That’s the third start to the intro of this
podcast and it’s because I keep wanting
to explain or justify what I’m doing.
This is an episode of C-Mick Be reads.
That’s all you really got to know.
I did the entirety of a year I read a free online romantic sex book about
some women who
had taken to a prehistoric planet and dropped there and they had to blink
their way to safety.
And it was good but I actually found that reading an entire book, my
commentary fell off because there was just less to say.
The author had their quibbles and traits
and odd things and I’d made fun of them and
then it came up in another chapter.
I’d just make fun of the same thing again.
I realized the sheer length of a whole book is a problem.
And I could read articles and stuff and I’ve done that in the past.
I want to make it so that there’s a variety
of interesting stuff that’s interesting to
me, interesting to the audience.
If you have something you would like me to read,
send an email to chunkmapeefchest@gmail.com.
or you can send a voice message to speakpipe.com/chunkmapeefchest.
Every social media platform, I’ve probably tried to claim chunkmapeefchest
and they all have message systems and stuff.
So if you just search for a chunkmapeefchest,
there’s a good chance there’s me.
There is another podcast called Seamick Bee and it was like the Military
College of Brazil,
maybe it was Columbia Military College of Brazil, something like that.
So I was going to try to start beef with them just because we got to decide
who actually owns the name.
And maybe starting beef with a literal military organization isn’t my best
idea I’ve ever had.
Which brings us to fake blood which is what we’re talking about today
because I read an article
about the history of fake blood and I found it really interesting and I
thought hey, if you
listen to my stuff, I just assume the stuff that I find interesting, you
would find them, and it may be, it may be, it may be, it may be interesting.
In 1897 there was a Parisian theater called the Grand Gugnoch.
G-U-I-G-N-O-C, G-G-G-N-O-L.
My writing’s very poor, I made my notes very quickly.
L’Gran Gugnoch and they put on plays, they put on horror plays.
I was like I’ve seen horror movies, I’ve actually never seen horror plays.
I’ve seen a few plays, I wouldn’t say I’m like someone who goes to plays.
Trying to think of the plays, I’ve gone to a bunch of high schools plays
with my friends were in.
I actually did a couple, I was really bad at it.
I went to the Chinese opera which was a really interesting experience
because the way they
did it is they had the Chinese opera on the stage and then up they had this
big monitor
and it had the subtitles but they were above so they were like super titles.
There was mostly singing and so this guy gave a 5 minute song and it was
clearly supposed to be inspirational to his soldiers and whatnot.
Then the translation was let’s go to war.
I think we’ve missed a few subtleties in that translation but I enjoyed it
but most plays you know their dramas.
The only one I ever cared about is waiting for Gdou and that’s because I
read it and then
I saw the Katie Lang video and the constant
craving video and that just reaffirmed my love for.
that play.
I think because it was only like 5 minutes
I didn’t have to actually go see it.
Reading it was good.
I don’t know if I actually want to see this stuff so maybe I’m not like a
play oriented kind of guy but a horror play would bring me in.
I would love to go see a live performance of a horror story.
They had their own secret recipe for blood.
So of course being a horror thing people
got stabbed or there were wounds and stuff.
So they had their own secret recipe and they
think it was pigments so make it red and
glycerol which I assume is just like a jealous stuff.
Like anyways.
So this became like okay we have to make
blood if we’re going to do horror stuff.
Now very soon they were maybe the most famous
and it seems like the first iteration of
fake blood as like a thing you made for
your performance was that Le Grand Reno then
movies came along and movies are where you know horror as a genre became its
own thing.
Like a real thing.
Like maybe that’s it.
Maybe live horror plays never became its own genre in a big enough way
because the kind of people who go to
plays maybe don’t want to go see horror.
I do I would really like to go see a horror play.
I think that would be really awesome.
We had movies, black and white movies and En Psycho is one of the more
famous ones because
the shower scene where their girl gets stabbed and the blood trickles down
and it circles
the drain as the water washes the blood off
the poor woman who’s just been murdered.
The problem is red blood actually didn’t show up very well on screen.
This is something I learned about that
you have to do stuff to make it show up.
And so it was more about consistency and darkness than it was actually about
looking realistic.
So at that time they used chocolate syrup because it had the sort of
consistency they wanted.
