The Blindboy Podcast - Biblically Accurate Anus

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

The aurora borealis and a herons legs cause me to think about the origin of life on Earth  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bevel the banister, you pubescent trevors. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. If this is your first Blind By podcast, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode. Because I think this episode might be...I think this one's gonna be strange. This is for the seasoned Quavis and the endless Declans, the sideways Monarchs, the perpetual Brendan's. First off I want to give thanks. I want to thank everyone for the kind words regarding last week's podcast.

Which wasn't really a podcast, it was more of a phone call. But last week's podcast, it was me describing my experience of what autistic burnout feels like. And when I describe what it feels like, my experience of describing that, I felt quite lonely. I felt quite alone in this experience of burnout. But so many people have contacted me during the week to say that they go through an identical experience,

or that they have gone through an identical experience in the past and just hearing that it felt warm and cuddly it it felt less lonely it made me feel normal it made me feel normal like when i was 19 and i was getting panic attacks but i didn't know what panic attacks were and i thought well i'm the only person in the world who's experiencing this terrifying feeling for no reason. And then you find out it's called a panic attack, and you read about what it is, and you hear about other people's experiences of anxiety, and you start to feel not alone. It's like, oh this, this shit thing that I go through.

Other people go through the exact same thing, And there's a feeling of community in that. So thank you to everybody who contacted me. Most people contacted me privately through DMs. It made me realize how many people are neurodivergent, but they're just not public about it. They haven't told their friends and family. They're still keeping it a secret for themselves. And thank you to everyone who said that me describing my experience made you feel less alone. That felt wonderful to hear too. So I've really been looking after myself all week,

primarily by making a real conscious effort to practice mindfulness. What I mean by that is like taking the time to go for a walk. But not the type of walk where yes I'm outside and yes I'm walking, but my attention is mostly in my thoughts, worrying about the past, worrying about the past, worrying about the future, but a walk where I'm deliberately focusing my concentration

on how I interact with the environment and every single one of my senses, noticing the feeling under my feet when I step on grass versus when I step on concrete. Noticing the difference in sound when I step on different surfaces. Using my ears to listen to the sound of traffic, to hear wind moving through leaves, to notice how sound changes when I'm close to a wall or when I'm in a more open space, actively noticing the wonderful smell of the summer air, noticing the smell of dog shit if I walk past dog shit or a sewer, really noticing it, oh that smells

bad, seeing the sunlight, noticing what time of day it is, taking an hour to go for a walk and to focus on every single one of my senses and to notice everything that's happening in my environment so that I'm not stuck in a loop of negative thoughts. Worrying about the negative thoughts worrying about the past worrying about the future just right now in the here and now noticing stuff and accepting noticing and accepting

worrying about the future Experiencing anxious thoughts about the future. That's us trying to create certainty thoughts about the future. That's us trying to create certainty. We fear uncertainty so we try to create certainty through worrying about the future. But by noticing and accepting that the future is more or less outside of my control then I can focus on the lovely smell in the air or the color of the leaves and it's difficult to do that that 100% of the time. But when I find my thoughts drifting away into a worry, or getting angry about something, I bring them right back to the here and now. A crisp packet crinkling on the tarmac. A little line of ants climbing up a wall. I notice it and doing that is it's very meditative. That

recharges my battery, it brings me to a state of calm and if this sounds a bit strange the reason I do this exercise is if I if I can focus my concentration on my environment for one hour on the physical things around me and my senses, then later on that day I can apply that same focus and criticality to my emotions when they pop up. Here's an example. An email comes in. The email is a little bit stressful. My agent emails me and says, you've got a gig coming up in a couple of months and the sales could be better. You really need to plug this gig.

This slightly negative trigger causes me to feel fear. Then when I feel fear and anxiety, my thoughts snowball and catastrophize. Oh no, nobody's gonna buy tickets to my gig. I'm gonna perform in front of nobody. This'll end my career. In a year's time I won't have a job at all. But because I've been actively practicing mindful walks, when that email comes in and it's a slightly negative trigger, and I feel that emotion of fear, I notice that emotion of fear.

