Rats In The Gutter

Well, as winter descends and New Zealanders retreat into Bronte flavoured gothic doldrums, some turn to the familiar for comfort, the known, the whimsical. And for the rats, this can sometimes mean indulging in a slightly embarrassing but mostly innocuous nostalgia watch of Adventure Time, which should actually have its roses as aforward-thinking animation that still smacks of post-modern vitalities and contemporary myth making in a media landscape that is annoyingly obsessed with (still, if you can believe it) teenagers having sex. I mean, at the very least it seems like Sam Levinson’s third season of Euphoria is pissing people off intentionally, making them feel icky enough they regret ever citing the first two seasons as quote-unquote ‘quality’. Which anyone who grew up on Skins could already plainly see was a complete ruse. Also; the rats comprehensively tackle (cough) the cultural weirdness of gooning and maxxing, which currently exist as a sort-of binary of optimisation and its opposite. Basically, the maxxer games the system like a chaos magician, working advantages and discarding anything that impedes upward mobility; while the gooner intentionally casts his time and energy on the fire, wasting himself into oblivion through porn-flavoured idles in an attempt to wrangle some agency back from the hampster wheel of late-stage capitalism. Which is the better method? More importantly, what kind of material conditions could create something like the dedicated gooner, a wastrel as committed to the bit of passive self destruction as a performance artist from the late seventies, or a sixteenth century martyr. There is so much of Bartleby the Scrivener in gooning, Herman Melville’s short story in which Bartleby—a words man—passively refuses the mundane tasks of his position (“I would prefer not to”) with such radical consistency that he is eventually locked up for it. All because he refuses to participate and lend his energies to a system of bureaucratic lashes and genocidal vim. The gooner is essentially Bartleby with wifi.Looking for more goon material? patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In honour of Tāmaki Noir tonight being hosted by Emma and featuring Samuel here's an episode from the back catalogue.a refined and amiable guest - this week we talk to journalist Emma Gleason about life, love, and the dystopian abolishment of truth in a media landscape that has no center.Delve into our back catalogue, bonus episodes and video content at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

RERUN: The Rats are taking a much deserved recording break, please enjoy this episode from the back catalogue.In this introductory episode, Samuel and Johanna explore their many indulgences toeing the line between self-care and self-harm, including (among other things) sex toys, weak white men, drinking as a national sport, smoking, full blown Burger King addiction and clinical inter-dependency. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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

