"Ice Bear disapproves"

I'm feeling a little better. I went to the reception thing. (I could have just as well skipped it; the place was packed, no one would have noticed if I was there or not). It was a "chocolate buffet," apparently at the retiree's request. (Paid for by private money - I doubt the campus has the funds for that kind of thing).

(I joked on Twitter that if I rate a reception when I retire - if I am still teaching when I do - I want an all-barbecue reception. Because barbecue. And yes, there can be tofu or vegetarian barbecue beans for those who do not eat meat)

I am watching a lot of cartoons these days because I confess there is a Certain Person that is in the news a lot that I sort of have a hard time tolerating listening to, so I switch away when that person is on. Which is a lot, these days.

A couple things:

1. I don't get home in time these days to catch re-runs of Pony so if I want Pony I have to either pull out the dvds or watch them on places like Dailymotion that seem to be "approved" (or so it seems) to keep the episodes up online.

2."The Amazing World of Gumball" has some slightly....subversive (?) ideas in it at times. One episode I saw recently was a parody of the tendency for people to want to bubble-wrap the world: Darwin the fish becomes very worried about safety, and somehow becomes the Safety Dictator (apparently because he is so cute and does big anime-sparkly eyes and people can't resist him?) And like any of this sort of for-your-own-good dictator, things get really miserable for everyone really fast. Finally his brother does convince him to step down: after all, as Gumball points out, how can you be a "good guy" if you are sitting on a throne and carrying a riding crop. (Heh.)

There are other hints of that kind of thing in other episodes, or at least ideas that might go against the standard "let's make everything as bland and inoffensive as possible" idea. (one episode has a song about how growing up means giving up on dream after dream.)

3. I've been enjoying (not that I get to see it often) We Bare Bears, a fairly new cartoon. It consists of three bear "brothers" (of different species, so presumably brothers-from-other-mothers). (I think an early episode shows them starting out as cubs in a pet shop and joining forces that way? Though that might be non-canonical, I am not sure how "show canon" works on this show yet).

Anyway. The characters are Grizz (Grizzly), the eldest, who is probably the most outgoing and also the most bro-dude-i-est of the bears. But also kind of the leader. And the middle brother is Pan-pan (Panda), who is cute and kind of girl-crazy and sort of otaku-esque and you'd think he'd be my favorite, but you'd be wrong. (Panda can be a wuss and can be seriously whiny)

No, my favorite is the "little brother," Ice Bear (a polar bear). Ice Bear is cool. Ice Bear doesn't talk much. Ice Bear speaks of himself in the third person. Ice Bear refers to himself as Ice Bear.

Ice Bear knits. And he is a gourmet chef. And in at least one episode, he gets frustrated because the other bears seem to take him for granted. (I am a lot like Ice Bear in some ways, which is probably why I like him. Well, he doesn't talk much, which is not like me, and he's also good at martial arts, which is also not like me)

Ice Bear also uses a modified refrigerator as his bedroom and he is shown not to tolerate heat and humidity well.

Ice Bear disapproves of heat.



And so do I. (It's been very hot and humid here, and while it wasn't hot in lab today, it was humid, and I think that contributed to getting me down)

(I even rennamed the tiny Percy the Polar Bear I made off the Alan Dart pattern in a back number of Simply Knitting to Ice Bear because he looked enough like Ice Bear to me)