lolcat

First LolCatSynth "contest"

Remember this photo from a few days ago?

Well, this photo has inspired several lolcat captions, including on this original post:

“im in ur ether, changing ur capacitanz”

There are several more suggestions on this repost at matrix.

So am calling the first LolCatSynth contest, to write even more lolcat captions for this photo. Please leave your suggestions in the comment section.

There isn't really any “prize” or “winner” for this particular contest, though I will be happy to do the actual captioning for my favorite submissions, as well as post them (with credit) to the popular lolcat sites.

Worthless Kitty Backfill: Salman Rushdie knighthood protests

Here is a small sample of calm and well-thought-out reactions to the recent knighting of British author Salman Rushdie:

The Senate of Pakistan expresses its strong condemnation on blatant disregard for the sensitivity of the Muslims of the World shown by the British Government by awarding a Knighthood to Salman Rushdie, who committed blasphemy against a pillar of Islam, the persona of Holy Prophet,” said the resolution moved by the leader of the [Pakistani parliament] Wasim Sajjad and supported by all opposition groups. [Times of India].

We will give 10 million rupees (165,000 dollars) to anyone who beheads Rushdie,” Islamabad traders' association leader Ajmal Baluch told around 200 people in one of the Pakistani capital's main bazaars.[AFP]

Not to mention this heart-warming photograph:


(AP Photo/Khalid Tanveer)

C'mon, “Biggest Evil of the World”? Did you guys forget about the whole invasion and occupation of Iraq, a (mostly) Muslim country, where lots of people are actually dying? And you wonder why you guys have such a bad rep…

The ironies of course are that The Satanic Verses didn't seem all that blasphemous when I read it years ago – it was mostly about a snooty anglophile from Bombay, with occasional interludes – and that Salman Rushdie has written many other works. One of my favorites was Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a childrens book. We did a children's theatre play based on the book while I was at Yale, for which I composed several original works – everyone's favorite was the disco soundtrack for the chase scene. It was a fun exercise in how to make a children's tale something dry and off-beat while keeping it suitable for a young audience.

I think this lolcat is particularly apropos:

lolcats in the news

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?