Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail. My name is Robert.
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and it is Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have never gotten in touch before, why not write us. You can reach us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you want to send is fine, but we especially like when you have something interesting to add to a topic we've talked about on the show recently.
Let's see, Rob, do you mind if I kick things off with this message from Joe about necromancy?
Oh? Please do? This is a good one.
This is from Joe spelled Jo. They're right, dear Joe and Robert. I loved the series on necromancy and communing with the dead. I'm Southeast Asian and supernatural slash spooky stories are the norm here. One of my favorite monsters is actually the Jongshi. They've been depicted as bloodthirsty, mayhem causing monsters over the years, but the legend behind them is quite sad. Imagine leaving your family to work in a far off province, only to perish in an unknown land.
Your last wish is to be buried back home, but hiring people to carry your dead body back to your loved ones is expensive and difficult. Your only other option is to have a Taoist priest briefly resurrect you from the dead and guide you as you make your way home for the last time. Now an inauspicious creature, your limbs frozen in rigor mortis, you hop slowly through the wilderness in the dead of night. Your only company is the priest who walks before you, ringing his bell to
warn the living that the dead are near. While your series was on how the Living Attempted to Contact the dead, Southeast Asia is rife with stories of the dead contacting the living. It's common for Chinese people to ask each other if they've dreamed of a deceased family member during or after the funeral proceedings. A friend once told me that the day after her grandfather passed, he appeared to her in a dream, and she asked him if he was all right. He replied, don't worry, I will soon
have company. Your uncle is coming, and two days later, her uncle passed from a heart attack. A common story you'll hear from cab or rideshare drivers. Here is passengers asking to be dropped off at quote home, only to have the GPS lead them to a cemetery. All this makes me think of is that perhaps we're all lonely souls reaching through the divide in search of a connection
we couldn't find in life or in death. On a lighter note, and this is connecting to our series on Monster Cats, Joe writes in the latest episode, Hello Kitty was listed as an example of a cat. You might not believe this, but Sonrio insists that Hello Kitty is not cat and is in fact a little girl cry laughing emoji. I guess Sonrio is the company that owns Hello Kitty.
Yes, yeah, Originally Hello Kitty was like a mascot and then of course takes on a life of its own.
Joe says, yes, I couldn't believe it at first too. She is supposedly, or she is supposed to be a little girl called Kitty White who was born in London. I will leave you with this snippet from an interview quote. It is a one hundred percent personified character. A Sonrio spokesman told AFP in Tokyo, the design takes the motif of a cat, but there is no element of a cat in Hello Kitty setting. Joe adds in parentheses, I'm
still mind blown. I love what you do. Looking forward to more episodes, Live Long and prosper Joe.
Yeah, well this was a great one, I guess, starting with Hello Kitty. Goodness. I can't remember if I'd ever heard this before. If I had heard it before, I had forgotten it, And now I am shocked again or for the first time, to hear that Hello Kitty is not a cat, because clearly Hello Kitty is a cat, right.
Hello Kitty is obviously a cat. Hello Kitty has cat ears and also whiskers, I think, Am I wrong?
Yeah? And then there are other animals. Is like a frog, right, I mean, as the frog a frog or not a frog.
Maybe the frog's a frog, but the cat is not a cat?
All right? Well, it's shocking. I can't lose too much sleep over this one, but it is shocking.
This reminds me. I'm sorry to bring this up yet again, but of the AI generated story we had, which was one of those story generators we were playing with spit it out, and it was called Garfield Beyond Thunderdome. It had the fighters in the Thunderdome trading insults with each other, and whoever Garfield was about to square off against, said, so you're the famous cat and Garfield replied, I'm not the cat.
