librarypunk - Tender Subject 001 - That’s a rather tender subject

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Welcome to the first episode of Tender Subject! This week, we're going over the whats and whys of this podcast. Why cannibalism? Why aren't we talking about True Crime? We also talk a little bit about the current cannibal craze in media and why we always need to justify our enjoyment. Finally, we do a show & tell for each other about something we might not do an entire episode on but wanted to talk about anyway.   Media Discussed: 2022 Was the Year of the Cannibal. What Does That Say About Us? We the Parasites by A.V. Marraccini Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind   Follow us on Twitter @tender_subject and on Instagram @tendersubjectpod Art by Anya R. Hueing Music by @coffin_flops

Hello, library punk listeners. This is your co-host Jay speaking. What you're about to listen to is not an episode of library punk. However, it is the first episode of a new podcast that Kate Terry and I are doing. You might remember Kate from a couple episodes of Library Punk, including the one about the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, as well as talking about fungus. This podcast, called Tinder Subject, is about cannibalism. through a lens of cultural critique.

We'll be talking about movies. We'll be talking about art, media more broadly. Listener discretion is advised, as we do swear a lot, and we talk about sex stuff a lot, as well as gross things, like eating people.

You can find us on Twitter, at Tinder underscore subject. We are also working on getting distributed through all other podcast platforms. You can find us on Podbean at tinder subjectpod. Pod.com. We don't have a URL yet. But I'm assuming we'll have all of that in the notes here.

So, yes, we look forward to sharing this with you and enjoy the very first episode of Tinder Subject. An article in vogue about cannibalism, which is kind of amazing and, like, sexy. I've got something. I understand how this is interesting. Thank you. The substance we receive. This is tender subject.

Insert theme music here. I love it. Yeah. I'm Kate. My pronouns are she, her, or they, them? And I'm Jay and my pronouns are he him. Sweet. So what are we doing here?

We're talking cannibalism. Why? Why in the world? What is this? What are we doing here? It started off as a joke that we took seriously, which a lot of my best ideas in the past couple years have been jokes that I've been taken seriously. I agree.

You were on my other podcast, Library Punk. I was. And each time cannibalism came up. Yep. And we waxed poetic about it while everyone else kind of stared at us. Indeed. And we realized, oh, shit, we should maybe do a podcast about this because we both have feelings and opinions about it. Yes.

And I feel like I have a little bit of a running joke on Twitter that I am into cannibalism, which is not entirely true. But I do find, you know, wires were crossed when I was a child as all kings are made. And I realized that one of the things that I found to be like incredibly erotic in a very strange way was Bugs Bunny getting cooked into a soup. Bugs Bunny is the root of most fetishes. Yeah, I think cartoons really are. my friend Roxy made a joke that like, someone on Twitter said that like most people get their fetishes from porn

and it's like absolutely not. It's the other way around. And Roxy was like, yeah, most people, it's like they were watching the Smurfs one afternoon and their underwear was too tight for some reason. And like, boom, fetish created. So I've always been like kind of, you know, morbidly fascinated by cannibalism. Oh, I was a big fan of Silence of the Lambs in middle school. I fucking loved that movie when I saw it.

And I was like, oh, hell yeah. I'm here for this. Yeah. And then, you know, as I became a sexually active person, I enjoy oral sex a lot. And the vocabulary we use to talk about oral sex is like eating, right? It's always involving eating. And so there was something about that wire got crossed in my head, I think, there. Because I'm not Catholic, so I don't even have that.

excuse. Oh, I do. Yeah. We can talk about that a lot too. Oh, yeah. That and that and Buddhism we're going to be like a whole episode. Yeah. They got a lot to say about Buddhism and or cannibalism and Tibetan Buddhism particularly. Amazing. Yeah, it would be great. We can talk about the Dalai Lama. Oh, God. That was a weird day to be Buddhist on Twitter. Yeah, I believe it. Yeah. He's like, oh, shit, it's happening. Oh, no. he's not actually the Pope of Buddhism guys yeah yeah and I don't know there's something about that the Rolling Stone article we're going to talk about later that it touches on a bit the act of like devouring as like that being like this like ultimate act of of love right

especially clones and all which you know we're definitely going to do an episode on but like of like taking someone into your body. Like it's almost like a penetrative thing. Hell yes. Like it's like so intimate. So not even like not even just like reading it or watching it or not in a sexual context. But just there's something symbolic about it that this is like this ultimate like almost mystic moment of coming together and becoming one thing. Yeah.

I always think like when I am like super in love with someone and you're like I'm cuddling with them or whatever and I'm like oh I would love to just like crawl right into your ribcage and just hang out there and I think that's like part of that feeling like the erotics of cannibalism as a metaphor like we're we're not going to give you recipes on this podcast probably probably probably probably I don't know we should absolutely I mean I'm a vegetarian so I wouldn't be able to but there is a Hannibal cookbook that we should absolutely do a review of recipes inside. I agree. I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm not a cannibal. I just play one on Twitter. Because people find it very amusing and I find it very amusing and I'm turned on by it. So I'm like, listen, if everyone's going along with this, like with my schick, then I'm going to keep doing it.

