Satirical fiction in newspaper form
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The Park Museum of Contemporary Art (PMoCA) offered the public a sneak peek at its new exhibition, “Art of the Domestic Feline” today in the above slide show.
The museum will host a gala this evening. The exhibition will open tomorrow.
George Angus Doo’s controversial and arresting film Shoot the Messenger will open the 9th annual Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF) on October 1.
The announcement was made this morning in a statement released by PIFF Communications President Leola Ocelot.
“We are thrilled to announce that George Doo’s award-winning film Shoot the Messenger will open the 9th annual Park Interspecial Film Festival. The Festival is very grateful to him for giving us the chance to screen his great film,” the statement read.
The film, which received the 2013 Winkie Award, explores the relationship between Humans and Doo’s own species, the Pigeon.
This is the first film in which Doo has put his own species at the centre. His previous films dealt mostly with underwater crises and desert themes. In an interview last spring with film critic Hernando Gorrión of The Avian Messenger, Doo said he was at first reluctant to use his own species as the subject of a film because he thought the issues were too close for him to be able to see them clearly.
“There is so much conflict, so many emotions on both sides. In many ways, it is a relationship of mutual respect and dependence, yet we have seen too many misunderstandings and far too many deaths,” he said.
Shoot the Messenger will screen at The Park Cinema on the Festival’s opening night, and again on Oct 4.
The Park Interspecial Film Festival runs from October 1-5, 2013.
In a statement released today, the organizers of the annual Park Art Walk (PAW) announced a major change in the event’s focus.
“Thanks to funding from The Park’s Department of Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations, in conjunction with a one-time gift from The Archons’ Initiative Fund, the 2012 Park Art Walk (PAW) will showcase art as it relates to the theme, INtegration through ART,” the statement read in part.
The new theme, which will be known as INtRT, will add a new dimension to the one-day, juried art exhibition, supporters say.
“For the past five years, PAW has done a wonderful job of showcasing the artistic expression of Park residents, but the art has had no defining thread. We believe that INtRT will give us a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our experiences…in life and in art,” said Aintza Kanariar, Director of Public Relations for The Park’s Department of Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations.
At a press conference, Balthasar Alouatta, press secretary to the Archons, said the one-time gift from the Archons’ Initiative Fund was made “to encourage Animals to learn more about species other than their own, so that we can understand our differences and our similarities.”
INtRT’s emphasis will be on similarities rather than differences, according to Alouatta. “We are celebrating 30 years of Animal self-rule. It is a great achievement that could only have been brought about by some degree of integration. We want to celebrate that integration in the Park Art Walk,” he said.
The 6th annual Park ART Walk (PAW) will take place on Saturday, August 18, 2012 between the hours of 10:00 am and 7:00 pm. Showings will take place at participating art galleries, retail establishments, and at the Ancient, Open-Air Theatre. This year’s jury will include curators from the Tortoiseshell and Kipos Galleries.
Formerly classified documents obtained by The Mammalian Daily reveal the real reason for the decrease in security funding in the 2014 Park budget.
The documents, which were obtained by the newspaper four days ago, tell a chilling tale of plans by the 2013 Archons to establish an unpaid “militia-like” group of Park citizens to “keep the peace at public gatherings.”
The documents also confirm rumours that plans are afoot to establish the position of “Roving Cultural Ambassador.” Among the RCA’s duties, as described in the documents, is “establishing a rapport with Humans outside The Park, in order to foster a more harmonious relationship.” In other words, the RCA’s job, in part, will be to attempt to prevent Humans from committing crimes against Park citizens.
The confidential papers tell a far different story from the one told by Park Finance Officer Milton Struts when reporters asked about the four percent decrease in security funding.
“The Park has become a safer place over the past year,” he said at the August 1 budget presentation.
Yet actual crime and disturbance statistics obtained from the Department of Well-Being and Safety indicate that the number of calls to Park Police and the number of Police officers deployed to keep the peace at public events doubled last year, in part due to the strike by The Park’s Doves of Peace. But even without the Doves’ strike, which began in November 2012 and ended in February of this year, “2012 would still go down as a year of almost unending conflict,” says DWBS Director of Public Relations, Cornelius Kakapo.
