The Blindboy Podcast - Valentines cards come from the Pagan ritual of slapping bare arses with the hide of a skinned Dog

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Valentines cards come from the Pagan ritual of slapping bare arses with the hide of a skinned dog  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Genuflect for Wesley, you wet Presleys. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Winter is wafting like a fart in a car. The window of nature is rolling down. The promise of spring is whispering in the ether. It's February. February. I never know how to pronounce it.

February. February. It's February. February. February. February. It's February. February. February. No one's pronouncing that R. I get very pissed off with the R in February. I used to get annoyed with it in school. Why can't it just be like January? I can make sense of January. It's Jan and you Ari. What the fuck is February? Why can't it just be February? Why is it February? Well, it comes from the word februa. There was a pagan god, a pagan god called Februs. Februs was the pagan god of purification. At this time of year, of purification. At this time of year in ancient Rome, about 2,500 years ago,

there was a pagan festival called Lupercalia. This festival was named after the god, the pagan god, Lupercus. Luper means wolf. Sheep would have been very important to the economy of ancient Rome. Late February and early March is lambing season. It's when all the little lambs are born. And when lambs are born, animals attack. So the god Lupercus was like this shape-shifting wolf dog whose shepherds would pray to, to protect their lambs. The god Lupercus is also where the word leprechaun comes from. Luperchaun. We thought for years that leprechaun was an Irish word, but researchers

up in Queen's University, Belfast, they spent five years trying to find the etymology of the word leprechaun, and they reckon it comes from Lupercus Lupercum that it's a Latin word but anyway the pagan festival of Lupercalia used to be held in ancient Rome right now and it was about fertility and purification and protecting all those lambs in the lambing season making sure that all the lambs would be born healthy and that they'd grow up to

be sheep. So people celebrated Lupercalia. Now the pagan festival of Lupercalia, it wasn't just about the purification and fertility of sheep to give birth to healthy lambs. Lupercalia was also about the fertility and purification of humans. Lupercalia was a sex festival. It was like a foreplay festival. But if this pagan festival was so important, why is this month not named after Lupercalia or Lupercus? Why is this month called February? or Lupercus. Why is this month called February? Well what the young men would do in this pagan festival is they would they would sacrifice a wolf to the god Lupercus. This god Lupercus who could shapeshift into a wolf and protect flocks of sheep. Young men. Would sacrifice a wolf. To the god Lupercus. But often they couldn't find a wolf.

So they'd just use a dog. So young men would. Kill a dog. And then they'd skin the dog. And then from the dog's skin. They would make these thin strips of leather. Out of a dog's skin, they would make these thin strips of leather out of a dog's skin. And then the young men would get completely naked, all holding these thin strips of dog skin. And then the young women would get completely naked.

And the men would chase the women through the streets and whip the women's arses with dog skin. This thin strip of dog skin was called a februa. After the god of purification, Februs. So that's why February has an R. That's why there's an R in February. The R in February refers to a thin strip of dog skin that's used to slap a woman's arse to purify her and bring about fertility. This was the belief at the time and it happened between February 13th and 15th. Now what we don't know is how consensual this was.

We don't know. Was this a mass act of violence where men were chasing women and whipping their arses with dog skin without consent? Or was there enthusiastic consent and this was a celebration and a festival and the women wanted their arses slapped with dog skin because it was titillating. We don't know, but we do know that's why February has an R because of the februous, the thin strip of a dead dog's skin that's used to flagellate an arse. Now why did people stop doing this? This was celebrated well into the 5th century. Look at that now. What the fuck is a century? What in the fuck is a century?

That's my problem with February. That's what it does to your head. I just call it century, century. There's no such thing as a century. This is why I dislike February. It fucks up my words. Why can't it just be like January? There's no such thing as a century. This is why I dislike February. It fucks up my words. Why can't it just be like January, January, February, January, February?

