Jesus sees you... and now he will blow your head off

The American military, still involved in two land wars in Asia despite credible advice to the contrary, recently upgraded a crucial part of its arsenal with a little help from the man upstairs.

Jesus--that tireless humanitarian still plugging away at his job despite 2000 years of "Dear Jesus, if you get me outta this jam I promise I'll go to church every Sunday"--has been enlisted to help the American military shoot bad guys, most of whom are reportedly Muslim.

The military contractor Trijicon (possibly a front for Dr. Evil) has produced thousands of rifle scopes for the US and allied infantry, scopes etched with what appears to be serial numbers that all end with JN8:12.

Bible thumpers and fans of the film Shawshank Redemption will recognize this nomenclature as John chapter 8 verse 12: "And Jesus said to them, I am the light of the world; he that follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life."

The rationale for baptizing guns in the sweet water of Jesus' creed: The scope is "designed to function in low light or no light conditions... [and] is ideal for combat due to its high degree of discrimination even among moving targets," said a statement by the manufacturer.

In other words, people who shoot other people are often in the dark and therefore could use a bit of light, light only they and not their enemies can see.

Jesus: better than night-vision goggles, and a whole lot cheaper.

So the American military via its orthodox contractor is hoping to embolden its infantrymen mired in unending, unwinnable wars in Muslim countries by arming them with guns blessed by a deity whose singular message was Love.

Reached for comment, a Pentagon spokesperson was reportedly "disturbed."

Reached for further comment, a Jesus spokesperson was reportedly "not f*cking surprised."

Christ's boyhood house discovered just as everyone is talking about him again

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even... wait, wait, wait. Someone is stirring. It's that little rugrat, belongs to Mary and Joe. Little what's-his-name. What's he playing?

Where did Jesus play? Right there (possibly), according to a team of archaeologists in Israel, who've just dug up an approximately two-thousand-year-old home in the city of Nazareth, coincidentally just in time for the holiday when Christians celebrate the birth of their approximately two-thousand-year-old savior.

Round about two millenia ago in this town, an angel delivered a one-line memo from God to Mary that said "You're preggers" and advised her to head for Bethlehem. The subsequent parts of that legend have been laid down allegorically in the best-selling book of all time, "The Bible: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the God-Baby" (subtitle later dropped by marketing department).

What the gospels--those that made the final cut--didn't much tell us is how Jesus grew up, did in school, got on with his mates, fared on the football team, got punished for breaking curfew, and rebelled against his parents by screaming "I wish I'd never been born of the one true God in a smelly barn surrounded by donkeys."

Until now, believers and skeptics alike have only been able to imagine in their mind's eye how Jesus must have lived in the town of Nazareth between the ages of zero and thirty.

But now, thanks to some timely digging in the parking lot directly opposite the Church of the Annunciation, which is built on the spot where Mary is believed to have been sitting knitting when she received God's angel-fax, we can all see exactly where Jesus spent his youth: in a hole in the ground.

For you see, much like today's Nazareth--which is a mostly Palestinian-Arab-inhabited Israeli city with a mixed Muslim and Christian population whose economy relies heavily on tourist dollars from foreign Christians while they otherwise face economic discrimination--the Nazareth of Christ's boyhood was also a poor place, and thus it is not surprising that Jesus and his family lived in the dirt.

The credibility of this theory is certainly being touted by Israel's Ministry of Taking Dollars from Christians, a spokesperson for which said, "We were, er, as surprised as anyone that there was this two-thousand-year-old dirt home here in Nazareth where your Messiah happened to live, and further that we found it, hehe, just in time for your celebration of his, uh, totally believable virgin birth."

In related news, the Palestinian Ministry of Taking Dollars from Christians Brave Enough to Cross Israeli Checkpoints has announced it has started digging in the parking lot outside Bethlehem's Nativity Church. "Maybe we'll find a sandal or something," said a spokesperson. "Perhaps Jesus dropped a baby rattle on his way out of town. If it's here, we'll find it. Please come visit. Please. Pleeeeeease."

Excavations highlight early Christians' penchant for burying stuff in the sand

From the needle-in-a-haystack department, Israeli excavators stumbled upon a 2,000-year-old gold earring near the Old City walls of Jerusalem.

2,000 years, eh? Why does that sound familiar? What was going on in Jerusalem two thou- oh my God! Could it be... His?

Men have been wearing earrings since, uh, pre-Christian times. Some pagans thought that earrings protected the mind by guarding the ear cavity against invading evil spirits. The ancient Persians just thought they looked hip. When Jay-C was preaching his radical message about faith, love and hope, He was probably trying to appeal to the hip crowd, too. And He was all about keeping out the jinns.

Call it a hunch.

Meanwhile, from impossibly small things found in the sand to impossibly large things kept hidden all these years, archaeologists in Syria just discovered a 1,200-year-old, nearly 700,000 cubic-foot church buried in the desert outside of Damascus.

What is really spectacular about the find, aside from the fact that a colossal cathedral went undetected for twelve centuries' worth of human curiosity and scavenging, is that the site where it was found - Palmyra - is one of the most heavily excavated (and rewarding, to the visitor) digs in the Middle East.

Archaeologists have found pottery shards, gold chains, glassware, oil lamps, gravestones... yes, even earrings. And only now an entire church!