The Blindboy Podcast - Jesuit Drip

Episode Date: January 17, 2018

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Oh God bless you dreamy weeping priests. Welcome back to week number 13 of the Blind Boy Podcast. Where I'm pleased, actually it's not week number 13, it's week number 12. Is it? No, it's week 13, can't even fucking remember anymore. Welcome to week 13 of the Blind Boy Podcast. Where it is a pleasure for me to announce that we are 13 weeks at number 1 on the podcast charts.

Because the lovely reviews and the subscriptions are still rolling in. So thank you very much for that. 13 fucking weeks. Number one, I can't believe it. I cannot believe it. There's so many lovely podcasts out there that I'm competing with. Well, I don't like saying the word competition. See, there you go now. Focusing on charts and all of a sudden I think the podcasts are a competition. That's what it's done to a sudden I think that podcasts are a competition. That's what it's done to my mind. Podcasts are not a competition.

How could I possibly compete with the likes of the Irish History Podcast, one of my favourite Irish podcasts? I can't compete with that. It's two completely different things. It's not fair to even put us in the same territory. We're doing different things and we're each good at what we do. The Alison Spittel podcast, which I also enjoy. I don't want to compete with Alison, she's sound.

I want to join Alison on a similar journey in the woods and we're each doing our own little thing I'm collecting conkers she's making rubbings of leaves and we're grand there's no competition cunts but we're 13 weeks on the number one spot

so thank you everybody for for all of that stuff I want to go fucking Brian Adams on it that's what I want to do Brian Adams was he got 16 weeks at number 1 in the charts with that song Everything I Do

from the soundtrack Robin Hood Prince of Thieves which it was on Netflix recently oh my god is it a pile of shit. This was a massive fucking film. Have you watched it?

Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman. It is just an American, an American cocaine frenzy of what they think Europe was like based on a rumour that they heard from a seven year old it's just nuts I mean

it's a bit racist as well yeah it's more than a bit racist it's very racist it uses a common Hollywood trope known as the magical negro, which is, in Hollywood films, when they have a person of colour, often played by Morgan Freeman,

they tend to, it's like this magical negro, as it's called called helps the white hero of the film in some way and they're subordinate in every respect and they may not be as educated as the white hero or they may not be as powerful but their connectedness with their culture and with the earth allows them some type, degree of magical ability and intuition which somehow helps the white hero. I tell you where I also saw this trope, but it wasn't applied to a person of colour, it was applied to an Irish person, and it was in the film Philomena,

which came out, I think it was about was it 2006 2013 and philomena if you remember it's actually quite a good film it's steve cogan and judy dench who plays very convincingly she plays a an old irish woman fucking fantastic. But. The film Philomena. On critical analysis. Uses the trope of. The. The magical negro. Or the magical other.

As we call it. Because. Steve Coogan is essentially the. English British hero of the film. He's like a government worker. And. It's. I government worker. And it's... I'm recalling... I haven't seen this in four fucking years now, lads,

so I'm recalling it vaguely. But Coogan is kind of living the... You know, a London busy lifestyle. I think he works for the government or he's a journalist or something. But he's got this kind of, you know, stressed city lifestyle. You you know lattes and cars and whatever the fuck and he meets this woman philomena played by judy dench who's a a rural

irish woman in her 50s or 60s and i think it's based on a true story i think it is based on a true story but ph Philomena anyway. She spent most of her life in a Magdalene laundry. And the Catholic Church. Took her baby at birth. And said that it was going to an orphanage. But the church actually sold it to a wealthy American couple. Sold her child. And that did actually happen.

In the Magdalene laundries of Ireland. But anyway. her child and that did actually happen in the Magdalene laundries of Ireland but anyway the way that the character of Philomena is treated in this film is very much in the style of the the trope of the magical negro because Coogan is the hero and Philomena is portrayed as this thick stupid paddy but the kind of the heart-touching moments in the film where they try and develop the relationship and conflict between Coogan and Philomena this kind of chalk and cheese relationship you as the audience member are given the impression that even though she's a thick paddy that her life experience gives her this magical wisdom that transcends the shallow

experiences of steve coogan and his high-flying london lifestyle does that make sense? it's like Filomeno's ignorant wisdom adds something to his character and then he as the white hero learns something about himself and that's a fairly it's kind of a racist trope that you see in a lot of films and usually it's applied to

a person of colour either an African person or often Asian, the Orient the magical knowledge and wisdom of the Orient or people from the Orient I shouldn't even be saying the word Orient because that in itself

is a British colonial term Asia but often Asians in films are portrayed as having a deep mystical knowledge, which possibly could connect to the theme of a previous podcast, which is the themes of individualistic culture, such as the Western culture, and we in the best look at asians in our media as having this grand wisdom this grand wisdom of of the stars and the moon and it's like it's just a different way of thinking it's collectivism i don't know where i started with this yes we're 13 weeks at number one i want to beat brian ad Yes, we're 13 weeks at number one.

I want to beat Bryan Adams' record of 16 weeks at number one. This took me on to the topic of the film Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, which is a really, truly terrible movie. But it's so terrible that it becomes, it is actually entertaining. All the actors. Even though they're Yanks. Have this bizarre mid-Atlantic accent. I'm not 100%. But I'm pretty sure there's a scene in it.

Even though it's set in. Like a thousand years ago. Someone has a wrist watch I think. And you can see that in it. But it's fucking terrible, and, oh, Alan, Alan Rickman is in it, actually, and he is a, he is a tonic in the film, Alan Rickman, who is a phenomenal fucking actor, unbelievably talented actor, and much, much better than Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, but he probably got a few quid Rickman apparently knew that the film

was such a piece of shit that he just went mental he just he was playing the sheriff of Notting Wood

Nottingham who's the baddie and Rickman just turned the baddiness up to 90 and played the most camp ridiculous

villain you've ever seen and that is highly entertaining. There's another lad in there. Can't think of his name. Kind of young good looking fella. And his accent. Is hilarious.

It's this low grumbly accent. This low grumbly British accent. Even though I think he's a Yankee. But. Do you know. Yeah. It's. It's good crack.

I think I've read a story before. That they were all just. I think they shot read a story before that they were all just, I think they shot some of it in Ireland and they all just went on the piss every single night. So a lot of the scenes in it are so bad because they're all so badly hung over. I don't know where I heard that. I think someone said it to me on Twitter.

