Posted by Kim.
Somebody had this picture on Facebook and I think it is funny. :)
Japanese Small Box Toys
Posted by Bunny.
Yesterday Pinky and I made our monthly trek to the Marukai Store, which is kind of like the mother ship of all Japanese Supermarkets here in California. Besides stocking up on Japanese snack foods the one thing that jumped out at us was their large selection of small box-toys. You know those small box-toys from Japan? In case you don't know here's how they work: each toy-box shows a selection of possible toys on the back of the box, but then they don't tell you which toy is actually inside. Which means you have to keep buying boxes and boxes of toys until you finally get the specific toy you want. Some of the toys are really cool but making you buy a bunch of toys you don't want is not my idea of "exciting" - it's WEAK. Anyway, this is the toy-series that had my attention:
They have little cat statues inside. Most of the cat statues in this series looked pretty boring to me but two of them looked kind of like me and Pinky. And I figured out if I squeeze the box a certain way I could peek inside, so I stood there and squeezed all the boxes and eventually I found the two toys that I wanted. So here's what I bought - this one looks just like Pinky:
Pooping. It even has a bunch of wheat grass, which is funny because she loves wheat grass for real. She's always saying, "Do we have any wheat grass?" even when we don't have any wheat grass, it's so irritating. Here is the other one, it looks like me, sort of.
Actually I'm a lot better looking than this in real life but I thought it was good that it came with a computer because I really like computers.
I've never been to Japan but I want to go one day because their toys and food is really good.
In other news, Pinky is still painting every day in preparation for our upcoming Winnipeg show; I'm working on everything else.
~B.
We Are Painting
Posted by Pinky.
Hi Everybody! I hope everybody is doing good. Some of your e-mails have been asking about what we've been up to since returning from our walk in the desert. Well, lots of things!
1. continue work on settler colonialism episodes
2. working with Teacup on hegemony project
3. planted a mini-garden (then we ate it)
But the biggest thing we've been working on is to prepare for our upcoming Pinky Show exhibition at the University of Winnipeg Art Gallery. The exhibition is going to be from November 12 to December 12, 2009 and is titled Class Treason Stories (excerpts).
The show will feature a brand new video made specially for the installation, a whole bunch of big, hand-painted banners, a viewing station to watch old PS videos, and some other stuff. Bunny and I are working super hard to make sure it will be a fun exhibition to visit, but also that it will have some brain-poking function in regards to questions of class treason - especially "what is it?", and "what does that have to do with me?", stuff like that.
Here are some photos of the banners taking shape.
Special thank you to HR02 & HR03 who are allowing us to use their studio to paint all these big things!
For more information about the upcoming exhibition, here is a PDF flier from the UWinnipeg Art Gallery:
Okay, back to painting.
Take care!
pinky
Photos from the Long Walk & Ride
Posted by Bunny.
I'm posting some photos Pinky made during our recent mini-journey.
This tree is in Southwest Colorado, near Cortez.
Burned trees, also near Cortez.
Lonely sign, Petrified Forest National Park.
Billboard, Route 66. I think this was in Arizona.
Right near home. Death Valley.
We are making some of our photos into an art project. We will post it in the PS Commons Gallery when we are finished.
~B.
We Are Back, WITH FRY BREAD RECIPE
Posted by Pinky.
Hi everybody. Bunny and I finally got back home - very dusty and tired - but we're fine and nothing bad happened to us on our walk. I'm writing this as Bunny is (voluntarily) taking a bath.
Trip summary: It's been so hot this past couple of weeks we could hardly believe it. In some parts it got almost to 120° F (49° C). In fact it was so hot we didn't walk everywhere as planned and ended up riding in people's cars whenever possible. We met a lot of nice people and another good thing was that we were able to go a lot farther than if we'd just traveled by foot. After about a week we found ourselves in the Navajo Nation so we wandered around there for a little bit. One day I'll write down some of our experiences, either here or in an episode or something, but right now I think I'm going to lie down and rest for the rest of today.
Okay I think Bunny fell asleep in the tub so I'm going to tell you one story. While walking a little west of Petrified Forest National Park, I found some really great papers stuck to a fence alongside Interstate 40 (I'm always finding good stuff alongside highways). One of the papers is a story about Navajo fry bread. I liked it so I put it in my backpack and brought it home with me and now I'd like to share part of it with you. I don't know who the author is - if anybody reading this knows please e-mail me as I'd like to credit them.
