"The Mark Of The Beast" Predictions

I like to predict things from time to time. There are those occasions when I am wrong without a doubt, but there are more occasions than not when I hit the mark right on the head. I predicted the gender of the first four pregnancies of my adopted mother, but on the other hand I could not predict my own sons gender correctly. I have successfully predicted the growth of certain towns I have lived in over the years to the extent of the expansion of particular roads. None of these claims make me a of prophet or any thing of the sort. Mostly, it is just a hobby, something fun to do. I bet you speculate at times. You probably speculate,or bet, on whether a particular marriage is going to make it, or maybe even to the extent of how long it will last. Or how many kids the marriage will produce.

 I was sitting in a restaurant the other day when a curious phrase caught my ear in the conversation being held at the table next to mine. This phrase peaked my keen sense of hillbilly interest. The two men were debating what the "Mark of the Beast" would look like. Their speculations ranged from a tattoo of 666 on the forehead or wrist to a capsule in the neck. Their ideas were somewhat realistic to me, but seemed to lack the imagination  of a true truck driver. Something most truck drivers usually have in ample supply. On another occasion I found myself engrossed in conversation with a guy sporting a short ponytail. In the midst of our conversation I became astutely aware that his pony tail was covering up a tattoo of a barcode he had received while in prison. His had been done as a prank, but it was there on his neck a barcode of his birthday for all see. Obviously this is not be the first time I had heard of a captive being released wearing a tattoo of sorts. The imprisoned Jews had tattoos on their wrist when they were released. I must confess no one really knows the what the "Mark of the Beast" will actually look like. 

What is the purpose of "Mark of the Beast"? Simply put it will be a complicated or even a sophisticated way of tracking information on the population. Simple questions like how many people are in your household? Any births or deaths? How often do you use your dishwasher? Water your lawn?  A lot of information is already being recorded electronically. You carry an ATM card which tracks many of your financial dealings. Passports track back and forth across the border. Social Security keeps up with your income. Grocery cards keep up with many of your eating habits. Employee cards track many of your work habits. Drivers license keeps up with habitual driving habits.

How can the "Mark of the Beast" institutionalized? Just imagine if all this information about you was gathered into one place. Maybe based on your Social Security Number. Why not everyone has a number almost from birth these days. It is difficult to claim a child on your taxes without this number. Possibly this is all compiled and added to a Drivers License. Now this is where the process becomes simple enough to institutionalize. Every five years or so you have to get your drivers license renewed to continue driving. The government is running truck drivers thru a similar process right now. They started a couple of years ago. Any one with a hazmat endorsement on their CDL drivers license has to go thru a special screening process before the endorsement can be renewed on your new drivers license. In a five year period all truck drivers will either drop this endorsement to prevent going thru the screening process or get screened. Oh I am sure you will have start the process three months advance to jump thru all the hoops, like finger printing, just  like we have had to do, but the process will be over in a matter of five years.

Why would the "Mark of the Beast" be imposed? It will begin as matter of convenience for your safety and well being. A cost saving measure on insurance or groceries. Eventually it will be used to gather information on unwanted elements in our society. Just think how much safer you will feel when the government is tracking all information about the known "enemies of the state."  You might think that would prevent another 9/11. Granted this doesn’t mean anything until they push the next process thru. Every thing about you is all on one card by now, and for your convenience they will stamp this on your forehead or insert a microchip in your wrist. Of course, this will alleviate the necessity of coming back and getting it renewed every five or so years. Eventually, It will be like social security all over again the voluntary will be taken out of the process for some reason and the stamp will be come mandatory. Probably because of forgeries or something of that sort.

I wrote this back in December of ‘08 under a different title on another website along with several other articles. I have begun rewriting all of these articles because of the complexity of the subject matter. Basically it was too much information to digest for one article and it was very difficult to read "poorly written". In the future articles you learn more about the "predictions" I have made and how close to reality they actually are. One of my sisters jokingly referred to me as a conspiracy theorist, and you just might agree her. Please don’t misunderstand my intentions, but I do think we need to recognize the times in which we live and realize what they mean to us.      Till the next time I bid you Adieu.  

