ITHAPPENED TO ME

I was thinking about cartoons this one day.

This one time, me and Ricky were just sitting around watching a tape of old Mask cartoons he has and getting high; I think it was a Saturday. Anyway, we saw this one episode where the semi went haywire and--oh, wait, this was funny, on this other one, one of bad guys kept talking weird, and I was like, dude, I know that voice. So then we watched the credits and it was fuckin' Casey Kasem! That bad guy was trying to blow up Mask and he kept being like, "This request and dedication goes out to your ass being fucking destroyed!" No, no, like, "Here's today's request and destruction!" Or, fuckin' . . . fuckin' . . . "Coming in at the number one spot for the third week in a row, here's your dead ass being blown the hell up!" No, I'm just messin' with you man. Anyway, it was Casey Kasem, but, uh . . . oh, yeah. On this one episode, the big semi truck started talking, 'cause it got like a short circuit 'cause that one dude spilled a coke on its computer boards or something, I don't know. But anyway, it started talking like a girl, like a hick redneck country girl, all like, "Hey, ya'll, Ah'm a-gonna drahve real fayest, now, y'hear?" Seriously. It was totally bizarre. I was like, what were those Japanese dudes smoking when they came up with this? And where can I get some?! No, I'm just playin'. So I was all like, trying to think of what it's like to be high when you're freakin' Japanese and everything, and I was like, they probably think of some totally different shit than we do. Like, when I'm high I want some Cool Ranch Doritios, Code Red, and maybe a 3 Musketeers or whatever; or just get it over with and go to Taco Bell already, you know? But in Japan, they probably don't have any of those things. They probably get all hungry for some raw fish or a fuckin' teryaki chicken or whatever. But then, that sounds pretty good right there. Anyway, then I'm like, what if it's totally different . . . what if the herb affects them totally different? What if they don't want to sit around and play video games--what if instead they get really industrious? Then I was like, holy shit, this whole economy could be based on different effects of weed across cultures! They fire it up and they get to work making killer games and cartoons and stuff, and we blast up and all we want to do is play those games and watch those cartoons! So I was telling all this to Ricky, and he was like, what the fuck, but then when I was done, he just was shaking his head, and he shook his head for like ten freakin' minutes and I was like, did he take one toke too many, or has he got some shit to say? So then I said that. I was like, "Did you take one massive toke too many, or do you have some serious shit to say or what?" Then, he was like--you're not going to fucking believe this--he was like, "Man, those Japanese people didn't think of that. They just made the cartoon. American people made all the words and stuff." I was like, "What the fuck are you talking about, man?! Japanese people didn't just draw the pictures, they made the whole fucking cartoon! Do you think they're just making a cartoon with all these people's mouths flapping and they're not even saying anything? Japanese people aren't fucking stupid, man!" Then Ricky was like, and this is the fucking craziest part, "They made the cartoon with words and everything, but when Americans make it for American TV, they change the whole fuckin' thing around. They put their own words in and it's totally different." I was just totally fucked up at that point. I just started at him. For like ten minutes. Then I stared at the tube, trying to watch the show and imagine those people saying some totally different shit in Japanese, but I don't even know any Japanese. Listen, this took a long time for me to understand. The Japanese people make a cartoon, and they talk about whatever. But then when American people change it for American TV and they're talking about shrimp fried rice or whatever, they know Americans don't give two shits about shrimp fried rice, so they change it to be about Burger King, or maybe something even totally different, like nuclear weapons. That's how you never even know if what you're watching is really what you think it is at all. You could be talking to some Japanese guy and be like, remember that time Voltron found a baby whale in space, and he'll be like, that wasn't a baby whale, that was a caveman from the past who got incased in ice and shot into the future in space! Think about that the next time you're watching cartoons, dude. -Joey Hacking

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