The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter

In our first episode, we discuss our May Book Club Selection:
The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter.
Synopsis:
In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.
But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.
Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.
With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.
A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:50

This might be the best book I've ever read.

SPEAKER_06 0:52

We're gonna go read. Go ahead, read, read. I read.

SPEAKER_05 1:07

Did you get wine? I did get wine. You do you find a glass?

SPEAKER_04 1:13

I found a coffee cup. I have a coffee cup and it's clean. It's also clean. Yeah, um I cannot keep a wine glass from breaking. Like, it's impossible. Oh no. It isn't. No, it's impossible. Let me tell you the story. Um Jared was taking something out of the cabinet with the wine glasses, and he knocked one of my long stems over, and it smashed all over the counter in the in the ground. When he was pulling it out, he just like knocked it with his arm. And then I was just sit standing there like, oh, and they were brand new. Oh just washed him, just put them up there.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

And then he said, Did you see what I did?

SPEAKER_04 2:08

And then he said, I was just reaching up there and then it fell out, and he did the exact same motion that he did, and it knocked another glass out.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

And we were both just standing there, and he just like looked at me, and then I just like started laughing because it was the most ludicrous.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

But yeah, I don't have wine glasses.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

I can't.

SPEAKER_05 2:35

I'm gonna send you some.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

No, I need some without stems because I'm acting brown.

SPEAKER_05 2:41

Okay, stemless ones, but like uh Michael has these ones, they're like a it's a wine glass, or it's shaped like a wine glass, but it has like a little indent for your thumb or your finger, which is nice. But it's like plastic, so it's impossible to break, but it looks and feels like a wine glass.

SPEAKER_04 2:58

Oh, I cannot wait to get your plastic kit-proofed wine glass in the mail. Can't tell you how excited I am. Um it's better than a gun. Does it have a does it have a smiley face on it?

SPEAKER_05 3:12

No, it's just a a like he this is a real story. The first time I went over to his house when he he got those because he was needing some, and he went to hand it to me and then dropped it on purpose, and I was like, oh no. And it just like it just like bounced around the floor, and he was like, eh. That is so funny. Oh my god. Okay, so I I needed like I was saying earlier, I need to get the tabby things for for next time, but I I took notes, but um paper clips. That is that's great. And I occurring to me now that that most of the notes I kept um because I filled this up and like you know, oh my god, you're so pretty.

SPEAKER_06 4:06

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

Oh my god, you're disgusting. I hate you. What mine is everywhere? And like I just I ran out of space, so I started just writing the page numbers for the quotes to go back later.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

See, I like and I'm like so anal, like I want everything to look nice.

SPEAKER_05 4:28

So when I ran out of room, I just started like I have like a thing on my phone that I started taking notes with.

SPEAKER_04 4:34

We are so different. I actually I'm not as uniformed as you, so I didn't actually write down my quotes. I highlighted them in my book and then put paperclips in here and made it ten times harder for myself. So I have to just kind of like read them in random order because I don't have a spari. I'm not very uniformed. That's fine.

SPEAKER_05 5:03

I were talking about The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter. This is your pick for this month.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

This is my pick, and I picked it. Um, I was at this little local bookshop, and I was really drawn to the cover, which is gorgeous. The cover is gorgeous. I was just like, oh my gosh, the cover is just so beautiful. And then I read the back and it was kind of a dystopian theme, and I was like, that sounds really interesting. Um, and I think the basic gist that I got the thinner you are, the closer to God you are.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah. That was my biggest takeaway from the jacket too, because it sounds a lot like that um the way down cult in the east. Did you hear about that?

SPEAKER_05 5:56

I watched the whole documentary about it.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

I bet you did.

SPEAKER_05 6:00

Quite gambling, and it was like that was her like she literally made like a multi-level marketing cult slash church with that exact premise. Which I feel like that was the least I got out of this book. Like I feel like that was like the main thing, and then it became like the least I don't know, it was very different than I expected it to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Okay, just FYI, spoiler alert, in effect. We are going to talk about all of the things. Nothing's off limits. So if you haven't read the book, pause it, go read it, and then come back. Or if you don't plan on reading it, just listen to us talk all about it, and then you can feel like you've read it.

SPEAKER_04 6:46

And also we are gonna talk about all of the things.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

All of the things. There there is adult content in this book, and we will be discussing it.

SPEAKER_05 6:59

Did you like the book?

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Did I like it? Um kind of I um I wanted to love it, but I didn't love it. I did I did I liked it because of mine and our history with the church and the way that people can manipulate um through the church and you know, like and kind of turn it into a cult. Um slowly, slowly over time. And and I really connected with those themes in the book. So um because I connected with them, I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed reading it. I I I mean I it wasn't a page turner, if that makes any sense. Yeah, but I liked reading it.

SPEAKER_05 7:54

I did not love this book. I um honestly, if if we hadn't been reading it together, I would have DNF'd it. Um but having gone through the whole thing, I reading this book was like having sex with no orgasm. Like parts were soaked, and you're like, oh, okay, what's going on here? And it's like, I'll get you next time. Like, wait, it's just starting to get good. Where are you going? Did you feel that way at all?

SPEAKER_04 8:31

Um, if you're referring, are you referring to the spice, like the sex?

SPEAKER_05 8:35

Oh, no, just like the just everything in general, because like every time I felt like something was starting to happen, it would just stop and then go to somebody other like go to the other um character, and then it was like never revisited.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

Yeah, it I thought the pacing of the book was weird.

SPEAKER_05 8:56

Like honestly, like this whole thing to me feels like everything, it feels like an outline for the book. This feels like it should have been a trilogy or something. Where like because I feel like it there was su it was such an intriguing um concept and like dystopian world, but you still didn't really get the gist of it. Like it the world building was confusing and incomplete to me, and there was just so much there to tap into that I felt was so untapped. Like you create this like really fascinating world, and it was just very like scratching the surface of what it would be to me, and I felt that a lot of the characters were kind of one-dimensional.