It had sort of the liquidity and it was very
sort of dark and vibrant looking and very
shiny and it showed up very well on screen.
There was a 1968 movie called Night of the Living Dead.
If you’re in the zombie movies it’s essentially the first zombie movie.
They used Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup for all the blood in that movie.
So when the zombies are eating a person they’re actually just pouring
chocolate syrup all over their mouth and going “ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.”
So actually what have tasted really good.
So I mean being an extra on that movie being
one of the zombie extras on that movie.
It’s not a terrible deal because yeah,
you’re maybe covered in fake blood and stuff.
That actually might be chocolate syrup.
Pretty easy to wash off.
But then when you have to eat another person
you’re just like basically licking chocolate.
syrup off someone which is kind of cool.
I was pretty down with that.
My thought was British people are always really like Hershey’s isn’t real
chocolate kind of stuff.
So they might be really down on that.
Hershey’s syrup and Hershey’s chocolate
bars are different, different flavors.
Anyways, then we get to color.
Other movies started and then you had to be able to…
Oh no, something else I learned about Black White movies.
Again, it was contrast was important.
Being able to see things on the Black and White film was really important.
So there’s the very famous end of Seven
Samurai where they have a battle in the rain.
And if you just have water pouring down from the sky in a Black and White
movie it doesn’t show up very well.
The people look damp but they don’t look wet.
It doesn’t look like the… You can’t see the rain running down their face.
So what they did if you watch that movie,
it’s a three hour movie so you might not be
too into it.
It’s a good movie though.
They used essentially ink to make it rain
so that the rain would show up on screen.
You could see the rain but that meant also you could see it like drip down
people’s faces and stuff.
So you could see the rain as an effect in the movie.
So Black and White movies that had a whole
different set of problems they’d deal with.
It wasn’t about realism, it was about visibility in the medium of Black and
White film.
Luckily back then they didn’t probably have EPA or environmental controls on
films or any sort of ethics.
So I’m assuming that whole area was just like sodden with ink and everything
in that area died.
But maybe we learned a lesson since then?
Now you can actually use water and it will have the effect because you’ll
actually be able
to see the water on the screen because our technology has come so far.
But it’s an interesting problem.
If you were the director of the film you’re like well we’re making it rain
but no one can see the rain so what’s the point?
You might as well just do it on a sunny day.
Everyone just looks kind of like moist.
Then we had color film in the 60s and 70s.
What they wanted was that vibrancy to come
out so that you could see the blood so you
know his blood.
So they actually made it almost cartoonishly bright.
I’m sure there’s a old movie you’ve seen where the blood looks more like
bright colored catch up than anything else.
My co-workers and I at lunchtime have been watching Loan Wolf and Cub the
Samurai movies
and they do some great slashes and there’s a big spray of blood that comes
out when they do a slash.
If that is not the right color you actually
wouldn’t be able to see it on screen.
The same problem is the previous problem with black and white movies.
It has to be able to show up so they use really bright blood and it looks
pretty good when
it sprays but when it actually like pools
when someone gets their like in throat slash
then lying down there’s a pool of blood.
When it pools it looks really really bad it looks really really fake but it
did make for some excellent blood sprays.
In 1963 they made a movie called Blood Feast and not only did the blood need
to be recognizable
as blood because it was blood feast they were going to be consuming a lot of
the blood.
It had to also be edible so they used a mixture of red dye and Kale pectate
which is antacid and anti diarrhea medicine.
So everyone on that set who is a I assume a cannibal of some sort I haven’t
seen this movie.
Now I’m vaguely interested in it because I know what the blood is made of.
Everyone in this movie had a really settled
stomach and maybe couldn’t poop that day.
What we want to get to is how much fake blood are they using was one of the
things because there was an amazing amounts of blood they actually used.
In the shining there’s that famous elevator scene.
Now that blood is a little bright in liquidy but it still worked.
That was 300 gallons just for the elevator scene.
That’s like eight liters of blood for those of you who don’t know metric.
The evil dead in 2013 they used over 50,000
gallons and that was just for one scene.
Do you have any idea of the amount of
gallons of blood you used in this thing?
This thing being the movie.
I know we ordered a truck the other day
that was 50,000 gallons just for one scene.
