dashPunk

Upon hearing Matthew Greenberg is hired to do a remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary I remembered my first experience of the movie.  It was a truly terrifying movie because of the setting and peripheral events making it a true 3D experience.

I watched Pet Sematary for the first time as a young child at the family’s old farmhouse in Connecticut.  It is one of those scary type of old houses built in the 1800’s.  Complete with secret passageways and even a mud floor basement. It is probably haunted if not the feel would leave one believing every old creek and bump in the night was due to paranormal activity.

It was a late warm summer night when we started the movie.  The window was open to let in a cooling breeze.  The Lights turned off so the only eerie glow in the room was cast from the television.  Strange shadows danced about the room as it flickered.

Just as the movie reaches it’s climatic moment it happened.  Something big moved past the window.  We know it was big because its footsteps thumped in the soft grass.  With each impact the animal huffed.  The kind of huff that is a mix of an exhale and a growl, low, rumbling.

In an instance the gun rack was emptied.  Light flashed about the room from both the overhead lights and the flashlights that each armed occupant now carried. It amazes me how fast all of us moved  both to secure the area and to search for whatever it was outside.

The oddest thing, we never found what it was that moved past the window.  No animal left lurking in the yard and no tracks left in the soft ground outside of the window.

(via /Film)

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The only live worth living is the one you are truly passionate about!

I hope by now you have discovered your passions and dreams, but I need to start practicing what I preach:

My Dream

I suppose the easiest way for me to explain my dream is to say that I want to be a cross between George Lucas, Stan Lee, and Gene Roddenberry.  That entails:

• Books
• Comics
• Movies/Series
• Games

I have a lot of ideas, stories, and settings that I want to share with the world.  I have already started with my books, but there is so much more I want to do.

So much of the community I love is maligned by the mainstream.  I want to help people feel comfortable with who they are and what they do.  To do that, I need to promote:

• Fandom
• Filk
• Fanfilm
• Fanfiction
• Remix Culture

I have some ideas about how to do this, and I have set some goals for myself.

For starters, I want to write at least 2,400 words a day.  Eventually, I want to push that higher, but it is a good starting goal.  I am going to divide my writing between dashPunk and my fiction.  Hopefully, I will be able to become disciplined enough to write 2,400 words s day for dashPunk and 2,600 a day for my fiction.  I have written 5,000 words a day before, but it is something to build up to.

I am reading feeds on the topics I want to talk about, and reaching out to others in those fields to hopefully get people to help out.

I am going to spend more time participating in Project: Shadow and Podcasting.

I am also building several table top role playing games just for fun.

What are your plans?

Hopefully, by now you have figured out some plans to achieve your dreams.  What are they?  Is there anything we can do to help?

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Find more videos like this on Project: Shadow

Thanks to John The Rogue Demon Hunter from the community at Project: Shadow.  This amazing fan video uses 7 Days to the Wolves by Nightwish as the soundtrack and footage from the three Underworld movies.

I love how the entire video is like a meta contemplation by Selene about the days to come in the war with the Lycans and the causes behind the conflict that started the war in the first place.

The opening was nice.  I particularly liked the use of the text “Underworld” to help give context for those not familiar with the movies.

I really enjoyed that he features the love story that underpins the conflict both in the past and what fuels the present conflict.

Featuring Vincent is also a nice touch since he is the antagonist throughout.

Overall what a great job and a beautiful homage to the Underworld story and Nightwish.

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An idea hit me. One that I love. One that I really want to write, but I have one little problem…

I am not sure what genre to set it in!! The basic idea is to explore spirituality, power, and the power of relationships to save people.

I know that is a little vague, but it is a complex story with a generic outline that spans four novels at the moment.

My biggest problem is that I can see the story existing in three different settings

1. My existing Barrens End setting, where Liquid Sky, Fate’s Harrow, and Shine like Thunder take place.
2. A new modern supernatural horror setting that would be somewhere between the Vampire Chronicles, Harry Potter, and the Cthulu Mythos.
3. A unique hybrid fantasy setting, a kind of sword and sorcery/dark fantasy/supernatural horror/steampunk thing.

I can honestly see the story in each of these settings, and how each will affect the plot. I am partly looking for comments, and part thinking out loud. I am really unsure which way to go.

What would you all like to see?  I am really open to suggestions

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A tribute to those writers out there when their minds and words fail them:

… perfect poster for my day so far!  I used to live a life of no regrets and I think it is time to return to that reality.

Rules for a no regret life **warning it is brutality honest**

• No regrets.. not allowed… not accepted
• Think twice, act once
• If you are going to do something mean it or don’t do it.
• If you mess up something either demonstrate your sincerity and fix it or be honest about not caring and move on.
• Regrets waste life (time + effort + joy+ purpose=life)

How does this poster motivate you?

(Thanks Brian Chang via FriendFeed)

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The Great Pit of Carkoon the resting place of the great Sarlacc.  What a great creature capturing my imagination from the first time I watched return of the Jedi.

As a child I would love playing with antlions imagining them to be the Sarlacc.  I would capture ants and bring them to the antlion’s pit casting the ant into it as a punishment for defying the will of the Hutts.  Then I would watch the show as the ant tried to escape the mighty antlion.

Antlion’s are an insect in the larval stage of it’s life.  They like sandy areas and my sandbox was a popular place for them.  They would create a funnel type of trap to capture other small bugs traveling across the surface pulling them under the sand like the Sarlacc and eat the bugs.

Antlion pit on left and an Antlion on the right

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Great News everyone!  Comedy Central have ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama!

Futurama is one of my favorite shows, and the movies only served to remind me how much I needed more.  Now that the show is coming back, I am as giddy as Zoidberg catching a wiff of the stench of anchovies.

My only hope is, they will not retool the show or make any major changes that will screw it up.  My fingers are crossed.

(via /Film)

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Throughout one’s life there arises nuisances that annoy and antagonize us like a fly at the dinner table.  The instinct is to swat that annoyance, rid it from our lives and return to whatever it is we are working on.  Though that is our instinct and the most immediate satisfying action, are there times when we should bear the annoyance and not swat the fly?

I love the scene in the book Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind when Richard and Kahlen are faced with the temptation to swat the Blood flies that were annoying them.  In this instance the annoyance was not only buzzing about them but they were even stinging and biting them.  The real danger they were in was if they attacked the small annoyance they would have gained the attention of a very dangerous and lethal predator a long tail Gar.

This scene is a great metaphor for our own lives and gives us the answer to the question: are there times when we should bear the annoyance and not swat the fly?  The lesson here is it’s sometimes wiser to tolerate the small annoyances because attacking the small stuff can make a situation much worse then it already is.  In other words as I’m told often “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

There are many real life examples of when people should not have swatted at their small annoyances and because they did they ended up in much bigger trouble.  Watch politics for a moment and the examples flow.  Take for example the young couple on a date who couldn’t leave the fly alone and ended up spilling their drink over their plate and nice outfit, not to mention the embarrassment.   For me, recently, I lost an afternoon because I could not leave the small plumbing annoyance alone and because I messed with it I made a situation that was ignorable into a bigger situation that had to be fixed.

The next time you are faced with an annoyance, endure for at least a moment and seek the truth behind the situation.  Discern and ask yourself if I go after that small annoyance will it make the situation worse.  If not then swat away but heed the Seeker’s warning for if you swing at the wrong one a long tail Gar might just be waiting for you.

Get your copy of Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind here and enjoy.

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I get sick for 1 day and the whole world changed. So much catch up to do. My email overflows.

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I’m a geek too!

(via New TeeVee)

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