Right. And it's like not everything we talk about on this podcast will be sexual, but I think a lot of it will be in that ballpark. Like you said the erotics of, which is not necessarily mean it is erotic, pornographic, but the sort of like sensual intimate aspect, even if that is metaphorical. Totally. So it's not just fetishy, but there's something, yeah. Yeah, like I think that we'll talk about art and movies and books and. There's even like, there's a Brazilian art manifesto that's like metaphorically about cannibalism. So there's so much to talk about.

And cannibalism is used as a metaphor for so many different things. But one thing we're not going to talk about is true crime. That was a good transition. Thank you. Yeah, because like I have complicated feelings about true crime. Same. Like I grew up, never missed an episode of unsubborn. solve mysteries. Right.

I fucking love that show. And I as also as like as a librarian and also as a person who's supportive of like transgressive art that like, you know, the whole idea that like, oh, this thing depicts something or people enjoy something with this thing in it. And that's bad. I always shy away from that. So the fact that I feel so repulsed kind of by true crime makes me question and interrogate why a lot because it's like if people are enjoying something that's not harming anyone

else then i kind of there's no issue there but there's something about maybe not true crime itself but the way that it's being handled in society that i don't like because it's kind of just turned into white women being told to be afraid of strangers absolutely constantly and not saying that marginalized people or people who face any kind of oppression shouldn't be, I don't want to say like afraid, but like, you know, there are reasons to be on your guard in society if you aren't a, you know, cookie cutter, straight, white, cis, abled, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, like white man. But it's turned into this like, it shows how incompetent cops are, but it still is like cops are great, but also kind of supports vigilanteism with like, all the like, well, I'm going to be the one to research it and find out.

Yeah, I hate that part where it's like suddenly this like crew of Reddit people come in and they're like, this is actually what happened. And you know, when people talk about next door and like, oh yeah. And rings and all those things. Like I feel like surveillance culture is something that we should all be very skeptical of. and I agree. And it kind of understand, like, it brings out, like, sort of the worst of our biases. You know, it's like, if you're on next door, people are just going to be, like, reporting every person they find to be slightly strange looking on the street. And it's like, I could be on the street and you could just think I'm, like, a nice young white lady. And, like, it's literally the same thing.

Like, what difference does it make if, like, I. I'm loitering on my own street versus like a black guy loitering on his own street. But like on next door, it's the end of the world, you know? And I just feel like so many people talk about true crime already. Like we really don't need to go there. And only a few people, I think, handle it really well. Like I think Badgays did an amazing episode about Jeffrey Dahmer. And it's like, no one else needs to do one.

No. You know. No, anytime bad gays has done something related to true crime and Dommar is very apt, right? They've always made sure to make it to really show where the societal issues are. Like they show that the person is a person. And also the problems actually are this like when they did Eileen Wernos. Yeah. Instead of like doing their whole like stick at the end, they were just like,

fuck society go donate to like sex workers and stuff. Hell yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, like we don't need to, we don't need to contribute to the true crime canon. There's like so many podcasts. And there are not a ton of podcasts that are talking about cannibalism in a pop culture setting. Nope. Because I looked for them. Yeah. Because I looked for them. There's some that will talk about just like events that happen. that I wouldn't classify as true crime. Yeah.

But, you know, like shipwrecks or, you know, whatever. And then not much else. Yeah. It's kind of confusing, especially with like how big, like Hannibal was and it all being artsy-fartsy, like you would think. Maybe that that would inspire more people. Brian Fuller, if you're listening, if you want to come on. Ooh, yeah.

Be our best friend. That'd be fun. That would be fun. That would be fun. I love him. But that's why we're here. Yeah. to talk about cannibalism and culture in media in the arts

because I also think that it like people like to think like oh cannibalism is this but one thing I love to challenge with like anything I do is showing where lines aren't as defined as we would like them to be like I bite at my nails and the skin around them all the time if I don't spit that out and I swallow it, is that auto cannibalism?

Kind of. And how many people love to do that? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, is kissing cannibalism if you're spit? It could be.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the horror side of that, of course, is like, you know, are zombies's cannibals, our vampires cannibals? You know, is any kind of exchange of, like, body part, fluid, etc., some kind of cannibalism. some kind of cannibals. Well, that's what I'm going to talk about in our, my little show. Same. Yeah, same. Yeah, I'm so excited. But yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of, like, fertile ground that people want to talk about it. And we just saw there was a Rolling Stone article that, like, literally just came out. 22, 22 was the year of the cannibal. What does that say about us by Brenna Erlich?

which one no one knows how to write about horror. True. Yeah. Non-horror writers, like, yeah. Learn how to write about genre. Oh, it's all about a societal comment. Yeah. Everything is not just horror.

