Watching "Blues Clues" together has become a Saturday morning routine for Bailey and me. She loves the music and I think that she believes that Joe is really talking to her. I hope it stays on broadcast TV for a good long time.

(Imagine a picture of Steve and Blue in front of their house)


I wonder if they will stay on long enough to do a show where they finally have to put the dog, Blue, to sleep. They could do a whole show about taking her to the vet, and having the vet say that there is really nothing more he can do. Then Joe gets all weepy, and Steve comes back for a final goodbye and expresses regret for all those years they were apart, and says how hollow that must sound in light of his cruel abandonment of Blue.

Then comes the needle... and the song...

We just euthanized Blues Clues
We just euthanized Blues Clues
We just euthanized Blues Clues,
Because she's really old.

(Imagine a picture of Kurt Warner with his hand all bandaged up)

That pretty much sums it up.

It is going to be a looooong season without Kurt Warner.

0-4

(Did anybody save Tony Banks' phone number?)

The team at NPR's Performance Today has assembled a list of 50 Essential Classical Music recordings. Bach has three entries in the top five.

I agree with many of their selections, but here is my top 10. The order is negotiable. The selections themselves are not.

1. 5th Symphony - Beethoven
2. Brandenburg Concerti - Bach
3. The Four Seasons - Vivaldi
4. St. Matthew's Passion - Bach
5. Symphony Number 40 - Mozart
6. Piano Sonata Number 8 'Pathetique' - Beethoven
7. Messiah - Handel
8. Symphonie Fantastique - Berlioz
9. The Planets - Holst
10. Carmina Burana - Orff

No, I didn't forget Debussy, Brahms or Chopin. Wussies don't belong in the top 10.

I have no idea what it is all about, but this site still fascinates me.

Hey Lego fans!

How about The Matrix and Monty Python Legos?

I like the way that Canadians pronounce "been" the same way we pronounce "bean", and the way that they say "about" the way that we would say "a boot".

I can't believe this. It is the Rapture Index, an attempt to analyze world events in order to determine how close we are to the second coming.

I suppose if it the index dips below 100, I will go ahead and make plans for Christmas this year.

I am the gift horse's dentist.

Sure, I think we can make it through that puddle. It doesn't look very deep.

Sarah and I might be able to understand some of it.

I have a growing respect for Mel Gibson.

There is a big fair in town, complete with rides, booths and carnival food. I am debating on whether to take my family. The weather is beautiful, and I would love to do something outside, but I am a little hesitant to put Bailey on a ride assembled by a carny.

The last couple days have been the first pleasant weather days we've had since we moved to Monroe. I wonder if it has something to do with the hurricane.

Well I can say one good thing about the Rams. They have a really good punting game.

They got their heads handed to them by the Bucs. They are 0-3. I'm hurting.

I watched almost three minutes of the Emmy awards last night when we got in from church. I may be mistaken, but if I heard correctly last year's Emmy show was nominated for an Emmy.

Is this common?

Who is so desperate for entertainment that they feel like they need to watch rich famous people give awards to each other? I suppose if you are really wrapped up in a show, you want your show to be recognized for its excellence... I guess. But I can't remember ever being that emotionally involved in a television show.

The other night at supper I shared my very first two-way conversation with my eighteen-month-old daughter. I leaned over to her high chair and and she butted her forehead right up against mine. I whispered and she whispered back.

Daddy: Hello
Bailey: Hewwo
D: How ya doin?
B: OK
D: I love you
B: I know
D: Bye
B: Bye

The Cards' smack down the Astros and clinch the National League Central Division!

Pastor Lusk invited me to teach the adult Sunday School class next week. Okay, where did I put those old Baptist Sunday School Quarterlies? Surely there's something in there I can talk about!

This page will be red and white until the Cardinals are eliminated from the playoffs, or win the World Series.

I've been on the waiting list at the library for the new Tom Clancy book. It finally became available yesterday. Just my luck. I have no time to read it.

