Friday Fun: Cockatoo vs. Kittens

Advantage: cockatoo.

Monday Therapy: Everyone's a Food Critic

How to tell if your cooking sucks.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

It's also a perfect excuse to post one of the best animated cat images ever produced by the Internet:

The Cat's Meow: Egypt in 3600 BC

Wow:

The skeletons of six cats, including four kittens, found in an Egyptian cemetery may push back the date of cat domestication in Egypt by nearly 2,000 years.

Disgustingly Cute: the Narcoleptic Kitten

I need a break from infuriating foreign policy debacles, messy domestic issues, and schoolwork.  Here, have a narcoleptic kitten.

Quote of the Day: We've Been Hacked By Cats?

Ouch:

The relationship between a horse and a human is a reciprocal one. They perform useful work and we supply them with food and shelter. It’s a straightforward business deal. That too was once the relationship we had with cats — they would control vermin in exchange for housing. But in time cats craftily developed a means to exploit a bug in the software of the human brain. By producing the purr and the winsome ‘silent miaow’ (two features believed to have evolved only after domestication) Felis catus found a vulnerability in our mental code: suddenly it was absolved from performing useful work around the house; the deluded owner would now supply all its needs in exchange for the illusion of affection. 

Like many successful hacks, the cat hack exploits the human capacity for self-delusion. We desperately want to believe our cats adore us, and so we are surprisingly eager to interpret their self-serving behaviour as though it were motivated by love. Cats are the courtesans of the animal world.

Disgustingly Cute: Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?

Liberté, égalité, morosité: Boo hoo

You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this monument to almost self-parodying ennui. Here's a bit of it:

The French are so busy wallowing in their existential estrangement — a state of mind Camus described as “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” — that they don’t even have the energy to be rude.  ... It’s not that they’ve lost faith in their own superiority. They’ve lost faith that the rest of the world sees it. The whole country has, as Catherine Deneuve says of her crazy blue moods, une araignée au plafond — a spider on the ceiling.

Poor baby. Watch this:

Friday Fun: Photoshop + Cats + Sports Photos

Ridiculous, hilarious, and oddly fascinating too!  Here's an example:

Military Working Cat Program Underway

This new Army initiative should strike absolute terror into the hearts of our enemies.

Monday Therapy: "Look at That Piercing Scowl!"

Everybody's grumpy on Monday morning, but this Internet celebrity could teach a master class.

New Zealand Environmentalist Wants to Ban Pet Cats

Via Alessandra, this bit of lunacy:  Some guy named Gareth Morgan wants to stop New Zealanders from keeping pet cats. Good luck with that, pal.  You can have my kittens ... when you pry them out of my cold, dead hand!

I also give you the incomparable Grumpy Cat herself, memed for your entertainment:

Internet Cat Culture + International Relations = ?

This.

Disgustingly Cute: Three Stowaways

This story is from last year, but I don't care.  The news lately has been so awful that I think we need (a) some feline cuteness as a balm, and (b) a reminder that good and decent folks live in our world too.  The attention in recent days has gone to the worst of the violent psychotics.  Please to contrast ambassador-murdering criminals with military personnel who foster lost kittens in their spare time.

Here's the story straight from one of the folks involved:

I'm Navy deployed overseas... 

We were in port a few days ago, and a cat came aboard via mooring line. We lost track of her, and found her later that evening. We managed to get her back to the pier, and waved goodbye as we took off. This cat seemed unusually upset by this... 

Turns out, in the short time she was on board, she gave birth to THREE kittens. The poor things went almost four days with no food or mommy before we found them in the machine shop. We have been bottle feeding them all day, and have already contacted local veterinary services to come check them out. 

After the initial shock of being found, and feeding, the kittens are just as happy and playful as any other cute little bugger you'd find anywhere else. They were a great boost to crew morale, and I LOVE THEM. 

I'm a sucker.

Kudos, sir!  More awwww-inducing photos here.  Know your past too, as this is just one instance in the long, long history of military personnel taking time for kittehs (see this for more photos ranging from 1888 to 1959).

Friday Fun: the Vet Can't Cure Henri's Ennui

Friday Fun Video: the Hunt for Pikachu

I Can Haz Historee: Precursors to the Modern LOLCat

Cats + photography + humans = a long history of silliness.  Did you know that proto-lolcats already existed in the 1870s?

The January 18 SOPA Protest

Here's the latest on the blackout-as-protest.  Lolcats are joining the resistance.  UPDATE 1: Wikipedia too? More here.  UPDATE 2:  The PC game protest.

Programming Note: Exam Season Starts Now

This means that I will be sleepless, exhausted, and wildly alternating among being absorbed in fury, disinterest, and/or snarky despair.  And now here is a lolcat for the occasion:

Friday Fun Video: A French Telecom Ad