It’s the day after Turkey Day. Obviously, not a day for deep thoughts or complex topics, since most of us are probably still zoned out from large quantities of comestibles. Therefore, LOLcats are the perfect subject for today’s post.

To understand the LOLcat phenomena, you first have to understand the idea of the internet meme. Chances are you’ve experienced one; you’ve been rickrolled, you’ve seen Chocolate Rain and the multiple spinoffs & parodies; the dancing baby, or even, going way back, HamsterDance. Memes are sometimes called “mind viruses;” basically, unusual ideas or themes that spread from person to person.

Wikipedia defines LOLcat as:

A lolcat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak,” ”kitteh,” or “kitty pidgin” and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang. The name “lolcat” is a compound word of the phrase “LOL” and “cat”.

Not all LOLcats are actually cats, but nonetheless appear on the offical LOLcat site.

(Ok, I’m pretty certain that’s not a moose, but still cute)

Some of my personal favorites:

What does this mean to me, Laura?

1. LOLcats have no practical use other than entertainment.
2. You can get the latest LOLcat entries via RSS feeds.
3. You can caption your own LOLcat pics or other people’s pics and also save your favorites.
4. This is a prime example of what I call TMFTS (Too Much Free Time Syndrome).
5. There are offshoots of the LOLcat meme, including a project to translate the Bible into LOLspeak and LOLCODE, a programming language based on LOLspeak.

(Thanks to Owen L. for the post idea!)