Hi everybody! I’m going to throw an opinion question out there.

A few months ago the people at FUSE magazine (www.fusemagazine.org) asked us if we’d like to contribute a cartoon to their magazine. Of course we said YES because I read FUSE magazine and I like it a lot (yes, I really do have a subscription). Well, our first comic finally came out in the current issue - Volume 33 Number 3 for those of you who want to look for it at the magazine store - and wow, it is really neat to have a Pinky Show comic. We are on the last page. And not to pat ourselves on the head too much (because that’s bad manners, right?) but we like the way it came out and I can imagine doing all kinds of neat things in a comic format!

So… Bunny and I have been talking a lot about comics and how that might actually be a better format for the Pinky Show than videos. Basically we just think it’s a lot more do-able. There’s certain things we can do in videos that probably wouldn’t translate well to a comic strip format, but the opposite is true too. And anyway, producing animated educational videos is really not a two-cat operation and we just haven’t been able to figure out how to sustain our project financially by making free videos & art. We have many thousands of fans but precious few supporters - on a good week we might receive one or two donations, which isn’t nearly enough to pay for food, electricity, equipment, and stuff like that. So we need to figure out a different way of doing things if we want to keep putting stuff out there.

So here’s the question: What do you folks think about The Pinky Show changing formats to comics? It might help us to expand our audience (if we could get it into college newspapers or whatever) and maybe a year or two from now, when we have enough comics, we could put them all together and sell them in a book, which might bring in some income (well, we hope - I’m not even sure if people still buy books…). We might still put out a video once in a while - “whenever possible” - but for now we have to figure out a way to survive, and don’t human beings like to read comics?

What do you think? Stupid idea? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Take care,
pinky

A few months ago Pinky guest-blogged on the Center for the Future of Museums’ website. Now Elizabeth Merritt, director of the Center for the Future of Museums, returns the favor (well not really, I just lifted the entire entry from their blog). Her blog post from today is below. Read it while it’s still warm.

< CFM blog entry begin >

THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2010

The Pinky Show Cats’ Report on the Future

“We, three cats from the Pinky Show, went to the future. We brought back notes & stuff.” Read the report.

Those of you who attended the AAM annual meeting this spring may have stumbled upon a curious exhibit in MuseumExpo—a set of cases (generously lent by Gaylord) filled with artifacts documenting the time travel expeditions of the Pinky Show cats.

You may be familiar with Kim’s interest in museums (documented in this wickedly accurate Pinky Show episode.) These recent expeditions resulted from Kim’s desire to see how museums develop in the future.

While not formally trained in futurism, the cats caught on fast to the fundamental principles of our practice:

“One of the things we noticed when we first started time-traveling” reports Pinky, “was that often there seemed to be no obvious connections between the various moments-in-time we visited. In fact, many of the futures we experienced seemed wildly different - sometimes even apparently ‘opposite’ - from each other, even when separated by only a few years. We later learned … that the reason for this is that the future, as it relates to the present, only exists as an infinite array of possibilities fanning outward.”

This is great description of what futurists call the Cone of Plausibility (depicting the range of possible futures diverging from the present.)

Pinky and company visited six museums at times ranging from 2028 to 2098. Being thorough researchers, they checked out the cafes and gift shops and observed how people use museums in the future. They discover both bright futures (where people hang out in the museum 24/7, “doing their own thing” 365 days a year), and dark futures (characterized by an over reliance on blockbuster exhibits, safe predictable programming and “edutainment.”)

I particularly like their interviews with cats they encountered in their travels, (Section V: 2028-2098 Voices from the Future). Margarita-cat offered (will offer?) the following words of wisdom: “You don’t have to be in a position of power in order to do good in this world. But you must be fearless… What does a fearless museum-worker look like?” Good question, and one I will think about a lot.

There are many ways to explore the future, and this was a pretty interesting experiment. I hope you check out the report—as Pinky says, “perhaps the diversity of artifacts presented here will serve as a reminder that a positive future can only be what we are willing to desire and fight for.”

< CFM blog entry end >

Download & read the document here: The Pinky Show Future Museums Report: Some notes on our time-traveling expeditions, 2028-2098. (1.8 MB, PDF file)

Posted by Bunny.

Our talented musical pals Hugo & Giordano are back and this time they’ve made a great video about Wikileaks. Please watch it - we need more freedom on the internet, not less!

The lyrics can be found on the Rap News page at Reverb Nation.

And, please don’t forget that The Juice Media, creators of Rap News, has a YouTube channel with all kinds of excellent video pieces that are very, very important to watch but are currently hardly getting any eyeballs. So please take a peek and if you are so inclined, pass the links around to your friends. Thank you!

Take care,
pinky