diary of revolution
selected musings of a critical thinker
About Me

- Name: Mark William Strong
- Location: Canada
Please visit my official blog for updates and information on current projects, at: http://www.wttwmws.blogspot.com
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
the +15 virus
I think there is a virus floating through the recycled air of the plus 15's. Like some mad cow version of cholera or the Black Death... and I have had it all week.
Started doing some temp work at a law office on Monday, which was the same day my mysterious fever-like symptoms appeared.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
earthquakes and ressurection
There was another earthquake in Indonesia yesterday:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/03/28/indonesia.quake/
Am I the only one shaking my head, here? Am I the only one paying attention?
I spent the last few days of Holy Week in solitude, and come Easter morning, had a new and greater appreciation for Jesus that I pray will stay with me and grow throughout my life.
Here is more about recent quakes:
http://www.olympus.net/personal/gofamily/quake/recent.html
By the way, Johnny Cochrane died today.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Elton John never sounded so good
Hey, there seems to be lots of talk about this lately.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7052514/
Here is a brief histrory I would like to share:
1918-19,
"Spanish flu," [A (H1N1)], caused the highest number of known influenza deaths: more than 500,000 people died in the United States, and up to 50 million people may have died worldwide. Many people died within the first few days after infection, and others died of complications later. Nearly half of those who died were young, healthy adults. Influenza A (H1N1) viruses still circulate today after being introduced again into the human population in the 1970s.
1957-58,
"Asian flu," [A (H2N2)], caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957.
1968-69,
" Hong Kong flu," [A (H3N2)], caused about 34,000 deaths in the United States. This virus was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968 and spread to the United States later that year. Influenza A (H3N2) viruses still circulate today.
With the convenience of travel these days...
Oh well. Bring it on.
-----------------------------------
The above information was found at:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm
and more fun learning can be had at:
http://www.cdc.gov
Sunday, March 13, 2005
A Regular Dream Killer
What can we say about ambition?
I have seen ambition ruin people and make people.
I dunno. Who cares?
Why try and figure this out, or anything?
Our reason is what keeps us so tangled in seaweed. To think that our logic can help? Ha! Like we are a bunch of little Spocks who can somehow figure everything out!
When will we learn? I say, when will we learn?
Words...
Words spoken have more destructive nature then what we hide inside. But at what point does that change?
If we hide it all inside, then one day will it (we) not explode? And then maybe instead of just being words, it will be actions?
Then again, if we freely talk, we are sure to condition ourselves into becoming the very thing we speak.
Seems like either way we can't escape the fact that a part of us is trying to self destruct the whole thing; the whole person.
And what am I supposed to do now?
Do I say anything, or just leave it alone?
Saturday, March 12, 2005
storage
This morning I rooted through a small storage unit I have had for 2 years.
How odd, keeping old things. I consider that now.
Lots of things I forgot owning. Guess I learned to live without it.
I imagine a whole lot of what we have we can do without when the circumstances change. Circumstances ranging from small to catastrofic.
I left this city with an apartment full of furniture and possesions, and two years later I find getting rid of the remants as addicting as collecting them were. Maybe even more addicting.
All that stuff. Can't beleive why I ever thought keeping it was a good idea. Of course, when I packed it, I assumed I would be back in the city within a few months at most. Back to the normalcy that the few years here had become. Back to pissing away my money on crap because buying stuff meant I was alive, or something. Hard to say, really.
That was April 2003.
I plan on narrowing down that storage to about three boxes. Books mostly, the hard to find ones that I know I will read again. The books that have stayed with me through my life, the way things do sometimes.
I also discovered my library of Larry Norman cds. He is one of those people, like a good book, that just keeps resurfacing in my life.
The first time I saw and heard him was in a music video when I was about eleven. My mother knew who he was. To me, he was a lanky albino.
Then, when I was about seventeen I saw him in concert for the first of many times.
In the late nineties I was involved with a production company in Vancouver that brought Larry Norman in for a series of shows on the mainland. I got to spend two evenings drinking stale Dennys coffee and eating overpriced grease with this man.
And here I am again, having gone almost two years without even hearing a single song, exploring my dusty Larry Norman collection.
Some things just are meant to last forever, I guess. They are like institutions that are built right into the fabric of who we are.
I just wish their was more by my side. More living and breathing ones.
Traveling lends itself to losing touch with old friends, not hanging onto them.
Here I am at thirty, and I finally feel able to begin my life the way I always wanted it to be. Maybe not in a literal way, but in a way that I always just wanted peace.
