We've posted a new exhibition, US Future States, in our Commons Gallery from artist/curator Dan Mills. Also, don't forget to check out the accompanying interview with Pinky in our Conversations area. This is a fascinating project that took the artist about five years to complete. Please send us your comments after you've had a chance to check it out. ~B.
The Pinky Show has Twitter & Facebook & MySpace
Posted by Pinky.
Everybody's been telling me I need to try Twitter so I finally made an account to try it out. I don't really get it - it seems like I just type in a couple of sentences and then I run out of room. I guess we'll try it for a little while? Our Twitter name is "pinkyshow".
Also Bunny made us a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/PinkyShow
And finally, we have a MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/thepinkyshow
We are slowly catching up with all this internet-culture stuff. Slowly.
Take care!
pinky
e-mail: Is PS okay?! Please blog to prove!
Posted by Pinky.
E-mail from Eric W.:
Subject: Is PS okay?! Please blog to prove!
Hi. You have not blogged since Dec. 2008. Please blog something to let people know you are still up and running and are not locked up in an animal shelter! ...Also... Have you thought about adding a section to your website where teachers can upload lesson plans, Word documents, pdf documents, etc. that would go along with you videos? They could somehow be peer reviewed before appearing online, or vetted in some way. Eric :)
Pinky's response:
Hi Eric, Thank you for your concern. No, we've not been locked up (recently). And I don't want anyone to think that we're just sitting around watching T.V. or something so here is my mini-report on what's going on around here at the moment: 1) editing & animating two new PS episodes; 2) putting together a new feature for the Commons Gallery; 3) Bunny is working on "tiny colonialism comix"; 4) I'm writing a children's book (for adults); 5) we're writing curriculum for some upcoming workshops; 6) ongoing grassroots education project re: colonialism in Hawaii; 7) computer died and (semi)resurrected; and 8) we just finished up and submitted a new grant proposal today for starting a program to collect oral histories (yay! everybody cross fingers!). So, rather than blog everyday about being on the verge of a nervous breakdown I just decided to leave the blog alone for the moment.
BUT! Regarding teaching materials idea - yes, Bunny and I have been talking about doing something like that on and off since... well, since we started this project. But things never seem to calm down around here so we've never actually gotten around to doing it. Hopefully sometime later this year Bunny will be able to make a Pinky Show Wiki so that interested people would be able to coordinate work on things like supplemental materials, episode subtitles, or whatever else people might find useful. We're hoping to do that eventually, we're just flat under a bunch of work at the moment.
But not dead!
Take care,
pinky
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Posted by Bunny: The situation in Gaza has deescalated somewhat but is still dire. Please remind your friends that we have two excellent documentaries in our Dec 2008 diary archives on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, and Occupation 101. Send them here.
New Episode: Cats in Slovenia!
Posted by Pinky.
We just added a new episode to our archive. Recently we went to Slovenia to attend an event in Ljubljana called Encounter on Radical Education and this is our slideshow/report of what we saw and did while we were there. I hope you find it interesting...
I'll keep this short because we are working on a ton of stuff at the moment, but we will be back soon with more episodes.
Take care,
pinky
Fundraising Success!
Posted by Pinky.
Hello everybody - I have a very happy announcement to make...
Due to the support of many, many people, I am happy to report that this past year (2008) we were able to meet the challenge grant from the Pierre & Pamela Omidyar Fund! YES!!! The bar was set at $40,000 - double what we'd thought possible, and to be honest, up until almost the very end of the year we all thought that we probably weren't going to be able to meet the goal. But an eleventh hour push of many small- and medium-size donations, plus a grant from the Hawaii People's Fund, PLUS a totally unexpected, out-of-the-blue big donation helped us squeak by the $40,000 mark at the very end! Unbelievable! It was like rolling a bowling ball down the wooden walkway thing and knocking down all the bowling dolls! Now we can pay our electricity and food bills - thank goodness!
The main thing this means for The Pinky Show project is that we'll be able to keep on doing it. We have big plans and we are determined to bring them into reality. I hope you can tell that Bunny and I love working on this project - we have all this love for the world of human beings and ideas, and even though this is a small project, we are trying to grow something that we think is good. We don't have kittens but it is kind of like trying to raise good kittens (I imagine). So, our sincerest 'thank you' to all of you who've helped us to continue what we hope will be a long-term project.
Sincerely yours,
pinky
Bunny
Kim&Mimi
Video: Occupation 101
Posted by Bunny.
I just remembered this video and did a search for it - surprisingly it's also on Google video. In some ways I think Occupation 101 is a better 'overview' than PP&P that I just posted a few minutes ago. Better yet, watch both as they're both excellent. I hope some of you will be successful in persuading some of your friends to watch as well.