I know. Well, and then, yeah, which led me to, like, there was an article in vogue. There was an article in vogue about cannibalism, which is kind of amazing and, like, sexy. The New York Times has an article. ID, which is like a British design magazine, had an article about cannibalism.

New Yorker had a thing about yellow jackets where they said, the cannibalism is the least interesting thing about it, which I completely disagree with. And that's again, like, another person who doesn't know about genre, who's just like, oh, no, it's all about how a bunch of girls learn how to get along in the woods.

And it's like, fuck no. It's about eating people. I still haven't seen the show. Yeah, we'll talk about it. I'm already fan being a host of this podcast. Yeah, we'll talk about it. I am not a huge fan. And I mean, I think that'll be interesting to talk about too.

Because people use cannibalism as a metaphor for so many different things, I feel like the way people talk about cannibalism, they will like really skirt around the actual cannibalism to be like, well, this is actually about... It's just a metaphor. It's actually about this. And it's like, it can be true. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like one thing I noticed in this article was that like the kind of talking head they got for it, their authority person was like a horror fissionado and a psychiatrist. Like in order to even talk about this, they had to get someone who could like medicalize why it fascinates us. Right. Right? Which I found kind of icky.

Even if I kind of agree with this person's opinions in some instances, I'm like, oh yeah, that's true. That's correct. But it felt like, like, I don't want to be like, oh, why is this so taboo

that we can't talk about it in whatever way, but it's like, can we not just write about this without, it's like we don't, how do I say this? Societal and self-reflection

is important and interesting, especially with our media, media both I do think does affect us societally and is a byproduct of already existing societal attitudes. But to say that everything has to be like reduced down to, oh, you do the sort of like our desire for something is ever actually what we desire, which I kind of agree with, but that, I'm being rambly, but that like you have to bring in a fucking doctor to explain why people want to watch the Jeffrey Dahmer show and explain it so that it's okay.

Yeah, I guess it's like excusing it. No, you're right. That it's like, well, we have to come up with a reason why people like cannibalism shows because of this thing, not just because people are sick little freaks. We're all perverts. It's okay that we are.

it's okay to be a sick little pervert yeah just got to own up to it like I've been leaning extra hard into the whole pervert thing lately when I really learned when I was like through again through bad gay shout out the whole distinction between the pervert

and the invert that that came up so like inverts um so this is before being trans and being gay were kind of separate they were still like if you were like you know a real

much lesbian or a real Femmy Twink or something. If you, you know, basically you, it wasn't that you were quote gay. It was that you were the soul of whatever in the wrong body. That's what inversion is. You're inverted. And because

that's a medical thing. Right. And therefore it's, you can start working on to cure it and excuses it and you can be pitied and whatnot. And it's like, like this is wrong that you're like this and so that we can fix it. Right. It's like hate this in the sinner. Right. It's the born this way.

Mm-hmm. Argument, whereas perversion is just... That's the good stuff. You can't, oh, you're not born in the wrong body, and you're just doing this, and you're not, you're not wrong in the right way. Right. Yeah, you're just a fucking weirdo, like everyone else is. And you're a fucking little freak. And you're showing, and you're fully owning it in, you're not closing parts of yourself off. You're not like, you know, saying like, oh, this is what I have to look like to society on the outside.

And everyone's like, you fit in very nicely. Thank you very much. You know, like it's the same as, you know, like people saying, oh, well, you know, gay should be allowed to get married because we're just like everybody else. We're just normal. No, I know the fuck I'm not. We're just, we just want to be normal suburban, boring people just like you. And it's like, no, we do not.

I don't want to be a normal suburban boring person. You know, like we shouldn't lean into that. And I'm really happy that there's a lot of people who don't, who, you know, are like sort of more visible now who are like, no, no, no, that's not what we want to do. Right. And like with like the, with our fascination with cannibalism, it's like, I don't like the whole like excusing it through, oh, well, it's really just a metaphor for whatever things. is happening in society. And these things are happening in society right now. And therefore, we're, our horror needs to, is reflecting it in XYZ ways, which again is

also true. But it's like also, we all love weird, transgressive stuff. Yeah. We're not open about it. There's a reason why people slow down around a car wreck. Yeah. It's not because they're trying to be careful. It's because they want to see a dead.

body in a car. Yeah. That's why, you know, it's like, have you not ever thought about like, oh, if I have to get something amputated, I wonder if I could take it home and eat it just to see what it's like because I'm curious. I totally would. It's my whatever, right? Exactly.

People eat their placentas. They do. That's cannibalism, baby. Yeah, they make like little placenta pills and people, you know, take the pills. And it's like supposed to be the most, like, nourishing. you know, like body part. And that's totally cannibalism. It's fine.