I want to be done with all of my Dabney reading before November, so that I can spend the last two months of the semester fulfilling the writing requirements.

In order to do that, I need to read 80 pages a day, every day.

Some of you say, "That's nothing." But for me that's getting home from work at 6:30, eating dinner, giving Bailey a bath and putting her to bed at 7:30, doing whatever needs to be done around the house and then reading until bedtime.

I am not complaining, I'm loving it. But I sure wish that there was a more efficient way of getting information into my head, than scanning it with my eyes line by line.

Yesterday I got a real shore nuff haircut in a real barber shop. (Thanks, Rick for the recommendation.) It has been a long time since I had my hair cut by a man in a barber shop full of men, with dead animals on the wall and a stack of hunting magazines on the table.

Last night the Cardinals beat the Rockies and the Astros lost to the Brewers. That brings the Cards' magic number down to two.

On top of that, the Astros will be in St. Louis for a three game series starting tonight! If the Cards win tonight, they clinch the NL Central!

Tino Martinez jacks a dinger in the Cardinals' win over the Rockies last night.

With any combination of four Cardinals wins or Astros losses, St. Louis will clinch the division.

Better Than Ezra is playing in Ruston, Louisiana next month, just 30 miles from here.

I shore do hope I can go.

I submitted my very first paper of the semester to Professor Lusk today.

He said it was good.

Okay, I may just be able to pull this whole thing off.

Aids to worship! Aids to worship!

It has been so long since I have written anything for credit.

Last night I started on my first paper for the Dabney Center. It took me an hour to write a paragraph four sentences long. Eventually I got into a groove, and got three pages done before I went to bed, but the going was still way too slow.

My problem is that when I am writing in such a context, I agonize over every single word and phrase as if I will never have an opportunity to proof the paper. I need to just throw all my thoughts down on paper and then clean it up after I have it all down.

I'm also really intimidated by the thought that what I am writing is going to be read by the likes of Pastors Wilkins and Lusk, and Misters Oswalt and Thompson, guys who have forgotten more theology than I have ever learned.

Maybe I can get over it and just write, and hopefully sharpen my ability to do so in the process.

The only person who could ever get his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.

(Little obscure ain't it?)

I think everyone knows someone named Steve.

Why is water the only commodity that we get piped right into our homes, available at our fingertips 24 hours a day? Wouldn't it stand to reason that we should have milk and maybe beer piped into our homes as well? While we're at it, why not pudding?

You could have two knobs, one for chocolate and one for banana.

Ouch.

The Rams fell to the Giants 26-21, and now stand at 0-2.

Okay, they're just getting their standard two-losses-per-season out of the way early, right?

Three of the four speakers today quoted Gary North, and apologized for doing so.

Today's lectures at the Dabney Center were outstanding.

Best quotes from the day:

George Thompson - (from my notes, paraphrased)

"In a sense, the Protestant church is older than the Roman Catholic church. You study the history of a church by studying its creeds. The first Protestant confession was the Ausburg Confession of 1530. The first Roman Catholic confession came from the Council of Trent in 1563. Of course, there were earlier catholic confessions, but Trent was the first confession of Roman Catholic faith and practice. So it can be said that the Protestant church is 33 years older than the Roman Catholic church."


Rich Lusk - (from his notes, exactly)

"To be saved is to experience the salvific presence of Christ in His church, through the means of grace, by the work of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is not just a matter of individuals "getting right with God". It also is about the restoration, healing and transfiguration of human life, especially human relationships... We must repent of the ways we have interiorized and privatized God's work of salvation, of ways we have traded in the rich, corporate view of salvation taught in the Scriptures for the mess of pottage that is American individualism... The church is not merely an agent or means to salvation; it is salvation."

I'm not strictly a sabbatarian, but I'm starting to act like one.

