E-mail re: Ants & Poison

Posted by Pinky.

I wanted to share with everybody an e-mail I received from crazy wolf (a.k.a. Wolfgang). It's about my poisoning the ants the other day (April 2nd diary entry):

hello Pinky

about your ant problem [wild ants]
killing them is not the answer
using poison is an absolute 'evil'
save our planet and yourself
by being what you teach

many ancient peoples have understood the inter[connectedness] of life on this jewel planet
they knew that to keep the undesired spirits away from the household or village
an offering had to be made
a recognition of the other
honoring the other
so
with regard to ants
the ancients made an offering of food [daily]
to their ant relatives
the offering was made in close proximity to the ants home[s]
but in a direction away from the village
this act of 'life'
created harmony

Pinky
make peace not war

crazy wolf

After thinking about it for a while, I wrote him back:

Hi Wolfgang,

Thank you for your letter. The ant incident has been bothering my conscience a lot. I think using poison was a bad thing to do. When an emergency arises your first reaction or 'solution' tells a lot about where your mind and heart is at. It made me sad that the only thing that I could think of at the time was that I had to kill all the ants. I wonder what I would have come up with if they were not ants but maybe tigers, owls, or something else. I certainly wouldn't have tried to poison them. Anyway I thought it was wrong but then I also couldn't think of an alternative. So thank you for writing me, I think it's a very different kind of relationship with ants (and others) that you're talking about. I will have to try this way of doing things and make an offering, but it'll be just the one tentative step since it's not like I deeply understand that way of being you describe.

You mention 'ancient people' and speak of this way of being in the past tense. Are there many people who are like this today or are they all gone? Are you someone who is like this?

Take care,
pinky

I'm very grateful that Bunny made us this website. We often receive very thought provoking e-mails and each one is like a mini-opportunity to learn from people from all over the world. One of the things that I'm having the most difficulty with is trying to imagine how to live a more respectful life on a day to day basis in this modern world. I wonder if Mr. crazy wolf will write back.

~pinky

"My Ants" or "Just Ants"?

Posted by Pinky.

Lately we've been having an escalating ant problem. Not with my ants (my AntFarm™ ants) but for some reason the 'wild' ant population around here seems to have quadrupled in the past month or so. They've been getting in our food, they try to make nests among our books and papers - today I even found some walking on our computer. When I opened up the computer case I totally freaked out - they were moving in! (carrying baby ants in, etc.) Gross! I'm sure a thousand ants living in the computer would make it crash and then we'd lose all our data. I shut down the computer, I told them to leave immediately; they ignored me and kept on bringing more ant-stuff. I tried to brush them away with a feather duster but then they just ran all over the place and made me all confused and panicky. It was insane, there were just too many of them. I followed their ant trail outside to their giant ant nest and when I saw that there were several thousand more of them out there, I realized that I really had to do something to stop them. I mean, I love ants, but these ants are sort of like out-of-control or something, and we can't have them destroying our computers (we can't make The Pinky Show without computers). So Bunny and I walked into town and... (*gulp*) bought some ant poison. I feel so awful even saying that. When we came back I said a prayer and we dropped a bunch of ant poison into all the big ant nests we could find around here. Then I cleaned off the computer as best as I could and moved it to a new location. It's been about 6 hours since I poisoned the ants and already there's noticeably fewer ants walking around. Some of the ants I do see here and there look weak and disoriented and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they fall over and die. I feel really sad. Isn't it so strange how I love my AntFarm™ ants so much and I wouldn't ever do anything to harm them; yet these other ants, just because they don't live in a small plastic container I felt like I had to kill them all? Other than the plastic container, I think actually all ants are the same.

~pinky

Report: Human Being Birthday Party

Posted by Bunny.

