lolcats

aka cat macros

Captioned cat photos...an acquired taste at best. They were first noticeable as an internet fad at the beginning of the year and if you haven't seen them yet you will. lolcats derive from the acronym LOL (laughing out loud) and cat (although the phenomena has now branched out to guinea pigs, human presidents, and an occasional stray dog). lolcats originated as image macros used to automatically append captioned images to postings in message-board threads. The typical lolcat is a kitten photo with a large superimposed sans serif caption. lolcats are commonly holding invisible objects and asking for food (often a cheeseburger). lolcat captions are usually commentary from the cat, or a scenic description. Captions are written in a misspelled Yoda-like grammar-poor baby-talk tween-texty geek-speak now known as lolcode or kitty pidgin. A typical caption is a snowclone of the form "in your X Y-ing your Z." Too cute for me, I miss the good old days when the members of alt.tasteless invaded and trolled rec.pets.cats in the pre-dotcon era.

I can has cheezburger?

lolcats2.com

tEh caTs!!

Kattalogen

Meme Cats

LolCat Builder

Do termites have you all shook up?

Bugvis

Local teevee ads. In addition to low production values, if you're lucky there'll be some bizarre theme and/or personality. Add a vertically challenged cast and you have Florida's Hulett Environmental Services. For nearly two decades, John and Greg Rice have produced and starred in insane spots for their pest control company. The brothers became millionaires selling real estate, doing infomercials, and giving motivational speeches. How can you resist when former intern friendly Congressional Representative Mark Foley from West Palm Beach described them as "the ringleaders of this community." The Star Trek one is a treat.

Hulett TV Commercials

Ay Carumba

Giant Crystals of Naica

The mining complex in Naica, Mexico contains some of the world's largest deposits of silver, zinc, and lead. Located beneath the Chihuahuan Desert, it also houses what may be the largest crystals ever found in a cave. Some of the gypsum crystals are as long as 36 feet and weigh up to 55 tons. The first cavern of crystals was found in 1910 and a second in 2000. The room temperature of the caverns is about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Crystal Cave of the Giants has some nice photos. The Giant Crystal Project has more and information on other giant crystal sites.

Crystal Cave of the Giants

The Giant Crystal Project

Alexa comparison of traffic at house.gov, senate.gov, and whitehouse.gov over the past month *

Beyond Googling

If you want to wander the net there's some tools beyond search engines. For website rankings, there's Alexa. There are concerns over how representative their opt-in user base is, but for casual surfing it's fine. You can view the Top 20, Global 500; and view top sites by country, language, or subject. You can also compare traffic at sites you select over various time intervals. Nowadays Alexa is a search engine and an Open Directory-based web directory. While Yahoo is the most popular of the surviving web directories of old, the Open Directory Project is the largest. For the "deep web" there's also Gary Price's librarian oriented List of Lists and ResourceShelf. If you want to really dabble there are search voyeurs, sites that let you see what other people are searching for. Larkfarm has a nice set of voyeur and random links.

* The spike in traffic at senate.gov in mid-May was either the authorization of the use of the Capitol grounds for the Greater Washington Soap Box Derby, or maybe the Immigration Bill.

Alexa

The Open Directory Project

List of Lists

ResourceShelf

Search Voyeurs