Filtering by Category: 2016-2023

Here comes 2024

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

Our computer died last year but we finally saved up enough money to buy a new one. I set it up and installed the software yesterday, so I think we are ready.

>>> MY “NEW YEAR RESOLUTION” FOR 2024 IS TO POST SOMETHING NEW TO THE PINKY SHOW WEBSITE EVERY DAY. <<<

o.O I get very anxious reading that sentence. Pinky & Kim made me write that so that I will feel publicly humiliated (?) if I don’t follow through. Sometimes the thing I post might be a very, very small thing, but I will try my best to not miss any days.

New 4 panel comic: 200 rains?

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

I guess we’ve been thinking a lot about rain lately? Here’s another comic with rain in it.

https://www.pinkyshow.org/projectarchives/2022/12/9/200-rains

By the way, in the comic Kim is looking at a review of this book: Hānau Ka Ua – Hawaiian Rain Names, by Collette Leimomi Akana.

New 4 panel comic: I think it's raining

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

We hardly had any rain at all this year - life without water is really brutal. We had a tiny bit yesterday and Friday, though (.01 and .05 inches respectively), so to celebrate we made this little comic about rain watching, one of our favorite things.

https://www.pinkyshow.org/projectarchives/2022/12/4/i-think-its-raining

We love rain. :)

Thank you, Sardines

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Kim.

It’s November 24 - you know what that means! Yes, it’s National Sardine Day!

If you’re lucky enough to live near an ocean, don’t forget to find some sardines and let them know how much you appreciate them!

Photo from Wikipedia: harum.koh from Kobe city, Japan - Japan fish, South American pilchard (Sardinops sagax)

~kim

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Posted by Drittens: I don’t think this is how these “National X Day” works...

New video: 100 Years of Planetary Caregiving

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

I just posted the new video. So far I think we have 8 videos in this series; I’ll be posting them soon. (We discuss the final version of each one as a group before they get published online.) Anyway, I hope you like it. I think this is the first video we’ve put on the internet in around 10 years? Comments are always welcome!

In other exciting news, our PINKY SHOW STORE received its first order! Thank you Pam!

Back in the desert; Susie; new video; U.S.A. "Thanksgiving"

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

We just got back home yesterday, just in time to celebrate Susie’s birthday. We call Susie “Best Cat” because she’s better than all of us. Better at hunting, better at drawing pictures, better at climbing trees, better at everything I can think of, actually. And she has the best personality too, so we just all call her Best Cat. We celebrated by having (non-dairy) ice cream and failed cinnamon rolls (Kim), and then took turns brushing.

Last night, after talking about all the crazy things we saw and heard at WILD COP27, we decided that we’d just go ahead with publishing our environment/ecology video series as-is, never mind re-editing anything. Our videos are broad enough that nothing in them contradict any of the new stuff we learned over the past couple of weeks. So, right after I finish posting this diary entry, I’ll go ahead and post the first video in our new series, “100 Years of Planetary Caregiving.” I’ll be posting the second episode in about two weeks.

Tomorrow is “U.S.A. Thanksgiving.” There’s so many conceptual and historical reasons why this holiday is very stupid and harmful, and an annual catastrophe for turkeys, obviously. The only part about it that I like is every year our friend Lady mails us an apple pie a few days before “Thanksgiving”, and if it arrives before “Thanksgiving” (it almost always does), we eat it that morning. Every year the U.S. Postal Service medium-WRECKS the pie on its way here, but that’s part of the fun! Still yummy. :)

Wild COP27 is almost half-over

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

Right now Kim, Pinky, Daisy, and I are attending Wild COP27 (Nov 6-18), Land Animals section. This is the first time I’m attending and it’s a lot crazier than I had expected, borderline terrifying actually. I’m not used to having to interact with Polar Bears and large owls, so several times in the past few days I’ve been close to freaking out. It’s all very educational though, we’re all learning a lot and we’re glad we made the journey here. Some of the data and perspectives we’ve heard during sessions have really forced us to reconsider some of the things we put into our latest videos (the environment and ecology videos I was finishing up right before coming here), which means I may have to re-record or edit some parts when I get back to the desert. It’s sad that the people version going on in Sharm el-Sheikh won’t hear any animal perspectives, or even have any (human) animal representatives present. I know that there are scientists and activists at human COP27 but it’s not the same thing.

This morning an elephant became so upset watching a recap of one of yesterday’s Egyptian sessions that she tore a large video monitor off the wall and trampled it. Everybody ran out of there so quickly. Funny to say, though - at the moment it was happening I also ran out of the room because, well, ANGRY ELEPHANT - but at the same time i felt like, “Yes! Thank you!!”

I bet no one at the Egypt COP27 will be smashing TVs.

~d.

October 17 is Nora Day

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Today is the day we celebrate Nora Cat’s arrival to planet Earth. Like a lot of us, since her birth was undocumented, nobody knows the actual date when she was born, so she just chose October 17 as an “okay guess.” Like Pinky, Nora is from Oahu island, HAWAII. Nora has been a good friend and comes around often to read comics (we don’t have a huge collection but she’s ok with reading the same ones over and over), use the computer, play games and fly kites, and basically just make life a lot more interesting for us here in the desert. She’s funny and smart. She doesn’t do any Pinky Show work because “politics bores me.”

Happy Birthday, Nora!

We’re taking the afternoon off to cook, bake, and have a small party together. Everybody will get a balloon.

Posted by Drittens.

This is a little embarrassing

Added on by Drittens Cat.

For better or worse, we are now stickers.

Posted by Drittens.

