The Drink Tank 370

Fear

James Bacon ~ Editors ~ Chris Garcia Copy~editing by Vanessa Applegate

I am nothing if not a collection of my Fears. When I started thinking about this issue, my first thought was Im going to have a lot to say, followed by James will have so little to say. Thats the big difference between us - I am a bundle of Fear, uncertainty, and especially doubt. James is certainty, dedication, and powering through. Were very different there, and its part of why we work so well together. I am unsure if were on the right path - he knows its gonna work. In the end, neither of us are completely right, but together we hit the nail on the head; we have a vision and it doesnt 100% turn out, but it always happens. Its one of the reasons that I get so upset when folks question James involvement with The Drink Tank. Without him, The Drink Tank would not exist now. He handles the Fear. My Fear. And thats where things get interesting. Im seeing a new woman, Vanessa. She gets that I am a bundle of Fears in a way that is very different from James, and anyone else Ive dated, it seems. Shes seen some of them, and she tries to soothe them, which is nice, but she doesnt deny that many of them are real. Some Fears are obviously not, even I know that, but she gets the ones that are. Ive no greater fear than death.You all know that, Ive written about it before. Im 40 soon, and that scares me. Decades tend to flip me out. Death is the BIG DEAL and Im scared of it and it colors my entire perception of the world. Its not an easy thing and I cant see a time when it will not be a looming presence in my mind; that hive of wasps each with a little bit of panic attached to the stinger that can pin-prick you again and again. Its my cross to bear, I guess, but it also keeps me safe. Limits me, yes, but you may have noticed Im 39 years dying and not yet dead... So here is our issue about Fear, in all its forms!
2

A Table of Contents
Page 2 - Editorial by Christopher J Garcia Page 4 - Two Mouths Rock - An Analysis of the Alien Movie Franchise by Tonya Adolfson Page 11 - The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker A Review by Chuck Serface Page 15 - So No Shit There I Was by Lenore Corvus Page 18 - A Selection of Horror Films Judged By Their Physical Effects on Me by Christopher J Garcia Page 22 - What Scares You? Facebook Answers That Very Question... Page 27 - What I Fear by Christopher J Garcia

Art Credits
Cover and Page 10 by Espaa Sheriff Page 3, 19, 22-23 - Art by Vanessa Applegate Page 14 and Back Cover - Art by Chelise Hyatt Page 17 - Art by Bill Rotsler

An Analysis of the Alien Movie Franchise

Two Mouths Rock

by Tonya Adolfson

When Alien popped into viewers nightmares

in the summer of 1979, it showed us a world unimagined by most when they think of the movie classification Thriller. Alien was drama, science fiction, and psychological trauma all disguised as a simple salvage operation, and it launched a franchise that has spanned generations. Some of the movies have been criticized as not being appropriate or not good movies. I will admit that an analysis of the franchise will offer questions and inconsistencies. However, I still own all of them. Alien started everything and, like Jaws (also a personal favorite), it produced a virus on the psyche that has infected normal, simple basics. Alien is to space what Jaws is to water, though I dont know if well ever get a Xenomorph Week on Nat Geo. Pity too. I would so watch that until, of course, they tried to say the facehugger at the end of Prometheus was still alive. Alien brought fear in the form of acid blood and an ability to be in places we couldnt see them or fight them, like the shadows or our intestines. They were fast and strong and it didnt matter if it was just a guy in a rubber suit. It wasnt a guy in a rubber suit. It was the monster that killed the main character. And the peripheral characters too. It stepped outside the common Hollywood trope of the Leading Man winning against the Bad Guy. It was groundbreaking in that a Supporting Actress NPC was the one who won
4

