Speakers’ Club Rules.
Word Crimes sing along.
Pure Imagination.
Minister’s Cat E.
One Word Story.
Names the Same.
Refuse the refuse and re-fuse the dynamite.
This team’s the Steams.
There are only three things in life that are fair: A pretty woman, a carnival and taxi cab rates.
What are your best English jokes?
Let’s forget the mildly entertaining and somewhat inconsistent shorts that Disney spun from its billion-dollar franchise ‘Frozen’ and look at the new teaser that just dropped. A determined Elsa faces the fury of a stormy coastline. Was she kidnapped and left on an island? Shipwrecked? We don’t know. We do know, by the determination in her face and body language, that she’s going to get off the island using her ice powers. The ocean can’t defeat her. (I don’t know why she needs a running start or how long she plans on running.The ocean is big.) She could probably make a stairway or bridge over the waves, but that would be way less cool.) Winter is coming!
Floating multi-colored diamond shapes…
All the SVENS! Gather the herd, we have places to run!
Anna shows off her athleticism. That’s quite a leap. Of course, tossing a bust around like it’s a bouquet of flowers showed off some of Anna’s unexpected strength.
Elsa is fighting fire to save her friend Olaf. Is this the time we see the demise of Olaf? If this scene comes before Elsa fighting the ocean… I fear for our friend who likes warm hugs. Maybe, it’s retribution for the short that was too long and shown before “Coco.” Olaf! Some people are worth melting for. Just maybe not right now!
The wind through the leaves as fall settles across the land. Has fall come too early? After Elsa’s eternal winter of the first movie, is this how the trees would react? Are those two new characters? It doesn’t look like Christoff’s coat. And he’s being blown like a leaf on the wind. It could be Hans or the son of the Duke of Weselton.
There’s a fell voice on the wind. All of those blowing leaves… It’s the Fall of Elsa. How else would a queen, her sister and the official ice deliverer be able to leave the castle and ostensibly the kingdom? Who did they leave in charge? Hans? He was a capable leader who seemed to care about the people of Arendelle, even if he wanted to kill the sisters.
The all female version of “Vuelie,” the seemingly weirdly out of place opening to the first movie featured a choir of men and women. This trailer version is different. And cut! No, Anna, I didn’t mean that literally!
I have already proposed several different plotlines that I’m pretty sure Disney didn’t consider. You can see them on my Patreon page as a preview of my planned book “Penguinate! The Disney Company” if you join today! You might also want to check out five bad pick-up lines from “Frozen” at our Weebly archives.
Human beings have a biological need to be accepted as part of a group. In tribal situations, being sent away from the group was a punishment that often resulted in the banished person’s death. One human alone would have difficulty surviving the elements, finding food, and fighting off those animals at the top of the food chain. Even as recently as the Middle Ages, banishment from a country was a punishment on the same level as death. We want and need to be accepted; taking the safe path and avoiding ideas that might not work allows people to feel safe. No group would banish someone for doing what he or she was told to do.
For better or worse, people also have a drive to explore. As tribes grew and competed for resources, people needed to push the boundaries and find places with more resources. Everything that has ever been discovered required someone brave or stupid enough to try it first. It takes courage to go over the next mountain to find food. It takes courage to convince your tribe to stay in one place while crops grow. It takes courage to suggest a new action because failure could mean laughter, ridicule and ostracization.
Creativity takes courage because it leaves the person open to all of his or her primal fears. The group may not only reject the creative work or suggestion, but also the person may lose status or membership in the group. That loss of an identifier may not be as physically bad as death, but it is as emotionally bad as banishment. In a business setting, standing up to your boss in the face of things that have always been done a certain way is rarely rewarded. More often, it is dismissed. Sometimes, it leads to being fired.
If you’re going to be creative, you have to be ready to face people who will tell you all sorts of things. You can’t make a living through creativity. It’s never been done before. It’s not safe. Don’t rock the boat. You’re too stupid, too clumsy, and/or too flighty to accomplish the new task. You may even face these arguments from your own internal editor.
As Elly Brown says, “Fire that guy!” Don’t listen to him, her, or them. Draw on your courage and create. It’s okay to be afraid; do it anyway.
For more on creativity, get “Disneyland Is Creativity: 25 Tips for Becoming More Creative.” Order “Penguinate! Essays and Short Stories: Creating for a Better Life and world.” Preorder “The Haunted Mansion Is Creativity.”
For Immediate Release Contact: Shad Engkilterra, penguinate.com
Email: shadexaminer@gmail.com
$1 from each penguin sold until July 1, 2019 will go to Global Penguin Society
Penguinate.com will donate $1 for every stuffed penguin it sells between now and July 1, 2019 to the Global Penguin Society (GPS) through the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN).
