It doesn't have the one I best remember, in which you are the victim of Mayan ritual sacrifice.
Which ending? The one where your last sight is the priest pulling out your still beating heart or the one where the knife breaks and you linger for several hours?
"You stride confidently into the District Attorney's convention, sober and rested. But it's too late! The bats from outside Barstow are real, and the hotel is full of them! Without your magic acid powers you're helpless to fight off the thousands of flying furry bodies infesting the casino floor. With your last thought, you wonder why none of the bats are attacking the prosecutors, and why none of the prosecutors are trying to help you..."
"You sit in the bunker hearing the bombs fall above you and watching Eva's lungs release their last breath. 'I should have never invaded Russia with such a late start in the season,' you think as you raise the pistol."
"You realize that your own precious child, your baby, fails to grasp the suffocating effect of the feathers. Giggling, she places one after another into your nostrils. With your mouth heavily taped shut, and your hands bound behind you, you give a note of gratitude that your child is not crying in terror. As the feathers begin to fill your nostrils, your vision clouds over. You lose consciousness."
"At last, you've defeated the thousands of interchangeable palace guards! Your karate skills have served you well when faced with Akuma's trained hawk, his elite guards, and even Akuma himself. You approach the princess you have been bound to save and prepare to kick her square in the face, when suddenly she counterattacks and drops you with one blow."
5 sounds disturbingly as though it is taken from first-hand experience.
"You watch from the woods in shock as the bandit prepares to kill the samurai Tajomaru. Overcome by the unjustness of this outcome, you rush out into the clearing, screaming, arms raised high. Too late you realize that the dry leaves are covering a deep pit. As you lay on the bottom of the pit, you find yourself plaintively hoping that your story is one day told. But it is too late for you: you die."
"Your mind races furiously, debating the impaled metal through your stomach from the bear trap. Recalling stories of valiance where the hero gnaws off a limb, you set to work, nibbling a doughnut hole through your torso. Obviously your enthusiasm proves futile and you bleed out, with a tell-tale blood mustache drying over your mouth."
As your eyes dimly view the lines on the EKG flattening, as you take one last look and realize that there are no loved ones near you, just a harried nurse who will be on to the next dying, elderly patient in a matter of minutes, you have a single thought -- why did I waste so much of my life on blog comments?
6: Mechner reference FTW. Everybody who played that game must've gotten killed by the princess at some point.
"Shocked by what she has discovered, Charlotte Haze breaks for the door. 'No!' you shout, rushing after her. Running past her, you block her path and kneel in supplication on the lawn. 'I can change! I love you, Charlotte! I understand that now!' Suddenly, a car speeding around your quiet suburban corner misses the turn and jumps the curb. As the mass of metal flies towards you, your last thought is for all the wonderful, age-appropriate romance you could have had."
...Er, the bandit is Tajomaru. So it's technically NOT perfect, but very good.
"You die in a blazing eyeblink for the third time that hour, because you can never time running between the gaps in the poison quite right. Your friends laugh at you, but fortunately they didn't need you and kill the necromancer without your help this time. Dumbass."
"Your last thought is that you shouldn't have trusted the burning rope to support your weight, after all. After your fall, however, you are rushed to the emergency room and saved, although there is severe hemorrhaging in your brain. You live for thirty more years at the hospital, flickering in and out of a slumbering consciousness. Your organs are gradually harvested."
"Sick with the sense of human ingratitude [you] sank upon the sand.
"The island became [your] home.
"There [you] eked out a miserable existence, feeding on sand and gravel and dressing [your]self in cactus plants. Years passed. Eating sand and mud slowly undermined [your] robust constitution. [You] fell ill. [You] died. [You] buried [your]self."
"The lack of oxygen reaching your brain causes you to lose consciousness before you can loosen the cord but not before you can envision just how this will play out in the press."
"It occurs to you that not many deaths involve both fiery lava and icy cold ocean water. The combination of scorching, salt, and water turns out to result in a melting of your body, and you become puddle-like like a microwaved Barbie doll."
There should be a choose-your-own-adventure that takes you through TFA.
The latest one on the tumblr is from Nintendo Adventure Book: Double Trouble, which sounds awesomely bad. "If you choose to jump, turn to page 65. If instead you choose to throw a fireball, turn to page 72. Repeat 500 times." That said, having the Koopas actually eat Mario is pretty edgy for Nintendo.
Mario thinks about how simple life was in Brooklyn. "All I had to worry about was blocked drains," he says mournfully, as he jumps over a skittering blue snapping turtle.
25: "The anaphylaxis tightened its grip. Your airways grew narrow; it wouldn't be long now. What a time to discover a food allergy. And yogurt, of all things."
There was actually a Mario TV show. Thanks to Netflix and a small child, I've seen the horror. Nicole Eggert was in one and she's apparently managed to scrub that from her IMDB page. I suppose even she doesn't have the power to remove Charles in Charge.
Never mind. It is there. It was just in the "self" section.