It's fine. It's cannibalism that we say is fine. Yes. Right. It's acceptable. And so it's like I wish we would be more honest about, you know, we like we like things that are taboo. Mm-hmm.

And it's okay. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. I mean, there is something wrong with you. because there's something wrong with everyone because we're all just sick little freaks and that's a great thing. Yeah, it doesn't need to be pathologized. Like, you don't need to be, you know, as someone, it's like, you know, in kink culture, it's like, oh, people always used to be like, well, you got spanked as a child, so you love getting spanked as an adult because you're like reclaiming it. And like, some people do. No, I didn't actually.

I didn't get spanked often at all. Yeah. Yeah. I got hit a couple of times. and that was it because I was a goody two shoes. Yeah, exactly. I know, I was the best, the best daughter ever. So I never got hit.

But like now I'm still the best girl ever and I love to get hit. Yeah. Right. Right. It's like you can do interrogation, self interrogation. You can even do like cultural criticism and critique. But we don't have to bring a psychiatrist in to, again, give people an excuse to feel okay about this sick twisted transgressive thing that they enjoy.

Right. Absolutely. Just fucking lead into it. Just, oh. Yeah. So that's the, yeah, that's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about a bunch of crazy shit and we're probably going to get weird. We're definitely going to get weird. Mm-hmm. And we'll have a lot of fun guests who are also little freaks. Only freaks on this podcast.

So many of them. Yeah. All my friends are freaks. Yep. I don't know any normal people. I know a few. Let's see. In the Rolling Stone article that I didn't like, there were some things I did like about it.

Mm-hmm. I actually really enjoyed it's, I don't want to say defense of, because I did not watch either Dom or Media mentioned in the article, either the Ryan Murphy series, which I'm kind of a Ryan Murphy apologist. I watched the Ryan Murphy. Murphy. Yeah. Yeah. And I liked it. Because I agree with this and that like, I mean, I hope that the family was actually contacted and I hope everything was like, you know, squared away before they got going. Because again, like this was about like a white man who killed a lot of like queer black men. That was mainly his victims. I feel like people don't talk about that aspect enough. That like the incompetence of the police is what. let him get away with this for so long. Yeah, the incontinence of the police and the willingness of society, I think just at large, should be like, gay stuff is icky,

I don't want to know anything about it. It is pretty icky. Yeah, and the people that he targeted were, yeah, people that we don't like to think about that are in the shadows, you know, like sex workers of color. Yeah, and like, but what I liked about this was that like, it's okay to do media about bad people even if they were real that's not glorifying or fetishizing or defending them and that like it's good to show that this person was a human because monsters

are human too yeah they're monstrous too yeah like be a saint and still be able to do this and that's important to realize because if we just label people as oh, that's this like monster who we can't talk about and has no depth or interiority, then that ceases to be a real person, then we can't like do anything about, you know. Right. So I like that. It becomes like an individual problem rather than a systemic problem. Yeah.

You know, it's easy to be like, well, this guy was a monster, so there was really nothing that could have been done. You know, or there was nothing, there's nothing about him that's human. There's no, like, story to him at all. Like, there's a story to every person that's born and dies, you know. And that's not an excuse. No, it's not an excuse. Yeah. I mean, you're not, by saying that someone grew up with, like, in an abusive family

or something like that, it's still not an excuse for why they became a horrible person. but it does like help you understand I think right you know and I think I think that's an important thing to be able to understand right like just because I was abused and didn't go that route doesn't mean that that can't be a cause for going that route right or part of it or part of it yeah and I think so you know systemically a lot of people exist in a like you know like a pattern of abuse that like you know continues over and over again. And we should talk about that. We should talk about, like, we shouldn't be afraid to talk about things like that. Exactly. So, yeah. Was there anything else that you liked about this article?

I think it's just fun. I mean, I thought it was just really funny that we were like, oh, shit, cannibalism is hot right now. It also made me, it gave me a list of, like, a few things that I would like to watch. that I haven't seen yet. Yeah. And just like some funny kind of like awkward stuff. Like it is kind of crazy that Bones and All was like the movie after Call Me by Your Name and like Army Hammer I guess is like accused of having a cannibalism.

Do you not know about this? No, I do know. I do know. But I guess it's like. Yeah. Yeah. I don't. I feel like I don't know enough about it to be like,

was this like a non-consensual cannibalism fetish or is he just a weird little freak? Yeah. I don't know. And like feel free to cancel me. Or don't cancel me. Just be like, hey, you didn't know this thing. I thought it was weird. Consensual cannibalism fetish.

That's metaphorical. I'm giving it a pass. Yeah. What I found weird about this article was near the beginning when it was tying cannibalism to cancel culture. as in like cancer culture is us like cannibalizing each other on Twitter every day yeah which I'm so fucking tired of commentary on cancel culture oh god it's so fucking boring

I don't think there's anyone who has like a good take on it really I just know yeah it's just like it's not cancel culture it's like people talking you know like I don't understand it's a platform where people just talk all day long you know and like it's not cancel culture to be like Elon Musk is a fucking dickhead. Like it's just like running your mouth. You heard it here first. You heard it here.