“What can be funnier than a penguin that is running to hug you,” said Jenya Engkilterra, penguin designer at penguinate.com. “Maybe he’s not running to hug you. He’s just running, but it doesn’t make it any less funny.”
Penguinate.com’s handmade penguins are made of faux fur and stuffed with holofiber. The eyes are hand embroidered, which gives every penguin a unique look and means there are no hard pieces for children to swallow. Our penguins love to cosplay, and costumes can be made to order.
Handmade stuffed penguins can be ordered at penguinate.com. They will also be featured at the penguinate.com booths at Lilac City Comicon 2019 in Spokane, WA, from June 1 – 2, Ogden UnCon 2019 in Ogden, UT, from June 7 – 9, and Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con 2019 in Las Vegas, NV, from June 14 – 15.
“Our penguins are made to bring joy and happiness to the world,” said Shad Engkilterra, Owner at penguinate.com. “We want to honor the birds that inspired so many happy moments for us and those who have adopted our stuffed penguin friends.”
Penguins and the Charities
Of the 18 species of penguins, only the Galapagos Penguin lives north of the equator. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists 10 of the species as vulnerable or endangered.
“We are concerned about penguins and their environment,” said Jenya Engkilterra. “We want to save penguins in the wild.”
Charity Navigator rates WCN with a score of 100 out of 100 and four stars. Over 90 percent of donated funds go to programs to protect wildlife. GPS has partnered with WCN and its president, Pablo Garcia Borboroglu, was awarded the National Geographic Buffet Award 2018. The organization also received the Whitley Gold Award in 2018.
DisneyNature chose GPS and WCN to receive a portion of the box office take in the first week for the “Penguins” scheduled to be released April 17, 2019.
###
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Shad Engkilterra
shadexaminer@gmail.com
In “Curious?,” author Todd Kashdan writes about several different ways to get more out of life. From taking on mundane tasks to exploring once-dismissed activities, Kashdan says curiosity is the way to make life more fulfilling. Too many times, we shut off our attention to a task, which leads to a missed opportunity to be in the moment while opening up the mind to negative self-talk.
Kashdan urges people to engage their curiosity through practice. The steps of practice he suggests are:
Kashdan uses this technique when he changes his daughter’s diaper, and when he does, he always finds something pleasant. He gets “a moment to reflect and feel close to my little one. Instead of losing a moment, I gain one” (p. 82).
In much of the first part of the book, curiosity is linked to creativity. Be curious, be more creative, and live a fuller life. For more on creativity and curiosity, check out “Disneyland Is Creativity: 25 Tips for Becoming More Creative,” and “Penguinate! Essays and Short Stories: Improve Your Creativity for a Better Life and World.” Preorder “The Haunted Mansion Is Creativity.”
Creativity comes when people aren’t afraid to make connections or sound dumb. People don’t like to be judged or have their ideas called stupid, even if they sound out there. Brainstorming sessions attempt to put people in a safe place where there is no judgement and they can dream as big as they want to. As an idea generation practice, Brainstorming can provide hundreds to thousands of ideas, depending on how many people participate and how long the session is.
Brainstorming sessions should have between 8 and 12 people. The session should last about 45 minutes to an hour though longer sessions can be advantageous if there are appropriate breaks. All brainstorming sessions have rules. At Disney in their blue-sky sessions, imagineers follow these rules according to “The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland”:
Not everyone agrees that brainstorming is a good idea. Edward de Bono says it’s a waste because so many ideas are discarded and the time to come up with them is wasted thereby. The process is inefficient. However, creativity is inefficient, so the brainstorming session, when the plan begins, should be the most inefficient part of the process.
De Bono also notices that some people try to top others, so the session results in people coming up with the most outlandish ideas. For me, that’s part of the point of brainstorming. Like Disney imagineers, I believe you never know where the best idea is going to come from, and it could come from a connection to an outrageous idea that someone else had.
Others decry the fact that brainstorming sessions have no follow up step. That’s up to the business to create. Recording the ideas and having the team follow up is easier if someone has the authority, time and resources to move forward with new ideas.
If you want to have a lot of ideas to choose from, start with a brainstorming session.
For more ABCs of Creativity, check these links. Grab a copy of “Disneyland Is Creativity: 25 Tips for Becoming More Creative.” Order “Penguinate! Essays and Short Stories: Creating for a Better Life and World.” Preorder “The Haunted Mansion Is Creativity.”
After 13 episodes of “Salvation” the most unforgivable action came from an assassin. He shoots his target at close range in the shoulder, then shoots a bystander in the chest and head. He had surprise on his side, so this should have been an easy task. Instead of checking on his target to see if she was still alive or dead, he douses everything in flammable liquids and starts a fire.
Dude. Seriously? You’re an assassin. Your next move after shooting the bystander would’ve been to go around the desk and finish off the target. Morgan Freeman in “Nurse Betty” said it best, “Three in the head, you know their dead.” (I use the quote in “The Pirate Union.”)