As part of our ongoing attempt to 'learn about human beings', we routinely observe them (spying) from a distance. That's what we did today; it was my turn (Bunny) to take notes.​

There's a trailer park not too far from where we live. Today we observed a family having a birthday party for one of their children. They had colorful balloons and twisty crepe paper streamers. No piñatas. Two mini-vans and a Volkswagen car arrived with three families (8 kids total) in them. Then the daddy-of-the-trailer took out a small-size inflatable swimming pool and blew that up with a foot-pump. The kids stood around and watched and apparently when you are 4 or 8 years old this is exciting. When he was done they put some water in the pool (not much) and then the daddy blew up little inflatable things that went around the kids' arms and then they all jumped around in the tiny pool, making much splashing. Then the daddy took out an inflatable slide that was maybe about 5 feet tall and shaped like a killer whale. He blew that one up with the same foot pump. We all thought that his leg must be getting very tired. When he was done with that the kids lost interest in the small swimming pool and they all started using the slide. Then all the adults went in and the kids were playing by themselves for a long time (we thought that was very dangerous but none of them died or anything). Then for some reason the bigger kids decided to make the smallest child sit in the pool while they tried to flip it over. They struggled with that for a while (the small child stayed put) and finally they figured out how to get the side bent down and then the water gushed out. Then the wind picked up the pool and it blew away real fast like a huge kite. Must be the small kid wasn't in it by then. All in all we enjoyed their birthday party.

~B.

Globalization, Part III

Posted by Bunny.

This is our last episode on the subject of globalization for now (see it here). It's basically about Third World debt. Of the three this one is my favorite.

We have scripts for 3 or 4 more episodes with the same comic, this time on the subject of colonization. But we'll do those later. For the time being I want to work on something else - we still have that Iraq episode plus a couple others to finish up.

One of the reasons why we got a few days late with finishing up this episode is because I got busy making a new area for this website. For now we're just calling it the 'Special' area. We are going to put mini-reviews of websites, movies, and other stuff we like in there. We also have a new page of human beings. I like that page.

~B.​

Why Not Crimes Against Nature?

Posted by Pinky.

Bunny and I just watched a documentary called Oil on Ice. It's about the controversy surrounding whether or not to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. [mini-review here] One of the most disturbing things in the film for me was how the oil companies would hire scientists to provide 'expert' analyses testifying that oil spills have minimal lasting environmental impact (such as, for example, after the catastrophic Exxon Valdez spill in 1989). These experts are used in the oil corporations' public relations reports and videos to enable them to continue engaging in devastating environmental exploitation.

I guess because I'm actually a big fan of science, it hurts to see scientists acting as academic mercenaries. I really wonder if they'd act this way if they could be held accountable for their role in the systematic harming of the environment. They are, after all, providing a key element of the necessary propaganda required to sway public and governmental opinion.

We already have the concept of 'crimes against humanity' to protect human beings from particularly odious crimes, systematically committed. Why don't human beings apply the same logic to protect the environment against, say, 'crimes against nature'? (and I'm not talking about people doing it with swans, okay?)

~pinky

Movie Review: Oil on Ice (2004)

Posted by Pinky.

This documentary film talks about the controversy surrounding whether or not to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Until you see this documentary, you might think the area is a barren arctic desert with ‘nothing’ in it. On the contrary, the ANWR is not only visually beautiful but also ecologically diverse and crucial to the survival of a mind-boggling range of animals. The film outlines the impact of drilling in the arctic and tries to place this in context vis-à-vis energy consumption, global warming, and the national and global economy. Another part we liked was that this film tries to show the long-term effects of oil drilling on the lives of contemporary Native people up in Alaska - that was really good.

Bunny and I had mixed feelings about this documentary. On one hand it discusses something that is extremely important and it showed us many things that we would have otherwise never seen. For this reason we were very happy that we saw it and will be recommending it to everyone. On the other hand we wished it did a better job at connecting the dots to the economic, political, cultural forces that drive our (inter)national addiction to oil. Maybe the producers were just trying to keep the film at 1 hour and had to leave some things out. This film would be excellent when shown as part of a sequence of related documentary films (An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car?, etc.).

~p.

[ pinky: B+ / Bunny: B- ]​

Globalization Mini-Trilogy

Posted by Pinky.