No one else is, no one else is strong enough to say that out loud except for me. No, but like it's just like me running my mouth and like it's true. It is true. But it doesn't exist for the most part. I mean, I wish it existed more than it actually does. Yeah, like it actually exists for people who are trans on Twitter. Who have no power.

Yeah, who have no systemic power. But it doesn't exist for, like, Louis C.K. Yeah. It doesn't exist for, yeah, like owners of Twitter who are like emerald minor creeps. You know, like, it doesn't exist for people who have any, like, systemic power. Yeah. And it's boring. It is. I'm tired of it. Yeah.

I'm talking about cannibal. Yeah, let's talk about cannibal. Which is fun. Are we ready for show and tell? And like just one more thing that like, yeah, like I find it so hilarious that people who are like trad and conservative call people like us snowflakes. And we're like, we have a podcast about cannibalism. What are you talking about? Exactly. I can handle a lot of shit, honey.

Yeah, exactly. I can handle so much stuff. I'm like, I'm not offended. I'm like, annoyed. They're very different things. Very different things. I'd almost rather be offended than annoyed sometimes. Yeah, for real.

It takes a lot to offend me. But, like, annoyed. That's a very common state. that I exist in. All right. Anyway, show and tell. Who wants to go first? Oh, my God.

We're so good at this. I can go first. Yes, tell me, tell me. I almost, I held up my book as if this was actually a visual media and I'm doing a book report on the podcast. But so I. Oh, I should say we're doing a little bit of show and tell of things that like we might, would probably not do a whole episode. on just because we wanted to give like a lot of context for this first episode.

Yes. But further episodes will be about full things. Yes. So what I wanted to talk about because I feel like this is a really good place for me to start when thinking about criticism and cannibalism and sort of the erotics of criticism is. Hell yeah. I just finished reading this book, this lovely little slim volume called We the Parasites by A.V. Maruccini. It is a beautiful hot pink cover, which is also very part of the erotics of criticism, I think. I really appreciate it. But so the author is a critic and has written a lot about literature and art and really approaches it from an extremely like, subjective, libidinal, sort of like erotic approach. And I mean, that's like kind of how I think of

art. I'm, I'm an artist, but I'm also interested in criticism. And I've done like curating and things like that before. And I've written about art. But I think because I'm an artist and I like want to always like put my hands into everything literally that like this kind of criticism is the interesting to me. So I'm going to read a little paragraph that will start me off. All right. So this is in the first part of the book. And the author starts out talking about figs and fig wasps.

And like right away I'm like, I'm in. Devouring. Devouring. I love it. So the critical gaze is also erotic. We want things. We are by a degree of separation. pollinating figs with other figs

by means of our wasp bodies rubbing two novels together like children who make two dolls have sex except we'll die inside the fruit and someone else will read it and eat it rich with all the juices of my corpse this is an odd but sensuous thing to want and I like fucking died

talk dirty to me baby it's like so incredibly horny and so throughout the book they talk about critics being parasitic, but also having like a symbiotic, potentially having a symbiotic relationship with artists. Right. And that parasitic doesn't necessarily mean like a bad thing because parasites need to keep the host alive in order to continue being parasitic, which is also kind of hot.

But I was just thinking about, you know, that like I said before, like the feeling of loving a thing so much you want to like crawl inside of it or like you want membranes to become porous and you want to like devour something and I feel like that's what I'm most interested in when it comes to like cannibalism and body horror um is like the erotics of it and the just sort of like extreme drama like I've always been a really dramatic I was a super dramatic kid and continue to be a dramatic adult. Same. Yeah, right?

We're perfect together for those podcasts, but they also say something about critics as tapeworms clinging to the guts of painting and poems. Yeah, it's so good. And then there's one other... I hope Cronenberg to adapt this. I know, right? Cronenberg, read this book. There's one other part that I want to do.

And to read, that was really interesting. That was about an artist who went to see a Solowit painting and got so excited by it that they kissed it. And so is this Cambodian French artist, Rindy Sam, kissed a panel of Twombly's triptic Fedris. And it was smudged by Sam's red lipstick. She tried, she was tried in a court in Avignon for voluntary. degradation of a work of art. And she said,

It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking. I thought the artist would understand. It was an artistic act provoked by the power of art. The prosecution, meanwhile, described the act as a sort of cannibalism or parasitism, but admitted that Sam was not visibly conscious of what she had done. And I just love, like, that's... so fucking romantic.

