From some reactions I got offline from that farcical argument for an age of accounatbility, I decided to post a real argument. And I think a reasonable on. Because people just wanna know: So why does The (Villainous) Dane believe that unsaved infants can go to hell?

1) Romans 3 tells us that all men have sinned.
2) Romans 5 lets us know that we are corrupt without ever having done a single action, because our corruption comes from the curse laid upon Adam. This is known as the imputation of sin.
3) God has offer ONE way to heaven for us sinners. That is through grace alone - and that is exhibited by faith alone in Jesus Christ (Romans 4-5; Ephesians 2.8-9; Galatians 3.5-8; &c.).
4) All who die without faith in Christ, being corrupt and therefore unable to stand before a holy God, MUST go to hell.
5) Faith is not generated by oneself, but comes only from God in his Grace (Ephesians 2.8), and this by Election (Romans 8.28-30; Ephesians 1.4-5).
6) So the only ones to be saved are those whom God has elected in His predetermination of events "before the foundation of the world."
7) Babies can be saved and experience the faith that comes by Election. John the Baptist evidences a preternatural reaction to the Unborn Christ (John 1:41) which is likely a true Christian faith. Also consider David's faith from the womb (Psalm 22:10).
8) If God can elect one baby, he can elect all of them, or he can elect three of them. Babies have just as much right to heaven as does Charles Manson. Both are totally depraved and therefore have no claim for just entry into heaven.
9) God is just. God is fair. God is good. God is loving. He will save all those whom he's chosen and cared for from before the foundations of the world and no more. We should be satisfied in this.

And a tenth and very cynical point that I hope no one takes seriously: If all infants go to heaven, we should consider it our moral duty to kill as many as we can because it is likely that they will grow into corrupt men who will spend eternity in hell.

I was going to carve a pumpkin tonight and bring it to school, placing it, flaming, outside my classroom to inspire an early retirement of the night's studies. But I don't think I'll have time :-( BOO! hoo.

Just a quick question: why is it that every time I walk into an Albertsons, they're playing Debbie Gibson's "Foolish Beat"? I remember that song being popular (and not very) for all of three weeks back in '89. Yet now it has somehow made it to some sort of Best of album and is force fed to shoppers several times daily. I mean it wasn't even one of Deb's popular ones (e.g. "Shake You Love" or "Electric Youth" or "Lost in Your Eyes"). And don't ask me why I know which ones were her popular ones - it's a long drawn out story involving much death, more torture, several llamas, a few sky-diving Elvis impersonators, a couple conspiracy-theorists, and one girl scout with legs that wouldn't quit. Now look, I've already said too much.

This is the article I was gonna write on Harry Potter and the place of myth in normal, healthy human sociology. Fortunately, someone beat me to it and saved me the trouble! Anyway, I highly recommend the article - especially to Christians who are wrestling with (or even interested in) the manner by which believer's ought to approach fantasy literature and cinema.

Link absconded without asking from somebody named Dave.

Hee hee hee... "America is just another cog in the big wheal of crap." What I been saying for years - just not so eloquently.

An accurate and convincing argument for the Age of Accountability
presented by The Dane

1) Babies are cute.
2) I don't want Hell to happen to anything cute.
3) Therefore I don't want Hell to happen to Babies.
4) God says that all men are born wicked.
5) This can't apply to cute things, because they're so cute.
6) Therefore, God meant "all men who aren't cute Babies"
7) Babies grow up and stop being cute.
8) This must be when the corruption that God says about men comes to be.
9) So we'll call this blurry age The Age of Accountability.
10) Oh, wait this idea undermines the Gospel...hmm, we'll have to not mention that.

While we're on a roll...
Vexation #13: Daddy???
The evangelical penchant for referring to God as "Daddy" kills me. Sunday night, we sang about five great songs of worship and then ended with a piece irreverant tripe that went a little somethin' like this. Hit it!

