Scripture of the Day - Paul (Rom.13:12)

This morning a short time ago as I was putting my room in order, changing over from night-time configuration to daytime configuration (I live in tight quarters and must move some things around for either configuration), the verse came to mind loud and clear:

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light." ~ Romans 13:12 (King James version)

All Along The Watchtower Revisited

The announcement two days ago that Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature has led to an explosion of interest in and discussion of his career and works. Unfortunately, this has included some debate and controversy as to if he was deserving of the prize or if the prize should even be awarded to song lyricists at all. In the meanwhile, I cannot avoid thinking of his most important song (in my humble opinion). Below is an excellent, but short analysis of it. Note: I have opined upon this song on this blog previously back in 2012 which you can read HERE.

On The Eve of Armageddon

Can anybody out there tell me anything about this illustration, to wit, who painted it, when, and on what book or publication did this appear? Thank in advance! Photo provenance unknown (all rights reserved).

I Liked One Last Time

I'm not a big fan of the over-commercialized and artistically vapid bubble-gum pop EDM artists and their music in general and more particularly ones who were former Mickey Mouse Club or Nickelodeon stars. Most especially I'm not a big fan of Ariana Grande who it seems always was or has become a wretched, little, snotty, bratty, ingrate who recently got caught claiming she "hates Americans"... she being one herself.  I certainly won't be buying any of her music any time soon if not ever. However, last month during finals week I was in The Avenue on campus at Cal Poly eating lunch and on the large television attached to the interior of the dining hall the following music video played and I was transfixed as I realized what I was seeing thematically. Those of you who know me or have followed this blog know of my interests in disasters and end of the age topics. This track and music video certainly peaked my curiosity and I was startled to see something thus themed at such an unexpected place and time. I made a point of watching to the end to see the name of the song. I was startled to see I had been watching Ariana Grande (pre-anti-American comment scandal) whom I had heard about but was unfamiliar with her work. The criticism stands but the following track is kinda cool even if the song is not exceptional devoid of the context of the video.

2012 Apocalypse Hurricane Sandy Meme

I encountered this meme sometime earlier this week or last week while looking for something else in Google Images. Apparently, this was created at the end of 2012 as a homage to both Hurricane Sandy and the 2012 Apocalypse/Mayan Calendar Roll-over/Pole-Reversal craze. In its nascent form it appeared immediately after the storm sans the monsters and was falsely presented as being an image of the storm approaching New York. Later, it appeared in the form seen here in year-end look-backs like THIS. The image is a hilarious mash-up of a standard image of the Statue of Liberty combined with a 2004 Mike Hollingshead supercell image captured in Nebraska combined with various movie monsters and antagonists. Surprisingly, the shark image predates by half a year the Sharknado craze.

Post-Apocalypse Engineering Flowchart

What Post-Apocalypse Looks Like

My friend Blake introduced me to this fascinating short film showing views from both drone and person of Chernobyl, Ukraine, from this year, 28 years after the nuclear disaster there. It brings to mind both the short-lived television series Life After People and the Planet of the Apes movie franchises both old and new as well as themes of zombie apocalypses and other types of world's ends. The musical accompaniment is also rather strikingly effective in an unexpected sort of way. I find it fascinating how quickly the vegetation has taken over the city.
Note: I live exactly 31 miles from Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

Songs For When The World Falls

It has been a month and a week since last I shared music here so this feels overdue given how prevalent music is on this blog. My own personal discovery of these two trance tracks occurred earlier this summer or sometime in the spring. "I Will Be Here" by Tiesto and Sneaky Sound System (Wolfgang Gartner remix) is by far and away the better song both in lyrics as well as vocals and sound being an exceptionally awesome trance track. It was love at first hearing for me and it is good to know Tiesto still pumps out some good music despite his transition on to other things which is to be expected of any good artist. He has been slammed for selling out and not holding to his hey-day sound of the late 1990's into mid-2000's but in all fairness temptus fugit and were he to still sound the same it could be fairly said he was artistically "stuck" and living in the past and beating a dead horse. Artists are people, too, and need to grow. 