Like it's a crisp packet drifting past me on my walk, or the smell of dog shit. I went to school with a fella who couldn't walk past dog shit without stepping into it. We'd walk home from school, and if he saw dog shit, he had to go over and step into it and he'd be very upset when he was doing it. Haven't spoken to this fella in 15 years, in his 20s he got into a gambling debt with gangsters and had to like flee the country and there was definitely a correlation between those two compulsions. But I don't step into dog shit when I walk past it on a mindful walk. I see the dog shit, I notice how bad it smells, I know that it'd

be a bad idea to put my foot into it, I walk around it, and when I get a triggering email, and I'm mindful, the feeling of fear, it's just like that dog shit. I don't have to pay heed to that feeling. I notice it, and I accept it. And then I take ownership of the power that I have to not react to that feeling. That feeling is not a fact. I respond to the email and I say, Alright, I'll plug that gig more. Every single gig I've ever done, the ones that sell out, the ones that are sold out, at one point in the stage of that gig, in its infancy,

is a promoter ringing up my agent saying tell him to plug the fucking gig, tell him to plug the fucking gig. That's what promoters do. It's the dogshit of my job. So I solved the problem in a mindful critical fashion and I don't need to experience. Catastrophizing thoughts are unnecessary, unhelpful levels of anxiety and the reason I'm able to do that is because I'm mindfully going for walks. So that's why mindful walking is important to me. When I can ground my body in my environment, when I can notice sounds, smells, textures, all of these things, I can then notice my emotions, textures, all of these things.

I can then notice my emotions, particularly my unhelpful emotions like anxiety or rage. I can notice these emotions when they pop up so that I'm critically responding to them rather than mindlessly being led by them. And then doing that, it recharges my battery and it increases my self-esteem and it makes me feel happy with who I am. I have a sense of achievement when I do that. It increases my calmness and my happiness. So that's what I've been doing all week. But I want to speak about a particularly meaningful and beautiful walk that I had a couple of nights ago. The Aurora Borealis was visible in the sky in Ireland.

Not just in fucking Ireland, in parts of England, parts of Europe, parts of America. The fucking Aurora Borealis, lads. And I didn't think I was gonna see it. I just assumed, ah light pollution, the sky will be too cloudy, I didn't think I'd see it. But at about 12 o'clock at night, last Friday I think it was, I stuck my head out the window and the sky was fucking clear and I could see it and I seized the moment and I said fuck that. Let's go outside for a mindful midnight walk. I went outside. It was a warm night, a warm fucking May night with the bam of summer hanging in the air.

I noticed the insects flittering around underneath the streetlights. I relished the silence, the quietness of the streets, the lack of cars. Thoughts emerged. I noticed how lucky I was to be able to go out and go for a walk. How lucky I was to be alive. How lucky I was to be able to go out and go for a walk. How lucky I was to be alive. How lucky I was to be healthy. How lucky I was to be a man. To be a man who was able to go out for a walk at 12 o'clock at night and not really worry about my safety the way that a woman would have to worry. I said to myself, if I'm walking on this road on my own and I see a woman walking towards me, I'm gonna cross the road to let her know that

she's safe. If there's a woman walking in front of me and I'm coming from behind, I'm gonna jiggle my keys so she hears me. I'm not trying to be a woke, performative, feminist man when I say this shit. These were the genuine reflections that I was having while mindfully walking, because my calm, mindful state is allowing me to freely access empathy. If I wasn't present, if I was worrying about the future, or angry about something someone said to me a year ago, I'm gonna be in my head. I'll be walking too fast, I'll be stomping up the road. I'll scare the living shit out of someone else who's trying to enjoy a night time walk. So that's the reason I'm mentioning that observation I had there.

I took note of that and then redirected my attention to that lovely blackberry piss smell that you get off nettles when you walk past them. The whole time I'm doing this walk, I'm flicking my eyes up, looking for the aurora borealis to be particularly fucking beautiful so I can notice it. It was going in and out. There were blue and purple arcs across the sky.

