Rat Boyz Presents: The Musclecast

Joshy's Corner features 18 Carat Affair's Desire. This episode features selections from Vance Randolph's 1951 classic "Ozark Superstitions" courtesy of Columbia University Press. Vance Randolph spent decades in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks collecting the phrases, superstitions, taboos, song and semantics endemic to region.  The penultimate episode of the season !!! visit clamsimmons.com for more info.

Featuring All Bases Covered by Various Blonde. Various Blonde appears courtesy of the Record Machine.

Featuring Too Soon by Barrel Maker & LION

Featuring Gabriela Lemmons of the Latino Writer's Collective

Featuring "Chuck D" by Ebony Tusks

In preparation for the rule of dolphin kings.

Oscar Addlepatter was last seen in an Arkansas pumpkin patch in 2010.

Pledge your support now! There is still time! 401-237-0892! 

  Ronnie and Donnie Turtle were the Romulus and Remus of Turtle County, brothers who bought all the county’s water, killing anyone who could not afford it. When it turned out no one could afford it, they found themselves in the awkward position of having killed their profits and neighbors simultaneously.   Regardless, they had accrued an impressive amount of wealth in the process and felt they deserved to build a monument to their success - one  that they could live in - and so they began to build their mansion on 1818 Turtle Street. The Turtle Brothers were too proud to travel across county lines to hire people who might make snide remarks about all the dead bodies liquefying in the sun and so they began to clear the land alone.   Every tree worth its lumber was chopped to the ground, every stone worth its hardiness was quarried from the earth, every shock of tallgrass was sliced clean from the turf, and soon all of the land around 1818 Turtle Street was reduced to a barren and threadbare state. By duties en

  Donnie and Ronnie Turtle were the first to sell gunk and they got rich doing it. After they got rich selling gunk, they started selling kid’s sunglasses (because no one was doing it) and they got even richer. After selling gunk and kid’s sunglasses they were richer than they ever imagined - Donnie and Ronnie then bought all the water in the county. The water was dirty so the Turtle brothers told the county they were going to clean it up and then sell it back to them. So the county sold them the water and the Turtle brothers processed it and started selling it back to the people of the county. It made the Turtles even richer but when they realized that no one else was selling water, they started selling cups of water for nine dollars and 20 gallons of shower water for ninety dollars.   Some people could afford to take a shower and drink a cup of water once a week. Other people could not and the Turtles became furious that those people were not buying. They were so irate they hired a hired man to investigate.

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell   In the 19th century, the Osage people lost millions and millions of acres of land across three treaties: the Treaty of 1808, the Treaty of 1818 and the Treaty of 1825. In these treaties, the bulk of the Osage Empire was sold to the U.S. government for less than six cents an acre. The Treaties of 1808, 1818 and 1825 still haunt the former Osage lands of Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas. Some spinetingler theorists argue that all the houses in former Osage lands are haunted because they were built on stolen land but nearly all spinetingler scholars agree that all the houses in former Osage Lands with street numbers that match the years of the treaties have a much greater chance of hauntings.   The Spinetingler Scholars Alliance has found overwhelming proof that numerical correlations can lead to general feelings of uneasiness or sensations around the face, liver and spine. In more extreme instances, they can lead to a full blown spectral out

The Carolina Parakeet was the lone parrot species, west of the Appalachian Mountains. At the time of Lewis and Clark, the Carolina Parakeet and its bright green, yellow and red plumage filled the skies with glorious shenanigans. Unfortunately, the last Carolina Parakeet died alone in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.   The dwindling numbers of Carolina Parakeets were accelerated by a number of human beings in the 19th century, but Chonny Burpins almost single-handedly crapped on the southern bird’s path to extinction. At the zenith of powdered Victorian restraint, Burpins hid in bird costumes for hours waiting to pounce on bee hunters who unwittingly disturbed the habitat of the Carolina Parakeet.   She also stabbed hundreds of feather poachers. Sometimes in the face. Sometimes in the eyes. Always with icicles. No fingerprints. Even today, Carolina Parakeet Rejuvenation Scientist Community Encyclopedia describes Burpins as,  “a right handed Parakeet defender living with a left handed person’s brain. Also, maybe she

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell   One night in the late 40’s a bunch of bus boys were busy soaping up rags in the bar of the Missouri Hotel. It had been a long night but now it was time to flip the chairs and sweep beer caps into dustbins. The bus boys worked hard and before long all the glasses stood tall and sudsless on the drying rack.   Soon Arnie the bar keep was handing out nickels and sending the bus boys out the door. When they left, Arnie poured himself a tall glass of Nasty Boy and soaked in the silence. For twenty minutes everything was still and Arnie even began to wonder what would be like to fall asleep in a museum but then he was jarred awake by a clatter coming  from the peanut pantry.   Arnie wondered if maybe one of his busboys was scratching around for a few peanuts but when he climbed down the stairs he found that the peanut pantry was empty. Arnie walked to the corner and found a tiny mouse door that had been boarded up. In the cracks of the boards