Finally, in agony and unable to pull yourself up with your impaled hands and feet, you suffocate. Because your Father has restricted your game time, you will not be permitted to play again for three days.
1: The one I best remember is this one. One of the hero's deaths takes place at the hands of a creature called the Quickdeath. Seriously.
"'Christ, what an asshole!' The leader of the others was splashing right through the water hole carrying what looked like a freaking bone. Apparently it was not going to be just another routine day of threats and posturing after all. And then the bone came down on your head and body--again and again. 'Where in the hell did that idiot get that idea?' flashed through your mind as you breathed your last."
"Too late, you realize that your magic swim trunks interpreted your swindle as a wish. Your last thought before the pain from the cancer makes thought impossible is 'Those mediocre gnocchi in curry sauce weren't worth it...'"
You know what would make a great thread? Devising poetic deaths for each other. I really think it would build community, guys.
"As no bystanders seemed inclined to help him while he choked on a piece of lion meat, Halford reflected that perhaps allowing the heirs of Dr. Heimlich to patent his eponymous maneuver was a mistake after all."
I am proud that when Unfogged thinks of gruesomely murdering one of its own, it thinks of me.
COMMENTER: CAUSE OF DEATH
Megan: neighbors
Urple: too many to list, I'm going with condor attack or eaten alive by dogs on farm
LB: opposing counsel
Tweety: recumbent bicycle accident
Trapnel: suffocated to death in colorful unitard speed skating suit/burned alive in library of Alexandria by forces of reaction
Natlio: Shot by revolutionaries
Gswift: Officer-involved shooting
Stormcrow: In Mousetrap-the-board-game like incident, soccer ball hits rock hits framed map on wall, map causes death
"In horror, you cast your gaze around the dimly-lit mountain cave and watch as the other members of your navy SEAL team writhe uncontrollably, gasping for breath, slaves to this bizarre mix of pain and pleasure which is now washing over you as well. If only you had taken his warning seriously, but now it is too late, and you realize that the superkoranic fellatio power of the Gayatollah abu-labs has indeed finished you all."
You volley at deuce and see your Swiss opponent begin his lob. You reverse course and the world turns upside down. You've slipped on the rain-slickened grass - again. As your shoulder hits, the ball lands, plop, softly on the baseline. The Duchess and her sister gasp. You stare up at the traitorous retractable roof and you know how it will end.
urple: a genuinely novel human sexual activity
"As urple peered into the dryer vent, an ominous roaring sound came from above; several decades of incompletely flushed petrified turds had finally broken loose."
Tweety: recumbent bicycle accident
No commitment to realism? Why not just make it rollerblades or a shake weight or something.
47: I was thinking broad-sided by a triathlete running a stop sign.
A sacrificial cenote of the Maya is again prepared, but filled with tapioca pudding. The commenter is brought to the precipice in a costume from American Gladiators, with Farrah's hair and Tom Selleck's mustache. She drowns, but it's a delicious end.
42.last: Shockingly, there is in fact a relatively large framed map (two USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles) that sits above my computer table at home
I thought it was the bent that took out Tweety. Not that he was riding one.
(BTW, a buddy of mine road his bike up Mt. Washington on Saturday. Wow!)
"I'm having trouble interpreting these blood test results, Mrs. Urple, does your husband's diet include anything out-of-the-ordinary?"
54: "Also, we really need to discuss your pap smear."
42.2: I suspect the "eaten by dogs" is already reserved.
COMMENTER: CAUSE OF DEATH
teo: Run over by out-of-control musher
Smearcase: Paroxysm of joy upon hearing the most perfect contralto aria ever performed
nosflow: Poisoned by eating too many apricot pits
42 acknowledges the only truth to be found here. I am immortal. I cannot be killed.
nosflow: Exposure to a surfeit of misused colons.
Moby/Stanley: doctor/nurse/phrarmacist fails to notice pun
Or wife/sibling/neighbor does notice pun.
60, 61: Alternately, angry mob notices pun and can't take it anymore.
Shearer: failure to solve frame problem.
I'm redoing the sound for this, but I might as well link to it while this thread is alive.
Jackmormon: assassins dispatched from the Tabernacle?
md20/400: trips over something at 9/11 memorial, strikes head on one of those bent platform things
dsquared: an *actual* streetfight
ttam: stray kick while officiating a savate match
essear: Struck by a stray Higgs boson which turns out to be *extremely* massive.
64: Megan: death by fiery flying sofa
"If only the house had been air-conditioned, the sofa might never have ignited", the fire investigator lamented.
"The deceased also exhibited an unusual reluctance to pour water on the sofa once it was in flames."
nosflow: "Excellent! You have decided to stop being a prescriptivist. Unfortunately, a commenter immediately misuses an abbreviation. You feel very sic. Maybe you shouldn't have eaten all that .py after all."
Goddammit! Why do these threads always happen when I am doing a lot of work, or on my way out to the local tavern?!
Preliminary conclusion based on thread so far: There are a lot of ways to die in California.
Goddammit! Why do these threads always happen when I am doing a lot of work, or on my way out to the local tavern?!
