As many faithful readers already know, I have been recently spending a fair amount of time in the company of small children. And in doing so one trend I have observed an over sanitizing of children's upbringing. The original Megatron toy would never fly today, and children are forbidden from playing favorite games from my childhood like "Commie-Spy Killer" (which admittedly has lost some of its relevance, and no, I didn't grasp what a "Commie" was at the time, but all my hero on TV fought against them and that was good enough for me).

That's all well and good. Those I can handle. But let's all sing this one together: "I know and old woman who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed that fly..." If you grew up in my generation, you completed those lyrics with "...perhaps she’ll die," and you know that after swallowing a horse "she died of course." But that's not what today's children are learning.

I think expunging any mention of death from our children's life does them a disservice. Not only does it gloss over the serious danger involved in swallowing horses (though to be fair, I'm not sure how she made it past cat) it also ignores a very real truth:

People die.

No matter how we try to protect him or her, sooner or later somebody the child loves will die. I feel like the only ethical thing to do is to prepare children and help them understand that death is a natural part of existence.

But wait. There's more.

Some of the preschools I visit are explicitly Christian and include "Jesus Time" as part of their curriculum. At one such institution, I was paging through a book of children's prayers when I came upon an old favorite "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep..." Wait a minute... that wasn't what I remembered. What's next, will they tone down David and Goliath?

Of course that's exactly what they did. I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear incase any children are reading this: David killed Goliath. Between when Goliath "fell with a loud thud right on his face" and when the Philistines "ran away and David became a hero," David "took hold of the Philistine's sword and drew it from the scabbard. After he killed [Goliath], he cut off his head with the sword." (And on a minor note, there is a difference between a sling and a slingshot).

I haven't been at any preschool, let alone a Christian on, around Easter, but this trend makes me wonder how they'll handle that holiday. How do you teach resurrection without teaching death?

Case and point Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (DlDoA). Now I've heard good things about the book. It has Xena, Lex Luthor, and the (for some reason not mentioned in the trailer) Guy from 24 in it. But please, for the love of all that is right and decent in the world, if you are going to mix 2d and 3d animation learn to cel-shade.

It's not like this is a new process. Take a look at my favorite movie from previous millennium, the Iron Giant. Is it glaringly obvious that the giant is 3d while (almost) everything else is 2d?

"But Matthew J!" I hear you cry. "That was a big budget theatrical release. Surely a direct to DVD art house picture like DlDoAT can't afford this mystic 'cell shading.'"

Maybe not, but a weekly TV show was able to afford just that. Every shot of the spaceship? Yeah they're all cel-shaded 3d too.

I could overlook the fact that the 2d animation looks like it was done some time in the 80 (the 1880s), if the (18)90s 3d animation didn't ruin the effect.

(Side note, it's amazingly easy to find music videos made from the Iron Giant on You Tube, yet nearly impossible to find the opening to Futurama. Why is that?)

Matthew J. Hanson

You longtime readers of Matthew J. Hanson.com may know well of my hate for Daylight Saving Time (or as I like to call it, Darkness Wasting Time.) Most of my hatred for Daylight Stupid Time comes from the fact I lose an hour of sleep every year.

“But Matthew J!” I hear you cry, “Don’t worry. Your loss is offset by a gain every fall!” While in a purely mathematical form, this may seem like an equivalent exchange, Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman would be the first to point out that psychologically the loss is felt more than the gain.

If this was not enough, the US Congress decided to make things worse by changing the start and end dates of Dingbat Silly Time, such that my VCR and Heroes and instead record the “I Wish I Were as Cool as Quantum Leap” show.

But the final insult is that for me, Dastardly Snotty Time does not represent an extra hour of sleep. Instead it represents an extra hour of work. Yes work. I know long time readers may not realize that I actually possess a job (because I don’t). But I occasionally work overnight, including this Saturday into Sunday from 10:45 pm to 7:00 am. I will work from one until two, then set the clock back and work from one until two. Again.

P.S. After you die, come back as a zombie so I can shoot you in the face.

For a while I just thought these characters were just clueless, but more recently I realized I had a decided advantage. Not only do I benefit from seeing things the characters see, I also benefit from skipping of the dull hours of irrelevant information that have nothing to do with the story. Because I only see important event, I know that events I see must be important. (For example the above character has probably wonder off into the woods several times before, and not been brutally murdered by a demonically possessed piñata. Why should she be this time?)

Finally, and I most importantly, I know that this is a movie (or TV show or novel).

This idea came to a head not long ago when I was watching Heroes, and I actually thought to myself "How can you not realize that you have a super-powered doppelganger who sometimes takes control of your body."

Well... let's think about it. How often in my life do I consider that a super powered doppelganger has taken control of my body?

Okay, there was that one time. But I don't want to talk about it.