Historically, the Germans are a tad, shall we say, grabby. Over the course of the first half of the 20th century in particular, they developed an unfortunate habit of marching into neighbouring countries uninvited and behaving badly. You know, doing rude things like not wiping their feet at the door, eating the last biscuits without asking if anyone else would like some, killing Anne Frank, and telling off-colour Bavarian jokes in polite company.

Now they’ve gone too far. Look, Germans, you can have Poland. Take Czechoslovakia if you must. But leave my toons alone.

I visit YouTube from time to time, to see if anyone has pirated more of my shows so I can link them (thereby further encouraging the piracy and illegal distribution of copyrighted material). So far there’s only a few clips from my most recently aired cartoon, Ricky Sprocket, but one of them is from an episode I wrote called, Ricky Who?

I’ve seen other cartoons I’ve written show up online dubbed into a variety of languages, but this one is different. There’s a kid — some German child — pointing a camera at a television with the sound off, making up his own dialogue. In German! How dare he!

Look, I’m sure his dialogue is better than mine, but that’s not the point. Television is supposed to be a passive medium. You stare at it blankly and turn your brain off. In no way is it supposed to encourage creativity or inventive interaction. So knock that shit off right now young man, or I’ll sue your ass for all the Euros or Deutsche Marks or Swiss bank account numbers or whatever it is you have in your piggy bank. Mostly because you’re German and you have to learn: Don’t touch what ain’t yours.

What? I’m sorry? Oh. This just in. This clip is actually Dutch, not German. Oops.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the fine and noble German people, who have always gone out of their way to support my work, and haven’t invaded a single country so far this entire century. Except Afghanistan. But that one doesn’t really count because it was sort of an international invading-army gang bang.

I will now turn my rightful indignation on the Dutch, who also have it coming.

Umm. Your trade monopoly on the island of Dejima for over two hundred years was unfair to your European competitors and only encouraged feudal Japan’s isolationist politics that would later necessitate their rush to join the arms race in the post-Meiji Restoration period at the end of the 19th century! So there.

Harsh, I know. But somebody had to say it.