SPEAKER_04 9:53

I wrote in my notes um more of a dystopian study than a captivating story. That's to that point I wrote. I I I didn't footnotes of like sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. I mean, that was it. That was my thought.

SPEAKER_05 10:15

Well, and then like it some of it, it it took me a second to get into uh especially in the beginning, because I and let's I'm I will preface all of this with the caveat of like science fiction is not um something I generally enjoy. There are exceptions to this rule. So anything that sounds too um sci-fi- just kind of pulls me out of it. But like the um some of the terminology for the is very, I mean, this author is very um she sees things in a very interesting way. Um like like freewa, like that, like forever calics, like it's handle people. Um like it just they they sounded like placeholders until she actually thought of what she wanted to call things and then it just stayed that way.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

Okay, I have a comment about the freewa people in this book. Um she kept referring to the fact that they had a prominent forehead ridge, like like an alien, like where like what kind of like a boob. Like it's and my question was, is that like in their genetics, or is it something they put on the skin?

SPEAKER_05 11:32

Sounds like something it sounds like it's like a specific race of people. But that's see, this is this is what I mean. Like you have all these questions, like, okay, interesting, but like explain.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Well, here's the thing though, like she never establishes this book as being a fantasy setting. It's dystopian, like how we would be way in the future if something were to happen. There's nothing supernatural going on, it's just like the people in their society for the most part.

SPEAKER_05 12:01

But then it's not our world at all because then you go like especially towards the end, like the kitchen is supposed to be like uh this is the history of this world. And then she even like references people like like the Ahinga people, and she references them a lot, but doesn't explain anything about them or any sort of context.

SPEAKER_04 12:23

I um I put as a note for the book, would make a world of difference if the author would place names of characters before chapters. Yeah. Because she doesn't um in the writing, like I I felt that she didn't really establish whose mind we were in very quickly within the chapter. And so you're like, wait, who is this? Like you're reading like a whole page and a half, and you still don't know whose head you're in because she doesn't preface or make any references to what's going on around.

SPEAKER_05 13:02

Yeah. It was so like it you're right, and it I felt like I wrote um that sometimes the writing seems really disjointed and not cohesive. Like, what does this scene have anything to do with what's happening? Like, there was some like there's a lot of times like it was there's like a super random page worth of words, and I'm like, okay, what does this word salad have to do with anything about this scene? Like, what what was the point of that?

SPEAKER_04 13:30

And then it just like she used like the meals and the cooking and the descriptions of of cooking and and eating the food as a reference the the war the warring of it. So like I felt like as a society, what she a lot of things that she did was people replaced food, the desire to eat food in a gluttonous way or to eat for flavor or for pleasure is taboo, but the society then in turn just redirected that desire into um like sex.

SPEAKER_05 14:09

Right. That was one of the things that I that I wrote. Let me find it.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

I wrote and I wrote sexual promiscuity is not an issue in this time because over time sex becomes so accepted and desensitized that people ignore the idea of monogamy and sexual orientation. Gay or straight does not exist. People have sex openly with all genders, and also in public, most entertainment is sexualized swapping food for more sex. It's like they need to find an outlet, like there has to be an outlet.

SPEAKER_05 14:53

Right, yeah. I I wrote like the the contrast of like the typical taboo versus food being the taboo is like a really interesting juxtaposition, and like obviously it's so opposite of now. Like, granted, like we have a lot of sexualized things in our uh society, but it's not like oh, like there's a couple girls eating each other out on the lawn. This is totally normal.

SPEAKER_04 15:17

Oh my god, how hilarious is her descriptions about sex?

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Like, eat me, eat me, eat me. Like, what's ever what woman has ever said that I want to know?

SPEAKER_02 15:30

If it's you, please let us know. Oh, we're we don't judge you, but you know.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

She referenced that like all of the shows on television, sex and nudity and like people having sex, like on the TV, and it was totally normal. And like there was even one where she went into went into a description about the show where it was like the biker dog matrixes. I'm sorry, my dog's throwing up. Oh no. Go clean that up in a second. But I forgot what I was saying.

SPEAKER_05 16:04

The the shows that they watched.

SPEAKER_04 16:06

Oh yeah, she was talking about how like there was the granny. Would you fuck this granny?

SPEAKER_05 16:12

Right? Or like the the one called me, in which they're like biker dominatrixes. That like and they're all like crying, like, oh, that was amazing. She beat the hell out of me.

SPEAKER_04 16:28

You know what it makes me think? I think to myself, like, does she think about sex this way? Or is this like part of the the what is it trying to make it seem like it's desensitized in the culture?

SPEAKER_05 16:43

Yeah. Well, okay, so it's it was very Scientology. Like, even like the names like Seagate and Scientology is.

SPEAKER_04 16:53

Oh yeah, you know what? I made that, I made that connection too.

SPEAKER_05 16:56

I was like, that's it's like that the whole Seagate thing is like super, super is basically Scientology because they have to work and all their money belongs to the church, and so it's like not the most original, but you know. But so I I was so like when I read the first chapter, I was super into it. Like I was like, ooh, this is so fasting. Like it like opens up, like there's like a and it just like brought me back to our uh church days with like lock-ins at the church. Oh my god for fun. So fun. But in this version, it wasn't uh like laser tag and like uh hide and seek in the dark. It was like, okay, well, the nuns are going to leave, and you all just have outer sex with each other and just explore your bodies. We're just gonna be in the other room. Like, wow. I was like, okay, this is so fun.

SPEAKER_04 17:58

I actually think that that's a really interesting concept. Um because like you look at the difference between like how society views um like homosexuality how differently it is now than when we were kids. Yeah, I mean, it's a massive difference. And you almost wonder a couple hundred years in the future, um will it be that way? Will people not even reference what what's what sex you are? It'll just not nobody will care about it because it's nobody upset by it. It's just a natural thing.

