100 Greatest Cartoons

Last night, after my parents had left[1] I watched C4's "The Nation's 100 Greatest Cartoons".

It was nostalgic to see old favorites like Tom and Jerry. They really were good, though I ended up seeing many too many times as a kid. And there's some I'd like to have seen now instead, like those which had the cartoon fit to a piece of classical music. I particularly remember a whole one with Tom playing a piano, and much of the music being caused by hium trying to catch Jerry as he runs across the keys. And the incomparable Niebelung spoof "KILL THE WABIT! KILL THE WABIT! WITH MY SPEAR AND MAGIC HELMET!"

And good to see a lot of more recent computer animated films. Especially The Incredibles, which was the first where I thought the people looked really real (though eg., Shrek, Monster's Inc, Finding Nemo were great at what they did, but it was seeing people, and water, that got to me most.) Of course, somehow I want to include "Who Framed Roger Rabit" in here, which is antoher entry in "Just Plain Good, who cares if it's animated" :)

And surprised to see a number of japanese things. I mean, I know lots of people I know love japanese various animations, but I didn't think there were as many that enough people to influence this poll had heard of.

And interesting to see a lot of the hokey old nonsense that everyone loves but can't explain why for the life of them. I mean, thundercats, yes, was amazing. But why? The dialogue and animation and plot were awful (though Cheetara was hot).

Reboot wasn't mentioned :(

Finally, three (paraphrased) quotes I found priceless:

"They always called the simpsons the best TV show of the 20th century. Why the qualification? Why not the best of all time? Do they think they might yet dig up an old animated bible?"

"And finally! You may have been wondering what is number one. If so, you're an idiot. What show has the wit of the simpsons, the scripts of the simpsons and the characters of the simpsons? The simpsons!"

"They had a character called Fisto? And let kids watch it? No wonder everyone's gay now."

[1] John: How was your weekend?
Me: Nice. My parents visited.
John: I'm glad didn't spoil it, then. Or was that good? :)

The most disturbing product advertisment since yesterday

Today, grocked from nakedtoes' lj is the concept of a usb vibrator http://www.livejournal.com/users/nakedtoes/66267.html. From her link: "USB powered!?? *is curious and afraid* Is this one of those you hook up to an X-box? (I'm not kidding -- there's totally a game-controlled vibrator... being marketed under the idea that this way the girlfriend will let her boyfriend play as much video games as he wants, and she will get off on it, and the man will feel Extra Super Powerful because him blowing up video game baddies makes his girlfriend scream for God.)"

Normally, that would handily qualify as the most disturbing bodily-function related toy I've heard about all day, but I made the mistake of turning the telly on during children's time, and there was an advert for a doll that pisses. And showed these little girls making her drink, and then, uh, lifting her dress, bending her legs, holding her over the toy toilet, squeezing her, and, well. It was called "Somebody Tinkles who really tinkles."

I SWEAR I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP!

And I know we're supposed to be comfortable with our bodies, and teaching children that excretion (or, for that matter, eating, sex, operations, etc) is dirty just causes problems, but this just freaked me out. Am I mad? Is this real? Is it weird or normal?

Emails from me may be slightly less mangled

For a while emails I've sent have been slightly mangled line-break-wise, which I've eventually got round to actually tracking down the cause of, and apparently I once incautiously toggled an ambiguously named option having something to do with HTML formatting.

D'OH!