A couple of weeks ago, after we got back from our trip to Ohio, Sarah and I found ourselves without a scrap of groceries on a Sunday afternoon. We thought that there might have been the off chance that someone would invite us over for lunch on Sunday after church, since we hardly ever eat alone on the Lord's day. Turns out no one did, and due to some very poor planning on our part, we found ourselves in a McDonald's. (Bailey seems to like the cheeseburgers. They are just her size.) The service was exceptionally poor even as McDonald's goes, and I went into orbit.

And that's when it hit me...

We have no reasonable or logical reason to expect good service if we go out to eat or shop on a Sunday. It is already a given that the people who are working in a store or restaurant on Sunday have no regard whatsoever for God or His day. By working instead of worshipping, they are living as if He does not exist. So we should know before we go into a place of business that we are going to be carrying on our transactions with either very weak believers, or, most likely, outright heathens.

I think we can operate with the general expectation that unbelievers will have lower standards of excellence and less of a work ethic than Christians. (I know, there are exceptions.) So, on Sunday, when we are walking into a business, we can assume that it is staffed from top to bottom with people who are not going about their work with a Christian worldview.

They may provide OK service. But we have no reason to be suprised if they don't.

So don't go out to eat on Sunday. There's a good chance you'll get terrible service.

Following up on an earlier post... this was my favorite GI Joe vehicle:

It was made to look similar to the A-10. Even though it was blue, and had the bad guy's insignia all over it, I usually had the good guys steal it and make it one of their own. It had these cool replacement panels for the fuselage to make it look like it had been shot up.

When I was in the sixth grade, my parents got me the GI Joe Aircraft Carrier for Christmas.

The thing was massive. It took up one entire wall in my bedroom and I could never drag it out to a place where I could get around it enough to play with. Couple that with the fact that I was already losing interest in toys like this altogether, and you can understand why it didn't take long for a nice thick layer of dust to cover the entire deck of the ship.

I don't remember ever asking for it. I think my parents just assumed I would want it. But I had a lot more fun setting my GI Joe guys up all over the house on furniture and stairs and doorways and having small skirmishes all over the place. The aircraft carrier took too long to set up and since there were no bad guy boats, it really made no sense to use it in any capacity.

So I only played with it three or four times. My parents still have it in their basement. Sixth grade is when I really started paying attention to sports and when I would rather shoot a basketball or swing at a baseball than play with some plastic toys.

I wonder what age is normal to stop playing with action figures?

So the Dabney Center starts tomorrow.

It is the whole reason I moved down here. I'm looking for a big return on investment.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

How long can you hold the button?

Gibe meh bak my node grampa.

When you don't have anything else to post, one of these is handy...

1. What time do you wake up in the morning? About 6:30
2. If you could have lunch with someone famous, who would it be? Chris Smith
3. Gold or Silver? Gold
4. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Sum of All Fears (should have been called Sum of All Bad Movie Cliches)
5. Favorite TV Shows? umm... The Simpsons if I can catch it... and that's the only one
6. What do you have for breakfast? A honey bun and a Coke if I have a chance to swing by a gas station on the way to work
7. What would you hate to be left in a room with? Chris Smith
8. Can you touch your nose with your tongue? no
9. Who/What inspires you? Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Chris Smith
10. What's your middle name? Chris
11. Beach or City? City... (nobody ever wrote a book titled "The Beach of God")
12. Summer or winter? Winter
13. Favorite Ice Cream? plain chocolate with milk poured on it
14. Buttered, plain or salted Popcorn? plain
15. Favorite Color? Brown
16. Favorite Car? Monte Carlo
17. Favorite Sandwich filling/s? Cheese
18. Ever been in love? Sure
19. What characteristics do you despise? over-attentiveness to detail
20. Favorite flower? Chris Smith
21. If you had a big win on the lottery, what would you do with it? Depends on how big... pay off debts, give a bunch to missions at home and abroad, build and fund a private school for the children of hard-working poor people
22. Fizzy or Still Water as a drink? What?
23. How many keys on your key ring? four
24. Where would you retire to? I don't believe in retirement
25. Can you juggle, if yes how many? No
26. Favorite Day of the week. Sunday
27. Red or white wine? Depends on what's for supper - Merlot or Pinot Grigio
28. What did you do for your last birthday? Worked on a sermon, went to bed, dreamed about Chris Smith
29. Do you carry a donor card? No

Okay, Joshua Clark's blog, added to the list.