"I like to give a little history on the Navajo fry bread. The Navajo fry bread actually evolved in the mid 19th century. In 1863, approximately 8,000 Navajos spent 4 years imprisoned at Fort Sumner, New Mexico and were given little more than white flour and lard to eat. American Scout Kit Carson and his troops drove our Diné people from their land by destroying our means of survival. Kit Carson and his troops killed our sheeps, goats, and horses, poisoned our water wells, burned our crops and destroyed shelters and anything else that was value to our Diné people.
Carson and his troops then rounded up thousands of starving Navajo women and children and sent them on what is called the "Long Walk", a 200 mile walk from Arizona to Fort Sumner and Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, one of the saddest events in Navajo and U.S. history. As time went by, the U.S. government provided those on the reservation with wheat flour as part of a commodities program. Lard and wheat flour became the main ingredients in the making of Navajo fry bread. The Navajo women, back then had to make the best of what was often considered poor quality rations in concentration camps and the varying availability of government issued commodities.
Frying was totally new to Navajos because we were used to hunting game that was very lean and making bread in mud ovens. The iron pots were also introduced to us thus created fry bread.
As with many cultures around the world, Native Americans have an all purpose flat bread that is a staple of our cuisine. Fry bread is considered a food of inter-tribal unity and is made at all Indian pow-wows. The dough is a variation of that used for flour tortillas, consisting of flour, preferably Blue Bird flour, shortening, salt, water, and baking powder. Navajo fry bread is a tradition in Dinétah.
If you ever become a visitor to a Navajo family home or a family gathering and you're offered fry bread or other traditional food, please take it, even if you ate 10 minutes ago, this is to show respect to the family that offered you their hospitality. That famly that is offering their food to you put great thought and love into their work. They want you to be happy with a full tummy and a safe journey down the road of life.
THIS IS OUR WORLD FAMOUS FRY BREAD, ALSO MADE FROM SCRATCH.
5 CUPS OF FLOUR
2 TBL SPOONS OF BAKING POWDER
2 TSP OF SALT
2 CUPS OF LUKEWARM WATER (NOT HOT, WILL BURN YOUR HAND, AND NOT COLD, WILL HARDEN YOUR DOUGH)MIX ALL DRY INGREDIENTS TOGETHER IN LARGE MIXING BOWL. SLOWLY ADD WATER, KNEED YOUR DOUGH TILL IT BECOMES A NICE AND FLUFFY.
NOW YOU ARE READY TO MAKE FRY BREAD!!
TO FRY YOUR BREAD:
1 CAST IRON SKILLET
1 1/2 CUPS OF OIL (YOUR CHOICE CORN, CANOLA OR 10W30)TURN UP HEAT ON OIL, WATCH OUT THOUGH!!!
PUT A PINCH OF DOUGH IN HOT GREASE IF IT SINKS, IT'S STILL COLD, IF IT RISES, IT'S READY
NOW THAT YOU'RE AN EXPERT, LET'S MAKE A TACO!!
1 FRY BREAD
1 SCOOP CHILI CON CARNE
ADD THE FOLLOWING AS YOUR BASE - CHOPPED LETTUCE, DICED TOMATOES AND ONIONS AND GRATED CHEESE.CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE NOW FAMOUS!!!"
So that's the story and recipe I found. Maybe later this week when I go marketing I will buy some baking powder and try to make some fry bread. Oh - here is a photograph of some fry bread I ate at the Blue Coffee Pot Diner in Kayenta. I also ordered ice tea and that was the biggest cup of ice tea I ever saw in my whole life. Those people do not mess around.
Till next time - peace!
pinky
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Posted by Bunny: What's that comment about "voluntarily" taking a bath's supposed to mean? I TAKE BATHS. I remember that Kayenta fry bread. I ate something that looked like Chinese stir fry + french fries + half that fry bread. It was GOOD.
Chalmers Johnson on Empire: 3+10
Posted by Pinky.
Here's a nice follow-up to the last blog entry re: empires - a short list-based essay by Chalmers Johnson titled Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire, and Ten Steps to Take to Do So. Again, in the interest of making this entry as brief as possible, I've taken the liberty of stripping the list down to small-size (apologies to Dr. Johnson). Please read the complete essay here, or better yet, read his trilogy of books on the subject: Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis.
Three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire...
