Follow Your Dreams

So its come to this.  Another year past, a new one begins.  When I look back and analyze what I have accomplished this past year, it’s bleak.  I ask myself if I am any further along in accomplishing my goals. I am not.  I decided that this year will be different. But instead of boring you all with my own story, I have decided to throw out a few pointers on how to make your path a little easier.  I don’t believe that any of us are completely content with where we are in life so I gathered some thoughts that might help everyone.

1.              Don’t Get Too Comfortable.

·      Sometimes in life we all find a place that we are comfortable with.  I say move along.  Did Voldemort sit back and say he was ok with only being the second strongest wizard in the world? No! He went out there and had someone kill Dumbledore for him. Did Rocky sit back and live life merely as a beloved boxing legend after he was defeated by Clubber? No! He wanted to but Apollo wouldn’t let him.  And he was better for it.  We all know what we want, and we all need to get out there and earn it.

2.              Find a New Hobby.

·      At some point in our lives, we have found something that we love to do.  For me it is watching baseball on TV while I am taking a nap.  Perhaps for you, it is judging people who ride public transportation, or maybe its gun shopping. While that is all good and fine, we need to get out there and find something new.  When you start a new chapter in life you may find something that can catapult you within inches of achieving your goal.  Whether it be through new people you meet, or something as simple as a new experience that reignites a flame that once burned deep in your soul.

3.              Never GiveUp.

·      After about a day of pursuing my dream, I feel like I have done a lot and deserve a break.  I wake up the next morning with the intentions of building on what I had done the day before, but when the alarm goes off I decide that I deserve a year off.  When in all reality, I have done nothing, but I take the year off anyway.  You don’t deserve a break until you have gained something.  One step isn’t enough; it’s a start.  Lots of people start something worth starting and never finish.  So don’t stop until you finish.  Even if it seems impossible.  I never thought I would be able to read or write, but here I am.

4.              Don’t Have a Stupid Dream.

·      Lastly, and most importantly, don’t have a stupid dream.  Don’t have a dream of getting an OK job to support a family that you might have one day.  When you were a kid you didn’t want to be manager of a Starbucks.  You wanted to be an astronaut, or a garbage man. Don’t get me wrong, being the manager of Starbucks is great, we all need some money to pursue our dreams.  But don’t ever be content with what you have.  There is always going to be something better out there.  Even if it is writing a blog after work, or breeding and selling dogs on the weekends. Whatever you want to do. 

So my point wasn’t to discourage people who have steady jobs, but to dig up a dream you once had and light a fire under your butts.  What you have isn’t bad, but it could be better.

Sincerely

Rage

31 Days of Horror: Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary.  The soil of a man’s heart is stonier.  Creepy Indian burial grounds, cats, Herman Munster, and spinal meningitis.  This combination makes for one incredible movie.  This movie is full of people and animals rising from the dead, incredibly disturbing sister-monsters, and people getting hit by trucks while they are jogging.  Still the most disturbing part of this movie is when the cat dies.  It gets me every time.  Did they just kill the cat for the movie? Either they killed the cat or they got the Tom Hanks of cats because he is one heck of an actor. This movie does a good job of showing you that children will make you lose your mind. But no matter how crazy you are, you will never get along with the dead unless you are dead too. The best part of this movie is when the baby boy shows how much he wants to be like his father by playing doctor with the neighbor.  Like father like son. It truly is heart warming.  Because of Gage’s last second attempt at being a playful kid, I give this movie respectable 7 out of 10 stars. I want to leave you with one last word of advice. Remember, sometimes dead is better.

31 Days of Horror: Black Swan

Black Swan.  I initially wasn’t planning on allowing this to be one of the 31 days of horror, however, after I started watching it I realized that this has all of the classic traits of a horror film.  It’s got it all; mystery, suspense, disturbing images, and a girl turning into a swan.  Not to mention guys in tights.  Wasn’t it weird when Natalie Portman’s legs turn into bird legs?  That’s when I knew this movie was a horror movie.  I like how this movie answers the thousand-year-old question.  What do you have to do to take your ballet skills to the next level? You have to lose yourself and go completely crazy.  Seriously, nothing can make any sense.  It makes me wonder if I can take whatever I do to the next level if I lose my mind.  Maybe some day we will all find out.  This movie also proves once and for that no matter what you do backstage, ballet is still going to be just awful. Although the ballet was boring, the movie was actually quite interesting. I give this move a 7.9 out of 10.

