Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 2

Anyone who has watched even a single episode of Dora the Explorer can agree that Swiper the fox is a total douche. It isn't enough that he's always stealing things; he has to just casually throw them away, rather than scurrying off with his ill-gotten goods or maybe doing something useful with them. But then he's got this, I don't know, pervasive developmental disorder or something, where if you tell him three times not to rob you, he won't. Maybe it's like a mild avoidant personality disorder. I don't know... what do I look like, Frasier?

There's one episode of Dora that displays a moral ambiguity that I'm not comfortable with. Dora and Boots have a hankerin' for some blueberries, and rather than simply going back to Dora's house, or say, a grocery store, and getting some more blueberries, they decide to go to Blueberry Hill and pick some. Aside from the obvious insecticide-related concerns related to the consumption of unwashed fruit picked from random shrubbery, their scheme has a slight kink: Swiper lives on Blueberry Hill.

Of course, Dora and Boots are all worried that Swiper may come out and swipe "their" blueberries. The whole time, they're all "keep an eye out for that sneaky fox" and "he's always trying to swipe our stuff." I have some news for you two: You're tresspassing. You got the munchies, and suddenly it's okay to go stamping around Swiper's house and steal the berries he has lovingly cultivated all season? Selling those blueberries is the only way Swiper's able to pay his rent. Are you gonna let that klepto crash on your couch after he's been evicted? No, I didn't think so.

Oh, you're the star of the show, Dora, so you get to act on whatever selfish whim you happen to have. Nice. What's next? You and your boanthropic pal Benny gonna go down to the river and set fire to the Grumpy Old Troll's bridge so you can toast marshmallows? He lives under that bridge. Jerks.

Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 1

Franklin is a Canadian cartoon aimed at preschoolers, based on a series of children's books. It's about a little anthropomorphic turtle named Franklin who is, as near as I can tell, mentally retarded, and manages to wiggle his way into any stupid, easily-avoided predicament that may present itself at any given time.

The show also endorses genocide.

That's a shocking claim, but stay with me here. Almost none of the other characters in the cartoon aside from Franklin's stupid turtle family have names (and even then it's only him and his little sister). They are all just called by whatever animal they happen to be. Franklin's best friend is a bear named Bear. Other idiots he hangs out with are named Rabbit, Snail, Beaver, and Fox. The soccer coach is Mrs. Porcupine, and the teacher is named Mister Owl.

The very few characters who do have proper names are younger siblings (a couple of Franklin's friends have these, I think), fictional characters like Franklin's favorite superhero, and the occasional professional athlete or something.

What this leads me to believe is that in the twisted Franklin universe, the turtles reign supreme and have virtually wiped out all other species. Only a single breeding pair of each other type of animal has been allowed to survive, hence there being a Mr. Bear and a Mrs. Bear, for instance. With no diversity, what need is there for names other than a generic species identifier? If they were enslaving the populace they might at least have ID numbers and barcodes tattooed on them, but nope. The skunk is Skunk, the raccoon is Raccoon, all parents and authority figures are Mr. and/or Mrs., and that's all there is to it.

The fact that other characters with real names only appear in one or two episodes is further proof of the atrocities that have taken place off-camera. They're probably all being shipped off to concentration camps after their token appearances. Or maybe slaughtered for food.

I don't know why nobody has spoken up about this before. These hard-shelled dictators must be stopped at all cost.

AT&T Disturbs Me.

I can't be the only one who's noticed how dark the AT&T Wireless commercials have gotten. I'm not talking about the mom with the stupid kids who don't want to use "old minutes," those are kind of clever. What I'm talking about are the "sorry I missed your call, I don't have any bars out here" ads. They started out pretty mundane but they took a very sudden, sinister turn. Here, I'll review:

• Dad looking for his daughter at local "make-out point." -- Okay, no big deal, kinda funny, whatever.
• Dude missing the Motörhead concert. -- Haha, stupid, Motörhead sucks anyway.
• College guy getting stuck in a hostel with creepy Euro-techno-trash. -- Wow, I would hate if that were me, but still nothing catastrophic.
• Hapless employee brings up the big corporate merger that was supposed to remain hush-hush, in a business meeting. -- That's probably going to affect a few 401(k)s.
  
