Bittersweet Infamy - #59 - A Very Caca Christmas

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

Holiday special! Josie tells Taylor about el Caganer (the crapping man) and the other scatological fixtures of a traditional Catalonian Christmas. Plus: the colourful world of Ghanaian bootleg movie posters.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast we share the stories that live on and indeed. The Strange and the Familiar. The Tragic and the Comic. The Bitter. And the Sweet. Happy Holidays Josie. Woop woop. Holiday season it's getting started. It's started right now because this episode airs later than now. I love that Christmas Carol. It's my favorite one. Me and Mariah. We're done. I think that was Mariah. I dropped that one in 95. I remember. Christmas season is starting right now. I believe it is called. Yes. Right before we came on I was listening to Spotify. We got our Spotify rap back which told us some very fluffy stats about how much y'all like us. So thank you. And I was listening

to a Mariah song that was just her doing the dance of the sugar plum fairies but it was just her whistle notes. So I think she's really Christmas must turn her some serious dime dude. Oh my God. She's like Santa. She makes all her money at Christmas. Or like most retail. Yeah. So here's the thing. I mean you taste is subjective to me no matter how much you want to hate in terms of the modern Christmas classics ones that weren't written by you know the German style of waltz several hundred years ago. Right. It's all I want for Christmas is you. That's the one. That's the best one. That's the biggest. It's the best. Attempts to subsequently replicate it have been mixed to occasionally good but always acknowledging that this is an

all I want for Christmas is you knock off. Yeah. It's true. And yet still Mariah was denied her trademark title Queen of Christmas. Deny a carry. Don't say that to her face. So yeah. For those of you out there who are enjoying the cold weather as I am we got a bright fresh snowfall last night here in Vancouver. So no way. Very white and snowy outside like it's a proper winter wonderland out there. Is it like city though or has it not quite done that. Not quite done that. This is new snow. Oh that's early. Well I mean seasons are kind of suggestions these days. So that's true. Thanks global warming. Thanks global warming. But if you are like myself looking out at the snow and you're like oh and like myself you like to

keep your window open all the time because the air is fresher to the discomfort of anyone who happens to be there. I've got a recipe for a cold weather drink. OK. It's called a Greenlandic coffee. So we are healing from Greenland. The very same. So we're going back to to one of my favorite. Yeah. As some people love British culture in the West and some people love Japanese culture in the West. I love Greenland. And so I've brought a it's basically a very boozy coffee. So unfortunately if you're not imbibing this holiday season there's not really like a virgin Greenlandic coffee is kind of just a coffee with some whipped cream on it. OK. That sounds pretty good. But that's pretty tasty. Yeah. Now that I say it out loud. But the way that the Greenlandic

coffee goes is let me put my little recipe here. This comes from CNN travel by the way. It's a mug drink and you know we love a mug drink. Well I have a lot of mugs. I like a nice standard sized mug. I like to be able to look at a mug and one instinctively know what its volume is and to know that I will be able to handle it with the grace that a mug full of scalding hot beverage demands without dropping it or burning my fingers or whatever. But those big huge novelty ones they get cold by the bottom. Anything gets cold by the bottom. So. Yeah exactly. So like congratulations you just drank your cappuccino out of Lebron's head but at what cost. Yeah. Exactly. Into that mug we pour 20 milliliters which is about half a shot of whiskey and this

represents all the rough parts of the country. So this is the rugged landscape. Much rock and crag and imposing desolate snowy mountain in addition to other different biomes depending where you are. Okay. It's a big place. Yeah. This whiskey represents the hunters, the fishermen, the men. You know the strong men. And we pour that into the mug and then we get 20 milliliters or about half a shot of Kahlua and this represents all the nice things about Greenland. So this is the women and the beautiful scenery. It's sweet. Wow. Very heteronormative. Cool. Listen baby. Do you want to go take it up with Greenland? No. Do you want to go take it up with Greenland? Because you're welcome to. I'm just trying to pour some booze into my coffee here.

And you know the flowers and the clouds and all the nice soft things that goes into. The moss. The moss. Beautiful moss. And then we uh the man and the woman they come together to tell stories under the dark arctic night. So then we pour in our 300 milliliters of coffee, put some whipped cream on top. That's the glacier. That's the iceberg. And the last thing we need is the beautiful northern lights. They're all our borealis. So you get a 20, nope. You're so cute. No baby. We're going hardcore for this. You get 20 milliliters of Grand Marnier. You set it on fire and you drop it on the whipped cream. Oh shit. That's awesome. That's different from sprinkles. Yeah it's slightly different. I laughed because I

thought that was so sweet though. And why was I snide? You know I'm sure that we love sprinkles of the world over. But you know what even if the if you're having the virgin light the whipped cream on fire. See what happens. You'll be fine. If your whipped cream catches and sustains flame you might have like a class action on your hands. I don't know that the whipped cream is supposed to be flammable like that. Okay. But yeah that's a that is like a post dinner coming together and telling stories. Kind of drink the the man and the woman quote unquote coming together and telling stories. And so I thought it was a little bit appropriate for I don't know what we're doing here. We're coming together and wishing everyone a happy holiday and we're

going to share some stories. And light it on fire. And light them on fire. And whatever is left at the end whatever is left at the bottom of the cup we'll see. Yeah hopefully it's still warm. And that is a Greenlandic coffee. Yeah baby. This Minfamous calls back to arguably our best Minfamous ever. You the voters said that it was. So. Yes. Josie do you happen to remember what the the best Minfamous of all time is voted by our fans was. No. I love this. You're the best. I. My brain. It's good. No. Who cares. Who cares. Life is so short. We there's the Melty's aren't real. We made them up. It's fine. Don't tell Barbara Streisand that. No. The winner for the best Minfamous we ever did was

Chindogu the Japanese I guess philosophy lifestyle of inventing these extravagantly useless things that were amusing in their extravagant uselessness. That was a yeah that was a January January episode. Why was it in January. Because I bought a book of Chindogu as a Christmas present for my half brother Tig. I followed the same inspiration. Maybe I'm just chasing glory because if that was our best one why not do a pale replica about it. Beautiful. My choice that I've brought in today is also something useless that I'm giving to my brother for Christmas. Oh good. Oh but this is going to come out before Christmas. Is Corey going to listen and know. I doubt it. I have Corey if you're listening on the off chance like turn it off. The other thing

is I my mom is definitely going to listen and I don't want to ruin it for her. So mom if you happen to listen hey Anna if you happen to listen I'm going to give the general description of the type of thing that this is but there will still be a little bit of enigma. I'm not going to give the exact details of what I've gotten my brother. Okay. But I'm going to give you all just enough. I don't know it's not fair to say that it's useless. It's decorative. It's ornamental. It's got a really cool story to it. It is not. Joy is not useless. Very well put. What I mean to say I guess is that like on Maslow's hierarchy of needs this does not appear. This is strictly optional. This thing but it's a but it's a fun gift. Corey you got something to look forward to my friend.