SPEAKER_05 18:38

Like it's not thing I did write down is that I liked the the queer normative. Like it's like it wasn't a big deal. It's like you could be bi, you could just be one or the other, but it wasn't something that was a big deal. And it's like also all right, well, I'll get into that one later when we actually get into actual quotes because all the sex. So like oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 19:01

Okay, guys, um, whoever's listening, if anybody ever does listen, this book has a lot of sex, and it's not spicy.

SPEAKER_05 19:12

No, it's not good sex. It's just like what's what's happening?

SPEAKER_04 19:16

Like what like okay, I might well I I thought it was interesting how the society was obviously and one thing I did like is that uh you went through time really quickly in the book, and so at the beginning it's really the beginning of these girls' journeys, and at the end it's like way later in their lives. Um so I thought it was kind of interesting how the the religious factor progressed over time. Uh you know, it stopped being people just living in their houses and and eating bland food and like starving themselves. It became we're gonna live on a commune and then you're gonna work and we'll pay you, but we have our own stores that you buy everything from. And it kind of reminded me of those like shanty town um from the Great Depression from the Four Winds. Yeah, they they went to the plantation and they worked there, and they had to work there, like there were no other jobs and they were gonna starve to death. Yeah, but they also had to live there on the plantation, and they had to buy everything from the market, yeah. And it was like way hyped up, and they would just like it was just a big cycle until all of a sudden you're so in debt, they give you everything, but they charge you for everything. Yeah. And you have to like work it off, but it's impossible, like you never make enough money to work it off.

SPEAKER_05 20:48

Yeah, except in this scenario, they don't feel like they need to work off anything. So we just get to be here and they give us it, like they give us everything. So it's it's all fine and good. Like, why wouldn't we want that? One thing I wrote, and granted, this was like early on, and this was like kind of before she had established um kind of like the the sections, like the the bastion, low quake, middle, and above, which is still a little confusing to me. Um, but like the descriptors, like very early in the book, she said things like her feet didn't touch the ground for four years. I'm like, can she levitate? Like, do people have magic here? Like, ex explain what you mean. But it was just like one of those like random things that's just like popped in and like never referenced again. And this was before she'd established what like the the tears were. And I'm like, she's a dancer who hasn't who's trained for four years, but's never touched the ground in four years. Are people carrying her? Like, does she have powers? Is she on a hoverboard? Like what are we what do we mean? What do you mean? Explain, like this I'm interested, but like explain what you mean.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

Yeah, I th I I felt like some of the the writing was disjointed. She just writes in a way that sometimes is very confusing for such a complicated world.

SPEAKER_05 22:12

Confusing. And also I felt like this like this book didn't know what it wanted to be. I thought that so many times through the book. We're in a dystopian futuristic place that's prob that's not even Earth, because it never references Earth, and obviously there's two moons, so it's definitely a planet that's not Earth. Oh shoot. Two moons? I missed that. Yeah, like in the beginning.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

I wanted to win it though, because um my mind drifted a lot when I was reading.

SPEAKER_05 22:42

Yeah, it took me a while to to get to get through this book. But then, so you have all of this, but then all of their lore is very like medieval sounding, like the night witch defeated the king. I'm like, okay, are we in fantasy now? Like, where are we in Elaine?

SPEAKER_04 23:01

Well, I definitely say this was a fantasy book.

SPEAKER_05 23:08

No, it's no, but like lore sounds like when you get into like the uh the kitchen girl sections, it sounds like more of like a medieval time in it. And like things like being called like the night witch, it's just something that you'd normally you know envision as like a a fantasy uh thing. Also, did you laugh out loud when they were having their church service and the the pastor was wearing a hawk costume with wings? Like with that. I was like, he's wearing a costume, but then like the visual of that is hilarious. I just picture him like at one point he just like shouts out, he's like, he spread his wings and said, precarity!

SPEAKER_01 24:09

What does that word even mean, precarity?

SPEAKER_05 24:12

Like what does that mean? Like if something is like precarious, like oh, we're on the edge of something terrible. Precarity. But like I'm and he's just yelling that with his hawk wings and his like beak over his face, like in church.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Like uh, and then like I could not with the okay.

SPEAKER_04 24:35

First of all, how did you pronounce the girl's name? I said I in my head I made it Riku.

SPEAKER_05 24:42

Of course you would.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

I I pronounced it Reiko. Okay, well I couldn't, my brain just kept doing it.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

So I was just like, okay, it's Riku.

SPEAKER_04 24:52

But it's well, what do you think it is? Like how it's I was like, how do you really even pronounce that?

SPEAKER_05 24:58

Well, I did the exact same thing you did and said Riku first, but then I immediately um Googled how do you pronounce Reiku?

SPEAKER_04 25:08

Sometimes I never go to Google for pronunciation. Never. Fantasy books are so ridiculous. Like I'm like, I can't remember all of these fake things with complicated names. You just can't.

SPEAKER_05 25:27

Alright, one thing one thing that I wrote down, um Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_04 25:32

Um okay, like towards the end of the book, like what I was saying with Rico or Rico or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Rico.

SPEAKER_04 25:41

She got sh you know shot. Yeah. She gets shot. She changed her name to Claudia, but she doesn't tell you right in that for a very long time. So you're like, wait, she's talking about things that only a few people saw. Her name's Claudia, and I do know what I did. I actually went back through the book to see if I missed a Claudia somewhere.

SPEAKER_05 26:11

Yeah. I you know what my first thought was when I got to part three, and like we're like 70% of the book at this point, and I and I wrote down, um Okay, so now a new POV with Claudia. Like now who's an there's a new person in the game? Like, isn't it a bit late to introduce a new uh character? Um, and then like after a while, I'm like, oh, it's it's it's Rako, it's definitely Rako, but like that was not clear for a while.

SPEAKER_04 26:41

Oh my god. And I felt super interesting.

