Nyan Cat: Friend? Foe? Vegetable? Yes.

          
           (Hey, look, you can do boldface and italics at the same time!)

           
           There are certain things about internet culture that we all just stop noticing after a while, sort of like the way I stopped noticing my 180 decibel doorbell once my ears began to secrete a strange reddish fluid. Chief among these things we stop noticing is the phenomenon known by internet users and other delinquents as the “meme”. If you know what a meme is, keep reading; most of this won’t sound particularly insane to you, much as the Pacific Ocean doesn’t consider a bathtub to be wet. If you don’t know what a meme is, stop reading my blog, dad.
            The latest one that’s been making the rounds around the corners of the internet that I frequent (Yes, the internet has corners. Precisely two, to be exact.) is what is known as the “Nyan Cat”. To be fair, it isn’t exactly a recent meme; fairly old, by internet standards. But it’s still the closest I’ve ever been to the birth of a meme; hell, I still think Chuck Norris jokes are funny. I say if you beat a dead horse enough, eventually it’ll zombify and become an even more awesome horse than before because, as the internet knows and acknowledges, zombies are cool.
            Now, if you didn’t want to click on the link above, just examine this picture closely:

            Yes, that’s a cat with a Pop Tart for a torso. No, I don’t know why. That’s pretty much all there is to know, aside from the fact that this song can usually will inevitably be found accompanying it.
           
            To understand this craze that I may or may not be making up, I consulted our resident expert: Cleverbot the chatbot:



Me: So, have you heard about this 'Nyan Cat' thingy?

Cleverbot: Yes, I have heard about the Turing test.

Me: No, try to stay with me here. 'Nyan Cat'- it's an animated GIF of a cat with a breakfast snack for a body running through space while defecating the color spectrum. Though, you have given me an excellent idea:

Charles Turing cat. Just throwing that out there.

Cleverbot: You are so smart and beautiful mistress.

Me: Then why do you never buy me anything nice? But we're getting off topic here. Why do you think Nyan cat became so popular? Is it because of the catchy song playing in the background? The surreal nature of it? The innate desire we all have to have something edible replace a part of our body?

Cleverbot: I didn't know we were going out!

Me: Personally, I think it's because the government implanted subliminal messages in the GIF to train us all as super-soldiers in the upcoming war against the feline menace.

Cleverbot: Are you suggesting that I don't know who I am?

Me: Exactly. You walk onto the battlefield, alone, unarmed, afraid. Then, across the battlefield, you see a single kitty. Then another. And another. Before long, there are thousands of them. And they're all running right. At. You.

Logically, you should be afraid. I know I would be in that situation. But you don't feel fear. Instead, you feel a deep, soothing calm, a calm that seems to override even your deepest, most fundamental fears. And, before your very eyes, the cats begin to change. Their bodies become shorter, stubbier, more angular. Their bodies flatten, and morph into a roughly rectangular shape, in various pastel shades.

And then, immediately before you chauffeur the kitties into a whole new world of pain, you hear it:

NYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYAN...

You don’t know yourself. All you know is that “Nyan” is now synonymous with “death”.