31 Days of Horror: Scream 4

Scream 4.  The one where Mr. and Mrs. ex-Cox-Arquette struggle to act like their marriage is struggling on set while at home their marriage really was struggling.  I can see why a guy would use a knife to murder all of those people.  No one can shoot the broad side of a barn in Hollywood except Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under.  Why is it that no one can shoot a person from 20 feet away if their life or the life of the person who is getting stabbed to death depended on it?  The thing that bothered me the most, however, was that Hayden Panettiere didn’t die in the first scene of the movie.  What was with her?  She is supposed to be a girl in high school and yet she always looks like she is on her way to the courtroom.  Her weird t-shirt/pant suit combinations along with her reverse mullet make her look like another 40-year-old Courtney Cox.  This movie was interesting in the way that it made fun of something just like the Scream series and yet it tried to make it serious at the same time.  I can’t say that it was good.  So I decided to give this film a 3.4 out of 10 stars.

31 Days of Horror: The Thing

The Thing.  The movie where Kurt Russell looks macho.  How about that one alien who can take over an entire human race?  That is pretty unbelievable.  But what is more unbelievable is Dr. Blair’s computer that predicted that an alien could take over the entire world population in 27,000 hours.  It’s hard to believe that they had anything back then that our app store doesn’t have now. I’m not claiming that Kurt Russell couldn’t have predicted that, but no computer would have had the balls to say something like that.  But I digress.  Do you remember when that guys stomach turned into a big mouth and then bit the Doc’s arms off?  And then that guys head turned into a giant head spider that almost sneaks out unnoticed.  Those are the types of things that make John Carpenter stand out.  Only a guy who really knew what good cinema was would think of making a guys stomach turn into a mouth that then bites off a guys arms.  I don’t exactly know what The Thing was, but I know that it was one crazy monster that could bite your arms off.   I think the scariest part of this show is the unknown.  The only thing we know about The Thing is it can replicate any living thing and it can bite your arms off.  I think I would rather have it bite my head off then my arms.  If I didn’t have any arms I would just die. But again, I digress.  This movie kept me on the edge of my seat.  It makes you think.  Because it was so much fun to watch, I give The Thing a rating of 7.6 out of 10 stars.

31 Days of Horror: A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street.  The one where it makes Freddy look like a pedophile instead of the cool “in your face,” in your dreams, down to earth kind of killer.  I never really knew the story behind Freddy Krueger.  So I was pleased when I heard this one could lay all of the question to rest.  The only problem with this is now I find myself rooting for the snot nosed brats that he is terrorizing.  I’m only joking, the only person who I take more pleasure in seeing terrorize his enemies is Vin Diesel as Dom from the Fast and the Furious saga. That part where he makes that jerk in the diner cut his own throat with a steak knife is epic. Even more epic then that time Vin Diesel wheelied that car in the quarter mile against Paul Walker at the end of The Fast and The Furious. Not to mention the part where Freddy kills that skinny wiener in the jail cell, and his cellmate gets really scared, that part sends chills up my spine.  Kind of like when Vin Diesel made an appearance at the end of The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. This movie was so good I would almost put it on the level that Fury put the Ninja Turtles on.  I give this movie an even 8 out of 10 stars. 

31 Days of Horror: Sleeping Beauty

You guessed it, Rage is at class again so I have chosen to write about a not so typical horror film, Sleeping Beauty.  The difference between this post and my previous post on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that I believe Sleeping Beauty can legitimately be classified as a horror movie, or at least a very scary movie, especially for kids.  I base that statement entirely on one character: Maleficent.  I propose that there is no more frightening villain in all of Disney animated moviedom.  She has a cold, calculating voice that she calmly uses to send chills down the spine.  If she makes a threat, no matter how extravagant, you better believe she is going to follow through with it, big time.  And the icing on the cake?  She can turn into a dragon!  Not a lame cartoony dragon that you could make fun of (a la Jafar turning into a snake in Aladdin), a terrifying dragon that could haunt your dreams if you were ten years old (or even thirty, I don’t think that dragon ever gets entirely non-frightening).  What other villains could compete?  We’ve already discussed Jafar (who comes off the fool at the end of the movie, tricked into becoming a genie?  What a chump), Scar (coward), Hades (hilarious, but not scary)?  The only villains who come close to Maleficent are her fellow villainesses Ursula from The Little Mermaid and the Queen from Snow White.  Why is it that the earlier Disney movies produced the most terrifying villains?  And why were these villains all women?  I am not going to get into that, because I don’t know.  But while I’m here I might as well spit out a few ideas.  Maybe because girls are way more scary than guys.  Maybe because girls are much smarter than guys when it comes to devious planning.  Maybe back in the day children weren’t coddled like they are today, and they were allowed to be properly terrified by children’s movies.  Do you think parents could scare their kids into eating their vegetables by threatening that the computer from Wall-E is gonna come get them?  Not a chance!  Have them watch Sleeping Beauty, and they’d be doing the dishes, washing the car, and mowing the lawn just to avoid a visit from Maleficent.  In my humble opinion, based on the comedy provided by the fairy god mothers, the lovely music, the romance, and especially the terrifying villainess, I give this movie 7.4 out of 10 stars.