Rats In The Gutter

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.

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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.
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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.

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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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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).

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