Mark Davis's LiveJournal

pretty thoughtful visuals. you guys are free to post what parts strike you as meaningful.

this song is definitely about forgiving people for what horrible things they may have done. "i start again... forgive me for what i've done...let go"

I love this video so much, from celebrating individuality, to advertising all of these excellent videos

i am hooked on this song, and now Daft Punk's "Faster, Better, Faster, Stronger" from Daft Hand's video.

Lots of things have happened since i last Livejournaled, The Musical finished and I have recently been selected to join the Worship Team. This is a major encouragement, but i keep finding myself lessening the magnitude of my selection, which makes it harder for me to be proud of my accomplishments, but then it keeps me far from becoming prideful of my abilities.

As I learned from The Screwtape Letters, humility is not disregarding one's accomplishments and making them seem to be no accomplishment at all, but humility is the acknowledgment of one's accomplishments, and then recognizing God in helping him to achieve it. A Humble man then continues to acknowledge God in people's victories.

A humble man also speaks of his accomplishments in the way that he would discuss his friend's, in moderation, saying all that is necessary to add proof to his life thesis: that through God, man is capable of doing good works deserving praise.

To God be the Glory,
MCD

    As I type this very LiveJournal, I have 5 staples in my scalp, to help heal a laceration 2.5 cm long, yet all covered by my hair.

    Now, How did i get the cut, you ask. Well, this is the funny part of it...

    I was upstairs in my room and was thinking about Marry Poppins, then I thought of Dick Van Dyke and how wonderful he was as an actor and dancer, as well as his penguin scene. I walked down the hall to the stairs. Feeling light-spirited, I began "galloping" down the stairs two at a time. Then, four steps to the bottom of the stairs, just before the ceiling of the living room started, i jumped up to click my heels, so i looked at my feet mid-flight. Then all of a sudden, I saw stars and (loudly) hit the bottom stairs (i broke my fall with my forearm).I  clutched my scalp and groaned. I realized that my head hit the edge of the room's ceiling. I screamed for someone's help.
    Dad  was the first one to see me his eyes opened wide and told me to move to the floor. I moved, and he looked at my head. He told me that i was not bleeding, and turned around to go to the laundry room for a towel and a pillow. My hands were still on the back of my head, an i felt something wet on my hands. I looked at them and there was blood on them (It reminded me of the Season 2 finally of "The O.C."). I couldn't move my eyes from my hands. I screamed that I was bleeding, and I felt a drop of blood hit the floor. The commotion brought the rest of the family trickling in, from my cringing mother, to my "Response to Emergency"-expert-sister. I was quickly informed that I had dented the metal drywall edge!

I have been realizing lately how often I compare myself to others to get my self worth. I remember my cousin, Scott Keenan, telling me that it was an easy way to get depressed. I have finally noticed this, as well as realizing that the Bible often tells us about how we are all special for what God has made us. It's hard for me because teens often equate their self worth with the worth others assign them.
What is especially hard about this is that most of my talents are not appreciated as an adolescent: my

• openness
  
• sensitivity
• ability to be serious in, well, serious situations (I admit, I can do a better job of making this apparent)
• analytical abilities
• creativity

I admit though, some things I can work on are

• humility
• self confidence
• using smaller words
• to stop talking when I have nothing (or little) to say and think through the words when I do have something to say.

Nevertheless, at least I have the ego to admit my faults. I wish more people had the maturity or persistence to try to push past my jokey exterior, and let me into their lives. I just love to listen to peoples problems, and help them in their trials, but my jokey (insecure, attention seeking) self is too difficult to move past.
It is so difficult to go through the following (consistently repetitively):

1. Seek the appreciation of peers, or affection
2. Tries to obtain it by means of becoming the class clown, in desperation
1. This does not work
2. By fall, with the falling temperatures coupled with sheer longing, I somehow get a crush on someone who appears to be higher up on the food chain, because, according to the teen belief, you are only as good as your date.
3. The pursuit of the girl leads to failure.
1. Thanks to the above logic, I feel like nothing! (simple logic really.) A Loser, a failure.
2. It hurts even more when someone else out of the blue picks her up, usually effortlessly.
1. Then I not only feel like nothing, I feel like nothing, and worse still, worse than the boy friend, or the victor. Lets pretend his name is just that, Victor. That's it. Victor.
   
   The following mathematical phrase describes My Value, based on Dating:
   
   
   value Mark= M
   # of Competition who tried for same girl and failed= C1
   # of competition who achieved said goal= C2
   mathematical status of me= S1
   status of said girl= S2
   status of girl currently dating  = S3
   status of competition, combined= S4
   
   [M*C1/C2*S4]/[S2/S3]= S1
2. It's time to check our answers!
   [M*1*S1/1*16]/[16/1]= [M*1/16]/16
   

                                            = M/16/16
   ^I think that is a small number, but Mathematically, I am not a Zero.
   
