You are either with us, or you are with the cartoons.

After ten Puccas, five Ricky Sprockets, and two Yam Rolls, it looks like I’m not with us anymore. I’ve joined forces with the evil doers. Turns out it’s not terrorists or Neo Cons or Muslim fascist-extremists or born-again Christian fundamentalists that are the problem. It’s the cartoons. We should have known all along. Hell, I grew up on Scooby-Doo and that shit fucked me up for life. It indoctrinated me into a subversive political mindset, and now I find myself a worker-bee peon, churning out more animated subversion to twist the intellects of a new generation of television-watching sloth-children. I might as well be strapping a bomb to my chest and taking a walk into a Wal-Mart.

Witness what just happened in Boston. One cartoon character lights up and flips morning commuters the bird, and the whole city grinds to a halt. Such is the might of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I shudder to think what could have gone down with a similar Adult Swim viral ad campaign for the Venture Bros. The entire state could have crumbled. And had it been a light-box advert for Robot Chicken placed in those tunnels and under those bridges? We’re talking about the complete dissolution of the United States of America.

Okay, technically, Robot Chicken is stop motion, but you get my meaning. Any sort of frame-by-frame animated illusion-of-movement technique may well spell disaster for the rest of western civilization. We can only be grateful that the National Film Board of Canada’s experiments with sand animation hit a wall. Their foolhardy dabbling with grainy forces beyond our comprehension may well have ended days long before the current crop of Christian soldiers had a chance to declare, “No, THIS is the end of days. Right now. This time for sure. We swear.”

As a further testament to my complicity in the cartoon insurgency, my Pucca episode, Itsy Bitsy Enemy Within, is up for another award. This time it’s at SICAF 2007, the big animation festival in South Korea. Studio B cut a DVD of all my first season episodes for me, and now that I’ve finally seen it, I have to say this particular episode may be my favourite produced credit to date. It’s magnificently cruel, which is what all proper cartoons should be. But if you live in the Boston area, don’t expect it to air anytime soon. Some cartoons are so awesome, they may require the complete evacuation of the city just in case one of the characters reaches critical mass.