There's One, Only!

Filthy Lie: The Brief Toppling of Instapundit

It was dark in the suburban garage. The candles burning around the edge of the circle only emphasized the darkness rather than dispell it. Inscribed into the circle was the traditional pentagram. It and the circle were drawn on the floor in fresh chicken blood.¹

The two supplicants had worked on the pattern all night. And now, in the darkest hours before the dawn, they were ready.² They began to chant. Klaatu Baraata Nikto.

The darkness in the room seemed to congeal in the center of the pentagram. They started chanting even faster. And louder. Klaatu Baraata Nikto. Klaatu Baraata Nikto! KLAATU BARAATA NIKTO!

"Ahem." The voice emanated from somewhere in the darkness at the center of the room. "That doesn't really work, you know. Besides it's just a line from a 50's Sci-Fi flick."

"But Dark One, it brought you here, didn't it?" one of the supplicants said.

"Actually, the evil desire in your heart did all the work. Everything else is just window dressing." The voice answered. "And don't call me the Dark One. I am Phil, the prince of Insufficient Light, ruler of Heck."³

The couple tried to make out what the speaker looked like, but the lighting was just not good enough. Finally, after squinting for several minutes, they gave up and asked their question. "Oh Phil, can you grant us supremacy at the top of the TTLB Ecosystem? Over even the giant Instapundit!"

"Hmmm. Tricky. And what do I get for this?" Phil asked.

"Our soles!" they answered.

"Let me draw up the contract, and we've got ourselves a deal!" Phil stated.

The next day, the pair sat in front of their computer, constantly hitting the refresh button or the TTLB Ecosystem page. As they watched, their ranking grew higher and higher, untill at last, it eclipsed that of Instapundit.

"HAPPY DANCE!" They shouted as they began to caper around.

Suddenly, the computer monitor blinked. When they looked at the rankings they saw their site's dropping like a stone. In moments, their ranking had fallen almost completely off the charts, all the way down to that of a Flippery Fish.

Then the monitor dimmed, and a voice echoed in the now insufficiently lit room. "BWA HA HA HA HA! I am now here for your souls!"

"But what happened?" they cried. "We were supposed to be at the top of the Ecosystem!"

"Ah," said Phil, "But you failed to read the fine print to see how long you would remain there. Besides, I have a prior agreement with Evil Glenn for the top spot. If he even finds out that I gave you 10 minutes over him, there'd be, well... heck to pay."

With that, his figure slowly coalesced out of the darkness. "Time to pay up."

The Prince of Insufficient Light glowered as he drifted away from the house with his payments clutched in a small cloth bag. Stupid! he mentally berated himself, Always read all of the fine print.

Back in the house the two bloggers looked at each other. "Well, that was a close one," the first said. "He nearly took our eternal souls."

"Yeah," his companion replied. "We sure got lucky... But my feet are really starting to hurt."

---

¹ Which was kind of unnecessary, as any dark red fluid would have done just as well. In fact, the shape wasn't even that important. Many an intrusion of the nether-realms into our own world started with a leaky transmission.

² Yes I know, this sort of thing is usually done at midnight, but with the advent of Daylight Savings Time, thing have gotten a little lax.

³ This character was borrowed from the Dilbert Universe. Mr. Adams didn't seem to be using him at the moment. On the off chance that Mr. Adams reads this... I am a worm. I am not worthy.

Posted by GEBIV at July 22, 2005 10:26 PM | TrackBack