After reviewing the documents, The Mammalian Daily reached out to the Archons, The Park Finance Office and the Park Police for comments. Only Gareth Shepherd, President of the Federation of Canine Security Workers (FCSW) responded.
“We are taking this very seriously,” he said.
“In addition to the practical, political, philosophical, and moral problems with this plan, our members stand to have untrained and unpaid Park citizens usurp their jobs. We will not tolerate this kind of treatment of ourselves and of The Park. I am eager to hear what the Archons and the Park Finance Office have to say in defence of this preposterous plan.”
Animals achieve lower scores on intelligence tests after they have spent a significant length of time in the company of Humans, say the results of a study conducted by the Cognitive and Experimental Psychology division at the University of West Terrier’s Department of Psychology.
The research study, which involved 5,000 Animals from inside and outside The Park, was conducted over a period of three years by UWT psychology professor and lead researcher, Dr. Luule Aednik. The full results will appear in the September issue of the prestigious Journal of Experimental and Reactive Psychology (JERP).
Supported in full by University research funds, the study concludes that prolonged amounts of time spent in close contact with Humans causes a “numbing effect” on the brains of the members of many species.
“There is a deficit after a certain length of time,” said Aednik in an interview with The Mammalian Daily.
“The most shocking result in the testing was the loss of recognition of some of the characteristics of one’s own species. We saw some types of species-specific behaviour almost disappear, often after only a few months. Animals lost basic skills; some had even forgotten how to secure their own food,” she said.
Though the impetus for the study was purely academic, Aednik believes the results have more widespread implications.
“I think they explain some of the problems that some Animals have had in adapting to life in The Park,” she said.
BREAKING NEWS
The University of West Terrier announced today that it has initiated an investigation into allegations of unethical experimentation on Humans.
The announcement came in a statement signed by the President and Governors of the University and posted on the university’s web site.
According to the statement, the allegations under investigation stem from research conducted by the Department of Human Studies. No researchers or areas of research are named and the statement emphasizes the broad nature of the investigation:
The university wishes to emphasize that this is an investigation into alleged misconduct and that no particular member of our faculty or student body is under investigation at this juncture.
The investigating team consists of several UWT faculty members who serve the university independently of the Department of Human Studies. These include Dr. Chloris Cougar, Dr. Fionnula L. Fox, Dr. Hume T. Goat, Dr. Luule Aednik, and Dr. Simone Gibbon. Other team members are Dr. Berthilidis Strix, Inspector Antonia T. Fossa of the Interspecial Investigations Unit, and Mr. Justice Augustus Dindon. Dr. Milada J. Goose, head of the Honking Hollow laboratory at the University of West Terrier and a senior member of the Committee to Oversee Scientific Research in The Park (COSRIP) will oversee the team and the investigation.
Although no time frame for a final report by the investigating team was mentioned in the statement, a spokesAnimal for the university told The Mammalian Daily that the administration is committed to conducting the investigation in a fair and timely manner.
The Park Museum announced today that it will host a major exhibition dealing with the rôle of sport in Park life.
In a post on its web site, the museum said the exhibition, entitled, Flyball and the Importance of Balls in the Everyday Life of Park Animals, will feature more than five hundred works including oil and watercolour paintings, photographs, sculpture, works in metal and glass, and textile impressions, “all celebrating balls and the way they inform Park life.”
Co-curated by The Park Museum’s resident curator, Dorika Pumi, and Mammalian Daily Balls columnist and sports historian, Bailey, the exhibition is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2016.
“This is the first exhibit of its kind anywhere in The Park and I am honoured that we have been invited to assist in its assembly,” said Clark Cascanueces, president of the Park Historical Society, in an interview on Mammalian Daily Radio this morning.
Cascanueces praised the museum for its “foresight” and called the upcoming exhibition a “major breakthrough.”
“For the most part, we have ignored the importance of sport—and of leisure activities— in the lives of Park Animals, “he said. “We’ve chosen to focus on survival and prosperity, but sport has great historical importance to Animals and, I would venture to say, is a necessary component of a good life.”
More information on the exhibit will be available in the new year.
The Mammalian Daily announced today that it has engaged the services of a pair of noted biographers to write a series of pieces about refugee Animals who have made their homes in The Park.
The series, which will be called “Survivor Profiles” will appear under the Influential Animals tab on the newspaper’s web site.
“We think we know our friends and neighbours,” said a spokesAnimal for the paper. “But the truth is, there are things we don’t talk about sometimes, such as where we came from and what life was like there. This series will give us a chance to get to know each other in a deeper way.”
The profiles will appear monthly and will be written by biographers Adeola Kifaru and Kamilah Tembo. Kifaru’s latest work, Ululate!, was described in a recent book review as “the most touchingly-written true story published to date”. Kamilah Tembo, who won the biography prize at the 2011 Park Annual Literary Awards (now known as Chitter Radio Literary Awards) for her book, Never Too Soon, is, herself, the daughter of Park refugees.
The Survivor Profile series will begin this month.
The coach of one of The Park’s most popular Avian teams has lashed out at critics who branded him “ineffectual” and his team “unworthy” of competing.
At a press conference held at dusk, Charles “Chuck” Nightjar, coach of the Poorwill Commoners, directly addressed the recent spate of criticism that has resulted in a call for his resignation and a complete overhaul of the team membership. In a speech aimed directly at the media, Nightjar countered accusations that he was ill-suited to lead the team and that the team was, somehow, “unstable” and unreliable.
The team has come under fire recently for being a no-show at several daytime training events and, more importantly, for allowing reservists to play in the regular season. The club has also been criticized for allowing members of other species to play for the team during hibernation season, when team members traditionally go into a state of torpor, and for allowing these players to train with the team during the regular season. Coach Nightjar has vigorously defended this policy, saying that all team members benefit from practice and that there is no way to compete during hibernation without bringing in team members from other species.
“The fact that we invite members of other species to play on our team [during hibernation season] in no way signals that we are less-than-serious competitors,” he stressed. “All our members are loyal to the team and focused on winning.”
The coach also took the opportunity to make a plea for fan restraint.
“We appreciate our fans. They’re very zealous…but they can be overly-zealous, too, sometimes,” he said, referring to a recent incident in which a group of passionate supporters painted their feathers and tails the colour of team members and flew out on a destructive nocturnal spree, trashing the nests of rival teams.
“This sort of thing has no place in sport,” Nightjar said.
Park Finance Officer Milton Struts believed he had a sweet secret to share this morning when he strode up to the press conference podium to release his Office’s expense projections for 2014, otherwise known as The Park Budget.
Displaying confidence in the PFO’s “tough decisions,” and assuming the budget would be “widely approved,” the smiling Struts assured reporters and observers that “we listened intently to Park Animals’ concerns” and that the PFO took them all into consideration when formulating the budget.
“We have attempted to be sensitive to issues that are important to Park citizens,” he said, before using his signature line to the media as the press conference concluded:
“We can’t bury our heads in the sand any longer.”
But, at the after-conference, many reporters and financial analysts had questions that seemed to surprise Struts.
Why, for instance, had both healthcare and security budgets been reduced, many asked, while groundskeeping and water had received a boost in funding? And, while no one seemed surprised that arts and sports funding as well as funding for special events had been reduced drastically (virtually halved since the 2012 budget was presented), many were genuinely puzzled by the bare bones budget set out for public education.
“I am shocked and disappointed,” said 2012 Archon Boniface Cuckoo.
“We (the 2012 Archons) wanted to make public education our legacy and we had the plan in place to do it, including building new educational venues and standardizing the curriculum. That can’t be done on 5%,” he said.
Predictably, the “mere 3%” allocated to tourism, as Struts called it, drew fierce criticism as an unnecessary and unwarranted expenditure and few seemed to believe Struts’s claim that weather would be better financed in the coming year.
“I think what they did was take a little from here, a little from there, and then put a different label on it. They thought they could placate us by giving weather its own place in the budget, but I don’t believe they’ve truly allocated any extra funding for it. We will have to see as things unfold,” said Kalliope Sun Bear, president of the Weather Makers, Producers and Sellers Alliance of The Park (WMPSAP).
“Unless he has some real answers for us, Mr. Struts might find his sweet secret has turned a little sour,” she said.
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