• Children's birthday party terrorized by man in tyrannosaurus costume. -- Well, I tend to find crying children funny, but I know most people don't. This is a ruined family moment.
• Children traumatized by family's accidental trip to a nude beach. -- A more disturbing notion to some people than others, to be sure. But anyone would be traumatized at the sight of the senior citizens that insist on hitting the ol' clothing-optional beaches.
  
• Guy falsely arrested for trespassing, and thrown in jail. -- Wait, what? That is harsh. And they even made a thinly-veiled reference to forced prison sodomy.
• Man blows up his own house because he didn't know to thaw a frozen turkey before deep-frying. -- Hey, not funny... that was that guy's home. And he's all singed.
• An entire news crew gets BLOWN UP. -- Holy sh*t. This is how we're selling phone service?
  
• Special holiday-themed commercial features a snowman slowly melting away. -- Because nothing says "Season's Greetings" like a none-too-subtle reminder of the inevitability of death.
  

I'm sure I'm missing some, but the trend couldn't be clearer. I'm all for morbid humor, but this is friggin' scary. At least the Verizon commercials are just dumb; these make me check over my shoulder every time I use my AT&T phone.

I realize this blog is about three months too late to be considered even remotely current or relevant, but I don't especially care. Yes, there are already a bunch of parody ads on YouTube, but I don't have a video camera so I have to resort to this.

Given that it's been a while since I've seen one of these creepshows masquerading as advertisement, I can only assume that AT&T has run out of grisly ideas with which to terrorize their potential customer base. As a loyal AT&T subscriber, I am rushing to the rescue with two new fully-formed scripts, free of charge:

1. *beep!* "Hey, it's Staci's phone. Yeah, sorry we didn't get your call warning us that the guy Staci just met on the Internet and agreed to have dinner with, has a mile-long rap sheet full of sexual assault charges, but we don't get any bars out here in the dimly-lit roadside diner on the edge of town where Staci drove to meet this guy. So Staci's about to get violently raped and in all likelihood will be dumped in the woods ten miles from here, with even less chance of getting a decent signal. I guess when Mister Right's grimy, calloused hands are clamped around her neck and her dignity and self-respect are being pounded right out of her, Staci will wish she'd gone with AT&T instead. The thought that an AT&T phone could've prevented the soul-shattering humiliation, bruises, and internal bleeding will surely keep her warm on the long walk to the nearest free clinic to get a morning-after pill. Whoops, gotta go, the roofie's starting to kick in!"
   
   
2. *beep!* "Yeah, Chad's phone here, sorry Chad missed your call, but there's no signal out here on the remote island paradise where Chad decided to bring his girlfriend so he could propose to her. So your frantic calls and text messages about the sudden military uprising currently erupting in this little impoverished Caribbean nation, the coup that will certainly lead to months if not years of ferocious civil war? Nope, we didn't get 'em. When Chad and Misty are caught in the crossfire of a conflict they have nothing to do with, I hope you'll send their family sympathy cards instead of calling them, because they don't have AT&T either. True, Chad survived the attack, but the last thing he saw before blacking out in that jungle was a group of guerrillas dragging his beloved away, laughing about the fun they'd have with her, and how much cocaine they could buy with that big, shiny engagement ring. Nobody's seen Misty since. Oh, and try not to stare at the stumps where both of Chad's legs, and his right arm, used to be, when you visit him in the hospital. He's a little touchy about how the doctors had to remove them because of the infection that broke out at the bullet entry points. Maybe while you're trying to console the hollow shell of the man that used to be your buddy Chad, you can mention the sweet rollover minutes he can get if he switches to AT&T."

Dear AT&T: You're welcome.