the day and she didnt do it by being the best at anything. She did it by being the only one left and scared as hell. Then came Aliens and the whole feel changed. The second installment was an action flick, not a psychological thriller. It introduced Vasquez and Drake to the mix, the couple that, to this day, never felt to me like they did anything sexual, but Drake admired and crushed on Vasquez, and she let him. She didnt do it in the harsh Heathers-style of the popular high school girl. She did it in the manner of a warrior alpha, recognizing a male who offers to beta himself for her. When Drake died,Vasquez was trashed. She had to push it down to do the job. And when Vasquez died, it was a warriors death fighting to give the others a chance. I think her last thought wasnt simple. It was vengeance, acceptance of her fate, and possibly Im coming, Drake. No single thought won that final space. It was a 3-way tie. All the relationships in Aliens had that intricacy without the clutter of airing emotions. Ripley and Newt. Ripley and Hicks. Hudson and Hicks. Apone and his Marines. Gorman and everyone. And the level of hatred that formed for Carter Burke. I still hear the line, They can bill me whenever someone tries to think of money over people in a movie. Luckily, I dont know enough corporate types to have anything like that happen in my real life. Where the first movie gave us hints of crew relationships, the second gave us clear loyalties and friendships. The first movie had value in laying down the threat, then picking off the crew until the last human carried the cat into the cryo-chamber after spacing the monster.The second movie showed the emotional scarring that came from surviving that encounter and the closure of facing the threat and coming out the other side. While the second movie enjoys the distinction of being one of the best sequels in movie history, right up there with Empire Strikes Back, the third movie is often treated like it has no place in the storyline. I strongly disagree. Alien 3, or as we call it, Alien Cubed, had a very important clue about the nature of the monster race:Why the cat was ignored in the first movie. It was too small to serve as a host. Whats more, Jonesy seemed to know that. Jonesy was purring when the alien in the first movie scoped it out. Now,
5

cats will purr when content but they will also purr when hurt, sick, stressed, nervous or near death. The funny thing about that point was that we, as humans, have published studies on the times a cat purrs but most people dont know those facts. A purring cat as the Alien scopes it out for viability was confusing and gave the impression of smugness and pleasure instead of fear. It was like Jonesy knew something we didnt. In this case, he knew that the alien needed a host at least the size of a Rottweiler. Alien 3 revealed that the alien takes on the properties of the host animal, running on all fours. This gave me an idea to write a fan fic piece where the Alien Queen is picked up in space, frozen, by a space ark coming from Earth. The shenanigans that ensued on that were pretty damned impressive. Alien sharks, alien rhinos, alien panthers, alien condors. Can you imagine alien condors? It would be like a roc with two mouths! There were a lot of very lethal options to consume the poor crewmen on that ship, which I dubbed the Noah. Alien 3 also revealed that Ripley had a queen in her.That was an important fashion statement. It showed the monsters had real staying power, that cryo-sleep is one of the best things to happen to alien space travel. It also indicated that the aliens can choose how long they stay in vitro, at least they can when they are queens. Most of the other hosts were killed within twenty-four hours of implantation, but Ripley didnt. She walked around with her alien for a few days before it popped out, long enough for her to decide to throw herself into fiery death in the smelter. Alien: Resurrection baffled many fans of the series, and most of us werent confused by the cloning or the attempts to make a Riley-alien hybrid. Most fans were baffled by the continuity issue of the infant.We see experiment after experiment in living, breathing horror in the lab, but nothing was as wrong as the boss fight at the end. It wasnt that the infant was frightening, as much as it was the wrong choice. I always close my eyes during that fight scene to block out what was apparently a writers strike, a producers stomach flu, or a sudden change in directors. When the monster was ripping its way out of the alien hybrid queens stomach, it looked through
6

the membrane like it was going to be Sigourney Weaver. There were dark nails like hers, and dark hair like hers. There was even a small head, again like hers. When the white, doughy alien infant was the result, me and my family and friends attending the film in the theaters just frowned. We didnt understand. We were all ready for the boss fight where a Ripley with a second mouth and acid blood took on the other Ripley in the cargo bay. She could even have an alien skull plate since those were also dark. In truth, it was seriously the best way to get the Ripley that Weyland Enterprises was truly after. And the fight need not have gone a different way. In fact, having the newborn Ripley die the same way worked just fine. It just would have made more sense than what they did. This was truly my first doubt in the series. When the end credits rolled, I felt like there had been a mistake in production. I wanted to call them up and say, Hey guys, what happened to the footage we shot with Sigourney? You know, the end fight scene? Did someone lose something? I even had the ending bleed into a new ending for my ark story, where Ripley was the corporate person choosing to let humanity get claimed for hosts. It fit nicely into my fan fic about the Noah and gave me a timeline where my little fantasy fit in. The bizarre infant has always struck me as a bad choice because it wasnt as much nightmare fodder as it could have been. The Ripley Infant Alien dolls in the action figures section alone would have paid the salaries of the SFX guys who would have done the work. The Alien Dough Boy was kind of a flop. Of course, this is also during the time when Aliens vs. Predators was altering canon. The little joke by a prop guy in the Predator 2 movie launched a huge fandom, so bright and strong that it got its own franchise. When AVP launched, I was okay with it. The idea that the Predator race used planets like ours thousands of years ago as a hunting ground for rites of passage fit into my Alien universe view just fine. Did that alter our history on a global scale? Well, yeah, but hello? Aliens. Already different. It was no problem for me to wrap my head around that concept. When the Alien queen was dropped into the arctic sea, I wasnt deluded by the idea that she was killed. It had already been
7