Holy Lord, Most Holy Lord
I'm here to seek Your face
Holy Lord, Most Holy Lord
I'm humbled by Your grace

I am truly nothing
You are All in All
Yet in your eyes, I'm something
Precious and beautiful

I am Your child
I am Your friend
You are my Daddy
Holding my hand

"You are my Daddy"?? Not only is that really hard to sing with a straight face (believe me, I tried once about seven years ago), but to call the awe-inspiring, majestic, and all-powerful Lord of all that is "Daddy" reeks of a profound misunderstanding of God's place in the order of things. It smacks of irreverence. It seems flippant. It belies a casual relationship. It turns God - One who is worthy of awe, of fear, of respect, of adoration, and of reverence - into a pal, a buddy, someone who'll pat you on the pack your first time being drunk and then tell you to eat more pretzels next time.

This current trend in Christian weirdness comes from the use in Scripture of the Aramaic term, "Abba." To be sure, this is a term of affection. Paul speaks of crying "Abba, Father." Despite many hip pastors around Southern California swearing that this is the equivalent of saying, "Daddy, Father," I'll stand on my belief that they're on crack - or perhaps a suitable, natural alternative (maybe long bouts with insomnia). More accurately, I would hazard that Paul is crying, "Father, Dear Father." This connotes the intimate affection without cowtowing to that difficult silliness that causes me such vexation.

God is not our Daddy, our Poppa, our Pops, our BMU, or anything so casual. He is our Father. That is what Scripture reveals. If we are dissatisfied with this, perhaps we should stick with "Abba" - I mean if leaving it in its Aramaic form was good enough for Paul (and better, for Christ), then it should suffice for us to leave the word unmolested as well.

I dunno. I just have a hard time seeing John, who trembled at the feet of an angel looking up at God the Almighty Father Who Stand in Light Unapproachable, Holy and Righteous and giving him a wink and a nod and say "Heya Daddy!"

Vexation #12: Ignorance as Fuel for Dogma
*sigh* Somebody named Mark Byron (who has many degrees) apparently has no better understanding of Halloween than Chuck Smith or your common household appliance. There's so much fodder here that I'm not certain where to begin. Perhaps I'll simply restate some of his hyper-reactive sillinesses and let that lead where that will lead. Because of time constraints, I'll only be able to broach a few of the problems.

The first problem of Halloween is that it gets a week's worth of free airtime to Wiccans and other "good witches." Paganism gets to say it isn't as bad as it's made out to be, is older than Christianity and deserves respect.

While I can't really comment on media coverage here - as I don't have television - this seems more an issue of perception than the holiday itself. For one, Halloween isn't necessarily anymore a Wiccan holiday than is New Year's. This goes back to my abundantly stated theory of holidays, but celebrations (even those broadly embraced by society) are without a doubt of individual import.

Take Christmas. To some, it is the celebration of the advent of God incarnate. To others, it is a celebration of peace and good will. To the holiday's founders, it was a celebration of the Winter solstice. To me, Christmas is a celebration of friends and good times and love for humanity. So it is with Halloween.

To some, it is a time to cop free candy. To others, it is a time to play dress up and masquerade as someone else for an evening. To Wiccans, it may very well be a high holy day. But so what? To me, Halloween is a day to celebrate friends and good times and a love for humanity.

If the media focuses on one single view of a holiday (something I don't remember it ever doing when I had television), then the media is where you ought point your finger. The media also focuses somewhat on the popular legend of Jolly Old Saint Nick nearbouts Christmastime - yet we don't point the finger at Christmas and call it a day of the devil. Neither should we for Halloween.

The second problem is that it gives the negative supernatural a good name.

Maybe I missed something in Halloween 101. Not only is Halloween rarely about the supernatural, but even when things like ghosts and bats and Frankenstein monsters and jack-o-lanterns are used as decorations, they do not imply in any respect a belief for good or ill in supernatural forces.

I love watching a good spooky ghost story like The Devil's Backbone or Sixth Sense. Even Ghostbusters and A Christmas Carol are worth an occasional glance. But that doesn't mean I have any vested belief one way or another in the events or ideas portrayed in the tales. As it happens, I do believe in a supernatural realm and that unexplainable things happen at unexpected times - and my beliefs about such reflect a biblical frame. But I don't go to sleep at night fearing Gozer the Gozerian or believing that "I see dead people."

