My dog listens to Radiohead. She has two sweatshirts from American Apparel and occasionally naps on top of old issues of Paste magazine, and if I offer her my Olive Garden leftovers, she will eat them  ironically. Especially the breadsticks. 
 
 O.K., so I just pretend my dog does all that. Which, as weird as that is, still doesn't make me as weird as people who actually do it, such as those who features their pets on the websites Hipster Puppies and Hipster Kitty. Both combine two of the Internet's favorite things: cute animals and making fun of hipsters. If they could somehow incorporate people falling down, they might be the most popular sites on the Web. (Watch TIME's video about Ben Huh, creator of the websites LOLcats and Fail Blog.) 
 
 There's Clara, the dog who wears vintage dresses and gets all her information from The Daily Show. And Bailey, the gray cat who will bore you with lectures about why he feels Fellini's 8½ is superior to La Dolce Vita. Cosmo regrets hooking up with someone at Bonnaroo, and Daisy is on Day 5 of the "master cleanse." 
 
 The LOLcatsmeetsHipster Bingo site, which launched a few weeks ago, spread across the Internet faster than that Jersey Shore clip of Snooki getting punched in the face. Hipster Puppies proves that you don't need an original idea to create a popular blog; you simply need to combine two things that people love  and sometimes love to hate. (That reminds me, I need to start my own blog: Republican Babies.) 
 
 Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take my dog to the flea market. She's looking for an old victrola she can use to accessorize her Brooklyn apartment. ||||| Hold on to your hair, Little Monsters, Ms. Gaga is back on the cover of Rolling Stone this week, and -- no surprise here -- she looks crazy! Now, I love Lady's theatrical looks, so this isn't an indictment of the over-the-top, see-through, sparkly, and spiky things. It's more of a statement about what's out: The Lady Gaga hair bow. 
 
 Clearly she's a victim of her own success. I think making a bow out of your own hair is now passe. You've been there and done that, Ms. Gaga, and it's time to move on. Before you and your stylist get too clever, though, here are some other things you should avoid in the way of the hairy hairstyles. 
 
 You are welcome. 
 
 The Princess Beatrice 
 
 Everyone's favorite look to hate, Princess Beatrice's royal wedding attire launched a thousand memes. But don't fall into the popularity trap, Gaga. Although I'd love to see someone attempt this on actual human hair, it might burn my eyes to look upon it. 
 
 Grammy Award 
 
 Sure, she's deserving of the music biz's top honor, but there's no need to turn anyone's hair into the iconic image. 
 
 Woodland Creatures 
 
 Also out, even if cute. Especially out to re-create on your head. (Feel free to take this advice too, hipsters.) 
 
 Donald Trump 
 
 Donald Trump and "hair" usually don't go together when you're talking style dos. Also, we just don't need to see him ever again, ever. In hair, or in the flesh. 
 
 Are you over this hair -- hairstyle? 
 
 
 
 
 
 Images (top to bottom): Rolling Stone, eBay, Grammy, fuzzcat/Flickr, NBC ||||| Kotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am. 
 
 Earlier today, numerous websites reported that Hello Kitty is not a cat. That's not only an oversimplification, it's also not quite true. Hello Kitty is a feline—just an anthropomorphic one, Sanrio told Kotaku. 
 
 The whole Hello-Kitty-is-not-a-cat thing was set off by an L.A. Times article on an upcoming Hello Kitty at the Japanese American National Museum. According to Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, prepared a written text for the exhibit. According to Yano: 
 
 I was corrected — very firmly. That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty. 
 
 Of course, Hello Kitty is a character that has come to represent Japanese cute, but isn't the point of personification giving animals human characteristics? I mean, do we really need to point out things like real crickets don't have top hats and umbrellas like Jiminy Cricket? 
 
 When Kotaku called Sanrio's Tokyo headquarters today and asked whether or not Hello Kitty was indeed a cat, a spokesperson explained, "Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It's going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a personification of a cat." 
 
 The specific word that the Sanrio spokesperson used to describe Hello Kitty was "gijinka" (擬人化), which means "anthropomorphization" or "personification." 
 
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 [Photo: attemptedbloggery] 
 
 One again, to clarify, I asked the Sanrio spokesperson, "Then, it would be going too far to say that Hello Kitty was not a cat?" The spokesperson replied, "Yes, that would be going too far." 
 
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 In short, you cannot remove the cat element from Hello Kitty. So, i t goes without saying that Hello Kitty is not a house cat like Tom from Tom and Jerry. Well, Mickey Mouse isn't a mouse like Jerry, either. He can drive a car. Over the years, he's had various jobs. He even has a pet—a dog named Pluto. But, Mickey Mouse is indeed a mouse, just like Hello Kitty is a cat. 
 