Could be bullshit. Could have dreamt it. Yeah, Morgan Freeman is in it playing what we'd call a moor, which is what they used to call Muslims, North African Muslims, in the 11th century, around the times of the Crusade. It's a horseshit piece, it's a piece of shit, it's a real piece of work, but I'd give it a give it a look one thing that is interesting that is quite redeeming is the when i saw it on netflix because i remember robin hood prince thieves when i was when i was a kid but when i saw it on netflix the thumbnail that they had chosen to use to advertise the film on netflix had morgan freeman as the lead um which which is quite interesting because

he wasn't the lead he was typecast into a rather racist role to support a bullshit story that's based on an English myth and it didn't even represent it properly Robin Hood the fuck she's led on 10 minutes into the podcast

and I'm already blazing out the hot takes I can't tell maybe I managed to offend someone there possibly I don't know I can't tell if it's my place to deconstruct

racist narratives within cinema is it my place to speak on the trope of the magical negro, within film, and me as a white male, I don't know, all I can say is that my context and intent is sound, so apologies for anyone who, feels offended by that,

but I mentioned the term, trope, in case you're wondering what the fuck is a trope, because I jumped straight into that one a trope is i don't know it's did i i think i mentioned carl young's archetypes a few podcasts back um a trope is kind of like an archetype but it's more it's it's it's it's constructed by the conscious mind it's not an archetype is is something that exists in dreams an archetype would be the goddess figure or the father figure

or whatever that appears in your dream and it comes from the unconscious but a trope is constructed by culture and usually cinema tends to be kind of a or no media mainstream media tends to be what the marxist philosopher althusser would call part of the ideological state apparatus in that it is used to films would be used to keep an existing system of power in place. So, within cultural Marxism, or critical theory as it is known, if you're not a conspiracy theorist, within critical theory, you would try and deconstruct media, ideological state apparatus and pick out these tropes as a way of uncovering the hidden structures of power within that media so you know in western films the lead of these films tends to be a powerful white male and quite a lot of western films

they kind of follow colonial themes whether we're aware of it or not if we hark back there to the instance of Philomena that I was talking about that is I would argue

that the use of the Philomena character and portraying her as the magical negro or magical other trope is an example of a colonial ideological state apparatus whereby

it's kind of like yeah we colonised the Irish but they're thick bog trotters that needed colonization. But you know what? We were very kind to them and we can continue to be kind. And if you listen, you can learn something from them too, because they are people of the earth. You know, we might have all our money and our books and our education. Oh, but the Irish people, oh, they can speak to the plants. Do you know what I mean? That type of shit. And in Philomena, it's Irish people.

In Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, it was North African people. And just look at films. You pick them out. Pick out the trope where that is used. And it tends to be a colonial narrative. The Yanks have, they've kind of turned it around a bit, the Yanks have a really weird one, where Yanks will do a film about Vietnam, or they'll make a film about the Iraq war,

and they will show how they did actually use colonialism on whatever country they were trying to colonize, and then they write a film about how upset it made their own soldiers for having to colonize it, which is, that's an almost an extreme postmodern twist on this type of colonial film making. Lads, I'm going fierce academic all of a sudden this is nearly I'm mentioning things

here that are probably worthy of their own separate podcasts that they're so in depth I'm going fierce academic actually no no because I'm just having to cop on to something now because this is very much been a stream of

consciousness rant that has uh I didn't have much of a plan for it but I did feel a little bit flowy when I was doing that

and I'm just have to realize in something there um and I think this is the point that my mind was telling me to make

Robin Hood Prince of Thieves like the character that Morgan Freeman plays in it Azeem was his name I think he was a Moor, a North African, a Muslim and Robin Hood

Prince of Thieves is based upon the ancient English legend of Robin Hood which we all know, stole from the rich, gave to the poor. Morgan Freeman's character does not exist in the Robin Hood legend. Okay? There is no Moorish person in the original Robin Hood myth. The Hollywood Yanks wrote that person in. So right there is your ideological state apparatus there you go

the magical negro character was written in by the Americans into this old Arthurian legend and hot take alert but the film was released in 1991 what was happening in 1991 smack bang in the middle of the first Gulf War The film was released in 1991. What was happening in 1991? Smack bang in the middle of the first Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm.

The Yanks were over, taking the oil in Iraq. So, this might be veering into conspiracy theory, but it's probably not as deliberate as that. The screenwriters would have been looking at the news. The news are a huge part of an ideological state apparatus. And the Moorish, North African, Islamic character that Morgan Freeman played and how that character was... He was at first reluctant, but he eventually went on to help Kevin Costner's white saviour character and to give him wisdom and knowledge and cooperate with him

is, you know, if we're to uncover the structures of power there that is the West bringing democracy in inverted commas to the Middle East as a way to snakily get some oil. So maybe that's what I'm, maybe that's, maybe that's the the purpose of that trope in that film there's the colonial narrative right there because ironically if you think back to we'd say Robin Hood the story itself is actually it's a folk tale It comes from the ordinary British people. And it's... Now, again, I'm basing this on shit that I would have fucking read ages ago,

so I don't have Wikipedia or whatever source in front of me. But the British always look back to their heritage as the Anglo-Saxons, right? A very vague history of Britain. The Romans came to britain okay and they took the place over about 1500 years ago and the romans never came to ireland actually now some say it's because they assumed ireland was too cold so they didn't bother their holes and that's why they called ireland hibernia the latin name for ireland is Hibernia and Hibernicus, I think it is, means winter, like hibernating. So they assumed Ireland was land of eternal winter

so they never colonised those. But the Romans did colonise Britain. So after the fall of the Roman Empire, it kind of fell apart and the Anglo-Saxons came over, the Germans from Saxony, and they settled in England quite kind of peacefully and became Anglo-Saxons came over, Germans from Saxony, and they settled in England quite kind of peacefully and became Anglo-Saxons. Then, in 1066, the Norman French,

who are just French Vikings essentially, they colonized quite brutally the Anglo-Saxon people of England and formed the kind of monarchical system that we still see today. That's a French system. And the early English language that the Anglo-Saxons spoke was kind of, I think it was either outlawed or it was only spoke by poor people. But French was kind of the accent that posh people spoke in England for the first two or three hundred years after 1066. As an interesting aside, actually, you'll see kind of the traces of this in how we speak English today, especially with food, right? Like, okay, chicken. A chicken is a chicken, right?

It's a chicken in the field, but on your plate, it's called poultry, beef is beef on a plate, but in the field, it's a cow, so they're very, very different words, and the reason is, is that poultry comes from poulet, the French word, and chicken is an Anglo-Saxon word beef comes from boeuf or whatever the fuck it is that's the French word for cow and cow is an Anglo-Saxon word, that's the word in the field

but the people in the field were the poor people the Anglo-Saxons so the poor person word has found its way into English when referring to it in the field and the rich person word is found its way into English when referring to it in the field. And the rich person word is the French. That's what happens on the plate.

