Ambrose Bierce

	“	COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.	„
	—Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary, on the state of mind felt by trolls reveling in the butthurt tears of lolcows.

One of the forefathers of modern lulz.

Ambrose Bierce (born Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce) was born June 24, 1842 and while he became known for a lot of things during his life, his most notable achievements included writing The Devil's Dictionary, a lulzy predecessor to modern day ED (and from which ED draws inspiration), and being such a pissy bastard, many people referred to him as "Bitter Bierce".

Early life

He was born the son of Marcus and Laura Bierce, and because his daddy was a terminal autist, he and rest of his twelve siblings were all given names whose first letter started with A.

His family was poor, but they encouraged their son Ambrose to read and write, so from a young age, Ambrose Bierce was trained in the art of writing something more entertaining than the graffiti and piss streaks on a Walmart bathroom stall, which would further Bierce's career in producing lulz later in life.

When he was fifteen, his first job was being a printer's devil for a newspaper in Ohio, which was a fancy way of saying he handled big rolls of printing machine diarrhea.

Military Career

	“	BATTLE, n. A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.	„
	—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, noting that battle essentially means "If you can't win an argument with someone, just kill the motherfucker and thus win by default.

When The War of Northern Aggression began, he joined the Union side and first got noticed by his superiors in the Battle of Philippi when he stupidly dragged some fucking idiot who got shot out of harm's way instead of leaving the dumbass to die of his own fail. Some newspapers thought this was valorous, but since his superiors were smarter than a bunch of fucktarded newspaper editors, he was eventually made a First Lieutenant in 1862 and was assigned as a "topographical engineer", which basically meant he drew pretty pictures of places where it most likely the Confederates would shoot Union soldiers in the ass since most of his commanders were too fucking dumb to figure that shit out for themselves.

Regardless of having a job that should have kept his ass out of trouble, he nearly got his head blown off in 1864, spent most of the summer sleeping off the bullet in his brain, and was eventually told to GTFO the Union Army in January 1865, but not before becoming a brevet major.

Personal Life

	“	LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.	„
	—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, on the topic of whether living is important, noting that suicide advocates tend to enjoy lulz and live longer than the rest of us.

Bierce got married in 1871, had a daughter and two sons, one of which decided to an hero because some bitch wouldn't fuck him, and the other died of alcoholism, and both died before their daddy did. Bierce eventually left his wife after he read some letters of hers and discovered a secret code in them about how she was slinging her cunt for another guy behind his back.

He also suffered lifelong asthma and had constant headaches from getting shot in the head during the Civil War, both of which made him a cranky motherfucker and contributed to his desire to take the piss out of life itself.

Famous fudgepacker, Oscar Wilde once trolled Bierce by telling him that he'd like to kiss him, leading Bierce to declare, "Do not want! GTFO, fag." Bierce later felt bad about this and the two made friends shortly afterwards.

Journalism

After the Civil War, Bierce spent most of his time writing for various news rags eventually coming to be employed by William Randolph Hearst; who could be considered a forefather to ED itself as he enjoyed lulz and courted a wide readership looking for their latest lulz fix. It was while working for Hearst that Bierce would come to master his trade in the art of lulz dispersal.

Railroad Refinancing Bill

When building the First Transcontinental Railroad, the Union and Central Pacific Railroads amassed 130 million dollars in debt, and even though the US government was really fucking lazy in expecting the money back, Collis Potter Huntington (one the guys responsible for the huge debt) tried to convince Congress to quietly write off the debt because he was a cheapass.

Hearst, however, saw some delicious drama in fucking this faggotry up, so he sent Bierce to confront Huntington on the steps of the Capitol Building and threatened to expose his Jewry to the world. When the rich fuck asked him how much money he'd have to pay Bierce to shut up, Bierce responded with,

	“	My price is one hundred thirty million dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town, you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United States.	„

Not long after, the U.S public flipped the fuck out over Huntington's corruption, Congress was fucking embarrassed over being the ass end of the drama, and the railroads were forced to pay the money they owed in the first place.

McKinley Assassination Lulz

Doing it right.

Bierce gained quite a reputation for taking the piss out of politicians and taking potshots at the fail of society, and when someone killed President McKinley in 1900, opponents of William Randolph Hearst made up totally believable claims that a short poem written about the assassination of William Goebel was really Bierce and Hearsts' way of being responsible for McKinley's death.

For the record, the full text of the poem went like this:

	“	The bullet that pierced Goebel's breast Can not be found in all the West; Good reason, it is speeding here To stretch McKinley on his bier.	„

The incident caused an epic shitstorm of controversy, to the point most rival newspapers and even the Secretary of State accused Hearst and Bierce of calling for McKinley's assassination, and even though Hearst was kicked out of a club for rich fucks and had his presidential campaign killed in the womb, he was so amused at the seething butthurt Bierce's unintentional troll had started that he never fired Bierce nor confirmed or denied his enemies suspicions about his intentions.

Literary works

Bierce wrote about a variety of topics, not just those oriented towards the lulz, but even his most failtastic writing was praised as being well written.

Most of his war stories revolved around the theme that "war fucking sucks for the poor bastards on the firing line". He also wrote poetry of the grotesquerie genre (in plain English, poetry with weird and disturbing shit written to freak people out.)

However, his most famous work was The Devil's Dictionary, which is an omnibus of various articles he wrote in newspapers taking the piss out of many common words, phrases, and memes of his day. He himself preferred the title The Cynic's Word Dictionary, but either way, it was and still is funny as hell, and is the direct inspiration behind the writing philosophy of Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Disappearance from history

In 1913, while touring some Civil War battlefields, he met up with a spic named Pancho Villa who was starting shit in Mexico, and because he was bored, he tagged along as an observer.

His last known communication with humanity was to Blanche Partington, a woman many people suspected him of fucking, but by her account she was simply a newfag at writing and the closest she got to giving him a sexual favor was fellating his desire to help her with her creative writing career.

Anyway, his last letter to her closed with the words "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination".

After that, he more or less disappeared from history.

Some speculate he decided to end his life in a lulzy way, others argue he was shot by angry spics, and some people just admit they don't have a fucking clue what happened to the guy argue Aliens took him away.

Lulzy Quotes From Bierce's Work

	“	Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.	„
	—A description of just how bad a retard's fail is.

	“	Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.	„
	—this is that sensation you feel when you successfully troll someone.

	“	Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.	„
	—You just know Anonymous loves this guy.

	“	Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.	„
	—Ambrose Bierce, Epigrams, describing why memefags are the parties responsible for the death of lulz.

	“	Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.	„
	—Truer words were never spoken about The Devil's Dictionary and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Previous Quote | Next Quote

See Also

• Cthulhu - Bierce contributed a little to H.P. Lovecraft's work, when he wasn't busy scaring the shit out of him.
• Drama
• Encyclopedia Dramatica
• Lulz
• Troll
• William Tecumseh Sherman - One of the forefathers of Anonymous.
• William Randolph Hearst

External Links

• Ambrose Bierce on Wikipedia
• Bierce's works, publicly available for reading & download from Project Gutenberg
• Online edition of The Devil's Dictionary
• The Ambrose Bierce Project - a digital resource for historyfags.

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