Because this professional killer and cleaner didn’t do his job, the target was able to send an incriminating email and accomplish the task, her death was supposed to prevent. We aren’t 100 percent sure that she’s dead, so it might be that this assassin did not complete his mission at all.
Maybe, this makes the story more interesting, but come on. All I want is for people to do their jobs well. Whatever your profession, whatever work you do, do it well. Even if you don’t like it. Until you quit, you need to instill in yourself the habits that will transfer to any other work you choose. Doing the job correctly should be a top priority for everyone who is employed.
And, I guess, I also want a story that’s a little more believable. The fate of the world is in question; this assassin knew that the target needed to be eliminated. He should’ve completed the job correctly.
Most people want an easy answer, and the simpler the explanation the better. Unfortunately, these answers and explanations leave much to be desired, and they stymie creativity. Creativity is the process that humans go through when they create something new. It involves not knowing where one is going as much as it involves having a goal. While the two may seem to be diametrically opposed, they are actually both appropriate for creativity.
Ambiguity is the idea that you don’t know the answer. If you knew the answer, you wouldn’t need creativity to solve the problem unless you were looking for a better answer. Trying to find a path to the goal, you look for solutions, you don’t know which one will work or what you’ll find, but you stay the course and keep moving forward. With each experiment you get closer to your goal, but you don’t know when you’ll get there.
Nike faced this issue of ambiguity in 1971 when, as head of Blue Ribbon Sports, Phil Knight realized the relationship he had with the Japanese shoe manufacturer that would become Asics was headed south according to Popular Mechanics. He needed an innovation to stay in the shoe game.
Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman was facing a problem with his athletes in Eugene. A new urethane tack had been installed at the university and the athletes were having problems gaining traction on it. Metal spikes couldn’t be used because they destroyed the track. Bowerman looked at everything and anything that could help provide traction. He needed something that would work on multiple surfaces. He needed to be able to make a pattern on the soles of the shoes.
His wife decided to help him on a Sunday morning and made waffles. Bowerman looked at the waffle maker and thought it could work to make his soles. He ruined that waffle maker but was undeterred and went out to get more waffle makers. He had his sole, and Nike had its game changing innovation for athletic shoes.
Bowerman, and Nike, had to go through a period of ambiguity while he was searching for the answer to his problem. There was no guarantee that he would solve the problem and there was no template that showed him how to solve it. He had to keep looking in spite of earlier failures. He had to deal with ambiguity.
When you’re confronted with a problem that you don’t know how to solve, or even where to begin to solve it, you could walk away. Or you could look at it as a challenge and enter the ambiguous path that leads to creativity and innovation.
For more on creativity, check out these links and get “Disneyland Is Creativity: 25 Tips for Becoming More Creative” and “Penguinate! Essays and Short Stories: Become more Creative for a Better Life and World.”
Sometime in early January, I started looking for a charity that supported penguins. It seemed like something we should do at penguinate.com. Penguins are cute, funny, the basis for our mascot and our lead creativity identity marker. I just didn’t find a lot out there on penguin charities and their effectiveness (much of what I found was for the Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey Team charity efforts).
Then I saw a trailer for DisneyNature’s “Penguins.” Ignoring the fact that the penguin’s name is Steve (hmmm… Steve), the movie looks like it has a lot of compelling penguin footage. Also mentioned in that trailer is DisneyNature’s commitment to give a portion of the opening week’s box office to the Global Penguin Society (GPS), which has a partnership with the World Conservation Network (WCN). In this case, as a Disney fan, I’ll let the DisneyNature film guide me to contribute to the GPS.
Jenya and I discussed it and we decided we would give to the GPS through the WCN $1 for every penguin we sell. That way we can do our part to make sure penguins are around long enough for us to go see them in the wild.
Wildlife Conservation Network has a 100 score and 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. Global Penguin Society won the 2018 Whitley Gold Award and the 2018 and the National Geographic Buffet Award for Leadership in Conservation presented to Dr. Garcia Borboroglu. Ten of the 18 species of penguins are vulnerable or endangered according to the IUCN.
Get a cute stuffed penguin today and help us support efforts to improve their numbers.
Check out why you need a stuffed penguin. Read why our penguins need you.
One of the reasons why video games are so popular and so easy to play for hours is because they set up quantifiable goals that allow you to understand whether you’re being successful or failing. It’s not just save the princess; it’s save the princess while scoring the most points or doing so in the fastest time. Hardcore gamers will sit for hours trying to gain levels, get treasure, discover secrets, complete side quests, and feel accomplished. Even gamers who play Match 3 games or Farmville have goals they can measure – one more level to complete or a certain score to attain. The numbers are tracked, saved, compared to your friends, and celebrated when milestones are reached.
Continue reading
Penguinate! Positive Creativity 