Today's Unique Phishing Spam Email

is purportedly from Benazir Bhutto's son. He's hot, of course, but his mother and I never exchanged emails.

Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:16:07 +0000
From: "Bilawal Zardari" <xxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Benazir Bhutto
Reply-To: YYYYYYY@YYYYYYY.CO.ZA
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

Hello,

I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation to you for your support during the hour of need. The enemy gave us a huge blow when they took the life of my dear mother. As a matter of fact, I do not know you personally except your contact details I got from my mom's address book. I also pass on my sincere appreciation for the feat we were able to record at the last elections despite the absence of my mom who was the party leader until her brutal assassination. The victory was to all Pakistanies as it clearly demonstrated their committment to the course my mom stood and died for. Your support is conspicuously recognized and highly appreciated.

Losing her is the hardest thing I've been through all my life, but knowing that she was a hero to many people does comfort me. I know she would appreciate what you all did for her. All we just crave for now is for her killing be probed by an international team under the United Nations. It is the only hope we have of getting the possible plotters of her murder properly investigated. Only this would help us convince our supporters that there was some element of collusion between her murderers and agents of President Musharaf who were determined to get rid of her.

Please do acknowledge receipt of this correspondence as I will be confiding something very important in you when I get to hear from you again.

Very sincerely,

Bilawal Zardari

I'm sure that his future email contact will tell me of some millions of pounds that his mother left in the UK that needs my help to smuggle to Pakistan to assist in overthrowing the president. I will keep you posted if my spam filters don't kill the second email off first.

My Good Friday sermon

I'm pretty sure that no one reading this blog will be at St. John's Walworth next Friday, so I'm going to print my Good Friday sermon here, in case it's interesting to anyone. As the Gospel for Good Friday is long, the sermon is short.

March 21, 2008 Good Friday
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 1:30pm.

In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.

Everyone’s wondered at some time or other why today is called “Good Friday”. After all, death is not something we usually commemorate as being “good”. The name “Good Friday” was originally “God’s Friday,” and we remember the death of Jesus, God’s Son and himself God today.

Crucifixion wasn’t the easiest death around. There is a reason why non-Romans like Jesus were crucified and Romans like St. Paul were beheaded. Crucifixion was and is a nasty way to go.

As we see it from our earthly perspective, death is the end. The body, once animated, breathing, talking, moving, is now still, silent, and wooden. We fear death as being the end of our existence here on earth—we sometimes do all that we can to slow down the aging process so that the inevitable end of our existence is postponed. We often quote Scripture when out on the town, having a good time: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

Those of you who are my age or older may remember the American theologican Harvey Cox and his assertion that “God is Dead!” from the 1960’s. His theory was that our original ideas about God were now no longer useful in the modern world, and some new ones needed to be found. While Cox’s theological speculation is now as dead as the god of whom he spoke, today, for us Christians God is really and truly dead.

You may have heard Good Friday sermons on the Seven Last Words of Christ in the past: they tend to be long 3-hour affairs, and Father John would be quite cross if I went on to speak for 3 hours. The death of God however, is a theological statement that could be chewed over for centuries, and has been. The theologians who have been chewing it over are much smarter than I am and have much more exciting and learned discussions about it than you and I can have this afternoon.

The fact that I want to bring out is a unique one. Unless someone here is 95 years old or older, they will not have personal experience of this. And I can say confidently that for around 200 years, no one else will. So I’ll leave you with that fact, and ask that you think about it, and take something cheerful away from our somber and solemn observance this afternoon. It is a sign of hope amidst the sorrow of death, a sign of rebirth after the silence of death, a sign of love in the midst of hate and violence.

This year Good Friday is the first full day of Spring. AMEN.