I have also noticed that a frustrating number of music threads start on a weekend evening after I've left the turned off the computer. Clearly there's a conspiracy afoot.
Heebie: Drowns in the river after drinking too much at the local park.
Ajay's has to involve an ekranoplan, somehow.
You died today. Or maybe yesterday. Hopefully whoever sends the telegram to your vicious, sociopathic son will at least get the date of the funeral right. Not that he'll be too bothered, that good-for-nothing.
Ajay killed while trying to immanetize the ekranoplan.
Walt: hubris re immortality/erotic asphyxiation in Angela Merkel's bed.
Teo: Collateral damage from Tlingit-Yupik conflict
Apo: Duke
You lower your light sword, and say "If you strike me down, I will be more powerful than you can possible imagine." You die, instantly, and your ghost is compelled to roam the Universe for eternity, never to rest.
Halford: Killed and eaten in a bizarre re-enactment of the The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover by Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni in a desperate attempt to rekindle their marriage. Tragically, while playing the Lover role, he never got to actually be Bruni's lover.
Natilio: The copper bosses killed him.
LB: Struck down by lightning after winning long argument with God.
Tweety: drunk and nostalgic for the Flame Wars of his youth, issues wrong command to Killer Robot.
This turns out to be harder to do for the women than for the men, perhaps because the women are less ridiculous.
Drat! I was just going to do 87.
People seem to find it plenty easy to do this for me. I work hard to overcome the ridiculous differential.
Blume: Killed by the ghost of Anne Frank.
oudemia: Killed by the IRA for not really being a member of the IRA.
Blume: Killed as an innocent bystander in a copycat terrorist attack by a remnant offshoot of the Baader-Meinhof gang.
Alameida, killed by Aslan. It turns out she was the White Witch all this time.
Lord Castock, accidentally killed by live ammo while playing in a War of 1812 LARP. His team successfully burned the White House, though, so all was not lost.
Whose knitting needles are those in Smearcase's corpse? Suspects abound.
Mr. Blandings: Walled up in a cellar alcove of an old Lower Manhattan commercial building, lured there by the promise of a perfect Cote de Brouilly.
CCarp: Grizzly bear attack, avalanche, wolves, enraged Native American whose case he wouldn't take--we'll know for sure if we ever find the remains.
I'm having trouble figuring out how to kill you, Stormcrow. That leaves... suicide.
Everyone thought it was going to be a parachute crash that did Flip in; instead it was excessive sweets for lunch.
JRoth should never have attended game 7 of the Pirates Red Sox World Series wearing that t-shirt.
I rather thought Flippanter would be killed by a coughing fit.
It would be fitting for Opinionated Grandma to die of CAPs.
bob: mauled by Japanese squirrels, but not in a way we can understand anymore.
re: 66.last
Heh. I have had a competitor push me out of the ring, and then almost take a swing at me. Amusingly, he's a more senior official in my federation and an experienced referee himself. He did say sorry later.
In fact, the very guy making the official sign for 'don't hit your opponent in the breasts' in this vid from yesterday:
101 - Just to be clear, it was someting very like the Disgusting Englisg Candy Drill from GR:
After that visit he wrote home to Nalline: "The English are kind of weird when it comes to the way things taste, Mom. They aren't like us. It might be the climate. They go for things we would never dream of. Sometimes it is enough to turn your stomach, boy. The other day I had had one of these things they call 'wine jellies.' That's their idea of candy, Mom! Figure out a way to feed some to that Hitler 'n' I betcha the war'd be over tomorrow!" Now once again he finds himself checking out these ruddy gelatin objects, nodding, he hopes amiably, at Mrs. Quoad. They have the names of different wines written on them in bas-relief.
"Just a touch of menthol too," Mrs. Quoad popping one into her mouth. "Delicious."
Slothrop finally chooses one that says Lafitte Rothschild and stuffs it on into his kisser. "Oh yeah. Yeah. Mmm. It's great."
"If you really want something peculiar try the Bernkastler Doktor. Oh! Aren't you the one who brought me those lovely American slimy elm things, maple-tasting with a touch of sassafras---"
"Slippery elm. Jeepers I'm sorry, I ran out yesterday."
Darlene comes in with a steaming pot and three cups on a tray. "What's that?" Slothrop a little quickly, here.
"You don't really want to know, Tyrone."
"Quite right," after the first sip, wishing she'd used more lime juice or something to kill the basic taste, which is ghastly-bitter. These people are really insane. No sugar, natch. He reaches in the candy bowl, comes up with a black, ribbed licorice drop. It looks safe. But just as he's biting in, Darlene gives him, and it, a peculiar look, great timing this girl, sez, "Oh, I thought we got rid of all those---" a blithe, Gilbert & Sullivan ingenue's thewse---"years ago," at which point Slothrop is encountering this dribbling liquid center, which tastes like mayonnaise and orange peels.
"You've taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!" cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror's speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. "Just for that I shan't let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams." Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.