SPEAKER_05 26:44

What?

SPEAKER_04 26:45

You want to know my note about that? I'm gonna read it. I have totally, and this is before I figured out who it was. But it was Rico. I read down, I have totally forgotten who Claudia and Martin are. I said, by page 263, I have totally forgotten who Claudia and Martin are. And then under that I said, geez, author changes names of main characters and doesn't mention it? Question part.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

I was so annoyed because like I went all the way through the book looking for Claudia, just like finger and first, where did I miss where did I miss it?

SPEAKER_01 27:31

I was so annoyed.

SPEAKER_05 27:33

Well, and like what annoyed me too, this is what I mean about everything being disjointed and unsatisfying, is because you know, she sets up uh Beatrice and Rako with these like really interesting backstories, and then once their story actually starts getting going, she just stops and then like oh well, fast forward, and you just like get skip all the parts that make their story interesting. Right, and then you just and then you just get like a cliff notes version of like, yeah, I've just been running the restaurant, and now like I'm a chef, and everybody was coming to my restaurant, and you didn't get to see her journey into that, and then like with Rayko, discovers like, okay, school's bullshit, like they provoked my scholarship, and she invents this like thing, and then we immediately don't get to see what happens for a while, like, and then she like becomes a thief and like falls in love with Keith, and then immediately that's like done, and then she's shot, and then you're like, Oh no, what's gonna happen? Then it's like 11 years later, except we don't know eleven years later.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

We have Claudia. Who's that?

SPEAKER_05 28:42

Yeah, it's like why does like okay, like, and then we eventually find out, like, oh yeah, it was easy to fake my death, and blah blah blah. I'm like, Kaylee, could we have seen that?

SPEAKER_04 28:50

Like, you can tell that she really loves Keith or whatever, like deep down, like in her heart, but like it never explains what happened in their relationship to why they broke up, and then even though she's always thinking, like, oh Keith, I love him so much, she's still the first thing she does, it says the first thing that she does when she gets all of that money is hire guys to beat the crap out of him.

SPEAKER_05 29:18

Right. So, like, why didn't we get to see like the fallout of that? Like, because the last thing we see that's like. Like, you know, it leaves us on that cliffhanger of like she's shot, she's bleeding out on the floor, you know, they're in the house with guns now. Like, it leaves you on that cliffhanger, and then we just never get back to that buildup. And it's like, again, it's like the sex with no, like, oh, this is getting so good. It's like next time, you know, gets arrest. But you liked it, I'll tell you that much.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

Like, no, like, give us out of all the stories. I my favorite was Beatrice.

SPEAKER_06 30:07

Really?

SPEAKER_04 30:08

I liked her story the most. I I don't know why. I think it was because like she started out in a really religious strict and like chose to get out of that and get away from that, and like stand up for herself, and then she like built a life doing what she dreamed. Yeah. Uh and I really liked her character, like, in in her when she was in her head. That those were my favorite chapters, the ones with Beatrice.

SPEAKER_05 30:34

I I definitely liked Beatrice more than than Rako's chapters, though I found the Kitchen Girl chapters to be more interesting than both combined. Like I I could have read a whole book of just that story.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Yeah, I was really craving those chapters by the time they came up.

SPEAKER_05 30:53

But I think it could have been like a trilogy where we actually get to play out these stories in a more expanded way. It felt like the cliff notes version of each story. Like all the ideas are there, it was just not well executed.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

Like I wanted to like to like it more that because it was so I think it was in a study of like a dystopian kind of study way. It was great. But like it was completely different than what I thought it was gonna be going in.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

Same.

SPEAKER_04 31:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:31

One thing I I wrote down like um like Beatrice is supposedly falling for Georgina in a new love-making experience, but it's described as we were like animals rutting in the dirt. It's it's so abrupt like that. Like, oh, we went into the fields and like we were like animals and rutted in the dirt. And that was it. That was the whole that was it for that scene. But then afterwards, Beatrice is so moved by it, and she's like crying, and she's like, I've never had sex, like it's like I've never had sex before. I'm in love with her. Like, wow, that rutting in the dirt was so romantic. Like I'm just like, where's the connection between Georgina and Beatrice? Like, you don't feel any of the like why are they falling in love with each other? And then obviously they're never told you what happened to Georgiana.

SPEAKER_04 32:32

Yeah, they never Yeah, she just like like never find out what happened to her parents, to the parents, you never find out about any of the side characters, what happens. I you don't even find out what happens to the main characters, right?

SPEAKER_05 32:46

And I right when she finally gets a call from her dad, I'm like, okay, this something's happening, like I'm really interested to see where this dynamic goes with her family, and then again, that's it. We never hear about them again, she never really talks about them. I also felt that based on what we knew from Beatrice and the relationship she had with her parents, because her parents seemed not as hardcore as a lot of the other people, like they still ate food together, which is something not a lot of families did, so they just seemed or were like painted like they were a really close family unit, and it didn't make sense to me that Beatrice would just leave without even having a an attempt at a conversation with her mom or her dad, considering how close she was to them. Like it just felt very abrupt, like her wanting to leave.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

Well, yeah, well, I think I think that the reason that she wanted to leave though was justified and why she left because it was like it just seemed like we're gonna put an implant in you uh against your will that makes you not they never actually said that to her, like they they hadn't even talked about the implant yet because it was just something that they had talked about creating. Well, I think it was like she was coming though and she wanted to get ahead of it. She was like, I have to get away from that.

SPEAKER_05 34:15

I get that it just seemed like again, everything just seems like abrupt and then move on, and then we never go back to it through the through the whole book. I personally just would have enjoyed um some dialogue with uh her family because it seemed like they were very close. And it it just the way that she kind of like felt out Georgina with the food and what she wanted to do, like I just expected her to have kind of that same conversation with her parents, or her mom at least, just kind of feeling it out, like you know, what would you thought happened when they found out that she was eating?

SPEAKER_04 34:55

They they said that she had to go to like a a Jesus camp to get better.

SPEAKER_05 35:01

I have a couple more notes. Um I at one point I wrote, we're over halfway through, and I still don't know where the story's going. Like, and I wrote the ending dot dot dot um okay. Like, what was the point? Like there was no resolution or real conclusion to anything.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

Sorry, Chana. We didn't love it. I I actually I think that I liked it more than you did. I can tell that I did because at the end of the day, I was glad that I read it because it was just such an interesting dissection of an idea of what how powerful religion can be.

SPEAKER_05 35:48

No, and I there and that's the thing. I did actually uh really enjoy some as some aspects of it. I think I think my frustration and the uh the lack of um fulfillment on my end.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

Uh okay, um hit me with with uh one of your your quotes.

SPEAKER_04 36:12

Okay. Um I wrote I mean I highlighted mine. So um You defaced the book.

SPEAKER_05 36:21

What? I I'm not a highlighter. I will never deface a book that way. We are different.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

Well, it's mine. It's my book. Mine. I will do what I want with it. Um highlighted it can be difficult in its own way not to have anything to rebel against. I like that quote.

SPEAKER_05 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:45

Your b your mind um and everything, you're you're yearning to have something. Something to fight for.

SPEAKER_06 36:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:55

You know, and um I think that's really true.

SPEAKER_05 37:00

Yeah, I I I totally agree. That's a that's a good one.

SPEAKER_04 37:03

They create their own rebellions out of nothing, even. You know.

SPEAKER_05 37:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:10

Also, how cute are the um the dividers of the parts, like the pages with all the food and the fruit? The pages are really very pretty.

SPEAKER_05 37:22

My my favorite quote of the book I wrote down um page 249. This body was not decorative, it was not slight, it was not willowy, it was not thin. This body took up space, this body made things, this body was her home. I owe you an apology, she said into the mirror.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

I really loved the the way that she used the universe of um the pressure of not eating to be a part of society, to be thin, to be a part of society, and the way that she broke it down to make a very clear message that that's not okay.

SPEAKER_05 38:10

Yeah. Or like everything being like opposite, like when they go to the mall, it's a sex court instead of a food court. And it's like, ugh, it's so weird. And like we're gonna wait for a clean room to open up, like, ooh.

SPEAKER_04 38:27

Okay, I gotta quote.

unknown 38:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 38:29

This is on page 53, if you're wondering. Bursting forth like a finger directly from the earth was a stalk of asparagus. She looked around. There were more dotting the grass of various lengths and thicknesses. Last book, thankfully, that contained a few drawings, homey little sketches of women in headscarves stirring bubbling pots around hearts, and she remembered the frilly little ridges on the head of the stock, making it look like a skinny, malformed penis.

SPEAKER_05 39:09

That one is definitely on my list too.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

I know.

SPEAKER_05 39:19

I'm like, do you guys have a bunch of like STDs?

SPEAKER_03 39:22

Because I'm like, why not?

SPEAKER_04 39:25

Like, why this great huge description of thinking, oh wow, that looks like a dick.

SPEAKER_05 39:35

Like, but also like an asparagus does not look like a like have you if you've seen a penis that looks like an asparagus, you've got problems.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

Um well, I guess it is kind of the same shape. A bulb.

SPEAKER_05 39:52

The the shaft, if you will, with all the ridges and stuff. That sounds like an STD penis, not like a a good one.

SPEAKER_04 40:04

Okay. But you are actually thinking that dicks look like they have like ridges on them, like a dragon egg.

SPEAKER_05 40:12

I don't well, I'm it looks like skinny penis, and I let me let me find it where I wrote it as well, not just skinny, malformed. Yeah, yeah, malformed. And I was like, well, I maybe like all the threesims are giving the kids STDs, but then like a little bit like when they're um later, so here's one of my quotes. It's on page 81. Uh they go to the sex court to wait for a private room. But um Beatrice has the bumps right now, in any case, so they're sticking to hands-only activities until the rash went away. I'm like, okay, so like all you guys do have STDs. With all the sex all these people are having, you would think that Yeah, but call them STDs, they just refer to it as the bumps.

SPEAKER_04 41:08

Like, oh, we'll just wait a few days.

SPEAKER_05 41:11

It doesn't occur to them that like the bajillion sexual pro also can am I the only one who has an STD, it doesn't really matter anymore.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Well, I d does it you all have herpes, nobody fucking cares that the other person has herpes, but it's like, but if it's a rash and it's bumpy and it hurts, we gotta wait a while and do hand jobs.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

I know I know.

SPEAKER_05 41:41

Okay for nine. While having a bit of intercourse with Peyton and Marty Zimmerman one afternoon, she glanced out the window and noticed a huge floppy sunflower gazing back at her. Like, just very casual threesome one day, but she's like clearly not that into it. But like also, like, okay, a little bit of incest because these are brothers. Um Peyton and Marty Zimmerman were over one afternoon while having a bit of intercourse with you know what?

SPEAKER_04 42:12

Maybe that's where the freewa ridge came from. From incest.

SPEAKER_05 42:18

But she meant to say three wah instead of free wah, I see. Or um, I got a I got a really good laugh out of um her favorite hymn being uh My Lord Lifts Me Up Like a Hot Air Balloon.

SPEAKER_04 42:39

What? That is so weird. Um like growing out of the church, um it it definitely gave me a little bit of PTSD at times. Yeah, gross. And it's like that with anything that I watch about religion, cults, any of that stuff gives me that weird and that's part of the reason I'm so fascinated by it, actually.

SPEAKER_05 43:14

Yeah, exactly. Uh it's like the weird taste in your mouth, but you also are like, wow, crazy.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

Well, it's just something that the only a certain group of people understand. You know what I mean? I mean, it's just that kind of experience doesn't happen to everybody.

SPEAKER_05 43:33

Yeah. Like I have some friends who like have never gone to church in their lives, and I'll tell them things and they're like, What are you talking about? Like, what do you mean? And it it's my mind that I'm like, Oh, um, this is a weird thing to have to explain to someone because it's just su it's such a weird thing, but that it also is weird to me to have somebody else like not know at all what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_04 43:58

Well then, and also In turn, like you were you were at the beginning of shaping who you are today during that time, and because of what happened from that time, and it's just it's such an important part of your history, like as a person, um, at least to me it is, and um it's really difficult to like have that huge part of yourself that you can't share with with other people, even people that you really love sometimes.

SPEAKER_05 44:32

Or there's just things like no matter how much you explain, they're just never gonna be able to truly understand. Like, even like little things like silly things, like I could send you a music video of Carmen and you would laugh your ass off, and anybody else would be like, What is this? And like, you have no idea.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

Oh, yeah, how uh how big of a deal this was. So I mean, in a way, I'm really drawn to this kind of material um because it just in a really weird way, it makes me feel like somebody else is getting where I'm coming from.

SPEAKER_05 45:10

No, totally. I like half of the things I watched is just like fussy uh docuseries. No.

SPEAKER_04 45:17

She is an amazing author in the way that she was able to create an environment like that that I was able to relate to. That's how I feel about this book. It it was very interesting, and you almost wonder like to us, it doesn't make sense, but to the author, does it make sense? Like, for her to get the points across that she was trying to get across in her writing. Like, it's not about these in-between moments, like these are the these are the defining moments. Yeah, only the defining moments. And because like it, and it's true, every time she switches into another character, uh, no matter what time period it is, no matter which chapter it is, you're transported to another state of mind and another big moment in that person's shaping. And and that was kind of interesting to me. Um, and now I didn't feel that way till the very end when I had finished the book. That's when those thoughts came to me. But like while I was reading, it was confusing. And like I it also felt like two different books in one because what would really help, I think what would really have just changed all of what I just said about the disjointedness would have easily been fixed by putting the date or the year at the top of each chapter so that you know where you are um and who you're talking to.

SPEAKER_05 46:55

Yeah. Rako's and Beatrice's story were just so separate that it's like, why are they both in the same book? Like maybe did you ever feel that way?

SPEAKER_04 47:08

Yeah, I well, what I got from it was you're seeing the way that this society has affecting these two really different people that come from very different backgrounds and different beliefs and upbringings. I felt like she was trying to create um contrast. Okay, I'm gonna read a quote.

unknown 47:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 47:28

This is on page 107. A litany of Bastian curses raced through her mind. Go fuck a goat, you son of a nun. I'll shit your milk. You've got assholes for eyes. Burn it all down, she yelled, punching one of Agatha's decorative sofa pillows. That is quite a paragraph.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:01

Those are like the weirdest words to put together.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

Oh, okay. How about this one? Okay.

SPEAKER_05 48:09

Uh page uh 78. Um Beatrice squeezed her sweetheart's hand, pointing to a particularly festive array of tiny spoons designed to remove hard-to-reach earwax next to long tapered candles and a huge bag of basalts. Like the that is the weirdest sentence I have ever read.

SPEAKER_04 48:44

Alright, um, I also did mark the pages with some of the recipes in them, like um the three-day mushroom soup and the pickle soup, the sour pickle soup. Oh I think I'm gonna try and make the sour pickle soup. Ooh, you have to let me know how to make it because I was like, oh, I love pickles. Um, I mean, I don't really like drinking the juice. You know, I'm not pickle juice gal, but I like a good pickle.

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 49:28

I mean it was right there. I couldn't. Okay, um, I this is a weird one. It was on page 31, and I just remember thinking, like, I what? Okay. It took all of her self-control not to throw up her breakfast on the beautiful quaft lawn. A quaffed? How does one coff a lawn? Like a coff is a hairdo. Like, how do you think a lawn?

SPEAKER_04 49:58

Of coef when you say that. That immediately goes to vagina parts.

SPEAKER_05 50:04

Right? Exactly. Like, but quoft, like that's a hairstyle. Quoft, like a quaff, like a a C-O-I-F-F. A quaff. Like that's like when they do that with little quaff.

SPEAKER_03 50:21

Like that's a hairstyle.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Does not help me picture it.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

You know, like it's quaff, like the quaf quaff.

SPEAKER_05 50:34

Where your hand is like tied up in a little bud. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Okay. I've got page 204. Anyway, she said with raised eyebrows. I'm too fat for church. I think you're lovely. He looked at her body frankly. Maybe we can have our own service.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

And then her cunt gave a mighty kick. I wrote that one down too. I was like, oh my gosh, the words cunt, mighty, and kick are just too much. That sentence is too much. I had that one too. I laughed out loud. I did that.

SPEAKER_05 51:29

I clearly remembered the I'm like, I literally thought like Lita's going to write this down because It's just preposterous to write that. Her cunt gave a mighty kick.

SPEAKER_03 51:43

Whoa. Whoa. Oh god, slow down there. There's a mighty cake in my pants. Oh, what a kick in the pants.

SPEAKER_05 51:55

So bad. Like why do you have Okay, here's okay, here's one. Um This goes kind of hand in hand with this one. I'm like, why would you phrase it that way? Um This is when Rako and Keith are having sex.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

And their wonderful romantic encounter.

SPEAKER_05 52:24

Yeah. Uh but she also couldn't tell if it was over. He kept kissing her and kissing her. Her armpits, her shoulders.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

I didn't mark that, but I laughed when she said armpit.

SPEAKER_05 52:41

Uh mapping her secret freckles and tonguing the edge of her ear. Like his thick. I don't think that's like why would you what a weird what place of the body to insert in your um he just kept kissing me and kissing me. My armpits, uh like my job.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

What a weird place to reference.

SPEAKER_03 53:07

Like, do you canna, do you get your armpits kissed often?

SPEAKER_04 53:15

And of course I think that um of course I think that you know these people are not the cleanest people. Like, I bet that her armpits were so hairy and so stinky.

unknown 53:33

Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:34

Like I would having sex in the parks and like they're just rolling around on the ground in the dirt and not taking showers, like just yeah, getting up and doing it all over again.

SPEAKER_05 53:50

Like some of them are like filming it for their like insta followers. So like I'm just gonna we're gonna I'm just gonna eat her out right here on the grass. Like, if you like that, like click and subscribe. Do you have another one?

SPEAKER_04 54:02

I have like four less. Okay, you you go next. Okay. Um, this is on page 325. Starting the chapter off with this is what we're doing because it's at the top under chapter five. Uh what you're already having here. That night Claudia had a dream. She dreamt she was standing over a toilet after having just used it. Instead of roses, she looked down into the toilet bowl full of her own feces. The feces bloomed outward, multiplying like cells, expanding into a thick floral ring around the toilet like a coral reef. She'd let it grow too much. She couldn't flush it away now. Plaudia was embarrassed. Not that everyone would know that she ate and shat, but that she couldn't hide it away as was proper.

SPEAKER_03 55:12

I cannot with this.

SPEAKER_04 55:14

I know.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

I know.

SPEAKER_05 55:20

I thought that same thing when I read it. I was like, oh like, okay, so obviously, like eating was like frowned upon, but obviously everyone eats to a degree, you know, to stay alive. So everybody shits no matter if they like eat protein shakes or whatever. Like, so now at the very end of the book, like also shitting is uh unacceptable.

SPEAKER_04 55:43

Yeah, they can't you can't shit too much. Just a normal amount, not a coral reef. Not enough. Okay, here's one. Oh, I liked this quote. This is a good quote every time.

unknown 56:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 56:01

Um, luckily, I am a gardener. I understand that some projects bear fruit quickly, while others take many years. I am planting for the future.

SPEAKER_05 56:15

Oh, I did that quote.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

I did like that quote.

SPEAKER_05 56:20

And I remember thinking after I read it that I had actually uh said something like that, uh similar to my mom. Like sometimes your ideas are just like a garden, like some grow really quick, and then sometimes you have to tend them for a long time before you see results. So yeah, I like that one too.

SPEAKER_04 56:38

And I also loved the last line in the book, which was each morning, ask yourself if I too am mostly water, in which direction shall I flow? Yes, it was a great line.

SPEAKER_05 56:55

It is a great line, it is, and it's a it's a good uh closing line too, and leaves you like thinking about stuff. Beautiful. We should have ended with that. I have one more funny one.

SPEAKER_03 57:08

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

You're on! Oh uh.

SPEAKER_05 57:20

This is on uh page 273. Um she could hear the murmur of voices in the cafe behind her. To her left. Two middle-aged women discussed washing their babies in tap water.

SPEAKER_04 57:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 57:48

I don't know, just the way I I'll tell you what, the way that she phrases things are just so and I get we're in a different world, but it's just it's it's so much to the point where it just it takes you out of the the story, and I'm like, I can't even um I actually had nothing to do with anything that was happening, and it's never referenced again. It's just like, yeah, and to her luck, like a couple middle-aged women discussed washing their babies in tap water.

SPEAKER_04 58:15

I would consider it to be vulgar, my good one.

SPEAKER_02 58:19

What a red, what a red.

SPEAKER_04 58:21

Alright, I guess that's it. From Channa Porter, The Thick and the Lean. Thick and the Lean, that's that's the takeaway. Um it's a beautiful cover, okay?

SPEAKER_05 58:32

It is an awful cover, but also like which which character is it supposed to be? Is it supposed to be uh Reiku or is it supposed to be uh Reiko? Is it supposed to be a cover?

SPEAKER_04 58:43

It's just so sexy. It's like I I know that if you can't see it, it's it's like a beautiful shot of a gorgeous woman, and her body is made out of different fruit. Yeah, she's like inside of a pear and a pomegranate, and it's just like but it like looks like her body, like the fruit shapes, like it's just gorgeous. Let's talk about what we rate it.

SPEAKER_05 59:11

Oh what about that? In our in our uh our books it goes up to ten stars, but I feel like we should stick to a five star system, yes? I I will I will read it rate it as a two on Goodreads.

SPEAKER_04 59:28

I rated it a three on Goodreads.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

So group rate group rating two and a half.

SPEAKER_04 59:36

Oh, we're doing halfzies? Oh fine.

SPEAKER_05 59:38

Well, it's a group rating, right?

SPEAKER_04 59:41

Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_05 59:43

We're mostly on the same page though.

SPEAKER_04 59:45

Yeah, we could I started reading the um the four horsemen books by Laura. I just know I'm gonna say it wrong, Philassa. It's about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And it's like a religious, like biblical setting.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:06

Like behind or like what? Uh like are we talking like another left behind series?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:13

Yeah, it's that's like all that's already happened, and this is like way in the future, and the horsemen are coming. So it's kind of like it has this weird like religious undertone to it that I love, but it's like smut, which is right. Yeah, the first book is called Pestilence, and it's about the first horsemen, and it's very sexy, and it's like this author, okay, she knows women. These men are all men that are the most horrible, domineering that just push you around and treat you like shit, but then when they start to fall in love with the girls, it changes them. So it's like catering to this like need that women change their men into better men.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:09

And uh of course I and I think it's hilarious that his literal name is pestilence because that's how most men are to us.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:16

Yeah, it's why it's that's what she calls him every and she says his name every five seconds. Pestilence. Pestilence. Like it's such a long fucking word. Pestilence means it means plague. It means like illness.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:32

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:34

No, I'm saying that in case anybody else doesn't know what pestilence means. It's not like everybody's going around saying pestilence all the time.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:40

Just uh also I read um or listened to the audiobook of the newest um in death book, Random in Death, by JD Robb.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:56

Gosh, I can't believe you're all the way up there at the top of those.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:00

Well, I mean, to be fair, I've been reading these since like 2007.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:04

I know, but I'm just like, I'm I I think I'm on book 15. Which book are you on?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:11

Uh I just 58.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:15

So many. I know.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:18

I know.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:19

Man, are you not bored with it yet? Is it still good? Like just as good.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:25

I I don't know if I I would say just as good. Like they're just like any other thing. It's like there are some that are better than others, but but no, this one was good. And uh it's like if if if no one's read them before, it's it's like a futuristic murder mystery book series. It's basically the SVU of book series. There's a million of them, but they're good every time. Yeah. Like and it keeps going and you get to follow along with the characters, like, and it's good writing, and it it's like never too high of stakes to where you can just like really enjoy it. Like you get the spice, you get the mystery, you get some comedic relief. It's it's everything you want. And it's just like my junk food rude where like I I can just show up, get a good story, and uh enjoy all the characters that I've been with for years and years and years and years.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:22

What?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:23

She comes out with like at least two a year of those.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:27

Like every time I read one, she writes four.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:31

So for maybe we should set up our our next book for for our next read, our next episode. Fourth we'll be reading the fourth wing, or I should say I'll be reading the fourth wing because Lita already read it. Like a cheater. So I'll uh I'll be prioritizing uh that one, but I'll um uh you need to read the four horsemen, please.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:59

Okay, you need to read them because let me tell you, they're just amazing, and you will not be able to put them down, and you'll be like, what happens next? What gross sex is happening next? I wanna know. And then we can do something on the four horsemen once we've read all of the men, the horsemen. Oh, in the second book she calls him war. That's his name. Like they just call him by the name. And the third one is famine, but I always think famine.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:42

Okay, okay, in this book, in Thick and the Lean, every time it was in the in the kitchen girl, and she's talking about Henry, the way that it's the way that it's spelled is H-E-N-R-A-Y. So every time I saw that he was like, hi.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:06

Y'all king! Ray.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:12

That's how I picture Olivia Wilde talking to Harry Styles now forever.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:17

Hi Rod!

SPEAKER_04 1:05:19

Come back to bed!

SPEAKER_05 1:05:21

You know they broke up, they're not even together.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:23

Well, yeah, but I'm still gonna think about them.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:26

But also his name is Harry, not Henry.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:32

Every time I see them, I'll be thinking, oh you guys. No.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:41

Unprofessional.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:45

How could she do that to Ted Lasso? I mean, Jason's today, I I he's just the most adorable man. Like, I just I adorable.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:58

He is like

SPEAKER_04 1:06:00

epitome of like normal white guy but like somehow still hot and funny like shh it's like Paul Rudd right like oh no Paul Rudd is like in his own universe he's so cute like he's funny and goofy and silly but he's also like buff and ripped and like he's not funny he is hilarious he has the weird timing I've ever seen he is always making me laugh my butt off I feel like Paul Rudd is like my like male spirit animal because he's always just like lift syncing really dramatically and that's what like we are reading um get in my swamp which is a ogre uh erotic novel so excited to read it which everyone was asking for the whole world was asking for asking for it right it's gonna be absolutely hilarious and and if you want to buy it you have to buy it directly from the website or from TikTok shop because it is banned on Amazon. Okay but I found it on Amazon. No but but there's a thing that said it's like this is banned on Amazon like a whole thing on their website about it.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:27

It was like I think they're just like trying to beef up their their things like right when you told me that I looked it up and I found it on Amazon immediately.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:36

Well maybe it was when they made that video or something.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:40

Maybe yeah because it was like a a review from somebody like why okay number one why are you doing a a Shrek themed um romance novel but also to call it like get in my swamp like you don't want to associate your nethers with a swamp like it's that's just the Shrek thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:01

That's the draw is the Shrek because there's like in all there you know the younger generation there's this whole thing about sexy Shrek like Shrek dancing Shrek wearing leather like like things like I I get it in that one which which movie is it when he like turns into a person he's all like all buff and everybody's like oh hey Shrek when he's a guy when he's a human yes the human is is okay let's just calm down here that's what it is because he is uh too good looking as a and he's even got he's even got that chest hair like oh I can't do that with my tongue that sounds more like a propeller yours sounded so sexy.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

Do it again do it again do it again Oh okay I'm gonna draw your ring I gotta breathe because I'm laughing you sound like a a bird chipaka do my feet a little I wanna I really I'm gonna do it seriously like I'm really gonna be serious.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:28

Alright do it again so I can hear it Okay it's more like a a it's more like a barrel cat for purr than a let's get your motor running all revved up with no place to go well at least you have a husband you can go jump if you want to yeah okay I will I'll I'll jump on him eventually not now though where I just live in the land of the perpetually single men are so stupid Relo because you are such a catch well thanks like princess syndrome like you just you have princess syndrome princess syndrome what does that mean that's where you like just wake up beautiful and you're like oh I'm so sleep addled and and I just happen to look like this when I wake up this perfect way my hair falls and just like sleep riddled eyelashes and you're adorable goddamn uh oh what well thank you maybe I should make a Yelp page and you can leave some positive reviews yeah just like leave me some positive reviews like would date her five stars for my dating profile had rating on dating sites that's like comments that's what they need that's what they're missing no that's the thing like like would date again very fun did not show up asked me to get in his trunk the the the pickup lines that I get I just I feel like I just like need to make a whole slew of TikTok videos of just like the weird shit that guys save me on dating apps like I swear to god that's because they're not trying to date you just by not in a douchebag yeah not somebody in an octopus porn side joke it's I joke uh oh no thank you that's a good story too you guys will never know you just uh oh god you're my favorite you're my favorite yay five stars this was fun it's midnight here so I'm gonna go to bed yep after I clean up the dog puke from two hours ago oh my god we should have paused I know but we didn't I don't think I've moved in like two hours like seriously uh bye book mate we've been so good at AFR book mate I love you