I'm not sure if these videos are being posted by their creators so it's probably best to watch them immediately, before they're taken down.
Peace,
Bunny
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Posted by Kim: Thanks Bunny for posting this video, I never saw it before. About 1 hour into the video I just started to cry a lot. Will we do something about this?
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Posted by Bunny: Tomorrow morning Pinky and I go to Los Angeles for the 12/30 protest at the Israeli Counsulate. You come too. There are emergency protests planned all over the U.S. and world. If anyone out there is reading this, please find out what's happening in your city or town and hit the streets.
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Posted by Pinky: Thanks Bunny. The newspapers pretty much just say that the air strikes are in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks into Israel. To which I'm sure most U.S. readers will just say "Oh, okay, Israel has a right to defend itself." There is no historical context provided. But I think if Americans knew a little bit about the situation in Gaza, probably there'd be widespread rage. Which is why there is no historical context given! I challenge any thinking, feeling person to watch this video and come away thinking that the air strikes are a simple matter of self-defense.
From the film:
"No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing, and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of this situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it..." - Rachel Corrie's final thoughts, e-mailed to her mother prior to her death.
"This is an America issue. Because this is an issue of American foreign policy." - Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies
Bunny Recommends: Peace, Propaganda, & the Promised Land
Posted by Bunny.
For the past couple of days Pinky and I have been absorbed with trying to solve a bunch of equipment problems. I think my computer is ready to go to computer heaven and Pinky's RAID keeps failing for some mysterious reason. On top of that our mic preamp has developed an intermittent static problem. Grrr. It's just annoying enough to make us contemplate a switch to book-writing. (Comic books?)
I hadn't gone online for a couple of days and when I finally did this morning all I see are reports about the Israeli airstrikes. The year ends in rivers of blood. So sad.
Some of you may remember that we (Pinky, Kim, Mimi, and I) posted a mini-review of Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land a few months ago and we all thought it was an excellent documentary. Well, I just found it on Google video. While it may not be the best summary of "the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict" (that would be our friend Yamila narrating that complicated story while drawing explanatory maps on a napkin), but it's still extremely helpful for anyone who gets their information about what's going on from the mainstream media - which is probably 99% of everybody. I'm posting it below - please watch.
~B.
[ Update: I guess the video was taken down from Google Videos recently? ]
Pinky Doll Kit
Posted by Bunny.
I posted an auction on ebay for a Pinky doll kit. We've had lots of requests for these so now is your chance to get the last one and help out The Pinky Show at the same time. It took some effort, but I convinced Kim to give up her kit.
The auction ends Monday so put in your bid soon!
Bunny Recommends: War Made Easy
Posted by Bunny.
Hey there, what are you doing tonight? Instead of Wheel of Fortune or Friends, how about watching War Made Easy? (70 minutes) Here's the description from the folks at Media Education Foundation:
War Made Easy brings to the screen Norman Solomon's insightful analysis of the strategies used by administrations, both Democratic and Republican, to promote their agendas for war from Vietnam to Iraq. By familiarizing viewers with the techniques of war propaganda, War Made Easy encourages viewers to think critically about the messages put out by today's spin doctors - messages which are designed to promote and prolong a policy of militarism under the guise of the "war on terror." Based on the book by the same title.
Please tell your friends to watch too. ~B.
PS Art on eBay!
Posted by Bunny.
Hello again. We've been back from Slovenia almost a week now and things are getting back to normal. Pinky and I both got sick on the trip but I got better fast and Pinky's still sick. Sickly, that cat. The trip itself was amazing. We're making a narrated slide show with about 100 photos we took over there and will release that soon. Pinky's pretty much done with the writing but I think maybe I'll have to narrate it this time because she still sounds weird and is coughing a lot.
In other news, while we were in Slovenia the folks at the Arlington Arts Center sent back the art work that we had in the Picturing Politics 2008 exhibition. Originally we were planning on keeping all the stuff we made for ourselves (because we like it), but the end of the year is quickly approaching and we're still short on our fundraising efforts, so after much discussion (grrr!) we decided to put them up for auction on eBay. The auctions run for only a week so if you've been clenching your teeth, agonizing over not being able to own either or both of these gorgeous+ masterworks - now's your chance! Yes, these are the very same paw-signed originals from the AAC show! WOW! (well, maybe not so 'wow', but they are very nice...) And of course 100% of any funds generated from the auctions will go to the production of new PS episodes. Interested? Click on the pictures below to check out the auctions!
