How Many Ways Can You Say: 'ATT Sucks'?

Here's one.

OS's latest adventure with Mama T came Thursday, when he needed to have some inside wiring work (for which he loyally pays monthly), attended to.

'We'll be there next Thursday by 5, sir.'

'But, my phones are all out, and I'm paying for this service already. I have to wait a week?'

'We'll be there next Thursday by 5, sir. Will anyone be home between 1 and 5?'

'But, my phones are all out, and I'm paying for this service already. I have to wait a week?'

'While we have you on the phone, sir, we want to sell you a package whereby we capture all your phone service, cable TV, and internet--so we can continue to serve you at this high level of quality....'

And, on Monday, they start gouging for internet usage...

T is in trouble. They are scratching for any dollar of revenue they can find anywhere from any of its hostages customers...

Accounting sleights-of-hand abound to obscure the reality of unfunded pension obligations about to blow up in the shareholder's faces. A customer approach that seeks only to sell stuff to the the next sucker, and screw the present customer. OS still wonders if the day will come when ATT is declared a bank, so it can go hoover up sum-oh-dat-free-munney-hunney that Ben loves to hand out. 'Cuz, lissen ya'll, theze guyz iz gunna go broke, and the day is coming sooner rather than later. Wait about six months, when all those customers start seeing phone bills that look like mortgage payment.

Excrement, meet motorized air-moving device.

(Disclosure. No interest in T, except gonna look to short sometime this year. Looking for another phone carrier in the meantime....)

The Wedding Sermon That Deserves To Be Repeated At Weddings For Years To Come

Cranmer shares the address in its entirety.

(Cranmer, bless him, once again leads the way in tying the sacred and secular together, and helping it all make sense.)

Friday, April 29, 2011
Royal Wedding: the Address of the Bishop of London

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day this is. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many people are fearful for the future of today’s world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day! It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each other.

The spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness. People can dream of such a thing but that hope should not be fulfilled without a solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today – “I will” – and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely the power that has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.

Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. It is possible to transform so long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

"Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon,
Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon."

As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive. We need mutual forgiveness in order to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads on to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today will do everything in their power to support and uphold you in your new life. I pray that God will bless you in the way of life you have chosen. That way which is expressed in the prayer that you have composed together in preparation for this day:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage. In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy. Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer.
We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Prayers And Good Wishes To The Royal Couple

Billions of words and images have spilled upon us about The Wedding, and this is not a bad thing. We live in a world where horrific images and words of pure evil now inundate us daily. It is time to hear some old, but perhaps unfamiliar words, as we will tomorrow morning. This from Paul's letter to the Romans, which will be read aloud at the wedding:

I APPEAL to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect. Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Romans 12: 1-2, 9-18 

Is there any living soul of any goodwill at all who could disgree with these thoughts? And yet, OS fears many will sneer, others denounce, and many more ignore these simple words. What if, instead, we heeded them and followed them in our lives, our businesses, our institutions, our marriages?

OS feels sure his few words will never reach the eyes of William and Catherine, but for the record, he wishes to say a few anyway. Everyone else has, might as well join in.

Dear young people, so in love, with such bright days ahead:

OS remembers another Royal Wedding, and watched with delight and joy as William's father married William's mother. The phrase 'storybook wedding' echoed again and again and again. Everything looked so perfectly wonderful, and the unravelling of the fairy tale is one of the modern tragedies of our time. OS cannot imagine the pain you, William, must have endured throughout, especially to lose your mother so horribly and publicly. To lose a mother is hard enough on a lad, much less to have to endure the public glare as you grieved and moved on.

You begin your marriage, inevitably, under the shadow of that debacle, the inexplicable failure of both your parents to embrace the simple verities and charity required to build and sustain any marriage. But, let this grizzled Old Southerner, with children your age (and a failed marriage to boot) in his life, remind you of One Simple Truth: Those were their failures, not yours. You are not obligated to repeat any of them, at any time. God's grace changes everything, if we but call upon it.

Hold fast to Christ (knowing that He holds you in his hand already), and hold fast one to the other. Seek one another's greatest good. Begin each day by telling your spouse just how wonderful he/she is, and that you are the most blessed man/woman on the planet to wake up next to him/her. Actively work to make each day a happy memory by day's end, and watch the happy memories pile up and strengthen your marriage. Go to bed, with 'I love you' on your lips as you drop off to sleep. Get up in the morning and do it again, and again. Time flies, so make each day count.

You don't need that many friends, but you need a few good ones, who know you as William and Kate, not as royalty. Choose wisely, and don't hesitate to insist that your friends be discreet. The biographers and publishers can have their day in the year 2111 or so. Until then...indiscreet friends aren't friends.

You have a huge task ahead of you, as you will one take the throne of a great nation that has suffered terrible losses in both war and peace. It falls to you to lead the rebuilding. As the love between you grows and deepens, your marriage itself will play a huge role in that work.

The printed program, with its selections of music and readings, is a great ray of hope for all of us. You have avoided the temptation to bow your marriage in the direction of the popular culture, and for this you will be criticized bitterly. Let your detractors whine themselves to death, and never apologize for being right.

God bless you, young people. You have my prayers always.

OS

Cranmer has posted the text of the full service, with all music selections, here.

The PDF of the official program can be downloaded here.

Louisiana Begins To Rightsize Its State University System

Of course, the obligatory howls of indignation will soon follow.

More than 100 academic degree programs will be eliminated statewide for not graduating enough students, the Louisiana Board of Regents decided Wednesday.

Nearly 200 more academic programs will be consolidated or shaped into new programs, under the plan approved by the board that sets policy for the state’s public colleges and universities. Southern University has the most degree programs being directly terminated, with 13 degrees lost, including its Spanish and French bachelor’s degrees, the Regents determined.

At first blush, this seems unfortunate, and in terms of the job losses for affected faculty, it is regrettable.

On the other hand, our present challenges do force us to ask simple questions, like:

'Is a bachelors degree in Spanish or French needed at every state university?'

'Is a bachelors degree in Spanish or French needed to produce young people fluent and literate in these languages, or any language, for that matter?'

'Does any school need a BS in Sustainable Agriculture?'

And finally, and most importantly, 'For what purpose, and for whom, should the undergraduate degree exist?' OS thinks it does serve an important purpose, but the time has come to revisit the question, probably school-by-school and state-by-state. We could emerge from this painful episode much healthier as a culture if we take this opportunity, and ask those questions.

It's a long story for another day, but OS worked alongside a highly-placed administrator at a large Public U for about a year, about ten years ago. This gent was very bright, and told OS: 'This Public U will have to operate increasingly as a Private U, and essentially be free of the legislature by 2020, if it is to survive. There will not be enough tax money to sustain the system. It's my job to tell all the deans this, and tell them to plan for that day. I'm the most hated man on campus.'

Highly-Placed Administrator was dead-on in his diagnosis. He only got the time-line wrong, as the day of reckoning arrived ten years ahead of his prediction.

Let Us Repeat The Meme: Islamic Fundamentalists Benign, Christians Evil...

...over and over and over...

Before we view this...

Now, let us repeat the meme 'It's all the fault of The West!' over and over, until the sense of sickening horror at this particular atrocity passes.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program...