Superman Saves Too

I'm writing this because of Superman and I never thought this would be one of the hardest blogs I'd ever write. But not for the reasons you'd think. I've been having a rough day, hell, a rough month, maybe even year. As I go along, I hope to convey why I'm having a hard time writing this and why the blog is written because of Superman, but not because of Superman. Lets start with that confusing notion.

You may be thinking, Casey's writing a blog about Superman because he's a fan of Superman and just needs something to write about in his boredom. This is not the case. I'm writing specifically about Superman today because I just experienced a moment when I needed him the most. Yes, a moment when I needed a fictional superhero to help me get through something.

This is a hard blog to write because of that something, and that something was: giving up. Not giving up doing something, but giving up the person I am simply because I'm tired of being that person. This is where Superman comes in and why I like him.

Many people have compared me to Superman and for good reason, I aspire to be like him. I don't mean I want to fly and shoot lasers out of my eye (although that would be awesome), I mean I want to be like the type of person he is. Superman is a symbol of hope, he is a man who has achieved great things fictionally and hell, non-fictionally. Not only can his character stand the test of time but his comic does as well. This is why I like the big blue boyscout.

Every time I feel down, or angry, or just feel like reading a comic I always go for a Superman one. I do this because every time I open a Superman comic I see a world where the nerdy nice guy gets the girl. I see a world where one man can achieve great things. I see a world where, no matter how hard things get, that one nerdy nice man never gives up.

I was very close to giving up today. Not on life, but on how I wanted to live it. A lot of people don't think I can be an asshole, that I'm always going to be the nice guy. But you know what, in a way they're right, but not for the reasons they may think. The nice guy isn't the nice guy because he's simply born that way, he's the nice guy because goddamn it he chooses to be, through thick and thin he never gives up.

I was moments away from up and deciding to be an asshole, yes, just deciding to be mean to everyone (and yes, I know how, just ask the rare person I've been an asshole to), but at the last second something saved me: a symbol, a character, a hero. This something pulled me from my anger, from my sadness, and from my hate back into the light that I struggle to remain in. Today, I was saved by Superman.

... and then you die.

What is the meaning of life? That's a tough one to answer. Go ahead and ask yourself that question and think about it for a moment. Now consider that whatever answer you came up with, will probably not be the same as what some of your friends, your co-workers, or even your family came up with. So what does that mean? How can you truly know what the right answer is? Absurdism says you can't.

We seem to live in a world in which we constantly search for answers to things and can't find any. Or instead, we find a bunch of answers and can't decide which one is right, which pretty much means we haven't found an answer. Absurdism, lets you choose your own answer, while simultaneously understanding that there technically isn't an answer, at least not one you can find. You essentially get 3 options with this:

1) Become religious: your answer is God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or Tom Cruise. They bring meaning to your life, they created it after all.

2) Kill yourself: end the life that you can't find meaning for. This one is essentially a cop-out, 'cause no matter how you look at life, you're here. Ending it would just be... I don't know, absurd.

3) Accept the bullshit, default to atheism, or find your own damn meaning: fight the power. Seems to be the best option, unless you're religious, then I refer you to number one.

For all intents and purposes, life seems to suck. That's the old saying, right? Life sucks and then you die. Go ahead and ask any "born-again Christian," I bet they'd say, "if it wasn't for Jesus, my life would suck right now." Ask any apathetic/lethargic person and they'd say, "life sucks, I'm going to go die." In general, people seem to think that life sucks. But to all of those people, all of them, that includes you Mr. and Mrs. God-fearing-Christian: Fuck you for telling me my life sucks!

Granted, you never said my life sucks specifically, but you sure implied it by saying your life sucks or that life sucks in general. Hate to quote High School Musical here, but we really are all in this together. You're life sucking without Jesus implies that my life sucks because I haven't found Jesus. You're life sucking because of all the bullshit in it implies that my life sucks because I'm going through similar bullshit. I don't think life should suck at any point, because really, what would be the point in that?

I sure as hell can't abide a world that sucks, so I choose to believe it doesn't suck by believing that life is indifferent to my problems, and boy do I have ton of them. But lets be honest here, you don't want to hear them. So what do I do to face my problems?

Whatever the hell I want, that's what. The way I look at most decisions in life is as follows: there's either a God (spirutual deity), or there isn't, either way, it doesn't really matter. Follow me on this one, if there is a God, my problems don't mean anything, 'cause eventually I'll be delivered from them. If there isn't a God, then nobody keeping track anwyays, so why worry about it?