Now. As for these other topics here, greatly appreciate these contemporary accounts of the ride share situation with people returning home the cemetery. That's that's wonderful. And then also, yeah, the jung shi are are such fascinating creatures slash motifs in in Chinese folklore and and and legend. We've we've talked about on a few times on the show. They came up in our Weird House Cinema episode on Mister Vampire, and I think there was a Monster Fact episode a
while back about them. But yeah, they're they're they're horrifying and scary. But yeah, there is this sadness to them because they are deeply connected to concerns and cultural anxiety over improper burial, uh, you know, in improper caring for ones deceased loved ones.
That really seems to be a theme this October that came up a lot in the In the Necromancy episode, uh anxieties over funeral rites not being properly observed and what would be downstream of that failure.
Yeah, all right, This next one comes to us from Scott. Scott writes and says, Hi, Robert and Joe just wanted to mention that your recent series on necromancy doubtless reminded many of us who grew up in the seventies of our introduction to this art, the classic but often campy, Saturday morning children's television series The Land of the Lost, in which Enoch often used the Library of Skulls to
access the lost knowledge of his ancestors. My memories of this are probably not very reliable, so I leave it to you to say more about this pop culture invocation of necromancy, except to note that, despite the frequent goofiness, this show did deal with death and loss a little more than some others of his genre did, e g. Enoch's loss of his culture and friends after he found himself stuck in a later time when his people, the Altrusians,
had degenerated into the barbaric slee Stack. Okay, I do know what the slee Stack are.
Scott I wish I could comment on this because it sounds interesting, but I've never watched Land of the Loss, so I'm just baffled.
I remember, I think I was watching cartoons during a time in which this show was still on. But it was on like in a weird time, like maybe it was on kind of late in the Saturday morning when you were there were increasing household forces to get you outside or to go and do other activities. I'm not sure, but I am vaguely aware of the Slee Stack.
So the premise of the show is like a family is on vacation and in their VW bus they get transported back to the time of the dinosaurs. But it's not just dinosaurs. There are also lizard men.
I think, so yes, okay, but again I've never watched it. I probably should.
Slee Stack sounds like the name of I don't know, like the the villain of the Lora Axe or something it does. Okay, moving on to some messages more focused on monster cats. This one comes from Anna. Anna says, Hi, Robert, Joe, and JJ I enjoyed your episodes on the Strange Cats of Japan. In part of it, you were talking about how there is the idea that cats have some secret, mysterious power. I thought you might enjoy the book The
Silent Meow by Paul Gallico. This is written as an instruction manual for cats on how to control and dominate humans. It's very funny and really taps into stuff that every cat owner has noticed. I really like this idea for a book. So it's kind of like the screwtape letter is except from Instead of being from the point of view of demons, it's from the point of view of cats. Yeah, Anna says. I think part of the mysterious nature of cats is that they often seem to change their behavior
when they realize they're being watched. My mom has a cat called Sammy Whiskers. She is now one year old. She is the size of an adult cat, but still has this frantic, clumsy running style. I like to call this galumphing. When mom and dad are away, I stay at their house and ta care of the cat. One of her funny habits is that she will run at me from behind and attack my legs or feet. The funny part is that her clumsy running style means you
can very easily hear her coming. The other day I heard her running up behind me, so I turned around and she immediately stopped running. I just laughed out loud at this because it had this nothing to see here kind of quality to it. I think I know what you're talking about. Anna and Rob. You've sort of talked about this with your cat experiences, right.
Yeah, though, my cat Mochi well, is not shy about attacking my feed, so me looking at her doesn't prevent it from happening. And if anything, maybe eggs are on.