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity costs" that go with them.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters — along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth — that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism.
7. We should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces.
9. We need to reduce the size of our standing army.
10. We must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
[ full essay here ]
Maybe it's too obvious to be included in the above list, but my favorite reason to dismantle U.S. imperial structures is simply because they're vicious and immoral. Enough is enough.
Okay, Bunny and I leave for our walk now.
Much love to you,
pinky
New Pinky Show Video: Kahoolawe
Posted by Bunny.
I just posted our newest video in the archive: 13 Things I Learned at Kahoolawe. It's an unusual episode by Pinky Show standards, so I'm curious how people will react to this one. As always, if you have any comments please e-mail them to us. We're not able to respond to each and every e-mail we receive (sometimes we get over a hundred e-mails a day) but feedback definitely influences the way we approach future episodes.
Starting Friday Pinky and I will be going for a walk for two weeks. We don't know where we're going - the point is to see where we're going as we're walking. It's been very hot here these past few days (sometimes over 110 degrees Fahrenheit), so besides having a good look into our future, the #1 priority will be to not die from the heat.
Bye for now. Bun.
We Love Museums w/ German Subs
Posted by Bunny.
German subtitles, that is.
A very nice person in Germany named Alexander was kind enough to subtitle our We Love Museums... episode in German. I don't speak German so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the translation, but from reading his e-mails I can say that his English is way better than my English, so I am going to guess that the subtitles are good! I also love the way he used a font that looks just like the font we often use - that's attention to detail...
Here it is, embedded from his new YouTube channel (pinkyshowgerman):
Big thank you to Alexander. Everybody please forward to all your German-speaking friends!
~Bunny.
10 Lessons re: Empire (Thank You Brits!)
Posted by Pinky.
I know I said I wasn't going to blog any more this month, but I'm always a sucker for a "Top 10 List". When I saw Stephen Walt's article in Foreign Policy about the ups and downs of empire maintenance, of course I couldn't resist copy-and-pasting the main points here. I mean, it's basically a two-for-one: favorite topic + favorite format! I like!
The basic question Dr. Walt poses is simple: Is there anything we (U.S. Americans) can learn about current place in the world by studying the rise and fall of the British Empire? Well, "yes"...
1. There is no such thing as a "benevolent" Empire.
2. All Empires depend on self-justifying ideology and rhetoric that is often at odds with reality.
3. Successful empires require ample "hard power."
4. As Empires decline, they become more opulent, and they obsess about their own glory.
5. Great Empires are heterogeneous.
6. When building an empire, it's hard to know where to stop.
7. It takes a lot of incompetent people to run an empire.
8. Great Powers defend perceived interests with any means at their disposal.
9. Nationalism and other forms of local identity remain a potent obstacle to long-term imperial control.
10. "Imperial Prestige" is both an asset and a trap.
Okay, I admit posting the above points is only a cheap come-on to try to get people to read the whole article (find it here!). But the article's so short and won't take more than 10 minutes to read (pondering time extra) - definitely waaay faster than reading Piers Brendon's The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 plus Gibbon's multi-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Thank goodness for internet mini-summaries!
Take care,
pinky
I Want a Hamster
Posted by Bunny.
I hardly ever see stuff on TV that I want but this looks really good.
![[ update: video no longer available. ]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/50f48bcde4b0c7661ad2ccae/1362272839387-0XL8UT88V37UPWC68TLR/20090715.png)
[ Update: Sadly, this video is no longer available. ]
July: Ridiculous Packed
Posted by Pinky.
To everybody who reads this blog, my apologies for neither of us blogging much lately. Bunny and I have been keeping ourselves busy with lots of stuff that all together seems to have sucked all our diary-keeping time away. And since our July and August work-calender is looking very full, I doubt we'll be blogging for a while.
On the other hand, it does feel nice to finally be wrapping up work on several of our 'projects'. The IWTPYF book is finally done; now Mimi is trying to figure out how to get it 'out there' whenever she's not working at the hospital.
Everyday morning Bunny and I have been working on preparing work for an upcoming show (November/December 2009) at the 1C03 Gallery at the University of Winnipeg. Right now it's a lot of planning / reshuffling using our cute little gallery mock-up that Bunny made (thanks Bunny), plus making lots of drawings, some of which will eventually become much larger paintings. The working title for the show is The Pinky Show: Class Treason Story (excerpts).