On that note, I'll finish with one more thing. Life can be the coolest and most awesome thing in the world if you fight for it and choose to live the life you want to live... and then you die, beyond that, doesn't really matter, you're here now, make the best of it. Thanks for reading!

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Before I give my review of this movie I must preface this by saying three things: 1) I'm going to review the trailer before hand. (Promised someone I would.) 2) It was a loooooong movie. 3) This will probably be a loooooong post, so I hope you've got a ton of food stored somewhere.

TRAILER
Got to be one of the best trailers of the year, but then again, Sucker Punch had a good trailer and I heard that movie sucked. The trailer had a lot going for it, imagery, music, everything matched the beat, and all of it built up to the title of the film. The trailer is even more perfect because it serves as an analogy to all the hype built up about this movie. I'm sure you've heard of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (it won't make you a hipster if you have, unless you say you liked it before everyone else liked it.) It started as an award winning novel (later trilogy) and then was adapted to film by the Swedish thereby making TGWTDT (2011) a remake of a foreign film and a book-to-movie adaptation. All of this being said, I don't want to reveal my thoughts of the movie just yet, all you need to know is that it was an awesome trailer.

MOVIE
Alright, lets talk about the director, David Fincher. I've liked 4 out of the 5 movies by him. His first one, "Alien 3", sucked so hard I wonder how he even made it as a director. Then again, this is the guy who made Fight Club, Benjamin Button, and The Social Network all award winning wet dreams. So he's clearly a skilled director and it shows in TGWTDT. Every scene felt how it needed to feel and every image was captured almost perfectly. But then, I didn't really have a problem with Alien 3's directing, just the rest of it. So I'll move on from directing.

The acting was atrocious...ly amazing! As one of the people I saw the movie with said (and I'm paraphrasing): it's nice to see Daniel Craig as someone other than Bond. Rooney Mara, otherwise remembered as the chick Jessie Eisenberg bitched about in The Social Network, did all sorts of an amazing job, especially with her accent. I honestly thought they cast a foreign actress for the part, turns out Rooney's from New York, go figure. The rest of the cast is filled with a bunch of old famous people, so they obviously did good.

Now my final note of the film. So I hope I've kept you on the edge of your seat with what I thought about this film, just as the mystery of the film kept me on the edge of mine. But seeing as I've mostly given good notes, you can probably guess what I'm about to say.... I hated Alien 3... but I loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Absolutely loved it. It was about 3 hrs long and had a good handful of moment where it could have ended. But just like in the Lord of the Rings, it had to close off a few things it set up in the film. No problem here with doing that, it makes the movie a far more rich experience to watch. I give it an A+, see the movie. One last thing, if topics such as rape, murder, or religion leave you with a feeling of unease, you may want to stay away from the movie, unless you think you can handle it, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really is the feel bad movie of Christmas.

The Mostly True Story of the Coolest MoFo in the World: Me. (The abridged version.)

It started in 1991 when momma Rafler and daddy Rafler had a baby together, they
named him Casey The Well-Endowed. By age 5, Casey was gettin' all the bitches at
Pre-School when he showed off his tricycle, it had tricked out rims, an awesome
stereo system, and hydrolics. The ladies couldn't resist. At age 10 Casey
developed a serious Coke addiction. Coca-Cola was his favorite soda for the
longest time. But then, in his 14 year of life, tragedy struck.The dreaded
diabetus set in and Casey had to switch to diet, no worries though, diet is
quite slimming. At age 15 Casey moved to the chillest state in the Union,
California. He was originally from the most uptight state, Kansas. It was here
that Casey spent the rest of his life up until now, age 20 (almost 21). With the
coolest friends surrounding him, in the coolest state possible, Casey Rafler
became: The Coolest Motherfucker in the World (Who's also well-endowed.) True
story.

Movie Review: Immortals

It's been a while since I've done a movie review, I watched Immortals on Friday and figured it was good enough for me to do a review. Here it goes!




So I should start off by saying that if you own a phone and bring it to the theater you should naturally turn it off. Another thing you can do is put it somewhere where it won't fall on the ground. I don't care where: purse, pocket, pants, where the sun don't shine; just keep it from falling on the damn ground. Anyways, I'll move on from that point.




This movie was produced by the same people who produced 300 and was advertised as being a similar type of movie. I went into it thinking they'd fall horribly short of making anything remotely as awesome as 300 simply because Zack Snyder and Frank Miller didn't work on this film in anyway. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movie lived up to the action the imagry and the coolness of 300.




