Advent Calendar Day 5...

I love cartoons, me.

Actually, that's a bit of a generalisation. That's a bit like me saying I love the British, whereas we can (unfortunately) count Gary Glitter and Chris de Burgh amongst our populace. What I should say is that, by and large, animated series can be extremely enjoyable, particularly if you have a team of visionaries behind them. They may have fallen out of fashion in recent years, but Ren and Stimpy and Beavis and Butt-Head were the products of twisted genius, as much as Tom and Jerry and The Flintstones before them.

Animated television shows have come a long way, and though you have The Simpsons, Family Guy and Futurama for an adult audience (despite what Channel 4 listings shows would have you believe), first and foremost, cartoons will find their natural home on children's television. From your standard comedy cartoons (the entire Looney Tunes and Silly Symphonies back catalogues, all beautifully animated and wittily written, along with Animaniacs, a modern day classic), to action/adventure fare (the list I could write here would extend for some time, taking in everything from Battle of the Planets to Dungeons and Dragons, Transformers to Visionaries, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends to Batman: The Animated Series), cartoons will always have a special place in my heart.

But then this cunt comes along.

I had a choice today between two distinct entities. For sheer crimes against all that's decent and good, Special Agent Oso narrowly beat Kim Jong-Il to become the fifth choice for the calendar. It's a poor state of affairs when the once great (but often grating) Disney allow their branding to be attached to this soulless cutscene from a Net Yaroze game. Being a father to two kids, I've had to watch a lot of preschool TV in the past 7 years, and my daughter's channel of choice right now is Playhouse Disney. Okay, it's for preschool kids, but it's fucking insulting to their intelligence. The more I have to watch it, the less intelligent I feel. It saps you with its empty computer generated event horizon.

Let's break it down. Firstly, it's ugly. It truly is. It's perhaps the ugliest looking programme I've seen since Keith Chegwin got his winkle out on Channel Five. It's the endless Bond-themed puns ("To Grandma With Love", "Fly Another Day" and so on). It's the fact that the title character has perhaps the most punchable cartoon face I've seen in many years. It's their cavalier abuse of time. "Quick, Oso! You have 9 seconds!" Cue a countdown, with exposition between each second, making it actually last around half a minute. Seriously, my daughter's sense of time has been fucked by this programme. It's eyeball-gougingly irritating and infuriating, and I want its creator shot.

Out of a cannon.

Into the sun.

Day 6 is nearly upon us... be back here tomorrow morning.