 

“Just Plain Nuts 2″

Well I didn’t last very long. At forty-three years of age and nearly 100lbs overweight, What would you expect? Guess I realized I wasn’t twenty years of age anymore. I took off late in the afternoon and headed for the coast to capture what I thought might be my last photos of a gulf coast sunset. I did find one thing remarkable my first day out. Trash. Lots of trash all along the sides of the highway. I couldn’t help But wonder why? Do we not have trash cans? Are all the landfills full? I’ll come back later and give you a full detail of what all I did later.

Trash on side of highway

Back pack for impromtu hike

Dock on bay

sailboat at sunset

“Just Plain Nuts”

Well here is a Just Plain Nuts story for the books. I have decided that since I am incapable of finding a job at my present location that I will do something I have not done for nearly twenty years. I am off to trek the USA for a couple of days with no destination in mind. Fortunately I am forty pounds lighter than I was two months ago. I have packed a backpack with some clothes and a blanket. My sister spent the evening making a trail mix behind my back and has insisted that I take a couple of bottles of water for my trek. She has been gracious in allowing me to stay with her for the last couple of months while I attempted to unsuccessfully look for work. Maybe I will find a way around the writers block I have endured for the last two months and find some interesting stories to post in the future.

“So You Think You Are A Photographer?”

What makes you think you’re a photographer? Oh I bet you were under the delusion, as I was, that owning a camera and taking the occasional photo makes you a photographer? These are the questions I began asking my self after I tried turning in some of my photos into a website trying to take that next leap and started moving into the realm of a professional photographer. Every one of my photos was turned down flatly. NO if’s ands or goodbye. I was shocked. Like you I really enjoy taking a couple shots every chance I get. As a matter of fact I took the time yesterday to knock off three hundred or so shots. I can’t say any of them were particularly eye catching, but some of them were kind of interesting. Odds are, it does not matter what kind of camera you may own, but rather what you do with that camera is the reason you might think of yourself as photographer.  So I started looking into what it takes to be classified as a photographer. Or you might say what are the different levels of a photographer and which stage am I.

The Enthusiast
Obviously, I owned a cheap camera once upon a time. It was one my mother in law had stashed away in basement. She let me “borrow” it. Some of my most favorite pictures I have ever taken were ones with that first camera. I guess it is because one is of a blonde haired boy around age three riding on a tricycle. Another one was of his mother on a larger tricycle in red or black shorts chasing that blonde haired boy on his tricycle. I think that boy’s mother photographed me in the garage on a rainy afternoon with that same blonde haired boy strumming a pair of tennis rackets like guitars while we sang “Achy Breaky Heart”.           More…..

“Jaywalkers Can’t Read”

All over the country, I have seen every kind of sign imaginable. The most surprising sign was in south Georgia. It read “Alligator Warning”. I have to say that was one that really caught my attention. Because it had only been the month before that I spent the afternoon in Bradenton FL chasing those lizards with a big stick. I knew if I walked out behind

These are the Jaywalkers that can't read. Check this site for more wonderful Wild Photography! http://wildphotography.wordpress.com

my truck even to relieve myself in the middle of the night I might find one of those really big lizards called alligator, and he would have been after me for teasing his younger siblings.

For the life of me, I can not figure out why they put “deer crossing” signs up in the first place. First off those little jaywalkers can’t read read, and secondly they never cross where the sign is located. I remember seeing the deer gather in western North Carolina to eat fresh apples right off the tree like some kind old timey camp meeting service. And the hunters can go to south Texas near the Mexico border because it is not uncommon to see a rocking chair hiding in the ditch watching his young eat the tall grass along the side of the two lane highway. I saw a standing deer jump over a six-foot tall fence in Missouri when I prompted him to run when began blowing the train horn on my semi.

Yesterday my jaywalkers were in a long procession one after the other, which is nothing new in and of itself especially in Wyoming. In fact, I came upon a chain of these jaywalkers one time at night and was barely able to guide my big rig thru them. I guess the last two were young and lagging behind probably goofing off or licking a little more salt off the side of the road had created just enough of a gap for semi to slide thru and my lights froze them in there travel. But yesterday I noticed that my jaywalkers were strung out one behind the other using a bridge as a crosswalk.