Home
Artists
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register
Partychan Telegram Live Sex ThePornDude
Home Artists Posts Import Register

Episode 555 - Ooze - Part One (Patreon)

Published:
2021-07-16 02:00:48
Imported:
2022-01

Downloads

Content

We're taking a dip in some OOZE by Anthony M. Rud - climb in!

Special thanks to our reader: PHOOLE! Explore the Phooliverse!

Next up: MORE OOZE!

Comments

Anonymous

Anthony am rude

Steve

Cajun is a mispronunciation of Canadian.

Ben Gilbert

I’ve never really heard of Cajuns in Alabama, but they do celebrate Mardi Gras in Mobile.

Anonymous

Initially I thought I hadn’t read this story, but I’m pretty sure it was in an anthology I read as a teenager called Nightmares in Dixie (the scariest story, in my opinion, was the North Carolina one about cannibal kids, but this was my close second). How fun to find it again through you guys!

Anonymous

This sounds like one worth tracking down and reading. Some of the comments sound a bit like reaching - "Lovecraft didn't like fishy smells" - but it doessound very much like HPL's style, if not his content, which you don't find as often these days.

Jason Thompson

You’re both gold this week. Gofundme to raise $30K?

Richard Horsman

There's a lot of "it was a different time" material in this one. The winner for me was the narrator hoping his foster daughter would someday "love him as more than a father". Reminded me of the pro-incest Seabury Quinn story I read a few months ago... I think there's validity in seeing some of the building blocks of Lovecraft in here, but my take was more that Lovecraft was reacting to the muddledness of a story like this. There are some great elements, but like Chris I had real trouble following the action in multiple parts of this, and I think it was down to sloppy execution on Rud's part. Lovecraft could be prolix and digressive, but the action and structure in his stories are leagues beyond this.

I Like the Cut of Your Gibbering

Anthony M. Rud, born 1893. "Born" I'm just sayin' nobody's seen Anthony M. Rud and Paul Rudd in the same room.

Anonymous

A cool story, and a great episode. When reading it, I was also very confused as to what the heck was going on. So many jumps back and forth in time. After a while I stopped caring and just thought “I’ll let Chris and Chad sort it out”. (After listening to your show all these years, I’ve become somewhat of a lazy reader, expecting someone to explain it to me in a podcast…)

Anonymous

Aren’t we all just scanning for the ooze though?

Anonymous

I haven't listened yet, but I assume it involves the Ninja Turtles.

Anonymous

Great episode, you two! Looking forward to next week’s installments, assuming Chad talked his way out of getting arrested. I’m glad to hear you two covering this classic of Rud’s. I too have thought it an oddity Lovecraft didn’t list it in Supernatural Horror, but then again maybe he didn’t think it fit? I haven’t found reference to the tale in HPL’s letters, but I haven’t done a thorough search. Nevertheless, it really does seem evident that this story had an impact on Lovecraft. Hank Davis, who edited a bunch of notable stories like this in his Baen Big Book of Monsters did have this to say about Rud: “Not a great deal is known about Anthony Melville Rud (1893-1942), though with that middle name, he must have been destined to be a writer. Born in Chicago, he contributed stories to such pulps as Weird Tales, Munsey’s Magazine and Blue Book, as well as nonfiction pieces to such magazines as Scientific American. He was also a pulp magazine editor, and in one biographical note said that he had written movies. He wrote at least one borderline SF novel, The Stuffed Men, described by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as a “Sax Rohmer-esque fantasy.” And “Ooze,” the story you are about to read, was one of H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite stories.” I don’t know where Davis referenced his source for this assertion. But Joshi says the same by including Ooze in The Dead Valley and Others: H. P. Lovecraft's Favorite Horror Stories . Regardless, I think it’s awesome to see some of the inspirational DNA for Lovecraft’s tales in otherwise esoteric sources, much as you all covered with the likes of Poe, Dunsany, Machen, and so many others. Tales like Ooze make me appreciate how Lovecraft, much like Shakespeare (don’t get me wrong, Lovecraft was no Shakespeare, as much as I enjoy his writing), wasn’t always necessarily original but instead made novel contributions to existing literary genres that stuck in the broader popular conscience. Lovecraft didn’t create the slime monster, evil alchemist, or the mad scientist, but only he made these into the likes of Shoggoths, Curwen, or Tillinghast.

Anonymous
>>63922154

I had the same initial reaction to that line but on closer reading I think he meant it innocently, as in “I hope she comes to think of me as a true parent instead of only a foster parent”. It definitely could’ve been written more clearly though.

Anonymous

There seems to be a general literary consensus that if a man creates life, it must go murderously wrong. I wonder why we seem so committed to this trope. It smacks of the same sort of anti-trans hatred of "unnatural" gender roles. In a story, if there is a man who wants to create life, we immediately assume that he is insane and that what he creates will be an abomination. Pinocchio seems to stand out as a counter-example except that he merely wishes for a real boy and a female-expressing magical being brings it about. Whether progenitor to ooze, the creature Adam, or the Nexus-6 series of replicants, the man is wrong-headed, doomed, and ultimately responsible for the rampaging monster he has released on an innocent world. But perhaps I am taking this too far. Are there popular examples to the contrary?

Anonymous

Don’t mock the ooze. It went on to found the consultant firm Ooze, Allen, Hamilton.

Murder She Rothenberger (Wrote In Burger)

Maybe it's a typo and the story is actually called 'B-Ooze'... who here can say they have never disappeared for a couple of weeks on a tear or decided to start an ill-concieved Home Reno project after a couple? ... 'It' s Fifer'clock somewhere!', as the ole saying goes ...

Anonymous

"Cake or death?"

Anonymous

I, too, worried when our protagonist began musing about how his relationship with little Elsie might evolve as she grew up. Surrogate-father-marries-foster-daughter seems to have been a popular trope in the late 1800s and early 1900s: see "Sweet Rosabel," the song that was supposed to be Harry Houdini's signal to his wife Bess if she managed to contact him in a seance, which ends with the lines, Often we speak of the incident, That cold winter's night long ago, When I first loved the baby, And oh, how it seemed to grow; I loved the child, then the little Miss. I then loved the woman as well, She gave her hand, soon I'll marry Sweet Rosabel

Anonymous
>>64349072

Heck, it goes back to the Tale of Genji, arguably the world's first novel! It's also off-putting there.

Anonymous

As someone from Acadiana in Louisiana (and a linguist), I just can't hold back from making a couple of observations. In South Louisiana, "Cajuns" are the white descendants of the French Acadians, and speak Cajun French, which is an old version of French with a few loanwords. A few percent of South Louisianians can speak it to some degree, and it is in little danger of dying out. I had many friends whose grandparents only spoke Cajun French (and German, but that's another story...Louisiana really is a fascinating place.) "Creoles" are mixed race, mostly southern european, black and Native American. But many people identify as both Cajun and Creole, as intermarriage is common. There is a separate Creole language, kouri-veni', that incorporates French, some West African (Yoruba and Malinke) and Native American Chitimacha and Atakapa. But Kouri-veni' is sadly dying out, and I've met very few people who speak it. There are Cajuns in Alabama, and I had never heard they were there! You learn something new everyday when you listen to smart-people podcasts.

Anonymous

Sounds like Lovecraft wasn't the only person heavily inspired by AM Rudd. Eddie Izzard must have lifted his entire 'Church of England Inquisition' bit from this story. I mean, "Cake or death?" is way too close to Rudd's "1000 bucks or a bullet?" to be a coincidence.