Like religious experience. Yeah. And like I was thinking about as an artist, what would I do if someone kissed my painting? And I think I'd be okay with it. Yeah. I think I'd be fine. It's in a, also, it's a Twombly. It's in a museum already. Like the act of someone kissing your painting is like another level of experience of that painting. Right. Yes. It's like when you check out a book from a library and someone's like written in the margins. Yes. Or like left a sticky note in or something. Like you will now are not just checking out the book. Like there's added experience to that book now that you get to check out. Right. Like you get to see the. I know when I get really excited I put like,

I write like yes with a million exclamation points next to something. Yes. And then you get to see someone else's excitement. Yes. About reading that passage also. And isn't that kind of cannibalism? Like reading, like experiencing and reading and devouring and consuming the excited notes of another while reading. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought this was for me like, yeah, this book really like just this idea of criticism being so libidinal felt very much like what I am interested in with this podcast project, you know, is like, oh, it's so good.

I feel like it's interesting that it's, because normally you might talk about that kind of libidinal thing for the artist, right? Because that makes sense, but not necessarily the critic. So I really, that's interesting. How long have you, this book been in your life? Not very long. I just got it a couple of weeks ago.

It is a newish book. And I really appreciate it. It's from sublunary editions. And it says on the back, an object by. Not a book, an object by. An object of desire. Yeah, it is. It's an

aesthetic object and the author A.V. is very active on Twitter and when people take a picture of themselves with the book, you know, like reading the book, like, oh, I'm reading this book. I love it so much. They'll always comment

about like the environment that the book is in or if you have really good nails or something like that they'll be like oh i love the bright pink cover with your you know like glittery black nails or you know like it's just very lovely they're very aesthetically attuned as a critic i like that but also a marxist so you know you get both best of both worlds really yeah so you know i just yeah oh there's and there's one more thing in this book that like I thought about for weeks about how there is a fish louse that crawls

that crawls into a certain kind of fish's mouth they eat the fish's tongue and then they become the tongue of the fish for the rest of the fish me and who right yes I was like that is the fucking hottest thing I've ever heard yeah who wants to be my tongue for the rest of my life. I'm in awe of nature. I know, me too. Nature is so incredibly weird. Just like incredibly weird. This morning, my speaking of parasites and cannibalism, my cat Odin, who is a feral, old

god who goes outside, he's the only cat who goes outside. Because otherwise, he pees everywhere. He had a very large thing attached to him this morning. And I was like, oh my God, what is this? It was a giant engorged tick. It was so disgusting. But of course, that's all I've been thinking about all day. I have it in a little jar.

Yeah. Did it like pop and stuff? It hasn't popped yet. And I feel like both me and my spouse are like, who's going to pop that fucker first? Right. Yeah. Because I want to.

He's so engorged. You should do art with it. He's just like, it's like Violet from Willy Wonka. Literally, it's just this huge engorged round thing with tiny legs and arms. That's incredible. Yeah. Sick. Yeah.

So that is the end of my book report. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You were a very good girl. Thank you. Gold Star. All right.

So for my show and tell for the class, I brought the book, Perfume, the story of a murderer. Yes. By the German author, Patrick Susskind. In German, the title, and part of me, my German's a bit rusty,

is Das Parfume Di Gicheste Aines Murders. Pretty direct translation, actually. And there was a 2006 film adaptation by I think the guy who directed Run Lola Run, but I might be incorrect about that. It starts Ben Wishaw and also Alan Rickman's there. Oh. I haven't seen the film though, so I cannot comment on it.

All right. Well, maybe we should watch the film. Maybe. Have you read this book? I haven't. At all. I'm aware of it, but I haven't read it. It's so good.

And when I tell people about it, they kind of stare at me. It's about in, um, it's about in, um, 18th century France. There's an orphan by the name of Jean-Baptiste Granuille. And I believe Granuie means frog on Frances. And he is born, like, a super smeller. He's like an exceptional sense of smell to the point that he can like navigate in the dark. Like it's like that.

Like a bat. Yeah, and he can like memorize all the smells in Paris. That's cool. And he can like tell, like, if someone's sick, like, that level of being able to smell. And he works in a tannery for a bit. And then he eventually becomes an apprentice to a perfumer and learns how to make perfume. And while working, he's, like, bored because he's memorized all the smells in France now. His nasal landscape is just sad now.

And he's a creepy little freak with no friends. And then he, all of a sudden, there's this new amazing, exceptional smell. And it's this like virginal teenager girl walking by, right? And so in order to investigate the smell and he wants it, right? He kills her and like stays there with her until the smell goes away. So he can memorize the smell and always have it. But then it's like his goal to figure out how the fuck do I? distill the smells that I want, right?

And so then he eventually gets an apprenticeship with another perfumer who teaches him new methods, and he smells another girl that's even more better. And so instead of killing her right way, he goes on a killing spree and just kills a bunch of virgins to practice distilling them into perfume until he can finally, you know, this is all spoilery, right? until he finally is able to get her and kill her and distill her into a perfume. Wow. And he the and it's a very like lush book because like because I'll get to the end because the end is why I wanted to talk about.