Because poor people didn't eat the food, they raised it. And the rich people ate it. And that is evidenced in how we speak English today. So anyway, this is what I'm getting at. When the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, they did a thing called the Domesday Book or the Domesday Book. It was like this big system of taxation and recording who was there in the land. And they used to collect taxes from the ordinary people using

sheriffs, like the Sheriff of Nottingham, who was the baddie in Robin Hood, Prince Thieves, who was the baddie in Robin Hood Prince Thieves, or in the original Robin Hood story as well. So Robin Hood itself is a story of the people. It is not a colonial story. It's about the ordinary man fighting back at the power, that Norman power, and taking the money from the greedy sheriff and distributing it to the people. It's a communist, socialist, Marxist type story to be honest and then the yanks took it put it into hollywood and used the moorish morgan freeman character to promote their ideological state apparatus of middle eastern colonization hot fucking take buys you can take that or leave it, alright?

When I do a hot take, if this is your first time at the podcast, all I'm doing is expressing a fucking opinion, which could be right, it could be wrong. I'm just trying to, I'm mostly trying to just be entertaining. I think that's kind of interesting. I like the sound of it.

Could be right, could be wrong. Who gives a fuck? But, while I have you, and I'm talking about another trope that's worth mentioning because it's not just justification of colonialism from the you know present in the media of the colonizer that i'm talking about here that that we can see in films and movies or news or whatever the fuck and in religion it's any structure of power so there's there is a trope called the manic pixie dream girl and this is an interesting one you'll see this in a lot of movies um often in arty farty films where there's a male lead that if the male is kind of a misunderstood artist type

often there's a quirky crazy manic girl who he falls in love with and then her crazy quirky manicness fixes the male lead character trying to think of examples one of the ones for me that broke my heart there's a film called Buffalo 66

written and directed by Vincent Gallo which I fucking love I grew up watching that I love it mainly from a cinematographic point of view every frame in that film is as good as a painting like fair play to Vincent Gallo for just how he treated the lights and how he framed everything view every frame in that film is as good as a painting like fair play to vincent gallo for the

just how he treated the lights and how he framed everything but the story itself is sexist as fuck it's just vincent gallo as this fucked up lunatic abusive man and then christina ricci plays this crazy quirky hipster girl and she fixes him and she's not allowed any kind of the writing of it she doesn't have any of her own opinions she doesn't have much depth to her character other than she services

the emotional growth of the male lead and that's what Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope does in films what else have we got for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope does in films. What else have we got for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? I'm trying to think. You know, Phoebe. Phoebe in Friends is definitely a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

But she's not really used... I can't think of any specific examples where she's used to service the progression of a male lead. She's used to service the progression of a male lead. Zooey Deschanel is often accused of being cast in a Manic Pixie Dream Girl way in quite a bit. Diane, Annie fucking Hall. Annie Hall by Woody Allen, who's another asshole. Asshole is using it lightly.

He's a full-blown cunt. But again, Annie Hall, a film I used to fucking love because it's very clever and it's very ahead of its time with comedy and broke the fort wall the whole shebang can't flow it as a piece of comedy but diane keaton is used as this quirky crazy woman who doesn't have her own opinions and her only purpose is to service the emotional growth of the male lead so there's two tropes for you lads the magical negro and the manic pixie dream girl and there's loads of them there is fucking loads of tropes i might do a separate podcast on tropes alone i should have saved that bit for deeper into the podcast shouldn't i I usually start off with something more kind of light hearted and then all of a sudden

but I just went straight deep in didn't I straight in fucking hell into the river with no wellies cold feet do you know what I'll do I'll talk about the weather now I'll talk about the weather 20 minutes into the podcast

the weather in Limerick tonight is fucking mental. It's absurd. There's these big, mad, fat hailstones out there, right? And it's quite unique. I've never experienced the weather like this. So there's hail and gale-forced winds. Gale-forced wings, gale-forced winds, there's winds out there of about 60 miles an hour, and it's lashing these lumps of hailstones sideways, so it's quite unpleasant, it's like, it's like if, it's like going out and all of a sudden, you know, you look up at the sun, and the sun is made out of razor blades, it's lashing off your eyelids, so it's quite unpleasant to be out there, razor blades, it's a lashing off your eyelids, so it's quite unpleasant to be out there, but I did have to stick my head out, because it was such phenomenal and odd weather, I wanted to experience it, and what I found was, whatever about getting small little balls of ice lashing off the cheek

of my face, the sound, the sound was unlike anything I'd ever heard before the wind had this brand new distinct howl it had a groaning presence to it which was it was it was beautiful because it it was so large it reminded me of my own insignificance and I like things that do that to me you know it keeps me it humbles me keeps me grounded but I was thinking why the fuck is the wind so loud, what's so special about this wind today, it was quite strong, but there were strong winds a few weeks ago, and they didn't sound that loud, and I think what it is, is all the fucking hail in, in the sky, flying around, is creating a kind of a bizarre acoustics because think of it like you know the wind wind is nothing but air on a horn but and it you know it floats through nothing it's just moving air molecules but now we've got these these solid crystals floating around not floating violently careering

around like like a fucking meteor shower in the air hundreds of thousands of them millions of them like a fucking meteor shower in the air hundreds of thousands of them millions of them so surely they must reverberate you know in a communal fashion and create this roaring sound so I think that's what it was a curtain of hail in its speed with the wind was creating a gigantic roar and I found that quite fucking beautiful because it was like an aural version of the Aurora Borealis, do you know what I mean, that's what it was like, it was like Aurora Borealis from my ears, so,

I quite enjoyed that, I was thinking of nearly, it was so good I was going to record it for you, but, I don't think I'd, I wouldn't have done it justice, I don't have the right earphones, or microphone,

recording wind is, uh, recording wind is weird, it's very difficult to record wind, because wind is the enemy of, you know, decent fidelity, it'll fuck shit up for you, you know, so, I just have to describe it to you, I have to describe that loud, cacophonous, hail wind, and it was beautiful, and I would like to thank the forces of nature for allowing me to bask in its cacophony I'm on a very deliberate ramble this week to be honest um main reason why is I was listening earlier on. I went to the gym earlier on to do a bit of heavy lifting from my chest because of my slow metabolism. I have a fierce fucking slow metabolism.

