Monkey Dust is a hard cartoon to describe without completely blowing the premise and turning people away from it insofar as it comes off as completely disturbed. Which it most certainly is. Nevertheless, I have been obsessed with it since I found out about it and, like most obsessions, it needs to be shared.

Monkey Dust is a nightmare vision of Britain, a dark, twisted other world full of giant advertising conglomerates like Labia, who takes the job of rebranding cancer as “Closure”, an attractive end-of-life option. Its citizens are no less bizarre. Take Mr. Ivan Dobsky, The Meat-Safe Murderer or so he was known until he was cleared 27 years later. He himself always said he “never done it. I only said I done it so they would take the electrodes of me nipples.” Then there’s Geoff, the first-time cottager, who despite his meek, introverted personality holds the lofty goal of fellating a complete stranger in a public place. There’s also Clive, who constantly comes home late only to tell his wife a lie based on the lyrics to The Eagles’s “Hotel California”, inept chat-room pedophiles, pretentious yuppies, and classically trained actors.

These series of interconnected vignettes and recurring characters make for a delightfully sick experience but it is no doubt one you will either love or hate. Some may be turned off by the humor on display here as it is unapologetically dark; but for those who enjoy their laughs more on the grim side of things you are in for quite a treat.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XLVI: Monkey Dust: Season 1 [YouTube]

This grotesque creature inspired a thousand coulrophobic children to imagine a clammy, corpse-white hand grasping them around their ankles and pulling them down into the cold black deep every time they went to the beach: it’s Glurpo, the Underwater Clown! Even his name is the onomatopoeia of a drowning man’s scream.

Glurpo was apparently quite the tourist attraction at the San Marcos Texas “Aquarena,” where — during a sub-aqueous show mostly devoted to bathing suit beauties combing their luscious, liquid hair — he would swim out of an underwater cave and horrify small children by mutely laughing and sucking his insane rictus up against the glass like a parasitic eel.

Glurpo and Glurpo 2 [Swapatorium] : Quiddity