Not playing Grand Theft Auto IV today? Good, then join Kaiju Shakedown as we ponder the big questions, specifically: while the rest of us are at work, what are the kids up to? Mostly, it's more of the same: shooting each other in the head with arrows, shoving umbrellas through their eye holes, and organizing internet mobs to terrorize the parents of other kids. Ho hum. Is it 2004 again, or something? But some kids are up to more nefarious things. Things that will upset you. Like this "artwork" of what lovable Pikachu would look like if he/she were real and not a cartoon.

Grand Theft Auto sounds better and better, doesn't it? In Japan, the kids are doing even more amazing, albeit upsetting, things when they aren't beating up ten cops or getting run over by drunk Air Force officers. The new craze is Ran Ran Ru! Based on a McDonald's commercial that was mashed-up into a disturbing new life form via the black arts of video editing it starts with Ronald saying, in Japanese, "When Ronald gets happy, I just have to do this. Everyone join in. Here we go! Ran Ran Ru!"

And then it melts your face.

It's been remixed ad infinitum and become a bit of slang that you can use to impress the kids who beat you up on your way home from the store and make you spill your milk and cat food. Ran Ran Ru is so popular that when a Ronald McDonald clone recently appeared for reals in a McDonald's in Japan everyone started laughing uncontrollably, as if they were stoned, and then Ronald started doing a live version of Ran Ran Ru (captured here on video) and even the staff joined in. If you feel like treating yourself, check out this Ran Ran Ru remix but remember to shut it off before it ends: if it plays all the way through you summon Satan.

Wow, that was scary. I wish the kids were doing more productive and positive type things, like filming porn in McDonald's.

The kids have also been doing things that make you feel peaceful. For a while, the kids were modding their home made levels of Super Mario World so that the game plays itself, even coordinating the levels so that they play themselves in time to a piece of music, perhaps a "pop song." But now the kids have, as usual, gone too far. Witness the madness of some kid somewhere who has modded TWO different versions of Super Mario World to play along together in eerie synchronicity to a full length recording of Haruhi's "Yuki, Muon, Madobe Nite." This is the kind of thing that makes you burn like moonlight passion. A feat of sheer awesome futility. A video game symphony of surreal wonder. (See it here, but give it a few seconds to really get going)

Remember when all the kids did were join cults, do drugs and set random fires? Sigh. The good old days.

(Ran Ran Ru originally rears its terrible head)

(Keep up with what the kids are doing over at Japanator)

(You have the Dogsfather to thank for creating that horrible Freak-a-Chu. Organize an internet mob to burn him!)