During my scavaging, I also discovered two unmarked cdrs. When I arrived back to my 17th floor vantage point, I put them in the stereo and to my great shock they possesed the distinct whine and wail minstrel voice of Billy Corgan balladering songs I have never heard before!!! I have no idea what these songs are or where they came from!!!
I am pleased.
That's it for tonight. I am feeling sleepy prevade.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
inertia
oh, the time passes by. It is amazing how easy it is to lose all concept of time; how it can all just become a blur seperating events.
This would explain my dire lack of contributable effort. Yet, I suppose I could not have written it any better then the silence exposes.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Friday, March 04, 2005
...calculate the number ...
Here is a simple code. Each letter is assigned a number and each letter increases by the number six.
A=6 B=12 C=18 D=24 E=30 F=36 G=42 H=48 I=54 J=60 K=66 L=72 M=78 N=84 O=90 P=96 Q=102 R=108 S=114 T=120 U=126 V=132 W =138 X=144 Y=150 Z=156
Here are a few examples of words that equal the same value.
Mark of Beast=666 Bio-Implant=666 Sorceries=666 Necromancy=666 Channellers=666 Witchcraft=666
Horrors=666 Treacheries=666 Slaughter=666
Corrupt=666 False Market=666 Stubborn=666
Unruly=666 Insanity=666 Illusion=666
Book of the Dead=666 Son of Sin=666 A Perdition=666 Geneticist=666 Vaccination=666 Quarrels=666
Lustful=666 Falling Away=666
Osama bin Laden = 660 Adolf Hitler = 660
Jesus = 444 Yshua = 444 Messiah = 444 Cross = 444
Gospel = 444 Jewish = 444 Joshua = 444 Obedient = 444
Jesus is Lord = 906 Jesus Christ = 906
Son of the Lord = 906 Lord's Prayer = 906
Holy Spirit = 906 Lord of Hosts = 906
Through Love = 906 Jesus Glory = 906
Jesus Is Alive = 906 Unconditional= 906
Healing Promise = 906 Love is the Law = 906
Redeemer From God = 906 Jesus Sacrificed = 906
Shed Blood For Man = 906 Prophetic King = 906
This is but a small example of related words that all align to various numerical values.
It sparks enough interest in me to include it here for you all to consider.
For a larger database of words and their numerical values, and to download a FREE program that allows you to instantly find the numerical value of words that you enter, visit http://www.geocities.com/iamthekey_2000/index.html
Go on, have some fun!! Download the calculator and see what the numerical value of your name is!!!!!
Thursday, March 03, 2005
When is it time to change?
"Our likes and dislikes as decisive factors have now pretty well disappeared."
Bill Masen, contemplating the post-apolocypse
The Day of the Triffids, by John Whydham
Seems like when we don't have anything, that we desire much. When much is sitting in front of us, it is easy to settle with nothing. And when we have no choice, well, we have no choice.
I wonder why it takes losing so much before we realize what we had. That all illusive search for greener grass on the other side reminds me more of flatlanders on crinkled paper - an imposability.
Somehow, we never seem to learn. As we lie there on our death bed and our life flashes before our eyes, I wounder how many of us will be satisfied that never wasted our time. And the next moment, that could be a minute or a year, or many years later, in ternity, what then? How will we look back at our time on this planet?
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
The Instigator
~A Lesson in Dream Interpretation~
Dreams are like blueprints of our conciousness. They reveal to us the things that we have etched on our heart, and if we pay attention, they show us how to deal with the trama's of life.
I was woken up this morning by a dream. At 5:56am
It all happened on a sunday, I remember that. A girl that is familiar to me, called me. In the dream, we were disillusioned with each other.
She called, though, at 11:30am. Not only had she taken the initiative to call, but also to ask me to meet her for lunch.
It so happens that in waking life we are quite disillusioned also, and quite recently I heard from her, out of the blue.
Sometime before 12:30pm I saw her in my house, though we did not speak. She apeared about to be preparing for our rendevous.
I wonder now if in the dream she was actually in my house, or if somehow I was projecting that? It really seemed like she was, because while she was there I took a shower and by the time I got out of the shower, she was no longer in the house.
We had aranged to meet at 12:30pm. There seemed to be many things delaying me. Many people were living in the house and that was to be my excuse for being late. Something like, 'you know how it is in these houses.'
Initially, being a little late didn't seem to alarm me.
I seemd comfortable blaming others and using them as an excuse for my behavior. Does this relate to waking life?
I don't know if I had left the house yet or not, but by 1:30 pm I went back to change my shirt because I had some kind of memory of her more dressed up than I was.
That image was from before, when she was in the house. Again, I don't know if I actually saw her in a dress in my house, but the image was there.
I kept second guessing what I was wearing, unsure of how much to dress up.
The whole process of second guessing myself tells me a lot about me. I tend to do this. Not all the time, but almost always at certain times. Certain situations. How had second guessing myself contributed to my waking life relationship with this girl?
And do I feel that I was compromising myself to impress her?
At some point I managed to finally leave the house. As I was closing the door, up came walking a pair of musical icons of my pre-teen era. I don't know if they lived in the house or had just come for some purpose, but this seemed to delay me further. I finally returned inside the house with the intention of calling my Canadian friend and assuring her that I was on my way.
The buisiness of my house corelates with my revolving door house in Maui, and for that matter, her revolving door house. I tended to resent that, and held contempt against that whole institution for being responsible for the disillusionment which we currently find ourselves.
The musical icons perhaps signifies how I have allowed my own musical ambitions to take priority over everything else. I certainly recognize how my ambitions have cost me much.
It was 2:45 am when I reached for the phone to call her and apologize for being so late, and let her know i was on my way. I wanted her to know that I had not intended to be late. That was a big thing, the desire to clarify intention. Perhaps even, if she thought it to late now to go, we could rebook for next sunday, but I knew that would be our last chance. After that, we were leaving to go seperate ways. I think all of us were.
I remember struggeling to understand how I ever could have gotten so sidetracked that I had become so late for our appointment. I couldn't understand it.
When there was no answer on the other line, I began to worry.
Maybe she had left. I even considered if she was at a local resteraunt waiting for me, though I didn't remember making any plans to meet there. We did not have reservations. I recal thinking that when we caught up to each other that I would love to walk in there and pay the man a 20$ to give us a good table, right away! But I also knew I hadn't the money for that.
There was no still no answer. I called again and got no answer. Eventually either I let it ring long enough or I finally got the phone number right (which I struggled with, because the more stressed I got, the more confusing it became) because her machine picked up.
Her phone number had proved to be such a struggle, though it was only two digits. Maybe that is why it was such a struggle because it was simple enough to confuse. But because I struggled to finally get it right, I actually remember it. It am pretty sure it was 664-4446.
The message started by saying that no one was there and they would be busy evrery day this week. infact, she listed every day of the week.
I knew she lived with her family, cause I was worried one of her parents would answer the phone when I kept calling the number.
I was afraid they would cover for her, because at this point I was getting pretty paranoid that I had pissed her off by being late, and missed all chances of reconciliation.
It may have been that first message or not, but I found myself listening to her phone message, and it was directed at me.
She said that she couldn't believe I had a problem being late, and then she said she had visited my website and she was disapointed because there was barely anything there. I had removed all the pictures.
Then she started crying, and that continued til the machine cut off..
I continued to frantically call her, but never did she pick up the line.
At some point, I again went outside again, but ths time I went into the backyard.
There was a sense I could walk to her house, it was that close. And I could also walk to the resteraunt I wanted to take her to.
It crossed my mind again that she could be there, waiting, we had no reservation and i was unsure why I thought that.
Intuition is a crazy thing. The hardest part is knowing when its intuition speaking or just our desire for things to be a certain way. The struggle to trust my intuition existed in this dream also, as many times it has in waking life.
When I went into the backyard, I saw a wolf looking dog. It was on a chain, so I knew I was safe, but I also knew it was someone's pet and that others like this one had attacked people. Even killed. They were very dangerous.
As soon as I saw the dog, I began hearing a voice over commentary. It sounded exactly like a news anchor doing a story on the dog.
What makes voice overs in dreams so absurd is that they never seem unusual to the dream character. I assume that the voice over is something more like an audio memory. It is the dreams way of showing, distinctly, that the character is remembering something.
The voice over commentary started by comenting on the chain that bound the dog. "You'll notice the ball chain."
It continued by talking about how this particular Japanese Wolf Dog was raised as an emporers guard dog.
Then the phone rang. I thought I was holding a cordless in my hand when I went outside, but for some reason, I had to go inside to get the phone.
Even though the dog was chained up, I still made a wide pass around him.
In my head I could picture myself picking up the reciever, and I was starting to imagine what I would say. Then...
I woke up.
The fact that the dream woke me up seems significant. It seemed to be a part of the point, that so often we miss in dreams and waking life. Like it was saying, "wake up and pay attention now."
When a dream wakes you up it is because the adrenaline in the body is aroused. It's why people wake up when they have nightmares. Fear creates adrenaline.