   I know that was random. I just felt like it.

4. That just rubs the salt in the wound, and then I tend to Join the Musical, in a attempt to gain acceptance from my peers from school, who envy my talent.
5. THEN all of my motives are in the wrong place, and I try to perform for the glory of me and not my God for crying out loud!

I hope figuring all this out will help me be able to stop making cracks at school all of the time.
I doubt it.
After all this, I can hardly wait to be/see what God wants me to become from all of this preparation and smoothing.

I got back from Furnace Company tour on Sunday the 18th, and i feel like blogging about recent events.

FC Tour was fun. We went to Boston this year, and stayed at an awesome farmhouse-turned-hostel. We performed at two schools, a high school/middle school of 400 students, and an elementary school in Downtown Boston.

The high school/middle school was successful, although i was not selected for many Improv games, i still was OK with it. I was able to videotape B-roll footage for the Tour DVD, and it was a lot of fun to use a truly powerful camera.

The elementary school was a blast because they had never seen a show like ours before. It was so much fun performing for an audience that wasn't critical and just wanted to have fun.

That night we went to see Blue Man Group. They are just incredible. They were creative in making their own instruments, making excellent music that i bought, and wielded all of their stage effects perfectly.
here is one of their classics, Drumbone
It was sooo cool.

Any way, we also served at the salvation army, which was fun as well.

Then, there was the encouragement circle. Every year on the last night of tour, the FC meets as a group and leaves the floor open for people to encourage others, and what people think is good about other people, and this year Mrs. Burick said something to me.
She said:
Mark, I love you, and I think you know this. You encourage me so much! I learned a lot about patience from you. You know, Mr. Burick and I call you our son, and I don't say it about many people.

Mrs. Burick taught me a thing or two about how everyone's relationship with God looks different, and how I shouldn't try to make mine look like some one else's. I also talked to her about why God made me the way he did, and not an amazing athlete, or someone cute, or someone who has it all together. She said that everyone has their own thorn in their side, and you can't see it on most people.

I recently chatted with a fellow FC member, and afterwards, all i can think about is how i was only interested in a few people, so i tried to be near them, and butted into their conversations, and when FC split up, it would come down to me being in those people's groups.

It ended up being too much for them, and some of them confronted me about how I made them feel.

On top of that, being back home spending most of my time on the computer, i know i don't have much of a life. I also know that my priorities are with out a doubt out of whack. Mrs. Burick said that being able to realize your problems are steps in the right direction, but i have almost stopped after the first step. It makes me wonder if i care if i'm sinning and putting idols before God.

It is all really hard.

Happy 16th, me.

this is a GIGANTIC png of a vector picture I made for the FC, and FC wanted to use it for the poster, so i blew it up and sent it to them. i think it looks really sweet.
Shout out to my father, who helped me tinker with the pipes up there.

This is a concept for a track jacket design for the Furnace Company.
It is a large Vector rendering for enhanced detail and unparalleled image scaling quality.

I have posted some pictures of my room on my flickr account.
here they are!

Part 1


Part 2


This an experimental video. While this video is mainly a test, I am beginning to use YouTube as a tool to reach those who view my LiveJournal.
It went into 2 parts because I talked too long and it cut me off.
[laughs]
Also, If you are viewing this through Facebook, click on "View original post" to see the videos.

I am beginning to blog so that I can easily tell friends what's going on. Also, I imagine, it will hep to be able to pour my emotions into writing for nor only archiving and posterity, but also so that people can be able to see what's going on, and see what I am feeling at the peak of emotion, when it strikes. I hope I can get this to be a semi-regular habit.

Anyway, I am using a pretty pimped out setup with all this. I have a LiveJournal account that allows me to:
a) send posts through IM to my blog
b) post audio "monologues" through phoning their website
c) post YouTube videos
(I have my YouTube accout linked to my LiveJournal, so every time i post a Video on YouTube, YouTube posts it as an entry in my Live Journal)
d) post through FireFox with an extension i downloaded

All this allows me to provide a multi-media Journal to thrill and instill thought and information.

One quick thing before this post is done: for the ease of readers who do not have a vocabulary as large as mine, i will either supply a synonym or definition after using non-common-place-words. Unfortunately, this will cause my Journal to be educational. Sorry guys.

Also, I will have perfect spelling thanks to Firefox's automatic spell check.