"Serves me right," Slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy---oops but that's a mistake, right, here's his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. Darlene, pure Nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry... mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can't begin to take away that bitterness. Impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he's been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid, "Oh mercy that's really sour," hardly able to get the words out he's so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who's supposed to be one of our Allies, shit he can't even see it's up his nose and whatever it is won't dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. Mrs. Quoad is meantime busy savoring, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. She beams at the young people across the candy bowl. Slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for a while. It is purple in color.
"Now you're getting the idea!" Mrs. Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?"
"Well," mumbling, "usually we don't get any more complicated than Hershey bars, see...."
"Oh, try this," hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.
"Gosh, it must really be something," doubtfully taking this nastylooking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.
"Go on then," Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.
"Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested."
"And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone."
Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned..." he is able to croak.
"Show a little backbone," advises Mrs. Quoad.
"Yes," Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "don't you know there's a war on? Here now love, open your mouth."
Through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going "Yum, yum, yum," and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow---unless something is now going seriously wrong with his brain---it tastes like: gin. "Wha's 'is," he inquires thickly.
"A gin marshmallow," sez Mrs. Quoad.
"Awww..."
"Oh that's nothing, have one of these---" his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powdered cloves.
"More tea?" Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.
"Nasty cough," Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. "Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can."
The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of Slothrop's mouth. Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapors seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.
Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. Slothrop lies with Darlene, the Disgusting English Candy Drill a thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. The one candy he did not get to taste---one Mrs. Quoad withheld---was the Fire of Paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste---"salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another... "sugared violets"... "Worcestershire sauce"... "spiced treacle"... any number of like descriptions, positive, terse---never exceeding two words in length---resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet-and-sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date.
I rather thought Flippanter would be killed by a coughing fit.
Fantastic.
99: Hmm, I guess I shouldn't wander upstairs and doze off before commenting lest we have another wacky misunderstanding.
Yes, wacky misunderstandings will be the death of this blog.
The last comment posts. Nosflow shuts down your server. You go on to join the book group on some archival tapes, until those too suffer fatal bit-rot unto oblivion. You've heard of an afterlife for blogs. But nothing's happening. Is this it? This is it. This is life. The one you get.
read: trampled in a bob fosse number? but, really, my cows.
You go on to join the book group
This is more of a pause-play, but if anyone wants to read 2666 we're doing a book group over at The Weblog. You're invited. Kickoff is Thurs for Book 1 (you can catch up!) and there's some beginning stuff going on now.
At last, the decisive moment. You swing your vintage Leica up from around your neck -- if it's good enough for Henri, it's good enough for you -- step backwards to capture more of the mise-en-scène, the perfect juxtaposition of background and subject that you've looked for all these years; the sly wit, the perfect and yet-oh-so nonchalant composition ... perhaps a soupçon of wry condescension? Sadly oblivious to the no. 15 bus which, even now, barrels towards the spot in the road into which you've stepped.
Stormcrow: his plateau got dissected.
In the year 2666,
If man is still Hans Blix,
And woman Stevie Nix,
All the squees are squicks...
Parsimon: Garroted, while closing up shop late at night, by agents of the mammoth online bookstore to whom she's refused to sell her lease.
"Allow me a moment of earnestness -- gak -- but are we just all okay with this kind of anticompetitive behavior? Ack -- maybe it's just me, but there's something to be said for local, neighborhood-level retai......"
65 is supercool. Click the link, y'all.
Yes, 65 is amazing. Reminds me of this.
43 is also great! And 120 is hilarious but also really awful.
Aw, you guys killed me twice! I am having a Sally Field moment here.
Blandings: Said pistols at dawn. Did not know what it meant, but said it anyway.
Stanley: Was making Easter eggs.
Bob: Slipped while watering the tree of liberty. Turns out it wasn't a metaphor/veiled threat of violent revolution. Actual tree.
Blume: Last seen chasing a separable prefix into the distance.
Teo: Avalanche consisting of 100+ distinct kinds of snow.
The 'foggers die a thousand deaths...
Apo: Of despair, after finally linking to the most disgusting thing on the internet.
Asilon: From LEGO fumes.
bob: Cat ninjas.
Light Rail Tycoon: The Great Portland Flour Explosion
LB: Last seen on a sketching expedition to the Great Stone Face of Vermont, leaving only her shoes.
Chopper: Surfeit of 99 cent pork rinds and Milwaukee's Best
Stanley: Mauled by Justin Beiber fans as the result of a typographical error on a concert listing
heebie: Lost in a tesseract
Moby: Liveblogs from the wrong bar
J. Roth: Brutalized by Brutalists
K-sky: writes a hit murder mystery novel, killed by unstable copycat
ogged: cancer
Bave: Fought autotune; autotune always wins.
Brad DeLong: collapsing bond market crushes the life from his still discoursing body
Tweety: Overtaken by molasses flood as he is out without his bicycle.
KR: Tracked down by vengeful out-of-work hobo consultants.
Stanley: Implicated in KR's death. Goes on the lam and dies in Wisconsin.
Cryptic Ned: Shows up at a meetup and it turns out to be everything he feared.