If I look at a Mars bar, I grow a pair of tits. So I must continually lift weights to speed my metabolism up. So I was listening to Bill Burr's podcast today while i was in the gym and jesus he's he's something else he's he's fucking fantastic i just he just talks into a mic for an hour and a half and i don't think he plans or structures it whatsoever and there is a beauty to it like today's episode that he did or it was monday's one he was nearly ignorant he was watching us he was watching an american football game halfway

through and getting distracted from his own podcast getting distracted from paid adverts that he was doing and it was a bit of a slap in the face for me because in recent podcasts i've been getting slightly more structured in how I'm delivering them and that's not a podcast then, that's a piece of radio and I don't want to do that. The point of a podcast and in particular the podcast hug I think is sincerity. You know, you have to have a degree of talking about whatever you want in a conversational fashion so that you the listener can understand that it's like i'm not talking out of my hope here um i'm actually talking off the top of my head i think that's an important aspect

what else was i at i'm reading a fantastic book called Beetlebone by Kevin Barry, who is one of my favourite writers. And, I don't know, myself and Kevin have been kind of mutual fans of each other's stuff now for a couple of years, just kind of keeping an eye on each other back and forth. just kind of keeping an eye on each other back and forth and I featured in his his periodical winter pages two times in a row and he gave me a lovely quote for the front sleeve of my book

when I was writing the Gospel According to Blind Boy I sent one or two of the earliest drafts on to Kevin which was a great fucking opportunity for me to have because it's like sending on a draft, one of my first drafts to one of the greatest writers in the world, was a great honour.

And he gave me one or two notes back, and those early notes from himself were, that was unreal for my confidence, because I'd never written a book before, so for Kevin Barry to go, you're on the trolley, was unreal. And myself and Kevin actually

while I have you I might actually say it myself and Kevin are doing a thing I don't know what it is it's in Dolan's Warehouse on the 24th of February and

what I'm thinking is we'll both maybe you can still get tickets for it by the way there's I think there's a couple a couple left I didn't I didn't advertise it very much um I suppose I am now mainly I think what we just want to do we want to go out in the lash and have a few pints after under the guise of doing a gig together but we'll do I I think we'll read a few short stories each of our work, and then hopefully an old conversation in front of the audience, and maybe, and I haven't asked Kevin yet, if I could record that for the fucking podcast, I think that would be class, but I'm reading Kevin's book Beetlebone at the moment, and it's, I haven't actually read it yet yet I've read the rest of his stuff but this is for me

this is the best work he's done yet it is fucking flabbergasting it's first of all the premise of it is it's kind of a quasi historical thing it's about John Lennon John Lennon bought an island off the west coast

of Ireland in 1967 and he eventually he gave it to some hippies John Lennon bought an island off the west coast of Ireland in 1967, and he eventually gave it to some hippies, but Beetlebone follows an alternative history of John Lennon staying there. I think, I haven't finished the book yet, I'm only 30 pages into it, 30, 40 pages into it, but the style of writing is amazing. It's written like a film script script there's a heavy use of dialogue and then very descriptive scenes

and it's third person throughout but it seems to somehow drift into almost first person every so often and it has that beautiful Joyce-ian quality to it now

people throw out the word Joyce-ian to sound fucking smart but no I literally mean it's Joyce-ian quality to it. Now, people throw out the word Joyce-ian to sound fucking smart, but no, I literally mean it's Joyce-ian in that the main thing that made James Joyce's work stand out from the rest when he was writing it, especially with Ulysses, is Joyce was concerned. Joyce would have been reading about Sigmund Freud

as Freud's work was coming out. And when you read something like Ulysses, often what you're reading on the page is not the words that the character is actually speaking, but the unconscious processes of that character's mind and how language is formed in the brain and the unconscious word associations that happen before the word

comes out of the mouth and that is kind of one of the hallmarks of joyce in writing and there that's present in beetle bone quite beautifully because i think for me the greatest success of beetle bone reading it so far is that kevin is able to use highly poetic um language and metaphor but at the same time while this is going on able to engage you in into a page turning story as well and that is fucking difficult because when you start getting very flowery and poetic and visual with your language the readers the mind's eye of the reader can be taken away from where you actually want the reader to go with the story and Kevin has balanced it fucking beautifully there and it's a real pleasure to read and I actually can't wait

to finish this podcast so I can climb into bed and read more of it. The wind is howling outside and it's time now for an advert. Do you know the little adverts that come in? And usually, last week we had a slide guitar pause and before that we have an ocarina pause. I wonder if I'm a little bit quiet and I turn the music down, can you hear the howling of the wind?

I doubt it. I'll do a little bit of ocarina. So you're either going to hear an advert or an ocarina. Actually I'll make my ocarina. This is what I'll do. I've got one ear listening to the wind outside the window. And I will try and recreate its intonations using the ocarina as a means of translating the power of the wind through a musical instrument for you, the listener. Thank you. people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone.

Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil

it's all for you no no don't the first omen I believe girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying six six six it's the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real who said that the real. What's not real? Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. So that was... That's an ocarina impersonation of the limerick hail hail ridden wind on tonight

Tuesday the 16th of January em few people in England have been telling me that the adverts that have been playing on this podcast have been for recruitment for the British Army which is quite ironic

sorry about that everybody don't know what don't join the British Army don't join the British Army don't do that don't involve yourself in the colonial the colonial nature of it no disrespect to anybody whose family is in the colonial the colonial nature of it no disrespect to anybody

whose family is in the British Army it's just there's better things to be doing become a nurse so what I was actually hoping to do with this week's podcast was I have

I was over in London at the weekend as I told you I'm working on a television project which I can't really speak about yet I brought over my little lavalier mic which is a mic that goes on my collar and my plan was to go into the British Museum which is one of my favorite it's my second favorite museum in the world my favorite museum in the world is the Royal Ontario Museum

in Toronto, but the British Museum is my second favourite museum, and it is a gigantic museum full of artefacts that the British have collected throughout their colonial past, and it's wonderful, it's fucking amazing, and so I went there with the mic on, recorded a full half hour, walking around, looking at artifacts, talking about them, talking about the history of them, and then when I got home, I'd found that the SD card in my recorder was corrupted, and it didn't go down, so I learned a very important lesson there, I immediately bought a new SD card, but that is a lost podcast episode now,

do you know what, I'll fuck off over to London in the summer, and I'll do a proper one, I'll be sure I'll be back again, I'll do a proper one, proper British Museum tour, because I reckon the fidelity was quite good too, I'd have gotten away with it,