That's that defiance. It's just like complete non compliance with social expectations. Okay, but and it goes on. I also enjoyed your weird house cinema. On Bride of Frankenstein. You were talking about a scene where Lord Byron says something kind of demeaning to Mary Shelley and she just snarks right back. This reminds me you have a scene in the book Jane Eyre. Mister Rochester, who eventually becomes Jane's
love interest, is somewhat based on the characteristics of Byron. Yeah, Rochester is often held up as the so called quote byronic hero or byronic I don't know what the noun is. He's just byronic, you know. That's the adjective there is. Anna continues. There is a scene where they're sitting by a fire with the housekeeper in the corner. Mister Rochester says something like, oh, I think you must come from
the fairy folk. As you've mentioned in past episodes, fairies were not the benevolent creatures we see them as today. This is a real vibe of the boss making a somewhat demeaning joke about an employee in front of other people, the sort of situation that you're supposed to just meekly go along with, go along with the joke. But Jane is taking none of it. She replies very casually with something like, oh no, those folks have not lived around here for one hundred years. The housekeeper is so shocked
by Jane's boldness that she literally drops are knitting. Jane Air is one of those books that if you try to describe it to someone, it sounds pretty depressing, but is also a very witty book. Thanks for all the great work, Anna and I agree on that last point. It's been years since I read Jane Eyre, but yeah, my impression is despite its you know, dark and gothic overtones, I recall it also having very funny elements as well.
All Right, this nice one comes to us from Chuck. Chuck writes in and says, Dear Robert, Joe and JJ, hello and happy early Halloween. Like many of your listeners, I truly appreciate your commitment to providing thoughtful intelligence and to be honest somewhat creepy discussion topics during October, I am writing to add a small but silly bit about
the Baca Niko. The popular board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, made by Avalon Hill and now in its third edition, has the beck and Echo is one of the supernatural slash horror tropes the players must struggle against if you are unaware. Betrayal at House on the Hill generally shortened to Betrayal by board gamers, is a
game that plays like a weird house cinema horrifflick. The game has players cooperatively searching a for boding mansion until a triggered event happens, where the monster goes to alien supernatural entity whatever is revealed and proceeds to attempt to destroy the players. The trigger is caused semi randomly, and there are fifty different in game events, so players are
never quite sure what is going to happen. The usual horror movie batties are there, poltergeist, were wolves, acts, wielding killers, alien abductors, but the game does include more off the wall scenarios, like having a mad scientist who shrinks the players down and sends his pet cat against them. Ah doctor X. Yeah. The next part has mild spoilers for those who have not played this scenario. In one particular case, a back in eco and his army of undead cats
are the big bat. The Okai's goal is either kill all the players or burn the house down. The players have to defeat the Bakuanenko before this happens, but every undead cat the bachan Eko summons strengthens it. In our gaming group, when we revealed the bacan Eko, after we collectively said what is the bacan Eko, we were quickly overwhelmed and died terribly in a burning house. That being said, it was great fun, especially with the player controlling the
Bakaneko using an absurd amount of terrible cat puns. Of course, the title of the scenario is the Catastrophe. I'm including two photos of the rules for the scenario, which does have a drawing on one with the game's depiction of the Bakaneko in spoilers now with stuff to blow your mind, I've learned much more history and lore about the bacan Eko. Thanks again for all you do and keeping science and strangeness at the forefront. Sincerely and gratefully, Chuck from San Diego.
I have never played this game. This looks like a lot of fun. So the scenario has sort of stats on the months, almost like like a D and D monster, except it looks not quite as complicated as that.
Yeah, Betrayal is a wonderful game. I've played it a few times. It's not one I own, so I wasn't even aware that this was one of the the baddies you could trigger, because it's just never come up in any play of the game that I've been involved in.
But yeah, it's a super fun game. The exact form of the gameplay is very variable because basically everybody goes in as a particular you know, trope character in this haunted house, and then something triggers these cards going out to determine what the battye is, and one of the players will end up being instrumental to that battye. So
I'm just making this up. Is this may or may not be what's in the game, but for instance, at this phase you might learn, oh, actually you're a familiar to a vampire and you're working on behalf of that vampire, that sort of thing, and so now it's you against the players, and so yeah, it's a load of fun.
Hopefully it's gotten better. But as I remember from playing it several years back, one one thing I was warned about is that the instructions, at least at the time, were written in a kind of confusing manner, and so it was better if someone who had played the game before was present to sort of guide you through it, because some of the details might not be evident just by reading the instruction manuals that are included in the box.