By the way, don't forget to look at our blog. Later tonight I'm going to post a link to an excellent documentary my friend sent me - War Made Easy by the folks at Media Education Foundation. Required watching - send your friends.
~B.
Chris Sent Me Fan Art
Posted by Bunny.
Three years into doing the Pinky Show and I think this is the first time someone sends us fan art... and guess what - it's a picture of ME, not Pinky! Haha! Chris in New Zealand sent us this cool painting he made of me holding a sacred heart (w/ barbed wire). Many thanks to Chris, I like it. ~B.
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Posted by Kim: Hey, where's your tail?
I found this amusing chart on the internet...
Pinky Show goes to Slovenia; New PDFs.
Posted by Bunny.
1. Almost a year and a half ago we received an invitation to participate in a series of debates and an accompanying exhibition on global practices in radical education. Well what seemed so far away before has now finally arrived and Pinky, Daisy, and I will fly to Slovenia this coming Monday (Nov. 24) to participate in the events; Kim & Mimi will stay behind and water the plants, feed the ants, etc. The program was organized by the Radical Education Collective (Slovenia) and the exhibition will be held at the gallery Škuc in Ljubljana. The talks will include representatives from education groups from all over: Contra Filé (Brazil), Dostje!, H.I.J.O.S. (Guatemala), La Lleca (Mexico), Radical Education, Section for Latin America, Social Center Rog, Universidad Nómada, Zampa di Leone (Serbia), Albert Heta (Kosova), Agon Hamza (Kosova), Hajrudin Hromadžić, Helena Popović, and us. From the curatorial statement:
"There is no silence, we are here to speak. About memories that give us strength to organize social struggles. About networks that move into new territories. About art as experience and experiment. About cultural hybrids and political mutants. About practices of freedom and about different social relations."
We are going to Slovenia to share and learn, I'm sure we'll return with many new ideas for the future. Pinky will take notes and give a report when we get back. We will be there for six days of dialogue/work, I think we might also have one day to relax and sight-see around Ljubljana. Assuming all goes according to plan, we will be back home on December 5.
2. Any orders placed in our online store between Nov. 24 and Dec. 5 will be mailed out as soon as we return from Slovenia. Mimi & Kim don't know how to do that stuff.
3. One of the objectives of our Pinky Show project is to create materials that teachers can use to encourage meaningful dialogue and reflection in their classes. To this end, I finally got around to making & posting downloadable PDF versions of the globalization cartoons, the museum poster, and so on. This makes using them as handouts easier. They are scattered throughout the Pinky Show archives. We hope you find them useful.
~B.
Mimi recommends: Sick Around the World
Posted by Mimi.
According to the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, health care ranks third on the list of voters' concerns, behind the economy and Iraq. The U.S. health care system is the world's most expensive medical system, yet 47 million people are without coverage, and hundreds of thousands of people go into bankruptcy each year due to medical bills.
I'd like to thank Dr. Gise for sending me the link to the FRONTLINE online video Sick Around the World. It's about an our long and in it, Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid finds out how five other capitalist democracies - the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland - deliver universal health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures. Following are excerpts from the website.
• In the U.K., the government-run National Health Service (NHS) is funded through taxes. "Every single person who's born in the U.K. will use the NHS," says Whittington Hospital CEO David Sloman, "and none of them will be presented a bill at any point during that time."
• In Japan, which has the best health statistics in the world, by law, everyone must buy health insurance - either through an employer or a community plan - and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit.
• In Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system, Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as "a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy."
• In Taiwan, the government collects the money and pays providers. Every person in Taiwan has a "smart card" containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically.
• In Switzerland, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit on basic medical care.
• According to Ried, it's not all "socialized medicine" out there. Many countries provide universal coverage with private insurance, private doctors, and private hospitals. These capitalist countries don't trust health care entirely to the free market. They all impose limits: (1) Insurance companies must accept everyone and can't make a profit on basic care. (2) Everybody's mandated to buy insurance, and the government pays the premium for the poor. (3) Doctors and hospitals have to accept one standard set of fixed prices.
• These foreign health care ideas aren't really so foreign to us. For American veterans, health care is just like Britain's NHS. For seniors on Medicare, we're Taiwan. For working Americans with insurance, we're Germany. And for the tens of million without health insurance, we're just another poor country.
Almost all of us can agree that this fragmented health care mess cannot be ignored. The longer we leave it, the sicker it becomes, and the more expensive the cure.
Okay, now go watch the video. It's entertaining & very informative at the same time.
~Mimi
Radical Education Debates in Slovenia
Posted by Pinky.
