Cosplay is weird enough when it’s just geeks in homemade Stormtrooper costumes. But these photos of “Simpsons” cosplay bypass Weirdville and head straight into Creepy Town. Rather than settle for making a costume, they recreate specific screencaps, and the combination of low-fi effects with precise detail is an unsettling juxtaposition. Or maybe it’s the ping-pong ball eyes. Or the way Sideshow Bob looks like a slaughtered funhouse mannequin.

There aren’t too many details on this at Reddit or SplitSider, but I think I’m going to blame Japan for this, or maybe Korea. A while back, someone complained about my Japanese stereotypes of tentacle porn and panty vending machines and groping schoolgirls on the subway — I think he said something about Japan having efficient trains and very small trees and whatnot. Well, this cosplay cancels all the good stuff out. This is almost as bad as the “Simpsons” live-action porn.

The Miss Universe pageant airs tonight on NBC, live from Sao Paulo, and every contestant has a short little video where they answer stupid questions like “Do you believe in life on other planets?” It’s an unremarkable concept, but Miss Japan absolutely knocks it out of the park (video below). Of course, I’m a sucker for racist stereotypes, so I laughed when she said, “No rimit.” But that takes nothing away from the fact that she answers every question like she just smoked a bowl and is waiting for the microwave to finish cooking her Hot Pockets. She’s got an excellent chance of winning tonight, as long as the talent competition is restricted to getting high and watching Akira.

“Saturday Night Live” has one of my favorite opening credits sequences on TV: it’s shot in such a stylized way that I’m always like, “Wow, New York looks so cool, I wish I lived there” even though I ALREADY LIVE IN NEW YORK. Well, the Japanese version of “SNL” debuted this month, and the opening credits sequence is exactly the same but with Japanese people in a Japanese city. It’s got everything I want in it, minus a Hello Kitty factory and Japanese businessman looking at tentacle porn on a crowded subway. More from Axiom:

The show will air monthly and is sticking to the live feed performance style which is a relatively new angle in contrast to the heavily edited variety shows popular in Japan.

As for the first episode, the sets and feel are very much akin to that of its American counterpart. However, the heavy influence of Japanese Konto style slap-stick comedy has replaced the more character focused, sketches that any viewer of the original show might be used to.

Anyway, the real reason I wanted to share the opening credits is because the announcer kicks it off by saying, “Ah-Satahday Night Rive-ah!”, which is funny because…. Hmm. Is there a way I can end that sentence without sounding racist?

Besides all the death and destruction and radiation poisoning, the Japanese tsunami has also had a deleterious effect on the content here at Warming Glow: it changed my attitude toward Japan. For the last several weeks, I’ve had to feel sympathy for human beings, instead of my preferred course of enjoying Japanese television for its video clips of monkey knife fights and fetishized school girls.

This Japanese TV clip is a small step to getting us back in the right direction. In it, the owner of a Shiba Inu controls the volume of the dog’s bark with different commands. It sounds kind of boring, because you’re like, “Well if it’s in Japanese how am I supposed to tell what the commands are?” Believe me, you’ll know. And if you’re like me, you’ll also giggle like a little girl. A carefree little girl who’s never had to deal with a tsunami.

Bonus Asian dog of the day: CORGI.

[video via BuzzFeed]

Before I delve into today’s TV news, I want to acknowledge the tsunami in the room: a massive earthquake rocked Japan late last night, devastating the coastal city of Sendai and triggering a tsunami that swept away cars, boats, houses, and other large objects that generally shouldn’t be swept away. News reports stated that the quake measured an 8.9 on the Richter scale, but Internet commenters dismissed that, saying “Whatever, it’s barely a 6.” Out of respect for the victims of this tragedy, I ask that all Godzilla jokes be postponed until tomorrow. Or at least this afternoon.

In order to give this some semblance of a TV angle, I’ve embedded a couple videos of news coverage below. The first is from Al-Jazeera’s English branch, and it has some jaw-dropping images of water sweeping over the land and the fires that erupted in the quake’s aftermath. The second video is from CNN, which has provided altogether lousy coverage but got a great eyewitness account from Matt Alt, an American who’s lived in Japan for the last eight years. Alt is actually the author of a book called Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, which — I’m sorry to say — would have dovetailed awesomely into a Godzilla joke. Alas.

Anyway, my best wishes go to the people of Japan and the rescue workers tasked with subduing the crisis, and my apologies to readers who look to Warming Glow as an impenetrable bubble that protects them from the grim reality of world news. I’ll get back to the business of Charlie Sheen and corgis post-haste.

