Listener Mail: Children of Ouranos

it is, send it on in. Let's see rob Do you mind if I get started with this message from Stephanie about our episodes on whale spouts, Yeah, let's have it. So this is responding to a couple of shows we did based on a chapter in Moby Dick where the narrator describes the whales blowhole and what comes out of it.

Among many strange claims made in that chapter was that whale blow was poisonous, that if it went in your eyes it would blind you, and in some cases if it touched the skin of say the arm or the hand, it would cause your skin to peel off. In short, none of this is really true, but after some research, we did wonder if these claims might be based on stories of people having skin rashes, conjunctividis, and other topical infections after exposure to whales, which is a well documented

phenomenon among people who handle marine mammals directly. You can get zoonotic infections, skin rashes, and so forth from them. Stephanie says, Hi, Robin Joe, thanks for another series of fascinating episodes on whales. I'm no biologist, but an alternate explanation for Ishmael's suggestion that whale blow is poisonous occurred to me. Could it not just be the extreme pressure of the air slash mucus expulsion that caused the side

effects described? According to this Quebec research bureau, and she includes a link, whales can spout air from their lungs at a rate of seven hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. I can imagine that sticking your arm into a seven hundred and twenty kilometer per hour jet of air could give you some pretty serious road rash or air rash. Sticking your eyes directly in front of this jet of air seems like it could lead to temporary or permanent

blindness too. Thanks as always for expanding my horizons of interest, Stephanie. Well, thanks for the message, Stephanie. Yeah, on that question, I really just don't know it. That does seem like very you know, that would be an extreme blast. It does,

you know, it exceeds hurricane wind speeds. But there are also plenty of modern day accounts of people who take whale spout blasts to the face or to the skin, and it doesn't usually seem to cause immediate physical injury, at least in the cases we've seen or read about. But on the other hand, yeah, it's hard to say for sure, Like this is a case where I would love to hear from somebody who does have a lot of direct experience working with whales or handling marine mammals.

The Greek god is pronounced your anus. The NASA official pronunciation is your anus. I should add this Joseph is spelling this out as your anus. Most people, including myself, say urine us spelled out as in p and us to make it more palatable in the English language. The true proper pronunciation is your anus according to NASA scientists,

but most folks just say 'in US. German scientist Johann erleit Bode proposed the name to name the planet Uranus, and his associate Martin Heinrich Klaproth named the element uranium in solidarity with him as a way to push the establishment to accept the name Uranus or Uranus, which has a near identical pronunciation in German, Uranus does not have the same connotations as in American English. Can't wait to listen to the rest of the episode. Keep up the good work, best regards, Joseph.

I recently heard your Moons of Urinus podcast, and once again you fell into the rabbit hole of proper pronunciation. The word Urinus does not even begin with a you, but with an O in the original Greek, so the pop popular English pronunciation is certainly questionable at best. As a native Greek speaker, having been born in French Canada, let me provide you with an official, bonafide, definitive opinion of an answer as to how to best speak Greek

in English. The answer is do with it as you will, ah, the Satanic maxim of pronunciation. I like this level of license, but constantine goes on. Much of Greek came to English via those grand cultural appropriators, the Romans, and then back in the eighteenth century or so, English intellectuals decided to standardize English Greek with novel grammatical protocols. Not to bury the headline, but this game of telephone went badly. To begin with, Greek is not even a thing. The name

came from the Romans. There is not even a G in Greek. We call ourselves Hellenes, and Greece is Hellas. Wait, it gets worse. There is not even an H at the start of the word Hellenic. Remember those English intellectuals I mentioned earlier. They decided that words that begin with the Greek epsilon or e will have a leading H in English for reasons unfathomable. That's right, it's not Helen of Troy. It is Ellen of Troy, speaking of H.

The Greek H or it's spelled chi. Here is that chai or I don't know how to say that is turned into a k sound in English. Yes, it is pronounced character and r chitecture, not character and architecture. It goes on and on like there are no d or J in Greek. So it is not Delta or Jesus christ either. It is thelta and eosus Christos. Yeah, you can look it up while we're The real plural of

octopus is octopodia. So if all that got jumbled up, what chance is there that Uranus's original Hellenic pronunciation of uranos could possibly survive through Roman transmission and English quote greekification. It can't. Don't fight it. Now more people pronounce it Uranus than Uranos, and such as life, and if pedants come along with an alternative pronunciation, tell them to quote stick it up. Let's say Uranas, stick it up Uras. As for us Helenes, we're just happy to be invited

to the party. Cheers, good folks, Constantine, Well, thank you, Constantine. I'm sorry I probably also pronounced some of those Greek words in your email wrong, but yeah, we're doing our best here. There's there's a whole mess of trouble leading up to everything happening with these words in our brains today.

