By Chase Stevens ’12
THE ROUNDUP
Does Gamestation own your soul?
Are you one of the millions of people who buys things online and agrees to terms and conditions with just a click of a button?
If so, you may have just sold your soul.
More than 7,500 people did just that on April 1 when they bought games from British videogame retailer Gamestation. They included a clause in their terms and conditions that said that if you buy a game from them, they owned your soul.
They even included a prize for people who caught it, giving them a 5 pound voucher.
The company did issue a statement that said that they would give back all ownership of the souls to their rightful owner.
While it was a funny prank, it did bring to light the fact that people don’t read the terms and conditions that they agree to. Gamestation estimated that 88 percent do not read the terms and conditions that they agreed to.
Because people don’t read what they are agreeing to, they could agree to anything, even something as ridiculous as giving away their soul
Lolcatbible.com
Speaking of souls, Martin Grondin is the owner of the Web site lolcatbible.com, a humorous and sarcastic take on religion.
Grondin thought it would be a good idea to translate the Bible into lolcat speak, an Internet variation of English that is largely incomprehensible. He set up a wiki, or a Web site anyone can contribute to, and let people translate passages of the Bible into lolcat speak. Work began on the lolcat Bible in July 2007 and according to the site, most of the Bible is already translated.
Lolcat speak originated with the Internet meme lolcats. Lolcats is a Web site where people post funny pictures of cats with captions that usually have many mispellings. The mispellings eventually evolved into its own dialect of English.
In the lolcat Bible, “God” is changed into “Ceiling Cat,” “Jesus” is now named “Happy Cat” and the Holy Spirit is referred to as “HovrCat.”
For example, Genesis 1:1 is translated from “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” to “Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.”
The Web site even has a section devoted to theological arguments both proving and debunking the existence of “Ceiling Cat,” which are all written in lolcat.
Grondin took more than 45 of the best passages of the Web site and made it into a book. On Feb. 9, 2010, the book was published by Ulysses Press.
The Web site even has tutorials on how to help out and translate passages, which includes a lesson on how to speak lolcat.
The entirety of the lolcat Bible can be found at www.lolcatbible.com.
