WHUT R TEH LOLCATS?

 

by Rick_Slick

 

The new Bruce Willis action movie "Live Free or Die Hard" is coming out this week, and I told Geea I was going to see it the night it premiered.  I mean... how many times can the same crap happen to the same guy before he gets all fed up fighting terrorists and whatnot and just hides alone in his house, having groceries delivered, and looking outside through boarded-up windows?  Anyway, Geea told me she had a different movie for me to go see, and it was called "Write Articles or Die Hard."  So here I am writing an article, because I really don't like what her movie is all about once she told me the ending.  But I can assure all twelve of you who actually read my article (this does not include RavenTresses, who only looks for her name and looks at the pictures) that I am merely biding my time and letting Geea think she is in complete control.  According to this factual Internet site, I would win against her in a fight of some sort: 

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Rick+Slick&word2=Geea
 

This week's article is about a growing Internet sensation that is taking precious attention away from RavenTresses, so she wanted me to investigate just what all the commotion is all about and somehow find a way to re-direct attention back onto her... where it belongs.  What could I possibly be talking about?  Spybots?  Blogging?  Online auctions?  That e-mail I always get that I need an entire crate of Viagra and that I should send my money to Nigeria?  No, I am here to talk about something important, like "lolcats." 

Lolcats are also known as "cat macros" or "stupid captions attached onto overly cute pictures of cats or kittens caught in their zany feline antics."  They are posted in various Internet forums and websites, with the majority of such instances occuring on "Caturday", which of course is the feline version of Saturday.  Here are some graphs: 

 

Lolcats were invented in 1994 on a Saturday morning in a secret government Internet computer research lab by Dr. Norman T. Lolcat when the (then) current version of Photoshop he was using malfunctioned.  While editing a picture of his cat on taxpayer time, the feline pet walked across his keyboard and actually made some words that were superimposed over the picture.  Proclaiming that day and every Saturday forthcoming as "Caturday", he proceeded to post the picture all over the Internet, which back then consisted of a network of 1200-baud modems and there were like five web pages total.  Ironically, Dr. Lolcat was financially ruined in 2002 and subsequently became a recluse after his cat walked across his keyboard again and inadvertantly bid his entire net worth for a Rainbow Brite lunchbox being auctioned on Ebay.  Despite the worldwide success of the lolcat revolution, he has not been heard from since. 

The captions on these pictures of cats are typically written in Internet slang, broken grammar, or misspelled English, as if the cat were actually saying what is written on the picture.  The most popular format for a caption is "IM IN UR ________, ______ING UR ________."  So like, a lolcat could be all "IM IN UR THERE NEWS SITE, DECREASING UR READERS!"  No wait, uhhhh... that's me.  I think if cats really knew how we were all like portraying them to talk like idiots, they would claw our eyes out and leave little tootsie rolls everywhere BUT their litter box.  Here are some examples of lolcats, in case by this point in time you still have no cotton-pickin' clue what it is that I am talking about: 

 

First, in the upper left corner, we have the Pokeman lolcat, which is like my favorite one of all.  This one is funny because a) Pokemon is stupid, and b) like cats would really care about Pokemon, even if it weren't stupid.  The humor is enhanced by using the traditional "motivational poster" format.  Note how the cats are entirely too interested in the Pokemon game, which leads me to wonder how the owner trained her cats to play Pokemon in the first place and if they are any good at it. 

Secondly, in the upper right corner, is a lolcat I found that reminds me of Geea when she just got burned on a There auction.  Actually, it would be funnier if the caption were "Y U NO RITE ARTICLES?!?!" because that's the same sort of expression I imagine she has in real life when she's yelling at me, and if she looked like a cat. 

Third, in the lower left corner, is an odd little lolcat I included where his butt is waving hello.  Now, if I had posed like that and posted a picture of that on the Internet, I would probably be beaten and thrown in jail.  But it's cute when a kitty does it, right?  I hate double standards!!

Finally, in the lower right corner, is the famous monorail cat, which apparently slides back and forth along the track on top of someone's widescreen TV because it has no legs.  This is the latest in flea transportation technology. 

RavenTresses was all noticing the disproportionate amount of attention placed on these cat macros and was wondering why no one was telling her how pretty she was anymore, so she begged me to devise some sort of scheme to win back the amount of attention previously given to her, especially on Saturdays.  She was all "I *hate* cats!!" and got all furious with them, flailing her fists around towards the sky and getting all red in the face -- like the time we went to go egg someone's house and she brought those little colored plastic Easter eggs -- so I figured that I would try and start my own Internet fad to replace it.  I hereby present to you... loltresses!

 

 

So this is pretty much going to catch on really quickly, right?  I hope so.  Those stupid cats can't possibly compete with pictures of RavenTresses doing silly things with misspelled captions superimposed on them.  Thank you once again for allowing me to waste your time with more of my incoherent drivel! 

Here are some web sites that help explain the lolcat phenomenon, because I clearly did a poor job at it if you read down to here and still need to visit web sites to figure out what I'm blabbering on about:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcats
 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4862013.html
 

http://kscakes.com/LolCats/Default.aspx
 

http://linguisticmystic.com/2007/02/07/im-in-mai-blog-postin-bout-cats-the-cuteness-of-grammatical-errors/
 

http://www.slate.com/id/2166338/
 

 

 

[Disclaimer:  The Voice of There does not endorse or condone replacing one Internet fad with another at RavenTresses' request, ridiculing Pokemon, or using Google Fights as the final arbitration method in any sort of dispute or comparison of superiority to your boss.]