This ep is proudly sponsored by One Percent Collective: opc.nz/RATS

Reality bends, warps, is vulnerable to liberal edits by every twelve year old with an iPhone, and is the worse off for it. That’s what we’re dealing with, collective sanity taking an extended sabbatical. And that’s the exact tone the rats take with its free-to-you ep this week, a shame-free fact-free spiral down various rabbit holes including Philip K Dick’s absurd declaration of female pop singers being emissaries of a supreme alien intelligence (The Logos), inter-dimensional travellers cleaning up after humanity’s nuclear mishaps, and whether or not Crushes has the best scented candles money can buy (which they do). Though they’d consider themselves empiricists the rats take a break from dialectical methods and explore the ‘what ifs’ of alien disclosure, which famous prophetess Baba Yaga predicted for this year, and which a new doco just premiered at Sundance called Age of Disclosure seems to herald. Are they here already? Do they mean us ill? Considering imminent nuclear holocaust, the rats take a more optimistic view that the aliens want to slow the roll out of total warfare because they can hear it through the interstellar wall, and would prefer we keep the noise down.

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The rats have contracted a mental illness whereby they can’t stop name dropping. Symptoms include swapping stories about famous people who may or may not hate them. Also, seasonal depression is getting mixed up with the existential dread of democracy’s very violent and drawn out end, which the rats have various strategies for combatting; like keto friendly sweet treats courtesy of local brand Justine’s, which Sam has seriously considered emailing with a message of profound gratitude.

Also, the country’s best in-store New World deli is aflame! The rats wonder whether they’ll still be able to get chicken sandwiches and hard boiled eggs on tap once the flames have been extinguished, while also being very grateful that first responders managed to get the flames under control (after several hours, cough). Also also, the rats finally give clarity to the age old question; what IS the difference between a chowder, a bouillabaisse, and a bisque? It all tastes like hot sick anyway, but we still think you’d like to know.

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There seems to be a lot of negative chat re Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover, and while at least one of the rats thinks Sabrina is the pop world’s most beige offering since Missy Higgins, they both agree that women policing women isn’t on; unless it’s a grown woman advising another grown woman to keep her love of Taylor Swift on the d-low (because like every conservative grifter with a secret Grindr account knows, not all guilty pleasures are quote-unquote innocent). Also; Sam complains (again) about having his expensive douche bottle stolen and renounces Queen Street City Fitness, scene of the crime in question.

He also wonders why the thief would take his douche over his bank card and Blunt umbrella (the rats decide this is yet another act of public desperation motivated by our national cost of living crisis). Finally, the rats are again in awe at people’s lack of capacity for satire, and in the same breath reconsider Michel Houellebecq’s Submission; though of course Houellebecq is a one-note writer, that note being the seemingly endless ballad of a sad white middle-aged man who’s never gotten laid in the way he’d like. His loathing of the middle class and France as a whole is just superb though, and the rats would recommend. Finally, the rats interrogate male laxity around having their mink blankets regularly laundered. As winter staples, it’s a unanimously timely and hard-hitting probing of a fractious and highly politicised topic (spoiler; you should wash your mink blankets every two weeks AT LEAST).

Support us and get extra shit at patreon.com/RatsInTheGutter

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