Your Daily Jingle

Yes, I know this person. And yes, I am honored to call this jingle-making wingnut my friend.

Some of you might remember one of Brian’s earlier ideas to make the world a better place.

Rivene’s Journey partnered with him to donate his amazing dreads to support Invisible Children.

And thanks to generous readers like you, Brian was able to raise over $5,000 for Invisible Children, by coloring and then cutting off his dreadlocks! (my donation was responsible for one of the Manic Panic pink cotton candy colored dreads).

Well, he’s at it again!

This time he’s using his talent to give us yourdailyjingle.com

Here’s how it works:

You bid on a jingle that you would like to see him create. The fastest bidder wins. The price has already been taken care of, as the cost for each day’s jingle goes up $1 per calendar day; e.g. today being January 8th, the cost would be $8. Want a jingle for Valentine’s Day? $45. You get the idea.

Brian then performs the jingle via YouTube video. As if this were not enough to brighten your day (believe me, I give you Rivene’s guarantee that your face will contort by the end of each video, either in a contented smile or a head shaking grimace, I mean, these are jingles after all!)

but wait..there’s more!

20% of the proceeds will be sent to charities and organizations like International Justice Mission, Invisible Children, and Project Cuddle, via a complicated algorithm that only an electrical engineer could have ever come up with… actually, it’s pretty simple, and only requires that you know how to click a mouse button.

On one level, it’s very creative. On another, it’s just plain silly. And I think that’s why I like it so much. Maybe it’s just me, but I am tired of the late night commercial & marketing technique that guilts me into social justice by playing woeful violin music while an Oliver Twist orphan bums for pennies on the street corner while his African cousin rummages through refuge in the background. I am 100% for social justice and activism in the world, but over the years, I have learned to appreciate artists like U2, Switchfoot, and Derek Webb who are able to wed creativity & social justice into a beautiful marriage of talent & grace.

That is why I would like Rivene’s Journey readers to help Brian’s jingle project off to a great start.

As an added bonus, the first 3 Rivene’s Journey readers to purchase a jingle will get a poem from Rivene himself!

Here are the guidelines:

  • You must mention Rivene’s Journey in the “jingle subject” line
  • You pick the poem! You can tell me what style (sestina, ballad, blank verse); era (biblical, apocalyptic, victorian) ; subject (death, bowel movements, love)… get as detailed as you like!
  • The poem must be shorter than 4 stanzas or 24 lines, whichever comes first
  • Each poem will be posted on Rivene’s Journey once confirmation of the jingle purchase has been made
  • Poems will be posted no later than 2 weeks post-confirmation
  • You must keep in mind my poetic formula mentioned in an earlier post
  • You can Email Rivene your poem’s requirements

As an added bonus

  • Any jingles purchased after Valentine’s Day (guys, that would be Sunday February 14th) will also receive a YouTube video of me performing your poem in front of a live audience! (“live” meaning any open mic I happen to stumble across)
  • Videos of the poem-reading will be posted on Rivene’s Journey 4 weeks after confirmation of purchase, for obvious production reasons
  • I own the poem (and any videos made) and maintain all rights for it. However, for just an additional 20% of your jingle’s price, I will also honor Brian’s deal where you may buy a full-use license of the work. This full-use license will grant you the right to use the video, audio, and poem any way you would like for one year (1 year from the jingle date you bought). If you’re interested in a license longer than a year or would like to own the work outright, just let me know and we’ll work it out. 

Click here to start. And let’s jingle all the way!

(oh, and if you were wondering what jingle day I purchased, keep an eye out for the back of my handsome mug somewhere around early spring on the jingle calendar)

 

Published in:  on January 8, 2010 at 6:17 pm Leave a Comment
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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions very well, but if I did, my first resolution of 2010 would be to write 5 blogs every week for my ravenous fans.