proven that she spent the last however many millennia frozen in the bowels of the temple. Granted, the sea is not like space in that the pressure in the deep is absolutely crushing.The commoner alien skulls could be crushed with a boot, but the pressure under the sea is equal on all sides. Without the concentration into a single area, its possible the queens elaborate skull was an evolutionary trait to stop her from being crushed in that environment. Yeah, I could still buy it. And the alien-predator hybrid at the end was delightful!

I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. Alien
But in all families, there is the black sheep, the one child people pretend to forget they have. For the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it was the second one, for The Matrix, it was the third one. For both the Alien and the Predator storylines, it was the Colorado one. Requiem was confusing to those of us who watched the movies because the people making it clearly never had. If an alien, our alien, got loose in a forest in Colorado, that whole scenario in the North Pole would have gone down in two days.We already know the aliens can gestate inside something as small as a Rottweiler. Lets give it elk, and deer, and eagles to nest in. Or bears. Bears are good. With a food source as vast and varied as the wilds of the Rocky Mountains during hunting season to choose from, that alien aint visiting the local pizzeria in Gunnison. If a human with a cell phone gets off his path, he might not be found for the entire winter. I doubt the alien-predator hybrid would have a lick of trouble camping down in a bear den and generating a queen to lay eggs for three months. Then along came Prometheus, and the world went nuts. No one cared that Requiems premise was ridiculous because frankly, all of us just ignored it and decided it didnt make any sense. Prometheus gave us back our original director and producers and was widely regarded as being a prequel to the Alien movies. Ridley Scott himself indicated that, although the universe was the same, it was an original
8

film, not a prequel. The ancestors of the Alien race were present but the Engineers might not have anything to do with the Predator timeline. Understanding this, and understanding that the Alien ancestors did show in the film (like FOUSes, Facehuggers of Unusual Size), having a T-Rex sized monster at the end that was reminiscent of the original source of John Hurts indigestion does make us question that intent. By saying it was set in the same universe but not the same storyline feels almost like an attempt to hand wave the changes to the main established story. Its unnecessary. Not all critters evolved the same way. We know the ship that crashed on LV426 had an Engineer in it.We saw that.We know it had a cache of eggs in the hold.You seriously dont need to explain more than that. They thought they were transporting a weapon somewhere. Turns out they were right. As fans of the franchise, we dont always need something elaborate as an explanation. These things are dangerous, and even when they are known, intelligent beings like to think they can control these things because they A) are arrogant and believe these creatures act solely on instinct and not real intelligence, B) think they are just a tool to be used against enemies, like a magnesium flare, C) dont really realize what they are up against, or, most often, D) all of the above. A) is refuted by the Alien Queen operating the elevator. B) is refuted by the presence of the alien on the escape shuttle on the Nostromo, using its ability to see a place to camouflage itself and still escape, and recognizing the need to escape. It couldnt fly the damned ship. Better to hide until there was no going back. C) was every movie in the franchise. We see corporations and military get away with things in the real world all the time, sneaky stuff that, when discovered, results in a jacket tug and a M.C. Hammer attitude. The only real justice we get against banks that destroy the economy or food chains that impose their phobias upon our sandwiches is the glorious fact that the Aliens would use them as hosts and kill them with a chest burst. After all, You dont see them screwing each other over for a goddamn percentage.