Last night at about 2:30 a.m. Bunny and I found out that we are going to Slovenia next week. It was a little nerve-wracking for me, not knowing if we were really going or not until the last minute, but now that they sent us the airplane tickets I guess we are really going! Why Slovenia? Here's the reason:
ENCOUNTER ON RADICAL EDUCATION
November-December 2008 events: Dialogs/Debates/ExhibitionParticipants: Contra Filé, Dostje!, H.I.J.O.S., La Lleca, The Pinky Show, Radical Education, Section for Latin America, Social Center Rog, Universidad Nómada, Zampa di Leone, Albert Heta, Agon Hamza, Hajrudin Hromadžić, Helena Popović.
The encounter of art and activist collectives from three continents is a small piece in the mosaic of numerous experiments of symbolic and material social recomposition in times of capitalism's profound systemic crisis. It represents an opportunity to rekindle discussions about the tradition of radical pedagogy and the methods of co-research, to learn about the media representations of overlooked realities excluded from the mainstream visual and sensual realms, about various tools for the production and distribution of effective counter-narrations emerging at the margins of the system: autonomous, self-organized communities.
"There is no silence, we are here to speak. About memories that give us strength to organize social struggles. About networks that move into new territories. About art as experience and experiment. About cultural hybrids and political mutants. About practices of freedom and about different social relations."
In their different ways, the participants are involved in deconstructing the dominant meanings, media discourses, and ideological certainties to give back the voice to those who were voiceless, and the image to those who were faceless. Their counter-narrations (publicly ignored histories, unspoken memories, etc.) humbly submit to the principles of empowering communities (of native inhabitants, farmers without land, children from metropolitan margins, relatives of the disappeared, migrant and precarious workers). They are based on a grammar of practical questions and concepts, whose purpose is not to formulate a unified "program of action," but to teach us to tell a coherent story committed to new subjectivities of resistance.
For rad. edu: Gašper Kralj, Bojana Piškur
Program:
Encounter on Radical Education, Friday, 28 November at 6 p.m.
Participants: Contra Filé, Dostje!, H.I.J.O.S., La Lleca, The Pinky Show, Radical Education, Section for Latin America, Social Center Rog, Universidad Nómada, Zampa di Leone.rad. edu. exhibition opening, Friday, 28 November at 8 p.m.
exhibition at Škuc Gallery runs from 28 November – 14 December 2008
Participants: Contra Filé, H.I.J.O.S., La Lleca, The Pinky Show, Zampa di Leone.Debate on satire and animated film as a means of social critique and Zampa di Leone workshop, Saturday, 29 November at 6 p.m.
Participants: The Pinky Show, Zampa di Leone, Hajrudin Hromadžić, Helena Popović.Discussion with Albert Heta and Agon Hamza, Wednesday, 3 December at 6 p.m.
Sounds interesting, right? I'll write about it when we get back (~December 4) if not sooner (still don't know if I'll have access to a computer or internet connection while we're there). Okay, now I better go pack my backpack.
~pinky
Bunny Mailbag: Obama, Forums, Legitimacy, etc.
Posted by Bunny.
Okay, time for another round of answering e-mails.
Question 1: What are your thoughts on Barak Obama becoming the new President of the United States? - from Daniel Frogbrains
Answer: Hi Daniel, It's difficult to imagine a worse administration than the current one. Well, actually, I take that back, my imagination is pretty good. But I think Barack Obama will put more effort into appearing less vicious towards the environment, social welfare needs, etc. But, ultimately he's an elected politician in the United States of America, which means that much of what he does will follow the interests of whichever class is most successful in wielding their own form of power. Which is to say if ordinary working- or middle-class citizens do not insist on being reckoned with then I hope they aren’t too surprised when the upcoming presidency ends up being remarkably similar to previous presidencies.
Question 2: Greetings Pinky and crew, Why do you not have a forum set up? If your interest is discussion, then wouldn't providing a forum for discussion be a logical goal? I look forward to a response. - Mrrar
Answer: Hi Mrrar, I like your name. The main reason why we don't have a forum set up at our website is because we don't have the resources or time to implement something like that the right way. I mean, it would be easy to throw a message board together and let people go at it, but I can imagine things getting out of control very quickly. All of the online discussion forums we've participated in in the past have been "interesting but also not very constructive". Discussing complex and difficult social issues doesn't seem to go well with the "anonymity of the internet" thing. I bet a lot of the very nasty people who we run into on the internet would never say such stupid things if we were talking with them face-to-face. But that seems to be a very common problem. Of course if we can figure out a nice way to get around this problem we will be very happy to reconsider. In the meantime, we will just continue making videos and other stuff for people to discuss among friends, family, in classrooms, or whatever. The internet is a good ‘delivery vehicle’ for us but we still think the most transformative dialogue happens offline.