Going to the movies is a beloved pastime. The world over. True fact. Have I lied to you yet this podcast? Probably. Do I remember? No. Perfect. Then this is how I get by. Point being the West African nation of Ghana is no exception. Stretching back into the mid 20th century Ghana has enjoyed a cinematic smorgasbord featuring the best of Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, that's Nigeria and East Asian film. And Bollywood is India and Hollywood is America. And East Asian is East Asia. We good? Got it all. Just you know this is jet lag, this travel. We really just went around the world in one sentence fragment there. So I'm just keeping everyone motivated. Until the advent of home video, however, Canadians had to satisfy their

movie itch in large cities like the country's capital, Accra, where cinemas were abundant. But not so sadly in rural areas where opportunities to see a movie were less common and you know you might not have running electricity even so. Right. Thank God for video cassette suddenly starting in the 80s. All the American hits like Predator and Terminator and Total Recall and other cultural artifacts featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger make their way over to our friends in Africa. And as in America, there are plenty of young entrepreneurs in Ghana looking to turn a profit. So begins a thriving bootleg video screening industry as a select group of motivated opportunists purchase diesel generators, VCRs and video projectors and take all the hot flicks

on the road to rural communities in their mobile cinemas. Oh, whoa. Obviously, once one person finds money in this enterprise, the competitors pop up in their droves. So now we have a problem. How do I distinguish my bootleg mobile cinema from the other guys murals? I mean, like you paint, you paint the motherfucker up, you make it like real nice. Josie, you've hit the nail on the head. Hey, hey. Advertising, baby. Promotional materials. And when it comes to movies, the king of the print promo materials is the poster. I love a movie poster. Who doesn't? Of course, this being the 80s, the world and its communication systems are significantly smaller. So James Cameron isn't sending his media packages over to Ghana and they don't include the poster with

the VHS just in case you want to bootleg it. Fair enough. Additionally, restrictive laws under military dictatorships have cut off access to printing presses in Ghana. So we've got to get creative. Mother of Invention. The cinema owners hire local artists to paint large, vividly colored original movie posters to draw more eyes to their screenings. There are a few things that set your typical Ghanaian movie poster apart from the original. Did you call Cory a Ghanaian movie poster? Cory turned off the podcast. I bought him a print of one, yes. Oh my god, that's so cool. That's like a good gift, right? Like that's a lot of fun, right? That's a super good gift. So there are a few things that set apart your typical Ghanaian movie poster from the original.

First, they're generally painted on some kind of sack material like burlap or canvas, readily available, easy to roll up and transport from place to place. Yeah, doesn't crease or rip, gotcha. It does increase or rip, but it weathers, it fades with transport, but there's like a scholar, like a collector in a Ghanaian movie posters named Ernie Wolfe who argues that like that's just kind of part of the history of the art. You know what I mean? Yeah. This weathering and the fact that it did travel from town to town and that looks this particular way is just the history being readable on the object in a really cool and individual way. The patina of the object itself, yeah, yeah. Sure, exactly that. You've got it exactly. So they'll prominently feature the signature or name

of an artist as well as the cinema that commissioned them, Princess Osu, Pal Mal Video Club, Nana's video, etc. Okay. The artist of this period usually will not have actually seen the film in question. Okay. They might be shown the cover of a VHS tape or given a general description of the plot, just kind of from somebody's memory, and then set loose. Oh my god. However, they are given some direction, some small direction. Okay. We are trying to put butts in seats. We're trying to differentiate ourselves from the competition, make you really want to come and see our movie. Yeah. So if you want to spice it up, maybe throw in some titties or some guns or a monster slashing someone's throat with a nice bright red spray of blood because like the red really pops in the

composition, you know? Totally. Then you should do that. Yeah. Whether or not it actually happens in the movie per se. Right. Okay. Okay. Yes. Beautiful. Says Frank Arma who painted movie posters in Ghana in the 1980s. The goal was to get people excited, curious to make them want to see more. Sometimes the poster ended up speaking louder than the movie. And so with that, let's stop talking and look at some Ghanaian movie posters. All right. So none of these is the one I've gotten, Corey. We'll get to that at the end and I have, I know how to deal. Okay. Here is the first image. Okay. All right. This is a movie poster for Jurassic Park. I know that because it says Jurassic Park. Yeah. So we're off to a great start. Right. Yeah. I know the movie. Great.

So in the middle distance, there's a dinosaur, we'll say anatomically, not like any dinosaur, maybe that I have seen. The scales are just mashup. Yeah. This there's not like any scales. It's more just like a crosshatching grid, short little arms, a T Rex, but then the head is like Nessie the Loch Ness monster kind of vibes. Feeling nice. That dinosaur is feeling nice. Yeah. Well, partly maybe because they're mentioned on a little snack, which is a person. Most of a person just the legs, the blue jean legs are kicking out from its mouth as blood spills down. Behind them is the electrified fence that I do remember from Jurassic Park. Like that kind of plays a big role because the electric fence like goes down and they're like, Oh my God,

it can get in or get out or whatever. In the foreground in front of the grand is somebody golfing. You remember when they beat the dinosaur to death with the golf club in Jurassic Park? I do not remember that. The golf club is like drawn up behind them. They're ready to like swing through. Is there even a golf ball there? No. Well, he's not playing golf. Is he? He's attacking a dinosaur. But his face is not one of attack. I do have to say that. Maybe the dinosaur walked into him practicing his swing. I think that's what it looks like to me. That is what it looks like to me. Okay. Yeah. Would you want to see this movie based on this? Yeah, I would imagine that it's dinosaurs that get set loose on a golf course. Yeah, it has that

vibe. Yeah, there's a lot going on. I like this dinosaur's face a lot. I think he's really baked. He's pretty chill. He's got the munchies. Yeah, he's got the munchies. He's got a munchie vibe. Yeah, for sure. Nana's video. Okay, so that's Nana's video. That's the cinema club that it would have been commissioned for. Okay, okay. Beautiful stuff. There's a little Gilbert Forston appears to be possibly the name of this artist. Yeah. So here's another one. I'm so excited. Here's another one. Okay. Okay. The movie is The Spy Who Loved Me 007. It's a James Bond movie. But in this poster, there is a James Bond with his arms crossed and he has like a gun in his hand. Behind him is a woman in a very short black cocktail dress, long legs, high heels. And then behind them,

it's the front of a car. I can't, it's like- It kind of just turns long. Imagine if someone like was drawing the front of a car and then they were just like, etc. And then just drew a rectangle kind of into the distance. It just turns into a long car. And then besides that, there is a very large, nearly as long as the two people, a fish. I would say maybe a carp. It's a red orange fish. Yeah, quite realistic almost. It seems to be kind of looking at the two people. Wouldn't you? There's no water around. It's not in water. It seems to be a fish out of water floating as well. It seems to be floating. And that is The Spy Who Loved Me. The Spy Who Loved- Wait, The Spy Who Loved Me. The movie is The Spy Who Loved Me, right? Well, I was going to point

out that if you look at the me, you can actually see that it's been painted over the word you. Oh, you're right. So this started as The Spy Who Loved You and they were like, could you please fix that? And he was like, got it, chief. The Spy Who Loved Me. And we stand, frankly. So this one, and this has been commissioned for Lover's Tessie Club. I think a lot of this one, I think it's very evocative. I really like the long car. Yeah. I like the clear, bold lettering of the title. This one appeals to me. This appeals to the Lynch fan in me. Yeah. The Spy Who Loved Me was a Lynch movie, right? And then here's the last one, and I will be posting all of these onto the