A second art exhibition we are preparing for is scheduled for a bit later (late January 2010 opening) and will be held in Belgrade, Serbia at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art-Belgrade. That one is called Lecture-Performance and is a historical survey of the lecture-performance format and it's development from the 1960's onwards (Robert Morris, Martha Rosler, Andrea Fraser, etc.). The short video we posted on YouTube last night is related to our preparation for this exhibition. Bunny and I will have to sort through the questions, fashion that into an interview, and finish writing the answers to the questions and submit to the folks in Belgrade by July 20th. (*low-level panic*)
A third event we're kinda-sorta preparing for is to do "something" with the Center for the Future of Museums (a project of the American Association of Museums). We were asked by their director if we would like to work with them to create a fabulous spectacle (j/k) for the AAM's 2010 annual meeting in Los Angeles. It's a big conference with about 6,000 museum people from all over the world all converging to... talk about museums (duh). We're currently bouncing some ideas back and forth, trying to figure out what's possible. Not sure if this one is going to happen or not, but (*cat alternative to crossing fingers*).
Also, we're working on finishing up episodes 2A (Daisy) and 2C (Patrick Wolfe) of the Hawaii series - two of the parts that focus on Settler Colonialism. On our calendar we scheduled things out as if we're going to be able to finish both episodes before the start of August (yeah, right). We're pretty far along, but still, media production and unforseen delays go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Also, we're still working on an episode about "nations". I think we've been working on that one on and off for almost two years and now I just want to smash it with a large, rubber mallot. We just keep re-working it because I just don't like the way it's coming out.
Also, we are collaborating with the Center for Hegemony Studies on a really great community education project. We've been working with them every Monday or Tuesday for a little more than a year now, but I think from now is when our collaboration will really start going in all kinds of new and interesting directions (sometimes good things take a long time to take root). I'll write more about this collaboration later in the year, after we've accumulated more documentation of said 'things'!
One last thing - Bunny and I will be taking a long walk in the first two weeks of August. We'll probably stay in desert-areas, but if we can get a ride with someone we were hoping to go as far as... I dunno, maybe New Mexico? We'll see. But during that time we probably won't be able to do e-mail everyday. We'll try to get to a computer every few days to check in if possible. Kim & Mimi said they will take care of things like book orders or make t-shirts while we are gone, in case we get any PS Store orders.
As I'm writing this diary entry I just realized how much coffee we're going to be drinking this month. There was a pretty good sale on coffee at the drug store and we bought 5 bags. Good thing.
Take care,
pinky
Questions for Pinky & Bunny?
Posted by Bunny.
The Pinky Show has been invited to be in an exhibition in Belgrade. We're going to be including an interview in the catalogue so for the next few days we are accepting questions from our viewers. If you have a question that you'd like to ask, please email it to us. We'll choose the most interesting questions and arrange them into an interview for inclusion in the catalogue.
~B.
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July 5 evening update...
Holy macaroni! We're not even 24 hours into collecting questions and we've already received so many questions! Some of the questions are really good so we're excited and really looking forward to answering them! I think it'll be good to keep collecting for at least a few more days - you never know when a 'wow' question will arrive. As of right now our video has received 94 comments at YouTube (not all of them questions though). In addition to those, below are the questions we've received so far via e-mail.
Hello there, congratulations for your show, it's great. I have a question for your interview: Why do you have a policy of anonymity, i.e. why do you introduce yourselves only with pseudonyms? Also, I'm from Zagreb, Croatia, and I'd be interested in seeing the exhibition you'll be participating in in Belgrade, so if you could give me some information on that, that would be nice. Thanks and keep going, anja
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What is your mission? What has been the most interesting project for you? What has been the most rewarding experience for you? If you had a wish, what would you wish for? What have you learned about your guests/visitors who have visited your site over the years? To fry your brain on.........why is it so difficult to be so simple (in conveying a thought, demonstrating a concept)?
....................................
good cat *scratches your head*
....................................