10

The Gift of Fear

by Gavin de Becker
A Review by Chuck Serface
ear, not worry or anxiety which are many times voluntary, is a reaction to signals from our environment that tells us weve entered unsafe ground. This gift of evolution doesnt emanate from a mystical third eye. It doesnt involve spider-sense, cosmic awareness, or whatever makes that robot from Lost in Space wave its arms and shout, Danger, Will Robinson, danger! Evolution has geared us to learn through the process of living, to learn what isnt safe, whether we realize it or not. We need only to listen. De Becker offers the example of Kelly, a young woman who saved her own life by allowing instinct to run its course. A man approached Kelly as she arrived home with groceries. His manner and style of communication set off alarms for Kelly, but he didnt seem immediately dangerous, so she dismissed her feelings, eventually allowing the man into her apartment where he raped her. Later, the man would have killed Kelly had she not escaped when the man left her bedroom. What made Kelly decide to get up and walk out of her apartment to a neighbors while the man rooted around her kitchen? Not panic, but fear. If shed panicked, perhaps she might have frozen on her bed until the man came back to complete his horrific plan. Fear, however, inspired her instinct to get the hell out of there, so it wasnt a decision so much as a reaction.
11

 While never blaming the victim, de Becker discusses case after case in which a client relates details that would have aided in predicting or preventing dangerous situations. The way someone speaks, certain gestures, and even humor can provide the ingredients necessary for successful prediction and prevention. An entire list of behaviors or pre-incident indicators (PINs), might awaken our messengers of intuition. Does someone force you into feeling like a teammate regardless of your unwillingness to do so? Does he discount the word no? Does he negatively typecast in a way that subtly coerces you? Does he offer too many unsolicited details about himself? In The Gift of Fear, readers will find a clear list of these and other behaviors that trigger fear responses. And as I have in the above, de Becker purposefully uses the masculine pronoun throughout his book, because the predominant number of predators are indeed male. Several chapters in the book are dedicated to specific occurrences, such as overly persistent people who wont go away, occupational hazards, intimate enemies (domestic violence), date stalking, violent children, and attacks against public figures. Each of these chapters contains descriptions of PINs, those factors which help to explain why we get that tingle in the back of our brains and how we can listen to avoid later complications. One section within the chapter on violent children gave me pause, however. After citing a statistic from David Blankenhorns Fatherless America about how the prevalence of young men in juvenile detention centers were raised without fully participating fathers, de Becker posits: Fathers are important because they teach boys various ways to be men. Sadly, too many boys learn from the media or from each other what scholars call protest masculinity, characterized by toughness and the use of force. That is not the only way to be a man, of course, but its the only way they know. (272) Can women not teach boys various ways to be men, or counter the messages they receive from the media about toughness and the use of force? Surely the causes of crime are multivariate, so Im leery of placing so much emphasis on any one factor, especially given the prevalence of same-sex parent families and single-parent
12

families with sons who are doing just fine. I do agree, however, that we cant underestimate the effects of childhood abuse and neglect. Whats one method for countering the advent of violent persons? Be loving and responsible parents, regardless of gender or family makeup. Gun-rights advocates have taken exception with de Becker. While supportive of self-defense courses like IMPACT, and very clear that he in no way challenges an individuals right to bear arms, he does advocate for sensible control. He suggests the following, a system he calls bullet control: I propose that we hold gun manufacturers to the same product-liability standards we require from every other consumer product. Imagine if caustic drain opener were sold in easy-pour, flip-top, pistol-grip dispensers made attractive to children by the endorsement of celebrities. Now, drain openers cant hurt people, but they arent made for that purpose. Handguns are made precisely for that purpose, so shouldnt manufacturers be required to build in safety features that have been technologically practical for decades? Even electric drills have safety triggers, yet revolvers do not. (389) This eminently practical reasoning has appeared in other sources. Other methods surely provide better protection, the ones having to do with prediction and prevention as presented in The Gift of Fear. Overall, de Becker has provided a useful guide, including even a lengthy list of questions parents can ask schools about policies theyve adopted to prevent violence. At times, the atonal plop of name-dropping, or at least the indication that he knows important people, impedes the flow of de Beckers prose, as does a narrative puffery that reveals that in part this book stands as an advertisement for his firm. Nonetheless, valuable information about learning to focus our internal instruments resides herein. All would do best to remember that letting another down easy rarely works. Know when to walk away. Learn to trust your instincts. Predict, prevent, and manage that greatest of survival instincts: fear.
13