I carve jack-o-lanterns every year - in fact, I carve them many times throughout the year: Thanksgiving jack-os, Christmas jack-os, Easter jack-os, and even the occasional Valentine's jack-o-lantern. I seem to remember that once upon a dream, people used them in a mock celebration, supposedly lighting the way for spirits (or frightening them off depending on the lore), but I just make 'em because they look cool.

I really don't know anyone (excepting a few fearful, young Christians who have been suitably brainwashed by ignorant rhetoric) who actually grants any power to the forces supernatural on Halloween. But again, it's all in your perspective. I suppose there might actually be those who celebrate fertility and pray to fertility gods on Easter. But more's the loss for them, eh?

The third problem with Halloween is that people will treat the negative supernatural as a fun fiction. If Satan can't get people to worship him, the next best thing he can do is to get people to ignore him, so that he can do his work in peace. If demons, vampires and exorcisms are just something you see in the movies or TV, then they are tone-deaf to the spiritual dimension of life.

I dunno. I've heard this critique before and it just doesn't ring true. Most people have an innate ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality - especially the greater the distinction between the two (e.g., it's easier to recognize Star Wars or Harry Potter as purely unreal than it is something like Speed or L.A. Confidential). I think far more dangerous are fantastic tales that purport to represent - at least to some degree - reality. Books such as This Present Darkness and Left Behind are just as fantastic and just as irrepresentative of what is as their secular counterparts, but because of the authors' worldviews, Christians are far more apt to take these fictions seriously. I remember hearing people speaking of spiritual warfare in identical terms to Peretti's make-believe world - and that was scary.

Really though, the problem is not the fantasy. It's how people react to the fantasy. So long as readers (or viewers, in the case of filmworks) keep their feet firmly planted on the ground, there is no problem with the circumstance. But if a work's audience is floating away into faery land, that audience should seek serious psychological help to overcome their issues with reality.

Again, the problem is not with the fantasy. It is with individuals reacting wrongly toward the fantasy.

Well, Mark continues, but at root, he seems to carry a fundamental misunderstanding of holidays in general, this holiday in particular, and the place of fantasy in the life of society and the individual. He also, like many fundamentalists before him, seems to embrace a disturbing willingness to demonize the innocuous. I hope this is just a phase he's going through and that he won't convert to many to his cause... I hope.

So, due to my absence in Europe and the inherent inability to really blanket the area with invitations, we had a small turnout for the party this year (a paltry, but fun nineteen souls). In spite of this shortage, there were still some fun pictures to be taken. And here they are.

Alas, I have no pictures of my first costume (Kate Moss - if anyone has some, I'll gladly ppost them) and the pumpkin shots didn't really turn out so you can't really marvel at my Greg "Spooky" Bahnsen pumpkin carving.

So I went to run some errands today. I lowered myself into the Black Kitty and was about to head off to the camera store when I noted that it was a bit hot in my ride. As the sun had been beating on the car for a few hours since sunrise, the Kitty was understandably greenhousing. By the way, sun is something that Europeans don't have. They have clouds. They have gloom. They have rain. They have no sun. It's no wonder they had inquisitions. Anyway, so I roll down my window about an inch and the whole pane slides down inside my door with a BOOM. So now I have permanent air condition. Even when it rains. Thank the heavens for the drought.

Because Airports are Boring Places V

My Top 5 Problems Observed in Romania

(in reverse order of importance)

Lack of creativity

Lack of ambition to better societal standards of living

Lack of informed sense about indoor/outdoor temperature, open windows, and differential temperature shock to the human frame

Lack of automatic cars

Lack of RC cola

Because Airports are Boring Places IV

My Top 5 Scenes in which Characters React to Music Audible to Their Hearing

(in no order beyond alphabetical)

Apocalypse Now - "Ride of the Valkyries" as the harbinger of Robert Duvall's crowd via loud speakers mounted on his Bell

Casablanca - "You played it for her, you can play it for me! If she can stand it, I can! Play it!"

