SteveJamieson.com

Yesterday I received a letter from a “very old church (55 years)” promising me joy, peace, health, money, a new car, a new house, and/or healing in family communication. All I have to do is follow their very detailed instructions for praying, which includes kneeling on the included prayer “rug” (actually a 11 x 17 in. piece of paper), and respond to them within 24 hours.

Wait a minute… I smell a scam. Indeed, the ever-vigilant Trinity Foundation is already on to them.

This letter would be incredibly funny if I didn’t know that these people are getting rich by preying on the poor and destitute.

Read the letter [1.3 MB PDF].

Read the letter (high quality) [5.7 MB PDF].

See the prayer “rug” [571 KB JPG].

Just a few seconds after walking in the door of my apartment after church this morning, my phone rang. The caller was an obviously distraught Elvenyukiryu—my good friend from high school. She had just learned that an 18-year-old friend of hers from work had earlier in the morning murdered the parents of the 14-year-old girl he was secretly dating, and then fled with the girl, either having kidnapped her or taking her willingly. (Follow the story as it breaks: html | rss.)

For some reason yet to be determined, this young man took a seriously wrong turn in life that culminated in the death of two people, the possible kidnapping of a minor, orphaned children, and friends left in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore—shattered lives all around. What possesses an otherwise normal and well-adjusted person to commit murder?

And yet, what depths of sin exist within all our souls? Is not the evil necessary to commit murder present within us all in one form or another? Is it not only by the grace of God that such evil is restrained?

Sorry folks if you happen to run across a comment advertising Texas Hold’em. My site is currently under attack by comment spammers. The first step that I’ve taken to end the attack is to force previewing of comments. No longer can you simply type your comment on the individual entry page and click submit. Now you have to click preview, and then confirm your comment.

Unfortunately, this has not stopped the “texas holdem” spam. On the plus side, this particular spam uses the same author name on every comment, so I can easily clean them all out every once in a while by using a simple SQL command on the MySQL database where my blog data is stored.

DELETE FROM `mt_comment` WHERE `comment_author` = 'texas holdem'

It looks like it may be time to upgrade my blog engine and install some anti-spam counter-measures.

I logged into my blog administration interface ready to post a nice new entry, and then I glanced at the recent comments box. “texas holdem”? “uk propecia”? Dang it! Comment spam!

I probably had to delete about 50 comments from various posts, which took a good deal of time and was highly annoying. Stupid comment spammers, we don’t want your filthy wares. GO AWAY!!!

Anyway… This week’s musical find is the Scissor Sisters. You may be familiar with their disco infused radio hit “Take Your Mama”, however I’m a little more fond of the unique sound of “Laura”. The video is also fun.