Satirical fiction in newspaper form
The President and Governors of the University of West Terrier announced today that Herman Stoat will speak at this year’s annual Open House.
According to a post on the university’s web site, the renowned dancer, choreographer, and UWT alumnus will talk about his UWT experience and the rôle of higher education in the arts.
The full announcement appears on the University’s web site.
The Department of Human Studies at The University of West Terrier has green-lighted a new course that will use footage of Human television shows to teach students about Human motivation.
In a brief announcement posted on the university’s web site yesterday, the President and the Board of Governors of the university confirmed the addition of the new course to the undergraduate curriculum.
“The President and Governors of the University of West Terrier and the head of the Department of Human Studies are pleased to announce the expansion of the Department’s curriculum in 2015,” the announcement reads.
As of September 2015, the announcement says, students who are attending the University and have completed at least one full year of study will be eligible to enrol in the new course, which is listed as HS 207.
Although the course description has not been finalized, the head of the Human Studies Department confirmed that learning materials will include footage of television shows that are made by and watched by Humans.
“Thanks to an agreement signed last January between the University of West Terrier and the Avian Messenger’s ‘Birds on the Wire,’® service, we have been able to obtain footage of some Human television programming. This material has proven to be extremely valuable in the understanding of Human motivation and the Human value system and we feel fortunate to be able to offer this to our students,” she said.
The announcement did not include any information regarding the course instructor, but many believe the department will appoint Noreen, since she has expertise in the field. The adjunct professor is currently on leave to promote her book, Lovely To Look At: What Animals Should Know About Humans and will return to her teaching duties in the Autumn.
The full announcement from the University can be read here.
The University of West Terrier has granted Noreen a leave of absence so that she can promote her first book, Lovely to Look At.
In an announcement dated today and posted on the University’s web site, The President and Governors of the University confirmed that Noreen will take a leave of absence this Autumn from her duties as adjunct professor in the Department of Human Studies. Her leave will begin on September 15 and she will resume her duties at UWT on January 12, 2015.
According to her publisher, Noreen’s book is scheduled to be released in early October.
The full announcement can be read here.
Park Museum exhibits some of the tools of enforced domestication
Balls, biscuits, bones. Bowls, boxes, beds. Collars, cages, leashes, toys. The list goes on. And they are all on display until midnight tomorrow at The Park Museum’s month-long exhibit marking Enforced Domestication Awareness Month.
Entitled, “It Could Happen to You,” the exhibit is the first of its kind in The Park and the first ever hosted at The Park Museum.
“We felt it was too important an event to wait for the museum’s completion,” says Sukuta Rhinoceros, as she guides me through the display cases. “We didn’t want to miss the opportunity to highlight this issue.”
One of the museum’s founders and a member of its Board of Governors, Rhinoceros spearheaded the campaign to open part of the main building’s ground floor wing for the exhibit. But come July, the construction workers will be back and if all goes well, the museum will officially open at the end of the year.
We stroll through the space together and as she details the provenance of many of the artefacts, it becomes clear that this is a deeply personal issue for Rhinoceros.
“Enforced domestication isn’t only a problem for small Animals,” she tells me later. “We were overwhelmed after we put out a call for personal items [of domestication] and I wasn’t surprised to find that the majority came from our Canine, Feline, Avian, Piscine, and Reptilian communities. But when some of our other citizens offered traps, harnesses, saddles and the like, our curator said we should put them at the front of the exhibit, so that attendees could see right away that no Animal is out of the sight line of the domesticator.”
The issue of domestication, of course, is much bigger than any museum exhibit can communicate. But “It Could Happen to You” is at its most poignant and effective when it deals with the tools that are used to entice Animals to give up their independence. The sadness and the pain lie in understanding the attraction of those tools. So many of our compatriots have suffered extreme difficulty and it is not hard to imagine succumbing to the promise of a nice meal, a warm bed, and some physical comfort.
If this exhibit accomplishes anything, let that be to remind us that we are responsible for each other and that we must work diligently to make it impossible for our fellow citizens to be tempted away from their lives in The Park.
Offspring often feel the effects of their parents’ domestication, experts say
The effects of enforced domestication are often felt several generations down the road, say experts who participated in a panel discussion yesterday at the University of West Terrier’s Medical College.