Is that the raining blood scene?
So obviously the raining blood scene is going to use a lot.
There’s a couple of movies that have had rains of blood.
I think the most famous one for me is in one of the blade movies.
Probably the first one where he goes to the
vampire dance club and they’re all dancing
and then the fire sprinklers turn on and it
sprays blood over and I was like, “Wow, I love.
my blood.”
I’d be interested to know what that was made of.
We’re going to get to a couple of recipes
later but I’ll just finish this quote.
Is that the raining blood scene?
Yeah, that’s a lot of blood.
That’s the thing where we’re trying to measure because sometimes we go over
the top and there’s a lot of blood and we go, “Eh?”
But somebody joked because the other day
I said, “Okay, that was too much blood.”
And they all said, “Wow, wow, that’s
the first time we’ve heard that so far.”
Usually I ask for more.
There’s always a tone that you have to hit right in horror.
With the blood, you want to make sure that it makes sense all along.
You choose one style, right?
Like the way an arm bleeds when you cut, it
could look so many different ways and not
look the style and not look this in the style of the movie, right?
We’re kind of a little bit.
Because we’re a little bit too Japanese, I would say.
It’s kind of that sharp flat and we have some of that, “What?”
It’s kind of that sharp flat we have some of that kind of stuff.
I’m sorry, Mr. Alvarez is not making sense to me right now.
It’s kind of that sharp flat we have some of that kind of stuff.
I guess you saw here about maybe the color?
The color is too sharp and maybe too flat, not textured enough.
I mean, that’s what I like.
Yeah, it’s pretty over the top sometimes.
So this year volume means that the different mixtures of blood, that’s
actually going to affect cost.
And they were saying 50,000 gallons, which again, that’s like 10 liters of
blood for one scene and there’s multiple scenes in the movie.
And then there’s a lot more blood in the movie.
So that’s interesting.
I did find part of the article I was
reading actually had some actual recipes.
So you could actually write this down or if you’re watching the video, just
take a screen shot or something.
So if you want to make some at home, you can actually do this.
So Kensington Gore was the trademark name.
So this is trademark.
Oh, it’s out there in the world.
You can actually find it yourself.
The trademark name for blood used in
film and theater during the 19CC assembly.
So that’s probably really, really bright
stuff I was talking about in samurai films.
Today it is often used as a generic term for stage blood.
So there’s the actual original trademark stuff.
And then now because it’s so common, they just use it for fake blood.
The bricks specifically use Kensington Gore in the shining.
So the one, the thing that the 300 gallons that flowed out of the elevator,
that was this recipe.
Golden syrup, which I assume is corn syrup, I’m actually not sure.
Warm water.
So again, so you can mix it.
Food coloring, which is going to be the red and cornstarch.
For adjusting opacity, I would have assumed
cornstarch was for thickness, but they’re
saying like, if it’s too thin, you can see through it and it looks too wet.
And if you want to make it so it’s harder to see, thicker, it will mean it
would be less opaque, which is pretty interesting.
Kensington Gore really set the standard for
fake blood made with a sugary syrup base
with food dye.
But if we’re going to talk about fake blood,
we have to talk about Dixmith because his
do it yourself recipe.
Well, technically poisonous is one of the most famous.
So yeah, in what was the movie, Blood Feast, the fake blood had to be edible
because the actors were going to be expected to eat it.
In “Night of the Living Dead,” they used chocolate syrup, which meant that
when the zombies reading the people, it
was actually quite delicious and very safe.
The one where it’s the anti-diarrhea medicine, maybe too much of that would
have been pretty bad for you.
I bet it would have worked its way through
eventually, but you might have been pretty
backed up for a while.
Smith, known as the Godfather of Makeup, was an American special makeup
effects artist,
known for his work on the famous film, such
as The Godfather, 1972, The Exorcist, 1973,
and Taxi Driver, 1976.
He put his own twist on the syrup-based blood with
the addition of methyl-peribin, a preservative.
He also used a photographic wedding agent that changed the viscosity of the
blood and allowed it to seep into clothes as real blood would.
However, this is what makes the recipe poisonous.
Therefore, making it unsuitable for any
application where ingestion may occur.
So you have one, the Kensington Gorone, you can eat it.