Question 3: Based on previous donation rates, what is the chance that the Pink Show will survive? (also from Mrrar)
Answer: Not particularly good. Pinky and I are 100% committed to this project but the challenges are also formidable. A two-cat production team to do the all the work that needs to be done? Hmm, this is probably not sustainable. And Mimi, who does all the paperwork and accounting for the Pinky Show project, has never accepted even one penny for all the work she does (not to mention she is already totally overworked in her "real job" as a doctor). Giving all of our materials away for free (while not accepting advertisements or corporate sponsorship) doesn’t make too much 'economic sense' either. I don't think people realize how much time or money it takes to produce this kind of work. So for now we are just trying to keep going, doing the most cost-effective work for as long as possible, until maybe one of us will suddenly get a great idea for how to make this all sustainable. Pinky has lots of great ideas and outlines for episodes and projects but we can't afford to do any of them. Maybe later. Also I think it’s important that one day Pinky would be able to afford going to the dentist and eye-doctor.
And finally, today's stupid question, from Sean O'Brien: What is your nation of origin? The cat speaks excelent English with a passive tone and yet expresses aggressive Anti American goverment opinions. I do however detect an accent. For me to take anything presented serious, I need to understand and then be able to verify it's origin.
Answer: Hi Sean, Yes, we are all from France. Now you know why it is so difficult for us to contain our anti-American sentiments, because as you already know, everyone in France are genetically predisposed to hate freedom. Now you know the truth, you’re very welcome.
Idiot.
Oh, by the way, we have received quite a bit of questions & comments regarding the We Love Museums video, but I will leave it to Kim to respond to them when she has some time to do that.
~French Bunny
Pinky Show Website Hacked
Posted by Pinky.
The Pinky Show website was hacked yesterday. Bunny set to work right away and got things back to normal so our website is once again free from malicious code.
But for all PC users, if you visited us yesterday or today (November 11 or November 12), it is possible that your computer may have been infected with a trojan virus. As a precaution, Bunny recommends that you scan and protect your computer with an up-to-date anti-virus program.
This is not the first time people have tried to forcibly shut us down and I'm sure it won't be the last. But like I said last time, it's not possible to stop cats from doing something once we've set our minds to it. All attempts to silence us will ultimately fail.
~Pinky, Bunny, Mimi & Kim
New Episode: Museums, etc.
Posted by Bunny.
Hi everybody. We just posted a new episode - it's supposedly about museums, but actually it's also an introduction to the ideological nature of all cultural institutions. This is the first episode where Kim does the presentation and I'm guessing it'll be most popular with our friends in cultural studies, museum studies, studio arts, and other stuff like that. We'll be doing some follow-up episodes in the future on this subject-area, for now we just wanted to make a small opening. Here it is:
We Love Museums... Do Museums Love Us Back?
Also, I wanted to point out that we made a free, downloadable poster that goes along with the episode. If you want it, you can retrieve it (it's a PDF file) from the We Love Museums... entry in the episode archives list:
Pinky-in-a-museum-display-case poster
We've got a lot of stuff going on around here, please check back often as several of our episodes are entering the final stages of production and we'll be posting them as we finish them.
"Have you hugged your animal friends today?"
~B.
Elections Perspectives: West, Zinn, Chomsky, & Invisibles
Posted by Pinky.
Over the past few months Bunny and I been posting some interesting stories about the U.S. presidential elections here in our blog. Today I have a few nice, short YouTube videos for you, posted in no particular order. Here come the elections - I hope you all vote! Take care, pinky
Cornel West:
Howard Zinn:
Noam Chomsky:
Two of the (Nearly-)Invisible:
[ video no longer available ]
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Bunny: I would love so much to punch Wolf Blitzer in the face.
Lt. Watada Update
Posted by Pinky.
We are very pleased to hear that a U.S. District Judge has (finally!) ruled that the Army cannot send Lt. Ehren Watada to trial a second time for the same charges - to do so is called 'double jeopardy' and would be a violation of his constitutional rights. As you may recall, the first trial was declared a mistrial by the presiding Army judge when he realized that the trial wasn't going as well as he had hoped (i.e., guaranteed conviction). With this additional setback hopefully the Army will just discharge Lt. Watada already - his term of service to the military was actually over in 2006, since then he's basically been held captive by the legal process and consigned to a meaningless desk job counting paper clips.
I don't know what will happen next - if we hear something we'll post it here.
[ Pinky Show Ehren Watada speech from 2006 ]
~ pinky