Friday Link Dump - Barney and Ecstasy Edition

"I can see why this is so popular." - Homer Simpson

Meet Zaky, the purple bear with a message of tolerance - Zaky is a Barney clone, only he's a bear instead of a dinosaur and his original target audience was Australian Muslims.  Now he's going global:

Zaky's creator, Sydney film producer Subhi Alshaik, describes the mild-mannered cartoon character as "the opposite of Bart Simpson" who teaches "good, ethical, moral messages".

I would not have guessed that the opposite of Bart Simpson was a purple bear, but what do I know?

Lunch Break: Jon Stewart's 1994 Interview With Conan O'Brien - This is O'Brien, about a year after he left The Simpsons, on Jon Stewart's short lived MTV talk show.  It's mildly amusing.  Oh, and Brother Bently from CollegeOTR, George Bush Sr. was not president in 1994.  Kids these days.

Kids in Texas Are Getting "High" on Bart Simpson & Ninja Turtles - We're back on the Bart Simpson Ecstasy pills.  I know this is from a local television station so if I'm expecting anything above a fourth grade level discussion I'm going to be disappointed, but c'mon.  They've got the word "high" in scare quotes like it's a new fangled drug term to which "squares" are not yet "hip".  

Candy-Shaped Drug Worries Local Cops - In Washington state they aren't even waiting for the pills to arrive before moving straight into the moral panic:

Mansfield says they haven’t yet seen the pills shaped like cartoons

Now this is the perfect story for AM radio.  The station gets a story by doing nothing more than talking to a cop, and the cop gets to be on the radio for doing nothing more than being a cop.  It's a perfect, news free circle jerk.  

Daily Jolt: Baseball Without Borders - Very poor usage, Andrew Johnson of FanHouse, very poor.  "Radical" is not what comes out of Bart Simpson's mouth, it's Milhouse's thing, that's his thing that he says.  

VH1 resuscitates "Behind the Music" - Behind the Music is coming back.  That's how long Zombie Simpsons has been on the air, a show that was enough of a cliche to parody nine years ago has had time to get cancelled and be brought back.  

Homer Simpson goes to Middle East? - Oh yeah, this sounds like a great idea for an episode.  

F1 change won't alter supermodel quotient - F1 cars are getting bubble domes?

Presumably the brains behind the world's top motor sport felt they hadn't already thrown enough curveballs at drivers, who this year will pilot cars so dramatically reshaped from last season that they look more than a little like the one Homer Simpson famously designed for his brother. That car sent Danny DeVito broke; formula one isn't quite there yet but the signs aren't trending in a positive fashion.

Hmmm, probably not.  It would be cool though.  

Plans underway for MacGyver movie - "No Selma, this is lying.  That was a well plotted piece of non-claptrap that never made me want to retch."  Also, MacGyver did a guest voice in 2006?  Whew, dodged a bullet there.

Scratchy has not yet been sighted - Morgan State played in the NCAA tournament last night and they've got a point guard named Itchy.  He got the nickname from his brother . . . who was killed "in an argument" a few years ago.  Jebus, Baltimore is a fucked up place.  Still, awesome name.  

Susy Schultz - New WTF column is about helping you - In this lady's alternate reality, WTF stands for "What's the Fix?".  The callous stupidity on display here is pretty astonishing:

A few people -- and when I say a few, I mean only two -- called or wrote to tell me that there is another meaning to the first three letters of the name of our new column, WTF: What's the Fix?

My sons might answer that by quoting Homer Simpson, "Du-oh."

I simply would say, "Yes, I know."

But we want nothing to do with THAT word. We are very clear that we mean, What's the Fix?

We are taking back those three simple letters. And we are reinventing them into a column that will help readers. I don't think that those initials are that far gone yet.

Where to begin?  Well, first of all, yes those three letters are gone and no you can't change their meaning even, as she writes at the very end, "in The Daily Journal's readership area."  (That appears to be just south of Chicago.)  "What the fuck" is a useful, multi-purpose phrase that works just fine; you cannot "fix" what is not currently "fucked".  And, "Du-oh"?  Does this woman have some kind of neurological impairment, like Rain Man or Awakenings?  I mean, what the hell is she doing here?