My brain! My hot, steaming brain!

Okay. You guys remember the classic original run of Ren & Stimpy, and how arguably the funniest parts of any episode were the "Ren goes psycho" moments? Well, sometimes I run across news items that make me feel like a cross between that and John Cleese at his most mad. ("That's just the sort of blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage.")

What brought it on now? Well, let me put it like this. I see from USA Today...

Guess who's coming for honey? As part of a barrel-full of Winnie the Pooh anniversary events, Disney is working on a new animated series that will replace Christopher Robin with a 6-year-old girl.

Arrrgh!

"We got raised eyebrows even in-house at first, but the feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide," says Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel.

But some fans no doubt will feel that Winnie's world was fine just the way it was. "This strikes me as a step too far away from the vision of the original books," says Kathleen Horning, who trains children's book librarians at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Besides, growing up, I had no problem relating to Christopher Robin. He almost had a non-specific gender."

Disney's Kanter says the new cartoon represents not an abandonment of an old, familiar world, but rather an alternate universe for Pooh and his crew.

"Christopher Robin is still out there in the woods, playing," she says. "We hope people will fall for this new tomboyish girl. The last thing we want to be is the ones who brought the franchise down."

Okay. As a fan of the books, the original cartoons, and tomboyish girls, I feel the need to say: Are you out of your freaking mind? Timeless characters don't need a breath of fresh air. Thats why they're timeless.

(Deep breaths. Control.)

There is a special place in hell for people like Nancy Kanter. And I note with grim satisfaction and pleasure the Dickensian stature of her name: Kanter. Cant-er. As in: Can't think of any characters herself that would equal the ones people have been falling for since 1925, without her little attempts to "freshen up the franchise."

So she has to fuck up somebody else's. This is the worst slap in the face to generations of fans since the WB's attempt to "revitalize" Bugs and friends.