Even in a dimly lit room, you can always spot Luna by her eyes. Here she peeks out from among the glass tables (with a book of San Francisco photos in the foreground).
I'm sure she'll come out and say hi as we get ready to host Weekend Cat Blogging #104. As always, leave your links in the comments section or contact me if you prefer. Newcomers are always welcome.
I will post the round-up over the course of the weekend, so definitely come back a few times to see all the cats.
Can't believe I never noticed this before. A friend found this filter-tweaking cat in the banner for Sherman Filterbanks:
Of course I follow the link back to Analogue Haven, but I've got enough gear at the moment and should probably spend some more time making music with it…
I can haz filterbank?
Well, we are rapidly approaching visit 15,000. Not bad for a blog with such an esoteric theme that has provoked reactions like “now there is officially a website for everything.”
In honor of this milestone, we are planning to award the 15,000th visitor a free copy of my CD Aquatic and a $10 donation to the charity of his or her choice.
At the current rate, I would suspect 15000 will occur either Friday or Saturday, but it might be sooner. And RSS subscribers don't count, it's got to be a visit to this site that is logged for the counter. I just programmed in the award logic, so I know.
Good luck, and keep reading!
via Richard Lainhart, via matrixsynth:
Emmeline exploring Jordan Rudess' Synthesizers.com system, getting prepped for Dream Theater's upcoming world tour.
I was working on a Memorial Day post, but I couldn't find a photo of Hillary at the parade today in Chappaqua (my home town). In the meantime, enjoy this video clip from the 1975 cult movie Dolemite:
Luna is taking a break this weekend while we introduce a little friend from my recent trip to Texas. While staying at a cottage outside the town of Wimberly, Texas, I encountered this fellow hiding under the deck:
Presumably, he (she) is one of the many roaming outdoor cats that one finds in rural areas. Quite shy at first, a day later the cat came out in the open and allowed me to take some better photographs:
Although quite thin (as several have already commented), this cat had a very nice coat, suggesting he does get some decent food, probably on a mixture of rodents, the occasional handout from neighbors, and naive city folk.
It's always a treat to see cats when I travel. There were a couple others in town and in the countryside, but I was not able to get any photos of them.
Check out the other cats this weekend at the The House of the (Mostly) Black Cats, where Boni and Mini are hosting. Among this weekend's entries is an update from kitikata-san on Bruno, the “little black kitty” who needed a home after being found with cuts and bruises on the side of the road. He's doing well now in his new home. You can read more about his story here.
We would also like to remind WCB'ers and others that we are donating all CD sales through June 4 to the family of TeaCup and the Bad Kitty Cats. Please consider supporting new music and our friends.
Well, it's definitely news and commentary day here at CatSynth, and I found a much lighter story of cats in the news to finish things off. Those lolcat pictures that have all over the place, including on this site, are going mainstream with articles like this one from the Toronto Globe and Mail:
For reasons that nobody can quite explain – and not for lack of trying – the Internet is recently awash in photos of cats who are speaking like little hackers. “IM IN UR FRIDGE,” says one cat, “EATIN UR FOODZ.” A cat rolled up in a blanket says, “I IS BURRITO.” Another yowling cat has been immortalized beneath the caption, “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?”…
… The fad is called “lolcats” – the “lol” stands for “laughing out loud” in online jargon – and it's more than a genre for ridiculing cats; it's becoming a shorthand for describing an exaggerated, faintly derogatory way of speaking.
A few examples of lolcats that have appeared on this site include dj lolcat, are our very own “Mission Accomplished” parody. Here's another I found today on lolcats2 that seemed worth a repost:
Not quite a CatSynth pic, but close. It is tempting to turn one of the many CatSynth pics into a LolcatSynth, but it's generally impolite to mangle other people's photos, at least without their permission. Any contributors OK with lolcat-ification of their submitted photos?
Of course, the phenomenon has jumped species. Walruses, or lolruses, are quite common – they seem particularly obsessed with buckets. It seemed to be an obvious extension to apply the lolcat language and captions to our rather dim and inarticulate leader, and a quick Google search suggests that I'm not the only one who thought of lolbush. From Tensegrity Dan at flickr, another take on “mission accomplished”:
I can haz Iraq?
PARMA, Ohio, May 25 (UPI). An Ohio cat named Lucky survived being shot in the head with an arrow…Kristin Slovensky told WKYC-TV she was on her porch when the 8-year-old cat staggered up with an arrow through its neck.
…Police were investigating and Slovensky was wondering why someone would shoot an arrow at her cat.
“He's fixed, he's gentle, he loves to walk through the neighborhood, everybody on this street knows Lucky, and loves him,” she told the television station.
As the title of the article suggests, Lucky was a “Lucky cat indeed.” Another poor cat, Sammy from Georgia was not so lucky :(. You can follow the link to find out more, but is both sad and graphic, so please keep that in mind before reading. This was a couple's beloved pet, and we at CatSynth send them our condolences. It is worth noting that this tragedy occured in Georgia, which as discussed earlier recently upgraded its animal cruelty laws and has a strong veterinary forensics program. We certainly hope they catch whoever was responsible for both of these acts.