Hello Pinky, I love your show =) the topics u talk about are pretty interesting and valuable. Recently I made a pseudo summer camp with some friends of mine, we went to my summer house and watched some documentaries and movies about topics that we often ignore or don't talk about, here's the whole list: Surplus /Zeitgeist / Jesus Camp / Das Experiment / The Corporation / Flow / Besides, I showed em' a lot of your videos, mostly the ones about education, injustice, war and some other... they really liked you and claimed each day for more D= but I ran out of videos. / We talked about the topics we saw in those videos, mainly they were: Animal and environment cruelty (Actually Im a vegetarian and I tried to explain my friends the benefits of it =P individually and for the world), Control systems (schools, jails, religion), Consumerism (a way of keeping people ignorant and silent), Warfare and the human race decadency (Zeitgeist scared them). Finally, possible solutions to that stuff, a hope (Your video about a global fundamental mind change was inspirational at this point). / Well, after 4 days of watching videos, talking, reading (specially a novel named Buda Blues from Mario Mendoza, maybe not yet translated but is worth reading-) and thinking about all this things... well we got pretty much scared, but still we want to do something, at least try to educate people, to pass the information that most ignore, make them conscious about certain things... / Something you should know, after hearing this, is that... we are from a third world country, we are from Colombia and that usually means to foreigners that we live in a jungle and only exist to produce guerillas and drugs, and that's quite not true. / Ok, sry for writing too much, actually this all goes to a question my friends and I have, how can we start making a difference? how can we approach to people to talk about those kind of topics? well we thought a lot about it and had some ideas: / We have and advantage, being from a third world country sometimes means we are ignored, but also could mean that we are hidden, like a stealth technique. / Internet, this powerful tool of communication can either mean the end of human race or it's salvation, it depends on the use we give it, I think u know more about it than we do. / It'd be nice if we can gather a bigger group and do things like the summer camp, and extend this stuff more, we thought about doing something like the pinky show, of course =P not making a copy or anything, we love your show and just want to ask you some advice about this things. Thanks for hearing me, I appreciate your response, take care Pinky & Co and keep working, your work are really making a change, goodbye.
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Will Iran remain the same (as in a theocratic govt)? Q2: Is there a possible way 3rd world countries can get out of poverty without help from foreign loans? If possible, is a self-suffiecent based economy more suit for them rather than a globalized economy? Q3: Can Islam possibly coexist peacefully with other religions since it's a religion based on hate? Q4: All religions claim to be peaceful. Why are their followers so violent and intolerant of people of other faiths? Q5: Will the world ever stop hating and instead embrace each other as fellow human beings? Q6: How will the balance of power change as countries like China, India, and Brazil become more economically powerful? Q7: We live in a post-America world now? The "post-America" part means that the US is not the superpower it once was and it's likely on it's way to post superpowerdom. Which country or countries shall become the next global superpower? Q8: If we have WW3, what or how do you or people think will be different from the previous world wars and where will the lines be drawn? What alliances will be formed?
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Pinkie, can you tell me why American citizens don't recite the Preamble to their Constitution every day (in school, at work, at civic meetings, in city, state & federal legislatures) as a reminder of what it stands for–in only 54 words–and a reminder that it is "We the People" who have all the power and delegated only SOME of it to the government we created, like Jefferson and his team wrote in the Declaration: / We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. / That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. / And starting a new government from scratch is one of the other rights retained by the people, as the Ninth and Tenth Amendments remind our government. We're the boss of them; they're not the boss of us, as my daughters used to tell me at bed-time. / Pinkie, Why do presidents and all other government officials lie to us all the time? Howcome President Bush was called The Unitary Liar-In-Chief? / Pinkie, why is our government paying rich banker-gamblers $7.2 Trillion because they made such an "amphibian fraud"* (* Tom Paine wrote that phrase; I love it. Today he probably would have used the "ph" word) out of mortgages to poor and not-so-bright people when it could have solved the whole problem by paying to keep people from being forced out of their homes? I think it would have cost us less of our money. Do you think it's fair for the people who caused a problem to be rewarded for what might even be criminal conduct? / Pinkie, can the President and Vice President of America be sentenced to death for killing people they ordered tortured to death? (see 18 USCode §2441) (125 total so far, 25+ thus far ruled "homicides". (answer: Yes, but it certainly is unlikely, given that rich and powerful people are above the law in our nation of men and money, not of laws.) / I could go on.... / best, bw
Okay, that's some of what we have so far. Even after one day I think we've already received better questions than if we'd been interviewed by a "professional interviewer" (whatever that is), or worse, if we had made up the questions ourselves. I'll update again tomorrow or the day after. Take care, pinky
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Posted by Bunny: You know, even though a some of the questions we've received so far kind of have a "HEY CATS I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER???" feel to them - I still think this has been a good thing to do. It's a very direct way of finding out what's on people's minds. Reading these questions may reveal future episode subjects we would have otherwise not considered.