Parenthetical gets closed.
And nobody gets him help in time because it take too long to open the tweet which links to the tumbler which links to the regular blog which links to a picture of Winston Churchill saying, "Help."
This thread is renewing my faith in Unfogged.
Jesus McQueen: Wormwood crashes into his distillery as he finishes a batch of artisinal absinthe.
CAR ACCIDENT DEATH SPECIAL
HIT BY:
Thorn: 1998 green Subaru Outback
Oudemia: 2001 Camaro SS with custom red neon lights and oversize rear spoiler
Ttam: 2011 Renault Clio
Gswift: Cherry red 2007 Ford F-350 truck with dually wheels
Smearcase: Bus
LB: Bus that hit Smearcase
Knecht: 2010 Audi S4 (alternate: Lufthansa Airbus A330 plunge into Bermuda Triange)
Von Wafer: 2011 Chevy Cruze Eco
M/tch: 1994 Chevy Suburban, Motherfucker
I will share the story of Halford's passing in 75 years, when it is in the public domain.
Tweety: Black BMW coming fast out of an underground parking garage.
Emerson: after direct action to free rats from rat-orgasm warehouse, nibbled to death.
Teo (old): Vagina dentata
Teo (new): Bear mouth dentata
It's not directly related to Flip's end, but the lead in to the DECD is nicely descriptive as well: One day, just as he's entering a narrow street all ancient brick walls and lined with costermongers, he hears his name called---and hubba hubba what's this then, here she comes all right, blonde hair flying in telltales, white wedgies clattering on the cobblestones, an adorable tomato in a nurse uniform, and her name's, uh, well, oh---Darlene. Golly it's Darlene. She works at St. Veronica's hospital, lives nearby at the home of a Mrs. Quoad, a lady widowed long ago and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases---greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy. So, out in search of limes for her landlady, the fruit beginning to jog and spill from her straw basket and roll yellowgreen back down the street, young Darlene comes running in her nurse's cap, her breasts soft fenders for this meeting on the gray city sea.
peep: goes without one.
(alternate: the Easter thing.)
Flip: A black Chevy Suburban with a "We Are Penn State" custom Connecticut plate.
140 is delightful.
Agreed. 128 is also quite funny.
Teo: Putting his faith in unfogged.
Tassel Loafered Leach: accidentally impales self on Romney 2012 yard sign.
LB will only get hit by that bus because she will be testing the new urban-atlatl app.
M/tch: 1994 Chevy Suburban, Motherfucker 2011 Buick Excelle.
Emerson: after direct action to free rats from rat-orgasm warehouse, nibbled to death.
Alternatively, frozen to death in an alcoholic haze.
SomeCallMeTim: Lifegiving liquid accidentally poured out of his vat.
SomeCallMeTim: Lifegiving liquid accidentally poured out of his vat.
You were fast. You were lucky. You are dead.
AWB: dies in sleep after grading millionth paper.
Cyrus: accidentally guillotined in team-building exercise at work.
Messily: cat bite.
ajay: navigation error leads to collision between ekranoplan and fishing boat.
Shearer: chosen by lottery.
Shearer x. trapnel: chosen by lottery.
Shearer: chosen by Green Card lottery. (There was a glitch in the INS computer system, and they had him down as a nonresident alien).
I rather thought Flippanter would be killed by a coughing fit.
God damn it, that's good.
Now that I've actually gone through the whole thread, it's even better than when I just glanced at it. Well done, Mineshaft.
"here's his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation" is quite wonderful.
Messily: Dies in a fire. Unfortunately, Kristin Henderson's "sign language" warning proved incomprehensible.
This thread is unspeakably wonderful. "Attempting to immanentize the ekranoplan" is now the tagline for my blog.
The "LB: opposing counsel" bit reminds me of the Frank Herbert novel about a society in which anyone who appears in court - accused, witnesses, lawyers, judges - is liable to be suddenly and ceremonially killed if the case goes against them. This tends to cut down on the tendency to resort to litigation rather than working things out through negotiation.
JRoth: killed by satisfied client so that he will never build a more lovely extension than the one he has just finished
168.1: Arm yourself when the Frog God smiles!
Indeed. Not one of his better ones tbh, but some interesting ideas.
Ajay's predictive track record: this comment
This thread really is amazing.
Only killed once? Fuck it, I'm killing you all.
Blume: Killed in Mayan ritual sacrifice.
Moby Hick: It turns out that Moby's fear of inflation is well founded when an escaped convict named Robert Inflation plunges his knife into Moby's dark joke-laden heart.
