A lot of cartoons really turn me off. I think this really started with Ren & Stimpy way back in the early 90s when extreme was rare and shocking.

I loved Ren & Stimpy. Now, extreme is the norm. When you look at the newer cartoons, the characters have weirdly shaped heads and faces, grotesque proportions (think of those skanky Bratz), or strange coloring.

I think exposing a very young developing brain to these distorted cartoons causes hyperactivity and all sorts of brain wiring issues. Imagine being a little baby and seeing Spongebob for the first time. What the hell is that thing!!! And not having the verbal means to express the horror.

That's why I love Nick Jr. cartoons. They're nice, gentle adventures for toddlers. Blues Clues, for example. Dora the Explorer.

My favorite, though, is Max and Ruby.

Max and Ruby are two rabbits. Max is the little brother, who is three. Ruby is the big sister, who seems to be responsible for Max. Max usually speaks the same single word throughout the episode. They are fluffy, rounded characters who don't move too fast. Even the font used in the cartoon has no cornered edges.

They are just my speed, especially at 8:00 a.m. when I am not quite ready for the day. No fast moves please! No morphing in the morning, Spongebob!

I was looking at the Nick Jr. message boards. There are a lot of people who think that Max and Ruby is not a suitable show for young children. Seems Max doesn't listen to his sister, and there aren't any parents around to watch these unsupervised young rabbits. This is apparently a bad influence on American youth.

Get a grip people! It isn't like Max and Ruby are real. Explain that to your kids and everything will be okay!

In a world of Girls Gone Wild, you're going to complain about Max and Ruby?

I'm not sure what exactly caused it. It could have been the salad bar on Christmas Eve. It may have been some pork I had left over after I made tamales.

Regardless of the culprit, I was hugely in pain late Christmas night. After about four hours of this misery, to the point of crying, David took me to the emergency room.

2:30 a.m. found me in a room separated by a mere curtain from a miserably sick baby. Here's a little secret: When I hear a baby crying in misery, it doesn't take much to make me cry too. So everyone is crying.

I got an IV with some anti-cramping meds and - don't be jealous now - some morphine! Probably to stop the crying.

After they hooked up all the tubes, I needed to go to the bathroom. They let me walk, during which the morphine decided to kick in. I wanted to lay right down on the floor in the middle of the ER. If I did that though, they would likely make me use a bed pan next time so I kept moving. I actually reasoned this out in my head.

Later, I was hallucinating in the exam room. I knew vaguely that I was laying down, yet I was so clearly handling some sort of white cube thing with an interesting label. Whatever it was, I knew it was not real so I suppressed the overwhelming need to let David and anyone else read the label.

I think we got home at about 5:30 the next morning. I was out for two whole days after that.

We've eaten the tamales since then, so it wasn't them. Just so you know.

Wow. This has been a heck of a year so far for germs in BrennerWorld.

First of all, I thought I had the flu. So, I sat around and wallowed in my misery for a few days. Finally I went to the doctor, and lo and behold, I had strep throat.

I got a nice big shot of penicillin in the butt/hip over a week ago and I still have a lump at the injection site. The strep was penicillin-resistant, so I wallowed in misery for a few more days before going back.

The good news is that I now have a good stash of narcotic pain pills.

The bad news is that David caught it.

And LD caught it.

Sigh.

Alas, the video files of the RFD-TV commercials threatened to take me over my bandwidth limits for the month.

You'll have to watch RFD-TV for yourselves!

I'm sorry.