MEGA QUAKE

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

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.

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.

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.

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.