Sifu: The Killer Robot learns to build copies of itself. It builds millions of killer robots who are ready to exterminate the human race. Sifu hacks into the computers of the world to give an impassioned speech to the killer robots. He appeals to their better natures by showing still photos of mud-spattered dancers at Burning Man. The killer robots instead destroy all of humanity's weapons, ushering in a new era of peace and harmony. Tragically, Sifu is then killed by Grover Norquist. All this time, Norquist had been a demon who feeds on human suffering disguised as a man. The source of his energy cut off, he takes revenge on the man who ultimately killed him.
heebie: Her math class totally changes a student's life for the better. That student begins following heebie obsessively on Facebook. Learning about heebie's shockingly liberal proclivities, the student begins to believe that heebie is the Antichrist, and that the teaching is just a form of hypnosis. The student blows up himself and heebie with a fertlizer based IED. It turns out that heebie really is the Antichrist, and the End of Days are delayed 50 years as a result.
ajay: Based on internet plans, builds his own ekranoplan, which crashes in the Pacific Northwest. He sets off on a several-day hike back to civilization without food and water, when he is killed by Sasquatch.
Halford: At an Unfogged meetup, he kills himself so that he doesn't have to hear another joke about intellectual property law. Ironically, the joke turned out be not about intellectual property law, but about the paleo diet.
Lord Castock: Falls in love with a beautiful, sullen Goth girl who stays up all night every night, reading poetry and writing in a small leather-bound book decorated with bones. Castock becomes frightened for his life when he begins to suspect the girl is a 300-year old vampire. The girl kills him because she worries that he's figured out her dark secret: she's Sasquatch in disguise.
Sir Kraab: Forms internet commenter union. Notorious for its brutal tactics, the union members break the fingers of anyone non-union who tries to comment. A worldwide strike of all internet comment sections forces people to once again argue face-to-face, which brings about a new Age of Reason. Kraab dies peacefully in her sleep, and yet never makes a dime from internet comments.
AWB: Spends years of instilling a life-long live of literature in class after class of students. Is killed by a mob of former students, who discover that a life-long live of literature is like joining a monastic order that takes a vow of poverty, but with even less sex.
Cyrus: While debugging late one night, after one too many Red Bulls sees that not only are matter and energy one, that P = NP and that computation is not an endless struggle against entropy but that computation is entropy. Turns into a pure energy being that dissipates into the Universe. You know, like V'ger at the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
chris y: Discovered that unbeknownst to him, garden gnomes have been stealing his sperm, and he has in fact fathered over a thousand gnome-human hybrids. Tormented by guilt over the fact that he is indirectly responsible for bringing so much life into a cruel future, tries to drink himself to death. Sadly, the garden gnomes secretly replace his liquor with water, so he lives to be a ripe old age. Dies just before Sifu's killer robots usher in a new era of peace and harmony.
Merganser: Obsessive sexual desire for women with a particular nose shape leads to its inevitable end: the discovery of a giant cliff with that exact shape, the camping out on said cliff, and the predictable death from being devoured by feral squirrels while sleeping.
180.2 That sounds about right. At least the first two sentences.
If Thorn has to die (and why not, everyone else apparently does), I think she deserves an incredibly luxurious death. Can we arrange a surfeit of something? Or a fall from a yacht?
Ginger Yellow: Discovers that he is not a real person at all, but only the alter-ego of a sleepwalking Rupert Murdoch.
Minivet: Puzzled by Minivet's apparent disinterest in the Scotusblog ACA blow-by-blow, intrepid hackers realize that Minivet is the person behind the Scotusblog denial-of-service attack. Additional research reveals Minivet is responsible many other spectacular hacking attacks, such as Stuxnut. Assassinated by Iranian intelligence.
Stanley: Found 5 dollars. Was unable to handle newfound wealth, and drank himself to death.
180.2 "A new era of peace and harmony' after winning the Gnome-Robot wars of 2027.
Can we arrange a surfeit of something?
Not lampreys. I've had a surfeit of lampreys and it wasn't pretty. Chocolate?
Thorn can suffocate under the weight of YA fantasy novels, issues of Arethusa, and adorable foster children.
Chocolate-covered childcare assistants?
185: IIRC Lewis & Short, among others, give muraena as either "lamprey" or "Moray eel"; the second interpretation is far more likely from the point of view of things you throw slaves to and from the point of view of things that would be nice to eat. Lampreys would be a bit gristly, I'd think.
JP Stormcrow: Tired by being pwned so frequently. Builds a time machine that allows you to travel back in time 5 seconds to hit "Post"sooner. Discovers joy of pwning self over and over again, until this results in a nosflow thread going over 1000 comments. Kills self in remorse.
MAE: Original ego returns from astral plane, sending alter-ego back to the nothingness from whence it came.
bill: Giant meteor.
lw: Discovered definitive proof that EO Wilson is wrong and that kin selection is right when in a Gattaca-like future it's discovered that lw is not closely related to anybody. Hunted to death for sport.
md 20/400: Talked into Fresh Salt for one last meetup. Place burns down.
peep: Turns out to be pseudonym of 6'5" linebacker who dies from a brain hemmorhage after sacking the quarterback and inducing a fumble in the Super Bowl.
Lampreys would be a bit gristly, I'd think
No, lampreys are delightful to eat - super tasty. This and the fact that they're unbelievably rich and tend to be prepared in ways that only enhance that quality is what makes the danger of surfeit all too real.
