The Lost Age of Tabloid Miracles

You know, there just haven't been any good religious 'miracles' or portents of late.  I mean, not so very long ago it seemed that hardly a day went by without there being reports of weeping statues, or of images of Jesus or assorted saints appearing in the most unlikely of places.  When was the last time you saw a tabloid headline screaming about how some guy had found a dog turd shaped like Christ on the cross, or seen the face of the Madonna in pool of vomit in the alleyway behind their local MacDonalds?  (Mind you, I have to conceded that the former is less likely to happen now that people are obliged to clear up their own dogs' shit, thus depriving us of many potential sightings of such things).  I used to quite enjoy reading about this sort of stuff - I was always keen to see just how bizarre the sightings would get: "I was watching a porn film last night and one of the guys had a scrotum which resembled the face of Christ when seen from a certain angle".  It the same thing with portents and omens - when did we last see a plague of locusts or a rain of fish or frogs reported?  Sure, every so often some tabloid or other likes to try and scaremonger with a story about how some guy who predicted the late Queen's death has now predicted when World War Three will break out, (although, I have to say that predicting the death of a woman nearly a hundred years old and in obviously declining health isn't the most impressive of predictions - something the papers themselves obviously realised as they later substituted predicting the Queen's death with a claim that he had predicted the pandemic).

But the fact is that we just don't see those wonderful old fashioned stories of my 1970s youth where weekend tabloids like the wonderfully named Tit Bits, would run some account by a rural old crone claiming that her jam-making could predict world events.  "Last year my freshly made raspberry jam soured overnight after I'd sealed it in its jar - three days later the Six Day War erupted in the Middle East!" Or even, "I was awoken in the night by the sound of breaking glass - when I investigated my larder, I found that two jars of gooseberry jam had unaccountably exploded!  The very next day there was a terrible air crash in which over two hundred people died!"  No doubt there would have been an adjunct to the story, in which the healing properties of the old crone's jams would be extolled, with tales of how sticking it up your bum could cure piles.  It is the same when it comes to heavenly portents of disaster.  I yearn for the days when we got stories of how a thundercloud shaped like an arse had descended over the City and let forth a colossal clap of thunder that sounded like a huge fart just prior to a massive stock market crash.  Even UFO sightings are boring nowadays - they are all vague videos of fuzzy lights in the sky.  Not like the good old days when you'd get nice clear cut pictures of saucer (or hubcap) shaped craft in the sky, or even sometimes on the ground.  We really need to get back to that wonderful age of tabloid 'miracles' that amused, entertained and stoked that elusive 'sense of wonder' in impressionable young kids like me when they read them.  I know, I know, the web is full of this sort of shit, but just isn't the same.  It certainly isn't as entertaining, that's for sure.