But that was several years ago. They may have changed that with more recent editions.
Man, I think you have more tabletop and board game experience than me, but that's almost always my experience is like trying to read the instructions is just overwhelming and confusing. The way to learn to play is to have somebody there who's already played and explains it as you go along.
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely preferable, and more and more I'm finding it's also great if there's at least a short video you can find me. There's so many videos that run you through gameplay on some of the more complex board games. I have found those very helpful from time to time. Like let's see, what is the Dune game.
Dune Imperium, I believe is the one, which is a fabulous game, very playable, Like its complexity is not too high in my experience, Like you can definitely and I think the average board gamer can definitely grasp it and have a lot of fun with it. But at least for me, it's like I could read the rules and it got me so far, but then I really needed to see someone like point at some stuff and show me some stuff to really make all the lines connect. There.
Short version of all that, it's a great time to be into board games because there's just so many of them and you have so many additional aids to understanding the rules.
Uh huh, okay, you want to keep rolling the dice on cats?
Sure?
All right? This next message is from Joe, a different Joe Joe. This time he says greetings. Although the urge is strong, I will resist the impulse to just tell you about my cats. Instead, I will share someone else telling about their cat three hundred years ago. And so here Joe shares part of the poem jubilate agno, which means rejoice in the lamb, specifically a famous fragment of this poem known as for I will consider my Cat Jeffrey, written in the mid eighteenth century by the English poet
Christopher Smart. I read this back in college, and this one really stuck in my mind as well. I'm not quite sure why, just I've never forgotten it. I think of it often. I think the story goes that it was written while Christopher Smart was housed in a mental asylum. He had been institutionalized for a time at a London facility that was then called Saint Luke's Hospital for Lunatics,
and the cat Jeffrey was his only company there. Coming back to Joe's email, he says, it is a beautiful poem which also captures much of the ineffable spirit of catness to which cat lovers are drawn. I would leave it to you to pick an excerpt if you choose to read this on the show, But a few of my favorite lines, Joe, I will indeed read your excerpt first. So these are lines from Christopher Smarts. For I will consider my cat Jeffrey. For when his day's work is done,
his business more properly begins. For he keeps the lord's watch in the night against the adversary. For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes. For he counteracts the devil who is death, by brisking about the life. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery. For he knows that God is his savior. For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest. For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation. For he can fetch and carry, which is patience and employment. For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive. For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command. For he can jump from an imminence into his master's bosom. For he can catch the cork and toss it again. For he is hated by the hypocrite and the miser, for the former is afraid of detection, for the latter refuses the charge.
And then, to share my own favorite lines from this fragment, here Smart writes, for he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed he is called by benevolence perpetually, Poor Jeffrey, Poor Jeffrey. The rat has bit thy throat, for I bless the name of the Lord Jesus, that Jeffrey is better, for the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it. In Complete cat, Complete cat.
Oh, this is great. Some of the various catneme makers should look this poem up and run wild with it. I mean, can't you imagine like reading it and then setting it to various clips of cats doing their thing?
Yes, complete cat, absolute cat.
And now I don't know that my cat knows that God is her savior, though I'm not sure what her theological bent happens to be.
Yeah, there is a lot of theology ascribed to the mind of the cat in this poem. I don't know. I don't know about that. But then again, she does spraggle upon waggle, though, for he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom. What is the eminence? I don't know. I guess that just means like a high place in the room like we were talking about.
Oh yeah, it could be, could be watch out bosom though. Yeah, they will definitely jump into the bosom.
Yeah, that is complete cat into the bosom. All right, Rob, you want to pick one of these Weird House cinema messages to respond to?