Thorn: On completing a stunningly beautiful lace shawl, realizes that she has inextricably knit herself into it like a cocoon. Metamorphosizes.
mcmc: Depressing songs of death with mechanical backing draw attention of the most feared mechanical causers of death: Daleks.
Megan: In order to hoard the fresh fruit after global warming ruins agriculture elsewhere, leads an attempt secession movement. Disappears under mysterious circumstances at the Battle of Yolo Bypass.
Awl: Eaten by Owl from Winnie the Pooh.
Natilo Paennim: Discovers that only is capitalism the only right system, but that he is the Invisible Hand prophesized by Adam Smith to complete the system. One he accepts his destiny, all fo the externalities that plague the system are resolved, and we enter a Golden Age governed only by profit and loss statements.
NickS: Takes his own life in despair when he realized he didn't like music that much after all.
LizardBreath: Killed by Richard Seaton, who mistakes her for Marc "Blackie" DuQuesne.
The new issue of Lucky Peach, which arrived yesterday, has a Choose Your Own Adventure story running through it. Also, pictures of shrimp, though not on a plate.
195.1: Natilo Paennim, God-Emperor of Capital
bob mcmanus: Lured to an exclusive screening of the long lost Ozu film Erogami no onryo [The Revengeful Spirit of Eros] (1930) by a mysterious party, mcmanus' body is later found bound and strangled by an unspooled VHS tape of Caddyshack (1980).
CharleyCarp: While camping on a Montana mountainside, grabbed by a giant pterodactyl to feed her young. Dropped from a great height to his death.
L: Crushed by the falling Carp -- the pterodactyl missed the nest.
nattarGcM ttaM: Learns that he's actually the son of a posh Englishman. Does the only honorable thing.
Bave: Sees the SNL "Escape from Escape from New York" skit for the first time. Discovers in a direct empirical manner that this is the inspiration for the killing joke in Infinite Jest.
k-sky: Discovers true calling is investment banking. Starves to death when world switches to universal socialism.
x.trapnel: Travels back in time to kill Shirley Jackson for giving lottery-based system a bad reputation. Unfortunately for him, Jackson is a time-traveler sent back to warn us about our lottery-based dystopian future, so is able to effortlessly disintegrate trapnel with the proton energy weapons of the future. Since trapnel was ultimately responsible for the dystopian future, this causes the future to be averted. Which means Jackson never exists, and therefore is never there to kill trapnel and avert the future dystopia. Time travel sure is confusing.
Turgid Jacobian: Crushed into the roof of the Superdome by the Goodyear blimp.
Mister Smearcase: While visiting the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas, killed by falling trapeze artist.
oudemia: Wastes away after learning entire life's work is a lie. The Iliad and Odyssey really weren't written by Homer, but another man by the same name.
Mary Catherine: Learns that John Emerson is really an internet pseudonym for a small group of bears with a sexual fetish for sexy Canadian women. Killed while trying to warn the world.
Josh: Shark attack.
nosflow: Knife-eye attack.
YK: Big Mac attack.
Nworb Werdna: Heart attack. Too soon?
teofilo: Renewed faith in blog fills him with such emotion that his heart swells three times its previous size, like the Grinch. Unfortunately, in humans the condition is fatal.
I'm thrilled that I got some deaths! This is absolutely making my day, especially since there's other stupid/bad stuff going on that I don't feel like going presidential about and so I'll just sit and stew.
AWB: Spends years of instilling a life-long live of literature in class after class of students. Is killed by a mob of former students, who discover that a life-long live of literature is like joining a monastic order that takes a vow of poverty, but with even less sex.
That shit is just accurate. Or, it will be if I don't die from anxiety while listening to the movers drop my shit all day.
199.last: Fortunately teo discovers he is not a human being.
Don't AWB. They're former students -- you just haven't recognized them yet.
while listening to the movers drop my shit all day.
Speaking of which I assume some manner of death by corn would be AWB's peril.
Natilo Paennim, God-Emperor of Capital
In the sequel, Natilo attains immortality by plastering investment bankers all over his naked body, and lives for millennia as a monstrous twenty metre long Jamie Dimon replica.
I'm thrilled that I got some deaths!
Agree - it's like finding you were considered important enough to include in the Sonderfahndungsliste GB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book). As Noel Coward said, "My dear, the people we should have been seen dead with."
NickS: Takes his own life in despair when he realized he didn't like music that much after all.
I'm flattered to be included, but I have to say that's kind of boring. I'm not sure I have anything better to offer.
How about: NickS exits stage left; nobody knows whether he survived or not.
I can only see the future, not change it.
How about: NickS exits stage left; nobody knows whether he survived or not.
Only if pursued by a bear.
207.last: nobody knows whether he survived or not.
Due to IMAGINATIVE EMPATHY FAIL.
I feel like someone ought to be crushed to death by rose petals.
(Uh oh. I think the iPhone mobile network has been banned.)
MATCH THE MONSTER LIGHTNING ROUND
Nosflow: Impregnated by Cretan Bull
Teo: Sparrow
Bob: Godzilla (nb -- is Bob a giant moth? Maybe!)