But as I've explained, there's a very good reason why it's called February. The whipping February of the festival of Lupercalia. But what happened to Lupercalia? Well, like all pagan festivals with long traditions, it gets absorbed into Christianity. One story is that around the year 270 AD, when Rome was ruled by an emperor called Claudius II, there was a priest, a priest in Rome by the name of Valentine. Now the thing is with Claudius II, he was always starting wars with the Goths. The Goths were pagan people from Germany. And Claudius was forever at war with the Goths. And he wanted loads and loads of men to go and fight the Goths. But Claudius believed that men who were married were bad soldiers. That men who were married

wouldn't die on the battlefield. That their desire to go back to their wife was too strong. So when it came down to it it they wouldn't give their lives up on the battlefield. They'd run away. Well that sounds mad but about 700 years previous to that in Greece the equivalent of like special forces like the navy seals in Greece were called the sacred band of Thebes and this was these soldiers, a troop of soldiers made up of 150 gay couples. Because the belief was, if you've got a lot of men, 150 of them, and they're all gay couples, they will fight harder on the battlefield because they're not trying to save their own life. They're trying to save the life of the man they love who's fighting beside them.

But back to Claudius 700 years later, 270 AD, Claudius II is like, no, fuck that. I just want a lot of straight men in my army and none of them are allowed to get married because if they're married, then they won't die on the battlefield. They'd be thinking about their wives. So Emperor Claudius II, second around 270 he banned marriage he made it illegal for men to get married so that he could have soldiers that had nothing to lose but even though marriage was illegal under claudius

the second the priest val Valentine, said fuck that. Because he was a Christian. And he's like, marriage is the Christian union between a man and a woman. So Valentine started doing illegal marriages. Couples who wanted to get married, they went to the priest, Valentine, and he married them, even though it was illegal. The Emperor Claudius found out, and had Valentine arrested. And Valentine was put in jail, in the house of a judge called Asterius. And I'm imagining this, this Roman villa, with the smell of incense,

frescoes on the wall, and the sound of trickling water. And Valentine the priest locked up in a cage in this house. Asterius was effectively Valentine's jailer. Now Asterius wasn't Christian. And while he was Valentine's jailer and had him locked up, he got talking to Valentine and he was curious. He's like, you're one of these priests you are.

You're one of these new Christians, aren't you? Because this is 270 AD. Rome was still pagan and Christians were this weird illegal cult that was only 250 years old or 240 years old. So Asterius, who was keeping Valentine prisoner, he was curious And he starts asking him questions. Tell me about this Christ fella. Tell me about what you do. Tell me about the holy things that you do. And Valentine's like, Yeah, yeah.

Jesus Christ. He died for our sins. They crucified him. 240 years ago. I'm a follower of Christ. And I can do all sorts. Because I of Christ and I can do all sorts because I follow Christ. I can do miracles.

Valentine's from Cork for some reason. I can do miracles. I can turn water into wine because I follow Christ. And then Asterius was like, you're talking out of your arse. You're talking shit. Prove it to me.

Prove it. So then Valentine says to Asterius I noticed that your daughter is blind because you see Valentine is he's like under house arrest in Asterius's house so he's there with his family even though Valentine is locked up

he says I noticed your daughter is blind I can use the power of Christ to cure your daughter's blindness. And Asterius goes, fuck off. And then Valentine goes, I can. Give me a go. So Asterius loved his daughter and he hated the fact that she was blind. Her name was Julia. So he brought his little daughter, Julia, to Valentine when he was under house arrest. And Valentine put his hands over her eyes and did some Christ stuff, some Christ magic. And then this restored her sight. And now Julia could see again. And Asterius was so happy because

his little daughter could see. And now Asterius was like, oh my God, this fella's the real deal. This Valentine fella, this priest, he's after curing my daughter of her blindness. He's performed a miracle. He's the real deal. And I have him as prisoner now because he was doing illegal marriages. So Asterius, because he's a judge and a jailer, he goes to Claudius II, the emperor, and he says, hold on a minute. You can't execute this fella. You can't execute him. He's legit. He cured my daughter of blindness. And then Claudius is like, fuck that.

He was doing illegal marriages. And I'm trying to, I'm at a war with the Goths. I'm trying to kill all the Goths and this cunts doing illegal marriages. Asterius pleaded and pleaded with Claudius but it was no good. Valentine was to be sentenced to death, public execution. And when they brought Valentine to the public square to be stoned and beaten to death, the executioner said to him, Have you any last words before we execute you? And Valentine said, I don't have any last words, but I have a little letter, a little note. And I'd like you to pass this letter on to Julia, the girl who I cured of blindness.

