Peter Brookes, in the Times of London, comments on the situation where the RC Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who will close down the RC adoption agencies as the government will ban discrimination against gay couples in the provision of goods and services, is supported by our own Archbishop Rowan Williams, who thinks it’s the thin end of the wedge (and about time, too).
How sad.
Imagine that you need a copy of your most recent statement and you call your bank. They tell you that you’ll have it within a week.
A week later, you get three large parcels. There are 75,000 bank statements in the boxes. Only one of them is yours.
I’m glad I don’t bank with them.
I preached at St. John’s again this morning. It was the 12th anniversary of the parish’s daily Eucharist. Note to non-Brits: Bernard Matthews is to UK turkey what Frank Perdue was to US chicken, and Hovis is a brand of bread.
28 January 2007 12th Anniversary of Daily Communion
Sermon delivered at St. John
One of my favourite blogs is Mr Wang Says So (once Mr Wang Bakes Good Karma). Mr Wang is a very perspicacious and effective blogger who comments on the political and social situation in Singapore. His latest on the “free economy” of Singapore is here. If you want to friend him on your LiveJournals, friend him here. He’s worth a read even if you only have the vaguest idea where Singapore is.
Remember, if you’re committing a robbery, don’t leave your wallet along with your ID at the scene of the crime, don’t write your note telling the teller to give you money on your own deposit slip, and wear a belt.
The Home Secretary, in a desperate attempt to convince the public that he is doing something about “illegal” immigration, has announced that legislation mandating ID cards for foreign legal residents of the UK will be brought in soon.
He says that since they are going to increase the penalties for employing illegal immigrants, they should at least reduce the number of possible documents a legal immigrant can present from 60 to one; this will help potential employers cope.
Employers know very well what kinds of documentation legal immigrants can produce to demonstrate that they can work. The reason that illegal immigrants still work here is either that employers actively seek them out as they are cheap, or that employers don’t bother with checking the papers in the first place. It’s not that the employers are confused.
Again the government is lying through its teeth.
I was looking at my direct debits (arrangements with one’s bank for a vendor of some sort (utilities, newspapers, and the like) to deduct funds from your account for remittances) and I saw this one:
Name Date Amount
CHURCH TIMES 00-00-0000
I have often considered liposuction, but this artist probably ended up making more money from his liposuction than he paid for it. Atsa spicy meat-a-ball…
HWMBO and I had a lovely dinner with
REDNECK CHURCH
1. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the finance committee refuses to provide funds for the purchase of a chandelier because none of the members knows how to play one.
2. You know you’re in a Redneck Church when people hear that Jesus fed the 5000, they ask whether the two fish were bass or catfish, and what bait was used to catch ’em.
3. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if when the pastor says, “I’d like to ask Bubba to help take up the offering,” five guys and two women stand up.
4. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if opening day of deer season is recognized as an official church holiday.
5. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if a member of the church requests to be buried in his 4-wheel-drive truck because “It ain’t never been in a hole it couldn’t get out of”.
6. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the choir is known as the “OK Chorale”.
7. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if in a congregation of 500 members there are only seven last names in the church directory.
8. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if people think “rapture” is what you get when you lift something too heavy.
9. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the baptismal pool is a #2 galvanized washtub.
10. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the choir robes were donated by (and embroidered with the logo from) Billy Bob’s Barbecue.
11. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the collection plates are really hubcaps from a 56 Chevy.
12. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if instead of a bell; you are called to service by a duck call.
13. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the minister and his wife drive matching pickup trucks.
14. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the communion wine is Boone’s Farm “Tickled Pink”.
15. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if “Thou shall not covet” applies to huntin’ dogs, too.
16. You know you’re in a Redneck Church if the final words of the benediction are, “Y’all come back now, Ya hear”.
If you decide to have your team’s logo tattooed on your back, ensure that the tattooist has a mirror and that you watch him like a hawk. Otherwise, you may end up like this unfortunate Argentinian fellow.
Zhu ni cheng ri kuai le,
Zhu ni cheng ri kuai le,
Zhu ni cheng ri kuai le dear Tim,
Zhu ni cheng ri kuai le.
Aside from one BSD (blue screen of death) the transfer went really well. PCMover rocks! I have to do some stuff such as transfer my Office programs, but almost everything seems to have worked so far.
Will take a few more days to settle in, I suppose, and I still have some hardware to move over, but all in all, it’s been good so far. The proof of that is that I rarely had to swear while doing it.
I bit the bullet today and have begun the process of transferring material from my old computer to the new one. This involves PCMover (from Laplink), and about 8 hours. It’s quite scary in a way, but I’m just taking it one gigabyte at a time.
