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I'm not sure what kids these days watch. What with the electronically whiz-bang games of the video, pogs, phones with ether powered telephony, it's a topsy turvy mixed up world I say. But back when I was just knee high to a grasshopper, I'd regale/waste/vegetate/expose myself to the Hasbro-Mattel-PlayDoh marketing conglomerate during my Saturdays. What Gen-Xer doesn't have fond memories of indoctrinating themselves with the characters and mythos of feature length cell animated commercials for toy products made in the Taiwan? Our parents comforted themselves in knowing that at the end of almost every single show, there'd be some sort of Life Lesson. Perhaps a "Stop drop and roll", "Don't talk to strangers", "Crack cocaine and crank don't mix, usually", or the always ubiquitous "Don't give into peer pressure" (in a cartoon that features all the robots emblazoned with the same symbol). Ah, those were the heady days, ...

In the Deep Pits of Anguish, somewhere outside the 7th Circle of Hell, there is a tiny workshop that creates all the instruments and devices that have enough devious crippling cruelty and torture to bear the trademark 'Made In Hell'. Oh, you know these products, even shell out your hard earned cash to wallow in suffering: Military Grade High CD Polymer Wrap, things sold on TV by D-List actors for $19.95, cellphones, all magazine covers that require more computer manipulation than all of Pixar's lovable and quirky animated features, and anything with the tiny footnote of "Some Assembly Required". Back when Man strode the earth, toolbelt donned, perhaps a brewski in one ham fist, 'Assembly' meant going out into the forest, killing any large, well toothed and enclawed beast that might be in his way, then using his backhair to create a makeshift saw to hew down trees with trunks the size of.. tree.. trunks... Then he'd use his well callused hands to sand a...