And he passed the letter on and on the letter it said, from your Valentine. And then they beat him with rocks until he died. And that's the first Valentine's Day letter. Now to me I'm thinking, what the fuck's he writing her a Valentine's letter for? Did he cure her blindness because he secretly fancied her?

The fuck was he doing? But that's how Saint Valentine became Saint Valentine. And that story of course is from a hagiography. Hagiography is, it's a sensational mythologised biography of a saint that's written many many years after the saint's death. Written by monks in the Middle Ages, usually for the purposes of tourism. Monasteries and holy sites, holy Christian sites throughout the Middle Ages. These were sites of pilgrimages.

Different monasteries throughout Europe, especially in Ireland, would compete, they'd compete to have the best saints, the best saints associated with their monastery, and the best stories and the best miracles. It was tourism, because if you had a fuckload of pilgrims, then you had economic prosperity, you had tourism. But that pagan festival of Lupercalia, the absolute madness. Let's kill a dog.

Let's kill a dog. Skin it. Make a whip out of its skin. And then whip women's arses with it. Let's do that on February 14th. This went on into the 5th century. That's 200 years after Rome became Christian. This kept continuing.

This mad pagan festival of whipping arses with a dog's skin. So St. Valentine's Day replaced that. Instead of whipping someone's arse with dog skin, you sent them a little love letter. You sent them a little Valentine's card. So when you're doing that today, if you're sending someone a Valentine's or texting someone a Valentine's,

know that that history is thousands of years old and it came from killing a dog and making a whip out of their skin that you hit someone on the arse with. And know that the dead dog arse whip was called the Februa. And that's why February has an R. I started to think about all this last week. You'll know from last week's podcast that I was in Oslo and then I went to Berlin. But while I was in Oslo, I was very disappointed because I'd planned on going to Oslo to do a gig, but also to see the Viking Ship Museum. I wanted to see the big Viking museum, but it was closed and I was left very

disappointed. But I refused to allow this disappointment to define my trip to Oslo. I said, fuck it. I can't go to the Viking ship museum. That's okay. Let's do something different. So I did do something different. The promoter, the promoter of my gig over in Oslo in Norway was a lovely Scottish man called Carl. And Carl runs a flotation tank business. And he brought me over to Oslo to do a gig. I think as a way to promote his flotation tank business. Which is wonderfully mad.

And I went to Card and I said, the Viking ship museum is closed. I'm so disappointed. And then he said, why don't you try one of these floatation tanks? I'll set it up for you. Come back in two hours and you can use the floatation tank. So I said, fuck it. Yes, I'll do that. The Viking museum is closed and I've made a promise to myself that I'm going to have some type of adventure in Oslo and this is perfect. I wasn't expecting to go into a flotation tank.

So I used the two hours to find out as much as I possibly could about flotation tanks. A flotation tank is like a very, a very large bath with a cover on it. And inside the tank is water. But very, very, very salty water. Very salty.

So that when you lie in the flotation tank, you float completely in darkness. A flotation tank is a type of sensory deprivation. They were invented by a psychiatrist called John C. Lilly, an American fella in the 1930s. And John C. Lilly wanted to experiment with sensory deprivation to try and understand human consciousness. What made John C. Lilly curious as a psychoanalyst was he proposed that if you completely deprive the senses, so like if you're in a flotation tank, you forget that you have a body.

You don't feel your body anymore because you're floating in salt and everything's dark. When you remove the feeling of a sense of your body, you're left only with the mind. And then the mind will begin to travel inside itself. And that's why John C. Lilly invented flotation tanks. But while John C. Lilly was in one of his flotation tanks, he started to wonder

if he could speak to dolphins. He started to wonder about the possibility of human-dolphin communication. Something about being in the flotation tank and floating in the water allowed him to have a type of empathy with dolphins where he wondered, geez they're really smart. They're very very smart animals. I wonder, I wonder could we teach a dolphin to speak English?