Instagram at Better Sweden for me. So take a look. Nice little plug you did there. All right. This is based off the Stephen King novel. Kujo, the killer dog. This dog seems to be a mix of like a horse body, like a cocker Spaniel or like King Charles Spaniel head. It's a Spaniel. It's a Spaniel. It's definitely a Spaniel. There's some Spaniel vibes, kind of like looking out at the viewer. Not a menacing look, I'd say, but just like a, hey, who are you? Yeah. And then there's blood on its muzzle. And coming out of its eye, it's crying blood as well. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's nice. It's a very like tranquil, almost sedated interpretation of Kujo. I would, yes, I would agree. No teeth being

bared. Like I would still kind of cuddle up with that dog if it weren't for the horse body thing. Yeah, I don't think that dog did it. I don't think I think that dog has been framed. That's just catch up. That dorse. And then behind the dog is a woman and a small child. And yeah, the child is Child is very suspicious. The child, I think did it. That's that look on that child's face. It's the child who did it. And he blames the dog. The killer dog. He should put parentheses around killer. He should put parentheses around dog, honestly. And this was commissioned for Rolls-Royce video as per the little tag. So that is a quick tour of some of the Ghanaian hand-painted

movie posters in the 90s. Not over-concerned with things like anatomy, perspective, adherence to reality, very concerned with like vibe, being a little bit enigmatic in all of their grotesquery and promising you a good time. Yeah, yeah. Like that's the vibe. So these provocative images in all their beautiful nonsense, they take about three days to paint and it's not the most lucrative job. It's a labor of love. You know, a lot of evident care put into the work. Yeah. Unfortunately, by the turn of the millennium, we've got evolving movie technology and the ability to quickly and cheaply mass produce marketing materials, as well as the world wide web, making it difficult to obfuscate the contents of any movie. Yeah. People in Ghana can now watch

the trailer for the new Jurassic Park and while our hero with the golf club there strikes a distinctive figure, he's not quite Chris Pratt. No, it's true. Or Jeff Goldblum. Or Laura Dern. Or any person, really, because that did not happen in that movie. However, just as the heyday of hand-painted movie posters ends in Ghana, they're discovered in the West by art collectors like Ernie Wolfe, who helps popularize them through a series of books. Some reach the eyes of the original filmmakers like Clive Barker, who is tickled pink by the poster for Hellraiser 3, which features an invented scene of a character being eaten whole. Ooh. The posters become highly prized iconography with exhibits and galleries and museums in America and Europe and original

selling for $2,000 each. Oh, wow. Lucrative now. Bam. Lucrative now and individual artists who were really trying to scrape together a living by doing these things back in the day when scraped together a living but also a labor of love because it was cheaper and easier to go paint road signs or whatever. But this was fun. This was art, baby. This was art, baby. This came from the heart. Some of these artists, the most sought after of them, have attained cult followings and now work on commission and patronage. Although a bit of the competitive and creative spark is gone says longtime artist Daniel Anum Jasper, who now Google images the subjects of his posters before he paints them and, you know, just like thinking of it as a prompt draw a movie

poster for the movie blah, blah, blah that you've never seen and don't don't look it up. Part of the prompt is like you cannot do any research. Ernie Wolf argues that a lot of their beauty represents a time where like because we weren't yet this global village. Right. And because James Cameron or or whoever didn't know that their movies were being bootlegged, how those bootleg movies are being advertised, you could just kind of freestyle it because neither the end consumer nor the guy on the other end of the chain really knew what you were up to. So you could be like, fuck yeah, I'm going to put like a lizard woman in the poster for sleepless on Seattle. Yes. I'd watch that. Sleepless in Seattle. As of 2022, much of the online popularity in the west

around Ghanaian posters comes via a Chicago based organization called deadly pray gallery, which commissions a roster of 10 artists in Ghana to paint new original posters in the style of the 80s and 90s. And it is from them that I have purchased my brother's Christmas present. Very nice. They say that 100% of their profits go to the artists, which is great. Yeah. This is not an ad. But the way that I will show you Josie because I've got it all rolled up over there and I don't want to disrupt it, but I'll show you the picture on the website. It's now sold out and without commenting on it either way. Tell me if you think this is a suitable Christmas gift. Okay. This is the one that I got, Corey. Oh my God. That is, what? This is good. Is it a good gift? This is a

very good gift. This is a very good gift. I'm not going to say any more, but this is a good gift. Why? I hope my brother feels the same. I did, I unrolled the goods to look at it and it's a nice frameable copy. So I think it'll be cute. And yeah, that is the useless but joy inducing thing that I have acquired for my brother this Christmas. I love it. Hogtown, The Six or Toronto. Whatever you call it, you can fly nonstop to Toronto on Porter Airlines. When you fly Porter, you'll enjoy free fast Wi-Fi and beer, wine and premium snacks included with every fare. You'll also love that our planes have no middle seats. Discover why Porter has been Eastern Canada's favorite airline for the last 16 years.

Visit flyporter.com. Porter actually enjoy economy. In the days leading up to Christmas in the year of our lord, 2005, on a main square in Barcelona. The municipal government was setting up a nativity scene, also considering where we are called a pesebre, for locals and tourists alike to enjoy. Celebrate the season, set out the nativity scene, get it going. The crush was holding our little baby Jay, centering our scene, crowded around him was his mom, Mary, stepdad, Joe, three wise men with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, carried by Reverend Camels. Gorgeous. Maybe there was a little shepherd boy carrying a lamb across his shoulders, followed by some more fluffies from his flock. Oh yeah,

you know he's hot because he has a shirt on, but it's real deep, you know? This is an 18 plus sheep boy that we're fetishizing right now. Yeah, yeah. Important note. Boy is used lightly. Above all of them hung a winged angel looking beautifically on your regular nativity scene. Calm, hospitable, glowing rays of golden light, a reminder that the birth of the world's savior took place in a humble manger. In Barcelona. In Barcelona. Beautiful scene, but barcelonians were upset. Okay. The nativity scene was missing something very important, Taylor. How could the local government of Barcelona deny the city the joy and humor of a figure present in all local Carolonian Pasebres? Where, oh god damn, where was the figure of the caganer?