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Posted by Pinky. July 8 Update...
It's only been about three days but probably we can stop now. I think we have more than enough good questions to make into an interview. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions! Currently there are over 140 comments at YouTube (many of them questions), plus the following that came in via e-mail:
dear pinky show, i would like to know - what drives you to find the issues that are sometimes hard to talk about, like the iraq war and other pressing issues? thanks, ben p.s. i feel this show should reach teens in high schools in America to make them understand the world around them. ben
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I often hear that the military might have wanted John F. Kennedy dead and that Oswald was innocent. What do you think of the subject matter? CL
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Greetings! I and I think a lot of people first discovered the Pinky Show by searching for "international law" or some such, and were astonished. On the other hand, I instintively think schools and museums are good things, even though they may create cultural collateral damage, so to speak. So the critique is a little murky for me. Will pinky and bunny continue to explain, say, why we are in Afghanistan even though it is stupid and immoral and illegal? Etc? Or the Obama approach to torture? Etc. Of course Afghanistan is something of Museum piece. If people had gone to the Museum a few more times they would have thought twice. Such a long email, I trust Belgrade is treating you well, JOEL
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What is the next phase of your project? Will you keep making videos by yourself forever or do you have plans to expand? Or are you moving into something completely different? I ask because I noticed that you cover other mediums such as books and art. Do you find these more enjoyable or effective than videos for getting your message across? A.A.
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Have you ever thought about making a whole movie? Or at least a feature length documentary? (no name)
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Instead of just talking, why not DO SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THE PROBLEMS?????? Do you realize how talk is cheap? ALSO YOUR VOICE IS SO ANNNNOOOYYYYYIIIINNNNNGGGGGGG and greats against my ears !!!!!!!!!! (no name)
Bunny and I will sort through all the questions and pick out our favorites. I'll post something here in the What's New section when the interview is done and posted. Please stay tuned! Take care, pinky
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P.S. A viewer named Jon sent us a wordle he made from all the YouTube questions:
Thanks Jon!
Na Ono o ka Aina / Delicacies of the Land
Posted by Pinky.
Hi everybody! Bunny just posted a great mini-documentary by Na Maka o ka Aina in the Pinky Presents area - it's called Na Ono o ka Aina / Delicacies of the Land. Some of you may not know much about kalo (taro) and its significance in Hawaii. Here's a little bit of background from Hawaii SEED:
"[Taro] is one of the single most well-known, important, and reliable plants in all of Polynesia, and the locals take a deep pride in its profound history. Various names for parts of the taro plant indicate its interwoven history with the Hawaiian people: the place where the stem meets the leaf is called the piko, or navel. The stem is the ha, the breath, and the cluster of shoots (or keiki, meaning children) that surround the mother plant are called an ohana, or family.
Here in Hawaii, the growing and cultivation of the kalo plant is a tradition that stretches back for more than a thousand years. The Hawaiians loved, honored, and cared for kalo and were in turn, as the creation story implies, fed and supported by it for generations and generations. By tending carefully the kalo, the Hawaiians eventually cultivated more than 300 varieties by selecting the plants for certain conditions, climates, and soils..."
Besides being an absolutely delicious food to eat, kalo has also been on people's mind lately for another more disturbing reason: there are bio-tech corporations who are trying to control, own, and exploit kalo in all kinds of very inappropriate ways. Many of the issues surrounding kalo are very similar to what's going on all over the Fourth World, as these corporations rush to own and commodify not only indigenous knowledge but also life itself. This is the context in which this mini-documentary was made.
A sincere thank you to Na Maka o ka Aina for allowing us to share this video with you on our website for a while.
Take care,
pinky
[ Update: This video is no longer available on our website. ]
I Want To Punch Your Face Now Shipping!
Posted by Pinky.
IWTPYF Update!
Monday afternoon: Two big boxes of I Want To Punch Your Face books arrive from the printers.
Monday night: Bunny & I stuff stuff stuff envelopes. I was happy that we were able to use all that wannabe recycled bubble-wrap we've been collecting over the past several months.
Tuesday morning: Go to the post office and send all the packages along on their way. We sent books all over the U.S., plus Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Italy, Slovenia...
