Visit the kelpforest....

So, once upon a time, the Corpse Bride, a plague doctor*, and Rainbow Dash the My Little Pony went Trick or Treating...



This was after the candy collection and Avalon's posture is "I'm soooooo tiiiirrred..." She was wearing some fancy silver flip-flops, but they were hurting her feet. Angus was pronounced scary, and a couple people thought Gareth wasn't wearing a costume (C'mon, you gotta do better than that!) until he turned around. He's trying to do the V behind Angus's head (because that's something Rainbow Dash would do), but didn't realize his hat was hiding it. ;p

( behind cut, as I know pictures of other peoples kids are mostly of interest to other people... )

Angus has been playing a Pokemon Blue emulator he downloaded lately, and thinking of my drawing of Nathan Explosion as a grass-mouse Pokemon, and a little inspiration from this CreepyPasta story, drew me this:



Well, I guess Curse wouldn't be too effective against Nathan, since he's part of the Curse of Dethklok already. Maybe the Ghost better keep his distance! ;)

So, Angus has decided, on a few viewings of reruns (seen fairly often in this household because my father recently became a fan), that he's soured a bit on Avatar: The Last Airbender because he didn't care for the ending.* Turns out that at 12, he's a total Zutara shipper. He decided to come up with his own solution. After viewing a few Kaput & Zosky episodes on YouTube (to jog his memory - it hasn't been aired in some time), he announced his latest comic book project is an ATLA/Kaput and Zosky crossover.

(Kaput & Zosky being another Nicktoons animation no longer being aired - a French import by way of Canada, I believe - about two bloody-minded bean-shaped aliens who go from planet to planet attempting to conquer them, usually being abysmal failures at it. It has a very simple, stylized art style, which I very much like, but it's very different from ATLA.)

( Spoilers? But who's watching anymore... )

Angus has been digging into all things Invader Zim lately and one of his favorite sites is the Zim Wiki. He's borrowing my phone at present, because I've been trying to figure out how to fix the PC - the both browsers suddenly stopped connecting, although everything else that connects to the internet still works. Grrr.

Anyway, he just brought the phone over to point out a particular caste of Irkens (Zim's species) called Advisors - who provide input to the leaders, the Almighty Tallest. The type specimen's name is Rarl Kove.

And then I had to explain why it made me laugh.

I love Invader Zim, but still haven't seen all of it yet. Or at least don't have the memory Angus does, to remember all the tiny details...Also, despite the number of times I've watched, I only in the last week recognized the voice of Tallest Purple as that of Kevin MacDonald (formerly of Kids in the Hall). Duh; thought I was better at voices than that.

Finally a Zim fan animation I favorited ages ago at DA, but it still makes me laugh.

Avalon wants to be Gaz for the next costume-appropriate holiday....

So, brought kitty home Wednesday night, and after some initial mewing during the ride home, I was worried he (yes, we're pretty sure he's a boy) would want to hide for awhile and be scared. Absolutely not. He came out of the carrier and immediately started bouncing all over the place as if he'd always lived here. For the first couple of days we confined him to our bedroom, mainly so he's sure of where his food and litter box are, but now have started letting him out into the front of the house.

I really thought John would be negative about getting another cat, but allergies and all he's first in line to play with him and even woke up early on Saturday because the kitten did. Kitten has a fondness for sleeping right on someone's pillow, which makes it difficult to avoid the occasional face full of fur. I woke once to find him draped around the top of my head. I have a slight cat allergy myself, and for the first day had very itchy eyes and was taking antihistamines right along with John, but it's getting better now. Hopefully he'll acclimate soon too; he usually does after a couple of weeks exposure.

Avalon will NOT let him alone. We've had to get after her several times for carrying him around constantly and not letting him rest. He actually goes back into the carrier for naps, partly to get away from her. She's like the character with the boneless cat in the Peanuts strip. She was previously doing the same thing to Spot.

I was previously thinking some variation of silver or gray for a name, but his being male shot down the main one I thought of- the mom in El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera; as a superhero, her name is Plata Peligrosa (Dangerous Silver) and she's a little bit crazy. Sounded perfect for a kitten to me and we have a precedent for cartoon names with Stimpy. I suppose the name itself isn't gender specific, but in any case, John didn't want a color and has dubbed him Scooter. I don't know where that came from - I asked him if he really wanted to name him after a Bush aide who went to jail. Eh.

Anyhoo, he's finally met his older brothers. They were hungry and Avalon let them in this morning. Everyone was more intent on breakfast than whether there was someone new around; Stimpy headed right for the bowl of kitten chow and polished it off; then I discovered we were completely out of cat food, so I pulled on my pants and headed to the store at 6 am. When I got back, Scooter (eh...) was still being ignored for the most part, so let's hope the interaction stays on that neutral level. If I know kittens, though, they do manage to ingratiate themselves - although Stimpy's the top cat now and will likely continuing the ignoring bit, he did the same thing himself to Bob, when he was a kitten. ;)

So last week, Angus and I stopped by Big Lots to pick up a couple of plastic bins. On the way out he caught sight of a bin full of $3 DVDs and I relented and allowed him to pick one out, pending parental approval. He picked out a one containing some Garfield cartoons; not the series, but three half-hour shows that I think must have been primetime specials. I rolled my eyes a bit but said he could have it.

Now, I used to like Garfield the strip, it was actually funny when it first started. I even bought the first book; Garfield was huge and fat and obnoxious, and Jon had an actual job as a cartoonist. It got dumb about the time Jon's roommate Lyman disappeared and Garfield started walking on his hind legs; everything became round and cute, even Garfield himself, who wasn't supposed to be. I stopped paying much attention to it decades ago, but a few months ago, Angus brought home the same book, given him to the school librarian because it was beginning to fall apart.

Anyway the kids love, love, love this thing. Avalon has watched it four times in the last couple of days. The one special "Garfield's Nine Lives" is interesting because it's a bunch of different shorts, some done with different animators and art styles. Two of them appear very Disnyesque; "Dianna's Piano" doesn't seem like it had anything to do with Garfield at all, being all pastels and colored pencils and a long-haired female white cat, the other "Lab Animal" looked a lot like Dragon's Lair, which, now that I think about it, came out about the same time this was originally aired (I didn't recognize any of the animators in the credits - but a lot of people are alumni of Disney). Another,"In the Garden" with a sing-song narrator describing Chloe and the orange kitten in an endless childhood fairyland, resembles someone's psychdelic LSD drug trip, complete with rainbow mushrooms, and disturbing floating balloon faces. Of course, that short happens to be Avalon's favorite one. One of the other specials, with Garfield playing a film noir detective (Sam "Spayed") had music vocals by Lou Rawls.*

(edit (8/16/2011): Aha! Here's a playlist with all of the shorts! In The Garden, the weird one, is #3.)

Huh. Well, I guess it's bearable every once in a while.

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While searching for a video of the Garden bit (which I could NOT find), so I could show you just how weird it was, I found it was based on a book - which I vaguely remember but didn't read - but reviews said it was a series of stories (not comics) and more oriented for adults. Also that it (the show) was nominated for an Emmy, but was beat out by the Garfield detective special mentioned above. Must not have been a lot of choices that year.

Noticed this yesterday; I'm not sure I've ever seen Cartoon Network doing this for previous inaugurations; then again they didn't have little blobby logo characters to display president's faces on until this season. I'm sure the channel's owner wouldn't have had any great impetus for doing something similar in the last eight years, but I don't think I remember anything previous to that either.