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man. Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Mans Fear

14

So No Shit There I was

by lenore corvus
o no shit, there I was naked and tied spread eagle to the bed; the ropes winched so tight I could hardly wiggle. As he slid his leather belt over my head and pulled it tight around my neck with one hand, he used the other to press the blade of his knife into my throat. As he whispered some clich into my ear about total power and control, all I could think was... Great, Im sure Ive seen a CSI episode that starts like this. I could picture the camera flashes over the corpse before they cover the body with a sheet. How am I going to explain this one? He loosened his grip on the belt long enough for me to gasp for air. This caused the knife to dig in a little deeper below my ear. I froze, eyes fixed straight ahead on the ceiling. Beige, I think we shall paint the ceiling beige... I closed my eyes hard, making sure my eyelids were the only muscles in my body that so much as twitch. What the fuck is wrong with me?!? Shouldnt I be in a full blown panic right about now? I dont think most people would be making a boring sex joke if they were in my shoe... err... Shackles. Awww, love, are you afraid? Do I scare you? He said, while scanning my face for traces of emotion and caressing my cheek with the knife; his words dripped in a warm, honey-like, sarcasm he then proceeded to lick from my neck. Because I should scare you.You dont know what Im capable of. He slid the cold flat side of the blade around my neck and down my chest. And asked softly with an inquisitive child-like quality, Do you fear me? As he
15

loosened his grip on the belt again so I could breathe and answer, I involuntarily snorted in absurd indignation, and just as suddenly, like the slow motion train wreck that you cant do anything to prevent, I choked back laughter in a sharp inhale that was cut short by a quick snap of the belt in his fist. I clenched my teeth and winced in pain as I felt the blade come down on my breast and break the skin. Oops! Did I do that? My, myyy, Well I suppose the song goes.., as he says in a singsong manor, and drags the blade in an x across the first cut ...cross your heart and hope to die he twisted the tip of the blade in the center of the x. I watched the skin yield. The small crimson droplets stream into a pool, as a secret smile crept to the corners of my lips. In my head echoed my reply, ...stick a needle in you eye!

Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

16

A Selection of Horror Films

Judged by their physical effects on me by Christopher J GarciA

i love horror films. I do. Theyre not my favorite genre, and there are things in horror films that I have a hard time watching. Its a sad fact. As Matt Jackson, the director of the awesome Love in the Time of Monsters, said I saw you squirming. Dude, you totally had your geek card revoked! Horror films have physical effects on me.They always have, and thus I dont see as many of them as I could. Why? Well, here is a sampling of what horror films have done to me. The Control film - Freaks - Todd Browning Freaks is an incredible film, and technically a horror film as well. Supposedly it was very scary back in the day, and I loved it from a young age. I re-watched it after several years the other night. I recognize that there are things that are meant to be creepy, while not being outright stings or scares. And after it was over, I went to bed. While laying in bed in the hour or so it takes me to get to sleep, I kept seeing one image: a dwarf with a switchblade in his hand. Im not sure why, but that image, that single image, even more than the final image of the Normal turned into a freak, stuck with me, and it might have pushed back my actual falling asleep by a few minutes.

17

Scenario 1 - The Blair Witch Project So, I love Blair Witch. Its a brilliantly constructed horror world, a back story the likes of which very few novels manage. Its a very effective film in that it causes the viewer to fall in with the way its shot.Those stories of people getting motion sick are a testament to how effective it was as a film. Also, it says that more folks need to watch Verite documentaries. I watched it several times, and the first time I saw it with a regular audience, I had a great experience watching. Now, after I got home, I was all alone. I was still living at home at that point, so it was rare that there was no one else around. I settled into my bedroom, turned off the light (I had glow-in-thedark stars on the ceiling, so there was that) and tried to sleep. It werent gonna happen. Every sound, every twinge in my body, every everything caused me to jump. Even pulling the blanket up over my head did nothing to diminish my fear. It got me deep. So what did I do? I waited until morning. I stayed up until 7am or so, then went to bed in the full light of day.This was the first time I can ever think of doing that. It was 1999, and I didnt have to work the next day, so it didnt hurt much until that Monday, when I had managed to get my sleep schedule back slightly towards normal. Scenario 2 - Love in the Time of Monsters Matt Jackson and folks are good, good people. I had seen most of Love in the Time of Monsters on disk, but I went to see the actual Cinequest presentation in the theatre, because seeing horror in a theatre has so many advantages over watching alone at home, even if that means you can enjoy a lovely glass of absinthe while eating Girl Scout cookies! So, in the Camera 12s luxurious screen 10, Vanessa and I took seats behind the rail, my favorite seats in the theatre because you can put your feet up and not have them bothering anyone, right in the smack middle of the theatre. I was also announcing the film, so I gave it one of my all-time best introductions, because I am so thoroughly loving the movie, and the guys who made it! So, the movie started, telling the story of a pair of sisters who go to Uncle
18

