How to recognize a "real" virgin Mary apparition

That's the title of a post by Ed Brayton this morning. It lists the church's rules for evaluating potential miracles. My favorite is this:

The subject (i.e., the person closest to the "miracle") must show "habitual docility towards Ecclesiastical Authority". That is so funny. This church is run by mad power queens.

So much for baseball?

Horrors! The satellite box for my TV system died today, or at least it seemed to.

The instant I realized this, I got tunnel vision. The room lengthened and odd angles appeared, as if reality was being stretched and distorted. Was it Einstein's cosmological constant in action? Had I accidentally taken some acid? And then in the distance, I saw it -- the baseball season being sucked far, far away by a . . . sea of static. No TV? No baseball? Sob.

So I did what any red-blooded American man would do: I called my sister. Because of the heart-stopping urgency of the situation, she came right over and jiggled things and (ta da) the totally dead piece of hardware roared back to life! It's a miracle! Somebody go wake Jeebus up and tell him!

Anyway, phew. It's like when the electricity goes out: sheer hell. But the season is saved!

It's a miracle!

There hath been another sighting of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Visit if you dare to behold His countenance!