Wikipedia)

Male turtles have fatter tails, longer toenails on their front feet, and a more concave plastron (lower shell) than females. See illustrations here. Kinda hard to tell from the virgin mary turtle's picture, with the owner's finger on the tail.

*!#@%&*! HTML tags

here are the turtle sexing pictures.

I think it's one of the Daleks. We should pobably be concerned about this.

Back in the winter, my bf's recently-converted-to-fundie sister saw "Jesus" on her TV screen while the power was off. (Yes, it was a shadow created by the tree outside the window. Yawn.) Well, the family was all over her about it, and later that night, as we were cooking dinner, we discovered a cremini mushroom that looked like a pair of buttocks.

Took pictures of it and was going to send it to her. Look, we've got Jesus' butt on a mushroom!

Then we decided it's probably just better not to play those games ...

California, Illinois, what's the difference, really? Completely arbitrary geographic designations, random lines on the map. I can't be held responsible!

Yet another (sadly unimaginative) person suffering from pareidolia which, if it isn't already, should be a diagnosis in DSM IV.

Michael Kremer, there is a large hispanic population all over the Chicago area. I'm in the western suburbs and a good percentage of the signs are in Spanish and English. I just didn't think that that's what Theron thought.
Theron, California had the chocolate Jesus/Mary/whatever, Illinois had the underpass fiasco. It matters to us! ;^)

Images of the Virgin Mary have always looked like vulvas. Her robes are the labia and her head is the clitoris. It's not an accident -- it's part of the way that Christianity spread by co-opting the symbols of earlier pagan religions.

For bonus yonic fun, rotate the Jesus fish so it's standing on its nose. Remind you of anything?

Seriously: the owner says the patch appeared recently. What would cause a turtle to develop that sort of marking? Disease? Age? Change of diet?

I guess God made the miracle go away since all us secluarist were asking to many questions.

Re: "Why, yes. All you have to do is google image search butt plugs and voila! Plugs of all shapes and sizes. "

There's a website called something like Divine Interventions (??) that has all manner of dildos, butt plugs, and various other accourements shaped like all sorts of religious personnel.

.....For bonus yonic fun, rotate the Jesus fish so it's standing on its nose. Remind you of anything?

What, you mean this?
http://img75.imageshack.us/my.php?image=0ichty0vw6.gif

as to the whole virgin mary/xian fish imagery...

anyone interested might want to investigate the adoption of such imagery from pre-existing secular and pagan sources:

http://www.halexandria.org/dward097.htm

http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/symbols/bldefsvesica.htm

It never ceases to amaze me how many xians I meet who are completely ignorant of the source of much of the imagery, symbolism, and ritual that has been subsumed into their religion.

I wonder if anyone will ever find an image of Mary's Joseph, history's most oblivious cuckold?

dinogami: If it occured persistently and with unusual frequency, I agree. But if it was just "happened once" I dare say it would be require all of us to be so dagnosed. I remember waking up early one morning and the shadows in my bedroom produced a very face like appearance on my bedsheets or something and I remember part of my brain insisting that there was a face there and another part going: no, you silly brain-part, you sleep alone, that can't be a face! (The same sort of "divided consciousness occurs in peripheral vision in my experience too.)

My god always talks to me thru turtle plastrons.

Think I Ching.

That's an interesting anecdote about what you called "divided consciousness", Keith. Years ago, I had a patient who had been a soldier on the losing side of a civil war in his country. He insisted in perfect seriousness that one side of his body was missing. We'd show him the X-rays in an attempt to reassure him that everything that should be was present; I'd massage and carry out passive exercises on his arm and leg on that side, and he'd agree that I was touching him on a body part that was present. The minute I stopped touching him, though, he'd be back to insisting that side of him was missing.

I don't believe he was faking, either; as far as anyone could tell, he seemed to be truly experiencing both states sequentially or simultaneously. I've always been curious about how that kind of divided consciousness could possibly work. Our best guess was that he felt he had lost a part of himself in the territorial loss of the civil war, and was somatizing that in some way. Of course, as plausible as that sounds, we had no way to verify or disprove it.

When I was a teenager I slept in a room one time that had varnished plywood walls. I woke up in the morning and low and behold, there was the face of Peter Frampton there in the plywood pattern! It was so cool and would you believe it, I really liked Peter Frampton back then. I'm not sure what he was trying to tell me but it was a powerful experience.

The dark plastral spot is perfectly normal for a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), and that particular shape is to be expected in the Chicago area- an intergrade between the pattern of the western and midland subspecies (bellii and marginata). As for gender, it's way too young to be showing the elongated claws of a male, and the tail looks like it's been bitten off down to a stub, probably by "Joseph."

Looks like the head of some obscure deep-sea cephalopod to me, but maybe I hang out on this site a little too much?

Holy shit! I took a good look at my hooch and found the virgin Mary mother of god down there. I have a devine twat. Of course my husband will only allow women to come worship with him as we all know his testosterone will not tolerate other men. Lol

[Sauron]: I SEEEE YOUUUUUU.

RavenT: The philosopher Dan Dennett sort of calls the unity of consciousness the "user illusion". Basically, that usually everything is stimulated about the same way, and all our systems can reach a settled agreement about what's out there. But sometimes, due to disease or stroke or just plain weird situations (like maybe in the case I described only half my brain was awake or something) this "agreement" breaks down, and wackiness ensues.