Now, I don't know what this is, but my etymology knowledge is concerning me. He usually, our figure is hidden deeper in the scene. He's not on full display center stage, like baby J, and so he's kind of maybe like hidden behind some other figures or some structures, but he cannot be found in this nativity scene on a main square of Barcelona. Where is he? This red, becapt, Carolonian peasant man squatting with his pants around his ankles, taking a shit. The caganer, the shitting man. Where is he in this nativity scene? The shitting man! Where did you put the shitting man? We came, we came, we brought the family. I told them kids you're gonna see some shit tonight, and now where is it? Wow, okay,

so I don't know about the caganer. How was it a nativity scene without the caganer? Barcelona citizens were irate, Taylor. And rightly so, yes. This was an attack on Carolonian traditions, which, I mean, we'll talk a little bit about Catalan region, but attacks on cultural traditions happened frequently. They take them very seriously. Very serious, allegations. Forced assimilation, political and cultural has been a large part of Catalan history for centuries. Also, people love their Christmas traditions, don't fuck with them. You know what I mean? The shitting man. Government officials countered the public outcry by citing the recently passed civil

ordinance that made public urination and public defecation illegal. Was he really shitting? He is a figure. Wow. It's not a live person. If I were, if Taylor Basso, in the way that the Krampus, for example, is a community activity in which you have actors portraying certain rules, I would assume in the native, are we talking about a statue of a caganer, or are we talking about a human of a caganer? And if we're talking about a human, are we talking about let's have a fun time the night before making a gross looking Nutella mix, or are we talking about you better eat some beans at about 430? What are we doing here? We are talking about a figure in my research. I did not come across any personification, like live personification

it is always presented in the nativity scene. So just like you could have a living nativity scene where you see Mary and Joseph, but then you're getting into like a nativity play. Right. We're talking about like major crush set up on the city corner statuette statuette. Yeah, Christmas decor. Okay. Okay. Thank you for asking that question. Very important question because that because then my next question is why are they talking about him like he's a fucking real guy who can break the law he's a stretch. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Because I don't feel like I'm online here. No, no, I mean the city commissioned the nativity and so they felt that they couldn't even have representation considering their civil ordinance. They couldn't even have representation of a dude taking a dump.

It normalizes and sanctifies it. It's the argument against pride parades, but it's it's for a shitting statue. Yes. Yeah, it'd be a bad example. Cool. Yeah. What will the kids think? Uh-huh. They'll drop trial and shit in the streets. Yeah, just right there. Dude, you know, we're joking about it, but I have known some kids and I have been a kid and yeah, maybe most totally. So tensions were running high that Christmas in Barcelona. The local government was literally shitting on the tradition of the shitting man and nobody was happy about it. Irony. Wow. As you can imagine, there were many a letter to the editor in the local newspaper, La Vanguardia de Barcelona, or should say Vanguardia de Barcelona. Many resolutions were offered. It is in the Christmas

spirit, right? One writer to the newspaper suggested including the caganer, but also placing a figure of a police officer with like a pin and a clipboard. And so it's like him writing a ticket for the ordinance. The answer could be more statues. The answer could be let's let's let's just expand the universe, the caganer cinematic universe. I fuck with that. Sure. Great. What else? That seems like a win-win situation to me. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you have to you have to commission an artist to do a statue. But the problem is that now we got this a cab shit. So you now you need to like commission an antifa to go with that, but people won't be happy with that. You know, it just it's if you give a mouse a cookie. It's spiraling out of control. Yeah. Yeah. If you give the caganera

ticket, that's that kid's book. There was enough public criticism from Barcelonian residents that a campaign developed to protest the caganera's absence. Cagambane. What? Cagambane. I hear it now. I hear it now. It's a thinker. That was not that. You gotta roll that one around in your mouth. The campaign was called salvam el caganera. Save the shitting man. Save the caganera. And it garnered quite a bit of media attention, local and foreign press with all of the outcry and all of the un-cheer in the holiday season. Finally, the following year, 2006, the caganera was restored to the city. You could spot the man squatting on the north end of the nativity scene defecating in a dry riverbed. Christmas was back, baby. Thank God. I was I was uneasy. I didn't know what to do.

This is so stupid. I love it. Tell me more. Taylor, in this episode, this year Christmas episode, I'm going to tell you the rich history of scatological Christmas traditions in Catalonia. Oh, wow. Because nothing says tis the season like taking a big old shit. Okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is this episode. We're just going to be talking about poop constantly. No, good. That's fine. That's fine. Are you okay with poop talk? Some people don't like it. I'm trying to be less of a tight ass, no pun intended about it. It's not where I first go for a joke. Like, you know, there's some people who will go for like a shit joke right away. Yeah. It's not the first place I'll go, but. It's the second number two. Hey, where are you

going to save them up? It's going to be a long episode. Like, don't, don't. You've thrown me off the scent. It's not the first place I go, but I've always, so this is, this taps into actually, we've talked about this before. I have a worry that I am going to bring in some sort of shitty poo poo, minfamous, or there's, there's very specifically one that my buddy Gerard, Gerard from podcast told me. Hi Gerard. That, hi Gerard. He won't listen, but he told me about the actor who played Mr. Belvedere apparently had to like take some time off because he sat on his own balls. And he also gave me another one about like a tennis referee who got hit in the nuts with a tennis ball and then he fell off the chair and died. And so I've got all of these like nut trauma

ones and I've got like a couple of poo poo diarrhea ones, but I'm really worried that I'm going to bring them in for the minfamous on an episode where it would be like completely offensive and inappropriate for that time. It'll be like, this is the first time this child's murder has ever been reported. I really rolled up my sleeves and talked to the victim's family. We've got some interviews with the mother coming and I just really thought it would be, and then I've come in here like, did you know that one time Mr. Belvedere sat on his nuts so bad that they had to stop filming? And so I wish now that I had had the foresight to know that this would be the shit episode where those would finally be appropriate. Yeah, fuck it. Let's go. This is gonna be funny.

Okay, so we've talked a little bit, be a little more serious now. We've talked a little, I mean, no, it won't be. We've talked a little bit about, um, yeah, I don't know why I'm frontin' like this. We're not just gonna fucking shit joke through whatever this is gonna be. We've talked about, um, the podcast in the past, um, who's that lady who wiped her ass with the hay? No, she would, if you didn't spin your flak, she would wipe her ass with it. Froperkta. Also of Christmas origin? Yes, exactly. So there is a history of like shit lore in general and also like Christmas shit lore. If you'd like. Christmas shit lore, yeah. Christmas yule log. We'll get there, don't you worry. I'm sure. Okay, so we'll talk a little bit more about the Kaganair here. Please. I would,

I sincerely would like nothing more. As we clarified, he is only a figure. He never becomes, um, personified for obvious reasons, civil ordinance, beside it would be gross and hard. I feel like they'd be hard. Yeah, but old-timey people were so hardcore that like, I wouldn't put it past like, you know, get the village out and make them shit. Like, you know, but in Kaganair. Okay. So, um, our Kaganair as a traditional figure, he's a Catalonian peasant man. Catalonia is a formerly autonomous region in the northeast of Spain, where the language, Catalan is the official language alongside Castilian Spanish. And Taylor, you've been there, right? You've been to Barcelona. Yeah, I have been to Barcelona and my, as I've mentioned earlier,

while lavishly apologizing for my Spanglish, my family speaks Castilian Spanish. So I thought that it would come in very useful there, but there really was a lot of Catalan. Like, there were a lot of like, storefronts, windows, movie places, whatever. It would be like, damn, I almost can read that, you know? My research that like, Catalan, what I listened to and like, tried to read, it seems like I should be able to understand it if I know a little Spanish, but- It's like, Portuguese kind of vibe, where you're like, this is, this is, or Italian, where you're like, this is real close. This is like, I'm this close. Yeah. My brain is this close to being able to shift to the right and understand the sentence completely, but instead I understand zero percent

of it. Yeah. And it's like, there are five vowel sounds in Spanish, but there are eight in Catalan. There's like, stressed, unstressed, and neutral vowel sounds, too, and consonant clusters that are very different from Spanish. So it's just own language. Yeah. And the area, too, it's right in that northeastern area where it's along a coastline, but it's right under the Pyrenees Mountains, relatively kind of isolated. And in the long history of that area, it has been dominated by other kingdoms, or as nation states came into being, like France was trying to get in, but now it's under Spanish purview. It's considered a region of Spain. Yeah. It is known to be a very distinct region in Spain with its own language, with its own traditions

that are safeguarded and fought for and unique just to that area of the world. It's pretty cool. Certainly. And one of those traditions is our good buddy El Caganeer. Don't you love when the serious expresses itself through the absurd, you know, our understandable protectiveness of our culture and keeping it alive leads us to like just fight with our whole throat for the shitting man. Yeah, exactly. I think that's so fun. Letters to the editor, yeah. Beauty. The figure of the Caganeer, he wears a regional wool red cap, and so it's like specific to Catalonia, and it's called a beretina. It's a signifier of place and culture. He's always depicted squatting and pooping his brains out. In the image of him,

you can see his bare bottom, but you don't see like his pants are down, but he's squatting. So you don't see any peeing action. It's just like a bare butt, and it's like a cartoonish bare butt. Like we're not getting graphic, but just in case you were confused about what he is doing in that squatting position with his butt out, there's always depicted a little brown poo curled up beneath the Caganeer's butt. Okay, so this is, I'm just gonna get really graphic and specific, and if at home that is offensive to you, I don't care. They know by now what this episode is about. Do we see hole? Do we see a hole? We do not see hole. Is there a loaf mid-pinch? No. Like is there's never a turd dangling out of the butt? Not in any depictions that I saw, nor descriptions.

The little coiled up poo. This is a separate implement, then. This is a separate smaller piece that you have to make sure to keep track of, make sure the dog doesn't get the poo, because otherwise he's just the squatting man. Is that it? Typically, the Caganeer comes on a small base that, you know, you buy the figurine on a base and included on the base is the little poop. So it doesn't become a separate thing that you have to hide or find or whatever. I see. I would say that the curled up turd looks, it's just, it's the poop emoji. Like it has poo emoji. Yeah, yeah. Like when you see the poo emoji, you're not like, oh my god, feces. You're like, oh, that's poop. You know what I mean? Like it has that cartoonish cleanness to it.

We're not seeing hole. We're not seeing hole. We're not seeing any like back of the balls, like none of that. Sick. Okay. Yeah, no, no, no, no questions. I'm satisfied. Please continue. The origins of the tradition have been lost. We don't know exactly where this comes from, besides the fact that it's unique to this place in the world. But it has remained a popular feature in Catalan nativity scenes since the 18th century. So we're talking about like 300 years or so where this could be traced. I see. Okay. Do we have a sense of a time before this or no? Like, do we have a sense of a time before the shitting man? BS, if you'd like. BC, I guess, the Cognitive. In terms of this tradition, no, I think it's depicted in a few

manuscripts and that kind of thing, and maybe some oral tradition stuff. But I have a theory. Ooh, do share. My theory is that some family happened upon a nativity where by chance there was just some peasant man taking a shit behind it. Yeah. And they interpreted that as part of the mise-en-scène. And so they just replicated that. And then when their friends came over, like, yo, why is there a dude coiling out a turd in your nativity? They didn't want to feel stupid. So they were like, you don't know about the shitting man. You fucking dummy. And so then they felt bad and so and so on. And so this is how the Cognitive propagated. I could believe that. Yeah. There's some ideas that it could be almost like a fertility thing, like manure in the ground

and new life. That's a reach. That one's a reach, but this one's even more so. The peasant man had nothing to give baby Jesus but a shit. Like, I don't know. I give a shit about you. That's what he was saying. That's what that little Christmas card. Oh, I have to go to confessional about this podcast now. Oh, I'm so sorry. JK, I'm not Catholic. Well, if you were in Catalonia, you wouldn't have to go to confession because right in front of the church is the nativity scene with the Cognitive there. So you're fine. Sweet. He appears in all sorts of nativity scenes in this area. Large public ones when public ordinances allow or when there's enough public outcry to change things up and get him depicted. Can't take away the shit guy. I don't agree with

them taking away the shit guy. It makes no sense. Yeah. You have the funniest, I'm sorry, tradition that is harmless. Unless you are about to tell me that people are shitting in the alleys on Christmas, maybe that is like a sanitation effort. But if they weren't, I think barcelonians know enough not to shit in the streets. They live there. They don't want to shit in the streets. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm with the people on this one. I'm with the people on this one. The largest Cogonair, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Taylor leans in. It was wrapped in chest, honestly, measured six meters in height, which is about 19 feet and eight inches. So about a story high. I think I think that's how big was the turd.