Clockwork Orange - the despicably ironic use of "Singin' in the Rain"

Resevoir Dogs - clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right; here I am stuck in the middle with your ear

Swing Kids - the pure enrgy accorded nearly every song play is uncanny; the characters feel it and so the audience feels it

Because Airports are Boring Places III

My Top 5 Film Scenes in which Soundtrack and Visuals Meld Perfectly

(in no order beyond alphabetical)

Amelie - rock-skipping scene

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - the three-way shodown in Sad Hill Cemetary

The Last of the Mohicans - the climactic chase culminating in Chingatchgook's justice

The Matrix - the lobby scene

Snatch - the scene which immediately follows Gorgeous George being knocked out by Mickey in one punch (the music makes one feel the surreality of it all)

Runners up include the finale of Dr. Strangelove and its bastard child, the climax of Metropolis, The Empire Strikes Back's entrance of Darth Vadar to the Imperial March, the screeching plummet of the knife as Norman Bates carves Marion Crane into a Christmas shower-turkey, Ennio Morricone's melding of two themes when Bronson and Fonda finally meet and duel in Once Upon a Time in the West, the Dust Brother's scattered sex-track for Fight Club dream sequence 'tween the CG-distorted Tyler and Marla, Donnie Darko's use of Tears for Fears' "It's a Mad World," Brazil's use of its blissful theme over the film's harshly ironic ending, and The Limey's introduction of Terence Stamp's character with "The Seeker." There are probably more, but I could only remember just so many films in the days ending my trip.

Because Airports are Boring Places II

My Top 5 Things I Saw in Budapest

(in no order beyond alphabetical)

The Citadel

The Fine Arts Museum

The Heroes' Square

Inside the Parliment building

The Zoological and Botanical Gardens

Because Airports are Boring Places I

My Top 5 Animals to Be Viewed in Captivity

(in order of preference)

Puffins

Squirrel Monkeys

Meerkats

Baboons

Dogs

Just in time for Halloween!!

My Top 5 Ghost Stories on Film

(in no order beyond alphabetical)

The Devil's Backbone

Donnie Darko

Sixth Sense

Stir of Echoes

The Uninvited

Okay, mucho apologies for anyone who emailed me in the last two weeks, but as 600+ messages were downloading the day I got back, they crashed, burned, and have left this cyber plane for e-heaven. If it was important, mail me back.

At last, here is a small gallery of photos and the usual snarky comments. Bon ape:

Ah, the ever-charming Amsterdam. Witnessed on the screen display of an out of order ATM: "This f---ing machine is f---ed up, so f--- off and find another!" [edited for your edification].

So I walked by a store with a big tv in the window that was playing Diana Krall's Live in Paris dvd. It made me so homesick that I think I'm coming home now. Immediately after this post, I'm going to get a rail reservation for Amsterdam from which I hope to renegotiate my flight date. My back hurts incredibly. I walk at a third of the speed I did a week ago. That and the food poisoning kinda suck all the life out of life. Plus I slept two hours last night. *grumbling* Hopefully I'll post from Amsterdam when I have the energy. And hopefully I'll get to L.A. on Saturday. That would be nice. Although it'd screw up my pland for a pickup. *sigh* The world's an imperfect place.

Go Sliding on the Ice Back to Your Midwife
Annnnnnnnndddd... it's over! Well, the wedding-half anyway. I still have seven days of wandering to go. And right now, I've wandered my poor, aching dogs into an internet cafe in the middle of Budapest. Having successfully avoided the dangers of Hungarian goulash (I filled my belly with the most deliscious pizza this side of Southern California instead - Marcello's!!), I find myself in fit state of mind to regale you with tales and wonders.

I will now summarize the last week:
Thing One: I now have a sister-in-law! Her name is Mihaela (pronounced mee-HI-luh - where the HI sounds like high or hi or hai!) and despite several people swearing that she can speak English, I only heard two English phrases from her (over and over again): "Hi brother!" and "Get lost!" I also hear the Romanian equivalent of "Get lost!" (dispari quite often as well. She stuck her tongue out at me on a basis almost minutely. And she threatened to beat me. I guess I do have a sister now.

Thing Two: Romanians like line-dancing to Audio Adrenaline's "Get Down" very, very much. *poor, poor Romanians* They also like replaying that song thrice that they might line-dance at regular, turbo, and über-slo speeds consecutively. This they do many, many times over the course of a wedding (I think Kelle counted it into the teens or something). They also like swing-dancing to Latinish rhythms like "Basic Instructions." This they also play consecutively several times - and then more later. Then there are the circus/carnival/gypsy/folk/caliopy songs - these are enjoined by large groups who clasp hands and dance in cicles. Large circles. Ethnic circles. For a long time. Very tiring. (it made me thing of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.)

Thing Three: Romanian weddings are much longer than their American counterparts. A looong American wedding goes for five hours. An obscene American wedding lasts for seven. Joe's wedding went from 2:oo 'til 11:oo - nine hours! And the Romanians considered that to be brief. I have to say: they pull out all the stops and it was easily the funnest wedding I've ever experienced. People can prepared dance routines and musical performances for the bride and groom. Off the cuff (and in order to be the American representative in this endeavor), I performed an acapella and skat-filled alteration of Nat Cole's L-O-V-E (which I've renamed 5-6-8-3). Kevin was very embarrassed for me, but admitted that I did a good job.

Thing Four: I exhorted from Ecclesiates for the Sunday morning service at my parent's church in Valcea. One of Joe's ex-girls came up to me afterward and said, "Thank you for the preach!" *I love goofy-but-earnest English!!* In spite of a throat torn raw by the previous night's wedding and the subsequent four-hour drive back to Valcea, as my enjoyment of preaching the gospel of Christ surged, my voice gained a new and temporary power! God is good like that *grin* and now I'm back to having a ragged, robot's voice. Oh, and I discovered that I very much like teaching through a translator! I definitely have to follow notes more strictly to do it, but there is none of that stuttering as my mouth gets ahead of my mind; while my translator translates, I get to glance at my notes and prepare exactly what to say next. What fun!

Well, I'll sign off now since my hour is just about up. Maybe you'll get more Danish joy tomorrow. If you're lucky.

p.s., JOHNNY: I would be pleased as punch if you'll catch me at the airport at the appropriate time. You should get out of class in plenty of time. Thanks.

The thing was.

The thng was, on my plane across the Atlantic (often referred to as a "translantic" flight), there was a young couple from You'veGotMeWhere (a burgeoning nation on the border of SomewhereOutThere). This young couple had (and with any luck, still have) a young child who had a lot of young energy. She had a fresh scab on her forehead which will make a lot more sense in a moment. As a release for all that pent up, youthful exuberance, one parent stood at the end of the airplane's aisle while the other stood the full length at the other end. Good and thoughtful drunken parents that they were, they would send the youngster careening down the aisle by calling her gleefully. The two-year-old would speed down the row toward the parent at the other end filled with the pleasure of being wanted.

The thing became.

The thing became an amazing journey into the sublime degrees to which a parent can harm a child without the child knowing. The child, obviously having only learnt to walk hours earlier, plowed forth with the clarity and equilibrium of a driver new to hard liquor and lots of it. With the balance and stability of me after getting off the super-spinny ride at Magic Mountain, she would hit top speed and run smack into an elbow or arm rest. She did this at least 40 times - giggling all the while. Never did she realize her peril. Never did she recognize the dread hand that fate had dealt her. To be born to such parents who would parade her wound from the day before gleefully! The tragedy! Yes, that very scab that festered upon her forehead was bought dearly in the same kind of circumstance in which her parents now engaged her.

And there was nothing I could do to rescue her from such a tragic life - after all, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was about to begin and I didn't want to miss a thing!