Recommended: New York Times slideshow of the aftermath and — even better — The Atlantic’s collection of photos. More video at Yahoo’s news blog, The Envoy.

Hey, what’s Japan been up to these days? Oh, not much: just putting kittens in bowls on TV. Why? Because they are kittens, and bowls are good at holding them. Your move, Internet. (thanks to Natalie for the tip)

This is something the Puppy Bowl could use: actual bowls. Speaking of which, I’m dead serious about being the referee for next year’s Puppy Bowl. Go like my Facebook page so I can convince Animal Planet to put on some zebra stripes and play with puppies. Come on, people: this is my job. I’m just trying to do it well.

It was almost two years ago that my perverted mind was blown to pieces by the teaser for a CGI animated version of Cat Sh*t One, a manga comic that was released under the title Apocalypse Meow. Because there’s no distribution deal for the series, this isn’t TV-related, but since the characters are special-ops bunnies killing terrorist camels, then this is precisely the sort of subject matter that Warming Glow was made for.

In this week’s most awesome revelation, Gamma Squad has pointed out that the first episode is available for free on YouTube for the next couple weeks (video embedded below). It’s not without weaknesses — the dialogue is stilted (presumably because it’s been dubbed from Japanese) and I have some quibbles with weapons systems’ accuracy — but the bottom line is that this is essentially a 22-minute action scene of rabbits and camels shooting at each other in a 21st century battlespace. I repeat: 22-minute battle between anthropomorphic rabbits and camels. Your day just isn’t going to get any better than that. Unless you get laid. But c’mon, let’s not kid ourselves.

(The video starts with a preview, so skip to the 3:53 mark for the start of the episode.)

It’s a slow day in TV news, and that can only mean one thing: a glimpse into what’s on Japanese television. Today’s newsmaker is a Japanese baby that has arms like loaves of French bread, and there’s no denying that this is the loafiest baby since Trig Palin.

Fun fact: bread babies are a considered a delicacy in Japan.

Whenever I have trouble finding interesting television news, the first place I turn to is Japan Probe, because Japanese television is a bottomless well of insanity. Take, for example, the capture of a wild monkey that had attacked 118 people in Shizuoka Prefecture over the last three months.

The effort to capture the monkey became international news. After repeated failures to bring in the monkey, a local government put a 200,000 yen bounty on the monkey.

It all came to an end when the monkey decided to raid a house. The owner of the house, who had been a victim of a monkey raid a little less than a month ago, was prepared for just such an occurrence. He chased the monkey into a closet and trapped the animal by closing the closet door.

Police and city workers then arrived with nets and tasers and captured the beast. [Japan Probe]

Fast forward the 1:30 mark of the video, and you can see a city worker give the monkey a FULL SEVEN SECONDS of taser. And that’s where the lousy pay and long hours of blogging finally pay off: the sublime delight of writing the words “Japanese monkey taser.” So please, enjoy this with me. We all have a tendency to rush through our lives without appreciating the simple pleasures. Sometimes it’s good to stop and tase the monkeys.

Baboons to the left of me, baboons to the right, the speeding locomotive tore through a sea of inhuman fangs.

I love many things about Japan: schoolgirl fetishes, subway groping, panty vending machines, tentacle porn, and Hello Kitty. But all of that fades to the background with this revelation: “Jersey Shore” will be shown in the Land of the Rising Sun under the name “MTV Jersey Shore: the New Jersey Life of Macaroni Rascals.” CNN Go explains:

With the average Japanese cable TV viewer being totally ignorant of American geography, the name “Jersey Shore” needed an explanatory subtitle. So MTV Japan has decided on「MTV Jersey Shore〜マカロニ野郎のニュージャージー・ライフ〜」, translated by us as “MTV Jersey Shore — the New Jersey life of macaroni rascals.”

Macaroni rascals? What? Our only guess is that the folks at MTV were looking for a way to translate the Italian-American epithet ‘guido’ and stumbled upon something more Japanese but equally un-PC. Since this is a family website, we translated ‘yaro’ (野郎) as ‘rascals’ but the pejorative word can take on much more R-rated nuances.

What are those “R-rated nuances,” you ask? Well, let’s just say that my Irish grandfather is no longer the only one calling Italians “macaroni assh-les.”

In response, a spokesman for the National Institute of Cheap Italian Stereotypes said, “Ay! Why you make-a fun? Mamma work-a so hard on that macaroni! You wanna break-a you mamma’s heart?”