Entitled “Acquired Misery: The Effects of Enforced Domestication on the Offspring of Survivors,” the event marked the first time that such a group has gathered to share their knowledge of the after-effects of enforced domestication and the toll it takes on Animal families.
Panel members included psychotherapist Dr. Berthilidis Strix, author of Shaken But Not Stirred and co-author of The Silent Cluck, Dr. Gudrun L. Gibbon, a Park psychotherapist and staff member at the Extinction Anxiety Clinic, psychoanalyst Dr. Elinore E. Owl, UWT researcher Dr. Chloris Cougar, known for her work in the area of Feline Unipolar Depressive Disorder (FUDD), and Dr. Simon Crow, director of Avian Medicine at UWT. The panel also included representatives of The Park’s many aid groups, including Home to Roost, Runaway Rovers, and the Tortoise Immigrant Aid and Mentor Programme.
The panel’s honorary guest participant was novelist Hercule Parrot, winner of a 2012 Chitter Radio Literary Award and part-time mentor at BirdBrains, The Park’s first Avian mentoring programme. A domestication survivor himself, Parrot gave a very moving speech at the concluding ceremonies at last year’s Enforced Domestication Awareness Month.
Yesterday’s full-day discussion centred on the psychological and physical effects of enforced domestication on the offspring of survivors.
“This is an area that has rarely been discussed openly, but we see the effects of it every day,” said Angus Deerhound, a representative of Runaway Rovers, an aid group that assists formerly domestic Canines.
“These Canines make a life for themselves in The Park and then they respond to messages that they should reproduce…[they are told] that they can make better lives for their offspring and, somehow, right a wrong. But they can’t do that without our help. They end up just making another wrong,” Deerhound said.
Statistics presented by the UWT’s Medical College, the Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm, and the Extinction Anxiety Clinic underscored the need for a plan of action to help those born to domestication survivors.
“When more than half of these Animals end up with some kind of anxiety disorder, some of them with debilitating ones, we cannot afford to look the other way. We must recognize the gravity of the situation,” said Inez Gallina, president of Home to Roost.
Catriona Cairn-Terrier gave the UWT commencement address
It has become so commonplace for the University of West Terrier’s annual commencement address to spark controversy that one might view it as a deliberate attempt to invent some kind of tradition.
Whether or not that is the case (and only time will tell), the 2014 commencement address given by Catriona Cairn-Terrier did not disappoint, at least in that sense.
Cairn-Terrier, who is listed among the “distinguished alumni” on UWT’s web site, used her position as Chief Archaeologist at the Institute for the Study of Mammalian Life (ISML) to make a strong statement in favour of higher education for all Animals.
Her opening remarks of congratulations to the graduating class introduced the somewhat unpopular idea that Park Animals might be more vulnerable to the idea of domestication, “if it appeared to them that the lives ahead of them were going to be difficult.”
Cairn-Terrier spoke in hushed tones about domestication, referring to it more than once as “slavery” and “the kind of life that looks appealing but [that] leads to misery and hopelessness and is, above all, wholly unnatural.”
Despite audible gasps from those in attendance, Cairn-Terrier continued in that vein for some time, extolling the virtues of institutional education to the point where some said they felt slighted by her and her interpretation of their lives. A few, who exited the ceremonies early, complained that the speech was not appropriate for the occasion.
“She may have had some good points and she may be onto something, but I didn’t appreciate being painted the way she painted me,” said Annabelle Kanga, whose daughter Juanita was in the 2014 graduating class.
“Of course I wanted to give her [Juanita] more opportunities than I had, but that doesn’t make me lesser or even more vulnerable to domestication. I think she should have kept those ideas to herself today and if she wanted to promote education, she should have just done that,” Kanga said.
Those who were more accepting of the speech said they weren’t surprised or put off by what Cairn-Terrier said.
“After all, June is Enforced Domestication Awareness Month,” said one attendee.
BREAKING NEWSAttention Park residents, Avians and non-Avians alike: stay tuned because some important tweets are coming your way.
Noreen has joined Twitter.
The Mammalian Daily advice columnist and Adjunct Professor of Human Studies at the University of West Terrier confirmed today that she has opened a Twitter account and intends to start using it “in the near future.”
