(It’s coming out on DVD this year. Not that I’m going to buy it, because I’m really not one of those people who buys old cartoon series on DVD purely for nostalgia value. But it makes me feel better knowing it’s available.)

This is the most awesome thing in god knows how long.

Via Obsidian Wings:

Youtube music videos made with World of Warcraft animation.

God, just stop, people. There is no possible way to improve the experience of any song by making a World of Warcraft video about it. None. Zero. Zilch. De nada. No, not even that one Jonathan Coulton song you really, really like – you know, the one that’s part funny, part unpleasantly creepy, and was obviously written to appeal to a sci-fi/fantasy dork. [1] Yeah, that one.

Honestly, if you really want to ruin a song, I can think of no better way to do it then to animate a hokey, stupid video using the hokey, stupid World of Warcraft characters and their hokey, stupid animations. Did you really listen to the song and think “hey, you know what this song really needs? A forest troll. And maybe a couple of naked halflings…”?

(There are always naked halflings.)

Seriously, log off of WoW right now. I mean it. Yes, I appreciate the many seconds’ worth of effort it took to message your entire guild and then synchronize a dance routine – and by “dance routine” I of course mean “everybody pressing Emote Menu -> Dance Option 4” in exact unison. Maybe it even took you two or three tries, but you’re apparently the cyber-Paula Abdul now, and no amount of (virtual) sweat will deter you from illustrating the seventh line of the song with a bad, unfunnily obvious visual pun.

Yes, I know you thought “The Internet Is For Porn” was funny, but guess what, Avenue Q has been around for quite a while now. So has “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” And the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And all the other songs you just discovered last week that have been around forever, but you missed them, presumably because you were busy trying to level to 60 and get your epic mount and epic warhammer and epic codpiece and whatever other thing they have now that’s epic.

(How can a mount be “epic,” anyway? Epic is something you use to describe a work of art, and usually only refers to length – an epic composition, an epic poem, et cetera. When used to describe greatness, it’s meant to describe an experience – “Stalingrad was an epic battle,” “I took an epic shit,” and so forth. None of this is really that appropriate to describe your magical Pegasus turtle, unless they are suggesting that the amount of time you sat your ass in front of your fucking computer is supposed to be somehow monumental, which come to think is probably the idea. Fucking Blizzard.)

While we’re talking about your taste in music – most nerdcore rap is shit. Most filk is shit. It’s just shit that panders shamelessly to you rather than to the masses, which is why most of it is free rather than costing money, and why nobody wants to make an actual music video of it for real. I get that you worship MC Frontalot. I mean, look at his name! It is a funny name! I’m sure that if only it came along with a reasonable amount of musical skill, he would be famous now! But he is not very good and your dancing orcs will, amazingly enough, just make the entire experience worse: a horrible vortex of everything about the Internet that sucks all at once. (The shit comments your shit Youtube video will inevitably generate are, of course, the shit icing on the shit cake.)

And god forbid you’re doing this in a game other than WoW. I mean, WoW is bad enough, but at least they went overboard in that game with an immense number of pathetically unsubtle emotes, giving its players the ability to render nearly any stock phrase in visual terms. Most other MMORPGs have only a small fraction of the emotes that WoW does, sad but true, and halfway through your “music video” you’ll have used the three different “dance routines” five times apiece already, and all you will create is pity, and there is already enough pity in the world.

If you’re using Star Wars: Galaxies – look, I’m only saying this for your own good, but for god’s sake turn off the computer and go out into the sunlight. It may burn at first, but you need to get away from the computer now if you think, even for a second, that the hip-hop Jedi treatment is whatever any given song you like really needed. “But it’s a song about Star Wars -” NO. FUCKING NO. Just STOP. You’re JUST MAKING IT WORSE FOR YOURSELF. (People may argue that I am dropping into cliche here to support my argument. I would counter with “it is fucking Star Wars: Galaxies, and the only people playing it at this point are the ones who need intervention worse than anybody else – the origin of cliche, if you will.”)

You’re already wasting hours of every day and paying other people for the privilege of playing a game you already bought [2]; quit clogging Youtube with the evidence.

[1] Which would of course be every Jonathan Coulton song.

[2] If you’re using Second Life – which, if you’re making a video for the aforementioned creepy Jonathan Coulton song you like, is at least appropriately creepy in the same kind of way – you have my congratulations for choosing a free online RPG. And also my horrified fascination for actually spending time voluntarily in Second Life. Christ: just get a first one.

I don’t generally think highly of most mechanima movies (Red Vs. Blue is about the only good one), but this one is really clever (in a melancholy way, no less) and well done. Anytime you can tell what the character is thinking with such a limited range of animation, you know you’re dealing with storytellers who really took the work seriously.

It’s been a rough week for some of you, I am sure. So I offer this to cheer you up.

Remember to keep your holidays dope.

Well, not really hot per se, but likely NSFW at a lot of places: this Youtube of an “erotic” animated comedy short from the 1920s.

What can I say, it’s interesting. And, although crude, pretty funny too.

The Global show Da Kink In My Hair does a Youtube-based “Kink Cam” where they actually go into Toronto salons and discuss whatever issue was involved in a given episode’s plot. It’s actually more interesting than the show itself. (Which isn’t to say that Da Kink is a bad show – it isn’t – but really, this is fascinating.)

This week: homosexuality!