Probably tastes okay because it’s basically golden syrup.
I assume is like corn syrup, which is really just a kind of sugar, a water,
food coloring, and corn starch.
It doesn’t taste great, but edible.
Or is this one because of the extra ingredient?
It’s probably to make it, he said to make
it so it bleed into sink into blood quickly.
So probably actually making it thicker without using corn starch, which
probably wouldn’t absorb into clothing the same way.
So you get shot or stab or something in
that slow bleed as what they’re going for.
Dick Smith’s blood recipe, one quart white corn syrup, so not golden syrup.
One level tablespoon of methyl-peribin.
Two ounces of Eller Red Food Color.
Two five tablespoons of A-Her-A-Her-Aler Yellow Food Color.
Two ounces of Kodak Photo Flow.
Two ounces of water.
That’s your base recipe, so you would just have to multiply that by two,
three, four, whatever to make bigger vats of it.
But remember, this is poisonous.
Do not drink this.
Do not eat it by accident.
It’s said, Eller Red and Yellow pigments
are not available anymore, so some recipes
will add zinc and use Red and Yellow Food dye instead to make this recipe
less poisonous.
You can use food safe and mulsifier wedding agents such as liquid, light tin
instead of the photo flow.
Another way to make it less toxic.
Edible blood is the go-to Sam Raimi method.
So Sam Raimi, he has made a lot of spider man movies and stuff.
For any low budget filmmaker looking to make
a horror movie, you likely need a lot of
blood.
You really need it to be very, very cheap and do it yourselfable.
For the original Evil Dead 1981, they needed just that like Dick Smith’s
recipe, the Evil Dead blood relies on corn syrup as the base.
To make a affordable blood that still looked to go on camera, Raimi, and
make up an effects
artist Tom Sullivan used a non-dairy coffee creamer in their recipe.
You can also find the recipe in Bruce Campbell’s autobiography if the chins
could kill confessions of a B movie actor.
It’s a pretty good title for a book.
So the Evil Dead blood recipe is six pints of clear, cato syrup.
So you have to get a British man to go out
for the evening and drink six pints and then.
take those glasses and then you can make this blood.
Three pints are you need a British man and his girlfriend.
Three pints of red food coloring, one
pint under kid has to come with him too.
One pint of non-dairy creamer and one drop of blue food coloring.
It’s that one drop of blue food coloring in
six, seven, eight, nine, ten pints of liquid.
Is it going to change the color enough?
Because if it’s three pints of red food coloring, one drop blue, I wonder
how much of a difference that makes.
Many movies and television series still rely on these recipes or some
derivative for their bloody visual effects.
However, others are turning to a cleaner method of Gore pixels, CGI blood.
It’s interesting though, we do want, what I want is for you to be able to
make it at home.
That was to me the more interesting part.
So if you dame to attempt one of these, make
it at home, do it yourself, blood recipes
for movies and cover yourself all in blood in fake murder scene, I would
like a picture.
You can send a picture to chummyvchest@gmail.com
and I would really actually
really enjoy to see what people do.
I’m kind of thinking the next break, I might
make some fake blood with my kids and see
what we can make happen because I would love to fake a murder scene and then
send a picture to my wife, which I bet she doesn’t find funny.
Okay, so the other thing, let me get
that up on the screen now, yeah, for me.
To continue, see me be reads, it’s 25 minutes, but I think I messed around
the first like 5, 10 minutes, this might only be a 15 minute podcast.
The other thing I read about, so there was your transition, is octopi.
Now the first thing I’m going to have to address is the usage of the term
the plural, octopuses versus octopi.
Now very technically, grammatically, octopuses is correct, but if you use
octopuses and correct
people on their usage of octopi, you need to realize that you’re not fun and
no one really enjoys being around you.
You might argue, yes, people do enjoy being around me, but you’re incorrect.
People tolerate you.
They exist in your vicinity, but they are not enjoying that experience.
So that’s just something to be aware of.
If you naturally feel the instinct to correct someone who says octopi and go
actually, the
correct grammar is octopuses, you should go
home and sort of just rethink the entirety
of your existence.
You could do better in life by just using the plural “I,” which is just way
more fun in every capacity.
And sometimes language is about pleasure.
