Posted by Bunny.
Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, we finally finished our 24 minute summary on the illegality of the Iraq war and occupation. See it here.
More news: we now have an assortment of Pinky Show shirts in our support area. They are very nice shirts. All proceeds from shirts (and posters, dvds, etc.) go directly to the production of new episodes. So buy lots of stuff - we have lots of subjects we want to explore in yet-to-be-created episodes. Thank you.
~B.
Posted by Bunny.
I finally finished The Pinky Show Support area. Check it out and let me know what you think. We'll be adding more stuff to it over the coming weeks/months. 100% of all proceeds & donations will go towards the creation of new episodes. Thanks.
Posted by Pinky.
Mimi and Kim came back from their vacation tonight. They got back around 9 p.m. and then went straight to bed. I guess I'll ask them how their trip was tomorrow. Anyway, we're happy they got back safely.
Earlier tonight I was reading an article about the shooting murder-suicide at Virginia Tech. 32 people were killed, the murderer also died when he shot himself. I was thinking about the horror of that number - 33 people suffering and dying like that is just so sad, not to mention all the other people who were physically injured or emotionally traumatized that day. The article went on to call it 'the deadliest single-perpetrator shooting in United States history'.
I suppose it's natural to compare one tragic day to other tragic days - it's not a pleasant thing to do but I can kind of understand the logic of doing so. But then I got to thinking - what about comparing tragic days to ordinary days?
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2005 there were 14,860 murders. 10,100 of those people were killed with a gun. Divided by 365, that's an average of about 28 people killed with a gun every day. I guess you could say that in terms of number of victims, it's kind of like having a Virginia Tech mass killing every single day, except it's spread out all over the country.
Another way to think about that number is to say that every month in the U.S. about 850 people are shot to death. One way you can imagine the relative scale of this number is to know that the average size of an elementary school in the United States (According to Education Statistics Quarterly 1995-1996 data) is 428 students. So if you can imagine a person with a gun going to an average-sized elementary school and then executing every single student there, and then going to another school and then doing the same thing over there too - well, that's how many people are getting shot to death each and every month in the United States.
It's fairly peaceful out here in the middle of the desert, so much so that it's easy to get lulled into a false sense of 'there's nothing going on'. I certainly don't think about gun violence every day, even though it certainly looks like it never really stops. Maybe the occurrences aren't sufficiently 'lumped together' enough to warrant our concern. We seem drawn to 'exceptional stories' and 'big numbers' - apparently even when the big numbers are actually smaller than the everyday numbers.
~p.
Posted by Pinky.
I was looking over some of my 'old' records when I came across the notes from the very first meeting where Bunny and I had discussed the possibility of creating The Pinky Show. When I saw the date on those notes - April 4, 2005 - I got really excited. I thought I'd stumbled upon these notes exactly two years to the day. Wow! This must mean we should celebrate! I ran to show Bunny...
Bunny: *looking at the notes* "It's May."
Me: "Huh?"
Bunny: "April 4th was last month. You missed it by a whole month..."
Oops.
Okay, so apparently I have a hard time remembering what month I'm in. But whether its been 2 years or 2 years+1 month, I think we do have some things to be thankful for. We've actually made some good progress since we started - it's not easy to draw up The Pinky Show with a two-cat production team, and the feedback has been really encouraging. It's also been a real struggle to make ends meet at times, but somehow we're still here. And although we haven't been able to work on this project full time, that's still our goal and I have good feeling that sooner or later something nice will happen if we keep on pushing this project forward.
I'm especially excited about the work we're planning for this summer/fall. I don't want to say too much about it before we get more of the details worked out, but I will say that it's basically a multi-episode series based on a walk across the United States. It'll probably be Bunny who does the walking. It's not going to be easy so she's already started preparing herself. More details later.
~pinky
Posted by Pinky.
We've been keeping track of the voting for a few weeks, and it seems that these two are, by a pretty decent margin, the most popular:
Being that it's kind of hard to anticipate how many people are really going to order a t-shirt, we decided to just make one design to start off with. If we do get orders and people want more desigs, we were thinking we could always add more later.
Anyway, after some discussion we decided to do the design on the right (the one where I'm standing up). We chose this one for a couple of reasons: 1) it's a one-color design (easier to print than the 4-color design on the left); and 2) we thought it was a little weird to have just my severed head on a t-shirt without the rest of me.
Personally I also like that design the best because it doesn't say "The Pinky Show" or have our URL on it. I know that's supposed to be 'good advertising' but I think maybe people who like the Pinky Show might just want a t-shirt with a Pinky Show-type picture on it, without having to become a walking billboard for our show. I figure if people really want to help us get more viewers it probably makes more sense for them to just tell their friends about us. I doubt anybody ever sees a URL on a t-shirt and thinks to themselves, "gee, I better memorize that URL and remember to check that out later today when I get home from work...". You know what I mean. So now it'll just be a very quiet and semi-secret relationship between me and the person wearing the shirt. Does that make sense?