It wasn't as dynamic as I've seen it on TV. It wasn't like what I thought the aurora borealis would be. There were no greens, no yellows. It was mostly pink and purple. And it was changing. And then it became intense. When I looked up and I really saw, holy fuck, there's the Aurora Borealis. I stopped. I walked into an area just beside an abandoned building site. And I looked up and marveled at the sky, the pink and the purple shapes of the Aurora Borealis in fucking Limerick, in Limerick.

It doesn't belong in Limerick, it shouldn't be here. But here I am looking at it. I'm thinking about the science of what's happening. The fucking sun. The sun is a nuclear bomb. Literally. The sun is billions of nuclear bombs. Atoms of helium and hydrogen fuse in giant nuclear explosions that we experience as heat

and light millions of miles away and what was happening right now as I looked at the sky was a particularly violent, a particularly violent and rare nuclear explosion happened on the Sun. A G5 geomagnetic storm blasted out that this fucking mass ejection of energy that Hurtles towards us as solar wind it's not like light it's different it takes like three or four days to reach us. But this, these particles, this giant nuclear explosion, these solar winds, these are mad dangerous. They should kill us, they should kill everything on Earth.

The Earth should be barren, barren, irradiated by nuclear fucking lasers. The Earth should be like all the other planets in the solar system with fuck all going on because the surface is bleached, irradiated by the nuclear bomb that is the sun, battered. But no, because we're protected. The earth is protected by a magnetic field. At the core of the earth is all this molten iron all these metals that are in

really hot liquid form and they're sloshing around all the time as the earth spins underneath our bastard feet currently now and this continual movement of molten metal on the inside of the earth, it creates a magnetic field. A magnetic field that's strong enough to protect us from the fucking sun.

This magnetic field that's caused by the molten iron protects us from solar winds, solar radiation, from the fucking nuclear bomb that is the Sun. It protects us. Like other planets have got magnetic fields too. Mercury has one, but it's only 1% the power of Earth's, so the Sun doesn't give a shit, it just blasts through it and irradiates Mercury. Mars...they reckon Mars used to have a magnetic field at some point in the past and then it decayed and then got blasted by the sun and bleached and irradiated.

But we have a strong enough magnetic field that fights off this solar radiation. And aurora borealis and aurora australis, that's us witnessing that fight. We're witnessing that fight. And you usually only see it on the north or south poles because the magnetic field is really weak on the north and south poles so more of this solar wind gets through. But what I was witnessing in Limerick the other night on my mindful walk when I looked up at the sky was a solar storm so powerful that it was penetrating our strong magnetic field. When the charged particles of that solar radiation batter off the protective barrier of the magnetosphere

that's been created by all the molten iron in the core of the earth, when those charged particles batter off the fucking magnetosphere, some of them break through and they collide with the gas molecules that are in our atmosphere. They overstimulate these fucking gas molecules, they overstimulate them and then the fucking gas molecules they release light, particles of light, and that's what you're looking at, that's what the aurora borealis is. And depending on how high up this is happening in the atmosphere, if you're seeing, like I was seeing reds and purples and blues, so that means it was nitrogen. This solar wind had gotten through the magnetosphere and it

was hitting nitrogen so I was seeing purples and blues and then if you see greens and reds it means that it's hitting oxygen, particles of oxygen. So in Limerick I was only seeing this solar wind breaking through the magnetosphere and stimulating particles of nitrogen. And I started to view the aurora borealis as the sky is artistic. The sky is being artistic. The sky, the atmosphere, is being overstimulated by solar wind, by an external force, something it can't handle and now it's emitting light. And I took out my phone to get a lot of photographs. And I found that when I took photographs, it was much more impressive on my phone than it was

with the naked eye. Like I could see the purples and the blues, carving across the sky, but on my phone screen, a pattern emerged. There was a definite pattern. The aurora borealis over limerick that I witnessed took the shape of a human anus. The striations of a rectum. I'm not spoofing. You can go to my Instagram, blind by Bo Club. I've got photographs. I took photographs of it. Bo Club, I've got photographs, I took photographs of it. The Aurora Borealis over in Limerick was a human anus. And the word that came to me as I watched it was, it was a biblically accurate anus. Because I thought to myself, 500 years ago, if you're in Limerick and you didn't know what the fuck an Aurora Borealisalis was and you were looking at what I'm looking at you would assume that it's a celestial being. You would assume that you're witnessing