Yeah, yeah. But it's a very lush book. It's very baroque and ornate and almost purple prosy because it's sort of like how do you write like talking about the senses. is really hard in writing, actually, because it's like, well, I experience anything that's not sight or hearing. It's like, what is touch, what is taste, the smell? Like, how the hell do you describe that in words in a way that someone else can then imagine that and grasp that? Like, I, like, I felt, I feel like the way that Ratatouille does the scene where he's trying the cheese and the strawberry at the same time and that's and showing like these little like bursts of like fireworks almost as like biting the the taste together to convey that to the audience that was like a brilliant way of doing that but it's like really hard to do actually it's hard in literature yeah yeah like show not tell right um so an entire book about a sense of smell and like how that is tied to like

memory and emotions and meaning. Because another thing about Jean-Baptiste is that he himself does not smell. Like his body does not give off any smell. And so like wet nurses who had him in the orp in like the convent orphanage when he was a kid, but he was like the fucking antichrist because he's like, they're like, he doesn't smell the way babies are supposed to smell. Right. Yeah.

Because babies have such a distinct. A distinct. instinctive like milk kind of like fresh smell and he just like didn't have that so they're like this little demon child who doesn't smell the way babies are supposed to smell but then he himself has like an angelic sense of smell that's wild I mean Hannibal lector had a very good sense of smell also exactly and so at the end of the book he ends up getting caught and when they are taking him out to the, you know, center of the square to execute him a, like, single drop of his new virgin perfume, like the distilled perfect scent, right?

Drops onto, you know, where the hangings and whatnot on the gallows. Wow. And that one drop, the smell and the emotions and feelings and whatnot that it stirs in literally every single person in attendance. he is like is able to convince them that he did not do it. Holy shit. They offer him like. They like glamored them.

Yeah. They offer him like something but not. And then everyone in the audience is just so enraptured and so in love with him that this wave of lust goes through everyone in the crowd and a mass orgy breaks out. Holy shit. And you have to remember that these are their families here. including children. Okay. Everybody goes in on the orgy and is not discerning about with whom they are orgying.

And then afterwards, this like mass hysteria that breaks out, no one can really remember that they did it. And they kind of don't talk about it. And he's just allowed to like get off, go away and life kind of goes back to normal. But it bores him and he doesn't like it. And so he intends to go back to die. And when he gets to where he wants to die, he takes the bottle of the perfume and he dumps the entire thing on his head. And then I will read. Yes, please.

It's story time, kids. I like story time. Yeah. That was the first thing that any of them could recall that he had stood there and unstoppered a bottle. And then he had sprinkled himself all over with the contents of the bottle. And all at once, he had been bathed in beauty like bled. blazing fire. For a moment, they fell back in awe and pure amazement. But in the same instant, they sensed their falling back was more like preparing for a running start, that their awe was

turning to desire their amazement to rapture. They felt themselves drawn to this angel of a man. A frenzied, alluring force came from him. A riptide no human could have resisted, all the less, because no human would have wanted to resist it. For what that tide was pulling under and dragging away was the human will itself straight to him. They had formed a circle around him, 20, 30 people, and their circle grew smaller and smaller. Soon the circle could not contain them all. They began to push, to shove, and to elbow, each of them trying to be closest to the center. I feel like I just realized what was going to happen. Yeah. You went, oh. Okay, I'm ready. Yeah. And then once the last inhibition collapsed within them, and the circle collapsed with it. They lunged at the angel, pounced on him,

threw him to the ground. Each of them wanted to touch him, wanted to have a piece of him, a feather, a bit of plumage, a spark from that wonderful fire. They tore away his clothes, his hair, his skin from his body. They plucked him. They drove their claws and teeth into his flesh. They attacked him like kainas. But the human body is tough and not easily dismembered. Even horses have great difficulty accomplishing it. And so the flash of knives soon followed, thrusting and slicing, and then the swish of axes and cleavers aimed at the joints, hacking and crushing the bones. In very short order, the angel was divided into 30 pieces, and every animal in the pack snatched a piece for itself, and then, driven by voluptuous lust, dropped back to devour it.

A half hour later, Jean-Baptiste Grun-Wi had disappeared utterly from the earth. When the cannibals found their way back together after disposing of their meal, no one said a word. Someone would belch a bit or spit out a fragment of bone or softly smack with his tongue or kick a leftover shred of blue frock-coated into the flames. They were all embarrassed and afraid to look at one another. They had all, whether man or woman, committed a murder or some other despicable crime at one time or another. but to eat a human being, they would never, so they thought, have been capable of anything that horrible. And they were amazed that had been so very easy for them. And that, embarrassed as they were, they did not feel the tiniest bite of conscience.