On that note I should mention that the director did a decent job. Yes, the narrative was a little crappy at some points, but again, the imagry, action, and coolness picked up the slack. Also, I had no clue who Tarsem Singh was before this movie and he seems like he's just beginning his career, hope he goes far.




The acting in this movie was absolutely amazing, but only with 3 people, the rest kind of sucked. The three good actors include: Mickey Rourke (Hyperion), Luke Evans (Zeus; aka Mr Mustachio), and Henry Cavill (Theseusuperman). Rourke is just a good actor, yes he was play a rough and tough bad guy as always, but he does a damn fine job of it. Luke Evans, in my opinion, is the embodiment of Zeus, I never really understood Zeus' motives as a god when I took mythology class (he just seemed like an old pervert with anger issues), but with Evans, everything about Zeus seemed to click (except for the mustache). Seriously, just watch how he acts, every scene is powerful and all the parts about Zeus that I never got (like non-interference with humans and the anger issues) all seemed to make sense in this movie. Anyways, now we come to Henry Cavill, just like Evans, Cavill seemed to embody a certain something, something awesome, something heroic, something (dare I say)... super. He's totally going to make an awesome Superman! I much approve!




Overall, this movie is an enjoyable experience. Even if you find things to hate about it I guarantee you'll find something to like about it also. Ladies and gay guys get hot man abs, dudes and dykes get a female nude shot or two, and everyone gets action and decent acting for the most part. My final grade is a B, see it if you get a chance. No loss if you wait, but if you want a fun weekend movie to see with your friends make it this one or Harold and Kumar (if you're with your stoner buddies).

Pieces of Me, A Peace in Me.

Break it down bit by bit, piece by piece, what do you see? An empty shell of a man with nothing left to lose. A lonely heart standing in motion. Gone by the moment, gone by the day, fade into all that everyone sees but nobody accepts. You expect, but in return get less than put out. First you give up all, everything. Then you realize you need it all back. No worries my child, all will be well. Your wounds will be taken on in time. When the moon rises the sun does as well. Miles apart, too close for comfort. Time enough for change, the realization that you are everything you need to be. In this moment you are king. What do they make of you? What do you make of yourself? Are you everything you wanted to be? Are you at the destination of your desire? Motion stands still. Feeling escapes you and numbness is not your friend. You're wanted, dead or alive. Enter beauty. Enter the song that captures your sound, enter the girl that captures your heart, enter life. Nowhere, everywhere. Surrounding the seconds. A name eternal, but one without a name. And life will be, and you'll move closer, bit by bit, piece by peace to the soul. To morality, to intelligence, to disbelief, to sin. The motion of your heart, unstoppable, unbound. There for all to see. Gaining more than glory. Everything rushes in, and all is well.

Dreams

You ever have one of those dreams that stick with you when you wake up? I'm sure you have, I've had them. I can't be the only one who's had them, they're probably quite common. I had one of those dreams last night, or by the time you're reading this, two nights ago. I thought about it all day up until now and I'm not sure I'll be able to stop thinking about it for a while, that's why I figured I should write this. Dreams are a powerful thing.




It was quite a simple dream really, me, others, and stuff. You want me to get anymore generic? But this dream was filled with emotion and that's the stuff that sticks with you. A mix of just the right emotions and just the right imagery, well, that makes a memory and dreams like these are one's not easily forgotten.



I've seen these dreams force decisions upon people, I've seen these dreams become wishes, I've seen these dreams become reality. Perhaps that's why they are so powerful. They make you aspire, achieve, and attain. They find your deepest desires and make them a reality, at least in some world. That's what makes them so appealing, the chance that literally in your wildest dreams you can rule the world, find true love, or destroy everything around you (if you have a dark side.)




I can speculate all I want about why these dreams are so powerful, ultimately, the only answer I can come up with is: heart. Not the thing that beats in your chest. I'm talking about the existential heart, y'know, the thing Ma-Ti yells when the Planeteers call upon the Captain. Your mind, body, and soul (if you believe you have one) are all influenced by this heart. The emotions you feel in these dreams last into your waking hours, either leaving you happy about life or depressed. Your "heart" represents the deepest desires within you, conquering that world, conquering love, etc.




What you do with your heart is entirely up to you. If it's broken, mend it. If it's happy, rejoice. Accept your heart and your dreams as one. Your heart is big enough, it can hold your dreams. And always remember: don't be afraid to dream bigger.