Left on Read: A Confederacy of Dunces (ft. Min Straussman)

I just read this over about 5 weeks, finishing it on a flight to Tampa this afternoon. What a collection of guys. I thought this book was genuinely interesting to read but best ingested in small chunks over, you know, more than a month.

Large Adult Son: the Novel

This probably isn’t the best place to suggest it, but another extremely, ahem, problematic novel I just remembered is Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling, which is also somewhat iconic within its own niche of steampunk speculative fiction. Peshawar Lancers is in some ways intoxicating with its alternate history of Britain being subsumed into India, with the British elite taking on Indian names and aspects of Indian culture. (And, of course there are airships and steam computers.) On the other hand, unsurprisingly, Peshawar Lancers is legitimately, shockingly racist. It presents Russians as diabolical and ritually cannibalistic; it presents the Thuggees as real; it entirely glosses over a Peshawari genocide; and it presents Afghans as simultaneously brutish and queer-coded. (The frenemy relationship between Narayan Singh and Ibrahim Khan is IMHO one of the more redeeming parts of the narrative.) So, um, yeah. Could be “fun” to pick that one apart.

Thanks I hate it, I suppose that's what qualifies it as art

Having seen a copy of the Viticulture game, I believe it is necessary to add that there are multiple expansion packs

Good episode, guys, but I have to note that _Confederacy of Dunces_ isn't John Kennedy Toole's only book. He also wrote a novel at sixeen, _The Neon Bible_, for which he couldn't find a publisher either. It sat in a drawer until after _Confederacy_ won a posthumous Pulitzer and then eventually, after decades of wrangling among Toole's surviving family about who would get the royalties, was published by Grove Press in 1989. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neon_Bible

Luxury fleshlights exist and they’re those made from molds of the genitals of actual porn stars. You really can have access to Alexis Texas’ privates.

Viticulture is a great game!

Luxury is perceived differently by the genders. A luxury fleshlight is a high end sex doll but these are associated with shame and guilt. While dolls are expensive, they aren't associated with the class markers inherent to luxury, they are seen as tacky and the purchasers are pitied. Luxury is associated exclusivity, class, and status. Edward in Pretty Woman lives a lux lifestyle and any need an be addressed with a simple phone call. Why sully your hands when you can hire someone for that?

Ignatius J Riley sounds like late in life Evelyn Waugh

John Kennedy Toole was the first guy to suffer from Inoperable South-Park Brain 50 years before South Park

If I know anything about cis male marketing then a high end fleshlight would have to involve carbon fibre and goretex, no? Also self-monitoring features for blood pressure, volume, velocity, sperm count, etc. and an app

How odd that I still own this book, which I never quite finished, which means that I've moved house with it about 14 times since it was suggested to me in college. To the best of my recollection, Barry Moser (southern American printmaker and guest professor) recommended it specifically (and solely) as a critique of the corruption of government/police in the city of New Orleans. Now I feel like I should revisit it... except that this podcast also makes clear to me that I should not revisit it.

In the words of a comedian I forgot, "dicks are funny, vaginas are arcane and mysterious"

portland mentioned

beany tuesday already had a comic that perfectly summarized dick-oriented sex toys: "No illusion of aestetic appeal. Designed to be nutted in then thrown across the room in shame". although if you want a penis masturbator gadget that doesn't look like a quote "Kalsky-Csupo parody of the female form", look over at Tenga who's making some phallic receptacles that don't resemble "a woman without the superfluous parts" the "review-industrial complex accounts for like a third of all Vice and Huffpo article" line about afab toys hit me like a goddam truck oh yeah about the book, I tried reading it as a teen and got like a few dozen pages in and I was like "this guy is too cringe he reminds me of myself" and put it away; glad you folks are there to summarize it for me!

If this show is to become a tour of trad Cath poster novels then Baron Corvo’s Hadrian the Seventh will need to be included.

feel like there is a fundamental mess factor to fleshlights that may be offputting to a customer base whose hygiene is already questioned. anyway i looked up the author after listening to this and he sounds like a sad and fascinating Guy

I worked on the development of some Luxury Sex Toys(tm) for a while, if you do have questions about the industry and genital gentrification, I'll do my best to help. Completely unrelated to that, I hope y'all are keeping an eye on Vitalia, the "pop-up city" trying to "make death optional" being held in the Próspera ZEDE on Roatán. Returning favorite Bryan "Blood Boy" Johnson is involved of course.

As an older geek I was surprised and appreciative of Riley’s slightly misnamed reference to Campaign for North Africa as the exemplar of insanely-complex board game mechanics. Back in my day we had proper maps with hexagons.

The essential problem with fleshlights at the high end is they are marked much like razors for men. All about the additional settings and functionalities. Whereas to get the experience of true luxury you need to pay a lot of money to a Turkish man.

Super happy that y’all covered this book. I started reading it at the start of 2020 at the recommendation of my debate bro ex. I didn’t finish it before I had to return it to the library and haven’t felt the urge to pick it up again, but it had existed in my mind as this wild novel few people I know have read, other than my ex, who can be really insufferable to discuss nuanced topics with. Glad to hear some actual leftists talking about it and picking it apart bc I had been rly craving that.

Also re: gentrified fleshlights- The LELO F1S springs to mind.

I feel like this book's alternative cognomen could be Catcher in the Rye II: Ten Years Later, as Holden Caulfiled becomes (to the surprise of no one) a RETVRN poster.

for sale: fleshlight, NEVER USED

immediately starts searching for high end fleshlights

I think you're all communiss.

I've always thought of sex dolls as high end fleshlights

Aren't there VR compatible responsive fleshlights?