The .LOL! file always begins with a joke whose length will vary, and then may include a structured 4D-Six-Sigma XML hierarchic matrix of a number of links to bitmaps, each link describing the bitmap format, resolution, and, optionally, including the actual bits of the bitmap as a binary BLOB in the Three_Little_Indians format (ISO 5555), etc.
Finding the
guidelines for each .LOL! file ... which not only may be very different for each file, but, also, often mutate every time each file is accessed ... is well-known for its computational complexity; while computer scientists debate if the problem is, indeed, NPHard, or NPComplete, or NPHalfassed, there is, at present, no one algorithm that is always useful, or successful.
Various heuristics have emerged, however, and the most performant are those that use a Quantumly Entangled noise source as the engine that drives a Monte Carlo simulation. Scientists have noted a correlation between solar maxima and minima and the success in parsing the file format, but there is, as yet, no significant theoretical hypothesis for the source (causality) of this correlation.
A significant prevalence of insanity and/or a large number of suicides among academic researchers working on the nature of the .LOL! file has been noted, starting, of course, with the inventor of the format, the American pro-Nazi broadcaster William Joyce (aka Lord Haw-Haw), hanged for being a traitor after World War II.
Stephen Hawking, the world-famous astrophysicist and cosmologist, was once asked about .LOL! files; he is reported to have said:
"So far as we know their distribution is not correlated with the cosmic microwave background radiation; on a practical level it would be more correct to say that a .LOL! file will find you, than you will find an .LOL! file, but, whatever you do, if you have one, or if one has you, do not turn your back on it."
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