We still have to buy some 'blank' shirts and also practice our screen printing technique. Assuming they come out nice, we'll send out an announcement via the newsletter when we have some shirts ready to go.
Okay, that's everything going on in the world of t-shirts. Back to work - Bunny and I are still working on the Iraq War episode. These episodes take a while because we like to double- and triple-check all the information, over and over again. Mimi & Kim are on vacation at the moment. Our goal is to be done with the episode and surprise them with it when they get back next Monday night. It'll be tight; there's still quite a lot to do.
Take care,
pinky
Posted by Pinky.
Our computer server that holds the Pinky Show website crashed on Friday due to some kind of hardware malfunction. As you can see our website is now back online, but my last diary entry got lost. I got all grumpy because that entry was actually a long one and it took me a long time to write.
So anyway, just in case you missed it, here is a not-as-carefully-written summary (a.k.a. the "financial report"):
• After carefully reviewing our 2006 accounting records, Mimi has determined that The Pinky Show project is not financially sustainable. We either need to find a way to pay our bills or shut down.
• We currently have a small group of very generous individuals who have taken it upon themselves to keep The Pinky Show alive. But except for these donors, we basically receive no donations. Since launching this website the amount of visitors we receive has grown tremendously every month. However, comparing the site traffic data to donations records, Mimi estimates that more than 99.9% of our visitors don't make donations. (yikes!) So although we do have a few very faithful supporters, we also haven't come close to being able to sustain The Pinky Show through donations from the viewing public in general.
• Bunny is almost done with The Pinky Show Online Store. Not that we think we're going to sell tons of t-shirts or posters or whatever; this is actually just something we wanted to do because we thought it'd be cool to have our own online store.
• Up till now we've been paying our bills by working various 'side jobs' unrelated to The Pinky Show. For example, Bunny and I have worked with an independent publisher on a number of educational projects; Bunny has built a few websites for some non-profits, artists, and so on; I've done some photography & design work for various organizations; Mimi has been doing research and consulting on health-related issues; etc. All this stuff brings in some money but it's also been taking away time from working on The Pinky Show. This is the main reason why we don't release new episodes very often. Our long term goal is to be able to stop doing this stuff and dedicate 100% of our time to making new episodes. Eventually we want to be releasing a new episode every week. But in order to do that, first we have to figure out where funding for this project is going to come from.
• After much discussion, we've decided that the most promising option at the moment is to try to fund The Pinky Show through grants. So Mimi and I have spent the past several weeks doing a lot of grants research and writing; this will probably continue until our financial situation changes. Neither of us are particularly good grant writing, I hope we get better as we go along!
• Any time we have to work on Pinky Show stuff will be roughly divided 70/30: 70% of our time writing for grants and 30% of our time producing new episodes. At one point we even talked about the possibility of using 100% of our time to try to secure some kind of funding before proceeding. But in the end we decided that we really don't want to let the website to become totally "dead". So while we'll still be making episodes, our output will drop off quite a bit (by about 70% I guess).
Hmm - I think that's about it. For some reason I still feel pretty optimistic that one day The Pinky Show will find a broad enough audience that we'll be able to work on this project full-time. We intend on keep on working on this until we either succeed, or receive some kind of clear message that there's no audience out there willing to support this project. Making The Pinky Show is really fun, so of course I'm hoping that eventually we'll be able to grow it into something permanent.
Sorry for the lousy report, I just don't feel like writing the same post again, and anyway, my memory is not so good. Now back to grant writing for me and Mimi. That plus Bunny and I are getting close to finishing up another episode.
~pinky
Posted by Bunny.
Free Pinky Show wallpaper for your computer available below.
Posted by Bunny.
Our new favorite website: http://www.infinitecat.com/. You must go there, because it is awesome. 1,400+ cats contemplating the infinite. This is what the internet was invented for. Mike Stanfill, the human being who runs the site, e-mailed us to let us know that he had made The Pinky Show website his "Cat Site of the Week". Yes!
Posted by Bunny.
My favorite meme cats now in the Special:Photos area. Most of these photos are from Meme Cats (of course) and I Can Has a Cheezburger?.
[ Update: the 'Special' area is closed now so the photos are below. ]
Posted by Pinky.
Today was my turn to visit Dr. Wendy. The visit was short, maybe 20 minutes, because basically I'm pretty healthy. She gave me a shot and put me on the same heart worm medication that Bunny is on. The heart worm medication is about $50 for a 3 month supply for the two of us. All together our check-ups cost over $300. I think in the future we're going to have to stagger our visits to the doctor because the way it is now, we both go at around the same time and then we are broke. I have no idea how we are going to pay for food and electricity next month. Our bank account is nearly empty and it's interesting how that directly affects how much time we can spend on creating new episodes.