My fifty hours of travel are over and I've seen a lot. It's great to see llamas, manatees, and orangutangs in their natural environment! Hoorah! I'm now in Timisoara and have met my brother and my new sister-in-law. She keeps threatening to beat me. So I slugged her to keep her in line. Don't worry - you can treat women like that in Romania. Everybody does it.

These aren't the woods I know. The woods I know are lushly spirited with an effervescent serenity. Green and open, their visitors find comfort in the myriad paths throughvarious ferns and lichens. Their creatures are natural and their light, pleasant. The scent of evergreen washes over all who enjoy their gifts.

These aren't the woods I know. These are coldly populated by a grim darkness. Hard and close, theirs visitors are necessarily hamstrung by the claustrophobic terror of the place. Their creatures are of unbidden faery tale villany and their light, absent. A dank mold assaults one's every sense and causes civility to flee.

These aren't my woods. At least they don't appear so from this I ride through Austria's verdant hills. In the distance, what looked to be a thick mat of brush oranging under the pale of Autumn's swath is strikingly revealed to be the mere tops of a forest so thick and so dark that it is of no wonder at all that such is the setting for so many tales of magical terror.

I won't be visiting these woods. For I value my soul. And my limbs.

Well, having been awake now for forty-two straight hours (excepting a twenty-minute fitful slumber on my first plane of my trip), I am in no mood to proofread whatever will follow. I'm tired, hungry, and my eyes are puffy. And I'm in Amsterdam. And I still have thirty hours to go before I meet Joe in Timisoara. *woof*

In any case, the flight over was one of my more pleasant of international trips. There were two movies - My Big Fat Greek Wedding and About a Boy - and both were good enough (but not so good that I'd hope to see them in the theater. I laughed a lot at both films, but largely to increase the aura of joy in my section of the plane.

Food was mediocre. Chicken for dinner and something the girl next to me suggested might be biscuits and gravy for breakfast. And speaking of the girl next to me....

A first in The Dane's international travel history, I was seated next to a traveller whose conversation and demeanor I found to be of genuine interest. As it turns out, she's the editor-in-chief of a web magazine - in fact, a web magazine themed particularly to suit my tastes. AWN, shorthand for Animation World Network, revels in that archane realm of cellulooid goodness known the world over (or at least in California) as "animation." We spoke of a number of issues around which the particular media revolves: large-scale animated film festivals (about which I first became aware via the Metropolis dvd supplements), the future of animation in America, and specifics of such fare as Disney schlock (my terminolgy), Princess Mononoke, Veggie Tales: The Movie, Grave of the Fireflies, and the latest Miyazaki release to grace American shores, Spirited Away (I'll post my review/critique after I return, but in the meantime, I highly suggest that every one of you find it and watch it - it should be playing in an art house near you). Oh, and for you unbelievers out there, she agreed with my opinions on the climax of Metropolis - so there!

Really, I just thing it was cool to talk to a girl who likes animation and knows more about it than me.

Well, I sign off now to get a bite and read some while I wait for my flight to Berlin where the real adventure begind :-o

Okay kiddies, this is it. Blakey has arrived to take me hither and yon. I hope to update from the raod. We'll see. (really, this is where I watch my daily average of user plummet.)

Oh yeah, and John, if you still want to pick me up, it's Tuesday the 22nd of Octember at LAX at 1:45pm (KLM Flight 601). Please confirm in the comments below. If you can't, just mention it below and hopefully some other dear soul will pick up the slack.

Anyway, peace out from the Mad Fat Chick Killah. Yo.

Margaret, I know you're probably not reading this but if by some lucky chance you are, I accidentally washed the pants I wore to the reunion without taking your e-dress and phone number out. I still want to meet up in Germany with you and Daniel if we can, so email me at theDane@nowheresville.us or leave your contact info in the comments section immediately below.

p.s. I was right about that incredible Ella Fitzgerald album I told your husband about - it was put out by Verve.

A short story by The Dane. Our director of ops just came through and was talking to us about the CF data structures in which our toes are dangling and he mentioned working on good and bad data models. I piped in with "I'd like to date a model!" The end.