The Japanese have concocted yet another clever plan to dominate the world. This latest invasion force consists of deceptively cute cartoon characters known collectively as “Pokemon”. If you haven’t heard of Pokemon, you obviously do not have any young children.

It all started a few years ago when hundreds of Japanese children began having seizures while watching an episode of the wildly popular Pokemon cartoon program. The problem turned out to be “photosensitive epilepsy” caused by a flickering effect used in that particular episode of the cartoon. The Japanese did the only responsible thing they could: they pulled the cartoon from Japanese television, and shipped it off to America.

OK, the show’s marketers claim that the problem has been fixed, and Pokemon is perfectly safe for kids to watch. But maybe that’s just what they want us to think. And maybe we would even believe them if the story ended there. Of course, if it did, this column would be way too short.

So we must move on to this disturbing but true quote from the official web site, www.pokemon.com: “Distressing news for dentists. When Pokémon candy hits store shelves, dentists across the country are gonna be working some serious overtime. Catch ‘em all. Eat ‘em all. Just don’t spoil your appetite.” Flouride was put in our water to keep just this sort of thing from happening, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be enough. Can we stand idly buy while the Japanese military-industrial-candy complex wages war on our children’s dental hygiene?

Then there is the new Pokemon music CD, “2.B.A. Master”, which is number 1 on the kids music chart. The music on the CD sounds innocent enough…until you play it backwards! I tried playing the CD backwards on my wife’s new portable CD player by removing the device’s cover and spinning the CD with my finger while the player was turned on. Not only was I unable to get it to play backwards, but now the player won’t even play my wife’s Michael Bolten CDs (I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing). Obviously, the Japanese are using the Pokemon CD in some evil attempt to sabotage America’s CD players, and also to get my wife really mad at me.

I’m happy to say America is not taking the Pokemon invasion lying down. We are using one of our most plentiful resources to fight back: lawyers! Ideally this would involve dropping huge numbers of attorneys on Japanese cities from a very high altitude. Sadly, that would violate the Geneva convention. Atomic bombs are one thing, but lawyer bombardment would be going too far. So we are left with the only real alternative in the Pokemon war: sue somebody’s pants off.

The somebody in this case is Nintendo, makers of the insanely popular Pokemon trading cards. According to a New York Post news story, Alex Silverman and Andrew Imber, two 9-year-old friends from New York City, are suing Nintendo over their practice of including occasional rare and valuable Pokemon cards in the card packs, forcing the boys to buy many packs of low-value cards in the hope of getting a rare one. The suit accuses Nintendo of conspiring to engage “in a pattern of racketeering activity …”

To Alex and Andrew, I can only say godspeed, young men, and good luck. Your country is counting on you.

And once the Pokemon threat is eliminated, someone should go after those creepy Teletubbies. They scare me.

by Joe

Shockley, September 24, 1999