I'll chance that, but it was interesting, I love the British Museum. I saw went back and had a good old squint at the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is a hugely important artefact. It's when

they started digging up the pyramids and finding the culture of ancient Egypt and specifically the writing system, the hieroglyphs. They had no idea what the hieroglyphs meant. And then they found this thing called the Rosetta Stone, which contained three of the same stories, I think it was a law or a decree, three of the same laws in three different languages. And luckily, one of the languages was Ancient Greece. So it had two types of Egyptian hieroglyph, I think,

and one Ancient Greece, because there was a part of Egypt that was controlled by the Greeks. So, using this, they were able to crack the code of what the hieroglyphs meant. Through the Rosetta Stone, this was the key to understand this ancient language. So it's probably the most important artifact in the British Museum. So I went around there. I had a look at some of the Assyrian artifacts,

some from the cultures of Ur and Babylon. So these are really, really old, you know, this is the cradle of civilization, the fertile crescent type shit, because you have to remember the areas around, you know, fucking from the northern Sahara up as far as Iran and modern day Iraq, this was known as the fertile crescent 15,000 years ago or whenever it was because it was fertile the Nile used to you know it was green and I think it's because of poor farming practices and over farming it eventually turned into a desert because humans fucked it up and then moved off into Europe I think that could be a hot take I don't remember where I heard that but

fucked off around there then I went upstairs and had a crack around a little bit of medieval Europe and I was there's a wonderful thing in the British Museum called the Sutton Hoo Collection

which is an Anglo-Saxon burial ship. It's one of the most important. I spoke about the Anglo-Saxons earlier. There were the boys that came over from Germany and mixed with the native English after the Romans left them before the Normans. But the Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo burial was this. This woman had a fucking mound of land out of her back garden and she dug it up and saw that there was an Anglo-Saxon chieftain buried with all his gold and his swords and his armour in this wooden ship. And it was very important for historians to find out about Anglo-Saxon culture. and culture but while I was there admiring this beautiful suit of armour and the board and everything that was there in the Sutton Hoo collection there were some Polish lads I say Polish now there were Eastern European lads hovering around me and they looked out of place in a museum shaved heads bomber jackets bodybuilders

and i was looking them up and down on the sly going jesus these these three lads don't look like they'd be particularly passionate about you know a fucking museum they look like they belonged up in soho in a strip club or in a bar getting moldy you know and then I checked myself because I was going that's a bit unfair I know nothing about these boys and then I looked closer and one of them on his neck had this kind of like this cross tattoo symbol

and I'd seen it before and I'm like oh shit that's a Nazi tattoo so there were three kind of really hardcore Eastern European Nazi lads having a debate around the Sutton Hoo collection

and I couldn't understand a word that they were saying but it scared the living fuck out of me because here's these what I can fairly accurately assume are these fascistic looking burly thugs which is fine well it's not fine but like when you see burly racist thugs you go well at least they're not

smart but it's like no these cunts were in a fucking museum obsessing about white heritage obsessing about because uh i think the the Anglo-Saxon thing is very much tied in with Aryanism, the Anglo-Saxons are seen as quite pure racially, racists do think that, so it was quite frightening to see these scary men who looked like they'd kick my head in, also indulging in the fruits of the mind and history and learning and backing up their racial ideology with a twisted view of history and being passionate about it. That's the type of shit that scares the living fuck out of me because that's what the Nazis were.

The Nazis were hard bastards, but they were smart as well so that was quite frightening also what's changed about the british museum british museum itself is kind of weird because they have um the whole building itself is it's this massive marble stone building based on roman and greek Greek architecture it has quite a lot of columns but then within the museum itself are the ruins of what I think is the Acropolis it's a Greek fucking temple couple is about 4,000 years old and that's in the British Museum so the museum is a Baudrillardian hyper real simulacra which contains within the walls an authentic greek acropolis that it was based upon so i found that quite ironic and amusing but security has changed in the museum i go to london quite a bit especially if we're over gigging and

i'd visit that museum i usually stay around the west end you know because I'd be gigging in the west end I'd visit that museum maybe three times a week if I could that's my peaceful place in London I will go there for fucking hours and just stare at artifacts mainly because I history for me I love history as you can tell it's like time travel and empathy do you know i love looking at a cup from medieval times and seeing that it's a little bit small because the people back then through nutrition and genetics were actually smaller people i love watching you know there's there's a little flute in the British Museum that's, I think it's 30,000 years old, if not older, maybe 50,000. Like that is fucking insane. That is before agriculture.

That's Stone Age man making this little musical instrument and I'm looking at it in front of me, a foot away from my eye. I love that that artifact allows me to. Empathically travel through time. To an ancient human. I get a real buzz off that. But anyway. I visit the museum frequently. And what's changed over the years. Because of those pups in ISIS. Is the security.

And. The first lash of that I got last year was. I called into the British Museum. And I was dressed head to toe in black. I had a fucking leather jacket and black pants and black shoes. And I had my backpack on because I was going to my gig later on. And my backpack was bulging. And as I walked in the door of the British Museum,

security came up to me and they were visibly nervous because here's a lad dressed in all black um you can probably tell as well from my eyebrows under my bag that i'm quite i'm kind of i'm darkish and the security guards freaked the fuck out they were very very nervous they weren't overreacting they were just shaking and afraid because I kind of fit the description of an ISIS bomber dressed in all black with a giant bulging backpack so the two security guards crowded around me can I can we see your backpack sir and then as soon as I opened my mouth and my filthy dirty paddy accent came out they just immediately sighed with relief and relaxed and started

laughing and they still went through my backpack fair enough but their anxiety went from 100 to 20 because they heard my Irish accent and the irony of that is unbelievable because 25-30 years ago for a British security guard to hear an Irish accent is what would have triggered his anxiety because we were the terrorists then. So I found it quite ironic that, you know, it was my accent that actually chilled him the fuck out. Ironically, those little moments

are what bring us closer to the British people. I often find that. I spoke earlier in a podcast one or two Ironically, those little moments are what bring us closer to the British people. I often find that. I spoke earlier in a podcast one or two about the book How the Irish Became White, that the Irish arrived in America at the very bottom of the racial system, but by becoming horrible to black people and Jews, they ended up in the bosom of the American elite and established themselves within high up on the color ladder. And it was quite similar in that moment with me in the British Museum. I felt more connected with the British person because my accent made him feel comfortable