19

Slavkos All-American Family Resort and end up fighting zombie-like creatures dressed in Bigfoot suits. Yeah, its THAT kind of movie. So, the first twenty minutes or so, theres some good stuff, and then we suddenly come to moments of some gore. I did not take it well. I found myself having to hide my eyes every time anything gore-tastic came on the screen. Eventually,Vanessa noticed and leaned over saying You dont like blood, do you? Well, duh. She also started putting her hand up in front of my eyes when anything gross happened. So I spent the movie hiding my eyes a fair bit. Now, that night I slept like a baby, but in the theatre, it was thoroughly physically uncomfortable.

Im a New Yorker. Fears My Life. RENT

Scenario 3 - The Conjuring I have a long and stories history of loving ghost stories, especially true ghost stories. The Warrens, one of the first ghost hunter pairs to get any real media attention, were folks Id been aware of for ages and this story, based on the haunting of the Perrons family, was incredibly well-acted. The script was pretty cliched, but Vera Fermigna, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, and Lili Taylor are all exceptional in it. Now, after I watched it at the Century 21, I headed home. That night, when I tried to sleep, it was a lot like The Blair Witch Project night only far far worse. You see, I was over-thinking every sound, but more than that, things i would normally be aware of became monsters. For example, I sleep with a bunch of pillows. It basically build a sort of nest (ask Glug or Warren Buff and theyll tell you what I do!) and sometimes the pillows will fall off the bed, now if Im sleeping under a blanket, the pillow might get tangled up and pull down the blanket as it descends to the floor. Usually, I barely notice this, but it happened that night and I literally sat completely up-right and said, out loud to nothing I could see in my apartment Who did that?
20

 It wasnt my most courageous moment. I didnt sleep that night at all. Not a wink, which sucked because I had to go to work the next day. I went him can slept for an hour or so until the sun went down, and that actually woke me up. For the next week, I was on the weirdest sleep schedule of my life. I actually could not sleep with the lights off. Not just a night light, but full on Lights-on! It was weird, and it took me the better part of two weeks weeks to recover!

I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us. Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Scenario 4 - Hannibal (OK, its a TV series, but stick with me) This is easily the goriest show on TV right now. Bates Motel, my favorite show on the air at the moment, aint exactly clean itself, but here theres a fair bit of gore and viscera. Its a smart, smart show, with an excellent performance by the great Mads Mikkelsen, but they do go for the gross sometimes. So, after a particularly long marathon of the show, about 1/2 of Season one in a sitting, I decided it was sleepy time, and when I went to lay down, I put on my CPAP mask. Only, my body wasnt having it. For some reason, it was rejecting the mask. Id put it on, lay down and it would feel as if Id stepped into a bear trap. Id put it on, and after a couple of minutes, Id feel like I was having trouble breathing, and then Id have to take it off, and after a while, Id feel better, try and put it on again, and that would make me feel trapped again, and Id have to take it off. It was so weird, that sort of thing had never happened to me before, and I can only blame Hannibal for that.