It’s about enjoying existence.
It’s about communicating with people and
creating sounds that are pleasurable for them.
as much as yourself.
You probably are the kind of person
who really enjoys hearing their own voice.
Whereas everyone else, what they hear is
the annoying grating of someone who thinks,
pulling words out of a dictionary is a good
idea when it inhibits having a good time.
Kind of lost it at the end there if I’m being honest, but I think my point
is pretty solid in that if you correct
anyone who says octopi, you should go away.
So I did read an article about octopuses, octopi.
Octopi are just amazing animals.
They are there.
Is it cephalopods?
I actually have to check.
I don’t want to get that one wrong.
Octopi versus octopuses, I’m pretty confident about cephalopods.
I’m pretty sure that might be an alien thing.
I think here’s the problem with reading,
like watching a lot of fiction and stuff.
Sometimes you get your technical language
mixed up with real stuff and fake stuff.
So sometimes I’ll actually say something that sounds scientific, but it’s
from Star Trek, so it’s not real.
That’s problematic.
There’s a reason I have an English major and not a science major.
Let’s put it that way.
Research published in 2021, Octopi, I
am correcting the article I’m reading from.
Octopi were observed punching fish during collaborative feeding sessions.
In some cases, the punches were to prevent exploitation and sure
collaboration, so in other words, keeping the peace.
So basically one fish was eating too much food.
All the fish needed to get food, so the Octopi took it upon themselves to
just like a little
deck here and there to just nail one in
the face and be like, you’ve had enough.
You need to let this other fish over here have a little bit of food.
But in other situations, it seemed that the Octopi punched the fish for no
other reason than to punch them.
But that actually, something we do know is that Octopi have memories.
So really what’s, see, they’re making an assumption that they’re just
hitting them for no reason.
I bet they remember some crap that that fish pulled before and they’re like,
I’m still angry at you.
I’m still decking you.
How do you like that?
Don’t come around here no more.
Octopi are famously anti-social animals and
are solitary, even when it comes to their
own species.
Maybe this is one of the reasons I like Octopi so much is that I am similar.
Now it seems like I’m very social.
My friend group is primarily them in line.
I would say I would enjoy spending time with them, but I would be more fun
if we both went home to our computers
and played a game together or something.
But I don’t know if that’s anti-social so much as just I have a very, very
specific set of lifestyle choices and needs at once.
A group of researchers gave Octopi
MDMA, popularly known as Molly or Ecstasy.
Now one thing I was enjoying about science is when they’re like, what was
the premise of giving an Octopus Ecstasy?
You can say there’s a scientific degree we’re trying to research something,
try to figure out how the brain works with
it, what effect does it have on the animal.
But really, you know these scientists had done Molly in the past and we’re
like, you know,
we’ve been working with this spit, I don’t
know the Octopi specific name which is too
bad because I’d like to start referring to them by name Kevin.
We know Kevin’s been working hard, he’s done like a whole bunch of
experiments, he’s taught us a lot and we want him to have a good time.
Let’s call it research.
Pop them a little Molly, our cells and see what happens, make sure that
Kevin parties tonight.
Octopi are typically a social creatures.
So the scientists wanted to see how the drug that affects serotonin levels
and induces extra version of people would impact the Octopi.
So essentially this is the same experiment as if you gave me Molly.
Would I then want to go out and spend time with other people?
What would happen to my serotonin levels which flat lying constantly?
As it turned out the normally solitary Octopi spent time with one another
after sitting in an MDMA bath which
sounds like a really relaxing bath for it.
I guess not, I’ve never done it.
I’ve never done XC so I don’t actually know.
Like I know it makes you more social and you like you want to touch each
other and stuff which is pretty gross.
But does it relax you?
Cocaine is famously amps you up and you want
to clean your house and then weed lowers
you down and you get more sedate.
I actually don’t know where MDMA falls at that.
The normally solitary Octopi spent time with one another after sitting in a
bath even going
so far as to touching each other with their arms in an exploratory way.
Either this says more about Octopi or the power of MDMA, perhaps for you to
decide but still.
It’s cool that Octopi can play nice sometimes.
I do have friends who have done XC when they used to go to raves and they
did talk about just like touching each
other a lot which again sounds awful to me.