Well, it just says two, two meters or about six and three fourths a feet at its widest point. So that must be like knee to butt, I would imagine. Wow. But the turd, the turd was probably, I don't know, five feet, huh? Wow, it's big shit. Yeah, it's like that scene in Jurassic Park. Why was that not on the Ghanaian movie poster? Laura Dern just like gloves up and goes in. The largest Cogonair, according to Guinness Book of World Records, and I quote, was achieved, achieved by Mara Magam shopping center in Barcelona, Spain on December 23, 2010. So relatively recent. Very cool. Did you know that there's a shopping mall in Moldova called

shopping Moldova? It's so cool. I thought you'd enjoy that. I'm gonna like write that on a little slip of paper and stick it in the locket and wear that locket. Every time that I'm down, I'd be like, Moldova. Shopping Moldova. So that's our biggest Cogonair. The Cogonair can also be seen dropping a deuce in small possibilities, ones that you might find in someone's house. So the little nativity scene up on the mantle piece, or we have like a little side table that was devoted for our nativity scene. And there is big business in the Catalonian and Christmas markets for the Cogonair figurine, because as we have moved into our more modern information age, the Cogonair isn't just depicted with the traditional peasant man, but also any and all popular figures. You

can find the Cogonair as Homer Simpson. Okay. Donald Trump. Okay. Makes sense. I think that one. Dude, I bet Trump novelty shit sells whether I like it or not. So I got it. It's true. Peppa the Pig, Queen Elizabeth. Yeah. R.I.P. Wow. Wow. Hello Kitty. Wow, the list goes on and on. Lizzo. Probably. Someday. Frida Kahlo. Spongebob. Yeah. Any. Spongebob. And all to have existed or will ever exist football players, as you can imagine. Yeah. Soccer. Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, other Ronaldo. All of them. Final mess. All of them. Yeah. Wow. Che Guevara, Captain America, Barack Obama, Shakespeare, Elvis Presley, the Pope, Burt and Ernie, Santa himself. When we're talking about the Separatist movement of Catalonia in solidarity, a Scottish yes

voter. So the Separatist movement in Scotland with his like little Scottish flag and his little kilts. Wow. A moment in time. A moment in time. Perhaps one of my personal favorites that I saw was the little mermaid with her fishtail, like her fishtail, because actually her booty just cut out to reveal a human butt with a turd. I don't know. No. It's pretty. It's pretty good. Yeah. Oh, I enjoy it. So, so somebody brings this. This is what I'm imagining though. It's like someone's come over to your house and you know, we're outside of, we're outside of Barcelona. Perhaps a friend has acquired this at some touristy kind of bric-a-brac, you know. Tourist love it, obviously. Yeah. And so I've got, I've got my little nativity set up and you know,

like you say, the works, baby J, hot sheep boy, you know, whatever you got going. And then my friends are like, Hey bro, why is SpongeBob coiling of a turd behind baby Jesus? I have to be like, this is a cultural, um, sit down. There's a lesson here. Interesting. Well, okay. So the Cognar traditionally, he's never in any iteration that he is, you don't put him in the center of things. Baby J is the star. It's his birthday. It would be slightly distasteful. Yes. So he's always seen kind of a where's Waldo situation. Like he's behind the, you know, like just to the side of the manger and like, oh wait, he's behind a camel, you know, like that kind of thing. And it's a, it is a game for kids supposedly, like kids should just go and be like, where's the

Oh kids and adults, I love that. Yeah. Love it. That makes them look at the nativity, which gives them heaven points. Yeah. The longer you look at nativity, the more the higher your score goes, the more you look at porn opposite. Yeah. The fewer blinks as you look at the nativity. Yeah. That's how it gets calculated. Yeah. It's only I open count. If you close your eyes, the timer stops. God knows. God knows everything. He can time. God knows. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I did read some theorizing about the Cogonair in terms of the nativity scene. And one posit was that because he adds a sense of humor and the grotesque isn't quite the word, but like the bodily function of the human form versus working as a foil. He adds to the

how, how religious and sacred. Yeah. Yeah. The sacred in the profane, the sacred in the profane. Thank you. There we go. There we go. No problem. No problem. We got there. We got there. I was, I was loving hearing you grasp that like how it was important that the shitting man is in the nativity actually. Which I kind of, I agree with. I'm all for anything that like loosens this up collectively. Especially when it comes to like religion, Christ. Oh my God. My Spanish Catholic grandmother was a very serious woman. A very serious woman about her Catholicism. Yeah. Yeah. Catalonia is like, it's not, it's not Spain, but it is Catholic. And it does take Jesus God serious, right? Yeah. Except for the Cogonair. So the Catalonian Christmas markets

are washing Cogonairs of all different shapes and usually they're, they're the same size, I will say, because they have to fit into the nativity scene. But certainly different characters, different colors. Just like shit. I didn't see any like art house ones that were like a Picasso style or something like that. Oh, see, I thought art house different. I was like, I don't know. A really graphic Chloe 70 shitting herself kind of circa kids, Harmony Corrine art house. Right. Okay. I didn't see any of that either. I guess I was thinking more like contemporary art museum vibes where it's like that triangle is the piece of poo. Yes, you were thinking like Gaudi. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. There we go. The Gaudi version. Yes. Didn't didn't see a lot of those, which for

Barcelona, you know, that would make sense. Yeah, I was gonna say it feels like money left on the table. Per chance, per chance. They might be there, but I think they're also like frivolity in this pop slash traditional item. So I could see how maybe like, just leave it to Spongebob and Trey Guevara, you know, makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Jesus Christ. And when you are figured as a Cogonair, it is not even though you are depicted literally shitting your pants, it is not done as an act of ridicule. It's done as you're so popular that like, boom, you get to show your pants in the nature. You know, you've made it, you know, you've made it when they make the Cogonair figure of you. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Exactly. Yeah,

totally. You're in the company of Superman and Barack Obama and Mario Brothers and shit. Yeah, no, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. There is also a Cogonair figure that you might notice because there are just so many of them on display in the Christmas markets. And what you might see is what seems to be along with pants down, little booty out. He's wearing that little red wool cap, the beretina, but this one is unusual compared to the other ones because as everybody else has a proper poo, like poo emoji underneath their butt, this figure has a present that it has pooped out. Taylor. Fine. Let me introduce you to the next installment of scatological Carolonian Christmas traditions. See. Theo de Nadal, which translates to the log of Christmas.

Remember, this is in Catalan. So Tio in Spanish would mean like uncle, but Tio in Catalan means like log or trunk. Okay. So the log of Christmas, which there's like a Germanic and British tradition of the Yule log, which you know, it's a pagan pre-Christian winter solstice tradition that draws from bonfires where you're meant to bring like a portion of a log into your home and burn it slowly throughout the solstice season. According to American folklorist Linda Watts, after the log was burned, it is placed beneath the bed for luck and particularly for protection from the household threats of lightning and with some irony fire. Fun. I like that. I know. No lightning strikes in 2023. And I didn't know this, but as it burns, you're meant to watch and like

count the sparks to discern your fortunes for the new year. I love that. Isn't that kind of cool? Yeah. Very cool. Like divining from the Yule log. Yeah. In the Krumpus episode, we talked about some kind of Christmas divining traditions as well. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. So Tio de Nadal, the log of Christmas probably hails from a similar tradition of the pagan Yule log, where you bring a log from outside into your home. But the Catalanians do not burn it right away. It has a more involved tradition. It needs to shit presence. Bingo, baby. Tio de Nadal is also called Kaga Tio, which translates to an imperative shit log. Kaga as like you, in parentheses, you, shit, comma, log. Oh my, what a fun tradition. And I think it's important to note too that