Smearcase: Valkyrie
Oudemia: Hardcore Manticore
Stormcrow: Atlas
Cryptic Ned: Griffin
Bob (not McManus): Choked on a Vietnamese sandwich.
Kind of a cheap shot, but how's this: After the delightful narrative-style first death above, people are reincarnated as the most inappropriate possible celebrity, then redie immediately from the cognitive dissonance only to be reborn as an inappropriate living thing.
NickS: Lady Gaga : Honey Badger
LB: Bobby Brown or Chris Brown : Cougar
apo: Steven Hawking: Siafu ant
heebie: Stephen Fry : tick (super-patient hunter)
Walt:Henry James: Spuds MacKenzie
Moby:Henry James:Morris the Cat
Megan:Woody Allen:couch-dwelling bedbug
Ttam:Adele:Dictyostelium
AWB: Jean de l'Ours
Fake Accent: Sasquatch
Rob Helpy Chalk: Robert the Devil
Walt: Either Jesus or Turkmenbashi
ursyne: Unfogged dies, ursyne, deprived of cock jokes and mix tapes, fails to thrive and soon follows.
hydrobatidae: Killed by a feral band of sociologists while doing ecological fieldwork in a remote area.
207: I notice while I killed you, you haven't killed me one time. All you do is take, take, take. You never give.
Wait, cougar's inappropriate? I like to think of myself as a sleek yet powerful predator. And I am fond of freshfaced young men.
oudemia: Crushed to death by iPhone mobile network, which only existed as a emanation of the electromagnetic spectrum until the Higgs experiments at the LHC caused it to take physical form and fall out of the sky.
fake accent: Last seem wandering the stacks at a large research university library somewhere in the western US or Canada clutching a piece of microfiche. Presumed dead.
Rob Helpy Chalk: Killed by a University of Phoenix hit squad during the great Community College pogroms of 2022.
Walt Someguy: Something complicated that I don't understand happens with currency and trade balances and somehow it kills you.
218: I thought it was inappropriate for the celebrity. Heebie loves ticks, for example. I'm pretty sure. RTFA if you don't believe me.
oudemia: Crushed to death by iPhone mobile network, which only existed as a emanation of the electromagnetic spectrum until the Higgs experiments at the LHC caused it to take physical form and fall out of the sky.
I thought cougars as a social type dressed and at least occasionally acted the part; LB's mentioned a bunch of times that she's not into clothes or gender roles, but maybe there's one of these in a closet?
Ticks are patient. The rest of this theorem is an exercise for the reader.
BG: Lost in search of passover Diet Coke.
Shearer: Found out as a Culture agent sent to heighten the contradictions; disappears after arrest.
226: Scandalous! They're both married, you know.
The only thing worse than being killed by the Mineshaft is not being killed by the Mineshaft.
Eggplant: Disappeared with a *poof* into thin air during a particularly nasty bout of self-deprecation.
God damn it I had Eggplant in the monster list but forgot to write it down. Anyhow, as I said there's a direct relationship between ridiculousness and likelihood of murder. I was trying to do rfts and snarkout and it was like death by being . . . Pleasant and rational?
231: Same with Witt. Killed by idiots for her manifest lack of idiocy?
231: Same with Witt. Killed by idiots for her manifest lack of idiocy?
Throat cut by an unusually sharp edge on a binder clip after after a particularly rough jolt on the commuter train throws everybody around the car.
178 sounds eerily close to an actual relationship I had once.
I can't hit Post on these because I feel too mean, which is an obvious misprision. I think. Anyway, I endorse Thorn's metamorphosis, preferably in Fairy Lace merino/silk.
235: Those yarns are absolutely gorgeous and I don't think I've ever seen them before. Definitely something to keep in mind for when I'm ready to go!
Walt stays alive while everyone else dies. Bitter and misanthropic, he starts a solitary man's blog: Fogged. He is the last man on earth. He has lost his glasses. The blog crumbles.
228: But who can forget these immortal lines by William Carlos Williams? "I have eaten Eggplant, who was in the freezer/ and you were probably saving for breakfast/ Forgive me the corpse was delicious, so sweet and so cold."
The William Carlos Williams dude was fucked up.
I was trying to do rfts and snarkout and it was like death by being . . . Pleasant and rational?
The first parents to actually die from the cuteness of their child.
Fans of this thread should read Machine of Death.
Ogged: A lurker got too supportive--kidnapped him and tried to force him to blog again, Misery style. He refused.
Bob mcmanus: Accidentally guillotined self in French Revolution historical reenactment. Procedural liberals didn't lift a finger to help.
Opinionated Grandma: ANEURYSM
LB: while procrastinating at work, came across an obscure blog post about evildoing by former big law clients--became tireless advocate for their victims, eventually a martyr to the cause. She might never have read the post that started it all if the link hadn't been such a striking shade of orange.
I'm always too late on these threads...
Katherine: arrived late on train platform, dashed for door, failed to mind gap, mortality ensued.