Rats In The Gutter

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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The rats are in mourning this week as Jimmy D, perhaps NZ’s last source of spiritually consistent urban gothic, closes its doors. As longtime fans of death-eater adjacent hotness, we feel the loss, and pity New Zealanders who wouldn’t bat an eye, and who clearly never grew up with the kinds of adolescent anti-social malcontent that leads later in life to success in the arts. In memoriam, we list our favourite Jimmy commodities, which include Berghein ready meshes and a VERY limited edition perfume which had notes of piss and cum braided so subtly with the linen-fresh of post-coitus Sunday morning bedding. Magnifique! Of course, there’s some confusion as to how this effect is achieved in the world of perfumery. Contrary to a very uncommon misconception, when a perfume strives to emulate bodily secretions in an aesthetically pleasing way, literal cat shit is generally not a viable (or legal) ingredient. With the ball rolling down an inevitable and endlessly quotable trough of listicles, the rats proceed to name their top five books, films, and tv shows; which makes sense in a saturated media landscape where digital consumption is technically our new civic (and moral) duty. Obvious crowdpleasers like David Lynch and Buffy abound, as well as lesser known but semi-popular favourites; like the centuries long submarine classic Das Boot, or the lush family romance of Salo (cough). Also, we ask the question everyone’s been too afraid to ask; is Johanna POC? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is officially Wicked Season and if you’re not a shrill femme jumping on the Ozian Express and getting your landing strip dyed a pleasing shade of verdigris, are you even ALIVE??!! Arguably, as our producer has pointed out, the true cinema of Wicked is the press tour, and by golly if Cynthia and Ariana haven’t ratcheted up the lezzy-platonic-whatever-it-is thing that they have going on like a director cut sizzle reel of the L Word. Truly, Cynthia Erivo is a force to be reckoned with and any mere mortal would be questioning their sexuality around her. Who doesn’t want to be Cynthia’s little pocket princess right now? Even if Ariana doesn’t get the Oscar, she’s got Erivo’s jacked arms and soothing upper-crust-British accent (worthy consolations). Oh to be the quasi-erotic fixation of a superhuman vocalist with the physical discipline of a Russian gymnast. Also, while the rats opine their lack of a Cynthia-Ariana style romance in their own lives, they discuss how finding a partner at this point is predominantly about just having someone beside you when we inevitably all burn together. You know, a fellow witness for the End of Everything (feasibly fucking imminent LOL). But in their chronic singleton status there’s always the symphonic stylings of Rosalia’s LUX (a cultural landmark akin to Moses’ high camp unveiling of the Ten Commandments on Sinai) to ease the stubborn agony of being alive in 2025. *sigh.

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There’s something rotten in the South Pacific (it’s cops, we’re talking about cops). Recent salacious pedo-adjacent revelations in NZ’s law enforcement aside, there is just SO MUCH to cover here at the end of everything, and the rats feel so honoured to have an avid listenership to join them in bearing witness to the rising seas (and everything that comes with that). Firstly, Auckland’s hornet problem, made more terrifying by the fact that they’re squirters (relatable, but ya know; time and place). Secondly, Johanna revisits her experiences as a young aryan-looking dressage aspirant at Horse Camp, a REAL THING THAT HAPPENED. While tumbling down nostalgia lanes, Johanna also tours us through the good Welly times of a local dairy-cum-party-hotspot, of which it’s reasonable to say Auckland has its own variations (not without a meth element though, which just isn’t everyone’s cup of tea). Second-to-lastly, we explore the recently disused Anthropocene moniker, and elect Cthuluhcene as a possible replacement, even though it feasibly all ends the same (so who tf cares; like, everyone dead etcetera). And last but not least, MUSICALS! Believe it or not Sam only saw Cabaret for the first time THIS YEAR, and is aghast at his own cultural lethargy. Turns out Bob Fosse is something of a genius. Get amongst!

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