andrewducker | Culture inspires culture

Waaay back in 2005 there was an episode of Dinosaur Comics* which contained the idea of a short story based around The Machine Of Death. The basic idea being that there would be a machine which, when given a tiny sample of a person's blood, would produce a slip of paper with a cryptic word or phrase on it, which would tell people how they would die. But because it was cryptic people wouldn't be able to rely on the information entirely, and would still be taken by surprise when their actual death arrived.

A year or so after the comic was produced they started collecting actual short stories based on this idea. And then they shopped it around, but were unable to sell it, as nobody would take on a book of short stories by largely unknown writers. So they self-published. And got it to number one on Amazon.*

And _then_ people started producing other stuff inspired by it.

Which leads me to the song I've been unable to get out of my head for the last few weeks, about the consequences of getting a slip with the word "Bear" on it.

Because since first watching this video, the phrase "And a Bear Came Out!" has come in useful far more often than you might ordinarily expect.

*http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=675
*More at http://machineofdeath.net/about