In an open letter to her fellow journalists, her colleagues at UWT, and to her potential followers on Twitter, Noreen wrote:
It gives me great pleasure to announce that I have found another way to communicate with you, my fellow Park residents. I have joined Twitter! From now on, I will be able to share my great knowledge of Humans with you easily and quickly. I look forward to enjoying a lively conversation with you and I invite you to tweet your questions to me at any time. Now, let the conversation begin!
Noreen is also at work on a book, which will be published this Autumn.
Noreen
“Human values” is not an oxymoronic term.
[pullquote]Many of the values and mores that in the past we have attributed only to ourselves have been shown to exist in Humans as well. — Noreen[/pullquote]So says Noreen in her first academic article, due to be published in the May issue of the prestigious Journal of Human Behaviour (JHB).
In the article, which is entitled, “Not Just Skin Deep: On Human Belief Systems and Motivations,” the Adjunct Professor of Human Studies at the University of West Terrier and Mammalian Daily advice columnist shares new insights into Humans’ belief systems and the determinants of Human behaviour.
“Some of what I have learned will surprise Park Animals,” she says. “Many of the values and mores that in the past we have attributed only to ourselves have been shown to exist in Humans as well.”
For example, Noreen contends, while Human behaviour may appear random to us, it is more often than not the result of ideas and beliefs that are widely held among members of the species.
“And these ideas and beliefs are often founded in a kind of morality. We may not recognize it, but very often Humans are trying to do what they believe is the best thing,” she writes.
The Park Museum and the ISML are currently engaged in a battle over the establishment of a permanent home for one of The Park’s most iconic literary works
The Park Museum is engaged in a contentious battle with The Institute for the Study of Mammalian Life over the establishment of a permanent home for one of The Park’s most iconic literary works.
The AutoZOËography of ZoëCat was written by Zoë, the sister of Jor, The Park’s first leader and the founder of modern zoocracy. The book went missing ten years ago, but was discovered last July by workers excavating at the site of the new Park Museum.
After the workers alerted the ISML to the discovery, Chief Archaeologist Catriona Cairn-Terrier convinced the Institute’s Board of Governors to provide a home for the book there.
According to Cairn-Terrier, no discussion about a time frame for housing the book ever took place.
“Our decision was never challenged and we assumed that it was permanent. We sectioned off a part of our lobby and built a display case that would protect the book from deterioration. We did all this in full view of everyone and at no time did the Park Museum voice any complaints. Now, they want assurances that we will hand it over to them. Quite frankly, I don’t know why they think we would agree to that,” Cairn-Terrier says.
For its part, the Park Museum contends that it is “intuitively obvious” that the book should be housed at the Museum.
“ZoëCat was and is still revered in The Park as a great thinker and as an important influence on Jor and, therefore, on the development of modern zoocracy. Every one of the 6,975 pages of her book is a part of Park history and the citizens of The Park deserve to be able to visit the work in the building that was constructed to house our history,” says Sukuta Rhinoceros, one of the founders of the Museum and a member of its Board.
The autobiographical tome, which is filled with Zoë’s personal, political, and philosophical musings, was never formally published. The book that was found by the excavators is believed to be the only extant copy.
Members of the Department of Human Studies at the University of West Terrier are scrambling to defend a new course offering that has garnered a lot of social media attention in the past few days.
The course, “Living in the Human World,” was developed by Mammalian Daily advice columnist Noreen, who is also an adjunct professor in the department. The course was intended, she says, to enlighten Park Animals on the day-to-day aspects of life in the Human world.
But many believe the object of the course is to teach Animals how to live with Humans.
“What they’re doing, in a covert way, is trying to groom us for lives as pets outside The Park,” said one popular post on GooseBook.
The University strongly denies that.
“We were honoured to have Noreen join our faculty and we wanted to make use of her expertise. After all these years of observing the Human world, it would be a waste of her talents not to allow her to share her knowledge,” said Bibiano Montanaro, spokesAnimal for the UWT president.
Many on The Park’s social media sites, however, are suspicious of that explanation.
“Maybe if paired with a history course or something like that, then maybe,” said one post. Yet another summed up the feelings of many Park Animals: “If it offers a critical view of Human society, then okay. Otherwise, it’s hard to see it as anything but recruitment of us as pets.”