All of us here at the Pinky Show want to say a big THANK YOU to everybody who ordered a book! We really enjoyed making it and sincerely hope you like it.
For those of you who ordered IWTPYF, if you have any comments after you've read it, please e-mail us. Mimi is in charge of marketing the book and wants gushing, hyperbolic reviews for the back cover. :o)
Take care,
pinky
New Episode + IWTPYF Update
Posted by Bunny.
Two things to announce.
1) We have a new episode: Hawaii vs. U.S. Imperialism. You'll notice that it says "Part 3" - yeah, due to some scheduling weirdness we finished Part 3 ahead of Parts 1 and 2. No biggie. It'll be easier to grasp the broader implications of "the Hawaii thing" when all the parts of the series can be seen together, and in-sequence, but I think there are still quite a few things in the episode that stand on their own, so I hope you enjoy this one in the meanwhile. Special thanks to Dr. Teacup, expert and teacher on the subject of U.S. Imperialism in the Department of Political Science, University of the Devastated Wilderness, who was a real joy to work with over the past year or so, while we collaborated to research and write this episode.
Dr. Teacup
2. I Want To Punch Your Face update: We are expecting our first shipment of IWTPYF books from the printer on Monday, so this is your last chance to pre-order! All pre-orders will be signed by me and Pinky and also include a secret, special 4"x6" Pinky Show photo that you can't get anywhere else. After Monday, no more fun promotional gimmicks! [ click here to order ]
Okay, that's all for now. More stuff coming soon.
~Bunny.
Today in Congress
Posted by Bunny.
I know I spend a lot of time bad-mouthing American politicians - I don't like them. Recently I've decided to stop watching those guys on CSPAN while I eat lunch - two times I threw up because of the ridiculous lies they heap upon the American people, not to mention the rest of the world. But once in a while someone has the audacity to say something honest and clear, like today, while debating the war supplemental:
"Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, had no intention or capability of attacking United States, had nothing to do with Al-Qaida's role in 9/11, and each and every statement made by the previous administration in support of going to war turned out to be false.
"Yet here we are. A new administration and the same old war, with an expansion of the war in Afghanistan. We cannot afford these wars. We cannot afford these wars spiritually. They are wars of aggression and they are based on lies. We cannot afford these wars financially. They add trillions to our national debt and destroy our domestic agenda. We cannot afford the human cost of these wars, the loss of lives of our beloved troops and the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. So, why do we do this? Why do we keep funding wars when they are so obviously against truth and justice and when they undermine our military? These are matters of heart and conscience, which must be explored. Our ability to bring an end to these wars will be the real test of our power." - Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
This guy ran for president the past couple of times. It's easy to see why he got pounded each time.
~Bunny.
6/16 Update: Congress approves the funding. How did your representatives vote? (link to Office of the Clerk)
The Challenge: How To Kill Faster, and From Farther Away
Posted by Pinky.
Every day, Bunny and I try to find at least a little bit of time to sit and chat about what we'd like to see happen during our lifetime. Sometimes we discuss desirable futures that lie beyond our approaching deaths. We know we won't be able to achieve all of it - in fact, much of the things we end up talking about invariably involves the efforts of many others we aren't even in communication with. But still, we think it's important to keep our eyes focused on the future even as we do our day to day work with our minds and bodies rooted firmly in the present.
One of the reasons why we started making time for this kind of (symbolic?) conversation a few years ago, was the realization that our ideological adversaries have been engaged in this kind of productive-dreaming for a long time. They've got the process institutionalized. And while we may not want the same things they want, we are very impressed with their ability to make their dreams come true. Just a few examples: the automobile, the machine gun, public schools, the atom bomb, the ICBM. Now the professional dreamers at the Pentagon are offering up a new dream - it's called PGS, short for Prompt Global Strike. Given their creativity and the enormous material resources they have at their disposal, I would not be surprised if eventually PGS becomes real.
Illustration from Popular Mechanics' Render Room.
Basically PGS works like this: 1) You find out - somehow (satellite, unmanned spy drone, or even some old-fashioned form of "intelligence" gathering) - that there is a person or a group of people somewhere, doing something, that you'd really like to kill. They can be thousands of miles away or even on the other side of the planet. 2) You input your "intelligence" into a computer, which then feeds the information to a super-high-speed missile, and press the big red 'DIE' button. 3) The missle launches, travels to its far-away destination via the exoatmosphere at hypersonic speed, then falls down on the unsuspecting target (and, presumably, any other non-lucky non-targets in close proximity) and *poof* - the 'target' is 'neutralized'. It's kind of like an ICBM, except WAY faster, non-nuclear, and the target doesn't necessarily have to be big and stationary (like a whole city, or a military installation) in order to be shot at.