I don’t know if I enjoy anything about that.
Octopi are smart and cranky which sounds
like every old man I know so I think maybe
again this might be why I start to relate to them.
Last year scientists described seeing Octopi gathering silt and shells off
the seafloor in Durvis Bay, Australia and flinging them at their peers.
Which I find funny which makes me think that the Octopi funny as well.
The research I believe that throes must serve as social purpose but to my
untrained diet this looks pretty antisocial.
I mean maybe they’re just having a good time.
This is how they entertain themselves.
I go to judo which is me grabbing on to honestly friends and sometimes
strangers and trying to hook them as hard as I can into the ground.
And it sounds like the octopus and I share certain traits.
This is again why I probably was so immediately connected to this article.
Research published in 2021 tracked Octopi’s sleep schedule.
I suppose if I say Octopi I can’t say Octopi’s but it is possessive.
I don’t know because if it’s plural possessive Octopi’s, Octopi’s, Octopi
added more eyes.
Octopi sleep schedules.
The scientists found the animals had sleep states similar to REM.
States and humans when we dream.
If the animals are dreaming though the researchers don’t think they have
dreams as complex relinquies as their own.
They have no fucking idea if that’s true or not.
That is a massive assumption on their part.
They might just have a broader view of the universe so what they consider a
simple dream you would consider mind blowing.
So I think scientists, the problem is scientists as much as they might talk
about science, make so many assumptions which is completely unreasonable.
It should be more like a small video clips or even gifts which is how most
people spend their waking days.
I’m sure there’s about 12 jokes in there
if you actually want to put it the effort
that I don’t.
I think that is you might but again you’re not going to if you start making
assumptions that there are more simple thought
processes like Dave the dog, my dog, he
sleeps.
He sleeps quite regularly and quite generously.
He’s sleeping right now in the corner.
He dreams.
Now he does little twitchy things like dogs do and everyone’s always thinks
he’s dreaming.
He’s chasing a rabbit.
No one knows that.
He might be dreaming that he’s just exploded the core of the universe and
has reformed everything
into a more perfect utopian balance system where everything is egalitarian
and there is no unhappiness.
And that’s that little twitchy motion that he goes, the assumption on our
part is species least.
If I’m being honest, the assumption on our part is that we’re some sort of
superior intellect
and that other animals can’t have that because they don’t communicate with
us in the same way, we make assumptions that they are lower species.
And I think that’s unfair and it’s especially unfair for the octopi because
the octopi, as we all know, is basically an alien.
It is the most alien looking thing on the planet earth.
Why would you assume that it’s dreams are more simplistic than ours?
In February 2023, researchers announced that
they had managed to record brain activity
in freely moving octopi for the first time.
The scientists implanted electrodes into the data logger into day octopuses.
Octopus cyanera or cyania or chyanuria.
I think I would say cyan because it has the CYN and it’s cyania.
Brain activity patterns recorded in the research have not yet been tied to
specific behaviors.
And again, maybe we don’t understand the
relationship because they’re so alien to us.
But if the practice sticks, it may provide more information about the inner
workings of the octopus and specifically how
their brain actively corresponds to their
movements.
They’re very complex, flexible legs that Japanese anime really enjoys.
There are ethical questions here as in the case whenever devices are
inserted into animals
that cannot express consent, but inserting
devices into animals for science arguably
better than frying and eating them in a persuade.
That’s a non-equivalency, if I’m being honest.
Yeah, that actually just threw me the writer
just started to throw in their opinion.
I was thinking about they used to think that babies don’t feel pain.
So these do do like surgery on babies and stuff without any anesthetic,
which is terrifying if you think about it.
So what can we actually take away from the octopi study?
And really what I take away from it is
that scientists make too many assumptions.
And those assumptions are bad science.
And what the octopi have taught us more than anything else is that if you
want to do science,
you have to do science properly, which means don’t assume that because a
species is different
that that species is lower capability intellectually, that their dreams are,
I’m really stuck on the dreams thing.
You can tell.
You want to just conclude by saying like scientists made the wrong
assumption because they made an
assumption where realistically speaking,
there’s no way to know one way or the other.
And anytime you see scientists assume or someone assumes you can just
immediately should be thinking that’s bad science.
[Music].