Rats In The Gutter

The body keeps the score, and this week the rat-bodies are bedraggled, bewitched, bewigged, and decidedly simian. Which is to say, despite recent salmonella attacks (taking out both towers) the rats are present and ready to tour anyone who’ll listen through the jumble-bin of a week-in-review. Which includes; an objectively stellar idea for a dive bar named Throbs and Leaks which, having a backroom, does exactly what it says it does on the packet; the unbearable lightness of Intellectual Property; the necessity of strategic self starvation when bottoming frequently, and the dysmorphia-adjacent pitfalls of doing so; the necrotic pull of reality television as an Only Fans pipeline (becoming more and more attractive as our government reveals itself as increasingly hostile towards anyone with less than a billion in savings); the abusive relationship most of the country has with KFC (because the colonel is a cruel taskmaster with little regard for your colon, hates it in fact); the architectural grandeur of cum gutters; and, as always, the profundity of corporeal being with its fixed duration and the sometimes incomprehensible fact that death will eventually come for us all, even if we cannot envision it right now because life seems so deceptively stable day to day, despite the geopolitical nightmare we all currently reside in, and the looming impossibility of a gas crisis whose fetid edges we’re already experiencing, hurtling towards the storm’s leering eye of public transport and excessive cardio. Yes, it’s an exciting but trying time to be alive and while everything we’ve ever known starts splitting down the middle you could argue there’s no better place to be than right here in the gutter, because at the very least, when the seas rise and fire starts falling from the sky and Jojo Siwa unleashes a plague of new singles (we hope not) we’ll be together. Throb and leak in our backroom at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter

The spiral continues! Though getting out of bed at the moment feels like the effort equivalent of pulling wooden splinters out of your own sphincter, the rats (along with billions of other misguided humans on this planet) are doing it anyway—and how! Despite our Sisyphean misgivings about being alive, this week the chats are as torrid and torrential as ever, starting off strong with a query; if the billionaires get to eat people, then why can’t we? Why should richos get to have all the fun! Why not bring back kai tangata, that oft maligned tradition of eating one’s enemies. David Seymour a la carte? Would certainly be the correct time (and purpose) to buy an air fryer, and they’ve really gone down in price these last six months so all signs point to KFD (Kentucky Fried David). Also, after getting on the anti Wuthering Heights bandwagon without actually having seen the film, the rats have finally seen it. And . . . they regret to announce that they actually enjoyed it. It goes without saying that the liberties Fennel takes with the source material are friggin galling. But, if you imagine the book doesn’t exist and the movie is its own thing, it’s actually kind fab. Charmingly imperfect, shaggy and weird. Etc. Also also, as we nose dive into the pit together in this global ‘polycrisis’ one of the rats bemoans an especially vexing symptom of shared psychosis, which seems to be pettiness and horizontal violence of the embarrassingly transparent kind (the jealous kind). Finally, these millennials wonder aloud and despair at the reported chastity of the younger generations, who apparently don’t have the restless libido of the older kids. Maybe it’s related to 5G, or microplastics, or labubus, or fidget spinners, or how The End of Everything is actually kind of a boner killer and makes you wanna bury yourself alive in a cosy hole in the ground, or drift out to sea on a one man raft with a case of wine and an eight kilo bag of trail mix. Who can say.Enjoy some delicious and piping hot KFD with us at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter

This week the rats are cinephiles and snap review The Moment, which they were lucky enough to see an advance screening of at Avondale’s illustrious Hollywood Theatre. The verdict? A not quite scathing enough meta-comedy about the cultural death of mass entertainment, and the slaughter a certain level of fame does to an artist’s integrity, when they’re willing to make potentially damning compromises in exchange for the meteoric success of, say, someone like Taylor swift; who arguably never had artistic integrity (in as much as being a teenaged country music star is the same as being a Hitler Youth pin up) and who Charli (maybe) specifically targets in her spoof of arena spectacles. The overt jabs at Coldplay are also very very welcome.Also, the rats get nostalgic and remember a bygone era through fondly recalled affordable fragrances—Diesel, Gucci Rush, and something called Strawberry that had a very exciting bottle for a scent close enough to Cool Charm as to be indistinguishable, which might’ve been its age-specific appeal (simple aromas for unsophisticated palettes; the rats can’t relate). And we’d be remiss not to extend a shout out to maverick branding exercise Herbal Essences, whose fantasias of aromatic brunettes in orgasmic toilette was something of a cornucopia of marketing finesse, introducing the concept of the female orgasm to the misogynist masses for whom the very notion of female pleasure (independent of a cock) was quite foreign. Finally, the rats bemoan the recent insanity of a school sports day getting marched on by a bunch of grumbling terfs for whom trans kids playing a bit of girls cricket (or whatever happens at school sports days) was inexplicably alarming. Like, why do you care so much about teenage bodies? Why not just get I HEART JAILBAIT tattooed to your forward. Either way these predators hiding their voyeuristic tendencies behind generic and flimsy moralism is getting reeeeeeal old real quick. Reminisce the redolence of a time gone by with us at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter

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

Soooooooo everything’s totally cool and normal right now aye, like definitely so chill that anxiously masculine influencers are looksmaxing which is another way of saying trying to look even more European than they already do, making mogging and the like a kid-friendly introduction to eugenics and nazi aesthetics, which probably has absolutely nothing to do with a male loneliness epidemic engineered by Epstein and cabal, which probably also has nothing to do with the fact Clavicular (like Andrew Tate but skinnier and more gay) is both microdosing meth to keep his weight down (similar to nazis, who were massive tweakers) and being sugar-babied by none other than Evil White Gay Peter Thiel whose heinous tech company Palantir introduced automated racial profiling to the world (among other things); and the fact that Theil is in the cabal as per The Files is also another complete coincidence and certainly not some terrifying sign of coordinated steps in an oligarchic sequence of popular white supremacy with the endgame of unleashing the peasantry on each other to thin the population and distract immiserated masses (literally you and me) from the incremental replacement of capitalism (bad enough) with techno feudalism (patently worse and already here). So yeah, like I said, so cool and normal. With everything being so cool and normal the rats still find some interesting things to chat about. Like; the great national mystery of the missing Māori economic base, which David Seymour definitely thinks has nothing to do with historic treaty swindles; and, the difference between psychosis and hypoxia, because so many people these days are experiencing one or the other, and it’s important to know your malady; and, the private fear that Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights might actually be, well if not good then campily enjoyable. What a time to be alive.Looksmaxx with us over at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter

Oh dear, it looks like we’ve been so desensitized to horror that full disclosure doesn’t mean diddly (doesn’t mean DIDDY) any more. Like, what even is happening with the Epstein Files? The rats don’t personally go in for annual bingo cards because they’re adults and not dead-eyed youths reducing every uncomfortable aspect of life to a game or meme trope, but that said, if either rat had a bingo card it would definitely not have had billionaire pedo cannibals on it. Never mind the fact they’re billionaire pedo cannibals who have either directly bankrolled or endorsed a live-streamed genocide, and that they are billionaire pedo cannibals our current government is not doing anything to distance us from. Like, I’m not keen on having America mining us or whatever, but I feel doubly not keen when the man behind the drill allegedly banged a child and then ate some of her (ALLEGEDLY). Feels like a no brainer tbh. Anyway…in this sort of Waitangi special the rats get nostalgic about the glass wares on the marae; a very specific type of cup that must’ve been part of some national standard at one time. Or a Briscoes sale. Likelier the Warehouse. Also; would Johanna ever fake her own death?The answer is probably yes, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. And then, if only because they have to, the rats discuss the Super Bowl, that American ritual of sound and fury which obviously split into factions this year with Turning Point’s sub par alternative show, headlined by a geriatric pedo who at the very least hasn’t eaten anybody (that we know of). While the rats have a heated debate about whether the symbolism of a Halftime Show has any social or cultural impact whatsoever, the world burns more and more furiously, and every able body under the age of sixty wonders whether they’d go as far as snipping their own achilles heel to dodge the draft. You know, like Trump did.