We're almost done with part III of our comic strip series on the topic of globalization. As Bunny mentioned the other day, we're really enjoying the challenge of trying to superimpose a different narrative onto the same cartoon sequence over and over again. For those of you who are curious about the original Peanuts comic that served as inspiration for this series, here it is:

View fullsize

click to see a larger version

I found this comic strip in a Peanuts book a couple of years ago and photocopied it. At the time I used Liquid Paper ('white-out') to remove the dialogue, thinking that I was going to just recycle the original pictures while replacing the words with my own dialogue. I wish I hadn't done that because now I can't remember what the original dialogue was about. If any of you Peanuts fans out there know, please send me an e-mail!

Also, a short note regarding our intent for this series. The subject of globalization is important to understand but also very complicated. Many of the books and reports we've been studying about globalization are fairly dense and take a long time to read. And since we think the best way to learn difficult subject matter is to be able to discuss it with others, we decided to create some 'instruments' to help start up good discussion. We think it's important to create texts - even if they come in a comic strip format - that help stir new questions or concerns in peoples' minds.

By themselves I think these comic strips are actually kind of difficult to understand. And as some of our viewers have noticed, they're actually quite 'dense' - we tried to pack lots of different implications, meanings, and references into every word and phrase. We also tried to write it in such a way that there are some problems and inconsistencies built into what is being said. We hope these things can be drawn out in conversation and argument.

For example, one of the most important questions we're always thinking about when writing Pinky Show episodes are ones concerning 'who'. For these comic strips we had a lot of discussions about questions like: Who does Bunny's character represent? An individual? A certain class of people? How about Mimi's character? Who are the 'we' or 'us' or 'them' that they refer to? Are they mistaken? Stuff like that.

So basically what I'm saying is that these comic strips are not intended to be a one-page "everything you need to know about globalization". Not possible, not desirable! There are a ton of excellent books, study reports, analytical essays, documentaries, etc. out there that cover a broad range of perspectives on the many issues surrounding globalization. If you're new to the subject, I tend to think a critical approach is a sensible place to start (after all, the 'pro-globalization' point of view is pretty well covered by the mainstream media, schools, U.S. governmental policy, state/corporate/international financial institutions, and so on...).

• Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2005), by Vandana Shiva.
• When Corporations Rule the World (2001, 2nd edition) by David Korten.
• An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2004), by Arundhati Roy.
• No Logo (2002), by Naomi Klein.

Primary sources are also very important. Just one such example - please consider the World Bank Extractive Industries Review's report Striking A Better Balance (2004), as well as the World Bank Group Management's official response to the report (also 2004). Fascinating and sobering.

Okay, I better go for now. We want to finish and publish Part III by Friday. Please take care everybody.

~pinky

....................................

Posted by Bunny: Each episode has their own accompanying transcript. Transcripts are easier to contemplate than videos.

Globalization Episode, Part II

Posted by Bunny.

Another new episode in our series about globalization - Defending Globalization: a mission for the educated and enlightened. As you can see we like the long titles. See it here.

We are having lots of fun recycling this comic strip. We're actually almost finished with Part III, which is also about globalization but from yet another angle. Globalization is complicated enough that we could keep on going like this forever (we won't). Hope you like it.

~B.

Globalization Episode

Posted by Bunny.

We have a new episode - it's called Globalization and the metaphysics of control in a free market world. Long title. This one is in comic strip format and is very short (approx. 3 minutes long). See it here.

This comic strip is also available as an 18"x24" poster that you can stick on the wall. We went to the print shop yesterday and printed one out big and had it laminated. It looks cool. It's on the wall next to the computer; it kind of makes our 'office' look a little bit like a classroom - neat. I'm still working on the online store. When I'm done I'll put this poster, and any others we have by then, into the store.

~B.

Today's quote courtesy of: Mark Twain

Posted by Pinky.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself... - Mark Twain

Ouch. I wonder what Mr. Twain would have thought about our current congress?

Oh, speaking of Mark Twain, last week I read A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I almost never read fiction but I really had a lot of fun reading this. Maybe I should read more fiction - it's good! I had no idea people wrote stories about time travel back in the 19th century (I like time travel; this book was published in 1889). It felt like a very old-fashioned book version of a science fiction movie, like The Terminator.

~p.

Q: Did you used to be owned by anybody?; Dolls v2.0

Posted by Pinky.

In the past few months the number of people watching The Pinky Show has been increasingly quite a bit. And with more viewers we've also been getting more e-mails. Some of them include what I think are 'odd' questions (I don't mind). Like this one:

Dear Pinky,

Are you and the others all strays? Did you used to be owned by anybody? I'm curious because I have a cat named Tanya and I was wondering if she too may be considering making a break for it too!

Elizabeth
Manning, TX

I feel pretty conflicted about human beings. On one hand I'm generally not impressed with the way human beings treat animals. On the other hand I'm sure there are lots of people out there that are capable of having a mutually respectful relationship with a cat. I consider each person on an individual basis.

But to answer Elizabeth's question, "yes we are strays" (though we prefer the term 'dissociated'). My personal history is a bit murky - but here's everything I know: I was born somewhere on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. When I outgrew kitten-stage I was taken to and left at the Humane Society, where I was then 'adopted' by some nice people and taken to live in a house. (trivia: According to Humane Society records, my original name was 'Georgia'.) Anyway I stayed there, living in relative luxury for a while before leaving for Los Angeles in 2004. So I guess you can say I've been 'mostly dissociated since 2004′. I say 'mostly' because I still correspond with my last human being family (who actually helps us with some aspects of The Pinky Show) - unlike Bunny, Kim, and Mimi who were VERY HAPPY to completely sever ties with humans. Tanya - if you are considering "making a break for it", please be sure to have a plan beforehand - it's an extremely dangerous world out here.

Bunny has been very focused on her doll making and is making good progress (the reviews have been mixed - I think they look really good, Mimi says they are 'creepy'). I, on the other hand, have done only one lesson of Chinese (Mandarin) and that's all. That language is so difficult it's not even funny. The pronunciation is a killer and it has different intonations you have to remember for each syllable. It's so hard I've even been practicing guitar extra just to avoid practicing Chinese. :P

~pinky

​Dolls v2.0

Kim's Airplane

Posted by Pinky.

I've been thinking about a small thing that happened last week. The four of us (me, Bunny, Kim, & Mimi) decided to go down to town to try to find some food. Before we left Kim and Mimi kind of got into a disagreement - Kim was going to bring her airplane along with her and Mimi said something like:

Mimi: Why don't you leave the toy at home?
Kim: I want to play with it while we're walking there and back...
Mimi: If you're holding your airplane you can't carry food.
Kim: I can carry food and the airplane.
Mimi: You won't be able to carry as much food.
Kim: Yes I can, etc., etc.

So anyway Kim ended up bringing the airplane and guess what? After three hours of going through dozens and dozens of dumpsters and trash cans all over Baker, CA - we're finally heading back home when Kim suddenly stops and says "Hey! Where's my airplane?!?" She didn't have her airplane anymore. She left it somewhere; we'd been all over town and it could have been anywhere. So we walked back to Baker and started looking in all the places we'd been. As you can imagine, Kim was in a near-panic and Mimi was quiet but visibly grouchy.

We finally found the airplane, or what was left of it, in the parking lot of the Bun Boy Restaurant. A car had run over it and it was flat and smashed into lots of small pieces. Kim started crying and I had to carry her home. I think at that point even Mimi was feeling bad for her because that airplane was Kim’s absolute favorite - she was always playing with it.​

​When we got home Kim wandered off for a while but she came back the next morning. She told us that she decided she's not going to play with toys anymore because she doesn't want to lose any more toys. Mimi said that wasn't necessary and she just needs to be more responsible and leave her toys at home from now on.

