I wasn’t fooled for one moment by this cheap attempt to cash in on the Virgin Mary on Feta craze.

What with people seeing holy images and experiencing uplifting visitations on toasted cheese, chocolate drops and griller grunge, it was only a matter of time before the fakes starting turning up.

And so we have the Buddha Pear

Farmer, Hao Xianzhang, you’ve cheated! You used a mold to squash little tiny pears and force them to grow into these Buddha shapes. You don’t see that as bordering on the sacrilegious? Some people treat fruit as the Holy Grail you know, and twisted shapes are offensive, if not plain blasphemous to them.

Another thing you may want to keep in mind, Farmer Hao, is that these objects are all the more precious because of their rarity. Why sell these pears for 50 lousy yuan when you could just grow one (better still, grow two, a back up is always good) and flog that one Buddha Pear on eBay for a million dollars?

After all, a pool stick with the Blessed Virgin was offered for $3,000,000 recently although I can’t verify the final bid.

These pears are worthless. You may as well eat them.

Don’t worry, I know when a Virgin Mary on a potato chip is the real thing.

Remember these other Amazing Appearances?

1. Holy Mary on a Tree Stump
2. BVM on a Banana

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The Devil in Marge

Marge Simpson is a church-going woman. She’s respectable, polite and proper, a virtuous woman, worthy and well thought of in her community.

She’s always tried her best to get some manners into her oafish old man and that impertinent brat of a boy who needs a good paddywhacking. She’s patient and tolerant with a winsome forgiving nature. She’s a real lady.

That’s why I’m shocked to learn of her appearance in PlayBoy. I’m appalled!

In my day we had a word for women who took their clothes off for money and I’m too much of a lady myself to repeat it here.

Marge, what were you thinking?

Are you broke? Has the economic downturn driven you to such desperate solutions?

And what is Homer doing, that’s what I’d like to know. Surely Marge would never have accepted this (obviously highly paid) offer if Homer had been against it.

I always knew Marge Simpson had a good sex life.

If the Simpsons didn’t have a cozy relationship, Marge would have booted Homer out the door years ago, especially after his dalliance with that hussy of a country music singer. But I can’t believe that a man of his particular level of intelligence would stand calmly by while his wife bares it all in a racy magazine.

Is there something about this couple that we don’t know? Are they estranged? Divorced? Do they turn up for a day’s shoot, act their parts, and then go their separate ways? Remember how it took years for the truth to come out about Lucy and Desi? And all the time the viewers thought they were watching a happy couple.

It’s been a while now since my Wally moved upstairs to join his old mates who marched with him on ANZAC Day. (I bet there’s a pub in heaven where they all sit in the corner complaining about modern youth). But let me tell you in no uncertain terms that Wally would have done his block if I posed in my birthday suit!

Not that I would have done anything like that of course!

Marge, I have lost my respect for you. And I’m washing out my blue rinse first thing in the morning.

Three cheers for Elena Bodnar, who received the public health accolade for a dual-use brassiere at the Ig Nobel Prizes this year.

A former resident of Ukraine. Bodnar was present at the time of the Chernobyl accident, and knows the importance of being prepared for unexpected public-health emergencies. She designed and patented a brassiere with cups that can double as a pair of gas masks.

A needy bystander

In the event of nuclear accident, bioterrorist attack or smoky fire, the wearer can quickly detach the two cups, fasten one over her own mouth and nose for protection, and hand the other to a needy bystander.

Organised by the scientific humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)