Hitting Lourdes for six
Ok, Lourdes isn't quite a place of worship per se, but it's a pretty religious place (as in "there's lots of religion going on there" not "it's set amid lovely countryside and there are some quaint buildings - and it's also religious"...although the latter is true as well)

ANYWAY.

So there I was in Lourdes with a couple of mates. We weren't there to do the holy thing, but to watch others do it. Like dogging, but spiritual.

ANYWAY.

Lourdes is quite a small town with lots of very narrow streets. And being a place of pilgrimage, there are lots of very large coaches taking believers to the shrine where they can buy bottles of local tap water for about 100 euros as "it's from Lourdes".

Very narrow streets and very large coaches do not mix.

I was walking along the narrow pavement, nearest to the kerb, when I decided to step into the street briefly....just as a coach was trundling past, which then proceeded to knock me with its wing-mirror.

Oblivious to the fact of where I was, and that I was surrounded by lots of catholics, and nuns and believers and priests etc etc etc, my natural reaction on nearly being creamed by said coach was to say at the top of my voice "JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST THAT WAS CLOSE"

I remember vividly about a dozen people stopping and staring at me, open-mouthed. From those who spoke English, I heard things like "you ought to be ashamed of yourself". Those who didn't speak English still worked out that I had said a_bad_thing.

Me and my mates cracked up and walked on.

I'm still here, I've not been condemned to eternal hell as far as I am aware. Yet.
(iworkfortheBBCnoreallyido!, Sun 4 Sep 2011, 22:43, 3 replies)

So what's the problem?
If Jesus and God are the same person, and God got Mary up the duff then Jesus was surely, for all practical purposes, a motherfucker?
(ubergeekian, Mon 5 Sep 2011, 12:00, closed)

Exodus 20:7 forbids this sort of behaviour.
I'd imagine that trying to argue the point about Jesus fucking his own mother, wouldn't get you very far with most Christians.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Mon 5 Sep 2011, 12:15, closed)

Lourdes is very weird
My mate Lawrence and me visited to laugh at the Catholics have a look around. The amount of shops selling ugly cheap plastic tat with pictures and statuettes of Saint this or Pope that made the tawdry souvenir shops of British seaside towns look like the height of sophistication.

And the parade of poor terminally ill and mentally and/or physically crippled people being walked/wheeled around outside the main shrine was somewhere between hilariously funny, inexpressibly sad and downright infuriating.

My atheism must have interfered with the Godly vibes that day, because somehow nobody's brain/arms/legs grew back and no tumours vanished.

To celebrate our trip, Lawrence and I went to the first shop we could find that sold hardcore pornography, and we bought some. (It was in the days before commonplace internet filth).
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Mon 5 Sep 2011, 12:52, closed)