"Who Killed the Lulz?" Periodical

[Cainad (dec.)]

For posterity, here are two submissions. One from Cramulus and the other from my own diminutive, warped mind. These will (hopefully) be used as a regular column in the Intermittens publication.
The general format is to copypasta some excerpt of text and replace the significant character with "the lulz."

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for Lulz! I am looking for Lulz!"
  As many of those who did not believe in Lulz were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

  "Where has Lulz gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed them - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to crap up the whole internet? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire web? What did we do when we unchained the forum from its URL? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all forums? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying Lulz? Do we not smell anything yet of Lulz's decomposition? Lulzs too decompose. Lulz is dead. Lulz remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become Lulzs simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Again I say, I do not know what has become of the lulz, though I think--almost hope--that it is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been its closest friend, and a partial sharer of its terrible jokes about the unknown. I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful night. That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my shaken recollection. But of what followed, and of the reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I must insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and over again. You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode. I reply that I knew nothing beyond what I saw. Vision or nightmare it may have been--vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was--yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men. And why the lulz did not return, it or its shade--or some nameless thing I cannot describe--alone can tell.

And now for some new crap:

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened --there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind --the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight --my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder --there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters --and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "HOUSE OF LULZ."


Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;–vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow–sorrow for the lost Lulz-
For the rare and radiant joy whom the angels name Lulz-
Nameless here for evermore.


What it is, only God knows. In terms of matter I suppose the thing Ammi described would be called a gas, but this gas obeyed the laws that are not of our cosmos. This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just the lulz out of space - a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.


When the Years had carries away Yonath, and Yonath was dead, there was no longer a prophet among men.

And still men sought to know.

Therefore they said unto the lulz: "Be thou our prophet, and know all things, and tell us concerning the wherefore of It All."

    And the lulz said: "I know all things." And men were pleased.

And the lulz said of the Beginning that it was in the lulz's own garden, and of the End that it was in the sight of the lulz.

And men forgot the lulz.

One day the lulz saw Mung behind the hills making the sign of Mung. And the lulz was the lulz no more.

(^Dunsany was a weird fucker)