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

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 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).Let rats live in 2026 by supporting us via patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter 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.Support us and Cynthia Erivo at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WARNING—contains a full minute of dead air as Johanna leaves the studio for a spew. A prerequisite of living in the gutter is humility—which, this week, Sam and Johanna seem to be in short supply of. Maybe we can blame the fact that narcissistic personality types are the new normal, or maybe it’s a contagion spread to us by our affluent gay friends who are more white and liberal than a Jacinda Ardern plush toy doing the hokey pokey. No Ardern shade really; only the world’s gonna need a lot more than ‘kindness’ to pull it out of its seasonal funk (side note; Ms. Ardern has recently done a speaking tour with Zionists *gag). Perhaps in aid of redeeming the complicity of white liberalism, ala terfy white gay guys and the Be Kind crew, the rats look to the Bible; and a heartening example of twinks fighting the good fight. You guessed it, it’s David and Jonathan from the Book of Samuel! Did you know that ‘harpist’ was code for pass-around party bottom? Look it up! (Must be able to translate Hebrew). Also; we question the true radical nature of neurodivergence, and whether deterritorializing flights from instrumentality are actually capable of culture jamming, or if it’s just another identitarian ploy for commercial anti-capitalism. Or something. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello there, our beloved and non paying listeners. This week the rats weave and wend their way around a world teetering on total shit fuckery (some would say we’re already there, or have been ever since the Iron Lady mainstreamed pillaging public infrastructure for the benefit of a ruling elite; tomay-toe toma-toe). In the rat’s shared world, which is still shared despite being separated by the Tasman sea, so much is going on that it’s difficult to put into words. Easier to put into a sustained note of primal screaming. In the undying spirit of the Avantgarde the rats offer a shaky middle ground with a near-hour of hyperbole and paranoia, with a dash of crowd-pleasing body horror. Like, the fact that Sam was recently grindr-catfished by Whangarei’s finest. Which would’ve been fine if it wasn’t for the upset stomach he got from swallowing A LOT of . . . well, you know. Add to this the whole block of Ghana he ate to get the taste and feel of hot white rancid lava out of his mouth/gut, and you might be able to guess how he’s finding his impromptu trip up north—familiar, bloating, and a little salty. This particular complaint leads Sam and Johanna down a nostalgic lane of old Whittaker’s campaigns. Specifically, the one where a biracial couple (for reference, a very hot svelte athletic couple; for the optics) dive into creamy vats of opposite blends; a white woman goes Ghana, a dark skinned man goes Milky Bar. The pair emerge as delectably coated racial cosplayers—roll branding. As if to say chocolate and eugenics go hand in hand—at least since (insert whatever year Whittakers was established). Also, we’d be remiss if we didn’t temper our id-fuelled verbal bricolage with some general pessimism about the approaching race/class/water wars. Which we do here. Enjoy (and see you in the thunder dome). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Another day, another National bequeathed nightmare. And yet more fixation on the unbearable incompetence of Nicola Willis. I know I know blaming a single person for the ruinous policies of an entire party is a bias, and in this particular instance borderline misogyny. But at this point we’re kinda not feeling beholden to considering the feelings of our shit-brained self-interested bloated-bellied government because they’re LITERALLY forcing everyone in this country to be complicit in an effing genocide. To take her mind off the profound national shame of our ELECTED leaders allying us with this century’s Nazis, Johanna goes to the ballet. Dracula to be precise. And finds herself surrounded by a frankly unreadable crowd. Who would’ve thought that Dracula the ballet would pull both borderline steampunk cosplayers, and cat eared femboys? A hybrid audience to say the least. But then I guess suffering at the hands of a nocturnal parasitic aristocrat is extremely relatable in our age of melanin deficient tech moguls. And once more, we turn to Nicola Willis and the mysterious case of the emperor’s new boats. Sam is horrified to realise the full extent of Willis’s suicidal approach to the NZ economy (if there is such a thing; pure theology). For example he didn’t realise a bargain deal on boats had already been secured, which Willis then scrapped, only for another more expensive deal to be struck when she realised that actually, it’s kinda important. Because the South Island is like, a real place. It definitely exists. People definitely live there. It’s definitely still quote unquote New Zealand. Also; Charlotte Gainsbourg’s sentient and detachable clitoris. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

well well well the rats are back and despite their hiatus they are NOT feeling rested. If anything their personal lives reflect the disarray of global politics. Though if they had to pick a favourite cluster fuck from the last week, it would definitely be the Nepalese uprising of angry zoomers literally burning their government to the ground for kicking them off twitter. In that vein, the rats would like to formally apologise for ANYTHING they have ever said about Gen Z, whose vacuous phone addiction and digital nativism might actually have an unanticipated radical potential (!!!). That said, the rats can’t help but feel disaffected about Charlie Kirk. Not the death of the guy (literally fuck him); more how his death will inevitably be spun into an unhinged attack on the dreaded left, despite the fact that kirk’s shooter was a friggin Groyper (an alt right douche). As Johanna’s dad conveniently points out while overhearing our less than informed historical speculations, it’s not dissimilar from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, in which biased spin about who did what and why triggered the First World War, which arguably engendered the second, which arguably put the tinders of a third world war in cold but living storage (and here we are). So yeah, pessimism is rife this week. But at least the Palestine march in Auckland had a hearteningly massive turnout; even if our government is too dickless to take a stance. In the rats humble opinion the world is currently over abundant with ugly middled aged men gaming public institutions to benefit private interests. How’s about we make like Nepal’s Gen Z and thin the crowd.Get in behind (and behind the paywall too) at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.