Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Another Entry in the -punk Subgenres List

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Check out the autographed cover flat that my pal Victoria Janssen gave me of her new erotic romance, The Moonlight Mistress. This is the gift that every straight guy secretly wants . . .. naked women with luscious pomegranates.

Over at Locus Online, essayist Adrienne Martini has a short screed decrying the proliferation of subgenres with -punk endings. Well . . . The very-soon-forthcoming book is apparently chock-a-block with sex, werewolves, sex, perverted scientists, and sex. Oh, yeah, and more sex. Which, Vickie proudly informs me, makes it a prime example of Smutpunk.

It's a rich world we live in, innit?

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11 comments:

Richard Mason said...

If I'm following this correctly, a book about Victorian musical innovators would now be called punkpunk.

David Stone said...

If that's smutpunk, then Phillip Jose Farmer already invented it in the late 1960s.

HANNAH'S DAD said...

I second the motion that we could do with out any more genres ending with -punk. Still, what can I do about it. Except grumble of course.

I do support the combination of naked women and pomegranates, though I think naked women and durians would be more punk.

JJM said...

Naked women and whole durians would go 'way beyond into ouch!punk. Last time I ferried one of those through the DC Metro, it wasn't the smell that almost got me tossed off (it had been frozen for transit and had relatively little odor), it was its potential as a weapon -- a mace head in a string bag!

Victoria Janssen said...

I think it should count for something that no pomegranates appear in this book.

Nor pearls, for that matter.

HANNAH'S DAD said...

> Last time I ferried one of those through the DC Metro, it wasn't the smell that almost got me tossed off (it had been frozen for transit and had relatively little odor), it was its potential as a weapon -- a mace head in a string bag!

I once read an inadequately researched short story involving durians. The author correctly understood that they were stinky, but seemed to know no more about them. She had her protagonist sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of durians, popping them into her mouth and eating them one by one.

Of course she could have been a Tyrannosaurus...

SpeakerToManagers said...

Steamypunk!

Michael Swanwick said...

Five minutes ago I'd never heard of durians, and now I want to try one. Are they seasonal? Whose neighborhood do I go to to find one?

And now I shall retreat from this string without pointing out that we've been engaged in fruitpunk...

David Stone said...

All of the large Chinese and sino-Vietnamese markets around here seem to have them. It seems like they are more often than not frozen, but I think I see them fresh as well. Canned Durian flesh is pretty inexpensive, if you want to just get an idea of what it tastes like without breaking out the hatchet or power tools.

A bit of durian trivia: someone once told me that durians are the world's deadliest fruit, due to fatalities where the fruit falls from the tree onto someone's head.

JJM said...

One way of coming to durians sorta sideways is by looking to see if your local Asian grocery (or, better, supermarket) has durian fruitsicles. No smell at all. I try to stock up on these at the beginning of every summer.

I've yet to encounter an authentically fresh durian in the States, at least on the right-hand coast -- they've all been frozen for transit. At that point, even when they're thawed, the smell is like a mouldy old gymn sock, at worst.

Hard to describe the taste, somewhere hovering in between caramalized onions and cream cheese and vanilla pudding. I am assured that fresh, high-quality durian tastes even better, but that few tourists get to try them because the taxi drivers refuse to carry them and the hotels refuse them entry. My parents would always wax nostalgic over the durian of their youth, but then my mother would bring up the smell. Oh gods yes, the smell ...

Unknown said...

Porn-Punk!