I wonder would that be possible? So he got out of his flotation tank and he rang up NASA and he said, I'm a respected scientist, John C. Lilly, and I'm interested in whether I can teach a dolphin how to speak English. And this is 1960. And then NASA said, well, we're NASA. We want to explore the universe. And sometimes we wonder, what would happen if we met an alien? If we went up into space and we met an alien, would we be able to speak with this alien? We don't know. And then John C. Lilly said, well, why don't ye, why don't ye let me try and speak with a dolphin?

Why don't ye set up a big research centre where we can study whether or not we can teach a dolphin to speak English, to communicate with a human, and then ye, NASA, can use this experiment to figure out whether it's possible to speak with an alien if you ever met one. So NASA said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. So NASA set up this Dolphin Research Centre on the island of St. Thomas, an island just beside Jeffrey Epstein's island. This was 1960, so long before Jeffrey Epstein so NASA set up

a research centre with John C. Lilly where he was like okay let's try and teach this dolphin how to speak English using its blowhole so the lab was set up on the island of St. Thomas

and the scientists and John C. Lilly were observing the dolphins, trying to figure out how did they communicate, what's going on underneath the water, echolocation, all these means of dolphin communication. But then one day, this girl showed up, she was about 21,

and she lived on St. Thomas. And this girl's name was Margaret Lovett. And she was about 21 and she lived on St Thomas and this girl's name was Margaret Lovett and she was just fascinated she was she she knocked at the door of the lab and said I heard you have dolphins in here and I love animals I just want to know what's going on this this is amazing so the scientist said come on in and have a look. Now Margaret couldn't believe what she saw. John C. Lilly was in there and he had three dolphins in a tank and John C. Lilly was able to say things to the dolphins and they were using their blowholes to respond to him. So it did appear to be a type of communication. He was fascinated with. Cuddy turned her blowholes into like a mouth, a mouth that could say human words. Now, Margaret Lovett thought this was fascinating.

And she kept coming back to the Dolphin Research Centre and the scientists would let her in. And before long, she was swimming with the dolphins in their tanks and playing with them and becoming friends. And she also started to become obsessed with John C. Lilly's idea of, can we teach these dolphins to speak English? So Margaret loved it now. She's with the dolphins 12 hours a day in this giant tank in this giant water tank she really believes she can make these dolphins talk and the scientist John C. Lilly is like I reckon we can do this too but then Margaret says I can only achieve through empathy with these dolphins if I live with the fuckers I don't want to go home in the evening. I want to spend 24 hours a day in this tank with

these dolphins. And John C. Lilly says, fuck it, that sounds like a great idea. That's kind of odd because Margaret Lovett is just some girl who showed up. She's not a scientist. She's just some girl who knocked on the door of the top secret, top

secret NASA laboratory in trying to find out if you can speak to dolphins. And she just arrives. So John C. Lilly says, yeah, let's figure it out. You're going to live in a tank with that dolphin 24 hours a day for three months. So she began. And there were three dolphins. And she was living 24 hours a day in the tank with these dolphins.

Her bed was floating on the water above. She had a desk for taking notes that was above the water. But she lived with these dolphins. And one of them, a young teenage male dolphin called Peter, he became real good friends with her. And he would swim around her all the time and she made serious progress teaching him how to speak. She taught him to say Margaret, a dolphin, to say Margaret, her name, with his fucking blowhole. Now he couldn't say the M but he could say the rest of it. Now the thing was is there was three dolphins in this tank. There was Peter the dolphin and then

there was two other females but Peter wasn't interested in the two other females at all. He completely ignored them and he was obsessed with Margaret the human. And Margaret was making serious progress with him, teaching him how to speak. But there was a problem. Peter the dolphin was becoming sexually attracted to Margaret the human. And now when Margaret was trying to teach him how to speak, Peter didn't want to play games anymore. He didn't want to learn. He didn't want to try to speak. He didn't want to learn. He didn't want to try to speak.

He was just horny all the time. So then Margaret started to masturbate him. She was wanking off the dolphin. Now she's given interviews on this. She said, look, to be honest, I had to do it. Because if I didn't wank off the dolphin he wouldn't continue learning English so this is a thing I had to do to continue with

the progress of his learning I didn't think much of it it's just he was horny, he was there he wasn't interested in the other female dolphins so I helped him out, relieved him and then we got on with our work now to make things even more mad, there was a TV show called Flipper.

Flipper was about a talking dolphin. And Flipper was inspired by John C. Lilly's research, right? But then John C. Lilly started to hang about with the producer of Flipper. And the producer of Flipper gave John C. Lilly LSD for the first time. So now John C. Lilly's after doing acid. And this has changed everything. So now he wants to give acid to the dolphins. So John C. Lilly and NASA are now injecting fucking acid LSD into the dolphins.

Now Margaret hated this. She thought that this was wrong. So they injected LSD into every dolphin but not Peter, the one that she was wanking off. So back to Oslo last week when I got offered the opportunity to use a fucking flotation tank. I was not expecting. I wasn't expecting that this was going to be the history of flotation tanks. expecting. I wasn't expecting that this was going to be the history of flotation tanks. NASA, NASA, wanking off dolphins and giving them acid so they can learn how to talk to aliens. That is not the research hole I expected to fall down when looking up flotation tanks. But I was very excited nonetheless. So I went to the flotation centre. And I got completely nude.

Completely naked. Because that's how you do a flotation tank. And then I climbed into the tank and closed the lid. And the water was perfect body temperature. Very still water. Perfect body temperature. And I couldn't believe how floaty it was. You don't sink.

My body did not sink. Because there's so much salt in the water. It did not sink. But also it doesn't feel natural. Water is something that drowns you. You're supposed to sink in water so initially my body wouldn't relax my body was tense my body was trying to fight the water because my brain believed that I was gonna sink I was gonna drown but of course I knew I was safe so I wasn't panicking but I wasn't relaxing my

muscles. Here I am in this flotation tank, pitch dark and I'm losing the feeling of being a human. I can't feel my body because I'm floating in salty water. I can't see anything. And my mind is fighting this. And that's when I start to fixate on the R in February. That's when I started to fixate on that R. And I start to think of the februa, and the skinned dogs, and the whip, and the arses.

And then I start getting pissed off about the Viking Museum again. I'm there in Oslo, in a flotation tank, and I'm thinking, fuck's sake, I really wanted to off about the Viking Museum again. I'm there in Oslo in a flotation tank and I'm thinking, fuck's sake, I really wanted to go to that Viking Museum and it's closed. And then I started to think, you know, fuck it, when I fly back and I get into Dublin, I'm going to go and see something nice in Dublin. Maybe I'll go to the Viking Museum in Dublin to make up for the fact that I didn't see the Viking Museum in Oslo. I'm thinking about dolphins.

I'm thinking about visiting the bones of St. Valentine in Dublin to make up for the fact that I didn't see the Viking Museum in Oslo. I'm thinking about dolphins. I'm thinking about visiting the bones of Saint Valentine in Dublin. I mentioned there in the Middle Ages about hagiographies, the biographies of saints. Different monasteries throughout Europe would make up stories about saints so that their monastery or their religious site would have more tourism, more pilgrimages. And what also became very valuable for tourism in the medieval times with Christian monasteries and Christian sites were relics, parts of a saint's body. Saint Valentine, he was executed, executed in 290, right? That's a long time ago. That's nearly 2,000 years ago. What happened to his body

after he was beaten to death with stones? They decapitated him and his head ended up in a church in Rome wearing a crown of flowers. In the Basilica of Santa Maria, you can visit the skull of St. Valentine, a relic. And in Poland, there's another church, and they have a little bit of St. Valentine's finger as a relic in the church, and they get lots of tourism for that. But in Ireland, in Dublin, in Whitefriars Church, we've got fucking St. Valentine's heart. His heart and his blood. Why is St. Valentine's heart and

blood in a church in Dublin? What type of fucked up shit is that? Well it's a relic. It's a relic. And a relic is something the Catholic Church has used throughout history to increase tourism, pilgrimages. But how did Dublin get St. Valentine's heart and his blood? Well, it was quite recent. St. Valentine was killed nearly 2,000 years ago, beaten to death with stones. But there was an Irish priest by the name of John Francis Spratt in the 1800s. And he opened up a building for blind nuns.