and the enemy was no longer me, it was the other, the Muslim. And you've got to always kind of be careful with that. You see that here in Ireland. Like, we'll say Polish people in Ireland. If a Polish lad goes to the Irish pub and he's surrounded by a bunch of Irish people and there's a slight vibe of xenophobia because he is other he is different he is from a different country if that Polish person gives out complaints about black people or Muslims then he becomes a little bit more Irish in that

moment so anyway this Sunday when I went to the British Museum, yes, security was up much, much higher than it was before. And there's now several barriers to prevent a car flying in and a little tent that you have to queue up for to have all your stuff checked, which is, I'm sure it's necessary, but it's a shame as well because what it's going to do is it's going to, it will greatly reduce the footfall of people that arrive into the british museum because um who wants to queue for an hour to go in somewhere for a year ago you could just simply

walk in the door and one of the things that the brits really have sorted is their attitude towards museums museums are free over there you it's they there. They're supposed to be in such a way that you just walk in. So it's disappointing that you now have to queue up for ages. But I can appreciate what they're doing it. That was a bit of a rant. That was more of a rant,

but I'm happy to rant. On this object actually of, mentioned there about the Irish Americans, how the Irish became white. That's the name of a book by the way. Which takes race as a. Not necessarily as a skin colour. But as a social construct.

If you think of it this way. Italian people are. About as physically dark. As Romanian people. However. People would more likely consider the Roma, sorry, not Romanian, Roma, Roma gypsy people, people would more likely consider the Roma gypsy

to be black, in inverted commas, because of their place on the power structure, their place of privilege, whereas they would not say that about Italians, who are equally as dark, who we consider to be white or Spanish um but the Irish were notorious shitheads in America shit lords racist pricks Irish American Irish American culture traditionally because the Irish were very poor at the bottom of the system, working class Americans. And they viciously maintained their stature within that by kind of being racist against anyone who was their competition.

Whether it be Jews or Asian people or black people. or Asian people or black people. And I just found out the other day, 15th of January, the anniversary of, in 1940, 15th of January, 17 men in America, they were in an organisation called the Christian Front, were arrested for trying to perform a military coup, a fascistic, a fascist military coup on the American government. And yeah, they tried to throw over the US government in the name of fascism. So I was

like, fuck, that sounds interesting. So I looked them up, the Christian Front, about 90% Irish American. They had a, their newspaper, was called Social Justice, and they were led by it was a bishop or a priest called Michael Coughlin, Irish American name and supported by the bishop of Boston. militant christian group that were mostly anti-marxist and anti-semitic uh they full-on subscribe to the conspiracy theory that you'll still hear today that marxism is a jewish plot that because karl marx was jewish and i think engels who wrote the communist manifesto i don't think engels was his real name i I think he originally had a Jewish name. But the conspiracy theory goes that communism and Marxism is a ruse for Jewish control. And this Christian front,

shower of Irish-American shitlord shitheads, who aligned themselves very much with Franco in Spain, who was a notorious prick, yeah, they tried to overthrow the US government in 1940 on the 15th of January. Found that very, very interesting. The silver lining of it is that one of the main people who fought against these people was an Irish American woman called Frances Sweeney who was a journalist and she was a anti-racism journalist and an anti-antisemitism journalist who was also an Irish American and she called out these shitheads. They were eventually kind of left off the hook. I think they were viewed as poor victims of fascistic ideology and were not

thrown in jail for even though they tried to plant bombs and overthrow the US government which is odd. I think it's time to take some of your beautiful beautiful questions. I'm going to take a mixture of questions from Twitter and Patreon because I

want to keep that sense of equality. Last week I only took questions from Patreon because there's just too many questions on Twitter. I want to thank again this week the people who are subscribing to the Patreon which is patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and what this is is it's a system whereby if you enjoy the podcast you can donate a little bit of money to me uh most people are doing four euros a month some people doing a euro a month but you know what it doesn't matter whatever small bit that you give means the world to me it keeps the podcast going and it's jesus it's great lads to be sitting down to the fucking podcast every week to be recording it and for it not just to be something i do for the love of it to actually be able to earn a couple of quid off it that is a lovely

lovely feeling and thank you so much for the little bits that you contribute because it's the first time i made any quid off the internet i've been doing the internet for years and you don't really make money from it what you make is likes and shares and hopefully that might turn into a ticket for a gig if you're lucky so i love this and thank you so much for contributing to the patreon so let's get on to a couple of questions before that actually i recommend an album last week i recommended uhgy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars this week I'd like to recommend the album John Prine by John Prine

it's eponymous it's country music slash folk music it's about as country-ish as we'll say Neil Young but John Prine is an incredible songwriter the album i think is from 1971 incredible songwriter again somebody who his songs are short stories in the tom waits randy newman vein and the album john prine has got some fucking beautiful songs with unbelievable lyrics that will break your heart so he I think he wrote it when he was only about 21 also and he's got some

being elderly is a theme in his music which was quite odd for someone that young but he's got one or two songs in it from the point of view of elderly people. There's a song called Hello in there about a lonely elderly person. And if that doesn't make you start bawling, crying, you're not human. Because elderly people are often erased and forgotten about and ignored. And we're all guilty of that.

We're all guilty of that. We don't think about the emotions or feelings or needs or wants of elderly people at all um i don't know why that is but it just seems to be a thing but the song hello in there by john prine on that album john prine that will make you ring up your ma or your da or your grandparents or whatever or just your neighbor next door who's a little bit older and it'll make you say hello listen to that song then listen to the whole album john prine questions james nesbitt on patreon asks why is reality tv so pervasive and popular and what is it doing to the collective unconscious? I don't think it's doing anything to the collective unconscious.

I don't think that's... You can't really fuck with the collective unconscious. What is it doing to our... not consciousness, but I would say maybe the zeitgeist. What is it doing to our cultural consciousness? It's certainly heightening our individualism. I mean, reality TV, you have to remember, you know, it did develop along the same time as the internet, so it's further, it's devaluing what fame is. Actually, look, I said it to you a couple of fucking

weeks ago, lads. Reality tv is one of the reasons I had a bag on my head I started the rubber bandits the summer that big brother was on television in the summer of 2000 and I became painfully aware that fame was meaningless that you could become famous and you could become notorious for doing fuck all and also that being famous doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be wealthy so i'm fairly well known in ireland but i still have to use the same buses as everyone else the same trains i still have to go to aldi i still have to live a normal life so I don't want that that's unpleasant so I wear a bag in my head

to get away from that devaluing of notoriety that has happened because of reality TV why is reality TV so pervasive and popular? money I think simply is the answer reality TV is incredibly cheap to make you don't need a team of writers you don't need a decent director um you can the people that are on reality television are doing it

as part of the gig economy they want they they just want notoriety they don't want to get paid properly even something like jersey shore they were getting paid like 50 quid an episode or something stupid like that they weren't getting paid like 50 quid an episode or something stupid like that, they weren't getting paid properly they were making their money from like doing nightclub appearances and stuff so reality TV is incredibly cheap to make and it is consumed

voraciously is that a word? I don't know it's not reality either it's, if you think as well in terms of money saving, right? Traditional drama, that requires a script writer. Script means that you write every single word in the entire half hour. That is a lot of work.

