Right now, I am sad. It happens. Everyone gets sad at some point, right?

So, if you’re sad, how do you cheer yourself up?

I used to cheer myself up by eating. A lot. And that didn’t turn out well. When I moved here last year, I gained something like 20 pounds in four months because I was so depressed.

Thankfully, I lost it all (and then some), but I’m still not happy. I’m not dangerously thin, but I’m not horribly overweight anymore. Since I had such a struggle, and it’s still something that bothers me, it’s been kind of difficult to find something to take its place.

Retail therapy used to hit the spot, but I don’t have the money for that…mostly because I exhausted this option earlier in the semester. Now I’m paying for it.

However, I have a new fallback. One that doesn’t make my clothing size grow or my bank account shrink.

I love LOLcats.

What’s an LOLcat? It’s a picture of a cat with a funny caption, assumed to be what the cat is saying or thinking in the picture. The grammar and spelling are hardly ever correct, with one of the most famous LOLcats being a picture of a smiling cat saying “I can has cheezburger?”

These cats do everything, from pushing invisible lawnmowers, to acting as monorails, to fixing computers and editing Wikipedia articles. They’re absolutely insane when you break them down, but they’re so damn adorable that it doesn’t matter.

Without a doubt they bring a smile to my face. There’s just something endearing about a cat inside of a computer tower saying “Yep, it needs moar internets,” or a Photoshopped image of two cats playing a Gameboy with a speech caption that says, “Let me show you my Pokemans!” and underneath reads, “MY POKEMANS Let me show you them.”

There are people that say they hate cats, and I’m pretty sure they’re the people who have never gone to lolcats.com, or icanhascheezburger.com, or stuffonmycat.com, or cuteoverload.com. Even a friend who calls me insane for loving LOLcats can’t help but laugh when he sees “Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate,” with a cat’s head popping out of a cut-out square in a ceiling.

I’m obsessed with LOLcats, and I don’t understand why people think they’re stupid. So what if the captions aren’t in proper English? Have you read the way most people write online? It’s much worse than “Timer goed off I swerz!”

I even have the LOLcats application for my Facebook. It gives me a warm feeling on the inside when I log in and see a cat with its paw over its mouth and in giant letters reads “LOL.”

Everyone says smiling releases chemicals that make you feel better. So, I say that if you’re sad, look at the smiling orange and white kitty with a prevalent message: “Cheer up, emo kid.”