Cartoon Character Flashbacks

Though my childhood memories are filled with mostly with being outdoors, or at least active, its amazing how quickly an odd turn of phrase can bring vision to mind that I can only explain has having watched many strange cartoons as a child.

My generation was not doled out the pretty pabulum that seems to be children’s entertainment today, unless they are allowed access to the other extreme – violence and gore laden video games.

We did not have pretty pastel colored ponies and fluffy, pudgy, purple dinosaurs. Warner Bros. gave us roosters, coyotes, rabbits (hares, not cute bunnies) and my all time favorite – skunks. Disney gave us a goofy looking hound, dour ducks, mice and many humans that were fairly attractive villains (evil without the CSI level crime scene). I also remember the drunk mouse who had a singing electric razor for a pal (what a way to calm little boy’s fears of their first buzz cut!), a moronic but comical vulture and the owlet who became the crooner of swing dance against his family’s instance on opera. It seems a few studios, like Pixar, have attempted to continue the tradition of dancing and singing bugs and other amusingly distorted real world entities in order to bridge the chasm between sickeningly sweet cuteness and nightmare inducing horror.

But what got me pondering all this was not another session in front of a TV, which I apparently did more often than I realized, but a visit to my office by the maintenance crew.

They were on a pest control mission to rid of us some uninvited, non-musical ants. During the discussion it was mentioned that another office was experiencing “German roaches”. Now aside from never having bothered to learn the nationalities of said species of vermin, I really didn’t pay much attention to the comment until colleague asked what are German cockroaches. I chimed in with “They are the noisy ones in the corner going for the beer and bratwurst.” My quip may have been on the pitiful side of witty, but the vision in my head was straight out of a 1960’s black and white cartoon. It may be a good thing for my office that my drawing skills are even worse than my jokes.

Damen und Herren, presenting the Deutschen Shaben! The lights go up and the band starts as a line of cockroaches standing up on their hind legs, wearing lederhosen, and each carrying a stein of beer, dance their way onto the stage in a multi-legged version of a Rockette’s line.

And they say video games are corrupting the younger generations?!?!?!
I think I need one of those beers instead of my morning coffee!

More money than brains!

That's my usual explanation for bad drivers. This afternoon at lunch it was really true.

On my way to get my car out of the repair shop I am flying low on an interstate highway with traffic all around. Passenger cars, 18-wheelers, delivery trucks, SUVs - all kinds. Suddenly brake lights are everywhere and quickly I find myself fast approaching a rather bright and shiney new Hummer3 ..... STRADDLING two lanes and slowing down even more! As I pray no one behind me tries to turn me into the filling of a vehicular sandwich, I see a small dog in the window of the driver's side of the H3. Finally the problem child decides on a lane and as I speed past for my own safety I can't help but shout a few obsenities - even if only to vent my own consternation.

This idiot woman had a chihuahua on her shoulder AND was talking on her hand-held cell phone while driving! Or maybe she was only listening while holding the phone for the damned dog to take the call; I really couldn't tell.

I really think auto dealers should be required to qualify buyers according to an intelligence test instead of their credit rating! But then again most intelligence tests don't measure common sense, do they?

Bandwidth Noise

Having used the internet since before the ubiquitous “ www” became part of human communications, I am a veteran of flame wars, people who do not know how (or refuse) to edit what they quote/copy, and a myriad of other aggravations of communicating with strangers in public, text based forums.

There are days when my tolerance for those who have not progressed emotionally or intellectually over the last two decades become exhausted. I know this is my penance for succumbing to the temptation to participate in any forum labeled “Soc.(anything)”, but this also my blog and my place to rant if I so choose. And yours to read … if you so choose. (Here ends the warning)

As a regular reader and sometimes commenter on soc.culture.korean@googlegroups.com once in a while it confounds me as to why people will quote 3 screens full of a post to follow it with one sentence or question about what is often only one sentence from the piece they quote. Do you not have a DELETE key?!?!? The only thing more irritating is to read several of these inane posts in sequence. Today’s was capped off by having someone ask a question that was clearly answered in the material they quoted – if only they had bothered to read past the 1st sentence they copied.

I guess you can sum up my tirade as a general angst over people cluttering bandwidth with laziness. I truly hope it’s not a matter of ignorance if they have the income to finance an internet connection and the hardware & software to use it. It reminds me too much of the major television networks in the U.S., and I won’t even begin to address how moronic much of that is these days.