And when you wake up from a dream, it is often not easy to return to sleep because the adrenaline that woke you up is still there and one needs to relax again.
The dream continued when I went back to sleep, a good thirty minutes later. Only this time, it seemed that a lot of time had gone by.
I was living in a differant house. I remember recieving money in the mail, for the second time, from a friend on the coast. This time he sent me well over 300.oo dollars. I think it was 310.00$
The very same friend, in waking life, actually did send me money just over a week ago. That must have been why in my dream, it was the second time. It is so interesting when dreams incorporate memories of waking life into the dream character. Unlike the voice over memory which was obvious dream memory creation.
Dreams can often happen in fragments, without a lot of filler.
Life is often to full of filler. Steven King is often to full of filler. I appreciate about Law and Order that they fragment their show well enough that most filler is removed and they just stick to the plot.
You know a good movie when they leave out the filler, and you know a dream is worth remembering when it leaves out the filler.
After counting the money, I went online. I had some kind of email or msn message from my Aunt who was in the military. In addition to her message I also recieved one from another couple in the military that I did not know. For some reason I had accsess to thier personal shopping list and could tell that they had put in a request for a supply of eggs.
In reality, I do have an aunt who has retired from military service. A good example of how reality can twist itself in a dream. the dream character had no knowledge of her retirement, but selected traces of my wakibng life memory to support the dream.
The next scene of my dream I found myself in a private jet that was circling a city. From the air, it looked like somewhere in the UK. Inside the jet were stolen weapons.
The jet cirled itseld down unill we landed on the water. It was not like a floater plane at all, so I have no idea how we did this. I remember thinking in my dream how it could be possible. But then subconcious took over again and i was in the dream, with one slight change. The private jet was now a semi truck.
I am pretty sure we met someone on a dock, not far from the military base. I was trying to balance on a life preserver. I was outside of the Jet (before it became a truck) and was standing on a life preserver, drifting toward my rendevous with someone. I made it to the dock and stood on a little platform, and it was about this time that I was seriously questioning how the jet was balancing on the water.
Perhaps because of this, the dream moved forward rapidly and I was no longer at the dock but atop a log platform, not far away, floating on the ocean, in front of a war monument.
Next to the war monument, adjoined to it, was about a 30 foot tall computer screen etched into the stone. From that monitor, miloitary personel could insert a card and make requests.
From my log barge I flew up into the air. Still not completely sure how I did that. I think I had wings like a bee. Maybe my character did not know how he was doing it and imagined it that way. My memory of the wings is from a distant view, not an experiencial one.
I experienced flying up, but it felt like I was swimming in the air. I think I was even kicking my feet. I rose into the air like I was laying down.
I inserted a card into the slot and purchased eggs for my aunts friends.
When I landed I realized that I had bought them for the wrong name. My friends on the platform, there were two of them, were concerned that I was wasting time, but I assured them I would be quick to correct my error, and i floated up again.
When I returned to the log barge I inquired about the weapons. I couldn't see them anywhere. The man on my left told me they were safe, and as he said this, we turned and saw the semi-truck on a larger log barge floating towards us. The barge was rocking in the waves.
That's the last thing I remember.
The second half of this dream seems to be less coherant than the first half. But I think it also gives me a lot of clues into my subconcious.
Starting with the money from a friend. I love that in the dream it continued an actual event from waking life.
The weapons were stolen. Could I be feeling like i have stolen something of others? Maybe pieces of them. And the fact that in the dream they were represented by weapons means that maybe I use those pieces of people to fight a war with myself.
The transportation was air (jet), then water (ocean), then land (the truck). This all speaks to me of traveling, which I have done a lot of. And this traveling as a result, and to acomidate, the stealing of the weapons.
Has my traveling been a my means of robbing from others? Not physical robbery, but a deeper one? Like some kind of energy stealer.
The significance of giving and not hording my money seems to come up. This is a principal that I have thought a lot about. As others give to me, I need to be ready to give to others. This seems to be what I also did in the dream, in my willingness to help out a couple I did not know, who were in need.
I also did this at some risk to my objectives, as highlighted by the concern of my friends that I could be wasting valuable time.
The jet becoming a truck clearly seems to be an attempt at my subconcious to erase a clue to my conciousness that I am dreaming. These clues fill our dreams, and when our conciousness becomes alterted to them, we either wake up because our conciousness is thinking, or we awake into the dream, ie: lucid dreaming.
My subconciousness prefers to be in complete control. Previous attempts to induce lucid dreaming have left me unable to remember my dreams. And for someone who frequently remembers multiple dreams every night, this is a trajic loss. Dreams are like a perfect escape. They are adventure. I would not wish that away.
