THE BOOK IS #80 ON AMAZON

SAVE THE WHALES PLEASE broke into Amazon's top 100 today. It's #80! To everybody who bought the book, thank you! However long or briefly we are in the top 100, it's a moment to relish and rejoice! Yippeeee!

SLAUGHTER INEVITABLE

Pro-whaling nations are gaining ground in their effort to break the deadlock and resume slaughtering whales. The IWC indicated it will will continue to explore a plan to allow Japan to carry out '‘commercial whaling' in exchange for reduced hunting for 'scientific research' purposes. Anti-whaling activists did enjoy one victory, when the prime minister of Dominica announced at the "International Ocean Life Symposium" that his government would not support Japan's whale-killing position at the IWC.

JAPANESE WHALERS THWARTED...FOR NOW

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's boat, Steve Irwin, arrived in Hobart on February 2o 2oo9, after a series of violent clashes with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. The activists located the whaling fleet earlier than they expected and prevented the slaughter of whales for over 27 days. However, upon arrival, Australian Federal Police, responding to Japanese complaints, raided the ship and confiscated the log and video footage of whale-killing.

WHOLE FOODS TAKES A STAND

Popular organic supermarket chain, Whole Foods, has warned Iceland of a complete boycott on Icelandic products if the nation continues commercial whaling.

"Whole Foods Market is a mission-driven company committed to environmental sustainability and stewardship of our planet, with a wide customer base with like-minded values," A.C. Gallo, the assistant president of the chain, said in his statement to the Minister of Fisheries. "We are deeply disturbed by the former Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture’s decision to authorize the hunting of Sei and Minke Whales over the next five years, along with a dramatic increase in Iceland’s whaling quota...Our customer stakeholders are highly educated and environmentally aware, and we believe that if Iceland continues its current stance on whaling that the demand for Icelandic products in our stores will decline forcing us to seek out alternative product sources from other countries."

STRANDED WHALES RETURNED TO SEA

Eleven long-finned pilot whales were returned to sea Tuesday after surviving a mass stranding on a remote southwest Australian beach...
WHOLE STORY ON BREAKING NEWS!

Whales, Dioramas, and Dramas

New wallpaper for someone's bathroom. ------------->

On brown carpeted floor, MY NEW ROOM, Los Feliz, CA, USA, the WORLD:

I’m now down the middle of the book and I’ve come up with an idea…

When I was in grade school, I was a pretty good student in that I loved new things. Really, all things but math. Math was like a genre of music… or film that I just innately didn’t like… umm, like spaghetti westerns or Romantic Dramadies geared toward a women exclusive audience. So getting into math was like sitting through a crap-tastic movie like the “Jane Austen Book Club” and trying to convince myself that it’s “ok”, and I different world/perspective that would somehow make me a more well rounded person by trying to understand it. Well, I understand that crap is crap… that’s too harsh… maybe that some perspectives are incompatible with one’s intrinsic self, tastes. BUT, I do taste art. Mmm mmm good. When it came ‘round to project time, this boy was all about making shoe box dioramas.
Now I’ve always thought books deserved the kind of publicity that movie and TV shows got. I remembering after reading Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, or Tom Robbin’s Still Life with Woodpecker, I would be designing posters in my head to be displayed on marquees, bus stops, and nowadays on Hulu every 15 minutes during a episode of “Lost” or something. All great works of art deserve pervasive and effective marketing. But alas, books get the shaft like most non visual media, most commercial for books are lame… just the book spinning into frame with a deep throated man synopsizing why it’s a sexy read… usually these books are suspense thrillers. Blech.
The more I read “the Whale” book, the more I get drawn to the action packed read rather than a heavy handed message about ecology. Sure, the elements are there, but they are woven in concert and compliment with some real fun characters. SO yeah, I like this book. Make no mistake, it’s not War and Peace or a Moveable Feast, but it would be tedious and laborious if all books were. If I could place a filmic genre to it, it’d be closer to action/adventure and I really truly love it for this. When it comes to mediums in art, books tend to be the haven for easy, unchecked snobbery. However no genre of story telling has hegemony over the whole art does it? There is a time and place for “Schindler’s List” and “Requiem for a Dream”, for “Dumb and Dumber” and “Die Hard”, for “Love Actually” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. There is never time for: “Roger Dodger”, “Mama Mia!”… and yes, “The Jane Austen Book Club”… even Mr. Darcy would rather watch “Jackass” then that contrived crap fest.
SO: I’m making a diorama-ed, film trailer of this book, this mystery book I found in a brown bag weeks ago, which the authors begrudgingly let me keep till I finished reading, whom now seem supportive of my exploration with it. And why not, I like it. Well, I’m gonna get back to reading it, then work some more on the trailer. So far so good…. I can’t wait to show you all!
Love and Kogi Koreann BBQ Taco Trucks,
Eugene
PS: Save the Whales Please. And while you’re at it, the rest of the planet.

SAVE THE WHALES PLEASE! A Movie Between Book Covers

Written by two men who hold Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California film school, Save the Whales Please is a movie between book covers with short scenes that end where the director—Quentin Tarantino?—might say, “Cut.” It’s a political action thriller in which Uma Thurman or Angelina Jolie might star as Jan Everett, the drop-dead gorgeous first lady of the United States and committed environmental activist whose passion is saving whales. Her husband, Carston Everett, is running for reelection for his second term. He’s an independent, and his poll numbers, like the poll numbers of his Democratic and Republican rivals, are all under thirty percent. Everett is young, glamorous, and ambitious. But a Jeb Bartlett he’s not. In fact, he’s surrounded by a chief of staff and advisors that make Dick Cheney and officials of the former administration look like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. Early on, George Pleasance, Everett’s chief of staff, sees a reflection of himself with the president and another advisor in a mirror in the Oval Office. He “felt a chill. In that moment, they could’ve been the White House of Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman at the height of their power, pre-Watergate.”

It’s an action-adventure story of dirty politics all around the world. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) allows Japan to kill whales “for scientific study,” which really means for public consumption. Pirates slaughter whales and sell them to Japan. When Jan Everett and her team, which includes a videographer and a submarine captain, capture both a notorious pirate and a ship owned by a Japanese family with enormous political influence, Japan threatens the U.S. with a trade war. At the same time, nearly two thousand blue whales have somehow been trapped between the Arctic ice and the U.S. Navy’s sonar experiments. If the whales remain trapped, they’ll all die and the species is likely to become extinct. The White House has offered these whales to Japan to forestall the threatened trade war. Jan Everett and her cohort take over the captured pirate ship and set out to save the whales.

The authors, one of whom is an entertainment lawyer, have created amazingly realistic politics and technology. Well … either they’re making it up, or it’s nonfiction that will inspire both green fanatics and conspiracy theorists to take action. Either way, it’s an exciting read.
(April) Barbara Ardinger, Foreword

(Foreword, one of the five big trades, reviews only .04% of the books it receives)