a fucking angel because it was so unique and strange and biblically accurate angels. Like we think of angels as stupid looking concert wings in their back. If you read the Bible, angels are mad terrifying things. There's a type of angel in the book of Ezekiel called an offeneme. It's a series of spinning wheels with thousands of eyeballs. That's a biblically accurate angel. So the phrase biblically accurate anus came to me when I looked up at the huge big cosmic arsehole in the sky and I loved it because I thought to myself of course of course if the aurora borealis is gonna happen in limerick of course it's

gonna be a big arsehole ready to do a cosmic shit on us because in limerick we have this thing called the cursese of Saint Munchen. In Limerick we just believe that bad luck happens to us all the time. Nothing can go right for Limerick and anytime anything goes bad we just say that's the Curse of Saint Munchen. And it comes from an old folklore story from the 7th century. Saint Munchen, Saint Mankan, the patron saint of Limerick, and the story goes, the myth goes, that Saint Munchen was trying to build his church in Limerick himself and a couple of angels that

were helping him out. And they were lifting rocks and stones and digging foundations to try and build this church. But the people of Limerick in the 7th century just walked by. And when Saint Munchin asked for help, please Limerick help me build my church, the people of Limerick were too lazy, they didn't give a shit, they said fuck you Munchin, build your own church with your city looking angels. So then he put a curse on Limerick. And Saint Munchin's curse basically said that you know limerick would never have good luck so when i saw that giant rectum in the sky it was

an anus the aurora borealis was an anus a biblically accurate anus when i saw that i thought of the curse of saint munchen so as i was chuckling away myself, nearly having a pain in my neck, looking up at this wonderful aurora borealis, this fundament in the clouds, I was noticing that beautiful cool summer night breeze, the air, pregnant with chlorophyll, all those warm smells of plants emitting their little nighttime scents dancing along the air. I felt this lovely feeling of hope, this lovely feeling of fuck it, it's summer. It's the start of summer. I can't wait to have a lovely summer. I'm so glad that it's summer and that I'm out here at 12 o'clock at night and that I'm alive and I'm happy and I'm mindfully

Adoring this beautiful wonderful night and as I'm looking up at the sky It's so peaceful. There's not a lot of cars And all you have is that silent city home as I'm looking up. I hear a cracking noise and then a whooping noise. And it's the sound of wings like a swan. And then this giant bird flies over me from the fence. Now look up. It's a fucking heron.

It's a heron in a nighttime flight. You don't often see Herons. Herons are the big lanky cunts. You don't often see Herons flying. But now a Heron is flying above me, coming out of this fence. And I'm like, wow! A Heron is flying above me and I follow it with my eyes. Now the streetlights are white, they're those white LEDs. It's not those yellow streetlights, it's fucking white. And it's a clear black, crisp sky with stars and the pink Borealis anus. So I have a very definite view of this Heron above me. There's no visual competition.

And as I look at the heron, I see its spindly legs dragging behind it. I'm like, is that fucking heron wearing a pair of green socks? Is that heron wearing socks or Wellington boots? The fuck is going on? So my eye follows the heron. And I'm looking at a heron.

And it has two long green socks on. Now I'm being mindful. I'm following this heron with my fucking eye for I'd say three seconds at least. It wasn't a sudden glimpse. I'm watching a heron fly over me, fly off. And on the bottom of the heron's feet, from its shins down to its little heron talons, it appears to be wearing green socks or green shoes or boots, perfectly matching, perfectly, as if an aesthetic choice has been made. And there's no doubt it was long enough for me to watch, see and say to myself that fucking heron's wearing shoes or socks or something what the fuck is this about?

