lolcats Fantastic!! The guy you talked about Kevin Nalty from willvideoforfood.com has some funny vids on youtube Check out Viral Video Genius http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXJVxmWTmkg where he talks about his inspiration. Loved the show and voted today as I do everyday. Keep pumping out the great content

LOLZ! Fausto, your monologue over my little FOF arrangement…priceless!

http://www.allyourbasearebelongtous.com/

There, user generated internet phenomena of the past.

‘Meowspeak’

Of course, way before LOLCATS was the whole Usenet ‘meowspeak’ controversy.

In the days before Usenet groups were swamped by spam (and yes, I remember the day the first Spam letter ever posted on every Usenet group - darned Green-Card lawyers) there was the rec.pets.cats Meowspeak controversy.

The group’s charter was to talk about cats, taking care of them, health issues, on and and on. Then, one fateful day (late 80’s - early 90’s?), someone posted the very first meowspeak post. Meowspeak looks something like “Wen Meomie found lotsa bitsa wet cardbord inna laundry, gess hoo she blamed, inna youshual hoomin respons?” (I’m quoting one of the few examples I’ve found w/ a quick search. It’s always spoken in first person from the point of view of the cat. And it’s usually the whole post.)

It definitely precedes Caturday/ LOLCAT language - don’t know if there are any direct connections.

In any case before you knew it , there was war in rec.pets.cats between those who were frankly revolted by meowspeak and those who thought you were a miserable, non-cat-loving human being if you didn’t love it and spend all day chanelling your gramatically and orthographically challged felin. If I remember correctly the group eventually split up and there was something like rec.pets.cats.meowspeak. (and, back then, creating a new Usenet group was a vastly complex process requiring approval and votes from other Usenetters).

I haven’t been to Usenet groups in a while - as far as I can tell most of them are pretty dead by now (strangled by spam, then absorbed by Dejanews Google Groups). I might be wrong though, just haven’t looked for them recently.

“The Meowspeak Wars” - a moment in history.

Alec

I loved today’s twist on the opening theme song. Really good.

The “Evil Seed” sounds too much like real life for me. Like I tell everyone “If you want to know something or want to hear my side of something, just ask!”

“It” is gender neutral. Grammatically you can call a baby an “it” but most parents don’t like it when you call it an “it.”

What if you’re hispanic? There is no THEY in Spanish. Only EL or ELLA. (ellos is masculine)

I got a tangential mention in FoF. I don’t know whether to be happy about that or not :-\

I’m not entirely sure if I should post here or in the spellchecking thread, but regardless, today’s episode made me think…

Languages tend to evolve over time, usually due to misspellings and variations in pronunciation. That’s why Old English is different from Middle English, and why Middle English is different from modern-day English. But even within modern-day English, there are subtle variations between American English, Canadian English, and the Queen’s English.

I think it’s easy for those of us living in America to forget that the Feast of Fools, while based in Chicago, reaches out to an international audience—not only to Canada and the UK, but to non-English speaking countries as well. Of course people are going to spell things differently than one might expect!

It’s important that we all remember that the main symbol of the GLBTQ community—the rainbow—represents our vast diversity. Our culture is comprised of multiple cultures from all walks of life all over the whole world. Spelling, while important in general, isn’t quite as important as diversity, inclusivity, and unity. We’re all here to share opinions and ideas, so as long as we’re able to communicate our ideas, the presentation of those ideas shouldn’t matter as much as their content.

DynaMike: Which seems more likely to end up in the American lexicon?

Pwned

or

Nucular.

The difference is that one is a really funny/popular quip made by youngins (like bitchin’, nifty, tubular…), and the other is an oft-harped-upon misnomer by our current President.

Some people are being edgy and funny and are fully understandable. Some people have English as a second language and make some understandable flubs in the gerunds and plurals. Some people you just want to hold down and beat with a grammar stick because you know they would come off brilliant if only they would concentrate on their rough edges for a bit.

But it’s my pet peeve. You don’t have to adopt it, and I would probably miss it if you did.

Leo LaPorte - so not Gay, though Gay-friendly. I worked with him at TechTV (Yes, the network no one ever got). When Leo says, “Makes its own gravy.” he’s not talking about the same thing as Fausto.

Leo’s reference probably has more to do with Gravy Train dogfood slogans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSerzbcwC0Q

“One of the things that breaks my pedantic little heart is when I see very big mis-spellings in titles and posts. Rather than succumb to my inner bitchy-ness and drop by to say “I think you meant to spell it THIS way” in every post I find, I suggest that people give Firefox a try.”

I admitted that it was a pedantic thing to do… and I used the word “suggest”. I pretty much disclosed fully that it’s something people who were only interested in improving their spelling could try. I made a point to not single out any examples of bad spelling or grammar and just threw it out there as something that bugged me. Therefore, I figure I buffered myself pretty well against any arguments of arrogance.

Several other people have touched on the fact that performance and skill are unrelated to spelling ability, and touched on the fact that spelling and grammar is one of the things that will alter people’s perceptions.

I wouldn’t consider someone who works out at the gym 6 days a week dropping by to say “this exercise will help you lose tummy fat for the summer season.” arrogant. I would figure they value their appearance, and wanted to give a helpful tip to anyone else who was concerned about their appearance.

I value spelling and grammar and how it reflects upon me. So here we are.

What was that exercise for losing tummy fat?

I have that same problem with bad grammar. I used to grit my teeth when our corporate officers at my previous job would send emails full of grammar and spelling errors. It just made me lose my faith in my upper management.

By the way, just to let you guys know, you weren’t speaking 1337 (leet) speak correct. (The language of the internet pretty much)

What you meant to write was:

“\/\/3′r3 50 h4pp3h u r |1573n1n 3 73h f3457 0f f00|5 p0d(457! |-|45 1 |057 m4h m1nd? |\|0 1 h45 |\|07. 1m 7ry1n6 2 74|k |13k L()L(47! 17′5 phun.”

From the eclecticlibrarian

Hey, the 3G iPod didn’t have a color screen! I call bullshit!

Can anyone post images in the comments, or just us?

Alec: I read a review for that book (in ‘New Scientist’ for some reason) but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. It seems like I’d find it pretty interesting.

fausto, how did you post the image in the comment?

To post a pic you have to enclose it in an image html code. For that pic, we just grabbed it from our flickr account.

http://www.365tomorrows.com/08/18/lolcats/

Check this out