21

What Scares You

Facebook Answers that Very Question
i asked a simple question - What Scares You? And my Facebook friends, bless them, were willing to answer them1 Here are some of the answers with my odd commentary! James Murray Fear I do not fear fear at all. Fear, as it stands in my head, is a good thing, a preservative, if you will. Its kept me alive so far, and while it has held me back at times, its saved me far more often! Sam Frazier Jr. bad screenings & unfulfilled goals. Ah, the filmmakers dilemma! Is it better to be out there and have things go wrong, or better to just do what youre gonna and maybe strike out. The answer is neither, of course. The answer is Be A Genius! Ive got nothing but unfulfilled goals in my life, so many.The things Ive managed have never been goals - theyve been things Id love to have happen, but I never really worked towards them as goals. They were just things I wanted to do and something came out of em, sometimes for no good reason. Also, Sam is one of the best filmmakers I know! Earl Cooley III poverty Never be poor, kid. John Paul Garcia. Ive never made much money, but compared to my Dad in the last 1/2 of his life, I am King Midas. Doin my best, Pops! Doin my best.
24

Arthur Chenin BUGS!!! Marya Murphy so much spider Michele Wilson Spiders and snakes. Debbie Bretschneider spiders Kathrin Elsholz Jones Spiders and death For a guy who is afraid of a lot of things, I aint particularly adverse to spiders. I dont like touchinem, but they dont wig me out. In fact, if I find one around the house, I usually put it on a Trail of Tears-sort of ride, putting it in a garbage can or in some deserted corner, once in while outside, so it can live out its little existence away from my sight, but happy, nonetheless. Brad W. Foster I am terrified of people asking me what scares me. Because, actually, I never can think of anything. And then they think I am lying, so they -try- to scare me, and it just escalates... Thats positively Garcian in its abstract paranoia! Andrew Trembley The day vending machines take over the world. Wait. Thats what Doctor Doofenschmertz is afraid of. If youre not watching Fineas & Ferb, youre wrong! Yvette Keller Everything, but only during occasional, random, split-seconds. My superpower is I can be afraid of anything! Pat Turner Velociraptors being raised on secluded tropical islands. I love Jurassic Park, but I really want to see Jurassic Park: The Musical (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufch21YBok4 for ref.) Elizabeth McCarty Being unable to think for or care for myself. Janice Gelb senility This has never been one of my fears. I would not mind losing my mind, so long as I kept my life. It might even be nice... Guy Lillian Bad flights, certain bugs, rubber balloons, needles, the dentist. I hate flying. It scares the hell out of me. Needles are a BIG fear for me nowadays, but rubber balloons?
25

Lloyd Penney Science being overwhelmed by the idiocy of religious zealots. Not one of my fears, but I can see how folks might have that one. Jennifer Liang Waking up from a coma and finding my hands had been amputated like that poor girl here in Georgia a few years ago who caught a flesh eating bacteria while playing in a creek. I would never stop screaming. Great, youve added another something that I was NEVER afraid of before to the mix! Thats not cool, man! Beth Zuckerman Earthquakes. Recessions. Depressions. And, of course, people dying. Got a sorta sampler goin on there! Vanessa Applegate My cat eating my face. More specifically, sudden keeling over from a massive coronary or a pulmonary embolism and having my kitty come over to see if I was ok. I fear that he would get about 3 licks in before noticing that I was dead and he would just start devouring my face. And I would still be stuck in the blink space between death and departure... Im 100% certain that is a universal fear. Nova Mellow Skiing I dont do much skiing, but its not that scary. Of course, I have hurt myself skiing, so maybe that wouldnt have happened if I had a better fear of it. Tom Frankenberger My wife when shes on her period. Ouch! Eva Whitley Sadly, the next guy who tells me he loves me. That is the saddest thing I think Ive ever read. Matthew Legare Fire. Angry Bears. Bears which are on fire and also Angry. But can you blame them? Bears, man. I knew it was them all along...
26

What I Fear
by Christopher J Garcia
i am the sum total of all my fears. All of them. And they number in the thousands and they weigh me down, hold me to the Earth like a magnet of mental blocks. I will list the biggest of them now. Death - Always, constant, powerful Loss in those moments when the world is kind Embarrassment when trying anything Having my weaknesses discovered Never finding my true path Flying and related Falling, or more accurately landing. Hurting others more than I hurt myself. Hurting myself too greatly Facing the monsters I created myself Letting people down and, finally Im afraid of that feeling I get when I try and face my fears, but they are obviously stronger and there is no real way to fight them. Those are my fears, in a rough order. I do not fear fear itself; I understand it too deeply to fear it, but I am of it winning. Because it so often does...

27