You’ve got Internet meme in my RL
CC-licensed Lolrus image from Pete Mandik’s photostream on flickr
Life here in southern RI is not quite as boring as I let on. A few weeks (or was it months?) ago, a story broke about a woman who was discovered in a sorority on campus, and in the process of being escorted out, the discovery of what are alleged to be burglary tools led down a rabbit hole that’s oh-so-deep. Now the woman stands accused of having robbed from numerous people in her neighborhood (which happens to be my neighborhood as well). One person I spoke to recounted the story of receiving an envelope with their last name on it from the police. At first, I thought, “that’s a very organized police department”, but in fact, one of the accusations is that this woman tracked the schedules of the victims, managed to collect keys, and kept them all organized. Very strange.
To this day, as far as I know, nothing was stolen from me. But a few days after the story broke, word started getting around that this woman had a couple dozen cats, and that police did not believe they belonged to her. That’s where it started to intersect with my life: we lost our totally kick-ass awesome cat Oscar last year, and hey, if this woman has him, well, I’d like him back.
We got in touch with the police, but they weren’t able to confirm the story about the cats, and they have yet to follow up with us. For the moment, I’ve written it off as a story that spread quickly and got exaggerated, but who knows?
Today, the story picked up for me again. I’ve been made aware of a blog that’s covering this saga with a mixture of news excerpts and random speculation. In fact, one post is consistent with my theory that the cat story was an exaggeration:
An officer may have said “there’s like 20 to 30 cats in that house” not meaning it literally but simply as an exaggerated expression. Somehow, someone, printed a flyer saying that there were 20-30 cats. This simply was not the case.
And that’s fine, because I’d like to move on and accept that I won’t get my cat back. But as I spent more time at the blog, things took a marked turn for the bizarre… as if this story could not get any weirder, it apparently includes a real-life version of one my favorite memes, the Lolrus Bukkit Saga. From She Had My Buckets:
He went around the side of the house and came back with my buckets. He put them on the ground and another guy took a photo of them. They then put them in my car for me. Now the buckets are back home…
So the only thing I can say for sure is that it’s still going to get weirder. And if a little more weirdness raises the possibility that my cat might come home, that’s fine with me.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Hey Brian! It was mah bukkitts! And we’ve been seeing a *lot* of cats in our yard (1 house over) including a fellow we think is our boy Junior! What does Oscar look like? email me and let me know, we’ll look out for him. The whole thing with the bukkits was so bizarre- I know I sound insane, and all that, but really, the only reason I had a photo of the darn things is that I got them at a fantastic yard sale where I also got a wondrful oxen yoke, a fantastic ammo box that I keep the croquet set in, and the bukkits, so I took a pic of my great haul to email my sister… Oh, it is so strange and awful, but it’s given me a lot of opportunities to bewail the fate of mah bukkits! (obviously I heart the lolrus). Definitely let me know about Oscar- and hey, maybe this year we’ll manage to get together for dinner!