Reality TV Memes

It is with great, agonizing shame that I confess to occasionally watching the circus that calls itself "reality television." I am fully aware that these shows are utterly devoid of intellectual, moral, or sociological value, but there's something almost therapeutic about subjecting myself to this assault on good taste. I can't help but feel better about my own life when I see a bunch of idiots volunteering themselves to be publicly humiliated for weeks on end, in the hopes of gaining some small measure of fame and/or fortune. However much of a fat loser I am, I will never be the guy getting into a drunken fistfight with two other guys over a plate of cold nachos to impress some skank with serious self-esteem issues and a third-grade reading level who, even if I should emerge victorious from the gamut of debasement that comprises this "competition" for her "affection," will only dump me a week after the cameras shut off anyway.

In short, Sheila and I make sport of laughing at morons. We take great joy in it. You do too, don't lie. I can't even count how many ridiculous and sometimes even slightly clever one-liners we swipe from these shows and use in daily interaction with each other, because making fun of stupid people doesn't stop when the TV is turned off. Oh, no.

There's the fake drinking game inspired by Whitney "I Shouldn't Have Beaten Anya" Thompson from ANTM (do a shot every time she says "I'm plus size"), which later morphed into the "I'm a retired model" drinking game that ended too soon when whatever-that-dumb-waif's-name-is was forced to drop off the Rock of Love bus due to health problems. I was looking forward to making fun of her some more. There's our impersonation of Jason and Grant from Ghost Hunters ("Well, we got some video where you can see an eight-foot tall apparition of some sort of ungodly goat-man, which pointed at us and said 'Hey, I'm a ghost, get the f**k out of my house,' and then the dining room table levitated off the ground and anally violated our camera guy, but I just don't think that's enough evidence for us to say this house is haunted"). Then, Real Chance of Love gave us "Fake-ass Puffy," which we declared to be the new "Nappy-headed Ho."

These things are stupid as hell but they make us laugh. We started jokingly referring to them as memes. Really, the only thing that separates a stupid inside joke from a meme is the number of people who are in on the joke.

So our current brain-rotting poison of choice is Tool Academy. This show can only be described as awesome by way of pathetic. Plus, by the time the first episode was halfway over, it had served up two such "memes." In fact, I'd like to see these become actual Internet memes, because everybody should find humor in the things that I think are funny but really shouldn't because they are actually just stupid.

The first (and weaker) of the two is the transformation of the phrase "Mister Awesome" into an adjective. Is something so truly mind-bogglingly amazing that "awesome" alone is painfully ill-equipped to describe it? Well, then, it is Mister Awesome.

I shall present an example:

Dude 1: "Dude, did you see the trailer for Transformers 2?"

Dude 2: "Oh, hells yeah, dude, it was...
"

But the crown jewel in this regalia of buffoonery is: "Mega please." The words tumbled out of that heifer Margo's mouth and into my very central nervous system. To truly appreciate it, it must be understood in its original context, so if you haven't already seen it, check it out here. Suffer through the ad, jump to about the 6:45 point and enjoy.

This phrase (much like the entire show) exudes some kind of primordial, incomprehensible blend of idiocy and brilliance that it makes me want to laugh just thinking about it. It cries out to be meme-ified. Are you perusing your favorite news aggregate site, or discussion forum, or blog, when you come across an incredibly inane, implausible, or otherwise ridiculous comment made by some trollish fop (or, y'know, a stupid post like this one)? Hit 'em with one of these...

...and hear the "Oohhh, snap!" reverberating all across the interwebs.

I might just shop this around over at 4chan. Everyone knows if you want a meme to take hold, it's gotta start at 4chan. Every single Internet meme in the universe originated there. Even memes that existed prior to 4chan originated at 4chan. I don't know how that works. 4chan is a strange and frightening place, to be avoided at all cost. Unless you're trying to get a meme to take root.

I don't want to be that guy, though. You know, the guy who tries to force something to happen that really ought to just happen organically. The guy who makes up a random nickname for himself and insists that other people call him by that nickname in everyday conversation. You can't give yourself a nickname.

I also don't want to be the guy that people come looking for in six months when "Mega please" has run its course, is all over the Internet, and everybody is sick of it but people still keep using it and why won't it go away it's not funny anymore aahhhhhh!!!

So, like I was saying, this is the new Rickroll, people. You saw it here first. Well, no, come to think of it, you probably didn't.