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Rats In The Gutter
Disappointed
So many things to be disappointed by, so little time. At the top of the list this week is Gaga’s murky position on Israel, because we think the lady doth NOT protest as much as she could be protesting. Being an ally of white gays is a serviceable pass up to a point, and that point is most definitely conspicuous silence on a very visible genocide lol. Another visceral disappointment in this wicked world is the cops recently being given the authority to shuttle homeless people out of the CBD into . . . where exactly? Maybe they’ve colluded with CERN and opened portals to various mirror worlds where the unhoused can start new lives, so long as they can figure out how to negotiate inverted matter and make treaties with inter dimensional beings that (allegedly) want to harvest their energies. Or something. Some things that the rats are not disappointed by this week include the pending Scary Movie sequel, because Anna Faris and Regina Hall are as big a part of millennial cultural memory as 9/11 and the iPod.
Also, the final Splore, which Johanna attended, and which we spend a good time celebrating as the very good time it actually was, and which ultimately exists as another disappointment, because it’s our government’s fault the beloved festival is no more; apparently the funds it needed to continue went, instead, to supporting an NZ stop on American pop-punk band Linkin Park’s world tour. Sans Chester Bennington obviously, who ‘committed suicide’ about a decade ago; who, at round about the same time, was making a documentary about human trafficking that may or may not have come close to the darkling realities outlined in the Epstein Files, and whose collaborators (including Avici) have all also mysteriously passed away. So totally not suspicious at all lol.
Visit a mirror world with us at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter
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Children of Men
47:57|This week the very-enrolled-to-vote rats discuss, among other things, the petty differences between Aussie and Kiwi approaches to getting the great unwashed to the polls. Dismal prospects aside (the future seems veeeeery touch and go right now) the rats are adamant that the flimsily symbolic act of voting could still count for something, despite the fact the system itself has long been bought out by a college of corporations and we’re all essentially feudalist serfs in a techno-rentier oligarchy (huge lols). Realistic pessimisms aside, the rats also tinker their halloween costume ideas, because there’s nothing to distract oneself from imminent doom quite like grinding on strangers in a slutty outfit.Want to hear the rats not zoped out? Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter
MEGA QUAKE
46:18|Despite some awful personal news pre-record, the rats persist like the showbiz rodents they truly are. This week our gutters overflow with classic anti America sentiment, disinterest in GTA release in November, refusal to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds” and of course a deep disappointment in male comedians (on going)What merchandise do the Rats have in mind come the revolution? Find out here
Hessian Skort
48:30|Behind the paywall the rats discussed the importance of Journeying, and this side, where the freebies never cease, they discuss Learning, a symptom of journeying, but also not a given. The lessons must be EARNED. Like, realising ‘things’ in your thirties, which some (meaning anyone in their early twenties) might compare to going roughly into that good night, without realising that later life isn’t just an extended tragedy when your proximity to adolescence can no longer be pretended, like most American media would have you believe (because the teenage brain makes for better consumers). Also on the minutes this week; Ken Russels The Devils which gets a 4k remaster this year and which both rats are VERY excited for, the discrete charm of a Hessian slip (somewhere between Courtney Love and a North Korean internment camp), the various obsessions and peculiarities of Mossad, and a real argument for the posthumous canonisation of one Aileen Wuornos.
Fear and Loathing at the VMAs
47:23|In this dystopian fever dream we call reality, with everything worsening apace (faster than a forgotten cube of Colby in the back of the fridge) it’s easy to forget that we once had different aspirations, that we once expected a rising gradient of liveability from our world, and not the agonisingly slow decline we all know and loathe. And yet the punch might be in really rubbing our faces in the muck, and NOT in fey delusions of well meaning individuals with authority and resources suddenly remembering they have a conscience and choosing to do things differently. Because if the room’s filling with smoke, then we may as well get high on the fumes of a dying world, rather than strain for a vanishing high ground that’s only going to be rubbed out by fracking or data-centre related erosion anyway. Or something. Also, Taylor Swift is a caucasian anti-christ and her musical offerings are more harmful to culture than the loss of our enlightened gay elders during the AIDS pandemic. Charli forever.What is the connection between Epstein and the manosphere? Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter
Dirty Work or Hardly Working
44:54|Because this is nothing if not a searing political podcast holding power to account with a smorgasbord of stolid sources and bonafide facts, the rats would be remiss not to mention Nicky Hager’s latest blockbuster Dirty Work, in which a concerned citizen (aren’t we all) finally takes down The Ugly Bitch Forum, FKA The Tax Payers Union. In a turn of events shocking to absolutely no one with more than three braincells left, it turns out the Tax Payers Union (who are most certainly NOT an actual union) are pretty much American flavoured lobbyists of supreme evil and networked corruption. Because undermining public spending on things like, idk, health education and the arts, is not something an organisation that’s allegedly ‘for the people’ spends its time doing. Good on you Nicky, from us to you.Behind the paywall the rats unpack the parallels between Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire and Salo Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter
Hoard of Smaug
55:43|to ask the question is AI art even art, a working definition of art itself has to be established. Which is far too labour intensive a task for the rats this week, who are battling their own personal demons, none of which have anything to do with the ongoing culture wars lol. On the table for the non-paying customer this week; dramatic readings, the dismal stylings of cultural theorist and proto Marxist Mark Fisher, Pink again (because like a shit stain she takes more than one rinse cycle to be gotten rid of), and finally the ancient battle between the working poor and the professional class.Desperate to hear the Rats perform buttrock karaoke? Find that and more at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter
Crumbs from the Factory Floor
48:10|We are haunted. Haunted by futures that never happened. So says mark Fisher, of Capitalist Realism fame. This week, the rats get critical and robustly discuss Fisher’s Hauntological musings, in which the despair of cancelled utopian futures filters down into production choices in popular music. Also on the minutes of this penitently delayed but hopefully well received gas session; the lows and lows of online hate, cookie sacks, and the unbearable lightness of jokes at the expense of is men.What recent film has Samuel contemplating his sexuality? Find out at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter
Plane Person
53:05|The rats are beleaguered besieged and generally against it but defy some very material odds and physically reunite in Big Daddy’s studio for much delayed session of grievance airing. Which this week includes; a generational loss of moral objectivity, taking things in good faith (cough), the myriad charms of Ninajirachi, the fetid horrors of an executive government, and mushrooms again (see behind the paywall for yet more mushrooms content).
Fuck It.
49:06|Anti bullying doesn’t sound like something the rats would be into. And it isn’t. But for a brief moment, one of the rats was poised to be its spokesperson in an already saturated market of travelling virtue signallers; like troubadours but more patronising. Also on the agenda; the gung-ho mentality of Sylvia Plath (who didn’t let two failed suicide attempts stop her from eventually knocking it out of the park), the strange beauty of intentional absences, the art of scamming, the endless hospo horror of Mothers Day, and the uncanny freedom of Fuck It.Unconventional cooking tips like substituting kewpie mayo with jif and more over at Patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter