We'll make great pets!

This weekend the Queen and I decided to take a departure from our usual morning ritual of listening to music while we eat our toast and coffee, and instead decided to watch cartoons! The first thing we landed on was Curious George. I was interested, yet also disturbed by the show. I'm not even talking about George's owner's bizarro canary yellow outfit. What the fuck's up with that hat? Is he some weird pilgrim or missionary? Is his role to bring Christianity to monkeys?

Aside from the weird outfit, the most troubling about the show was that Curious George seemed to be a really weird blend of animal and human child. He wasn't able to speak, but he was able to understand how to go to a pet shop and pick up food for some pet mice. Why didn't he pick up his own food while he was there, and if he could, why would he need the dorky guy in the yellow hat? Retail takes a fair amount of cognitiont for a monkey, but I'm going to suspend disbelief because as far as I can tell it doesn't break it's own logic. However, where it all breaks down is where he's now in charge of other pets as if he's not a pet himself. I know different animals have different levels of intelligence but in this case the pets were more or less just some realistic mice and a snake. With the Mickey and Pluto deal at least Pluto isn't a basic dog. Pluto is more like a slow child to Mickey and Minny. Pluto... we just don't know.

Why is this important? Well ol' George behaved like a little kid when he wanted to, but when it was cool to be a monkey he'd have that to. It's just not fair. Can you imagine if you had the abilities of a monkey with human intelligence? GET YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF OF ME, YOU DAMN DIRTY APE! But here the message to children was clear: If your neighbor's pet snake and mice escape and go traipsing around the ledge of your apartment building, by all means go get it because monkeys and children are basically the same. If this doesn't cause death or a near miss, at the very best it's going to cause grave disappointment when the child actually meets a real monkey and instead of fun filled hijinks's it masturbates in front of them and then throws it's own poop. Next thing you know that child is going to grow up and become the CEO of a paper company and the deforestation of the rain forest will commence. How sad will it be if the king can not get the cancer drugs we're going to discover in the rain forest because little Billy destroyed it?

Next came Spongebob. Way better IMO. All the animals were sentient here and had super silly personalities to the point where it was totally unbelievable even to a 2 year old. (maybe the crabs they consume in the crabcakes weren't but they never show you) Plus, the comedic timing was better and the artwork was superb. While no first season Ren and Stimpy, it will get my seal of approval when I take the throne.

Anyway, when I am KING I shall decree that if you are going to make children shows that depict animals in an anthropomorphic way, they must ALL be sentient. If the cat eats the mouse, then we have a flash back to when the mouse was falling in love with his wife and how they all wept tears of joy when the first litter was born... but it will be OK because the mouse will have a stick of dynamite it will light inside the cat. Basically I'm going to have Matt Groening actually create the Itchy and Scratchy show in it's own series... maybe do a live action movie... Man that'll rule.