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell   The Union Depot Train Station was an architectural marvel, but it was built in the middle of a floodplain and in 1904 the Union Depot was completely flooded. When preparations for a new train station began, city planners began to focus on a strip of land adjacent to the O.K. Creek. It was agreed that if the waters of the O.K. Creek could be diverted and channeled underground, that this would be the ideal location for a train station.   And so the city began to confront that wrinkle. City officials began to contact all the plants and animals living along the creek, telling them they had 30 days notice to vacate their creekside parcels.   Waterproof notes were handed out to all the fish and turtles. Eviction notices were seed pasted to the nests of the local waterfowl and all the street cats were contacted. Every cricket and water bug was notified via paper boats. Cattails and creekside willows are no dummies. They read the writing on the

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell   Derrick Thomas was a great football player for the Kansas City Chiefs. His football coaches knew he was fast so they nicknamed him the Falcon. In one game, the Falcon sacked the quarterback a record seven times. The Falcon was a legend but tragically his life was cut short in a fatal car crash.   When he passed away a void was created in the football shaped hearts of thousands, but within a few short days birds began to hover near the milemarker that claimed Thomas’s life.  First, it was only a few hairy rats with wings and their night bat friends. Then, it was all the pigeons and doves who like to eat popcorn out of the trash. Thirdly, all the cardinals and bluejays and all the other seed suckers flapped over.  Fourthly, all the hawks showed up with fresh mouse meat blood dangling from their beaks. Before long every bird of every species and every feather was lording over the highway.   Most drivers passed through the tunnel of feather

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell   The original town of Kansas sat on a bluff towering above the river. The height of the bluffs made offloading river goods, such as molasses and horse pelts, a nightmare. After years of slow delivery times, horse pelt industry officials threatened to leave Kansas City. That's when intrepid Mayor Johnny Filth stepped in.   Mayor Johnny Filth took the city's entire annual budget and bought a shovel for each citizen in town. He handed a shovel to every man, woman and child at Kansas City's annual bean dinner and said, “Get to digging! Do it for the horse pelt industry!”   Together the city cut into the river bluffs like a giant stack of chocolate cake. Within days the bluffs began to shrink and the speed of horse pelt delivery was mightily increased. The work continued day into night and night into week and week into fortnight.   After a fortnight, Donnie Turtle, one of the hardest working shovel boys slipped a note into Mayor Filth’s pocke

  Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell The Elmwood cemetery caught the animal buddy world by storm when Margarine the deer befriended a stray dog named Rusty. Rusty and Margarine, with every frolic among the headstones and every cuddle among the tombs, sent inspirational shockwaves across the mammal community. But the transcendent friendship was cut short when a local hunter named Omalley Squeezums shot and killed Margarine in the heart of the cemetery.   Omalley Squeezums was quickly brought to justice and promptly paid the ten dollar fine, but the damage had been done––the dreams of a trans-species Camelot were lost forever. However, even as the nation mourned the death of Margarine, the cemetery’s humble plastic-flower duster, Donnie Turtle, made a curious discovery. Turtle found a notebook whose cover read “Private Deer Diary! Don't touch! Or read! Ever! (Unless You Are Rusty).”   Turtle rifled through the pages and instantly recognized Margarine’s distinct hoofwriting,

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell Nelle Peters was one of most prolific architects in Kansas City history. She designed over a 1,000 buildings including one of the city’s most iconic high-rises, the Mark Twain. What most people don’t know is that the Mark Twain apartments have a dark secret. To understand that untold mystery, we need to first look at the moral tug of war between Peters and J.C. Nichols. Nichols was a famous real estate developer, but in the process of gobbling up land and spitting out commercial and residential properties, a radical concept began to dominate his mind. As the plans for the Mark Twain apartments neared fruition, Nichols became more and more obsessed with the idea of secretly stealing Mark Twain’s body in hopes of burying him in the cornerstone of the building. Nelle Peters pushed against this idea from the beginning, but it was like convincing a spider to clean up his own cobwebs. “Drop this body-snatching nonsense. How could you even think

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock Editor: Sarah Rendo Cover: Rob Mitchell   Oscar Wilde, one of the brightest wits the Emerald Isle ever burnished. In 1885 Wilde toured America with speaking engagements dotted across the country. Unfortunately, critics treated Wilde's performances like watermelon seeds spit in the face of a very wise turtle. In fact the Kansas City Star gave his performance at the Coates opera house a bad review. They declared Wilde to be a spectacular nincompoop. As if that wasn't bad enough, Wilde was reviled for his off stage habits as well. In particular, they didn't like his hollow tooth. Some said he kept jewels in his tooth. Others said he kept manuscripts in his tooth. A select and depraved few hinted that Wilde kept tiny baby teeth in his hollow tooth. This was an era when people were very secretive about their dental life and so rumor has it that almost no one, with the exception of Wilde's dentist, spoke about the hollow tooth. Of course, one person did speak about it, and he spoke a