Satirical fiction in newspaper form
Park media’s second annual Month Without Metaphor (MWM) begins today!
The initiative aims to gauge the effectiveness of reporting the news “without embellishments, comparisons, and the painting of pictures for the reading public,” according to its organizers.
You can follow Park media as they tweet through the month at Month Without Metaphor (MWM).
APRIL 1-15
Holstein Fashion lends its support to The Park’s striped and spotted citizens
PFO head Valentina Abeja: “A budget is a very emotional thing.”
Barkettes donate original Stuffed Dogs Don’t Shed sheet music to Park Museum
Fowl Ball organizers on second annual event: “We are all systems go!”
Court date set, SplotchWatch owner Raimundo Zorro to face three charges
Food insecurity to become Park Animals’ biggest challenge: DWBS
Pro-election group finds support in renowned director Douglas Cheetah
Clementina Araña appointed head judge of 2015 Toe-Hair Contest
Barkettes’ first concert sold out: promoter
Park innovators to watch: abSCENT
APRIL 16-30
Mating Dance to offer pre-registration to endangered species
New date announced for Park’s annual Anixi Agrarian Jubilee
Prionailurus Press to promote the literature of the striped and spotted
KwikLiks: Park’s first “flash groomer” opens its doors
List of participants grows daily as May’s Month Without Metaphor nears
Police launch early morning raid on Sneak-a-Snuggle outside The Park
Sneak-a-snuggle refugees healthy and happy to be free: Hermione Hippo
Cynics to re-release Take the A Frame
Stereotype Sundays go bold: Hello. My name is Filthy Pig, Stupid Sheep…”
Follow Month Without Metaphor participants on Twitter during May
Park Historical Society calls for new, mandatory census within two years
The Park Historical Society is calling on the 2015 Archons and the Park Census Office (PCO) to institute a new census by the end of 2017.
In an interview this morning on Toro Talk Radio, PHS president Clark Cascanueces told host Yannis Tavros that The Park is “way overdue” on an official count.
“Our last census was conducted in 2007, the year we knew as 25 AZ, because calendar harmonization hadn’t even been discussed yet,” he said.
“And that voluntary count was all but useless, in my opinion. There was too much ignorance surrounding the process and Animals over-reacted to the idea of a head count.”
Cascanueces says the idea has support from some former as well as current Archons and from faculty members at the University of West Terrier. He also counts The Park’s healthcare providers as avid supporters of a new census.
“They’ve told me we have to get a grip on what our needs are, not even just in their own area, but in every area. At this point, we’re flying without a net, providing ad hoc assistance and hoping that will suffice. Well, it won’t,” he said.
The PHS president said he has a meeting scheduled with the Archons for mid-May and that he intends to tell them that a new, mandatory census is as urgent as a new budget.
“All mature societies have some idea of who makes up their population, who needs what, where, when, and why. We are well behind in this respect,” he said.
Click on the image above to follow Month Without Metaphor (MWM) on Twitter!
Members of The Park’s media who have committed to participating in Month Without Metaphor will again be tweeting throughout the month of May, it has been confirmed.
In a joint statement issued today, the participants, who work for The Park’s newspapers, magazines, journals, radio and television stations and web sites said they “look forward to surpassing last year’s experiment in expressing themselves and discussing the events of the day in a more straightforward way.”
Today’s statement also confirmed that editors would be keeping a running tally, “so that we’ll be able to see which members of the media were best able to communicate without using metaphors.”
The purpose of Month Without Metaphor is to gauge the effectiveness of reporting the news “like it really is…no embellishments, no idiotic comparisons, no ridiculous painting of pictures for the reading public,” says Alvin Tinamou, publisher of The Avian Messenger and one of the organizers of the communications experiment.
“We think all this metaphorical reporting is obscuring the facts and distracting our readers’ attention from the important issues,” he says.
Follow MWM participants on Twitter during May.
Are you a Dirty Rat?
While you may not view yourself that way, apparently that is how many others see you.
That much was made clear yesterday, when The Park’s Stereotype Sundays took a bold turn and encouraged Animals to participate in what many were calling a “grand experiment.”
“We handed out name tags and told the attendees…go bold…write down the vilest thing that you have ever heard about yourself or your species. Don’t think about it too much. Just write it down and wear it around and see what happens,” said one of the event’s organizers.
The experiment, or “initiative,” as organizers prefer to call it, was the idea of Dewi Rhinoceros, whose tenure as Chief Archon in 2013 included establishing the weekly event in order to foster interspecial harmony.
Rhinoceros, now Chair of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Interspecial Harmony (CIH), says she was moved to intervene in the weekly project when she realized it had stalled and was no longer serving its purpose.
“We established Stereotype Sundays to foster interspecial harmony through honest discussion. It worked very well for the first year and a half. And, then, the honest approach seemed to lose its meaning and almost disappear. All of a sudden, we were just nodding our heads…as Hieronynous [Hedgehog] says, in active self-agreement. We were admitting our problems, but not moving forward. It was as if we’d accepted prejudice, intolerance, misinformation and stereotyping as necessary elements of life.”
The new approach won’t be a weekly component of the event, though, organizers say.
“We asked those who participated to come back next week and discuss the results. If it appears that it was successful, we’ll continue it, perhaps, on a monthly basis. In any case, it was well worth the effort. Everybody is talking about it today.”
BREAKING NEWS
The Cynics (Philosopher Dogs) will release a new version of their wildly successful collection Take the A Frame next month, according to an announcement issued yesterday.
A late afternoon press release signed by the group’s founder and lead singer, Luther “Droop” Dachshund, said the group will release a digital version of the collection at the end of May. The announcement said the collection will include a brand new version of the title song as well as the digitally re-mastered original.
The release date is meant to coincide with The Park’s observation of Enforced Domestication Awareness month in June, Dachshund said in the announcement.
“Our group has been supportive of that initiative from its inception and we want to reinforce our relationship with it again this year,” he wrote.
Last year, The Cynics donated the proceeds of their song Diamond in the Ruff to the cause.
“We’ve been fighting enforced domestication for years, but there hasn’t been much movement on the issue until recently…We want to do as much as we can to further awareness of domestication’s harsh reality,” he said at the time.
Since then, The Cynics have performed very little, save for a few concerts at The Pound, the gastropub of which they are part-owners. And, although the press release did not mention any upcoming concert dates, a spokesAnimal for Rotunda Records, the group’s label since its founding, said he thought there might be something in the works.
“They’ve been working very hard in the studio and not just on the re-release,” the spokesAnimal said. “We all think it’s about time they went on tour again.”
Hermione Hippo
The more than one hundred Animals who were liberated yesterday in a raid on a Sneak-a-Snuggle outside The Park are “relatively healthy and happy to be free,” according to Hermione Hippo, head nurse at the Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm.
Hippo, who is also an Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of West Terrier, said she was called in to the hospital in the very early hours of April 23 to assess and triage the liberated Animals.
“This was a total surprise,” she says.
“We’ve been working on a plan to contain Tulip-Related Illness and Small Ball Fever. That has been our focus for the past two months. We were blindsided by this,” she told Mammalian Daily Radio host Didier Wombat in an interview this morning.
Hippo said the majority of Animals were “relatively healthy,” which made her job much easier.
“They appeared to have been looked after, at least. They were well-nourished when they came in, but they were in shock. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that they would be able to escape their confinement,” she said.
The Animals will stay at the Park Hospital until Monday, at least, Hippo confirmed. After that, they will be re-assessed and receive counselling and other aid before they are released. Hippo said she had she had no idea as yet of how many plan to remain in The Park.
Park Police’s undercover unit launched an early morning raid on a Sneak-a-Snuggle
BREAKING NEWS
At a press conference held this morning, Chief Inspector Maurice Addax of the Park Police’s Specist and Hate Crimes Unit (SHCU) took to the podium to confirm reports of an early morning raid on a Sneak-a-Snuggle that recently opened outside The Park.
Flanked by Inspector Antonia T. Fossa of the Interspecial Investigations Unit (IIU) and C. Astrid H. Ant, Head of The Park’s Ant Security and Intelligence Service (ASIS), Inspector Addax revealed details of the raid, in which more than one hundred Animals were liberated.
“Under cover of darkness, members of the ASIS Select Undercover Brigade (SUB) were deployed in a covert action that involved infiltrating the Sneak-a-Snuggle and liberating the Animals held therein,” he said.
The crack team of more than a thousand received assistance from other members of the police force in the execution of the raid, Inspector Addax told reporters.
“All went as planned. The operation went smoothly and we do not anticipate having to return to that location,” he said.
The Animals who were liberated come from “a variety of different species” and, Addax told reporters, they will be spending a few days at the Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm before they are released and able to function on their own.
“They will receive counselling from a number of The Park’s refugee and immigrant aid groups and they are welcome to establish a life here, should they so desire,” he said.
The Inspector also confirmed that Park Police have no intention of laying charges against the Human owners of the Sneak-a-Snuggle.
“It does not lie within our jurisdiction to prosecute Humans who reside outside The Park,” he said.
Every day, more members of the media join Month Without Metaphor
The list of participants in Park media’s second annual Month Without Metaphor (MWM) continues to grow, as newspapers, radio and television stations, and even web sites sign on.
“We are very pleased with the growth this year. We are particularly pleased with the addition of the gossip web site headsNtales. I think their interest proves that this initiative is well worthwhile,” says Month Without Metaphor organizer Alvin Tinamou.
As of today, the new participants are :
Print Media:
Radio Stations:
Television Stations:
Web Sites:
Park’s first flash groomer: KwikLiks
The Park’s newest grooming house has opened in a flash and that’s not just a metaphor.
As its name suggests, KwikLiks offers quick grooming or, as its proprietress Maitea Behi says, “Flash grooming for the fast set.”
At the grand opening yesterday, Behi beamed as she offered treats to the steady stream of new customers.
“In our business, we like to say, ‘A treat is worth a thousand licks,'” she joked, as she directed Animals of every species toward the house’s bank of groomers.
With five full-time and eight part-time groomers, Behi says she can service over five hundred Animals an hour.
“A few licks should do it for most Animals. Larger Animals, of course, will take a bit more time. And for important occasions, we’re happy to take those extra few seconds to make you look your absolute best.”
While Behi’s establishment is the first of its kind in The Park, she says that flash grooming has taken off elsewhere.
“We scoped out a few venues outside The Park and even considered opening there,” she said. “But my heart belongs here. My loyalty is to The Park.”
KwikLiks’s opening at this time of year is no coincidence, either. While Behi hopes to cash in on The Park’s upcoming social season, she understands that this year the established houses may win out.
“I’m going to need to gain the trust of Animals in a flash,” she said.
