Tuesday, August 25, 2009

THE BEST OF PROVDOG?

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Last February, through my friend The Flying Aardvark, I learned of a website with the unusual name of I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER (ICHC). At Cheezburger, one is able to add their own captions to photographs, and these captioned photos are called LOLZ. It can be a lot of fun. Even too much fun. Using the pseudonym ProvDog, I overdosed on the site until I wore it out. Having created 323 Lolz of my own (as of this date), I'm now semi-retired from the site. In other words, "I'm burned out."
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ICHC has some sort of voting system in place allowing visitors to select their favorite Lolz, and the most popular of them are displayed on the site's "Home Page." This is like having a Top 40 radio hit. One can also "Favorite" the Lolz they personally like best. "Favorited" Lolz are collected in a file so that the person can easily locate them again for viewing and re-viewing. In my 7 months of playing at ICHC, I favorited 181 Lolz created by other folks.
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It's a difficult site to figure out because, as near as I can tell, it is overrun with Crazy Cat Ladies and other Weirdos. (I fall into the latter category, not the former.) It's impossible to get a handle on which Lolz are going to be popular and which are going to go largely ignored. In my time there, I wound up creating one Lol that was voted onto the Home Page. My big hit was "FLUFFY'S DRIVING SCHOOL", a Lol that I myself don't feel is even one of my 30 best. In fact, it became a bit frustrating to me seeing FLUFFY get Favorited over and over and over again, while other Lolz I had created, which I thought were much better, went unnoticed.
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It got to a point where everytime I saw that some visitor had Favorited Fluffy I'd think to myself: F##k Fluffy! Eventually I created a Lol which featured the singer Van Morrison saying, "ProvDog hates FLUFFY'S DRIVING SCHOOL the way I hate BROWN EYED GIRL." This satisfied me for awhile, but eventually I got irritated again and decided one day that I'd rather be a No-Hit Loser than a One-Hit Wonder, so I deleted Fluffy from the website. (Sorry, folks, but you ain't gonna Favorite Fluffy ever again!) I'm probably the only bloke in that website's history to remove his biggest hit. 712 people had Favorited Fluffy over the period of a couple months.
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One day I created a Lol meant to amuse my friend The Flying Aardvark. It was an inside joke, and to anyone else the Lol would have been utterly nonsensical. And yet two strangers actually Favorited it. Now, how does one explain this? A completely meaningless Lol gets favorited not once but twice by individuals I do not know, and yet so many of my other Lolz which I thought were at least mildly amusing, get Favorited zippo times. As I said, the collective mind-set at this site is difficult to understand.
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Since I rarely create new Lolz anymore, I figured I'd post here what I feel are the cream of the crop from my own collection. I suppose it's only proper that I start with my most popular Lol - Friggin' Fluffy:
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Now on to some Lolz that I like much better.
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THE CAT COLLECTION:
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This next one was never Favorited by a single person, and yet I think it's one of my funniest. Go figure! All I know is that it actually made ME laugh when I created it:
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Another one never Favorited by anyone:
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This next one actually got a favorable response and was probably my second most popular Lol even though it didn't receive enough votes to be included on the ICHC Home Page:
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PROVDOG'S DOGS:
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This first one actually received one vote - a NEGATIVE vote! Poor Petey:
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Well, isn't this TRUE? . . .
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I thought I'd try converting a dog photo into a record album cover. Few people cared for it:
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DRUNKEN ANIMALS! Or, A Kangaroo Hops Into A Bar And The Bartender Says . . .
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I think Hank was Favorited by one person:
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This next one got Favorited even less than Hank did, but I can't really complain; I've always known that my sense of humor is a bit "out there" and I think a lot of people just don't "get me":
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POLITICS AND OTHER SH-- "STUFFS":
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This was the very first Lol I ever created at I Can Has Cheezburger. You'd think that at least a few Democrats would have Favorited it, but you'd think wrong. A little Monty Python wink here:
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I thought this next one was kind of clever. I was alone:
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This next one actually did receive a fairly favorable response:
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CRAZY ABOUT WOMEN! Or, Just Crazy Women:
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ProvDog does film noir . . .
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JUS' GENERAL STUFFS:
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It truly surprised me when my version of Treasure Of Sierra Madre wasn't Favorited even once. I guess I just don't "get" ICHC any more than ICHC "gets" me:
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Fun With Words:
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This is one of my best, sez I. After this one went nowhere, I took my Captionator and went home:
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I do recall that my friend The Flyin' Aard liked this one:
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This last one was the biggest disappointment. I thought at the time I created it that it was my best Lol and I still feel that way. Maybe it was too wordy or too convoluted, but just as Ed Wood hoped he would be remembered for his movie Plan 9 From Outer Space, I hope to be remembered for my Nathan K. Greenberg (the K stands for Kosher). I was playing at ICHC strictly for personal joy, and so it really doesn't matter that Nathan went down with the ship - I like him jus' the same:
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I have three other favorite LOLZ which I previously posted on my Blogs here, so I didn't include them in this group, but otherwise I would have. They are:
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My nearly 300 other Lolz can be found HERE, if anyone's interested enough to look.
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And I suggest you visit the Lolz that other folks created which I have saved in MY FAVORITES. These are all good ones, most of which are better than my own (that's why I Favorited them!) Check 'em out.
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Well, I hope some of this Stuffs was at least good for a chuckle or a snicker or two.
Yak Later, All.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy (a.k.a. ProvDog)
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4 comments:

  1. Hi, Stephen:

    Of course, MY top 3 favorites of your LOLZ are:

    1) “I’m sorry, but our time is up.”

    So cute… and my Mom loved it too.

    2) “My kingdom for some catnip.”

    3) “It’s… Alive”

    Maybe I’m more of a crazy cat lady type.

    I remember that I didn’t understand the “Nathan K. Greenberg” LOLZ and you had to explain it to me. (So embarrassing!) The Kermit the Frog reference went right over my head.

    I haven’t been over to the site in ages, but it was fun to see YOUR favorite LOLZ.

    ~The Flying Aardvark~

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  2. Thanks, AARD!
    And thanks again for turning me onto that website. I'm sure that after an extended break, I shall return for further play.

    It's funny that none of your three favorite ProvDog Lolz made it into my own Top 33 list. It just goes to show... well... something.

    In trying to decide which 30 to display here, I did pause briefly to consider your #1. I paused momentarily to consider your #2. And I didn't give any consideration whatsoever to your #3.

    One of us has inferior taste when it comes to my work. I'm just afraid it might be me.
    :o)

    ~ ProvDog

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  3. You have too much time on your hands my man. Some funny stuff!:)

    WP

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  4. `
    No, actually...
    I have too much blood on my hands. ;o)

    Thanks!

    ~ Howlin' "Lonesome Dogg" McCarthy

    ReplyDelete

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