There is a particular section of the lyrics to this which really capture my attention:

"You know when the moment comes
To be strong, your resistance
And that's what we're led to believe

When the big world falls apart
And you think that the feeling will linger
You need somewhere to start
I will be here (I will be here)

And when it all seems to fall apart
You can't breathe
You don't know what you're thinking
You need somewhere to start
I will be here (I will be here)"

The other song entitled "World Falls Apart" by Dash Berlin is a very good song although the vocals by Jonathon Mendelsohn are a bit too soaring in sound and some of the base & drum elements feel too clubby and yes, I realize it is a club mix but the elements to which I refer are also in the radio edit of this trance track. Anywho, I nonetheless really like this song which features lyrics that also capture my attention for touching on the same theme which as you by now know has haunted me my entire life: the End of the Age. This is basically the entire lyrics which are repeated twice in the trance track:

"When the world falls apart
I will hold you in my arms like a friend

When the world's unkind
I will make you smile
I will stay right by your side until the end

Through the dark of night
When no hope's in sight
When the walls start closing in, I'll be your friend

When the world falls apart
If you should ever feel so broken that you can't go on
If your world falls apart
I will hold you in my arms like a friend

When the world falls apart
If you should ever feel so broken that you can't go on
If your world falls apart
I will hold you in my arms like a friend
Until the end..."

Lyrics courtesy AZLyrics.com


Something to note about these songs is that when I hear them and think about their lyrics I am unable to not think about how much these lyrics express my devotional thoughts and feelings to the amazing woman with whom I will hopefully someday be partnered, God willing.

Picture of the Day - Cover The Earth

Today while waiting at the traffic signal at the intersection of Riverside Avenue and 13th Street in Paso Robles, CA, I noticed this image on the side of a Sherwin-Williams Paints truck parked in front of their paint store. The image struck me rather forcefully and I could not avoid thinking of some Biblical End-Of-The-Age theme.
Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

When Chicken Little Is Correct

I find this topic endlessly fascinating and perhaps a bit prophetic as I have touched in times past on this blog as can be found in various postings undler the label "End of the Age". Watch and be edified.

Never Forget End-Cretaceous!

An Idle Thought About An Apache

A U.S. Army Apache gunship just went right over my house in Paso Robles headed southbound low and in a huge hurry unlike how they seem to cruise most of the time (higher altitude and slower).... I had a sudden flash of how so many End of the Age movies start at the outset of the Zombie Apocalypse or Alien Invasion or Giant Monster's Advent in the region ..... the first signs of trouble often are military aircraft overhead or military vehicle(s) on a local highway doing something secretive, urgent, and atypical which we the viewer understand to be significant but to which the characters in the movie are not initially cognizant.

Oh Godzilla!

This trailer actually makes this movie look like it will be worth watching. As anybody who has followed this blog for any length of time realizes by now I love science fiction and End-Of-Civilization flicks. Perhaps less well known to you is the fact I love monster flicks provided they aren't too dumb or otherwise frustrating. Notice that this theme of the end of all things or at least a grave threat to the continuance of civilization comes up once again in a major American movie? What drives this deep-seating interest and anxiety? Food for thought to be certain! Anywho, play this teazer full-screen and crank up the speakers.

It's All Happened Before But Will It Again?

It seems only apropos that following my "The Day Of The End Of The World" post day-before-yesterday that I share this short clip as a sort of coda. These two series segments form a sort of bookend pair as they show opposite ends of the story arc for the acclaimed television series Battlestar Galactica as found at the start of the story in the other posting and then here at the conclusion of the episode "Daybreak ~ Part 3", final episode of Season Four and of the entire series. Not only does this cleverly wrap up the series and connect it to present-day Earth but also cleverly gets into some more transcendent stuff such as the nature of human civilizations to destroy themselves and the degree to which there is Free Will and/or it is all essentially predetermined by human predisposition.

The Day Of The End Of The World

My entire life I have been haunted by this theme to the depths of my soul. Here is one fictional visual account of such a day. It shows this event from the perspective of the Battlestar Galactica television series from the 2000's. We see this calamitous coda to civilization known in the series as "the Destruction of the Twelve Colonies" from three perspectives: the planet Caprica, Colonial Fleet Headquarters at Pycon, and the Battlestar Galactica itself, the last remaining survivor of about 120 capital ships of the Colonial Fleet the rest of which are destroyed in this Pearl Harbor-esque assault. Below is a musical tribute ("Journey to the Line" by Hans Zimmer) to this fictional calamity derived from both the television series' movie pilot and and its two spin-off movies "Razor" and "The Plan".
Check out the follow up posting to this which shows the series conclusion: "It's All Happened Before But Will It Again?" 

