Procrastinet

Laugh Out Loud Cats

filed under: Stuff to laugh at

I have something to talk about which is incredibly awesome. However, it is incredibly awesome partly because of the context into which it falls, which I suspect some of my faithful Procrastinet readers may be unfamiliar with (hi mom!). So let me backtrack a little:

There's this meme on the internet (in this case more appropriately called "teh intarwebs") called "LOLCATS," also known as "Cat Macros," also known as "Kitteh" or "kittah." Basically, it started in various online forums where users would take cute pictures of cats and put funny slogans on them, using a pidgin english made up of misspellings and faux-"l33t" hacker-speak.

To catch up on LOLCATS you can check out I Can Has Cheezburger (a reference to an early/classic lolcat picture).

One of the sub-memes is "invisible ______," like the below:

Then the lolcats meme spawned sub-memes, like the "lolrus." That's this guy:

Then further sub-memes, like the lolpresidents:

So then, to bring us up to the point of this post, a cartoonist named Apelad (Adam Koford) came up with the "true historical origins" of the lolcats, a comic strip by his grandfather called the "Laugh-Out-Loud Cats."

Not many people know this, but my great grandfather Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford, was also a cartoonist... From 1912-1913 he produced a comic strip which was featured in 17 newspapers, including the Philadephia Star-Democrat, the Tampa Telegraph, and the Santa Fe Good-Newser. The strip was entitled "the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats" and featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip.

The whole Laugh-Out-Loud Cats thing is a mock-hoax, or "foax" if you will - which didn't stop a bunch of internet snotheads from being all like "duh this is OBVIOUSLY fake" - which is funny, of course, because of COURSE it's obviously fake, that's the damn joke in the first place. With the avid help of Boing Boing, Apelad has now created 40+ panels for the "historic" cartoon, viewable (and I highly recommend it) here.

Then - and this is where we start to get seriously awesome - Apelad started offering original pen-and-ink panels of the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats for sale on his website - for a mere $20 each. I jumped on this immediately, and ordered one. I requested via email that it be along the lines of "nooo they be stealin' my ________" because the Gore one was my favorite of the lolpresidents.

First came the setup, on Apelad's blog a few days later:

One week later, this arrived in my mailbox:

Much happiness - it's great to see something come to life online and then to actually have the thing itself in person.

I was hooked, and ordered another one a few days later. This time I requested something along the "Iz not so gret, aktuly" sub-meme:

Yesterday, I received this from Apelad:

w00t! Both original panels are now framed and proudly displayed.

Wonder of wonders, to complete their geek provenance, Xeni posted the "Bucket" frame on BoingBoing:

Awesome.

I Am Not The Chosen

filed under: Dadditudes

This morning, Max had climbed into bed with us (as usual, around 4am - none of us really even bother to wake up for it anymore, including Max). We all slept in for the first time in weeks, but around 8 he woke up and wanted some attention from Mommy. In the course of attempting to get up with him myself, thus (a) letting Mommy sleep and (b) getting to sleep in on Father's Day tomorrow, as it would then be "my turn," the following conversation transpired.

Max: Mommy! Get up!

Dad: Buddy, I'm going to get up with you.

Max: No! I want Mommy!

Dad: No, buddy, really, I'm going to get up with you this morning.

Max: No, Daddy. You are not Jewish. Only Mommy and I are Jewish. So you do not get to get up with me.

...

...

WTF?!