It requires a couple of people, highly professional people, to be paid at the right amount of money because to be able to write a script requires talent, so there's less people needed. Now, scripts for reality TV can just be written simply by a producer. All they're doing is looking for moments of conflict. And follow a simple three act structure. And there you go.

There's your reality TV. And the meat and two veg of the script is written by the contestants. Just talking out of their hopes. Connor Carwin asks. Or is it Connor Carwin? No Brian. Brian asks. When can we expect the Italo Disco episode?

I'll save that one. I think for when the weather is a bit better. And I'll do the history of Italo Disco. But only as it is contextualised within the larger history of disco and house music. We'll give it a couple of months. I'll have a think about that one. I want to do it properly. Daniel Roberts asks.

Do you watch sport at all? No I don't. I don't. And I don't have the gift of understanding sport and it pisses me off i would love to because it would just mean one more thing that i can be passionate about i just don't get sport i don't understand it i don't enjoy playing sport and i certainly don't enjoy observing or watching sport having a clue don't know why it's good i don't know it escapes me but that doesn't mean that i devalue it i feel that i'm missing out i'm missing out on sport i

don't have the gift of understanding it tommy ryan roach blind boy how about you come up with a general mental health plan for us to follow i'll have a think about that and do it properly in more detail down the line right because it's quite a big one but you know if if you're we'll say not in the throes of depression or the throes of anxiety or think you might have mental illness you know because obviously the first thing that i would suggest to anybody is you go and see a counselor go and see a professional if you can't afford it there are charity services available unfortunately you can't go to the fucking hse because they'll put you on a waiting list for a year but if you're doing okay and just want to protect yourself right uh from mental health issues you can't go wrong with you know read about cognitive behavioral therapy emotional intelligence

and mindfulness meditation those three things are no harm for anyone to have a lash at if it was physical health we were talking about there. That would be me. The equivalent of saying. Lift a few weights. Do a bit of running. You know. Weights.

Cardio. Keep an eye on the diet. That's. What those three things. Kind of are. In mental health wise. Jason Nevins. Asks.

What are. Some things. You can do. Daily. To maintain. Mindfulness. What I would say., mindfulness is very simple. Mindfulness is simply to be fully present and to be fully 100% aware of what it is you are doing in the present moment.

Okay? I tell you what the opposite of mindfulness is if you're driving a car and you get to your destination and you can't remember the journey because your driving becomes completely autonomous and your head was off thinking about whatever it was okay a lot of the time with us humans and a lot of our discomfort you know emotional discomfort can come from the fact that the inside of our heads tends to be worrying about shit that's already happened or worrying about shit that might happen okay both of those things are not reality they're not present reality what's gone before no longer exists in the past. So to worry

excessively about it is not rational. To worry excessively about what might go wrong is also not particularly rational. That doesn't mean you can't be concerned about what has gone before and what has gone ahead. I'm talking about excessive worrying over these things worrying about what somebody said to you fantasizing about an anger you have inside oh i wish i said this to them that would have showed them replaying arguments and conversations in your head that you had with another person that you would like to have all of these things are the opposite of mindfulness and when your when your day is occupied by these type of thoughts your stress level is always high and it's detrimental for your mental health so mindfulness is simply to focus as much as you can on whatever the

fuck it is you're doing right now and when you do that it's and you do it skillfully it's not possible to be thinking about what has gone before what might happen so regarding daily mindfulness mindfulness doesn't necessarily mean sitting down in a meditative state with a candle on chanting something true mindfulness is i tell you this next when you eat a meal this is how you this is how you do it next meal that you eat or even a glass of water or a cup of tea really really you you know notice notice what's happening when you do it if like if you pick up that cup of tea feel how warm your hands are focus all your energy in your hands and feel how warm your hands are as they cradle that cup then notice as you bring that cup up to your nose and your mouth how you feel

the steam on your cheeks and coming up to your eyes then take that first sip and really appreciate and taste it and feel the warmth of it in your mouth then notice the warm liquid as it goes down into your belly and makes your belly feel a little bit warm these very very detailed observations about whatever it is you're doing right now that That is mindfulness. And if you can bring into that. A slow breathing. Like I spoke about last week. Where by your breathing into the nose. And feeling the breath as it inflates your stomach.

Not necessarily your chest. That is mindfulness type carry on. When I spoke earlier on about the wind. Do you know? Mindfulness allows me to be creative, I went outside into that hailstorm to deliberately try and experience it in a mindful fashion, to truly feel what that sleet was like on my face and to listen to the sound of the fucking hailstones and because I was mindful in that moment it allowed me to have the kind of

creative observation which is the wind sounds differently because the mass of the air has changed as a result of the hailstones if I wasn't mindful and I was out just pissed off that the weather was shit or pissed off at the rain I wouldn't have had that observation about nature and I've been able to tell you about it only because of my mindfulness was I able to do it be mindful the next time you eat a dinner really notice the food on your plate notice the smell notice what it tastes like be mindful of how you cook be mindful of how you walk the feeling of the ground underneath your feet notice how when you walk down the road how the different texture of tarmac to concrete to grass and really put your mind into your feet when you do that that's full

mindfulness that's what that is um often when you begin meditation, and it's a good way to calm yourself down for anything, it's a good way, if like me, like I'm introverted, so I get a little bit nervous when I'm around any people, to be honest, you know, so if I know that I'm getting into a situation where there's going to be a lot of people,

and I want to deal with that in it, in a way that I'm not looking for their approval. That's something that often when I get nervous around people I can do or say things whereby I'm essentially looking for their approval because I'm nervous and that's not a good way to be because it lowers your self-esteem and it doesn't get you a lot of respect from people so i ground myself before i meet other human beings or before i meditate and to ground yourself means let's say you're sitting in a chair or you could be leaning against something whatever it's best to do it in a chair you close your eyes and you truly notice and feel the weight of your feet connecting with the floor underneath you and then it's like you you mentally scan your body and you scan from your feet up to

