Friends, there is something in today’s society keeping me up at night.

And I fear for my children. If things continue the way they are going, my future kids, my own flesh and blood, will miss out on their childhood.

I refer my comments to the sad state of the cartoon world.

I recently saw a Saturday morning cartoon called Lunatics with futuristic animals that vaguely resembled Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner and others. I think maybe they were shooting stuff from their eyes or hands, I’m not sure. But I can dictate to you that I never saw Bugs Bunny from Looney Tunes or the tragic Space Jam movie shoot people with their eyes.

Honestly, these new characters are as far from their originals as Michael Jackson is from his once-black self.

And thus confused, I fell into a delusional spell for the remainder of the show. I can’t remember much about the story line.

Do the producers of these cartoons think today’s children are idiots? Apparently.

Themes these days are so generic. Blah.

Let’s take a look at some of the future-themed cartoons from recent memory: There’s that awful Lunatics, of which we just conversed, Batman Beyond, a futuristic Batman adventure in which Bruce Wayne is a decrepit geriatric who just can’t let go of his once caped-crusading self. There are myriad other shows that take place in the future.

Oooh, how groundbreaking.

Next, there are the anime shows. Strangely enough, lovers of these cartoons will generally spend days, weeks and even months on end playing Final Fantasy VII. The fact that the storylines are not generally predictable is sadly overshadowed by the fact that all the characters’ reactions are VERY predictable. I can predict to the very second when a character will groan, gasp, snarl or fly through the air with just one limb wailing out of control with lines all behind him to indicate his extreme velocity. I call them “speed lines.”

If you ever watch them, many of the characters don’t even have eyeballs! They have empty sockets! How sick is that?! I see this all the time in my pseudo-anime shows as well, like Teen Titans, TMNT and Lunatics. They aren’t quite anime, but the action is similar, and most miss their eyeballs.

I’d rather watch any one of the hundreds of Land Before Time movies before watching Yu-Gi-Oh! or Samurai Jack.

Almost.

The point is that the cartoons of my childhood and yours are all but vanished. Gone are the days of Animaniacs, The Real Ghostbusters, old-school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Looney Tunes reruns every Saturday morning. With the exception of maybe Spongebob Squarepants, there aren’t any clever and witty cartoons on television anymore.

Looney Tunes often lampooned society and politics. Animaniacs followed suit, all the while teaching us the states in the Union, states’ capitals and the countries of the world. Sure, they had boloney in their slacks, but I also learned from them that Bill Clinton plays the sax.

The fond memories make me long for a childhood my children may never have.

It will be up to us, the future of America — no, better — the world, to raise our children in an intellectually original cartoon world and respond thoughtfully and correctly when they all ask that inevitable question: Who ya gonna call?