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Posted by Drittens: Reader question: How big are these stickers? Answer: They’re all cut from 4” vinyl sticker stock, so “slightly smaller than 4 inches.” Thanks for your question. :)

A few ideas about how to teach

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

Today is the anniversary deathday of one of my teachers. She continues to influence the way I approach teaching every day. She was a first grade teacher of 6 year old children for around 35 years. She wasn’t _my_ first grade teacher but we talked about learning and teaching all the time.

She herself never tried to reduce her very nuanced teaching philosophy down to a few “rules,” but just for fun (“fun”) tonight I tried to smash our thousands of hours of talking about classroom teaching down into just a few sentences.

• Give the children as much love as humanly possible. There’s no such thing as too much love.

• Listen carefully to them, and watch their little faces with equal care.

• Have a philosophy for scolding that’s about learning. Our work is to raise decent, caring human beings.

• Show them that you cherish their efforts to learn by sincerely replying to each and every attempt they make to learn something. Do this regardless of how many students you have, how long it takes, or how much (or little!) effort they seem to be giving.

• Prepare, prepare, prepare - and then be ready to set the preparation aside if the situation calls for you to do so. Teachers should be creative and improvisational.

• Never, ever lie to your students, about anything.

Writing it up like this, this all seems so simple. But every time I try to put these ideas into meaningful practice, I’m always failing.

R.I.P. Jeanette. I miss you.

Drittens

The Pinky Show Store opens

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Drittens.

I made the new Pinky Show Store live tonight. It’s not fancy, but it still took me almost three weeks to make because I really don’t understand how the internet works, it’s very mysterious. Kim wrote up most of the item descriptions and also designed some of the items, like the octopus t-shirt and the LOST tote bag.

People may wonder why we have a store AND a donation page, because aren’t donations way better than selling things? (Yes, donations are better.) We decided to make an online store because we did some math and figured out that less than 1 in 10,000 people who use the Pinky Show make a donation. Hopefully maybe some people who aren’t into making donations might consider buying a t-shirt or something.

I still have a bunch of posters that I have to add to the store. Also, I hope one day we’ll have Pinky dolls. I want something soft to give to people with dementia.

Well let’s see how this goes I guess. ~d.

YouTube, bleh.

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Pinky.

It’s been such a long time that I can’t figure out how to get into our old YouTube account (“pinkyshow”). I guess I forgot the password and all that stuff… Doesn’t really matter, actually, I just asked Drittens to start a new channel. So that’s what he did - the new YouTube channel is named “PINKY SHOW with Drittens.” That’s even less catchy than “The Pinky & Bunny Show”, which we originally thought was too long and hard to remember back in 2005. Oh well.

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Posted by Drittens: The new YouTube channel has no videos yet. I guess I have to upload the old Pinky Show videos? Nowadays videos are really high resolution. The old Pinky Show videos are small and blurry in comparison.

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Posted by Kim: Our videos look so simple I don’t think anybody cares about that kind of stuff. The part that’s going to be interesting to me is seeing if the new negative comments are going to be different from the old negative comments! Get ready Drittens - ten thousand random people hating on you is a really big bummer! lol

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Posted by Pinky: We had a meeting. We decided not to post our old videos to YouTube. We’re just going to post our new stuff on the new channel. Let’s go forward instead of backwards.

Okay the desk is ready

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Pinky.

Drittens got all the old Pinky Show equipment out of the closet and cleaned everything up as best as he could. Some stuff doesn’t work any more, but we’ll try to make our project go with what we have. Amazingly, the TV that already looked ancient when we found it in a dumpster in 2004 still works! :-)

I think we’re less than a month away from releasing the first of the new episodes.

Please be careful. It’s very, very hot out there. ~p.

We received a message from "The Cockroaches"

Added on by Drittens Cat.

Posted by Pinky.

We happen to be in the middle of a severe, worldwide drought, and it’s affecting us here in the desert, too. Well this morning when I woke up and started getting ready to make breakfast, I found a small note taped to the coffee pot:

Good morning Cats,
It hasn’t rained for such a long time.
So there’s no water to be found at all outside.
We have been coming indoors to look for drinking water.
Lately every night we drink the last few drops of water in your coffee pot after you wash it.
But three nights ago the small cat started putting a lid on the coffee pot.
Now we can’t get into the coffee pot.
Ants can fit under the lid but we cannot.
The ants are still drinking.
We need water too.
Is it fair that the ants can continue to drink water but we cannot just because we are somewhat larger?
Why are you kind to ants but you don’t accept us?
Actually ants and us cockroaches are cousins.
Same like bees.
Water is a sacred right to all living creatures.
Please remove the lid every night before your bedtime.
We’re desperate.
Thank you,
The Cockroaches

My first reaction was, “Gross. We have cockroaches walking around in the coffee pot every night??” My second thought was, “Okay, I don’t want anybody to be thirsty, but do we really have to live with these guys?” I don’t know - I think we need to have a meeting to discuss what to do about this. ~pinky

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Posted by Kim: Hey! Wait a minute! Are you really not going to address the larger question here? Is this normal - receiving a handwritten note from a bunch of cockroaches? And which pen did they use? And tape? Which roll of tape did they touch???

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Posted by Pinky (Aug 20 update): Yesterday, Drittens, Kim, and I decided to write the roaches a reply. We left it next to the coffee pot at around 11pm:

Hello Cockroaches,

We (cats) will leave a small bowl of water on the ground, just outside the front door every night. In return, please do not walk around in our coffee pot or on other kitchenware. Is this acceptable?

Also, Kim wants to know “Do ‘The Cockroaches’ have internet?“

Your neighbors,
cats

As of this morning we haven’t received a response, and it’s hard to tell if anyone drank from the water bowl we left outside. ~p.