And he had the gift of the gab. He was a great storyteller and a speaker. And he found himself in Rome in the presence of Pope Gregory in the 1800s. And John Francis Spratt, the Irish priest from Dublin, was such a great talker. He impressed Pope Gregory so much that Pope Gregory said, fuck it, let's give this Irish fella, let's give him St. Valentine's heart to take back the Dublin. So he did. And St. Valentine's heart is in Dublin in Whitefriars Church. And I was thinking about this in the flotation tank resisting resisting thinking about the hour in February thinking about st. Valentine's heart thinking about going to Dublin to visit it until eventually I just let go and it was a phenomenal experience.

I just let go. I stopped resisting the water, and I let every single muscle in my body, muscles I didn't even know I had, I let myself go as if I was going to drown, and I didn't. I floated perfectly on the water. Unbelievably relaxed.

And when my body let go, when my body let go, and I was floating on that water in complete submission, then my mind let go too. I wasn't thinking about wanking dolphins. I wasn't thinking about St. Valentine's heart. I wasn't thinking about arses being slapped with dog skin. I was thinking about nothing.

And my body became overcome with a type of calm ecstasy like a really deep intense meditation and when my muscles let go and I allowed myself to float in this flotation tank emotions and tensions like anger and stress that I might be holding in my shoulders or my legs or my fingers, these things just went because I'd let go I was floating in the water and I'm facing up in the pitch dark and I start to breathe deeper than I've ever breathed before and my body begins to rise and fall with each breath as I inflate my lungs with air my body floats and rises and falls with the water and because my senses are deprived I no longer feel my body or feel as if I'm in my body I can't see anything and the rhythmic pattern of my breath looking up into the darkness

I start to fucking hallucinate I start to have psychedelic experiences. Shapes and colours emerge from nowhere. It looked like the Milky Way, just calmly swirling in front of my eyes. But there was no anxiety. Normally if I was hallucinating I'd be anxious about that. There was no anxiety with this. It felt so peaceful and wonderful. And I was in this tank, floating in darkness for an hour, until eventually I had an experience, which afterwards the only way I could describe it was, I felt like how I wanted death to feel like. I travelled through a tunnel. I travelled through a tunnel of light. I hallucinated and travelled through a tunnel of light

in this beautiful, calming, ecstatic flurry of emotions. It was magnificent. I didn't take, there was no drugs involved, no hallucinogenics, no weed, nothing. Completely sober, well rested. I went into a flotation tank and had what I can only describe as a mildly psychedelic experience. Not a million miles off of how people might describe DMT and it was phenomenal. It was amazing. And I can't wait to do another flotation tank.

I cannot wait. I believe they have them here in Limerick. They're beside the Swinger Sauna. It was like the most intense, deepest meditation I'd ever experienced. And it truly felt. It felt spiritual. It was astounding. It was amazing. So I'd strongly recommend. Doing a flotation tank.

If you have that opportunity. I would recommend it for anybody. So I. I don't really want to do psychedelics. Mushrooms. DMT. I'm just, I'm LSD. I'm personally not really into that. I prefer meditation, exercise, things like that. I'd be too anxious.

I'd be very anxious around anything psychedelic. So that's why I wouldn't do that. Also, I don't need it, so my desire to do it would be recreational rather than therapeutic, which I think is the wrong reason. But the flotation tank felt like a mildly psychedelic experience, without needing to consume any psychedelics, without needing to give control over to a substance as such. If I wanted to end the flotation tank experience, I could just get out.

I had full control and it was beautiful. So I'd be trying to do it again. But I don't know what the health and safety shit is for flotation tanks, so maybe look that up first. You know, I recommend meditation to people too. But like I say, with meditation, it's not for everybody. Especially for people who might have bodily trauma. So if you are considering doing a flotation tank, maybe look up the risks or who shouldn't do it beforehand.

