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.

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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?”