Monday Night Ode To Mushroom People

Welcome to another week of mushrooming. I hope you're all enjoying yourselves.

Walking Mushrooms from Delicious in Dungeon (ダンジョン飯, Danjon Meshi, lit. "Dungeon Food"), a delightful manga by Ryoko Kui

NOTABLE MUSHROOM PEOPLE

1. Melanie and the other zombie kids

The Girl with All the Gifts, dir. Colm McCarthy, 2017. 

Based on the 2013 novel by MR Carey. The book's better but you knew I was going to say that. Movie has some visceral pleasures though. Fungal outbreak results in fast-moving chompers.

that you, Omelas?

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2. Kenji Murai (Akira Kubo) 

Before The Last of Us, there was Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People) in 1963, directed by Ishiro Honda*, the creator of Godzilla. Saw it when I was around six on one of the Saturday morning creature feature shows, and I believe it was my first real experience with cinematic dread. Matango subtitled into English here tho I first saw it dubbed way back in the seventies. There's a dub but I'm morally opposed to sharing it. (Sub > dub. Film screen > tv screen > computer screen > phone, according to me)

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3. The last survivor of the good ship Albatross

How far before TLoU? Matango was adapted from a 1907 short story by William Hope Hodgson (The House on the Borderland) called "The Voice in the Night". Public domain, obviously, but this is my copy** from MIT Press. (Physical book > ereader > phone > audio. IMO. but here's a crappy audio version if you can handle it.)

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4. Leary, McKenna, Castaneda, Griffiths, et al...

You all know why...

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5. Richie Grenadine, "Gray Matter" by Stephen King, 1973

Drinks warm beer and eats a cat. Warm beer, ewwwww

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6.  Hugh Crain's daughters

“It’s not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark.”

Somewhere in chapter 3, I think, either Theo or Eleanor.

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 7. Merricat Blackwood

my copy from the 80s

Last sentences of the opening paragraph:

I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita Phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.  

Mary Katherine really likes death cap mushrooms and mentions them at least three more times in the book. I see no red flags here.

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8. Erin Patterson

Patterson in Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: A Late Supper in Leongatha, Michael Bay, 2023. 

Some days you get angry at your ex and his in-laws. Some days, death cap mushrooms seems like the answer to all your problems. (I hope she gets the help she needs... somewhere she can't harm herself or anyone else)

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9. The fruiting bodies underground

The image of Lester Ballard's victims will live in my memory forever.

Also features in The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud.

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10.  Eldon Stammets

I mean... some things you just don't expect to see on the TV, even when you're watching Hannibal. Season 1, ep. 2; "Amuse-Bouche". 

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11.  The Mushroom People at the market

There's a booth at the local farmer's market run by a company called The Mushroom People in which granola, salsas, and yes, mushrooms are sold. The guy who's always running it said I could just rinse em real quick and eat them. That's true... mostly. Which leads me to the last entry.

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12. This dumb sqrl guy who ok is not exactly notable even to himself

Shiitake dermatitis. According to this study, it's caused by raw or undercooked shiitake mushrooms and occurred in only 9 out of 500 participants in the study. Not a lot, but not a negligible number either. Guess who's got two thumbs and is affected by flagellate dermatitis from shiitake?

I'd been getting random breakouts since I was a little kid and only found out about the condition a few years ago. The outbreak looks like your limbs and torso have been visited by the whip cracking Torquemada of The Lilliputian Inquisition. it's not serious and goes away on its own, but like clockwork shows up two or three days after consuming undercooked shiitake. Skin! The only organ that consistently fails me more often than my brain.

That's concludes tonight's An Evening with SQRL for now. Tune in next week for more blathering. Now chat away. About mushrooms in books, movies, or whatever the heck you want.

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* Honda was a longtime friend and associate of Kurosawa's. They came up together as assistant directors through Toho's system. Honda was "Associate Director", an unusual title, on Kurosawa's last four films; Ran, Dreams, Rhapsody in August, and Madadayo. Honda died before Madadayo was finished. Honda's funeral was perhaps the last time Kurosawa and Mifune saw each other. Poor Honda. He wanted to make personal, humanistic movies but was tied by the studio to direct kaiju and war films. I'm just thankful for his existence. +100 wuffies for anyone who can name the Kurosawa/Mifune movie which features Honda's boots standing in for Mifune's.

** Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "Sultana's Dream" is the first story in the anthology, and it's kind of an important one for proto-sci-fi. A Muslim Indian feminist voice from 1905 imagining a female utopia. Even so, my favorite story in the book is E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops".