Cats are polarizing. Non-cat people vehemently despise the entire species, readily listing the wrongs done to them and loved ones by felines. Meanwhile, cat people feel just as strongly, and are ready to tell you all the ways their cat is smarter, better, prettier, and more fun to be around than you'll ever be. But whether you love them or hate them, you have to admit there isn't anything much better than a funny cat video. So you don't have to waste your time filtering all the non-cat content out of your newsfeed, we've compiled a list of our favorite funny cat videos.

Cat Jump Fail with Music: Sail by AWOLNATION

First of all, "Sail" by AWOLNATION is an absolute banger under any circumstances. Second of all, this sneaky boi looks like he'll set your house on fire and laugh while it burns. Third, and finally, what an incredibly bad jump.

Cats vs Zombies

We love a high budget production, talented feline actors, and tasteful machine gun use. Most of all, we love cats in funny little vests committing graphic acts of violence. We hope the creator of this video has found the help he needs.

Official Video: Cat Bath Freak Out -Tigger the cat says 'NO!' to bath

This cat is not happy about bath time, and eerily screams "NO!" over and over again. Inexplicably, instead of calling an exorcist, the owners of the cat continue to laugh, ignoring the fact that Lucifer himself is emerging from the mouth of their furry friend.

Surprised Kitty (Original)

This video of a small kitten throwing it's paws up in surprise has gained almost 80 million views on Youtube. We have to wonder if the person to post this now famous 30 second clip had any idea of the cultural impact their kitten would have.

Boxing cat

While this boxing cat's behavior almost certainly indicates a feline neurological disorder and not an understanding of human sports concrete enough to generate imitation, it's pretty funny anyway. We're pretty sure he'd lose a boxing match though, he's pretty small.

The Savitsky Cats: Super Trained Cats Perform Exciting Routine - America's Got Talent 2018

We aren't sure if these talented cats are funny or just disturbing, but either way they're undeniably entertaining. And fluffy. Look at their little paws. We'd like to believe that the cats actually trained the two women, not the other way around.

Photo by Sq Lim (Unsplash)

We are not worthy of dogs.

They're loving, funny, loyal, and perfectly compatible with our desire to document and post everything on the Internet. In fact, one might argue that the Internet's surplus of dog and cat videos is one of the best things about living in our technologically overloaded 21st century. Their excesses of fluff and wide-eyed, unconditional love are salves for all our human faults.

In honor of #InternationalDogDay, here are seven of the best dog videos of all time.

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MUSIC

Noah Kahan's New Video Pokes Fun at an Old Rock Star Trope

The folk-pop singer-songwriter's latest video, "Mess," is an ode to man's best friend

Noah Kahan started gaining attention for his music when he began uploading songs to SoundCloud at eight years old.

Kahan, now 22, is realizing his lifelong dream of being a professional musician and singer-songwriter, and he has seen a great deal of success. Since signing to Republic Records in 2017, he has begun collaborating with producer Joel Little (known for his work with artists like Lorde and Khalid), has toured extensively, and has received a lot of recognition. His 2017 debut single, "Young Blood" has garnered over one million streams on the YouTube channel, IndieAir, and the follow-up, "Hurt Somebody," landed him a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Noah Kahan - Messwww.youtube.com

Now, Noah Kahan is back with yet another single, "Mess." The video for the song is a tongue-in-cheek play on the old trope of the homesick musician on the road. Although the song is a familiar – though sincere enough – lamentation of the alienation and estrangement felt by the nonstop touring that often comes along with musical success, the video approaches the subject with a self-aware sense of irony. Kahan is not pining for his family or a lover as he forlornly separates M&Ms by color in his backstage dressing room before a show. Instead, Kahan is tormented by how much he misses his dog.

The viewer is offered a series of vignettes in the video, some of which present the standard rock-star-on-tour sadness that we're familiar with, while others show Kahan having intimate, love-at-first-sight moments with other people's dogs that are equal parts endearing and creepy at the same time – at least until it becomes clear that these dogs are meant to be stand-ins for his own. By the time Kahan finally does make it home from tour, however, we expect a big sappy reunion where the beloved pup runs to greet her human in slow-motion, but it turns out – in a comically sad twist – that the dog has more important business to attend to in the front lawn.

Fans of Mumford & Sons, Hozier, and Cat Stevens will want to give Noah Kahan a listen. He will be on tour – and presumably missing his dog more than she misses him – in Europe and the UK come April.


Dustin DiPaulo is a writer and musician from Rochester, New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University and can most likely be found at a local concert, dive bar, or comedy club (if he's not getting lost somewhere in the woods).



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CULTURE

Collective Unconscious or Conscious Appropriation: Did Mac DeMarco Steal Mitski's Cowboy Archetype?

Mitski's cowboy was a meaningful subversion of patriarchal norms. What is Mac's cowboy trying to say?

