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Episode 484 - The Ocean Leech (Patreon)

Published:
2020-01-23 14:37:42
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

This week, we're sucking up to The Ocean Leech by Frank Belknap Long!

Special thanks to our reader, Rachel Lackey of Rachel Watches Star Trek!

Coming up: The Beast with Five Fingers 

Comments

Anonymous

You know a story is mediocre/bad when Chad and Chris spend 43% of the show in diatribe mode.

Anonymous

Story was just okay, but I love the episode itself. The Leech Facts were solid, and the end music was tranquil and helped me recover from hearing about the Tyrant King Leech.

Anonymous

If you don't know about Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous go back and listen to Doom Came to Sarnath.

Steve

Boatswain, isn't that the Bo'sun?

Steve

"Industrious retching matter", doesn't get better than this.

Steve

I got leeched once. It's pretty creepy, and didn't hurt at all.

Anonymous

I really liked this one. Sorry you guys weren't as entranced. The Siren Song monster is also present in "The Bells of Oceana" from last year and "The Horror at Martin's Beach", which is one of my favorite eps from the HPL days. I'm actually writing some interconnected short stories at the moment about the people left behind when sea monsters start seductively calling denizens of a depressed seaside resort town to their doom during the long, lonely off season. It's also about how Robert Shaw was warning us about this in JAWS all those years ago. Nothing good happens when you go swimmin' with bow-legged women.

Anonymous

I'm pretty sure that sea lamprey are only parasitic during a juvenile metamorphic phase. I'm too lazy to go grab a text book or google, but I remember that from some work a few years back. Anyways, that's how it is here in Maine. The adults are pretty grotesque and freaky though, that I agree on.

Anonymous

That passage about sails really sounded like Bradbury's style.

Anonymous

The leech weather predictor was called the Tempest Prognosticator IIRC. And Chris you can see one if you go to the museum in Whitby. My wife and I went to the Goth festival a while back and took a trip around the museum while we were there. As we were the only ones the guy who took the tickets gave us a tour where he explained all about the Prognosticator. They also have a Hand of Glory there!

Anonymous

I amused myself by trying to imagine the leech monster / human relationship as similar to the human / domesticated animal relationship. It didn't quite work, but it sort of did. Imagine, if you will, a cow on a farm near Kobe. It lives in cow-luxury with beer and massages and classical music in a heated shelter. It ponders life and develops a personality. One day the doors open and these new creatures emerge. They sure look like the humans that take such good care of you, but they smell wrong and whoo-Nelly they sure don't have your best interests at heart. Still, they know how to calm you down. Take you off. Gently touch a bolt gun to your head and... Anyhoo, I do try to amuse myself.

Anonymous

For some reason I keep having "When sushi strikes back" going through my head, though probably the revenge of the calamari would've been closer to the mark. Regardless, this story just made me hungry. Yeah, I know, weird.

Anonymous

I enjoyed the ‘Leech Wikipedia Page Podcast’. Story was a little too short, eh? 😉

Anonymous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ 'nuff said.

Anonymous

While I enjoyed your Robin Leach reference, I would have liked this story to have taken place on the still waters of Ricki Lake. Then, as the crew ran down the arsenio hall (technical naval term referring to the ship's passage to the dog pound), desperately grabbing tools like byron allen wrenches for weapons and slipping on the alan thicke slime left by the creature, they could have successfully stopped themselves from Morton Drowning Jr, and looked off into the sky as it turned a fantastic orange dona-hue and I'm really sorry I lost it there at the end. In conclusion, Sally Jessy Raphael.

Anonymous

Not related to the story, but I have to recommend The Lighthouse for people like me who are searching for the perfect Weird/Lovecraftian film. Right down to the superfluous final scene and all.

Anonymous
>>31614112

Although there are some species of lamprey that are not carnivorous, sea lampreys are very much carnivorous and very much parasitic. The distinction is that when they technically metamorphize from that 'juvenile' to 'adult' phase, it's literally just to breed, then they die. In the Great Lakes (where they are non-native invasive species) they can kill lots of native fish and terrify kids that see pictures of their nightmarish hell-mouths without fully understanding their biology. uh, or so I've heard.... >.>

Anonymous
>>31636724

Just saw it over weekend. Definitely agree that it is "Lovecraftian" in the strict sense of a non-Cthulhu weird tale where not everything is explained. Hints at larger "otherwordly" happenings, leaves plenty of room for potential unreliable narrators while subtly implying connections and loops. I'm also using Willem Defoe's "Hark" rant to make my kids admit they like my cooking.

Steve
>>31626151

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_prognosticator It's a beautiful thing.

Darth Pseudonym
>>31610732

Yes, boatswain should be pronounced like bosun, and it's making me twitch every time they say it.

