INVADER ZIM Fact #12

Yesterday’s post was the least popular of all, despite it containing

1. Toilets – Everybody uses them
2. Clowns – Everybody hates them
3. Nilbog Milk – Everybody who drinks it turns to goblin food

The drastic drop in readership here is just astounding, and, I’ve got to say, perplexing. I do my damnedest to provide the kind of information that simply cannot be found from any other source (save for possibly a handful of lower order demons) and I’m giving it out for free. FOR FREE!

What more do these people need to stop this mass exodus from my once-packed church of ZIM-truths? Honestly, I don’t know, but I can tell you what I will do in response.

I’m going to double my efforts to enlighten the misinformed children of the intersack, tighten my reign on the rumor-donkey that has thus far bucked off my every attempt to control its ornery ways. I’m going to make that donkey my bitch, and just when that donkey calms down enough for me to look it in the eye, that donkey is going to throw another fit because it’ll know that not only do I want to control it, I want to fuck it.

The very donkey in question. FINISH HIM.

Metaphorically.  METAPHORICALLY.

Alright, someone just leaned over and, seeing my screen,  asked “Awww…what’s wrong with that donkey?”

“What do you mean what’s wrong with the donkey?  I just found it on the internet.”

“Why is it like that?

“What?  It’s just lying down, it’s probably just asleep.”

“Donkey’s don’t sleep like that.”

“Noooo.  OH GOD.”

Now I’m sad.  I can’t help but wonder if that donkey up there is alright.  Geez.  Let’s move on.

Well, I’m sorry I filled your heads with donkey-necro-sex, but I’m about to wipe all that clean with today’s Chun-Li flurry kick attack of info, straight to your minds, dig?

What I was saying before about working twice as hard, it has to do with the format of today’s fact delivery method.  Rather than focus on one fact for today, I’m going to rifle off and and address as many as I can before having to check out of this hotel.

I will introduce each fact with some of the most common questions I am asked by fans of the INVADER ZIMS show.

LET’S GET TO IT!

FAAAAACTS:

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LINE FROM THE SHOW?

Hands down, my favorite bit of dialogue is GIR’s “But I thought YOU were making breakfast!” from the episode ‘ZIM Learns What a Shovel is For”

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER AND WHY?

ZIM’s probably the easiest for me to go to in terms of being the most successfully realized, with the idea of Dib being coming a close second, marred only by his execution in the production, but in the end, I’m going to have to say that Whiskers the Elephant wins out in the end.  He’s barely in the show, but I’d spend so much time THINKING about him, thinking up new scenarios for him or just writing dialogue that had nowhere to fit into actual episodes that he simply became like a real person to me.  In fact, during some of the darker periods on the production, Whiskers was there for me the way other people have actual, non-imaginary people there for them to support them and keep their sorrow from overflowing to critical levels.

I can’t tell you how many times Whiskers stayed my trembling hand from pointing that gun to my temple and blowing my brains out.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST BATTLE WITH STANDARDS AND PRACTICES YOU HAD ON THE SHOW?

Everybody thinks ZIM was this constant fight between standards and myself, but the truth is that standards was a far more predictable nemesis, and one I had no personal issues with.  Still, there were some pretty epic confrontations in regards to sometimes the silliest of jokes or plot points.

One such fight had to do with an episode where Dib is eating and walking to school and gets barked at by a leashed dog on an old woman’s lawn.  The thing the standards people didn’t like was Dib stopping, staring at the old woman watering her lawn for maybe a full minute before saying “It’s not a good idea to water your lawn in the morning.  Wait until at least midday.”

The old woman says “Don’t tell me how to water my own lawn, boy.”

Dib’s response of “And it’s a good thing your dog is leashed, because I’ve killed more unleashed dogs than you could probably count broken dreams in your long, wasteful life, old woman.”

The woman says nothing, but the way she crumples and turns to dust on the spot says more than words could.

Apparently that was going too far for children’s television.

WHO ON THE CREW DID YOU HATE THE MOST?

J. Bondy, head of the color department.  Though the man could color design like nobody’s business, he had the most terrible habit of bringing the most foul smelling bag-lunches to work with him every single day of his time on the show.  Nobody had seen him actually eating whatever was in those bags the entire time, too.  He’d simply vanish away into an alley or a sewer or who knows, but when he’d return he’d smell of the stuff as if he didn’t so much eat it as roll around in it.  He knew we needed him, too, that we couldn’t fire him without crippling the show, and the more we needed him, the bigger those bags would get.

FUCK YOU, J. BONDY.

DO YOU REGRET MAKING ANY EPISODE MORE THAN OTHERS?

I used to defend it vehemently, more out of a failure to admit mistakes than anything, but the years have made it obvious that the episode that claimed to teach kids how to pilot helicopters was just a bad idea.  Twenty years, and thirty burning hulks of crashed helicopters with tiny, confused-looking corpses later, and I’m ready to let go of my pride.  I’m sorry, little ones.

Ah, I’ve got to go.  Checking out of this hotel and about to hit the road again.  Just know that these posts will return to normal in just a couple of days, so just hang on.