 [Photo: Bone Trouble] 
 
 Many of the headline covering this L.A. Times article called Hello Kitty "human." Yet, Yano never says that Hello Kitty is human. She simply states that Hello Kitty is a girl. That corresponds with Hello Kitty's official profile, which says the character is a "cheerful and nice girl" (明るくて、優しい女のコ or "akarukute, yasashii onna no ko"). 
 
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 The character's official profile never says she is human, and among cat lovers in Japan, it's very common for cats to be referred to as "girl" or "boy," instead of by the Japanese gender markers designated for animals (namely, "osu" or 雄 for "male" animals and "mesu" or 雌 for female animals). The reason for this is that by using terms like "girl" or "boy" for animals, they can personify them through vocabulary and raise them above the status of mere "pet" to a member of the family. 
 
 [Photo: GalleryHip] 
 
 When speaking with Sanrio, I asked if Hello Kitty was like Snoopy, another animal character that can walk upright. Sanrio pointed out that Hello Kitty was different because Snoopy still lives in a doghouse, and Hello Kitty, well, lives in a house. But, so do The Three Little Pigs, Mr. Toad from The Wind and the Willows, and a whole array of animal characters from the popular tradition. 
 
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 Part of the argument that Hello Kitty was not a cat centered around her having a cat for a pet. There's a long tradition of anthropomorphic characters with animal pets. Heck, Minnie Mouse has a pet cat. Yes, a mouse has a cat for a pet. Hello suspension of disbelief! 
 
 [Photo: MMO Central Forums] 
 
 Then, there's Goofy. Disney very clearly points out that "Goofy is a dog," but he is a personification of a dog. According to Disney, "Goofy was created as a human character, as opposed to Pluto, who was a pet, so he walked upright and had a speaking voice." This is why Goofy's full name is sometimes given as "Goofus D. Dawg." Yet, even though he's also owned a dog, it would be a mistake to call him a human. He's not. 
 
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 [Photo: CartoonScrapbook] 
 
 In both the Disney universe and the Sanrio universe, there's a clear separation between the pet animal and the anthropomorphic animal character. 
 
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 Let's say, however, you are still not convinced. Well, when Hello Kitty first appeared in 1974 as a character on a coin purse, she didn't even have a name. The coin purse simply read, "Hello!" In Japan at that time, the character was known as "the white cat with no name" (名前のない白い子猫), as if the character belonged in a Spaghetti Western. 
 
 
 
 [Photo: SyleCloseUp] 
 
 Then, there's the name. It's obvious, but "Kitty" means "cat" in English, but "kitty" or "kitten" in Japanese is "koneko" (子猫 or 仔猫 or 小猫). So, what's the cat connection for Japan? Wouldn't "Kitty" simply sound like a character's name to the Japanese? Maybe, but in 2009, a Sanrio spokesperson appearing on Japanese television show Megami no Marche said that in around 1975, the character was named "Kitty" after Alice's pet cat in Through the Looking-Glass. This probably explains why Hello Kitty lives in the United Kingdom. It also helps explain why you cannot take the cat out of Hello Kitty. 
 
 
 
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 [Photo: Victorian Web] 
 
 And as Japanese site Byoukan Sunday points out, Sanrio's website groups Hello Kitty with the cat characters. The category on this page is "neko" (ねこ) or "cat." You can see it also includes Hello Kitty's pet cat, Charmmy Kitty. 
 
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 Even without all this, when talking with Sanrio earlier today, I pointed out that most Japanese people would understand Hello Kitty as a cat character (Yes, I also believe anyone in any country would understand that). But nobody would mistake her for an actual cat. Just like nobody would mistake the countless characters from American cartoons as actual animals, or the numerous anthropomorphized animals from fables and folklore. 
 
 That is what makes the fact this "Hello-Kitty-is-not-a-cat" notion became a story and then went viral so darn surprising. There are literally thousands of years of animal personifications. Certainly, people understand that Mickey Mouse is not a real mouse, just like they understand that Hello Kitty is not real cat. They don't need to be real. They're characters. And as their names denote, Mickey is a mouse, and Kitty is, well, a cat. 
 
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 Hello Kitty [Sanrio] 
 
 To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
– Maybe you don’t yet have a baby you can turn into a Ramones-listening, eye-rolling version of your younger self—but certainly you have a pet. Time points to Hipster Puppies and Hipster Kitty, both dedicated to celebrating pets and poking fun at hipster humans. The quickly-going-viral sites prove that for a popular blog, all you need to do is “combine two things that people love—and sometimes love to hate," writes Claire Suddath.