g in Greek. Are you ready for this? Gaia is the poetic form of gamma eta and is pronounced ye okay, I think poetic means quote, getting it wrong, So it is Urinos and ye not Uranus and gaia, all right, And there are several more yes as actually, but I think we'll cap it there.

and the rest of the European astronomers. Since they couldn't call it George, it was agreed the moons would all be named for British literary characters, at least according to what I heard on doctor Neil Degrass Tyson's podcast, Keep up the good Work.

the planet Neptune Millard Fillmore Star or something. But yeah, so it was agreed instead that the names would come from from mythology instead of from you know, political figures, to avoid having national rivalries appear in the heavens. And yeah, that does seem to be the case, but I guess it's maybe somewhat of a concession to Herschel's desire to name it after the English king, to name it after characters by an English playwright and poet, or not the planet.

I guess the moons. Okay, I think we're going to cap the Urinus messages there. But we've got a whole bunch of messages on hand about weird House cinema, so maybe we should try to read some of those, including some messages in response to Time cop So Lawrence writes, Hey, guys, just listening now to your episode on time and you said it's your fourth time travel film. Not to jump down your throat or such, but you're not counting Santo in The and the Treasure of Dracula, and I think

you ought to. Thanks Lawrence, Lawrence, Oh my god, you're correct. This must have been I don't remember which one of us said that, but this must have been an oversight, because it is true. Santo not only has a time machine in that movie, I think he invents the time machine.

but multiverse travel. It fits that core theme jet Lee, as both protagonist and antagonist gets more and more powerful a Lah Highlander quickening style, and with the killing of their parallel selves across the multiverse. It's from the early two thousands, but would not be out of place in the eighties with some of the bright colors and comic book darkness, fake grime, and spotless street scenes juxtaposed, and also early though not young Jason Statham before he learned

to speak out the front of his mouth. I think it fits Weird House Criteria. Check it out, Thomas, and then there's a follow up. Sorry about the split emails, but clearly I jumped the gun in my excitement. You later in the episode ask about twin films, jet Lee plays versions of himself matching up against each other. Does that sound tempting? Three question marks.

Jason Stathum, Pam Greer, Pam Greer is in it. Yeah, But the main thing I always remember is that ice Cube's character is named Desolation Williams, and people refer to him in the dialogue as Desolation, so they're just like, hey, hey, they're Desolation. What's going on?

People the bert Eye Gordon Shrink movie. Chris says, this is definitely a guy I would want to have a drink or three with. Couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this weird bit of print media overlapping with my digital media world. They did a great job sharing some night color prints of his various movie posters as well. Please see attached. The movie posters will have to be in a separate email due to size constraints regards Chris. All right, so Rob, I've attached the screenshots Chris took

here the photo of Bertie Gordon. This doesn't look anything like the photos of him I'm familiar with, but he's much older in those, so I guess when he was young, he was a skinny guy with sticking out ears and a big funny mustache. And the caption tells us that this is him playing a character called the Mad Russian, who was a regular on CBS Radio's The Eddie Canter Show.

ever lived, or so some might argue. You've heard Ed Wood was the worst, or Roger Corman, or maybe Michael Bay. But Gordon was not lousy for one or two decades. He was a terrible filmmaker for about sixty years. And when he got around to writing his memoir in twenty ten, called The Amazing Colossal Worlds of Mister Big and Autobiographical Journey, it was the absolute worst book ever written by a filmmaker.

To borrow from the lurid posters for his movies. His talent, such as it was, screamed amazing, towering, beyond description, just not in a good way. Now, I do appreciate the nod to how like the lack of modesty in the bad movies of the mid century, Like how movie from the fifties that were some of the worst ever made, would say in their advertising like a film unlike any other will change your life. You are not prepared for the most spectacular movie event ever created. It is Attack

of the Puppet People or whatever. But I also just want to go back and say, you know, Roger Corman made a lot of slapdash drive in cheese, but I don't know any reasonable observer who would say he was the worst filmmaker who ever lived. I get why Edward is in the running, but come on, Roger Corman made at least a half dozen movies that are really good, and a couple you could say are great. A Mask of the Red Death comes to mind, So I don't know why he's included there.

feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Wednesday. A short form artifact or monster fact episode except when it's an omnibus episode and then it's longer as previously described. And then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a film on Weird House Cinema.