Again, if you link to me and I don't link to you, let me know.

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

It may be just because I recently had a birthday, but I have been feeling really nostalgic and sentimental about my childhood recently.

For example, today I had a debate with another guy who is about my age over which was the coolest G. I. Joe action figure. My favorite guy was "Gung Ho", pictured below. He had a really cool rifle with a grenade launcher attachment, and he was a Marine, which meant he could kick anyone's butt.

For a long time I kept him in my backpack and took him everywhere, so that when I went over to somebody's house to play G. I. Joe, I would have him with me.

Now that I look at him, he kind of reminds me of Freddie Mercury.

Okay, that's weirdness.

Jessie's Blog

Added to the list.

Hey, if you link to me and I am not currently linked to you, please let me know.

Good one-liners (or two-liners) I've read recently...

"Let the God-despisers get back into their closets and keep silent. They will be silent on that final day; they should begin practicing early." - Gary North, Intellectual Schizophrenia.

"... Biblical concern for the poor, etc., is a reflex of Biblical concern for the righteousness of God's law. Liberal concern for the poor, for racism, for women, etc., does not develop out of Scripture but out of Enlightenment humanism and Marxism." - Jim Jordan, The Moral Majority: An Anabaptist Critique

"We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers." - Willimon & Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

Yesterday, when I came out of the bank, and went to get back in my truck, I saw a big green puddle under the front of the vehicle. Surely that isn't coming from me. Was it already here when I parked? I looked underneath. Nope. It was my antifreeze coming from my water pump.

I drove the short distance back to my office and parked it. I picked up a phone and started checking around for the best deal on replacing the pump, when my friend James, who is a co-worker, as well as a member of Auburn Avenue, overheard my questions to the mechanic. He told me he would fix it for me, if I got the part. I told him I would pay him. He said, "Whatever it is worth to you. I would do it for free."

I am so inept when it comes to doing any sort of repairs to cars. Every time that I try to fix something, I end up doing more damage and taking it to a real mechanic anyway, who then charges me for repairing the damage that I did on top of the original repair. So I gave up on fixing stuff a long time ago. I just pay someone else to do it, as expensive as it is. I am jealous of guys that can fix stuff.

So the water pump was $22.00 and I paid James $50.00, which ended up being WAY less than the $300 that the cheapest mechanic was going to charge me. It is good to have friends that can do stuff like that. I just don't know how to return the favor.

Most of my grass is dead.

Good.

I'm tired of cutting it.

Monday, September 09, 2002

I want to use some of my birthday money to buy an ant farm.

Sarah doesn't want me to have an ant farm. She says that the cat will surely knock it over, if Bailey doesn't get to it first. Then we will have hundreds of ants all over the place.

I had ant farm when I was a kid, and the ants were going along real well for about six weeks. Then we took a week-long vacation and when we returned all the ants were dead. Starved to death.

All except for one. He seemed pretty weak. I tried to milk an aphid and nurse him back to health. I took him to the vet to see if anything could be done for him. But I lost him on the way. I thought I could hold him, but we went over a bump and he flew out of my hand. Then, a few years later, when that giant radioactive ant went on a rampage through Tokyo shooting green electric shock rays out of his mandibles, I thought he looked familiar. The Japanese government flew me over there so that I could sit in on some of their secret underground board meetings to determine how they could stop the ant. I pleaded with them not to kill him, that I could reason with him, but they finally ended up leading him into a big warehouse where they blew him up.

