Felines, nothing more than felines
“No one knows who put the first cat picture on the internet,” writes Michael Agger, on Slate.com, “but they have since become an unstoppable, mutating force.”

Icanhascheezburger.com is the latest site dedicated to “lol” (laugh out loud) pictures of cats. A new video on YouTube, posted by a lady who has taught her moggie to eat with chopsticks (truly – search for “cat chopstick” on the site), is typical of the genre.

“When I worked at a web magazine in the mid-90s, we used to joke that more people uploaded pictures of their cats to their home pages than read our articles,” Agger says. Citing Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, he adds: “That joke became less funny when it turned out to be true.”
icanhascheezburger.com
slate.com
wikipedia.org

Spam attack
Spamtrap is “an interactive installation piece that prints, shreds and blacklists spam e-mail”. The contraption – allegedly a work of art – lures in spammers, prints out their unsolicited e-mails and shreds them immediately. Great for fostering a sense of vengeance among the spammed. Not so great for the environment – even if the shredded messages are recycled.
billshackelford.com

Fashion victim
“If you ever thought you spent more than you could afford to support a lifestyle, wait till you meet this guy,” says the I’m An African in New York blog. It points readers at a Congolese “sapeur” – a victim of the country’s “cult of cloth” – who earns about $150 a month but splashes out on D&G, Gucci and other designer accessories.

“We Congolese have been so obsessed with designer clothes and looking good that over time some of us have prioritised it to the detriment of basic needs sometimes,” the author says.

“That same gentleman also owned a fur coat, in an equatorial climate mind you!”
africaunchained.blogspot.com

Expansive gesture
On the subject of splashing out on looking good, MyFreeImplants.com puts women who want breast implants in touch with benefactors who want to help them pay for bigger breasts.
myfreeimplants.com

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