The Pentagon says "we" "need" a weapon system like PGS because of the "ever-evolving" "nature" of "threats" to "national security". No mention of how complicated things get when our so-called enemies are forced to live under a purpose-built umbrella of instant death of human design. I wonder, do these Pentagon guys really want to live in the world they are creating? I don't mean that rhetorically, I really do wonder that in the most practical way.
Feeling more than a little creeped out,
pinky
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Posted by Bunny: I think you are missing the point on the question of motivation. To be able to strike down a rival person or group of people without having to actually fight them - can humans resist such God-like powers?
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Posted by Pinky: I think there are plenty of human beings who would be happy to resist that kind of "power".
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Posted by Bunny: Name five. This is an example of how you like human beings way more than I do.
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Kim: How come you guys keep saying "human beings" when it's mostly people in the U.S. that's on the leading edge of innovating this stuff?
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E-mail response from one of our readers:
Dear Cats, Thanks for your thoughts on the omnipotent killing device our military is planning. Unfotunately, we have a simillar system now known as UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). These can be flown in Afghanistan yet operated from Virginia, USA. Imagine that, fly an unmanned plane around half way around the world, locate a target and "Take them out" all with just a joy stick. Then, hop in the car and hit Arbie's for lunch and maybe run the Mustang through the car wash on the way back to the office. To kill some more. The problem I see is this fellow in Virginia keeps mistaking Wedding Parties in the dessert for terrorist meetings. It must be that the thinking is - who the heck would have a wedding in a dessert? They must be terrorists! (from Ian)
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Posted by Pinky: Funny you should mention UAV. About a yearor two ago we were in the desert outside Las Vegas on the way back from visiting NTS (Nevada Test Site - by some standards the most heavily atomic-bombed place on this planet). We kept seeing these weird airplanes in the sky, at the time I remember thinking they looked like really big paper airplanes. After getting home we did some research and found out that those were MQ-9 Reapers flying out of Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada. We live so close to a major component of the U.S.'s War On Terror, "Remote Control Division", and didn't even know it.
Burned Kitty Needs Help
May 25: Doakes and Riggs got caught in a house fire. Riggs perished in the fire, somehow Doakes found a way to survive. He needs a lot of medical care now, please help him out.
Posted by Bunny.
Doakes.
Extra 30 Minutes Before Bed Yields Yet Another T-Shirt Design
Posted by Pinky.
Thirty minutes ago I was somewhere between too tired to work and not quite sleepy enough to fall asleep immediately if I'd climbed into bed. So I decided to make another t-shirt design (as if we didn't already have too many). Here it is:
I made this because today Kim and I were talking about how lately Bunny has been the grumpiest thing ever. So grumpy.
Okay, now it's 3:30am and I'm really ready for bed. Goodnight!
~pinky
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Posted by Bunny: Okay, so I'm grumpy for a few days in a row. Who cares. Not like I talk to you guys everyday. I would like it better if it said "NOT A LOLCAT".
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Posted by Kim: Maybe you don't say anything but we still have to look at your big, grumpy face all day and listen to the sound of your big feet stomping around. And you keep on going "grrr" and "rrgh!" and stuff like that, which is really annoying when I'm just trying to enjoy my coffee.
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Posted by Bunny: Excuse me for living.
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Posted by Kim: I'll excuse you for being so grumpy if you put a bag over your head.
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Posted by Bunny: Same result if I put a bag over your head.
The U.S. vs. Gog & Magog
Posted by Bunny.
Apparently there is some anecdotal evidence coming to light that President Bush actually did have a really good reason to invade Iraq: God told him to do it. He (Bush - not God) was very determined to fight the forces of Satan and rid the world of God's enemies in the Middle East. Somewhere in this whole bizarre story are Satan's allies, Gog and Magog.
"In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated... In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on 'a mission from God' in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord."
Interesting? Completely insane? Read more here.
~B.
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Posted by Kim: I asked Pinky to draw Gog wearing a very dense fur coat, that’s how I imagine him.