Okay, I made that last part up. But who knows what sort of crazy adventures we could have if I was allowed to get an ant farm. I guess we'll never know.

Sunday, September 08, 2002

My wife doesn't serve store-bought croutons. She makes them herself.

So I preached at a Southern Baptist Church in Arkansas again today.

They didn't run me off or walk out on me, even though I tried to tinker with their ecclesiology a little bit. The congregation seemed to be pretty attentive and very cordial afterwards.

If you want the outline, just read Peter Leithart's The Kingdom and the Power, chapters 4 and 9.

Hey, I only had like one weeknight and Saturday to prepare.

My two favorite NFL teams are the Rams and whoever is playing the New Orleans Saints.

Not a good way to start the season.

Rams lose to the Broncos 23-16.

Saturday, September 07, 2002

Highly Uninformed Pop Critic

vs.

So it appears that some girl named Kelly Clarkson beat Sideshow Bob for the top spot on Fox's national talent search known as "American Idol". I watched the show for the first couple of weeks, just out of the morbid curiosity of hearing really bad singers who thought they were good. But as the weeks wore on, and as there were no really good singers rising from the pile of non-talent, I just drifted off.

I did see the final performances of Sideshow and Kelly and don't believe that either of them have any sort of musical talent. They aren't even good as pop goes.

Okay Kelly, your fifteen minutes starts... now.

Friday, September 06, 2002

If boxes were completely round, I don't think people would use them for packing.

Thursday, September 05, 2002

Today I had a working lunch with a group of Rush Limbaugh-ite, flag-waving troglodytes who were expressing their immense pleasure at the fact that American planes may soon be dropping bombs on Iraq... again.

I sat in silence. If I opened my mouth, they would have no idea where I was coming from, plus, I had not yet conducted my important business with them. I needed them to not be loathing me over the next couple of hours.

So I'll just say here what I should have said then. I wouldn't say that Iraq or any other Islamic state is guiltless, but they do have a number of very good reasons for despising America. Our nation acts like a stainless righteous judge in these international affairs, and we go about our business as if there is not the slightest chance that we will get our heads handed to us in a paper bag. The hubris sickens me.

We are a nation that hates God. I have a bad feeling that one of our little military engagements one of these days is going to ignite a retaliation that will make 9-11 look like a paper cut.

Is it possible to become immune to caffeine?

With enough patience and duct tape you can stick a cat to anything.

Some people may say that I let little insignificant things aggravate me too much... like misplaced apostrophes or bad drivers or raspberries.

I say that the first step toward the reformation of a society is discovering what the problems are. How can you be a reformer if you don't know what needs reforming?

The second step toward the reformation of a society is...

I don't know what the second step is. But I hope it requires the obtaining of a large stick.

Open letter to contestants on Fox's "American Idol":

Pick a key.

Thank you,

Duane

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

Last week I saw a chicken truck turned over on the highway. Traffic was stopped in both directions and there were dead chickens everywhere.

It was sort of apocalyptic. I wondered what those chickens had done to be visited with such a severe judgment.

They had not even the dignity of a proper battering and frying.

Okay, all that last post means is, "The word of God preached is the word of God".

I don't even know Latin, but I thought maybe some of you all had seen that before.

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei.

Agree or disagree?

I think Matt and Sora Colvin are the two neatest people I've never met.

Last two books for the Dabney reading list:

"The Final Word" - O. Palmer Robertson
"Perspectives on Pentecost" - Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

Whenever I buy a box of popsicles, the orange ones are the last ones to get eaten. Neither Sarah or I much care for orange flavored stuff. I have dibs on the lime, Sarah likes the cherry and we split the grape. We don't even buy boxes that contain raspberry. I would rather have no popsicle than a raspberry popsicle. We abhor raspberries. They have the aftertaste of sweat and they stink.

