Sunday Rerun: Shame The Devil

 Here's a sentence you won't see too often: Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.  

Nixon Eggplant

Those terms refer to the way we fool ourselves, or allow ourselves to be fooled, by the way we perceive things.  Have you ever been in the shower and you're just SURE the phone is ringing, so you hop out of the shower, skid across the tile while leaving a watery wake like a tugboat, and, wrapping yourself in a towel, grab the phone and holler "Hello!" to a dialtone? The phone wasn't ringing at all; it hasn't rung since the day before yesterday when Aunt Mildred called to thank you for the peppermint patties you sent from Ft. Lauderdale. Certain sounds and sights can fool us. People often see the face of Jesus or Nixon on things, and you have to figure, the name of the pooch in that photo top left is "Muffin."

All of this is fun; we all enjoy seeing a cloud that looks like Bill Belichick, but you can take it too far.  And by "you," I mean Robyn Wilkins, a resident of Cordova, Tennessee with too much time and too little to do.  She is a proudly Christian mom, and worried that the occult is taking over her town.  Why, they've even got red tail lights on school buses that look like pentagrams!   And, for crying out loud, a pentagram just like those brake lights, except that it's upside down, with two points up, inside a double circle with a picture of the head of a goat inside is the logo of the Church of Satan!

And Adolf Hitler...wore a shirt!  Just like some other people do...so all men wearing shirts are evil too!

Memphis’ Action News 5 says Ms Wilkins took a picture of the tail lights, and lookie here! The lights form a five-pointed star! 

Pentagrams are a sacred in some faiths. Some people turn the five-pointed star upside down and ascribe evil powers to it, but to me, I see a sheriff's star, a symbol of law enforcement, where Ms Wilkins see whatever in Hell she's talking about.

“Anyone who fears a God, if not God and Jesus Christ, should be outraged,” the worried mother told the TV news.

My free advice for Ms Wilkins and her worried friends would be to read up on pentagrams, Pentatonix, pentameters, and pentathlons.

And for heaven's sake, don't fly over the Pentagon!