Oh man, we got some good ones here Ooh hm hmmm, select as you will, all right. Oh well, that one's good too. I guess I'll start with this one comes to us from Andrew. Hi, guys, I just had to send a quick email to say that in your recent episode of Weird House covering Terror Vision, you briefly mentioned a film that would make for another great Weird House
episode One day. In the connection section, you noted that one of the characters had previously appeared in Rock and Roll High School, the nineteen seventy nine musical comedy featuring the Ramones. Surely at least Joe has seen this wonderful piece of weird terrible gold. I don't know a ton about how er why this movie came about, but there are some good stories out there, like about d d Ramones acting being so bad that they had to cut his lines down from five to three, two of which
are along the lines of, hey, pizza, it's great. I think you guys could have a great time with it, and I know for a fact that I'd have a great time with it. So tass it on the list. PS. Still waiting for that Langaliers send up, Love you guys, Andrew.
I feel like we've talked enough about Langaliers in unrelated episod so so that can we even do do an episode on it now?
Probably? Probably it's I think, as I mentioned before, I weirdly weirdly enough. I don't think I've seen it. I've only read it, but I have seen clips from it and they look stupendous.
Yeah, it's just peak made for TV Stephen King.
Yeah, yeah, with some strong Twilight Zone elements to it.
Uh and some I think this has come up before, but yeah, the the like CGI thing is flying around eating time. They just look like meatballs in the sky. But to address the main subject here, Andrew, you know, I rock and roll high school. I don't know whether I've seen that or not. If I have, I remember nothing about it.
It certainly exists, and yeah, perhaps it's got some great people in it. Oh, Clint Howard is in it as well, is Dick Miller.
Clint Howard and Dick Miller. That's uh, that seals the deal. Which one of them is playing a janitor and which one is playing a grumpy store clerk.
Well, it looks like Dick Miller plays the police chief, so he's out of the running for that. Clint Howard plays a character named Eagle Bauer, so I'm not sure where that ends up.
Okay, since we're on the subject of Terror Vision, let's see we were going to do a ps from a message from Brian Love to come back and do the rest of Brian's message another time, but because it's about Terror Vision, Brian says in PostScript to another email, I'm listening to your episode on Terror Vision and yes, WASP was a parenthesis. Is most definitely a very real band.
This came up because Uncle Rico in Terror Vision is wearing a T shirt that has a band on it called WASP as an acronym WASP, and we did not know if that was real or not, or if he was made up for the movie.
His character is od, you know, a good Irish boy.
Who is the character to discover that the hunger Beast from outer Space is into metal. Yeah, anyway, Brian has the info for us. Brian says, uh, Wasp, they are the progenitors of what my friends and I call quote crude dude rock heavy metal. Buy dirt bags for dirt bags and those who love them. Wasp's main claim to fame was that Columbia dropped the presumed lead single from their debut album before it even hit stores in nineteen
eighty four. The studio recording of the egregiously titled Animal Parentheses f Like a Beast wasn't officially available in the United States until over a decade later, which gave them the air of danger that all crude dudes desire. I'm a big fan of their absurdity and think they might have made a bigger splash if they hadn't been quite so unattractive. They really leaned into it in the eighties. That was a non starter for hair metal, so they
never really broke big. Still. A vinyl box set of their first five albums was just announced and I'm anxiously awaiting my copy. Wow, thanks for the pleasant memories.
I'm looking at this vinyl box set right now, and yeah, that's a lot of WASP. That is a definite proof of their existence right there.
Well, I admit this gap in my knowledge. I am a metal boy that knows absolutely nothing of WASP.
Oh and then here's a picture of them. Yep, yep. They've got that hair metal crew dude vibe going.
On here, and they're all holding knives.
Yeah, knives, Michelle. Oh, one has a hand grenade teeth on the pin. There you go. All right, Well, thanks Brian for that, and we'll come back and discuss your your main thoughts in a future listener mail episode. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close the mail bag on this one. We'll be back later. We have our listener Mail episodes that occur on Mondays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Monster Factor Artifact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Just a minder. Hey, if you happen to use any of the social media platforms out there, you can look us up there, you can follow us. If you use Instagram, go do SDBYM podcast and follow us there. You know, if you're already using it, it's a one way you can keep up with the
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Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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