In the end, I decided that it is better for my subconciousnes to guide me in learning than it is to conciously take advantage of a no consequence world, and miss the opportunity to live waking life more fully.
I think that weather one remembers there dreams or not, that they are most always helpful. It is the things that we don't remember, while dreaming, that intrigue me most because they shape the way I think.
Yet, I feel I must also say, as i conclude, that not all dreams have something to say to us. At least, I am not convinced of it.
Sometimes one has a dream and knows it is meant to convey some truth to them. Other times, it seems the mind is trying to rant away the excess information it determines un-usefull.
So, I wouldn't go about trying to find your answers in your dreams. If we do that, we miss the whole point. Our concious efforts to discover answers will always mislead us.
We must retain a firm grip on our salvation. Only the Lord is our judge, and only He is acapable of diserning for us where we should go anfd how we should live.
I believe that God can use dreams, like guideposts, to show us the way. To show us areas of our life that need attention. But God is not the only one who can influence our dreams. This is vitally important to recognize.
We should not be seeking the dreams, but the One who gives the dreams. If God wants to speak to you, don't limit how He can do that.
Open Your Eyes
It's amazing how we build things up in our heads. Before we know it, reality comes and it just isin't what it was in our head. It seems pretty disapointing. And it makes one think about where they are and how dangerous all that living in the head was.
Every now and then I wake up. Only to find I haven't really woken up yet. I seem to be in a constant state of opening my eyes.
And I seem to be in a constant state of living in my head.
I would like to think I do not do it as much anymore. That I am more down to earth. More grounded.
I think by diverting all the living in my head to imagination, it is easier to seperate the non-reality from the stuff I just make up, from the lies. That way I won't be confusing the lies from the things I make up from reality, if that even exists anymore. And then how do we figure out truth?
Lies, like contrived truth in any form (including imagination) have three main motives, as i see it. 1) Vanity 2) Guilt, and 3) Turth
We lie because we are vain, because we are guilty, or because we are trying to conceal truth from someone.
It'gets trcky in its similarity to memory creation, and how we can create memories based on stories we have told ourselves enough times that they become truth (ie: we like to ourselves)
We have convinced our mind that true is what we tell it.
And that kinda relates back to the whole paranoia thing and how easy it is for us to be swept away by our paranoia. Just like our passions. Even when our motivation is rooted in unreality.
And we get swept away by our lies. And our fantasies. And all the things we build up in our heads. And then we feel foolish for going so far out on a limb to actually imagine that all the build up could really have come true.
Our disapointment attacks our esteem level, and the thrill we got from avoiding normalcy starts becoming to us the reflection in the mirror that constantly keeps us on the fringe. We start to resent that andbecome hostile towards the people that never accepted us for being who we are. All the while knowing that it's our own fault for being so differant because it satisfied our desire to feel a unique, which in turn satisfied us pleasure seekers enough to think we suddenly had a purpose.
It's all about the purpose, really. And when we feel disapointed, it is an attack against our purpose.
I have to remind myself that I am at war with myself. It makes this all a whole lot easier to understand.
Each one of us is like a ticking bomb of self destruction, and contorl is the restraints that keep us from going off.
The things around us, like the mundane things we all resent, like working and cleaning the bathroom, these things all contribute to the grounding that is essential to keep us sane.
On our own, we really have no hope. The easiet alternative is to take the blue pill and wake up in the morning with no knowledge of how much we resemble rats in cages.
Scientists did a study on trama and how it affects people. They started by rating trama by percentages. So losing a job may be 20%, and a family pet dying may be 30%. Whereas losing a spouse would be a 100%.
Well, they found that if you take enough of the low ranking trama's, and say in addition to losing your pet and your job, you are also evicted (lets say that is 15%) and you get dumped (another 15%) and then you can't find a new place to live and your don't really have any money for food....
You get the idea.
The more of the smaller trama's added up, the more unstable the person became, and the more they began experiencing the effects of trama as deeply as the one who lost a mate. If those smaller trama's added up to 150%, than that person could very well a withering fluff.
I wonder how they did this study? I wonder if they took some guy and ruined his life and secretly spied on him the whole time until he very nearly stepped into oncoming trafic to end his life?
By gaugeing your personal amount of self satisfaction on how you think others see you, then you will either be always disapointed or always decieved.
If we are bound to base so much of our self worth on what we assume others think of us, is it better to live in anonimity? Removing the things we do from public opinion? But I suppose, even then, we can not get away from the self induced ridicule we project others to have of us.
Open my eyes, damn't!