I don't know if Kim is going to give up toys for real, but I think I can kind of understand why she said that. I wonder if it’s possible to not have anything precious.

~pinky

New Hobby Update: Chinese; Pinky Doll Prototype

Posted by Pinky.

After thinking about it for a couple of days, I decided that my new hobby is going to be learning how to speak Chinese. The hardest part was trying to decide which language to learn - there are others that I also like the way they sound (German, Hawaiian, Navajo, Spanish, etc.). Bunny suggested that I learn them all at the same time but I thought that'd be too difficult. In the end I just decided to go in alphabetical order. This is in addition to my already-hobbies: reading, documenting stuff, and learning to play a guitar.

Bunny's new hobby (doll-making) is going pretty good. Here is the first one, finished last night.​

I put the light bulbs next to it so you can see how big it is. There were some parts of it she wasn't happy with so now she's working on a revised version. [ Bunny: This doll came out too narrow. I didn't realize it'd lose width when I stuffed it. The revised doll will be a more accurate representation of Pinky - i.e., fatter. ]

For those of you who've been asking when we're going to finish the next episode, please rest assured that we're not spending all our time sewing dolls and watching subtitled kung-fu movies. This hobby stuff is just what we do to 'relax' after our work-day is over. We still work on episodes 7 days a week.

~p.

No Animals

Posted by Pinky.

After thinking about it some more, I've decided to stop eating other animals. I haven’t decided on what to do about dairy & chicken eggs - I'll have to look into that some more.

Happy New Year; New Hobby

Posted by Pinky.

Today is the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar, year 4705. As such it's the Year of the Boar (a.k.a. Year of the Pig). According to the Wikipedia entry, many people traditionally don't eat meat (animals) on the first day of the new year in order to insure greater longevity for themselves. I don't know if that really works or not, but at the very least I'm sure it's appreciated by all the animals that would have otherwise been eaten today. To be on the safe side I would have liked to have avoided eating any animal-related food today too but by the time I read the Wikipedia stuff I had already eaten some dried fish flakes (I think that’s what it was). So I guess no longevity for me.

Bunny has a new hobby. She is now sewing dolls. The way this came about is that we were down by the highway looking for things to eat (as usual) and while we were there we came across a large plastic bag with lots of smaller packages of different colored fabric remnants in it. We're thinking it fell off a delivery truck. Anyway the four of us dragged the whole thing back to our trailer (very tiring). Bunny started cutting out pieces right after and now she is sewing them together in the shape of cats. I will post a picture of one when she is done. Me, I'm not really into sewing. It looks relaxing but I can't get the hang of tying knots.

I think since this is the beginning of a new year, I would like to start a new hobby too. I'm going to try to decide on one before I go to sleep tonight.

~p.

After the Political-Social Stuff...

Posted by Pinky.

Exactly one month ago, I posted our (then) production cue:

"...two new blurbs; a follow-up Q&A episode to the Lt. Watada episode (061222-01); an episode about pollution in the Pacific Ocean; a tutorial on how to videotape an interview; a mini-biography episode (Bunny's current pet project); and hopefully, if we can coordinate it, an episode about nuclear non-proliferation."

Well, the two blurbs were done (Thomas Edison Hates Cats, and Ant: Light Pollution) and we're almost done with a third. The Lt. Watada Pt. II episode morphed into the Iraq War: Legal or Illegal? episode (approx. 2 weeks from completion). Bunny is still working on her mini-biography episode (according to Bunny ETA is "March-ish") and who knows when the Pacific Ocean one will get done (that one is actually being worked on by a friend of ours, so...?). But we did finish the episode on nuclear weapons last night - it's called 27,000 Holocausts. Special thanks to Dr. John Burroughs, Executive Director of Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy. I thought he was very clear and easy to understand so I'm happy with the way it came out.

