clowntown daily dispatch (acey’s bejeweled baguette): currently screaming about fanfiction

girls good and awesome and pretty. lov them

 

Me too I’m so with you on this

 

not a tmbg song and thus not today's song but die young by kesha is super good actually

 

here's today's tmbg song tho: last wave!

 

the machine of death books are both so fucking good

 

I've never heard of them what are they about?

 

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED.

They're a pair of short story anthologies based on, of all things, this Dinosaur Comics strip. The stories all share the same premise: there is a machine that can tell you, from a sample of your blood, how you will die. The predictions are often vague or ironic or otherwise odd-seeming--but they are never wrong.

Here's the official description thingy:

And that's the one thing all the stories have in common. (And not all of them follow the exact backstory of the machine given there, either!)

There are lots and lots of stories, by a wide array of writers, and they all have very different takes on the idea. (Some of my favorites: A girl who gets her test done on her 16th birthday because of the importance her school's social ladder puts on one's death prediction; a woman who helps catch Zimbabwe's first official serial killer with the help of the machine and the local medicine man who owns it; a story set in a small 1950s (seemingly?) town where the protagonist's slip says "on the john," obviously to her utter mortification (and there's a twist there, of course); the story of an Indian woman working at a call center for the machine and her struggles with whether or not to get the test done and prove her deeply superstitious mother wrong; and a man who is very excited to get, as his death slip says, "torn apart and devoured by lions.")

I highly recommend both books, and here's the best part: YOU CAN READ THE FIRST ONE, IN ITS ENTIRETY, FOR 100% FREE RIGHT HERE. (PDF format, but hey, it's a free awesome book!)

 

Please tell me she dies on top of someone named John.

 

Nope, afraid not (although there are similar examples of that kinda thing that DO happen in other stories—in fact, there’s a side plot of sorts in one where a guy gets “joy,” and everyone is speculating on what the fuck that could mean...and he gets killed when he gets hit by a car driven by a woman named Joy).

Spoiler: story spoilers

It turns out that the machine that had been brought to that town was a scam. This comes to light when the protagonist is talking to a waiter she’s friendly with, having told no one of her prediction out of embarrassment, and he admits that his slip said—you guessed it—“on the john.”

Turns out everyone in town got the same prediction from the fake machine, even people who claimed to have gotten things like “shot” or “motorcycle accident”...and everyone there was too ashamed to tell the truth. After all, who would want to admit to kickin’ the bucket while taking a dump?

 

I do like that but I think my idea would've been funnier. Oh well. They sound like really great stories :D

 

They really are! :D Admittedly there were a couple (as in maybe two or three total, across both books) that I couldn’t get all that into, but the vast majority are golden (and ymmv on the ones I couldn’t get into, for that matter).

 

GUYS HOLY FUCK THE APARTMENT COMPLEX I APPLIED TO IN SAN JOSE CALLED

I HAVE AN INTAKE APPOINTMENT ON THE 8TH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

 

Independence, girl!

 

also???? job interview????? this saturday??????

 

SU is a fucked up but very positive show for kids

 

this is very true, to be fair

 

today's song: electric car!

wholesome wife-husband duet...i lov

 

all time what is the best song of 2018

 

today’s song: i’ll be haunting you!

(watch the vid for this one, i know i’ve shared it but it’s fuckin awesome okay)