This is awesome. This is... this is just so freaking spectacular. I've been waiting for this day for so, so long. Our country is going to be so much better now that this day has finally come. And to think, those headless journalistic chickens at CNN are at the center of it all! Oh, I am as giddy as the first school kid who ever licked up a line of Colombian coke thinking it was a pixie stick.

Yeah, I know the big news of the day is that Sarah Palin did the political equivalent of storming off in a huff and threatening to run away from home and never come back, but that's not why I'm excited. Okay, okay, I know that there's no possible way Palin's departure could mean anything less than some fantastic meltdown, whether in her personal life or in the Republican party as a whole, so maybe I should be more interested in that.

I mean, yeah, it'd be twelve shades of awesome if she ditched what is likely her last legitimate job so she can go star in a reality show that would chronicle her descent into desperation and self-loathing. Better yet, I hope she's hot in the biscuit to run for President so she'll show up lukewarm to the 2012 primaries and completely ruin whatever's left of the GOP. That way we can all sit down with our robot-humping grandkids and tell them about the time a 73-year-old jerk beat one of America's oldest institutions to death with a bumbling idiot from Alaska.

But I'm not here to talk about Palin. No, sir. I'm here to talk about the unequivocal death of LOL.

That's right. LOL is no longer net-speak! How do I know this? Well, like anyone hip to Internet culture, I'm aware of the CNN Principle. The CNN-P states that an Internet trend has reached its nadir when CNN starts covering it. Though it has been an arduous clump of years, we can finally say goodbye to the single most annoying acronym in our culture. In a fire ship of a fluff piece, CNN.com "writer" Jordan Valinsky compiled an article called "10 Humor Sites Sure To Make You LOL". This beautiful product of laziness and a limp effort to capture a younger demographic is basically 2009's official list of Stuff You Used To Like.

So, while you furiously update your bookmarks to make sure you never visit Garfield Minus Garfield ever again or kill time at work unironically indulging in Graph Jam, remember that you will never, ever, ever sound young or hip again so long as you use LOL. Not in a chat, a text, a freaking Tweet and (my personal favorite) NEVER AGAIN IN A SPOKEN CONVERSATION!!!!

So, hop to it, kids! The Internet needs a new way to express amusement and/or dismiss dickheaded remarks like they're not snide and offensive. In the meantime, light a votive, say a Kaddish, post some goatse or do whatever you raving hordes of loud-mouthed Internet atheists do when something passes from this world.

LOL

1994-2009