Lolcats: either you 'get' them and laugh helplessly at them, or you just don't see the point at all. As support for my assertion, I submit this letters column.

I laugh helplessly at lolcats. (The funny ones, anyway. The lolcat phenomenon is an example of Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap.")

I was disappointed that the author didn't mention the importance of the mangled language to the humor. Part of the pleasure that I (a technical writer and editor for more than 20 years, so usually Very Strict about language) get from lolcats is decoding the capshuns, er, captions.

I also enjoy the way the "mangling" follows very definite rules and has its own sound and rhythm, almost as if it were poetry, and the way it creates its own reality. Lolspeak plays into our view of cats as furry little anarchists, refusing to follow rules. It reinforces our feelings toward our pets as our "babies". It's playful. And play is a good thing. We don't get enough of it in our lives.

A friend once observed that the most literate of our friends have "an adversarial relationship with the English language". Making or just appreciating a lolcat, we get to break a few rules and make a few rules and change reality a little bit.

Or maybe the appeal of lolcats is the satisfaction we feel when TEH JOKE, WE GETZ IT.

"Ceiling Cat only knows what those rules actually are -- or how I KNOW them or, more accurately, know when ur doin it wrong."

As someone observed upthread, there are probably linguistics grad students at work on this already.

Some lolspeak is borrowed from text-messaging, some of it is phonetic, some of it just seemed to sound right so that other people repeated it.

I'd love to have Justice Glenn Greenwald.

I realize it's about as likely as Attorney General Patrick Fitzgerald, but a girl can dream.

Does God really love Democrats that much?

So, you'll be hanging the photo right in front of the dart board?

(I know, I know, but somebody had to say it.)

No survey of kickass heroines of urban fantasy is complete without Vicki "Victory" Nelson, the private investigator in Tanya Huff's "Blood [Noun]" novels that were the basis for the (sadly shortlived) TV series Blood Ties. The novels were written in the early 90s, long before Buffy, and are still in print. The novels feature a vampire, but they're not the stereotypical "vampire novel".

Funny thing about the media concern-trolling about Obama's "overexposure". They also worry about former President Clinton being in the news too much. But I searched and searched and couldn't find any media person worrying about whether George W. Bush was "overexposed" to the American people during his eight years in office, or whether Dick Cheney is spending too much time in front of the cameras now when his opinions should be irrelevant. Apparently the Guardians Of Liberty in the snooze media only think that the American people shouldn't want to hear from Democratic leaders.