Kaga translates closest to shit, not necessarily pooped. It is determined to be a curse word. Yeah. It's not like a polite phrasing. My Spanish grandmother in particular swore like she breathed, and that was where I got my Spanish from. So I think I have like maybe a profane, my gauge on what is and isn't profane, isn't very good, because my friend fellow read me for this too, because I was like, boy, I may add, which is like, I'm gonna go take a piss. That's a little bit crass. And I was like, what do you want me to say? That's the verb that I know. I love it. I think cursing is hard because it's very audience based, right? Like you could say, like, I'm gonna go take a piss to me and I'll be like, okay, cool, fine, whatever. But if we're,

you know, like on the Sky train, maybe if you said like, I gotta go take a piss, you wouldn't say that in front of other people. I don't know, you know, I wouldn't say it like loud. I wouldn't say it like loudly in front of a child. I didn't know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think kind of fits into that. You wouldn't say it in front of a child you don't know. But this tradition is called cagatío. That's very funny. And you get gifts. And you get gifts. So let me tell you about cagatío. So it's a log that's about maybe a foot to two feet long. And it originally and the tradition even still today is that it's the trunk of a tree. It's not like a little skinny stick or whatever. It's meant to be like a girthy baby. A scoogum log. A scoogum log because much like the yule log,

it's pulling from nature, bringing it in, understanding that nature is nurturing us even in the dead of winter when nothing seems to be living. Nature is still giving to us warmth, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it's brought into the house. And now you can buy them pre-made. But before you would take this log and you would put a little nose on it, like a little peg nose, and paint the end of it red, give it little eyes and a little smiley face. Put its little berentina, its little red cap on, and you would affix two sticks to the front of it. So like little feet so that when you put it on a table or on the ground, it kind of like looks up at you. It's angled from the very cute. It's adorable. Oh, and I should say it's always displayed with a blanket

covering his little booty. For modesty. For modesty, but it's also it was cold outside and now he's inside and now it's nice and warm and hospitable. Yeah, and you want to warm up that dumper too. You want to get that real warm dog and cover anything that comes out, right? Modesty, correct. And I need no imagination to understand where this tradition came from, because that was for sure some like peasant parents who needed to keep a child occupied. Bam. And we're like, you know what we've got? A fucking stump. We're putting a face on it and it can shit out. Put two little feet on it. Yes, baby. This is Cagatio. Everybody knows about Cagatio. Yeah. Go back to bed. Don't you worry about it. Yeah. Yeah. That was that was making something out of nothing. Or like Ren and Stimpy,

the long song. I love Ren and Stimpy, man. Yeah, this feels. It's so visceral and disturbing. Yeah, this feels Ren and Stimpy. Like this could be in a Ren and Stimpy episode for sure. Oh, yeah. In particular, this like man with a red stocking hat who shits in the nativity. He feels very Ren and Stimpy. Yeah. So you have your little Cagatio and starting December 8th, the night of the Immaculate Conception. Why that night? Why not that night? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, objection. Those numbers don't make sense. Amen, brother. They do not. Wait, this, I, wait, the math. This don't work. Oh, yeah. This is, this is, so is she supposed to have had the kid 17 days later or like a year and a bit later? I think the explanation that is

long and involved and requires a doctorate in theology. Yes, yes. Something like, I don't know. My hands are up on this one. No, wait, no. My hands are up on this one. I really tried to research this, but I just like, I don't care. That's what happened. I get it. I get it. I get it. A good effort. This is due date drama from 2000 years ago. I don't expect you to get to the bottom of it. So back to the shit. December 8th is the day where you start feeding Cagatillo. So every night, the children of the household would place cookies and little clementine oranges, maybe even a little glass of port. Cagatillo loves to party. You just got to get your Cagatillo nice and full and fat and real poopy. Yeah. Grow a present, baby. Yeah. So you set that out at night and in the morning

you come back and there's only like little cookie crumbs and like the peels of your clementine oranges and just the sediment of your port at the bottom of the glass. Yeah. And then on Christmas Eve, all the children and any adults who would like to participate, they are given a stick and they're asked to warm up the sticks or even wet the end of the stick. Children and any participants will start hitting Cagatillo. And I think some kids, it kind of depends on your household. I think some households encourage just like whacking literally the shit out of Cagatillo. Yeah. It's hard to control kids who love gifts. Yeah. Most of what I saw was like a very firm but not harsh tapping. Assertive. An assertive knock on Cagatillo just to get those bowels moving.

You know? Yeah. Let's get a little massage going. And as you are whacking your Cagatillo with a stick, you sing a song. Because what is Christmas without song? Please. Now the song is in Catalan, so we'll listen and then I have the translation I can share with you. Sure. And it's sung by Noor Jones. What a delightful Christmas treat. So two things. Two things. That Doron stuff, I don't like it. It's like marzipan. Oh yeah, I was going to describe that nougat. Yeah. Yeah, it's not my favorite. In fact, I won't abide it. I think it's the opposite of a treat. Okay. So there's one. There's two. That's not, two hasn't come yet. Two. Number two. Cagatillo is quite a pitiful figure, isn't he? He gets hit

with a stick. Those kids are just beating the shit. He looks quite miserable and I feel bad that you've brought in Cagatillo from the cold and you're heating up his ass. You're giving him a taste of the good life. Yeah. And giving him clementines and then you just beat the shit out of him. Yeah. It's a fun song though. Yeah. Circle of life baby. Yeah. But I'll read the translation for our listeners here. So Cagatillo is the imperative shit, shit log, hazelnuts and nougat, which is what you were describing that Doron candy that is, I don't know, it's like a little brick. Yeah, like a nougat, marzipan-y. It's like almost like fluffy drywall a bit. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's nutty, it's pasty, it sticks to your teeth. If you make the mistake of remembering that cyanide

tastes roughly like this when you're eating it, then it ruins it and that happens to me often. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's just a no in candy for me. Okay, so shit log, shit hazelnuts and Doron or nougat do not shit herrings. They are too salty. Shit Doron, they taste better. Shit log, almonds and Doron. And if you don't want to shit, I will hit you with a stick. Shit log. And of course it's a cultural song. So every household probably has a different way of saying it and doing it. But generally it's a command to shit, get that log to poop out some presents for you. And so the presents that appear from Cagatio are typically small presents. It's Christmas Eve and you're getting candies and you know little almost like in our household these would be like

stocking stuff or gifts. Yeah, yeah. Which you know, thank goodness because if it was a bigger gift, Cagatio, that might hurt. Don't expect any jacks from Cagatio. True, very true. No kitchen, yeah, none of that. No kitchen. No razor blades. Nothing of this sort. Though in more modern times, especially with the Americanization of some Christmas traditions, even in this region, it'll be, oh, you got an Xbox. Good for you. Have fun or you know, like whatever can kind of fit under a blanket. Yeah. So you hit Cagatio, he shits you some gifts, you open them or you get to eat them and then you, in some households, you can do it again. You leave the room, you warm up your stick, you come back. Cagatio.

