INVADER ZIM and McRib, separated at birth?

Weirdly enough, this was an actual promotional poster for the show

People keep telling me that INVADER ZIM is going to be airing on Nicktoons for the month of March, and only for the month of March, as part of national cancelled show awareness month or something.  Apparently it’s true, and that’ll be good news to some people, so that’s cool – people need stuff to watch and ZIM is definitely capable of making televisions display images emit sounds.  The whole one-month-only thing is funny to me, though, and reminds me of how McDonalds would, every couple of years or so, thaw out their subterranean warehouse where they store their McRib slug, a creature whose sole purpose is to use its great ovipositor to shit out McRib patties, and sell the sandwiches for a limited time only.  I’m not sure if that’s still the case with McRibs, but that’s how I remember the situation.

In reality, it’s more the bizarre, limited nature existence of a sandwich that makes me laugh more so than any real love of the meal itself.  I don’t actually think I’ve eaten a McRib since I was a child, and the thought of eating anything from McDonalds in general kind of gets my stomach gurgling.  The real power core of my ages old obsession with the thing is the way it is presented on those special occasions when the sandwich is actually available, a thing heralded with great, forced celebration in commercial and billboard form.  “IT’S BACK!!” proclaim billboards and posters showcasing the sandwich in all of it’s billboard enormous grandeur!  It never fails to get me visualizing people turning a corner and spotting the billboard, stopping in shock and awe and screaming thank yous to sandwich jesus because holy fuck they never thought this day would come again!  MCRIB IS BACK, AND I WILL MURDER EVERY LAST MOTHERFUCKER THAT GETS IN THE WAY OF ME AND THAT SANDWICH BECAUSE WHO KNOWS HOW LONG THIS RAPTURE WILL LAST?!

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!

So now ZIM’s getting the McRib treatment, and I find that maybe not as funny as actual McRibs, but it’s still funny and odd enough to think about, and really, however strange it is, it’s nice that fans get excited about something of mine from a decade back when they find out it’s going to be aired on television for awhile.  Maybe people who get crazy excited about the McRib wish they had someone to write to when they see those billboards, eh?  The reason it’s strange to hear about it this way is because I’d likely not have found out about it any other way as i haven’t actually had a television hooked up to anything but game consoles and computers for maybe five or six years now.  The idea of sitting in front of my television with commercials and scheduled programming is pretty alien to me by this point what with the Hulus, Netflixes and such.  Even the idea of watching ZIM as a broadcast is a strange one to me, as, like a lot of people even when the show was airing for the first time, I never watched it.  I was too busy making new episodes to sit down at whatever mixed up time the network decided to air it and watch something I had JUST put the final polish on.  Usually, you’re so sick of watching, editing, reworking and reworking an episode that you see and hear it in your sleep.  I actually don’t remember the last time I watched an episode of the show, even on the dvd’s, but I’m sure the second I popped one in or started up a video file of an ep, my brain would play the entire episode in the first few seconds and I wouldn’t have any need to actually watch the thing in meatspace and in realtime.

Nickelodeon wasn’t a channel I had any real reason to watch then, and even after, when Bryan’s show, Avatar, took off, I’d watch the episodes on dvd, and now I’m continuing the viewing on the Netflix streaming.  ZIM being back for one month only, then, has even less impact than a sandwich coming back into restaurants after a few years of being unavailable.  That doesn’t stop me from digging how happy people are to find out the a thing they can consume in so many other, more convenient ways is about to be temporarily available in one more way.

So, in honor of this MONTH OF ZIM thing, I’ve decided to do my best to post a fact a day about the show for the entire month of March.  Now, I’m pretty bad at keeping schedules like that, but I’ll do my best.  I hope you’ll enjoy reading what I write as much as I will certainly enjoy writing it.

JESUS SAVES. MCRIB WILL KICK HIS ASS