Okay, wallets out, capitalist scum, ’cause we’re disrupting the dirt market.
How? Easy: There’s an app. Duh.
You want dirt: Use the dirt app. Dirt comes to you. Fills your home. So much dirt. You unlock loyalty rewards like a marble stone with your name on it, says you’re in the dirt right there.
We got the dirt network in place. My pal Dave knows coding. You give us the funding and we’ll have everyone six feet under and the profits won’t stop ever, not ever. Money forever, dirt forever.
Walking to the train this morning, I passed a small clay shrine on a street corner. It consisted of a bowl and a tiny clay man who had lost an arm. The body was crude, just tube-shaped limbs like snakes, but the face was detailed.
Between its legs, bird seed.
I almost took a picture of this little god of bird hearths, but was too self-conscious, due to a group of construction workers standing nearby. (I prefer to take photos unobserved. Dunno why.)
So instead I’m telling you.
You brought a knife to a knife fight.
Well done.
I’m so glad you read the invite carefully. Thanks as well for the RSVP and for arriving promptly at the listed start time. Thus far, this has been our best organized knife fight yet.
Everyone got their ambulance buddy picked out? Yes?
A dentist who has to get pre-fight worked up before removing plaque. Stomping around, slapping tables, taking deep breaths.
“WHOOOO! Okay, plaque, today I am going to MURDER you, bro! I’m gonna leave your body in the WOODS, bro! You … you messed with the WRONG TEETH, bro!”
Oh joy of days, it’s Monday, and we all know what that means! The weekend is over, so it’s time to get serious: Time to strip every vegetable in the pantry of its given name and history and tell each vegetable separately that it has no future and no dreams. It’s the only way they’ll be quiet all week, and meek under the knife.
A magical race of scroll people. They remember being trees. They’re animated by the words that run through them. When they talk, the riffling of pages, their face an open book. They’re great scholars and their love is literary and strange, fingers paging through each others bodies, poring over the lore within.
They burn libraries as abominations of non-living words.
The Signal: EP142 – We’re smashing together 45 minutes of music that we’re digging right now, in this particular order, and that we’d like you to listen to and enjoy. In this way, across time and space, we are linked. Mind to mind. Atom to atom. Forever.
This installment shares our established preferences for eclectic sounds. We’ve got producers making Soundcloud R&B tracks that sound like the batteries are running down, garage rock from Austria, funk from Estonia, calypso on Jamaica, hip hop from Spain and the UK, northern soul, afrobeat from Cameroon and much more!
Download by clicking on the link (or image) above. The file is available only for a limited time. If you’re interested in the tracklist, it’s in the mp3 itself, in the id3 tags. Or, if you sign up to be a member of our mailing list, The Tuned In, you’ll be among the first on the planet to know when a new mix is posted, and you’ll get a permanent archive link and the entire playlist, delivered to your inbox.
The Transactional Cleric: Worships whichever entity gives the best return on investment. Heal spell doesn’t work as intended? Time to move on to the next entity.
“He got himself kicked out of the temple.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah. He was being too loud, again.”
[20 min. earlier]
“This is a city FULL of entities that demand worship. You think I can’t go down the street and get this mace blessed? You think I can’t find a floating being who’s gonna want me to be able to explode TWICE the undead you’re offering? You’re fooling yourself. They ALL want a piece of me. I’ve run three cults, buddy. THREE CULTS. Those are SEPARATE cults, mind you… no rebranding with a new god and a new logo on the door, oh no. I get RESULTS. I get WORSHIPPERS. I DELIVER. And in exchange, I DEMAND SOME SERVICE!”
The Thief Who Destroys Wealth: Every gem taken: shattered. Every gold coin? Chucked in a lake. Catchphrase: “Money, like… isn’t even real!”
“What the heck happened to the coins? They’re all… chipped!”
“You-know-who got to them while we were sleeping last night, apparently. Said if we really needed something, we should just ask nicely and that people should give it to us, because we’re all people. They said something about ‘brotherhood’, I dunno. Looks like we’ve got to sell these for scrap ’cause no one’s going to take them in this shape.”
The Fighting Fitness Enthusiast: Gives frequent positive feedback to opponents in combat. Warns them about balance issues, over-exerting, importance of hydration.
[after getting punched in the nose]
“Nice! Nice one! You kept the fingers tight and the thumb safely tucked away. Next time, though, don’t forget to plant the lead foot, okay? Pivot and throw from the hip. Watch how I do it.”
[successfully lands a punch]
“You see that? Okay, I’m going to do it again, watch watch watch.”
[punches with the other hand instead]
“Okay! We’re doing good! How are you doing? Feeling loose? What did we learn? Don’t trust the person we’re fighting to be honest about what they’re going to do. Right? You got it! You got it! Okay, we’re really warmed up now. Let’s keep it going, keep that energy going.”
The Laziest Wizard: Only got into magic as a way to avoid actually working on anything. Only learns new spells that are easier/work faster/do more for less. Loves scrolls, potions… anything where someone else put the work in.
“Cast that spell? Really? Ugh… I can’t. I’m so busy all the time. Plus, the spell components are all the way over there.”
[indicates a bench five paces away].
The Unbeliever Cleric: Despises superstition. Only trusts alchemy and lore. Hates it when their spells work.
“There must be a more rational explanation for why that happened. Likely this holy symbol contains some sort of element that they’re allergic to. Remind me to repeat the experiment the next time we come across more of the same.”
[Want to browse more of our characters, free to a good home?]
The countdown has started. In the communal flower garden in the center of the village, the blooms wither and fall to the ground as we call out the numbers together: 28! 27! 26!
We’ve never reached zero.
But many times we’ve awoken to ourselves, restrained by vines, in the park, the sun pleasant and warm, and we pass a pleasant afternoon there, content, and the good mood lasts for months, until we remember the countdown, and that we never finished it.
About one in three cottages in this village have been the setting for something awful. Not sure about yours? Easy ways to check:
) Say brightly & clearly to yourself “I sure like living in a place where there’ve been no murders!” Then listen for giggling, perhaps from the eaves.
) Open every door. Make sure there’s not a door in the cottage that your eyes have been sliding over that’s actually locked, and warm to the touch.
) Does your kitchen’s tile have a fun pattern? Or is it a collection of dire sigils that form a P O R T A L ? If the latter, put a rug over ’em.
More later, once voices from the lost stop screaming at me from every wall.