Our "newspaper articles of interest" thread has been quite popular, so I thought I'd start a similar one for relevant (to words) content, for fun and laughs, or for just plain interesting Blog articles. This one from England is English irony at its best. Now I know why the London School of Economics and Political Science is so renowned.

This blog mentions how LOLcat has created a new syntax and nearly a new language. Are any of you familiar with the phenomenon?

Isn't "lolCat" YOU?

quote:

Originally posted by Caterwauller:
This blog mentions how LOLcat has created a new syntax and nearly a new language. Are any of you familiar with the phenomenon?

How could we not be? this is my favourite.

Excellent find, goofy! I love it!

I wish lolCat was me, but alas, someone else came up with it first.

I have to say that, if these blogs and others like them are considered instances of witty or otherwise outstanding writing, then it shows me, more clearly than anything else, why my own writing is so often misunderstood.

I fear I would never be able to give pen to the kinds of utterings I read in these examples.

Incidentally, the link that Kalleh posted takes me to the the blog of Joshua Gans, a Professor of Management (Information Economics) at the University of Melbourne (which is in Australia - not England).

In my poking about the blogosphere yesterday I ran across this . It's probably of no interest to anyone else but I was surprised that so unique a version of my favourite book was one that I had not seen before.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

I fear I would never be able to give pen to the kinds of utterings I read in these examples.

Indeed, you wouldn't Richard.

I'm no great fan of cuteness (and they are nauseatingly cute) but I do chuckle at silliness (and they are certainly silly). Perhaps you should consider a silliness retraining course. There is a TV documenatary about clowns on Monday night. Maybe you could start there.

And although it's not a blog can I just say that this, which I found a few years ago, is the most deeply disturbing version of Alice In Wonderland I have ever seen. These people are strange.

You think that's more disturbing than Švankmajer or American McGee's Alice?

I thought it was really cute.

Have you seen Tove Jansson's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland?

Indeed. Did you check out the whole site? There are dozens of these cat productions on it. The disturbing thing is that anybody is monomaniac enough to spend so much time, effort and will producing something that is, as you say (though with my adjective) insufferably cute.

The Švankmajer is disturbing unless you approach it for what it is - a piece of surrealist art rather than an Alice adaptation and then compared to other surrealist film making (say, L'age d'or) it is really rather tame. It isn't even as disturbing as other Švankmajer films.

American McGee's Alice is just pandering to it's gorefest loving teengoth audience. I didn't find it disturbing although several levels are next to impossible to complete without cheating.

Oh yes, nearly forgot. I do have the Tove Jansson illustrations in my collection and very good they are too. For disturbing illustrations though you need to find a Spanish copy illustrated by Jean-Claude Silbermann.

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but I do chuckle at silliness

I chuckle at silliness if it's funny - but most silliness I find to be simply - silly.

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insufferably cute

I agree that they are - the lolCat things. I also am amazed that so many people - seemingly from all over the world - spend time making these things. What amazes me most, though, is that it has created its own syntax. Fascinating from a linguistics point of view, isn't it? It's like Xtreme Baby Talk. Ick!

I think lolcats are completely hilarious but I can't explain why.

I will look for Jean-Claude Silbermann's illustrations.

Island Press now has a blog, Eco-Compass.