your calves and you feel your calves with your mind you feel your calves and you notice them and you notice them in a way that you don't usually do and your kneecaps and your thighs and you go all the way up your body until you reach your face and your head and you just mentally check in and notice that these parts of your body exist and when you do that properly too you'll start to notice like um little tensions or little pains that you didn't even know you had and it can be quite useful you know and that's called checking in with your body that's a grounding exercise and I do that to get my head in check before I speak with humans or maybe I don't really get nervous with gigs anymore

but I used to so I ground myself before that that's a daily mindfulness routine and it's not at all complicated it just means do what you're doing anyway but just bring it into your direct attention to be honest the hard part is what's difficult is how we carry on autonomously it's quite a lot of effort lads to be doing the dishes and at no point to consciously consider that you're washing dishes

and for inside your head to be, you know, having a fantasy argument with somebody who wronged you earlier on that week. That's a lot more effort than silence in your mind and looking at the lovely suds and watching the plates as the grease is lifted off with the washing up liquid and viewing all of this as it is before you and noticing the smell of the fairy liquid and how warm your hands are and how wrinkly your fingers feel that's far less effort than having an imaginary argument in your head which is the opposite of mindfulness you know jamie asks i'd like to hear your thoughts on death and loss and how you can cope with these things um that's a tough one but again i'd bring mindfulness into that you know you have to death and loss are are a guarantee in our existence they are

they're a given death is is a given it's going to happen to us and it's going to happen to someone that you really love and care about and they're going to be gone and it could be, and loss and death doesn't just have to be a human as well, it could be an animal, or it could be, fuck it man, it could be the loss of a dream, the loss of an aspiration, it could be looking back on the past 10 years of your life and going, Jesus, I'm not how happy, I'm not very happy with how that went and the key to dealing with it I think first of all you cannot avoid the pain of it okay your pain is a part of human existence pain is necessary and it is guaranteed so you must experience that pain in a mindful fashion. However, there is a lot of avoidable pain,

and the majority of pain that humans experience, I believe, is completely avoidable. It's that shit I spoke about just there. Your brain living in the past or living in the future, and fantasizing about negative things that have happened or may happen. That's unnecessary, avoidable pain. But loss and death, that's fucking, that's real pain. There's nothing you can do about it, you know. I don't know if I spoke about this before, but my cat died there about two years ago. Now, I know that might sound foolish to some people,

but that broke my fucking heart because I raised this cat since he was a baby and when you put a little creature that relies upon you for food and warmth and love and you raise that since it's a little child to an adult your brain just thinks that it's a child simple simple as that, so my cat Charlie was his name, died of a liver disease, he may have been poisoned, I'm not sure, and it fucking devastated me, it floored me, it broke my heart, and I struggled to find meaning in that loss as well, because he was just a little innocent cat, who liked nothing more than lying around around in the sun, and getting his food, and having his little scratches, and cuddles,

so I found it difficult for me, to, I mean, what I had to reflect upon, is that the quality of his life, when he was alive, was, he had a very high quality life,

but it floored me, it ended up fucking up a gig, I tell you that, I was gigging at Body and Soul, and, I was due up, we were up doing a song, and he'd only died the day before, I didn't want to do the gig, but at the same time as well, I didn't want to cancel, because it'd be disappointing

people, and I was being mindful about his death, so I was very emotional, and I started singing, it was just before the song Spastic Hawk, which is about a pet hawk who is disabled and I dedicated the song to Charlie and I spent the entire fucking song doing the worst performance of my life because I was bawling crying behind the bag singing Spastic Hawk

because all I could think of was poor fucking dead Charlie but regarding we said death or loss of someone who's fucking close to you, there is unbelievable pain that you can't avoid. However, you can take great meaning from the loss of that person. Because death and loss, inevitably, down the line line we can only grow from it and in hindsight you can look back on that so the healthiest way to deal with bereavement is to be able to tolerate

and accept and not try and change that the pain is happening and there isn't a hell of a lot you can do about it but you can you can improve how not improve but you can avoid unavoidable pain such as denying to yourself you know tears a lot of men in particular will deny themselves tears over loss or they'll tell themselves that they're not as hurt as they are or they'll pretend that ah it's grand there's nothing i could have done about it this these this is the language of defense mechanisms and what this does is it creates complicated pain and complicated uh bereavement which will only eventually come back and bite you into the hoop so acceptance and what and what acceptance is, is like, I don't know, if you got fucked into a river, and you can't swim against the current,

so you decide that you must go with the flow of the tide, but there's rocks ahead, you just have to accept that the tide is carrying you and because you're mindful and looking forward you can see the rocks ahead and you can gently maybe sway yourself left and right to avoid walloping off them but you cannot stop the flow of the river it's carrying you but eventually

the river will quieten down and you'll look back in it that may have been a tired ridiculous metaphor for bereavement I don't know alright we're up to the that was a fucking very

ranty podcast boys wasn't it I don't think I stopped once but sure look I'll see you next week look after

yourselves please keep subscribing recommend the podcast to a friend tweet about it put it on Facebook I want this to grow we're up to nearly a million listens now which is Please keep subscribing. I recommend the podcast to a friend. Tweet about it.

Put it on Facebook. I want this to grow. We're up to nearly a million listens now, which is class. But I want to fucking... I want to see how big this thing can grow. And I do think it can with the help of ye. If you do feel like subscribing to the Patreon and giving a few quid, please do. But you don't have to. It's still going to go on regardless of that.

What else can I say? If you enjoyed my book the gospel according to blind boy i would appreciate it if you went onto amazon and left a nice review if you like don't leave a shit review because that would take the aggregate down of the the star system but if i get enough good reviews on it i think what it'll do is it'll just suggest the book more to people and i wouldn't mind the book getting into the hands of some yanks or some more brits or some australians because it's sold quite well in ireland but i'd like to grow it beyond that if possible so if you feel like being sound and you like the book leave a review on amazon please so anyway go on peace and have a lovely day and a lovely week and most importantly look after yourself and the little bit i spoke about mindfulness there give that a crack it's very simple if you're eating a bun if you're eating a sandwich do it mindfully see how you get on

and gradually increase that in increments throughout your day. And you will become a happier person. And that's not even psychology. That's fairly basic fucking Buddhism. A few thousand years old. They've been doing that for years. Even the Catholics had a bit of mindfulness. Nuns counting their rosary beads.

Counting rosary beads and doing a decade of the rosary, which are beads in your hand, that is a mindful exercise. It is a mindful, meditative exercise. And you find that with a lot of... Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now

for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Religion.

I'm not even religious alright yart have a good one Thank you. you