Okay, so I'm going to do an ocarina pause now. I'm actually in my home studio. I'm in my home studio. And it's very late at night. It's late at night because I'm just back from a tour. I'm just back from tour. I was working. Working pretty much non-stop. Look, Oslo.

Two dates in Berlin. Fol fuck loads of flying and traveling it's intense so I'm just home so because it's so late I don't want to hit myself into the head with a book this week but I can't find my ocarina but what I did manage to find was an Aztec death whistle which I forgot that I had so I'm going to blow this Aztec death whistle and you're going to hear an advert an Aztec death whistle is like a war whistle of the ancient Aztec civilization and it's a whistle that's designed to sound like someone being murdered it's supposed to sound like screams but I'm going to play this Aztec death whistle

very gently so it sounds a bit like an anxious ocean 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 hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m 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. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, 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. I don't want to do it really loudly because it's actually quite terrifying.

That was the Aztec death whistle pause. You would have heard an advert there, an advert for... I don't know what the fuck the advert was for, right? Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBuyPodcast If you enjoy this podcast, if you find yourself returning to it regularly if it's part of your weekly routine to listen to this podcast maybe you go for a little walk or something when you listen to it if it's a part of your life and you enjoy the work that i'm doing please consider paying me for that work all i'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee

once a month. That's it. Because this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I rent out my office. The Patreon is how I'm able to deliver a podcast each week about something I'm genuinely passionate about. It allows me to have the time and space to fail as an artist. So if you want to support that, go to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast.

But if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everyone gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. And also, if you are going to Patreon, make sure that you become a paid subscriber. A paid Patreon subscriber. Because there's an option now on Patreon where you can subscribe for free.

But I don't see any... I don't get paid paid for that there's no benefit for me for that I think it's just a way for Patreon to get your data so if you are going to my Patreon page please become a paid subscriber because people recently have signed up for free membership and I reckon these people think that they're supporting me in some way by doing that. If you want to subscribe to anything for free, just subscribe to the podcast on whatever app you're using. Free. Follow it for free. Or go to fucking Instagram and follow me on Instagram.

Blind by a bow club. But for Patreon, there's no benefit in being a free subscriber. If you can afford it. The price of a cup of coffee once a month. If not, don't worry about it. All right, just tell a friend about the podcast. That's fine. Just some gigs. Next week on Tuesday the 20th, I'm in Derry in the Millennium Forum. That's for the Northern Ireland Science Festival. I've got an unreal guest for that. I cannot wait for that gig.

Then, Friday the 23rd. Where am I? Killarney. Come down to Killarney. March 7th and 8th. I'm down in Ballycatton in Cork at the podcast festival. Two gigs. Tiny fucking gigs. Very few tickets for that. Like really small gigs. So come along to that if you're around beautiful place down there in Ballycotton near the sea then April big giant massive fucking tour of the UK

my biggest tour to date I'm going to be in Newcastle Glasgow Nottingham Cardiff Brighton Cambridge

Bristol and then the Hammersmith Apollo in London. My biggest ever show on the 1st of May. I cannot wait. So that was a queer old podcast. That podcast was more like a phone call than a podcast. every so often I'll do a podcast that's a bit like, like a phone call. And that's what that was. I usually do a little continuation after the Ocarina pause or I answer some questions.

But this week, I might dip out a little bit early. The reason being, I'm back from a tour. It's very, very late. It's very late here. It's two in the morning here. And my boiler, my gas boiler is actually broken.

So there's someone coming to repair my boiler in the morning because it's not working. They're coming at 8am and it's 2am now. a.m. and it's 2 a.m. now so I'm gonna sign off earlier than usual so that I can have a little bit of a snooze and not be too tired when the gas repair person arrives here at 8 a.m. in the morning I'd like to get up at half seven I've got some new muesli that I'm very excited about and looking forward to okay dog. I'm gonna catch you next week with a hot take of some description. Hopefully the weather will be better. Doesn't start getting good really until fucking first week of April. Let's not be codding ourselves. February's a bad month. Sideways wind and bastard rain rain have a delicious St. Valentine's Day

skin a dog slap an arse wank a dolphin I'll catch you next week 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 hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m 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. Thank you.