Ten years ago, a woman named Diana Duyser of Hollywood, Florida, bit into her grilled cheese sandwich and munched indifferently. Going in for the second bite, she looked down and noticed that her grilled cheese was actually Mary, Mother of God.

If you're like me, you heard about this a while back but you never gave it much thought. This is understandable, considering the subject is a grilled cheese sandwich. But there are many interesting little aspects of this story that all tell a different story. First of all, the fact that it was a grilled cheese sandwich is one factor that allowed this non-story to become a story. If it were a breakfast crepe, it wouldn't have made the rounds in everyone's office inbox. It wouldn't have sold on eBay for $28,000.

The grilled cheese sandwich is a piece of Americana. We've all had one, if not ten thousand. All those people, all those kitchens, all those spatulas, yet a grilled cheese prepared in a trailer in Florida is going to be the same as a grilled cheese prepared in a galley kitchen on the upper west side or in a five-star restaurant in SoCal when your kids don't like anything on the menu.

Then there's the whole face thing. We humans, being so human-centric and generally gullible, tend to see faces in random patterns. So much so that the tendency has a name: Pareidolia, which the Skeptic's Dictionary describes as:

"...a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Theresa or Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun or the face of a man in the moon."

It's the sort of thing that has allowed Jesus to show up on a Dorito, a muddy towel, and a rose petal. It shows us Mary in the clouds, in reflections off a lake, or a dirty diaper. Yes, that even. And it's always a religious figure or an anti-religious figure. You were probably forwarded that photograph of the "face of Satan" in an explosion from 9/11. It's never the face of Bea Arthur or Tommy Chong. Some claim that this lends credibility to the notion that the holy and the unholy reveal themselves to us. These people are the same folks who record 700 club reruns. They see these faces in random patterns because they want to. The "face" on that sandwich looks more like Clara Bow than anyone else. God doesn't show up in your baby's diaper diarrhea, or the flour on your counter top as you're making pancakes. Come on, people. Know thyself.

And what is it that fuels interest in this? Is it drilled into popular culture by a believing society, or by a society that feels pity for those who would believe it? I think it's the former, but I hope it's the latter. This is the sort of thing that cheapens faith and religious beliefs, like Earnest Angely.

It would be an interesting poll to take. How many out there roll their eyes at this sort of thing, and how many are inclined to believe? So far, it's 1-0.