Anyway, after we bring our current production batch to a conclusion, I think I'd like to make an effort to work on some episodes or blurbs that maybe aren't so 'dark'. It's not that I think nuclear weapons or war aren't important enough to keep making new episodes about - of course they are, and we plan on making lots more episodes on these kinds of subject matter. But when we started this Pinky Show project Bunny and I also had lots of ideas for episodes that were about pop culture, the arts, education, traveling, and things like that. We really like that kind of stuff too. But I guess with the war going on our minds have been sort of preoccupied with the more overtly political subjects. So anyway, I guess I'm just writing this entry as a way to remind myself that we shouldn't forget to do some 'non-war' episodes soon.

~p.

New Episode: 27,000 Holocausts

Posted by Bunny.

We just finished this episode last night; it's about nuclear weapons (you can see it here).

Reminder: All our episodes & blurbs have transcripts. The transcripts (plus credits, bibliography, etc.) are located via the [ transcript / credits ] link below each episode or blurb. A typed-out version is good for classroom work or individual study. I do the transcripts now because Pinky types slower than turtles.

~B.

Today's Quote Courtesy of: Aldous Huxley

Posted by Pinky.

​I was poking around Nancy Snow's website and found this quote.

Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings and actions that make for peace and freedom. Conversely almost nobody wants war or tyranny; but a great many people find an intense pleasure in the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for war and tyranny. - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Good quote. Before I'm gone I'd like to have a deeper understanding of 'why'.

~p.

p.s. It's 8:45pm and the newswire says that the court-martial of Lt. Watada has been declared a mistrial. Not much information yet - I'm so curious about the details. All I've heard so far is that a new trail is set for March 19.​

Abuse, The Easy Way

Posted by Pinky.

Bunny and I have been closely following the feedback we've received for the Ehren Watada episode we posted at YouTube.

We're not surprised that there's been negative responses. But what was really eye-opening for us was the feeling of rage and hate that dominates the language of the negative feedback. There's not much reasoning going on, not much analysis or argument. Mostly name-calling, racist epithets, and exclamations of self-evident 'truth'. It's weird how people can sound so sure of what they believe even though it appears (based on the logical gaps and misinformation in the responses themselves) that they haven't done much research into the matter. So bizarre: If someone doesn't make the effort to sort out the facts and historical foundation of a given situation, why would they then feel justified in expressing their position with such simplistic and self-assured language?

Until we've done the research on any given subject, it's actually pretty obvious that we don't have enough information to form a well-informed opinion on that subject. In other words, until we do some kind of inquiry into the matter, we are, by definition, ignorant. I don't think there's anything embarrassing about admitting that.

So how come so many people think it's okay to make hurtful declarations, directed at an individual or a group of people, based on nothing but stereotype and preconception? Isn't it useful to think carefully about where and how we learn the things that we are positive we 'know'?

Probably until the day I die I am never going to understand how it came to be that human beings can have so little compassion for each other. I can understand that somebody who is very smart can review all the same information that Lt. Watada did, and then come to the conclusion that he should be sent to prison. After doing some research, I can say that I've actually come to the opposite conclusion, but to be real, of course I believe that it's also possible to see things differently. If I disagree with you and it's important enough, I'll try my best to try to convince you that you should think differently. And maybe there are even some situations where I might even fight you for what I believe in.

But I hope I will never take pleasure in dehumanizing a human being. I doubt there has ever been anything good to come out of reacting to a situation clouded by hate and hasty judgement. What are the benefits of strong, decisive action based on misinformation or misconceptions?

I've been told that human beings should try to respect each other - not just when they are alike, but especially when they are different. Does this also apply to differences caused by the holding of different ideas?

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever. - Soren Kierkegaard

I doubt that many of the people who are directing the most scathing words toward Lt. Watada could bear the emotional weight of a million people's animosity for even one day. And if that concept seems hard to even imagine, then I think that means something too.

~pinky

Pinky Show T-shirts Poll

Posted by Bunny.

Hi. We have four Pinky Show t-shirt designs in the Pinky Show store. Please vote for the one you like best. Any comments would be appreciated (send us an e-mail). Thank you.

[ the poll has been closed. ]​