Once the material is transferred, then I’ll have to move the Audigy sound card and console from the old to the new computer, take the SATA drive out of the old computer and put it into the new one, and transfer a USB/Firewire add-in card from one to the other. Then rationalise all the licenses and the like, and set up the other computer in the kitchen for HWMBO. Quite a lot to do.
I put the iMac upstairs in the spare room, and will probably put the Sun SPARC up there too. I’ll have to get an ethernet bridge for those. We will have a truly wired house then.
Until the main computers are back up again, I’m using one of the laptops in the kitchen, with the old DELL screen attached to it.
Occasionally I’ve written about our parochial troubles here, I think. Our Rector has been with us for 12 years this coming August and is basically quite dysfunctional. The parish has shrunk, the number of things that go on has shrunk to almost nothing, there has been some question as to some financial transactions, and his liturgical talents are, well, questionable.
The system in the Church of England does not allow priests with tenure in the parish (referred to as the “freehold” of the parish) to be deposed unless they commit a crime. So, unlike a congregational church, which can dismiss its minister after a vote, we are stuck with him. His health is not the best, but he hangs stubbornly on, refusing to leave or retire, continuing to ruin the parish.
11 years ago we decided that the shortcomings we saw (after only 6 months of his tenure) were such that we needed to take them up with him. We wrote them down to forge a consensus, but for various reasons we never got the opportunity to sit down with him and air the problems. The document languished on my computer for 11 years. I found it, and printed it off. I had made an appointment to take the Archdeacon to lunch and talk about our parochial situation.
Without going into the gory details, I think that the Archdeacon is broadly sympathetic to our plight at St. Matthew’s. What he can do, he will do. If the Rector does not change, or move, or retire, we will have 9-1/2 more years of this and will not have any parish worthy of the name by the time he does finally go.
Oddly enough, most Archdeacons get lots of complaints about clergy from people in the parishes, but usually discount all of it unless corroborated by the churchwardens (lay presidents of the congregation, roughly speaking). Our churchwardens are under the Rector’s thumb, so they have not mentioned any of this to the Archdeacon. I hesitated to talk to him, or his predecessor (who was responsible for landing us with this Rector in any case, moving him out of one problem situation just like the Roman Catholics used to move problems priests around just before the child protection people arrived) because I was not a churchwarden. Now that I have just turned up at meetings for 7 years, regularly, people noticed me and I got on more committees. People now listen to me. So I’ve taken my opportunity.
We cannot depose the Rector. The Archdeacon is limited in what he can do. However, he’s promised to do what he can do to help the parish, and the Rector, and get us through until we have a change in clergy. I just have to stick it out longer than the Rector does.
I have been told that I have a Midwestern accent; people tell me I must be from Ohio or someplace like that.
However, I just took this quiz, and, you know, you can’t really leave home behind:
| What American accent do you have?
Your Result: Boston
You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don’t. Of course, that doesn’t mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine. |
|
| The West |
|
| The Midland |
|
| North Central |
|
| Philadelphia |
|
| The Northeast |
|
| The Inland North |
|
| The South |
|
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
|
It’s been a busy week, so only today have I gotten the strength to write anything.
Work has been quite busy, with lots of angst over our business plan. As an Indian consultancy, there are multi-cultural difficulties for Brits working for us. The company is very slow in coming to grips with these. If we are to be seen as a consultancy that adds something to the labour of many programmers and testers back in India, we need to pay higher salaries here, find very talented people, and allow them to go ahead and do what they do best. This is not yet happening. There is a growing realisation that our salaries aren’t going to attract many multi-talented people unless they are raised.
Well, you say, why are you working for them? Well, I don’t necessarily need lots of money any more, I thought it would be fun, and they were the first ones who asked me. Any raise in salary or title I get will be gravy. As it is, I’m putting 20% of it away in my pension plan (about
is:
My basketball the whig
I wasn’t aware that basketballs took part in the political life of the 18th and 19th centuries.
chrishansenhome resolves to…
mousez72.boyshapedbox.shayan.mondragons.obsidianbear every Sunday.tim1965s.I like the idea of eating more
There’s been another death at the jaws of a pet pit bull here in the UK. The BBC story has a link to St. Helens council’s webpage (the place where the incident happened).
…courtesy of Ron’s Log, a bit of gay history that is definitely NSFW (in case your co-workers or boss are speed readers over your shoulder) and which may squick some of you (it’s about the Catacombs, a fisting club in San Francisco, circa 1978, and thus pre-HIV) but is fascinating nonetheless. There is a tantalising sentence at the end: ILLUSTRATIONS, which, sadly, is only an illusion.
