BeetleJuice

Hello my dear fellow peepsters, it has been a delightful day of exploration for me. Do you ever decide to try to re-create yourself? Do you ever decide to try to clear out all the old baggage and/or negative debris that clings to you like all that junk that was clinging onto Sarah in The Labyrinth? Do you ever decide to ruthlessly cut away and discard the useless junk and only carry the most important things (which usually end up not being "concrete-things" anyway...)?

I am Constantly trying to do that. It is hard at times, because I am naturally born and raised to be frugal. So, discarding items is a fine line between wasting and just being reasonable; on the other hand, not discarding is a fine line between being frugal and a pack rat.

 An old pair of pants that "could" be altered.....
A wood plaque that "could" be stripped and sanded down for a new art project....

 But am I ever going to take the time to do that?..
Would it Really be saving me time and money?....
Have I So Far taken the time to do any of those things? ...

 Answer:    no.


So, I am clearing away the debris and starting fresh.
And in doing so, I have made room for new things. I read in my Happiness Project journal to clear off a shelf and leave it empty and clean: making empty space can be uplifting because it has clean open potential. Always give yourself room for potential growth, we become hemmed in with all of life's trappings, but try to leave room for your mind to breath, in leaving some open air for your mind, you also are freeing your body.

So, I cleared off a shelf of my own and made room for something new: BeetleJuice. First off, I had never seen this "BeetleJuice" till yesterday. I decided to try it out on that clean shelf and see if I liked it. I do like it, but let me just say... Pre-tty wild. It was not what I imagined for some reason. What did I imagine?.... I don't know... I guess I didn't imagine BeetleJuice being the sort of "savior/villian" he turned out to be. I REALLY wasn't expecting the fabulous adult humor tossed through this either! I had no idea the movie would be more about the deceased married couple and their becoming acclimated to the compromised way of life, well, after-life, they found themselves in. However, despite all of the unexpectedness, I enjoyed it.

Suicide seems to be an underlying topic in this film too. You find out suicide cases become these fairy looking civil servants for all afterlife cases.... hmmmm....  Anyway, I also had a moment realizing, that Wow, I had never really seen Alec Baldwin so young. He's still good looking as an older man, but now I can see why they called him a stud in Red October ( a film I watched vaguely as a kid and have no real memory of it at all.) ANYWAY.

I enjoyed the odd spelling of his name in the movie "BeetleGuese." Michael Keaton is just flipping nuts, man. He's really cool. Think about this for a moment. The man played BatMan. The man played BeetleJuice. He was in The Other Guys. He has played the full spectrum, and is just amazing. Imagine being that open minded. I want to be like that.


So, I am totally being spacey and jumping all over random subjects, so I will shut up and hope you take care my dears, and try something new, trust yourself to do something different and break out of the daily grind. Be safe and have a happy weekend!!

Snow White and the Huntsman

Good evening my dears, it is getting late for me, and I am delighted to be able to bring a pretty recent film into the blogger "limelight."



I had the good fortune of purchasing the latest version of  the classic fairy tale of Snow White: the princess who's spirit is connected with nature and brings peace to the land by ridding a kingdom of an evil queen.  This version is titled "Snow White and the Huntsman." Starring Kirsten Stewart and Charlize Theron, it definitely isn't camera shy of any close ups. Aside from familiar faces, the story line is more of an epically sculpted landscape than the more previous fluffy adaptions.  I thoroughly enjoyed the extended cut that lasts two hours and fifteen minutes of graphic battle scenes and impressive digital effects. I had been wavering as to whether I really wanted to spend the money to buy this, but I was excuisitely surprised and pleased to have made the purchase.

This version provides a background glimpse into the evil queen's beginnings and as the story matures, so does our understanding of what molded her into such wickedness. But just as we come to understand the queens horrific past, we also are able to see the parallel childhood of the princess and how both girls dealt with tragedy in opposite manners. There is a line that the now grown princess confides, "I used to hate her (the evil queen, Ravenna) but now I only feel sadness...."

When Snow White is awakened by the kiss of her true love, she speaks to rally the people to aide her against the queen and she says, "I have seen what she (the evil queen) sees... I can kill her..." She understands why she is evil, she does not judge her, but she cannot stand by and watch her destroy innocent peoples lives.

Have you ever had to survive something? Have you ever faced captivity and faced evil?

There are two types of people. People that cannot stand up to evil and cower to it. And then there are people that look into the face of evil, and refuse to look away until they see into the heart of evil, and they do not turn away; they recognize it as something that dwells in all of us, and they stand up to it and rise above it.

There are flowers that wilt in frost and winter, and then there are flowers that bloom and remain strong despite what the world has surrounded them with.

I am going to say, sometimes surviving is merely holding onto an unexplainable faith that there is something good- something worth holding out for- waiting for us in the near future.  And when we find that hope, that bright light..... we would rather die that day fighting for that light and hope than live another day of "this death," as Snow White calls it when rallying everyone to her.

In summation, I am wishing for you all that if you have not yet found that light, to hold on to faith: I Know you will find it if you never stop hoping and looking for it.

And to those of you that Have found that light.. you have found that hope. .... I implore you to have the courage and strength to fight to hold onto it. If you work at never losing it and fighting for it, you are truly alive, anything else is only a shadow of what your life has to offer you.

I would never ask of you my dear readers anything I do not demand of myself as well. Life is difficult and we are all unique individuals with similar and different pasts, but we are all the same at our cores. We all contain good and evil in us, and it is up to us to decide which we will give into, which we will survive from and which we will hold onto and never let go. Be honest and courageous. I was not born a fighter, but I have trained myself to fight for what I love, anything else is not living, anything else would only fill me with regret and useless wishing.

Always with ernest hope,

Read Riding Hood