Heart Stealers and Blood Kissers

Today I have two things I would like to draw to your attention. The first is the romantic tale of a burglar who robbed a couple and then later returned to ask the female half out on a date. Have a look at his picture. I applaud his optimism, but he really ought to have got changed before going back. Or at the very least leave his swag at home. She probably recognised the candlestick.

The second story that piqued my interest comes from Italy, where fear of The Swines [eek!] is so great that religious devotees have been forbidden from kissing a vial of blood 17 centuries old. Now, you wouldn’t think this would be so bad. Seriously, I wouldn’t be that broken up about it…
“Look, here’s some antique blood”
“Wow”
“You can’t kiss it though”
“…what?”
“You can’t kiss it. The dusty blood I mean. Sorry.”
“Er…really? Right. Well that’s…fine. Honestly. No problem.”
Apparently the blood liquefies every year. I should make it clear that this is in fact a miracle, and is almost certainly nothing to do with chemicals present in the vial, or environmental factors. That would be ridiculous, and the scientists that say it is are clearly sent here to test our faith.

The best part about this story is actually nothing to do with blood-kissers with invisible friends, but is actually to do with another religious relic. One belonging to mad monk Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin to be precise, though most of us will know him as Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine. It was this aspect of Rasputin which the relic was related to.
Being a lover of legendary ability, a group of Russian women in the 1920s took to worshipping a relic they believed to be his penis. He was assassinated in 1916 (thus the appendage was at least four years old), so if it was still recognisable as anything you’d want near you I suppose it is quite impressive and therefore maybe worth venerating. But I doubt it.

Cut to 1994 when the penis, now a grim 78 years past it’s bean-blowing days, was subjected to “whatever the usual tests on detached penises purporting to belong to famous historical figures are” and found, brilliantly, to be a sea cucumber.

In case you don't know why this is so funny that they mistook a sea cucumber for a rotting cock, this is a sea cucumber...

...and this is a cock...