Intermittent Rant

OK, so I don’t want to be a hater. I don’t. I’m not a hater. Really! I’m not.

But I really really really really really really hate Lolcats. I don’t quite get it. What is this phenomenon? How has it gotten so popular?

Here’s my impression of how it came about:

Gosh, gee, golly, gee-whiz, that sure is a cute picture of a cat. But no, I, I can’t just send it to all my friends and family and co-workers and passers-by and strangers and such. No, it’s missing something. YES! It needs a caption of some sort. Yeah, as if the cat were trying to say something. Like as if the cat has ATTITUDE! Boffo!

But wait, I have an even better idea! (Gee, golly, I’m so clever!) What if I misspelled the captions so that the cat’s not only got attitude but he can’t fathom our quaint human world with our rules of grammar and bizarre social customs.

OMG, GENIUS!!!!!!!!!

I mean, they’re cute and all, but it’s like pushing cuteness to a whole new level. It’s like punching someone in the face with cuteness.

But won’t someone please think of the children…I mean, cats? It’s like you can’t take a cat seriously anymore. You see a cat pooping and instead of recoiling in disgust, you think, “I Shoodna Eatn Dat Hole Ding!” or two cats fucking and you say to yourself, “OOPS! Where my junk go?” I mean, don’t you remember when you looked at a cat and simply thought, “Meow.” This is borderline animal cruelty. And I’m not afraid to say it once and for all.

UPDATE: Apparently, they’re being turned into a musical. I believe this is one of the four horsemen.

First of all, I begin with a simple postulate, that all men are fallible; that is to say, all human beings are capable — and even given to — declaring a falsity beit knowlingly or not. More simply put, we are all capable of being wrong by virtue of being human. Secondly, I observe that all religious teaching is passed along by and through humans, and furthermore that all religious knowledge comes to each of us from another human beit a pastor, a parent, a teacher. Thirdly, the first two points being made, one must conclude that the entirety of religious knowledge is capable of being false being that it is handed down from human to human and humans have the capability — and even the propensity — for being fallible. Therefore, I ask: how can I trust this knowledge? How can I be sure that it is true? How can I know that it was not misinterpreted in some way having been marred by the hands of history. How do I know that these are indeed the words to escape the lips of God?

Imagine Moses atop Mount Sinai receiving he Ten Commandments. One can say that God made Moses’s ears ripe for the listening. One can say that the words in and of themselves are such that their anunciation creates the perfection of their understanding, that is to say, the words are so powerful that they cannot be misintereted or falsified. And yet how am I to know what is and isn’t the word of God? Because I am told so? How do I trust THAT? And so we return to our dilemma.

One could also say that religious knowledge is true by virtue of one’s knowing it is true. In other words, it is true because I know that it is true and, through free will, I am able to distinguish between truth and untruth. And yet what is often the case is that one man’s truth is nonsense to another. You see, when we say this, we step away from reason and into the realm of faith. And in so doing we circle back to our original dilemma.

We are left with the simple conclusion that all religious knowledge is fallible. If this is true, then whether you are a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, you must ultimately ask yourself the question: Can one speak for God? In fact, wouldn’t it be a sin to speak on God’s behalf? Couldn’t it be the greatest sin of all?