So I'm now in the position where I'm like questioning my reality a bit but also I'm not because I'm like no you know what know what you saw. You watched it. You noticed it. You didn't get it on camera. But you saw a fucking heron wearing green socks flying off. But because I'm so calm from the mindful walk, I'm not really reacting to it. I'd gotten too calm.

I had a spiritual experience with the Aurora Borealis. I'd actually'd gotten too calm. I had a spiritual experience with the Aurora Borealis. I'd actually gotten myself too calm. This was grounds for slight panic. A rational level of panic was justified here, or at least surprise and bemusement. But I was like a salmon that had been lulled and tickled into calmness. I noticed and accepted that the heron was wearing fucking shoes and got on at my night. And I go home. I walk home, thinking about the roar of Borealis.

I sit down and make myself a cup of tea. Crack open the internet. And then I just start thinking, man you're after seeing a fucking heron with a pair of shoes on there are you just gonna accept that? Are you just gonna accept and notice that one? Because either you just had a you met a fairy either you just had some type of fucking supernatural experience where I don't know you connected with the universe and a bird came out wearing shoes or you've finally managed to achieve a flow state so deep that Jungian synchronicity has allowed you to experience a different spectrum

of reality either something supernatural happened or there's a rational explanation but you just saw a heron wearing green socks or shoes. We're gonna have to interrogate that one. We're gonna have to think critically about what just happened. So I'm there with fucking laptop in front of me. First thing I do, typing in, heron with green feet. Maybe thinking, okay, this is some rare type of heron

that I've never seen before and their their legs are green Nothing, nothing comes back. Then I start thinking Maybe the heron's been tagged Maybe you know the way sometimes they might tag birds like pigeons sometimes they have little small tags on their feet Maybe there's a way to or even sheep. You know, you can tag sheep with paint. Maybe this heron has been tagged in some way and they tagged the heron by putting green socks on it. Sarge. Fucking nothing. Now I'm thinking...so I can't come up with a rational explanation for this. I definitely know what I saw, but I can't tell anyone about this. It's not like I saw a ghost or a UFO. I'm not going to anybody and saying,

I was out walking by that old building site there, looking at the aurora borealis and a fucking heron flew past me wearing green socks. I'm not saying that to anyone. I'm even thinking I'm not fucking saying this on the podcast because it sounds too mad but I can't let it go. I can't let it go. I'm too curious. I have to find out. Why did a heron fly over my head wearing a pair of green socks. What's going on? So I start thinking, where was I? Where was I? Where did the herring come from? So where I was, was an abandoned building site. It's a large building site in Limerick that was supposed to be a shopping center in 2008. Massive. They dug the foundations, they poured the concrete, the cranes were

up, and then the recession hit and everything stopped. This building site just stayed there. And it was shocking. It was shocking. In 2007, that wasn't supposed to happen. Buildings start and then they get finished. And when this giant shopping center never got built, they just left it there. They just left it there. And the years passed and we watched the cranes rust. It was frightening because the whole time throughout that recession, when you're thinking to yourself, it's going to get better. It's not that bad You see the shopping center that never was

It is that bad. I'm witnessing collapse That's what this is. This is collapse like the way the magnetic sphere protects us from solar fucking storms up until 2007 I Believed truly that there was a social net in place that would not allow a shopping centre to be left abandoned and unbuilt. And right now in Limerick there's this huge development in the middle of the city centre, massive, called the Opera Centre where they're digging these huge foundations. We're all terrified. We're all terrified. What if another recession happens and our city center becomes a whole?

Because we've seen it happen before. And that abandoned shopping center, people would say, that's the curse of St. Munchen. That is the curse of St. Munchen. That abandoned shopping center that's never built with the rusting cranes, that's the curse of St. Munchen. There it is. Because that wasn't supposed to happen with the economy. That wasn't supposed to... That shit wasn't supposed to happen. Building sites, shopping centers get built. They don't just get left there. And it's still there today. They've levelled some of the structures, but the foundations remain.

