Okay, so here's the story.  It's New Year's Day 2006, and my girlfriend Alison and I are driving to the mall.  It's a nice 30 minute drive, and on the way we get on the topic of a story I had heard about where Disney had supposedly sued an elementary school for creating a mural featuring some of the older Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and their whole crew.

Now here's where everythig completely blew up between us.  My feeling is that although they were at one point the absolute centerpiece of the Disney empire, the Mickey Mouse gang (including Minnie, Donald, Pluto, Goofy, and all their boys) are not used as much as they used to be, and by suing such horrendous intellectual property pirates such as elementary schools who are clearly making a killing by exploiting Disney characters, Disney was merely protecting their older intellectual properties.  My theory is that, while Mickey Mouse and company are clearly recognizable icons of the Disney empire (at least to people of my generation), Mickey Mouse is used as, at most, a mascot for the company and little else at this point, as most of the mainstream Disney productions of the last 10-15 years have been movie adaptations of fairy tales and myths (Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, etc) and Pixar produtions such as Shrek.  I took this as the same sort of thing as if somebody was going around selling pirated copies of the original Contra, Konami may not necessarily be intending to sell the original Contra, yet they would sue to protect their intellectual property.

I continued with my theory, that people of my generation (I'm 26) may have some familiarity with Mickey Mouse, but I personally do not.  I compared Disney characters to the Looney Tunes.  When I was growing up, I could almost always count on Looney Tunes being on TV somewhere, and I was able to happily while away my afternoons watching the Roadrunner repeatedly cause Wile E. Coyote to be crushed, blown up, dropped off cliffs, and the like.  I could always count on Speedy Gonzalez to outwit Sylvester, and all that sort of thing.  But what about the Disney characters?  Sure, I knew who Mickey Mouse was, but I really didn't.  In a move that really seemed to annoy Alison The Significant Other, I compared Mickey Mouse to Max Headroom.  I grew up knowing who Max Headroom and Mickey Mouse both were, but really didn't.  Okay, Max Headroom was this computer generated head who stuttered a lot, fine.  But what did he actually do?  Did he have a TV show?  Did he appear in those annoying commercials before the main feature when you went to the movies?  Did he do anti-smoking commercials?  I have no idea what Max Headroom's actual purpose was, or even where he appeared.  I had the exact same understanding of Mickey Mouse in my youth.  He was easily identifiable, but what did he do?  Sure, he appeared in a bunch of movies in the 50s, but what else?  Did Mickey and firends have their own cartoons in the same vein as the Looney Tunes? What did they do?  I really thought that in the current age, Mickey Mouse's entire purpose was to sit in the front window of the Disney Store and to sell little plush toys to kids.

And that brings me to my next little pondering.  If I, growing up in the 80s and 90s, have absolutely no idea what purpose Mickey Mouse serves outside of being the mascot for a heartless corporation which has so much time on their hands that they've taken to suing elementary schools, what of the current youth of America?  Sure, I found out later by asking around that the Disney characters had their own cartoons like those of the Looney Tunes, but that was decades ago.  What do today's children think of Mickey Mouse?  By this point, Mickey Mouse is so far out of the spotlight that it amazes me that Disney is still using him as their mascot.  Do you think today's youth has any idea who Mickey Mouse is any more than I, 20 years closer to Ground Zero, do?  Can they even make the connection between the three black circles used as the logo for Disney World and Mickey Mouse's head?  Do they even realize that Disney did more than just Shrek and Aladdin?

At this point, I got the usual "no, every kid on the face of the planet knows who Mickey Mouse is, you don't know what you're talking about but you think you do" sort of answer, and then Alison got pissed and went off shopping on her own.  I took this opportunity to solve the problem once and for all, and walk over to the Disney store to ask the people there for their input.  I presented my theory, and her answer was that no, Mickey Mouse is still definitely very much in the forefront of Disney entertainment, because he was in a movie (I think it was the Three Musketeers, but I don't remember exactly) which was apparently his first movie in some fifteen years.  I asked the lady how, if this was his only movie in fifteen years or so, he could still be considered more than an intellectual property.  She again confronted me with the fact that he was in this movie and that made him a main player in the Disney Empire.  I then returned the favor by confronting her with the little situation involving the elementary school, to which she replied that the elementary school "was infringing on Disney's copyrights."  My response was "yeeeaaaah, but it's an elementary school."  "they were still infringing on Disney's copyrights."  "But at what cost to Disney?  Is this elementary school taking away from Disney's profits in any way?  How exactly does this hurt Disney?  It seems to me like they're just shaking their dick at people."  "I said they're infringing on Disney's copyrights."

At that point I realized I was getting nowhere with this mindless drone of the Disney Empire, thanked her for her time, and left.  I told Alison about this when she finally was un-piseed enough to hang around with me again.  I learned a couple of important lessons from this.  Number one, don't ever concede anything to anybody about anything you were arguing with them abuot, because they'll take the smallest partial concession as a complete admission of defeat.  Second, either Disney has such a tight leash on their employees that they can jerk the lowest people on the chain around totowing the company line or the people are that fucked up that they actually believe in the great Holy Disney Empire.  Either way, the priests of the Great And Holy Church Of Disney (otherwise known as the knuckledragging clerks at the Disney Store) are two of George Carlin's favorite types of people.  They're completely full of shit...and they're FUCKING NUTS.