My Wacky Filipino People Are At It Again

In my beautiful Philippines my people believe that touching this burn piece of wood will *heal them*. I think you can also just be in the presence or general vicinity and that is why up to 8 million of my people go to check out the Traslacion (the Transfer) "of the lovingly venerated lifesize Back Nazarene image of our Lord Jesus from Intramuros (I've been there (1)) to Quiapo, Manila..." Or as I call it, moving a burnt Jesus cross across town.

Yea looks just like Him...doesn't it.

My peeps have those awesome Spanish rapers and pillagers, err, I mean those dudes that took our country by force and stole our land, no I mean the people that NOT graciously implanted their religion on my peeps and it spread like a virus the same way they did it here in the states with the Native Americans (Indians); that is by ill force. No what I mean to call them is Spanish Conquistadors...yea, that's what I meant. Any who...

I'm doing this from memory so all you Filipino history buffs out there (Troy) correct me if I'm wrong, but, it was in the 1600 when a lifesize wooden Jesus carrying the cross was being shipped to the islands from Spain. I'm assuming that they were drunk because the ship caught on fire and the statue got burnt black. When it arrived I guess they wanted to see the silver lining of it all and was all like "this is miraculous." It also survived a burnt down church or two.

 One article I read said 3 million and another said up to 8 million of my devout flip-homies went to the procession which lasted fro, like, a whole day. The reason why there is the "Traslacion" in the first place is because the place it chills at has too many visitors and if they have their parade every year then millions upon millions of my ailing and in need of medical attention people can go check it out. This years festival required 1,000 police to not only do crowd control, but because those crazy Islamic Filipinos know that that is a good time to go all roadside bomb-n-stuff (that is what the Catholic Northern gov. said).

My people are so ga ga in their Catholic worshiping (recall we literally nail ourselves to crosses-crucifixion-every year for some reason) and even tho there are many religious festival thu-out the year, this one is the ONE. It is so popular that authorities are thinking of taking it on tour to different and more provinces. This years event was the biggest evah evah. I guess it could be a symbol of hope-n-shit so that is why it is so powerful...and the healing powers, don't forget the healing powers (there's no universal health care in the islands).

It's sort of funny that at religious events on the islands that after there is always hella litter.

Not funny thing about my people going to see the burnt piece of wood because it has *miraculous* healing powers is that 600 peeps were treated for exhaustion, there was a stampe, pulling, shoving, cuts-n-bruises and dozens were hospitalized for hypertension (WTF) and fractures because they got all crushed-n-shit in the massive crowds, in addition to terrorist threats.  Makes me instantly think "God sure does work in mysterious ways."

The NOT best thingy about Mulatto Jesus is that he comes out for another festival during another part of the year. Yippie.

(1) Intramurous would be like if you live in Sacramento and went to Old Sacramento. In fact, now that I think about it, it would be like going to the historic "old town" of whatevah city you live in. It was the wall fort for the Spanish invades to protect them and their clergy from my peeps, ya know, cause they invaded and occupied us for hella long. When i went there I thought is was no big deal and kinda stinky because it's so humid there and there is mold everywhere. I liked going to the bookstores, but I didn't like the mold smell. I'm American, so there.

* Reuters

* Manila Times

This is what I think about when I think "Philippines"...the beach is nice also.