Welcome back to the gutter where the living ain’t easy and the joys of scraping by are . . . well, few and far between. But like, ‘community’. And like, ‘therapy’. Because while everything is on fire you can at least anaesthetise with self-care and yet another instalment of whatever the Kardashians are up to these days (*vomit sound). On the Kardashians, the rats revisit Kanye’s public apology for like, the last few years in which he identified as a Nazi and made songs about hitler, as well as rubbing shoulders with soft-cock fake-goth abuser Marilyn Manson, and a slew of albums which suffered not only from ironic fascism (???) but also lacked the glory of previous albums in which craft was the priority and not flaccid alt-right shock. Can we really forgive a balding bipolar has-been because, to quote his apology, he had a ‘head injury’ that made him think jews bad hitler good? Probs not tbh. Also; clearly Nicola Willis is terrible at her job. But with one of her few credentials being in English and poetry, the rats wonder what a poet Willis used to write about. Did she subvert canon and use kiwi imagery steeped in the miseries of Sylvia Plath? (Think a pavlova drizzled in period blood). Or maybe she used staccato stream of consciousness, like an affluent Janet Frame, minus the flare or urgency (and talent). The rats can only guess without eyes on Willis’s actual work, but they have to assume she’s a better poet than treasurer because if not, the safest thing would be for this early work to stay buried lest it resurface as just another humiliation on an already long list; somewhere between disappearing boats, e-scooter fails, and a collection of Blazers so plain they’d make Margaret Thatcher look like Liberace.Support us because nobody else will: patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter

Here we are in the new year, and any hopes of an improvement over the cluster fuck of 2025 are well and truly shot to shit. Because apparently we’re all expendable when it comes to the resource grabs of sycophantic billionaires. Bleating sheep marching obediently to the slaughter (sooooo brat summer). And yet the world is still so full of wonder. Like pussy sponges, an ancient solution to the age-old snafu of having sex on your period. Historically retrieved from the sea there are all sorts of synthetic materials available to those too far a drive from the coast for the humble sea cucumber and its absorbent variants. Cotton wool? Literal wool? The world of household items is your literal oyster. However, as one of the rats points out after recent first hand experience, a sponge lacks the tampon’s convenience of a drawstring. A help-mate to pull it out after use is recommended. Also, Johanna shares a recent experience of spontaneous non-sexual exploration of other women’s bodies in a club bathroom. The kind of sensual camaraderie men can’t consent to without the garb of contact sport or war, but which they would obviously very much like to have without risk of terminal gayness (an irremovable stain). Which begs the question; what’s more fulfilling, romance with a partner or romance with friends? The rats do not have an answer. Just voracious sexual appetites that no amount of cottaging can satisfy. They do try though. Frequently. And athletically. Also, what IS a functioning city, and what lengths are we willing to go to live in one? And more importantly, what does it matter in a resurgence of global fascism remaking every city in its own image anyway? Hold on to your tits girls; coz Paris is burning.

Wow, what a year this week has been! Just when you think the stink of western madness couldn’t get thicker on the air…it does. But anyone living on this side of 9/11 knows already that it can always get worse; and just in time for Christmas! One of our favourite things to do over the Christmas period is spiral in the family home after declining to join your loved ones at lunch, only to pull back from full dissociative affect by watching a familiar movie. Often this is Batman Returns or Eyes Wide Shut. But this year, why not remember the year that was by spiralling into a classic Rob Reiner, who we are presently mourning after he and his wife were stabbed to death in their LA home. The man gave us Princess Bride, and also This Is Spinal Tap, among others. And much like the inconceivable tragedy on Bondi Beach, Reiner’s death has already been re-framed by a toad-faced politician with a tic-tac-choad. Apparently, his death was an inevitable result of being anti-Trump (or so says Trump). Also on the agenda this week; theorist Byung Chul Han’s notion of terrorism as the ultimate selfie (kms), the offering of comedians versus the offering of musicians, the semiotic wasteland of techno neo-feudalism, the mirage of nationalism, and the unlikely power of Lynn Ramsey’s latest film Die My Love, in which impending climate doom and The Malaise Of The End are gorgeously rendered as one woman’s struggle with post natal depression (serious, it’s lit; and also the most punk thing you’ll see this year).Let rats live in 2026 by supporting us via patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter