Author Topic: Pseudopod 168: El Dentisto que Corta  (Read 23720 times)

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Reply #25 on: November 20, 2009, 04:03:39 PM
Oh, there is NO way that guy is surviving that night.  He killed his patient, he's too drunk/stupid to realize it, he's being surrounded by guys with knives...  My favorite part of this story is when the crone comes, probably to officially condemn him, and she laughs derisively at him.  He assumes she's making a little joke about having no teeth, and he smiles and claps.  At that point, she places her hand on his cheek, and there's this little tender moment as she seems to genuinely pity him for what's about to happen to him.  I like to think what's going through her head is, "Wow.  You really have no idea what's going on right now, do you?  You're actually just a complete and total moron.  How tragic your life must have been.  Not that this is going to stop us from making you die horribly."  That's the wisdom of old age, shining across a cultural and linguistic gap.  It's rather beautiful, really.

I think a missed a couple details, but that makes total sense, and I like the story even better with that ending!



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Reply #26 on: November 20, 2009, 10:14:09 PM
Please for chrissakes, it's Tempeee (with an Eee at the end) not Tempeh like the preserved soybean food.  Something about you Escape Artist narrators and your instance on mispronouncing the name of that town.

Yes, we insist on mispronouncing everything we can.  And just so I can keep avoiding the correct pronunciations...  Can someone point me at a site with a comprehensive listing of place name pronunciations, other than Wikipedia whose pronunciation scheme I find time-consumingly inscrutable?  Googling, e.g., "pronounce sheboygan" is not always as effective as you might hope, apart from wikipedia.



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Reply #27 on: November 21, 2009, 04:33:41 AM
Thank you for everything, gang.  You're the best.



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Reply #28 on: November 21, 2009, 10:19:37 PM
What a squirm-in-my-buss-seat story.  Nice.  That little real-world tidbit about these "coyote" surgeons roaming Central America is such a great, gory gem I found myself thinking, "Damn...I wish I discovered that!"

The character's narcissistic inability to see how wrong his actions are reminded me of the narrator's inability to see how crazy he is in "The Tell Tale Heart" and worked so well for similar reasons.

Ben's feeling on the ending and the crone were similar to my reactions while listening.  I don't think this guy's surviving the night.  But the ambiguity left to that is beautiful.  First of all, it's far scarier, to me than if the dentist's fate was described (particularly the image of his assistant lying on the ground, legs twitching up in the air and imagining why....shiver!).  Plus, it's ambiguous enough to possibly interpret a different ending--they just party for the night, and the dentist wakes up the next day and starts the whole process over again (also a chilling possibility).  So I get two endings for the price of one, depending on what strata of horror I wish to meditate on in a given moment.

Nicely done.  And another example of why "rules" like sympathetic characters and character-development arcs are limiting things to get hung up on.

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Reply #29 on: November 23, 2009, 06:03:37 PM
Yes, we insist on mispronouncing everything we can.  And just so I can keep avoiding the correct pronunciations...  Can someone point me at a site with a comprehensive listing of place name pronunciations, other than Wikipedia whose pronunciation scheme I find time-consumingly inscrutable?  Googling, e.g., "pronounce sheboygan" is not always as effective as you might hope, apart from wikipedia.

http://phoenix.about.com/cs/phoenixfactsfun/ht/pronounceplaces.htm

The first links from:

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=how+to+pronounce+tempe&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

No need to get defensive.  Maybe I touched on a nerve, but this isn't the first time I wrote about mispronouncing 'Tempe'.  Honestly, it's so weird that Escape Artist readers are the only people that I've ever heard consistently mis-pronouncing that word.  I usually figured that if the jocks from ESPN know how to pronounce it, everyone else in the country has to.



Ben Phillips

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Reply #30 on: November 24, 2009, 01:02:31 AM
Thanks for the links, and sorry about the defensiveness.  I was kind of hoping for a more general reference site, but perhaps it's just not out there.  All the ones I can find are limited to some smaller geographical region like a state or a country.  I guess I just need to build a collection!



wakela

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Reply #31 on: November 25, 2009, 03:38:22 AM
Great creepfest.

Oh, there is NO way that guy is surviving that night.  He killed his patient, he's too drunk/stupid to realize it, he's being surrounded by guys with knives...  My favorite part of this story is when the crone comes, probably to officially condemn him, and she laughs derisively at him.  He assumes she's making a little joke about having no teeth, and he smiles and claps.  At that point, she places her hand on his cheek, and there's this little tender moment as she seems to genuinely pity him for what's about to happen to him.  I like to think what's going through her head is, "Wow.  You really have no idea what's going on right now, do you?  You're actually just a complete and total moron.  How tragic your life must have been.  Not that this is going to stop us from making you die horribly."  That's the wisdom of old age, shining across a cultural and linguistic gap.  It's rather beautiful, really.


I think a missed a couple details, but that makes total sense, and I like the story even better with that ending!
Actually, I found this part to be kind of jarring and took me out of the story.  I agree with Ben's interpretation of what was about to happen, but if he had just killed a girl of the village, I don't think the other villagers would be laughing at him.  They would be sad or angry.

Also, though it wasn't inappropriate for the story, I Alisdair's outtro pulled me away from the story and into an imagined debate about health care reform. 

But other than those two pretty minor point I thought it was a great ep.



melopoiea

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Reply #32 on: November 25, 2009, 05:10:43 PM
The Lovecraftian ending (specifically because Lovecraft associated Cthulhu with people of color and working class people because he was a classist and a racist and was expressing his fear that way) and the fact that the indigenous characters didn't get to be well, characters, just to stand in for a mass of people for us to pity both really turned me off.

I listened all the way through.

I was glad it was a nice way to weave in discussing healthcare reform.

But really, I didn't take much away.

Even the main character wasn't creepy, just an exaggerated stereotypical serial killer like person....amoral, abused, warped in the usual ways.

I don't watch slasher movies, but I've listened to some very graphic Pseudopod stories all the way through. And to be honest, this one didn't engage me. I had a hard time caring. I got angry, but that was it. And that was mostly at the well-meaning racial insensitivity.



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Reply #33 on: November 25, 2009, 06:21:34 PM
Quote
The Lovecraftian ending (specifically because Lovecraft associated Cthulhu with people of color and working class people because he was a classist and a racist and was expressing his fear that way) and the fact that the indigenous characters didn't get to be well, characters, just to stand in for a mass of people for us to pity both really turned me off.

I'd disagree with this, although I guess it comes down to definitions.  The portrayal of the poverty stricken natives without individualized characters doesn't strike me as a racist because of the 1st person narration - The narrator doesn't see them as individualized, but the entire story is about what a clueless, ego-driven wanker he is and he's our only source of observation.  Minor side details never portray them as acting either as clueless savages (The whole scenario is not just an attempt at luring him into becoming a sacrifice for the godless heathens - they really thought he would help) nor clueless noble savages (honorably shrugging their shoulders and chalking it all up to the circle of life, or whatever - they are exacting revenge for being taken advantage of - probably more justice than they'd get in the local courts and undeniably human and not noble).  I certainly wasn't pitying them in the end.

As for Lovecraft - while undeniably racist (Michel Houellebecq's H.P. LOVECRAFT: AGAINST THE WORLD, AGAINST LIFE is still the monumentally definitive work on the topic), and undeniably later repentent (not that matters in the least to the observation for story concerns - we're not here to judge the man, just to see how this attitude informs his work), the perceived racism doesn't strike me as "Lovecraftian" - non-whites in Lovecraft are generally used to symbolize his fears of miscengenation or in a more general sense, to project the "other" as atavistic, implying both a bestial savagery and openness to horrid, ancient wisdom.  Sure, there's savagery here but as I said above, nothing to imply that the natives are somehow wiser or tapping some ancient power.  Seems like good old "eye-for-an-eye" to me.

I also wouldn't characterize the narrator as a "serial killer" - he doesn't strike me as an unempathizing, amoral, sociopath, just a dolt who's absolutely convinced he's capable of doing anything he sets his mind to.  Technically, wrong or not, he believes he's "helping" these people and that doesn't strike me as the mind set of a sociopath.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2009, 03:37:17 PM by Sgarre1 »



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Reply #34 on: November 26, 2009, 03:23:27 AM
...and the fact that the indigenous characters didn't get to be well, characters, just to stand in for a mass of people for us to pity both really turned me off.
...
I was glad it was a nice way to weave in discussing healthcare reform.
...
Even the main character wasn't creepy, just an exaggerated stereotypical serial killer like person....amoral, abused, warped in the usual ways.

I don't watch slasher movies, but I've listened to some very graphic Pseudopod stories all the way through. And to be honest, this one didn't engage me.

They weren't standing in for a mass of people. They WERE a mass of people. And THAT was the character. In this case, the group was a character in the story. No need for individuals here. And no need for pity. That's not what they are there for. They are those who don't know, but wise up in the end and get theirs. If I am not mistaken, that's a paraphrase for one of those 3 or 4 basic plots The Ely mentions in some of his in/outros.

I didn't see any typical serial killer in the story. Just an arrogant idiot. Take away the knives and I know people just like him.

Personally, I don't want The Pods to go into politics. I listen for enjoyment. If I wanted politics, I would listen to talk radio.

Slasher movies don't compare to Pseudopod very well, so judge them on their separate merits.

As to this story not doing it for you, that's what makes the world great. If two people are the same, one of them is not necessary. The next story may be the best thing in the world for you and bore me to tears.

I read, therefore I am...happy.


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Reply #35 on: November 26, 2009, 08:21:31 AM
If two people are the same, one of them is not necessary. The next story may be the best thing in the world for you and bore me to tears.

My clone says he disagrees with you. Violently.


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Reply #36 on: November 26, 2009, 07:30:54 PM
Yeah, just not seeing the pent up, subconscious racism there - well-meaning or otherwise.

And I have to agree that the masses of faceless people are a product of the perceptions of the first person narrator.

And even pressing that further, I do not believe that the main flaw of this character is racism.  It's not even malice, not even subconscious, hidden malice (where he's punishing someone for a perceived slight and letting his conscience dress it up as something noble).  His main flaw is pure narcissism and the complete inability to experience empathy or see outside his own head long enough to see what hideously horrendous shit he's perpetuating.  He'd be cutting up white people too, if he could.  This is the place and these are the people he gets away with it with (too many "with's"?).  Everyone of any demographic belongs to one giant, faceless mass to this character because he doesn't consider anything outside of himself.

An artificially inflated, forced, didactic social conscience in fiction writing does not make those social issues any better...it just makes the fiction worse.

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Reply #37 on: November 26, 2009, 08:17:43 PM
The Lovecraftian ending (specifically because Lovecraft associated Cthulhu with people of color and working class people because he was a classist and a racist and was expressing his fear that way) and the fact that the indigenous characters didn't get to be well, characters, just to stand in for a mass of people for us to pity both really turned me off.

I listened all the way through.

I was glad it was a nice way to weave in discussing healthcare reform.

But really, I didn't take much away.

Even the main character wasn't creepy, just an exaggerated stereotypical serial killer like person....amoral, abused, warped in the usual ways.

I don't watch slasher movies, but I've listened to some very graphic Pseudopod stories all the way through. And to be honest, this one didn't engage me. I had a hard time caring. I got angry, but that was it. And that was mostly at the well-meaning racial insensitivity.

Sorry the outro didn't work for you.  The health care thing's an interesting one as, on this side of the pond, it's not a political issue at all.  Or rather, it's the sort of political issue that people agree on the basics of and nothing else. 

That being said, and this is a genuine question, what would you have liked the intro to be about?  There's genuinely no front to this I'm just curious as to what lies in the overlap of the following Venn diagram:

STUFF IN AL'S HEAD RELATED TO THE STORY

STUFF LISTENERS WOULD LIKE DISCUSSED



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Reply #38 on: November 26, 2009, 08:54:03 PM
can we just unscreew the top of al's head and rumige round inside !!
kind of like an idears pick-and-mixs !!!


card carying dislexic and  gramatical revolushonery


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Reply #39 on: November 26, 2009, 09:52:33 PM
That being said, and this is a genuine question, what would you have liked the intro to be about?  There's genuinely no front to this I'm just curious as to what lies in the overlap of the following Venn diagram:

STUFF IN AL'S HEAD RELATED TO THE STORY

STUFF LISTENERS WOULD LIKE DISCUSSED

I'll happily go with STUFF IN AL'S HEAD RELATED TO THE STORY.


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Reply #40 on: November 28, 2009, 12:33:39 PM
This was great little romp.  The horror factor for me is that this would fit so well into that post-apocalyptic genre that is supposed be just around the corner, and the fact that this could just be a straight up modern day narrative (rather than a work of fiction).

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Reply #41 on: November 30, 2009, 09:01:34 PM
That being said, and this is a genuine question, what would you have liked the intro to be about?  There's genuinely no front to this I'm just curious as to what lies in the overlap of the following Venn diagram:

STUFF IN AL'S HEAD RELATED TO THE STORY

STUFF LISTENERS WOULD LIKE DISCUSSED

I like the intros pretty much as they are, sometimes with stuff from your history, or from pop culture, or whatever, that relate to the story.

I like Pseudopod's intros better than Podcastle's, because they are of more general interest.  Podcastle's tend to get a little long because it's giving too many details of the author/reader's publishing history rather than philosophizing.  For publishing history I like just a quick sentence or two about that "They've been published here and here and have a book coming out in January." kind of thing.

Also, I love your accent, so even when the intro is of less interest, that alone is entertaining to me.  :D



wakela

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Reply #42 on: December 01, 2009, 01:31:24 AM
Sorry the outro didn't work for you.  The health care thing's an interesting one as, on this side of the pond, it's not a political issue at all.  Or rather, it's the sort of political issue that people agree on the basics of and nothing else. 

That being said, and this is a genuine question, what would you have liked the intro to be about?  There's genuinely no front to this I'm just curious as to what lies in the overlap of the following Venn diagram:

STUFF IN AL'S HEAD RELATED TO THE STORY

STUFF LISTENERS WOULD LIKE DISCUSSED

In general I like the ol' in-out on Pseudopod, and I actually look forward to them.  This one just seemed too political.  Maybe that's because I'm American, and the words "universal", "health", and "care" are rarely followed by anything that doesn't set my teeth grinding.  Your story about your relative receiving fast, quality care seemed like the numerous accounts of how great the British system is and how America should seek to emulate it.  But I caught myself, because the outtro was still appropriate to the story, and if it had been about any other advantage of living in the developed world I wouldn't have noticed.

Whether or not it was a political statement, I don't think Pseudopod is getting too politicized in general.  In short, don't change a thing. 



eytanz

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Reply #43 on: December 01, 2009, 07:15:38 AM

In general I like the ol' in-out on Pseudopod, and I actually look forward to them.  This one just seemed too political.  Maybe that's because I'm American, and the words "universal", "health", and "care" are rarely followed by anything that doesn't set my teeth grinding.  Your story about your relative receiving fast, quality care seemed like the numerous accounts of how great the British system is and how America should seek to emulate it.  But I caught myself, because the outtro was still appropriate to the story, and if it had been about any other advantage of living in the developed world I wouldn't have noticed.

So, there's a part of you who doesn't want to hear a British person talk about life in Britain because some of it is relevant to a political debate in America? I find that fascinating as an insight to human nature, and to the nature of the internet. There's a big difference about an American politician saying things in the media about the British health care system - either positive or negative - than a British person saying the same things to a British audience. The assumptions are different, the perspective is different - lots of things that can be left unsaid in Britain because everyone has experience with the system in question may be very important to the political debate in the US, and leaving them out when talking in the US can skew the discussion in a way it won't in the UK. Plus, of course, everything is couched in fact that the two countries are simply different on a cultural level, and not everything that is right for the US is right for the UK or vice versa. But all this becomes so much more complicated once you introduce media like Pseudopod to the mix - a truly international medium, but not a directed one - Alasdair isn't talking to Americans here, specifically, and he is not making the adjustments you get when a diplomat or a lecturer is specifically trying to talk to a different culture. He is talking from his POV, and we are all percieving it from our own POVs, and a lot of interesting stuff gets lost - or added - in translation, even though the language is the same.


(Disclaimer - I'm not trying to say anything about health care. I'm intrigued by how political discourse is becoming more complicated in an age where the internet makes communication global)




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Reply #44 on: December 01, 2009, 10:56:46 PM
New listener here!

To me what I found really creepy overall was the man's assertions that Jesus and God were backing him up on this.  Constantly he'd go back to how Jesus had saved him and it was thanks to God that he was able to perform such wonderful works.  People who think and talk like that while doing something so cut and dry bad to another person seriously creep me.

As for the boy, I wondered a bit if our dear dentist wasn't trying to harvest his eyeballs to sell on the black market, much as I presume he was doing the same with the girl's kidney(s?).

I loved how the end was written.  So often when intoxicated (by alcohol or even just when on a natural high) you do lose the depth perception, and things just sort of float away from you, so you get vague impressions of things and events going on.  Even without the alcohol, that's how I picture the dentist wandering through life, he's just disconnected from everything.  And it fit so well with my impression of the Mayan people, left to their traditional culture without much outside influence, just as the dentist had left such outside influence behind as he traipsed further and further in (which, from the sound of the narrative seems like he was going further and further back in time, away from the gentler sort of culture that is the Mayan peoples now and back to the ancient mayans, so that it is laughable that he declares himself a god -- even if it is to himself in his musing.  Who is he to stand up to any of their old gods, for whom blood flowed freely?).  Ancient Mayans did not treat their prisoners kindly.