Anonymous

Always some podcaster got to invoke the Holy Trilogy...but your mention of the Sarlacc and a monster that keeps you healthy with oxygen, food etc even as it drains you did make me think of the Matrix and how Lovecraftian it is. Neo and the rest of humanity are sailing on placid seas of ignorance - and a glimpse of the wider, horrible truth is enough to make some go mad like Cypher. Of course, if the Matrix is letting you eat, grow, sleep, communicate, love, and so on, until you eventually grow old and die, it's not really any different from life - and as Cypher says, at least in the Matrix you can get a good steak. So, as always, I have learned something from the HPLLP - that the Matrix is actually about one brave man's struggle to save his friends from their own foolishness and allow them all to enjoy a lovely, juicy steak - and how they electrocute him for it. If that isn't a metaphor for life, I don't know what is.

Anonymous
>>31612150

Agreed - both about the siren song and the fact that Quint is clearly the hero of Jaws. I do think you guys slightly missed the point when you gave old Frank a hard time for the crew feeling "a little resentment" at the monster - the whole story points to the seductive power of the creature, and I suspect the resentment is not at the monster for taking their friend, it's at their friend for being taken by the monster. Jealousy is always a mother-F, but rarely logical. Oscar should have let the thing take the narrator, though. His entire captaincy seemed to be based on ignoring monsters, calling his crew idiots, then buggering off in the middle of battle to (mis)read a book. Worst Captain ever? At least Ahab took the whale with him.

Anonymous

Not the greatest story ever but I got vibes of the siren myth that would usually be in a sailor story, maybe mixed with a little bit of the seductive powers of a vampire.

Anonymous

Growing up in Florida I’ve had many leech encounters. The way they move in the water is truly beautiful. On land they are slow and unwieldy but once they get into water they turn into graceful acrobats. Also the ones here have a strip that will turn colour to a deep red when they are filled with blood.

Anonymous

For the Sarlacc, Fett was able to survive because his armour provided protection against the digestive acids, acids that fused all of Carkoon’s victims into a single telepathic consciousness, forever being disintegrated and consumed long past physical bodies but also forever alive and aware of their melding together into the creature itself. That is the being eaten for a thousand years thing. It is horrific and frankly was never allowed to be explored as deep as it should of. A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett by Daniel Keys Moran in Tales from Jabba’s Palace has always affected me with sheer horror ever since I read it as a child.

Anonymous

Chad. I believe I'm speaking on behalf of your entire listenership when I say this. Please, never use the the words 'teeth' and 'urethra' in the same sentence again.

Anonymous

A queer, aromatic scent... An ungodly, aromatic odour... New Axe Leech, coming soon to a store near you. Buy it, you idiots!

Anonymous
>>31705250

My brain read that as "queer, aromantic scent" first and I was already thinking "Well, acespec people *are* LGBT+ so that's redundant, but what the hell is an aromantic SMELL?" before I realized my mistake.

Anonymous

Honestly, being eaten by this leech doesn't sound like a bad way to go. In fact, escaping from the leech sounded like trying to get out of a comfy bed on a cold morning. If I had some fatal disease that ended in a painful death, I would opt for the leech. I also enjoyed the Leech Facts With Chris and Chad portion of this episode and I always love it when Rachel reads!

Anonymous

Solid and entertaining work as always Chad & Chris. Just chiming in to recommend the horror book The Troop by Nick Cutter. Not about Leeches specifically but in the same leechpark. Very graphic and just the right side of over-the-top, but very effective and I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work. Also. Imagine an actual leechpark. Who would even go there?!!

Anonymous

Thank you for bringing up the ludicrousness of the sarlacc—the creature that apparently grants you immortality in order to feed on you for longer. Its mama always told it to make the most of every meal, there are starving sarlaccs in the Star Wars equivalent of third world countries!

Anonymous
>>31663970

Yeah, it doesn't seem fair that Star Wars (a space fantasy) isn't allowed to have a monster that basically acts just like Tsothoggua in that Michael Shea story, right? I mean it's not like this is a serious SciFi property like Star Trek. ;) But seriously, the Sarlaac is an avatar of Tsothuggua and that's canon now.

Anonymous

I grew up in a family that spent summers camping in Northern Ontario where the waters are well stocked with leeches, black, slimy and alway lurking. I developed a horror of the little monsters. They would sometimes be attached to their unsuspecting victim for hours before being noticed, sometimes not until a rivulet of blood began running out of their armpit or from behind their knee. They were particularly prevalent in swamps. My father and I accidentally tipped our canoe when navigating a narrow swamp channel and ten year old me nearly had a fit trying to extract myself, mental levitation skills to the max, from the mucky, leech infested water. Dad chuckled about it for years afterward.

Anonymous
>>31685929

I loved that story! It is the best Boba Fett story I have ever read. The Sarlacc was really a horrific thing, trapping all of its victims beyond death in limbo of being perpetually eaten. As Blake mentioned, it is like Tsathagouaa from the eponymous story by Michael Shea.

Anonymous

(Catching up on episodes.)In Japan, we have giant leeches that live in trees and drop down on you. There’s some YouTube video of one eating a giant earthworm that circulates around the internet now and then. One of them dropped onto my dog while I was walking her. It couldn’t get through her fur to bite her before I pulled it off her, and it generated a lot of slime that was stuck in her fur and took awhile to wash out. She never knew it was on her.