The Trigger Effect

I first saw this series premier of Connections hosted by well-known science historian James Burke sometimes back in the early to mid-1990's and although it offered me nothing revolutionary it did help distill for me some things that were already my mind and validated a few others. In fact, I still have a VHS recording of it somewhere from that timeframe. In any case, I found this on Youtube last night and offer it to you here tonight. The "prepper" culture has emerged since this program was long off the air and even since my 1990's first encounter with this program. Something I find fascinating is that none of the essential concepts in this program have changed and if anything this is more relevant today than on the day this first aired. That means that this episode is as ominous now as it ever was. I like Burke's expression "technological womb". The good stuff here begins at 22:29 and gets rolling from there.

Quote of the Day - "Lady Galadriel"

As stated in my previous blog posting, the following quote from Lady Galadriel's prologue to the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring" which is repeated in the other two movies of the Lord of the Rings movie franchise has haunted me ever since first I heard it. Below, I share both parts of particular interest to me of said prologue. Note, this is all surprisingly applicable and apropos to the current time and place we find ourselves in this modern world hurtling itself towards the future unknown. One can hear Cate Blanchett's voice narrate within the movie the full lines HERE.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost for none now live who remember it ... And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend; legend became myth." ~ Lady Galadriel

Galadriel's Prescient Prologue

Since first I heard it I have been haunted by it, to wit, Lady Galadriel's Prologue in the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring". Cate Blanchett who plays that character in all the Lord of the Rings movies does a fine job narrating this haunting and ominous and atmospheric movie prologue. To me it speaks to real life in this time and place as ominous things are afoot and darkness gathers in anticipation of being unleashed in the not-too-distant future. Within this speech are references to how much has changed and not for the better. It explains the why of it in the context of the movie. For our purposes that is not relevant as real-life inputs are causing the real life changes we are seeing but to which not all of us are paying heed. You can read part of these lines HERE.

Scripture of the Day - Isaiah

Note: it has been nearly three months since my last "Scripture of the Day" column here. Prior to that it was a four-month interval between consecutive such columns. These are not chance facts, but rather artifacts of the fact that I have not been getting into the Word solo with any consistency for much of this year. Well,  apart from doing so in conjunction with other believers at church and home church which part of my life has been sufficient. However, that is a different sort of connecting with God and getting into His word than reading alone in personal study of the Word as part of investing in my personal relationship with God and time tithing of sorts which offers different possibilities for God to speak to me through His Word.

Anywho, below is a pointedly prescient and applicable passage quite apropos to any time and place in the human story. However, none more so than right now. It is applicable to the unbeliever as well as the lapsed believer equally so. We live in a time and place that is existing on the bubble while not fully appreciating that fact. We are in the relative calm before the storm. This passage points to the necessity for all of us to be serving God either in starting to do so now before it is too late or continuing to do so as may be the case before whatever is about to happen breaks forth upon all of us.

I am quite surprised that this passage has not been previously posted in this blog. Better late than never I suppose.  It might surprise you to know that I actually have had this passage entirely memorized my entire adult life which is rare given my propensity to not memorize poems, lyrics, Scriptures, etc.

Seek the Lord while he may be easily found, call upon while He is nearby. Let the wicked person forsake his own way, and the unrighteous person his own thoughts and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon all sin. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your way my ways, says God. For as the sky is higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down and the snow from above, and tarries not, but waters the ground that it may be fertile and blossom, that is might give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that I utter; it shall not return to me for nought, but shall accomplish my pleasure, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

~ Isaiah 55:6-11 (Kimicus Ad Absurdum translation)

Last Days Of Blue

As those of you who follow this blog have realized by now I have my peculiar proclivities including listening to Electronic Dance Music (EDM) as well as a lifelong fascination with disasters and on a related note, End of the Age stuff likewise. The following progressive house track caught my attention when I found it buried in the set I posted here yesterday entitled "When Progressive Is A Positive". I looked it up and discovered it is entitled "Last Days of Blue" by Moodfreak. I already liked it enough to intend to share it here but when I saw a particular Youtube music player of it featuring an apocalyptic illustration of a city in ruin by something much greater than a mere conventional earthquake there was no possibility I would not post this here. Crank up your speakers and enjoy this very contemporary progressive house track!