In the end, I found the story very interesting in that remote staring-at-the-spider-on-the-wall-in-fascination-even-though-it-grosses-you-out kind of way.  Live by the sword, die by the sword kind of thing.  A strange sort of justice.  Kudos to the reader as well, great job!



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Reply #45 on: December 06, 2009, 07:32:39 AM
this hit a sensitive spot with me.  both the betrayal of trust and the strong taking advantage of the weak are sensitive points in my psyche so this story was maybe a little too effective.

Can someone point me at a site with a comprehensive listing of place name pronunciations, other than Wikipedia whose pronunciation scheme I find time-consumingly inscrutable?

you can try dictionary.com which has a surprising number of place names and uses the easier to understand phonetic spelling instead of the international pronunciation alphabet.

but hopefully wikipedia is gonna get better.  after your comment i rewrote the ipa template so that it has mouseovers describing how to pronounce each character (you can take a look at it in tempe).  it takes a while for a change like this to work through wikipedia's bureaucracy but hopefully it'll make pronunciations useful to the average user.

anybody who takes a look at the template and has comments i'd love to hear them (direct messages would be best).  we've gotta work with language geeks so it's not going to be completely targeted at laymen (that's why some mouseovers have comments like 'short i' or 'schwa e') but at least we get an example word for each sound.

anything that you can think of that will make it easier to understand we can look including.



Ben Phillips

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Reply #46 on: December 08, 2009, 10:11:42 PM
but hopefully wikipedia is gonna get better.  after your comment i rewrote the ipa template so that it has mouseovers describing how to pronounce each character (you can take a look at it in tempe).

Wow, that's pretty nifty I think.  Huge improvement!



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Reply #47 on: December 09, 2009, 04:50:43 PM
you work for wikipedia?  I mean I know anyone can edit stuff but I don't know the exact allowances about that...

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


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Reply #48 on: December 10, 2009, 05:26:06 PM
What was that about a Mayan retribution?  Maybe I missed something at the ending.  All I saw was her "rewarding" him for his efforts in front of a crowd.  Was there something supernatural going on there that I missed?

Oh, there is NO way that guy is surviving that night.  He killed his patient, he's too drunk/stupid to realize it, he's being surrounded by guys with knives...  My favorite part of this story is when the crone comes, probably to officially condemn him, and she laughs derisively at him.  He assumes she's making a little joke about having no teeth, and he smiles and claps.  At that point, she places her hand on his cheek, and there's this little tender moment as she seems to genuinely pity him for what's about to happen to him.  I like to think what's going through her head is, "Wow.  You really have no idea what's going on right now, do you?  You're actually just a complete and total moron.  How tragic your life must have been.  Not that this is going to stop us from making you die horribly."  That's the wisdom of old age, shining across a cultural and linguistic gap.  It's rather beautiful, really.

Thanks very much for the kind words about the narration, everyone.  Glad you "enjoyed" the story.  I love sharing special things like this with the world.

I really wanted to interpret the ending this way.  In fact, I listened to the ending twice hoping I would, but it just seems too ambiguous. 

The Mayans are the ones that come across as complete and total morons (most horrifying moment in the story-- when the girl gets fingered briefly before being knocked out again, and the villagers around her just look at each other curiously as if to say "the white man knows what he's doing-- he's white!)
The ambiguity in the ending is masterful-- villagers raise blades and bottles-- ritual killing or celebration?  Why the unbuttoning of pants?  Caesar's shaking leg-- is he getting a handy too or are they disemboweling the poor blind child?
I think you could make a case that this ambiguity weakened the ending, but even so I appreciate how well he pulled it off.

And ya, kick ass reading.  I got to freeonlinedictionary.com for my pronunciation issues.



eytanz

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Reply #49 on: December 10, 2009, 06:08:11 PM
I really wanted to interpret the ending this way.  In fact, I listened to the ending twice hoping I would, but it just seems too ambiguous. 


I really don't think there's anything ambiguous about the ending. I mean, I could see your point, if the entire story hadn't been designed to establish that the narrator has no ability to tell what the hell is going on around him. The fact that he's interpreting it one way more or less assures us that the opposite is true.