Second round. Sometimes you got to go back. Second round, shit some more gifts. You can do as many rounds as many as you fed Cagatio. You will know it ends when he shits a herring, a salty herring. That marks the end of this battle movement. That's the last thing Cagatio should. Beautiful. Great. Yeah. Ew. I hate those things too. Those, dude, salty fish, all the staples of Spanish food, not for me. Cheese, wine, orange juice. Anything that a log would shit, let's say. Okay, so that's Christmas Eve and you're getting little gifts and then in this tradition, you wouldn't get your bigger Christmas gifts until January 6th, which is Three Kings Day. And that is when the Three Kings brought their gifts to baby Jesus. So that's when everybody

should get their gifts, is when baby Jesus got his gifts. And that's like a very Catholic tradition anyway. Gotta wait for the birthday boy. He gets his piece of cake first. Traditionally, kind of in an older, an older time, you would take Cagatio after he is giving you all his gifts and after he has shat his salty herring, you burn him in the fire. That's what he was meant to do. It also feels very friend and stumpy, right? Yeah, like that. Yeah, very that. So now it's seen more as like a household decor item. So you would just put Cagatio in the back of the closet and wait for another year to bring him out kind of thing. I see. Yeah, I see. And in terms of, you know, where this tradition came from, it's a little bit of another question mark much like

Caganeer. There's most likely ties to the Yule log, but in terms of why the log shits presents, I mean, you're right, maybe some parents were just like, I don't know, the log will shit you some presents. We'll see how that goes. Gotta freestyle this one. Yeah, yeah, just let's see how this goes. I mean, another interpreted circle of life nature gives to us, isn't that a beautiful thing? Let's celebrate it. Presidents are fun. That might be another reason. Yeah, that's I resist the urge to literalize or not maybe not literalize to intellectualize this shitting log. It doesn't seem they weren't sitting there thinking of like theme when they put the face on the log and made it shit. No, you're right. You're right. And you know,

when you think about it, like there are so many traditions and we don't even have to look past the holiday of Christmas to find some that like logically are not making a lot of like Santa is a fat man who crawls down your chimney even if you don't have a chimney and gifts that you could find in the store. Yeah, he goes to Walmart. Yeah, you've made your Amazon wish list and all of a sudden they're there and like, okay, you know, like tradition is not built on an A to B to C kind of pinpointing. You can't spell illogical without log. Damn it. You're good. It wasn't even a shit joke either. No, I went for the rare non shit log joke. You are a classy man raising the bar every time I open my mouth. No, but you make very good points in what you say is quite

right, especially in like a religious tradition. There's extra, you're allowed to have extra wiggle room for logic there, right? Because the whole point is suspending your ties to worldly shit like logic and just believing, right? Faith, baby. And you know, I think another element of this too is like, these are traditions that are native to Catalonia. And we kind of touched briefly about like a separatist movement and a history of trying to assimilate this culture into other hegemonic cultures. And I think Catalonians, like they have put up a long and good fight to keep their traditions alive. And, you know, the Caganeer and Cagatio are part of it, even if they're a little weird or if other people find them grotesque or, you know, just kind of poopy,

shitty stuff. It's Catalonian. So hang on, baby. It's going to be here. Keep on shitting. Keep on shitting. Keep on shitting, Caganeer. And I love the idea too that like the reason that these traditions have remained in the Catalonian customs and culture is not because they signify even a religious event or, I mean, they're, they're of course tied in some way to pagan events, but like the line is murky and it's a little weird. They're just around because they're fun and they're funny. Yeah, yeah. That's why you still do them because it's funny to hit a stick and tell it to shit. And then you get like a little piece of nougat. Like, it's really funny. It's, I agree. No, there's, there's, there's no reason outside of fun to keep doing that. But if the fun continues, then why stop?

I don't think that gets old. Right. I'm annoyed that I missed the memo. I would have known my Spanish heritage is in Barcelona heritage, is Madrid heritage. But I wish I had known this when I was in Barcelona because then I would have bought back some Caganeers for people. Yeah. That's a lot of fun. I know I didn't know that. It doesn't surprise me. I think that much in the same way that you can find like fallacies and drawings of dicks going back into antiquity and drawings of, you can find porn going back forever. So it doesn't surprise me that the same cultural obsession with shit that translates into the poo emoji also translates in this particular way. Oh yeah. I like it. Yeah. I know. It's fun. Now I know it to get you for

Christmas. What? I gotta get the O? Not gonna say. Not gonna say. That's, uh, yeah. That's what I got. I present to you, Taylor, the, um, the salty herring to signify that I am done. Oh no. Ew. Granted. All right. It's time to, uh, log off. That was, that was good. See y'all Christmas day. I'm so excited. Taylor's gonna, gonna drop a Christmas deuce on Christmas day. And how? Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy. But no pressure. Bittersweet

infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources I used this week were The Strange and Wonderful Movie Posters from Ghana, The Matrix, Alien and More, An Art and Film, Open Culture, March 4th, 2014, How Ghana's Gory Gaudi Movie Posters Became High Art by Ryan Lenora Brown in The Atlantic, February 4th, 2016, and Incredible Ghanaian Film Posters by Rahul Verma, March 13th, 2019 in BBC Culture. The recipe for Greenland at Coffee came from Greenland at Coffee, The Best Cure for Cold Weather, on CNN Travel by Chris Scott,

February 9th, 2018. The sources that I used for this episode include an article published on BBC.com, Travel, entitled Catalonia's Beloved Scatological Christmas Custom, published December 17th, 2018, written by Jessica Jones. I read another BBC news article entitled A Traditional Nativity Scene, Catamon Style, published December 23rd, 2010, written by Sarah Rainsford. I looked at the Guinness Book of World Records and their entry for the world's largest caganaire. I read an opinion article published in Al Jazeer, entitled What Happened to Catalonia Can't Happen to Scotland, written by Michael Keating, October 31st, 2017. I looked at the Wikipedia pages for caganaire, Tío de Nadal, and the 2019 to 2020 Catalan protests. I watched a video on YouTube,

posted by Benito Sereno, entitled Magic and Legends of Old Christmas Part 5, a pooping log, and the gift bringers of non-Spanish Spain. And finally, the caga tío song you heard earlier was performed by Nora Jones and was posted on YouTube by Team Awesome Rules. The interstitial music that you heard earlier was written by Mitchell Collins, and the song you are listening to now is Tea Street, by Brian Steele. Merry Christmas, Van Nadal. In the market for a vehicle, come into Innisfail Chrysler and take part in Plinko for Prizes. That's right, Plinko for Prizes is on right now, and you can win one of six amazing prizes with any vehicle purchase. With blowout pricing on over 150 in-stock vehicles and up to $10,000 in cash

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