But cordoned off. You can't go in there. It's totally cordoned off by these big huge wooden fences so you can't see inside this abandoned building site. So that's where the Heron flew out of. So I crack open Google Maps and I start looking at this abandoned building site on Google Maps. I'm looking at the satellite images, the Herons Eye view and then I notice, after nearly 20 years, the huge deep concrete foundations of this abandoned building site have formed a lake. There's a lake in this building site that no one can see.

A lake of rainwater on concrete foundations. And on Google Maps, this lake is bright green. And then I start to think, ah, the heron flowed down into this little concrete lake, these foundations, assumed that it was you know a body of water that might contain frogs or fish, maybe it does, I doubt it. But while the Heron was standing in the water of this lake in the building site, while the Heron was standing there, it colored its legs bright green up to its shins and then it flew away.

And that's why I thought the heron was wearing green socks. And that's definitely what happened. That's 100% the best possible explanation. I know for a fact that behind that fence is a bright green lake and that the heron was in there and that's why its shins were green. So I was real happy with myself for having cracked that case. But now I'm down a research hole. I need to know, you know, what makes a body of water bright green, so bright green, that it could colour a heron's legs if a heron was to stand in this body of water. And it turns out there's actually a beautiful synchronicity and connection between the green

shit on that heron's legs and the aurora borealis. So when you have a stagnant body of water, a body of water that's undisturbed for many years, such as the foundations of a building site, and you know, a rainwater pool, and a building site that nothing touches it for years, blue-green algae can flourish. This algae is called cyanobacteria and it's bright green in color. It's natural but when it completely colonizes a body of water it can be quite toxic. Unfortunately that heron whose shins and feet were so covered in cyanobacteria that they looked to me like green socks. Unfortunately, that heron is at risk of being poisoned by a neurotoxin unless it immediately flew down into a river and washed its legs off.

That heron could die. But a concrete pool and a building site, that's the perfect environment for this cyanobacteria to grow. The water doesn't move. You've got nutrients that can come from cement, phosphorus, nitrogen. There's no fish, there's no plants, there's no insects, there's no life to feed on the cyanobacteria.

And because it's a building site, there's no trees to provide shade and cyanobacteria feeds off sunlight but also this cyanobacteria, this green algae that was on the herons legs, it's probably the most important life form in the history of all life on earth right now. So I mentioned earlier, the sun is a nuclear bomb that gives off very dangerous radiation. And the earth is consistently bombarded with this nuclear radiation from the Sun. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even bacteria, can survive on other planets in the solar system because the Sun's rays kill everything.

But here on Earth, the Sun gives us life because our molten core of iron creates the magnetic field that defends us from solar radiation. So that dangerous radiation doesn't get in because the magnetic sphere protects us from it but then the light and the heat from the sun that gets through and creates life. It wasn't always like that on Earth. 3.5 billion years ago... Now this is... Fuck dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs aren't even... This is 3.5 billion years ago. There is life on Earth. But Earth is very different. And the life that's on earth is pretty much just bacteria, anaerobic bacteria, bacteria that exists without oxygen. Life on earth was just like oceans with bacteria in it. Some of these bacteria, 3.5 billion years ago, started to evolve to respond to sunlight. Now the sun was a lot weaker back then, but certain little bacteria

would start to respond and move towards sunlight. And these bacteria became cyanobacteria, the stuff that was on that heron's legs that grew in the building site. So 3.5 billion years ago, what these cyanobacteria started to do in the oceans was photosynthesize. Cyanobacteria were the first life form on earth to use the light of the sun

to convert carbon dioxide and glucose into oxygen. Photosynthesis is how plants grow. Plants use the sun. Plants move towards the sun. Plants produce oxygen. Cyanobacteria 3.5 million years ago used the sun's light, the safe light of the sun, because the magnetic sphere was pushing out all that radiation, cyanobacteria used the sun's light to produce oxygen and then it bloomed and over time changed the entire atmosphere of the earth so that

the air contained oxygen. Cyanobacteria created the world as we know it today. This was called the Great Oxygenation Event. Life was no longer anaerobic bacteria. Plants were born. Oxygen in the atmosphere eventually led to much more complex life forms that could breathe oxygen and plants that could use the fucking Sun's light to give out oxygen and that's what was on that Heron's legs when it came out of the building site so I was

absolutely thrilled at myself when I went down that curiosity hole and found a meaningful connection between the Heron's legs and the Aurora Borealis, and the history of the earth and life on earth. And how marvelous it is, how fucking mad it is to live on a place that's so fine-tuned to life. So, to continue on from last week's podcast where I spoke about the threat of experience and burnout. Mindfulness, going on mindful walks, focusing on my environment, reducing my stress, calming myself. That leads to the type of divergent creative thinking and curiosity that recharges my social battery. That's what grounds me. That's what connects me with who I am. And if I'm able to see the connection between a heron's legs and the aurora borealis, then

I'm doing okay. That's how my brain is supposed to work. That's my natural state. Let's have an ocarina pause now. I don't have an ocarina. I left my otter ocarina in my. I don't have an ocarina. I left my outer ocarina in my home studio. I'm in my office now. I'm gonna bring it in for next week, but right now I've got a packet of chewing gums. Got a little...one of those punnets

of chewing gums that you get. And I'm gonna shake this and you're gonna hear an advert for some bullshit. I don't wanna shake it so much that I destroy the chewing gums. That was the chewing gum part. From fleet management, to flexible truck rentals, to technology solutions. At Enterprise Mobility, we help businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving you moves the world.

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of your home. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more and save 10% on your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P. You marth, a merriness, if it brings you distraction, whatever has you listening to this podcast frequently, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast. Because this is my full time job, it's how I rent out my office, it's how I earn a living. I adore making this podcast. But it's only possible when it's directly supported by patrons. So go to patreon.com forward slash supply and buy podcast.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it, you can listen for free. Because someone else is paying, so you can listen for free. And make sure if you do go to my Patreon that you become a paid subscriber and not a free subscriber. The free subscriber option just benefits Patreon. It's a way for them to get your data. And it doesn't benefit the podcast in any way. Follow me on Instagram, Blind by Boat Club. And like the podcast, share it, leave a review, tell a friend.

Let's plug a couple of gigs as promised to the promoters who are sending me anxious emails. Let's plug some gigs. Vicar Street Dublin on the 18th of June. That's very close to sold out. That's more or less me for the summer. There's a gig in Kilkenny that's completely sold out but come along to that Vicar Street Live podcast on the 18th of June. That's gonna be wonderful fun. There's very few tickets left.

I'm having a quiet summer. I'm gonna have a quiet summer with lots of mindful walking and hot takes and enjoying myself. So I wanna speak a bit more about cyanobacteria, blue-green algae. Whatever about a tiny little lake, and I say tiny, a tiny tiny little man-made, the foundations of a shopping centre in Limerick, whatever about that. The largest lake in Ireland, the massive fucking huge, the largest lake in Ireland is called Lough Nia. And it's up in the north of Ireland. And it's the only lake that when you look at Ireland on a map,

you see this big hole. And that's Lough Nia, up in the north of Ireland. Loughnae is dying. Last year, last summer, it was completely overcome by a bloom of cyanobacteria, blue-green algae. It's probably gonna happen again this summer. Lachnae provides 41% of the north of Ireland's drinking water. It's gigantic and it's dying because of cyanobacteria as a direct result of violent colonization. The North of Ireland is politically part of Britain. It's politically in the UK. Loch Né is owned, it is fucking privately owned, by some prick called the 12th Earl of Shapsbury.

It's owned, this fucking lake, is owned by a Royal English fella. The largest lake in Ireland is owned by some English royal who inherited it and it is dying because it's privately owned as a result of colonisation. The lake should not be owned by a man called the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury. It should be owned by the public in the interest of biodiversity.