Mitski has repeatedly announced that she doesn't care that fellow indie rocker Mac DeMarco just released a single called "Nobody," off his forthcoming new album, Here Comes the Cowboy. Of course, this news is coming about a year after the release of Mitski's fifth album, Be the Cowboy—which also happened to feature a lead single called "Nobody."


MAC DEMARCO - NOBODYwww.youtube.com

On social media, Mitski has been persistently laughing the whole thing off, writing that "I'm 100% sure Mac and I just went fishing in the same part of the collective unconscious… Idk you Mac and you clearly didn't know me lol but thanks for the laugh."

Still, it's hard to understand why no one—no producer, songwriter, or marketing agent—mentioned the similarities. To compound the strangeness, Mitski and DeMarco also both have the same PR person, whom Mitski apparently talks to every day. "What's wild is we have the same PR, so I LOVE my personal conspiracy theory that she heard the album and track titles but kept quiet thinking maybe some Mac fans will mistakenly find me," Mitski added.

After all, both musicians occupy comparable levels of recognition in a similar sector of indie rock. Plus Mitski's Be the Cowboy was one of 2018's best reviewed and most highly ranked albums; Mac and his team would've had to ignore every end-of-year list to have never heard of her.

Their music's also relatively similar, in that they both favor ambient guitars, world-weary lyrics, and dreamy imagery (just listen to DeMarco's "Moonlight on the River" next to Mitski's "Pink in the Night" for comparably psychedelic, mournful, lonely-in-the-dark sentiments)—though their takes on "Nobody" couldn't be more different. Mitski's is a frenetic pop-disco scream that touches on global warming and loneliness, whereas Mac's is a typically low-key, abstract musing that may be about television's ruinous effects on humanity.

Pink in the Nightwww.youtube.com

Moonlight on the Riverwww.youtube.com

Although Mitski might be cool with the presence of more than one cowboy in this town, her fans have not been as accepting. Today, Mitski implored enraged fans not to leap to her defense, tweeting, "while the mob is still in there fighting on my behalf. You may turn against me for saying this, I accept that, I just have to admit it's terrifying to have a big group of strangers acting on my behalf in ways I'd never act myself, and I don't even seem to matter in the equation."

So, to borrow a phrase from a review she wrote about Harry Styles, if Mitski reads this, she'll probably hate it. In that review, Mitski discussed the way that One Direction functions as an idealized projection screen for fans in need of pretty-boy icons to worship. In a very similar way, although Mitski may not have wanted this to happen, her music has become a projection screen for fans treasuring the opportunity to see their identities and emotions represented in an articulate and nuanced way.

After all, Mitski's utilization of cowboy imagery was a purposefully subversive reclamation of an archetypically masculine, colonialist trope. The cowboy—like the kings and demigods that preceded him—is usually a man, violently in charge, and always getting what he wants. Mitski's cowboy turned that trope on its head.

In an interview with The Outline, Mitski explained her album's title, saying that it "kind of came from the fact that I would always kind of jokingly say to myself, "Be the cowboy you wish to see the world," whenever I was in a situation where maybe I was acting too much like my identity, which is wanting everyone to be happy, not thinking I'm worthy, being submissive, and not asking for more. Every time I would find myself doing exactly what the world expects of me as an Asian woman, I would turn around and tell myself 'Well, what would a cowboy do?'"

Mac DeMarco's explanation was a bit different. "Cowboy is a term of endearment to me, I use it often when referring to people in my life. Where I grew up, there are many people that sincerely wear cowboy hats and do cowboy activities. These aren't the people I'm referring to," he said.

Looking at these descriptions side by side, it's easy to see that while Mitski herself might not be angry, some of her fans—many of whom don't often get to see much powerful, successful representation of their identities, mostly due to oppressive hegemonies of white power—might be taking offense. Mitski has grappled before with the implications of her music being taken as something far more symbolic and political than she intended. In response to suggestions that her "Your Best American Girl" was a fuck-you to white male-led music culture, she stated that the song was only about how she personally felt while processing her identity as a Japanese American woman in a relationship with a white man.

But one of Mitski's greatest talents is her ability to make microscopic views of her experience feel universal, and many fans have leaned into this, understanding her music as a touchstone of power, a nuanced and subversive center of solidarity and truth in a white supremacist-run world.

Mitski - Your Best American Girl (Official Video)www.youtube.com

Maybe this all was nothing more than a coincidence. But if Mitski and Mac DeMarco were truly fishing in the "same part of the collective unconscious," what corner of the mind was this, exactly? Maybe the cowboy represents a universal desire for a real hero in an era that seems to desperately need one, or something similarly loaded. But in all likelihood, DeMarco was probably just incredibly stoned, heard Be the Cowboy, and later became wholly convinced he'd dreamt it up himself.

Regardless, Be the Cowboyis available for streaming everywhere, and Here Comes the Cowboy will be coming for us all on May 10th.


Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York City. Follow her on Twitter at @edenarielmusic.


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