We need to do some fundraising. Maybe in the short term we can sell some t-shirts or cookies or something, but if we want to be able to keep working on The Pinky Show, eventually we're going to have to do something more ambitious.
Fundraising idea #1: Bunny stands on a tall pole. You know who David Blaine is? A few years ago he stood on a 90 foot high pole (22 inches wide) for over 30 hours without eating or sleeping. At the end he jumped off into a pile of cardboard boxes. Scary. Well Bunny says she can stand on a pole twice as high as that (and narrower on top too) for even longer. I'm not crazy about this idea because I don't know how we'd ever build a pole that large to stand on, and anyway, it just sounds too dangerous.
conceptual rendering
Fundraising idea #2: I walk across the country, from Los Angeles to New York. I could bring a video camera and interview interesting people I meet along the way. I've always wanted to see this country from 'up close'. Negative: I'm kind of worried about getting run over by a car or truck along the way.
Fundraising idea #3: Apply for grants. Not as exciting as #1 or #2 but also less likely to result in death.
I'm trying to remain optimistic that we'll be able to find some kind of solution to our money problems fairly soon. Either that or this little experiment of ours is over.
~pinky
Posted by Pinky.
I was hoping Wolfgang/crazy wolf would write back, and he did. It's a good e-mail - very helpful in explaining where he's coming from, and I thought everyone would benefit from reading it and considering its implications (For those of you who missed what this is in regards to, please see the diary entries about ants - April 2 and 6):
dear Pinky
this is a very complex issue
in that our current hypermodern culture is disconnected in varying degrees from 'feeling'
which can be stated as pitiless [read compassionless]
when I use the word ancient peoples
I could use the term 'primitive peoples'
but I avoid that term because of the implied inferiority
ancient peoples understood that they were a part of a cosmos
one spirit among many
the idea was that everything was imbued with spirit
and that to act against anything without pity
was to invite catastrophe
pity compassion reverence are all roots of the same tree
hypermodernism has abandoned these roots
in other words 'the roots of life'
in favor of the 'right' of the freedom of 'aesthetic expression'
this freedom of aesthetic expression dominates both art and science
the ancients understood the importance of limits or taboos
their cosmology/mythology was full of stories about the consequences of transgressing these limits
the guiding principle could be expressed as an 'aesthetics of pity'
our modern and hypermodern culture is clearly one of destruction
even if we were to remove from the critique mans inhumanity to man
consider that without reservation the wholesale destruction of hundreds of millions of living organisms when chemically spraying an acre field during food[?] production
the word production is an indicator of what is really transpiring
one example
there or countless others
so yes
there is another way of being here
a way that has been 'intellectually' neutered by those who inhabit the ivory towers of power
a way that would render this jewel planet a livable paradise for a million years into the future
a way that has been all but erased from our collective hypermodern consciousnessremember the Yoko Ono / John Lenon campaign
'The War Is Over'
(if you want)still true
some suggested reading
Wisdom Of The Mythtellers - Sean Kane
Spell Of The Sensuous - David Abram
Art and Fear - Paul VirilioPinky
consider pity [compassion]
almost everything that you post on your Pinky Show
speaks of the pitiful [full with compassion] or the pitiless [without compassion]
I do not see it as that big of a leap to perceive the entire cosmos from this perspective
including antsas Thich Nhat Hanh expresses - PEACE IS EVERY STEP
crazy wolf
I need to study this further. I feel like I respect the perspective but I don't want to just acknowledge this with words and then move on with my life unchanged.
~pinky
Posted by Bunny.
Check out the 13 min. video Under the Influence: How Lobbyists Wrote and Bought the Prescription Drug Bill (from the mainstream news program 60 Minutes). Link from here. Unbelievable.
[ dead link ]
Posted by Pinky.
All of us go once a year to the doctor and today was Bunny's turn. I don't think any of us enjoy visiting Dr. Wendy even though on a personal level she is a nice person. Every visit involves a lot of poking, grabbing, shining bright lights in our eyes, and so on. But we go anyway because I guess it's important to try to be healthy. That and going to the doctor is the only way I know of where we can get heart worm medicine.
I don't know exactly why but Bunny was SO cranky today and we all had to basically shove/drag her all the way to the doctor's office (not easy since she is really strong!). And when she got there she also fought and struggled with Dr. Wendy and assistant, but of course they are much larger and stronger and have four hands and a towel to wrap her with, so Bunny eventually lost.
The most shocking part to me was when they washed out her ears - they were so dirty inside. Dr. Wendy says Bunny is being lazy and not grooming enough. I guess we will all be grooming more from now on. Next Friday is my turn, bleh. Not looking forward to that...
So anyway, when Bunny got home she went straight to grooming then right after that she went to sleep. It's almost midnight and she's still sleeping - all that excitement must have wore her out.
~pinky
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 teachmany 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 harmonyPinky
make peace not warcrazy 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
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
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.
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.
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
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- ]
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:
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.