Why are raspberries everywhere now? I am working with some caterers to get some lunches to some business meetings I have scheduled for four days next week, and they are offering everything from raspberry lemonade to raspberry vinegarette dressing to chocalate brownies with raspberry sauce. GAG. If I didn't have anything else to do with my time, I think I would devote my life to the cause of eradicating raspberries from the face of the planet.

Anyway, now that we have Bailey around, the orange popsicles have a place to go other than the trash. Whenever she sees us take one out of the freezer, she follows us around saying "Sicle! Sicle!", until I give in and let her ruin her supper.

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.

On Saturday I will turn twenty-something.

I miss comic books.

I remember getting them for 50 cents when I was very young. Then they went up to 75. I think the last comic I bought was $1.25. What are they now, like $2.75 or something?

My favorites were G.I. Joe and Spiderman. I was definitely a Marvel fan. I still have them somewhere in my parent's basement. I wish I could dig them out and read them tonight.

Heh-heh.

I say we eat him.

Sunday, September 01, 2002

I left the computer room for just a minute, and returned to find Bailey in the desk chair, and this on the screen:

\ bmnn.;/////'';ssxccvbnmjjnnm,,./;.,veexxblkjjfjfi5u85yurhfhfjfkgjg rvf f md fvhchcfhcfhyycefghv gh dyvytyrcy

Bailey's first blog.

The scary thing is, I think she can pronounce it.

We took our membership vows at Auburn Avenue this morning. We did the membership interview with the elders as soon as we got here, but it has taken a little while for the communication between Auburn and Providence to take place, and for both Pastor Wilkins and us to be in town at the same time. So we're official.

Bailey was exceptionally unmanageable in worship this morning. From the start she was squirming and squealing. I didn't even think we were going to make it all the way to the part where we took our vows, which was only 10 minutes into the service. When we returned to our pew and began singing a hymn, she started to shout "Ah-MEN, AHH-MEN, ahhhHHHH-MENNNN", loud enough to be heard over everyone singing. It takes a real good set of pipes to be heard over the singing at Auburn Avenue.

I appreciated her zeal, misappropriated as it was. She is such a jabber box, that as she gets older it is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep her quiet. Some other 18-month-olds can make it through the service with a book or a small toy, but Bailey wants to read the book to me... LOUDLY, or make the stuffed animal roar and eat, LOUDLY. Not that she's saying real words. She is not yet putting full sentences together, but she is jabbering like she is really saying something.

I took her to the nursery and deposited her there, and returned to the sanctuary, which I really hate doing. But on days when she is especially vocal, the only alternative is standing outside with her, which does nobody any good.

Warning... the following is a long passage from a book I'm reading...

"If there is any entity to which ultimate loyalty is due, it is the nation state. In the twentieth century we have become accustomed to the fact that - in the name of the nation - Catholics will fight Catholics, Protestants will fight Protestants, and Marxists will fight Marxists.

The charge of blasphemy, if it is ever made, is treated as a quaint anachoronism; but the charge of treason, of placing another loyalty above that of the nation state, is treated as the unforgiveable crime. The nation state hast taken the place of God.

Responsibilities for education, healing and public welfare which had formerly rested with the Church devolved more and more upon the nation state. National governments are widely assumed to be responsible for and capable of providing those things which former generations thought only God could provide - freedom from fear, hunger, disease and want - in a word: 'happiness'."

"Dying for this state, as Alasdair MacIntyre has said, is 'like being asked to die for the telephone company.'"

"States, particularly liberal democracies, are heavily dependent on wars for moral coherence. All societies may go to war, but war for us liberal democracies is special because it gives us a sense of worth necessary to sustain our state. We are quite literally a people that morally live off our wars because they give us the necessary basis for self-sacrifice so that a people who have been taught to pursue only their own interest can at times be mobilized to die for one another."

"In short, there is nothing wrong with America that a good war cannot cure."

- From "Resident Aliens" by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon

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