On the contrary, though the meal lay rather heavy on their stomachs, their hearts were definitely light. All of a sudden, there were delightful bright flutterings in their dark souls. and on their faces was a delicate virginal glow of happiness. Perhaps that was why they were shy about looking up and gazing into one another's eye. When they finally did Derrett, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile.

They were uncommonly proud. For the first time, they had done something out of love. And that is how that book ends. God, damn. So good, right? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry, Archer. Hit your tail, buddy.

Oh. I know. I know. I know. It's like suddenly this book about smell becomes a book about consuming. And then I'm so viscerally reminded of what is actually happening when we smell something. Yeah. And that particles from that thing are going into our nasal cavities. And some sense we are consuming anything that we smell. That is why smell, like, affects our sense of taste so much. Yeah, yeah. If you lose your sense of smell, you can, I mean, I had COVID a year ago and my taste buds were just, like, a wreck, you know?

And it was, like, not pleasurable to eat food. And it was so sad. Right. Like, so I love this book because of, one, that at the end. Yeah, that is. Yeah. They loved him so much that, like, they ate him. And thinking about, like, of him as an angel, you know, they had to take, like, a bit of his body,

which is what a lot of, you know, a lot of saints are, their little bone fragments are in reliquaries all over the world. Oh, that's right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. that people feel like they need to like partake in it so much that they need they need like a little piece of somebody right i mean like even think about like victorians with their like locks of hair oh yeah and stuff right um and like morning jewelry that's like locks of hair yeah yeah it's like and to be in the point of view for because it's a third person point of view of obviously but we're in you know we're with jean viz jean Baptiste for basically all of it until the end as he's getting devoured. Right. And then suddenly it just like pulls out.

Yeah, it becomes about the people around him. And the fact that that's like this first act of love for so many people, you know, I mean, it's true. Like most of us kind of are just like senses dulled most of our day. Yes. I mean, I mentioned when I mentioned when I was last on horror vanguard when I went on to talk about an opera that like one of the reasons why I like opera so much is because of how melodramatic it is because polite society,

normal society, you know, white heteronormative, you know, society tries to, capitalist society, tries to keep all of our senses dull. Yeah. You know, we're like sanitized and sterilized against everything and like told what to feel. and what to want and want to desire and how and when and why instead of just letting ourselves have feelings and senses and stuff. And when we actually do let ourselves, we find how intense they actually are, how intense our hunger is, how intense our taste is, how intense our lust is, how intense all of our emotions are.

Yeah. Oof. Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited. We're going to talk about so many fun things. I know. I would just do a whole episode on this book, but that's the only cannibalism. Yeah, that's enough.

It's just the end. I don't know. That's enough. Yeah. I think we can, yeah, we can talk about so many things. I'm super excited and so happy to like, one of the things I love about podcasts is it's just like, well, first of all, it's like freelance research. It's a great way to get me to do homework.

Right. It feels like I'm still in grad school, which is awesome. And then it just like, it's a project that just kind of keeps spinning, you know, so you meet new people and get all these new approaches and ideas. And like, that leads you to the next weird thing. And, like, someone will suggest a book you've never heard of before. And you're like, sweet, I have a podcast. Come on.

Let's go. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about weird shit. So yeah, weird shit. Weird shit. That's it. Yeah. But yeah, that's me and my book report.

I love it. Thank you. Love it. I love book reports. Yeah. In conclusion, this is a real good book and everyone should go read it. Yeah, I know. I'm adding it to my list right now.

Yeah. I know Gretchen really likes it. Yeah. So I've seen her talk about it before. Yeah. So. Always a good reason to read. read a book.

Is that Gretchen Falcon Martin? Yeah. Exactly. It gets her stamp of approval. Yes. Exactly. Speaking of which, I made myself bleed

and I'm sucking on it and I just realized, oh, huh. Amazing. Amazing. It's all around us, folks. Just a nice, salty little snack. Yeah, trying to keep it from, you know, getting everywhere. Oops.

Anyway. All right Justin always just says good night when we end things Yeah And then it's very abrupt Yeah Well we'll come up with something

And we'll have social media At some point Yes Yes My Twitter's currently locked down Because Tucker Carlson Found out about a thing I'm in Jesus Christ

Yeah That sucks Yeah So far I haven't had any harassment But the project Rit Large has Yeah Well I guess

you can find both of us on our other podcasts at the moment. Yes, I am. Oh, go ahead. At Fang's podcast. And you are? At library punk. Yeah. Woohoo. We like librarians and or vampires.

Yeah. I mean, every, you know, if you like one, you like the other, let's be real. There's librarians on the vampire podcast. It's true. And vampires on the librarian podcast. Not yet, actually. Yeah, you need to get yourself a vampire librarian. There's got to be somebody. Or maybe we just bite the bullet and do an episode about Buffy.

Let's do it. We don't have anything else going on. Let's do it. Now whose podcast will it be on? That's the fun question. But you'll have to tune in and find out next week on Tinder subject. Yes. Yeah.