Of course, I don’t have any fans, ravenous or otherwise, but I read somewhere that the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time; and the way to begin the journey of a 1,000 miles is with one step; and the way to properly brown cooked meat is to dry it with a paper towel. I don’t believe that that last one has much to do with writing, unless you happen to be Julia Childs, in which case, it will earn you thousands of dollars and many ravenous fans (literally).

However, if I did do New Years’ resolutions, here are what they would be:

1) Obey God at any cost

Sadly, I discovered in 2009 the very painful consequence of disobeying God, namely, a broken engagement. If you have ever had the misfortune of falling in love with someone, being engaged, and then having that sundered, I pray God heals your heart, for it is the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life. Fortunately, friends and family have been very supportive, and I am healing, though it is a very slow process.

2) Finish what I start

I am currently 2/3 finished with my novel Blood Children; 1/3 finished with an untitled (though very good) faery tale; 1/10 finished with an interesting fictional memoir about sleep paralysis; and 95% finished with a long short story called “The Choice.”

I am very excited to announce that my friend Wes has procured me 9 days in March at his aunt’s house in Lincoln City, Oregon, where I will seclude myself with a stack of books, another stack of research articles, a large thermos of hot chocolate, my laptop, and a bound and gagged Muse who will help me finish the middle third of Blood Children; whereafter, I can spend the rest of 2010 polishing it off, sending it to an editor, and thickening up my skin for the rejection letters soon to follow.

3) Write more poetry

I learned in the beginning of 2009 that poetry is actually very helpful for prose writing. I discovered a mathematical formula that equates the amount of poetry written to the amount of useful prose:

(y stanzas X z lines) X .037 = # of useful prose lines

Properly calculated, this means that I produce, on average, 2 lines of useful prose for every 54 lines of complete poetic dogshit, which is still far more efficient than all of the economic stimulus plans produced in 2009.

Now, as this is a writing blog, I think it would be unfair of me to talk about my creative work without giving you a demonstration thereof. So, here are a couple of stanzas that I wrote during a worship service at my church (and again, if you find any of these lines emotionally gripping, remember the above mentioned formula).

**

Shallow pools hide deeper waters

and quiet streams flow to hidden caves

but my soul is a desperate Gobi

lapping at pools of mud

__

Peaceful dreams of kings

bring the din and roar of thunder

and only fools cry silence

to a night shattered by screams

**

Finally, in a completely non-sequitur move, I leave you with a belated 2009 Christmas gift: my very cute niece Abby, producing her very first magic trick.

Published in:  on January 4, 2010 at 8:35 am Comments (1)
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Culture Glutton

scott embarrassed

- *hiccup* “Excuse me! I think I ate too much…”

A blog idea I came up with last night – presented to you after slight editing…

I am on a race with the clock against the sleep aid/melatonin nightcap that is racing through my bloodstream. I need to capture some observations before pharmacopeia-induced sleep hits me.

It has taken  3 1/2 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2 seasons of Spaced, and a severe nutritional deficiency of good reading, for me to realize that consumption of too much visual entertainment is bad for my creative output.

It has been great for the analytical half of my brain. I find myself more aware of story elements, plot, character development, the filmography of numerous directors and actors. I even find myself increasingly aware of the details in the world around me. But my own inner eye has been squeezed to a tiny squint. Any natural flow of ideas has become encased in the frozen walls of other writers’ visions. I can clearly visualize the creative works of Josh Whedon, Simon Pegg, James Cameron, Hayao Miyazaki. Less clear are the endless worlds that once floated in my mind, like tantalizing fruit hung from a tree ripe and ready for the plunder. Two years ago I couldn’t type fast enough to capture the images and characters boiling away in my head, brimming to the surface in dreams – both waking and sleeping.

I suppose I could go back, retreat from cultural relevance, abandon my IMDB Top 50 movie project. Stop watching Buffy. Forego television (well, my Hulu and Netflix equivalents thereof). Become just another mediocre writer with lots of ideas but no creative well to draw from. A writer who is a mile wide and a cultural inch deep.

But I think it can be done. Balance that is. Take Stephen King for instance. The man is a cultural glutton, yet somehow he finds the time to publish dozens of books while wading neck deep in music, television, and film. Granted, he is a self-prescribed hermit. And he does not volunteer his time to the mission of his local church. And I wouldn’t exactly say that all (or most) of his books are particularly stunning – from a strictly literary perspective. But he has found some modicum of balance (or maybe he just learned how to live without sleep once he got himself off the cocaine). Either way, he demonstrates that it is possible to remain both creative and analytical; aware of the world around him, even as he creates the worlds that exist only in his head. There is a balance there.

One I have not yet discovered.

Published in:  on September 5, 2009 at 7:36 am Comments (1)
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It’s all Yiddish to me

the_yiddish_policemans_union

An amateur’s review of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

by D.Scott Phillips

Michael Chabon, author of Wonder Boys and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Pulitzer Prize winner, also Hugo, Sidewise, and Nebula award winner, began his literary meteor-strike with Werewolves in Pittsburgh. An east-coast native, a supporter of rigid writing discipline (10am-3pm, Sunday-Thursday), he began writing Yiddish in February of 2002, and released it to critical acclaim in May of 2007.

Part hardboiled detective story, part historical fiction, it is a completely unique retelling of the Jewish plight post-WWII. The title derives from a fictional and mostly inept organization of detectives residing in the Chabon-created district of Sitka, Alaska, the place where Jewish refugees have been exported after the failed Jewish re-settlement to Israel, 1948. Truly, “a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.”

The story begins with a murder in The Hotel Zamenhof, the place where washed-up homicide detective, Meyer Landsman, has landed after a failed marriage, a disastrous career, and the overall shambles of his slivovitz friendly life. The death occurs during an inconvenient time:  the Jewish district of Sitka is a few months shy of Reversion – the 60 year generosity of the American government has come to an end and the Jewish district will revert to just another chunk of Alaskan soil. Landsman discovers that his murdered neighbor is a heroin-addled chess prodigy of some renown, but as he digs further, he is told to “black folder” the case and end his investigation.

Told from the 3rd person present tense, Yiddish reads like exotic candy, partly from its unusual perspective, but also because the book is filled throughout with genuine Yiddish phrases, enough to warrant a 4-page glossary at the end. Like Wonder Boys and Kavalier & Clay, Yiddish is not for the literary faint of heart, grappling as it does with a strong sub-text of spiritual and political tensions. A fictional “what-if” for adults, Yiddish is for the adult reader who likes their fiction with a stiff flavor of the real and intellectually deep.

Fans of Susanna Clark’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell will find themselves in familiar territory, as Chabon does for Jewish-American history what Clark did with her own native England – combining fresh prose with interesting research and loveable characters, leaving the reader second-guessing the stories told in history books. There is magic in Yiddish, and American fans in particular will rejoice in finding the literary Tzaddik Ha-Dor we’ve been longing for.

Published in:  on August 16, 2009 at 10:39 pm Leave a Comment
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Death Tweets

dead_bird

“Someday soon, a celebrity will Twitter straight to the grave.” 

-Farrah’s Stunning ‘Story’ EW

Mark Harris was on to something as he gave his opinion of Farrah Fawcett’s “Farrah’s Story,” which aired on NBC. A former sex-symbol, actress Farrah’s story is one of disappointment, despair, and the disillusionment of remission as recurrence settles in. It is the story of a glamorous life reduced to cancer and chemo, a sad reminder of the fall; death and dying aired for 9 million viewers’ pleasure. 

Mr. Harris’ article raises poignant questions about the blurring of lines between the public and the private life, between decency and humiliation, between full disclosure and sealed lips.

Would you blog your doctor’s diagnosis? 

Would you Facebook update your chemo treatment?

Would you vlog your funeral?

Would you  tweet your death?

         _________

Where is the line?

Published in:  on June 19, 2009 at 7:23 am Comments (2)
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