As you can tell it's very painful for me to say out loud that the largest lake in Ireland is owned by the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury. It's just so fucking unbelievably wrong. So the largest lake in Ireland is as healthy as that tiny concrete pole in the building site in Limerick for a number of reasons. Number one, it's massive, it's surrounded by farmland, fertilizers from agriculture run off into the lake and pump it full of phosphorus and nitrogen. This feeds the cyanobacteria and gives it an unfair advantage. Climate change means warmer water and this is accelerating the growth of the algae of the cyanobacteria. An invasive species known as zebra

mussels that are not native to the lake. Zebra mussels filter the water. They filter the water and they make the water too clear. Because the water is too clear sunlight can penetrate deeper and this blue-green algae, this cyanobacteria that brought all life to Earth, it loves sunlight. And another reason why the largest lake in Ireland is dying, this lake is bright green and soapy with algae. A big reason this lake is dying is because the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, who owns, who owns the lake, who is a DJ, he's a DJ that lives in New York. The 12th Earl of Shaftesbury has allowed 30 million tons of sand

to be extracted from the bed of the lake since the 2000s. The 12th Earl of Shaspry who lives in fucking New York, he receives money, he receives a commission for all this sand that's taken from the fucking bed of the lake for industrial use. And when all this sand is taken from the bottom of the lake, it destroys the nursery areas for the fish, for fish that live in this huge gigantic body of water. So now there's no fish to eat the algae. So long story short, the largest lake in Ireland is green and soupy and dead. It's as healthy as a concrete puddle

in a building site in Limerick, and it's fucking disgraceful. The 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, I don't give a fuck that I can't pronounce that title correctly. He shouldn't own this lake. He should not own the biggest lake in Ireland. It should be owned by the public, so that rewilding can occur. The lake should be seized immediately. That's not going to happen because the north of Ireland, like I said, is politically in the UK. So the

fucking UK, they're not going to go seizing lands from royals or whatever the fuck you've got going on. Loch Né is hugely important in Irish mythology. stories that are thousands of years old. One story is this. Fionn Macaul, the giant Fionn Macaul, got into a fight with another giant from Scotland. And the giant from Scotland ran across to Fionn Macaul via the giant's causeway and did a huge big scrap in the north of Ireland. And Fionn MacCull won and the other giant ran away to Scotland. But as he ran away, Fionn MacCull reached down into the

ground and pulled out a big chunk of art. And he threw it at the giant from Scotland and missed. And that became the Isle of Man. And the hole that was left in the ground became Loch Né. And when we're talking about indigenous Irish mythology, mythology that existed in the absence of writing, oral storytelling, we have mythology and interesting stories about lakes or trees or mountains so that you fear and respect these things, so that you don't overfish or pollute or destroy. The lake becomes a magical thing associated with gods and goddesses because it's essential

to our survival. Whereas colonization is about the removal of that language and culture and story so that the lake becomes just another commodity, just another thing that can be completely exploited and extracted from to benefit the pockets of an absentee landlord. But one beautiful myth about Lacnais is the wooing of Etaan. Etaan was a goddess, a fairy who lived in the other world, and she was married to a fairy king called Midir. But Midir, he had a jealous

ex-wife who fucking hated his new wife, Etaan. She hated her. So she cast a spell on Etaan and transformed her into Lach-Nae. So now Etaan, the beautiful goddess, is imprisoned as a lake. But one day, the king of Ulster comes along and takes a sip of water from Lacnais. And when the human king of Ulster does this, the spirit of Etain leaves the lake and jumps into a human woman. Now Etain is trapped inside a human body. And she doesn't know that she's a goddess, that she's a fairy goddess, she has no idea.

She's trapped, she was trapped in a lake, now she's trapped in a human body. And the king of Ulster, who drank from that lake, now he takes this woman, takes Etan as his bride. And the king of Ulster, and this human woman, with a tine soul trapped inside her, the King of Ulster's a prick. He doesn't treat her very well.

Now he's obsessed with her. He thinks he loves her. He won't let her out of his sight. But really, he's abusive and controlling and narcissistic and she's not very happy at all, even though he's obsessed with her. And though she's Queen married to the King of Ulster she's not fucking happy and then back in the other world Midir, Midir who's this fairy king he's like what happened to my wife I thought she was

turned into Lach-Nain now she's this human and she's married to some fucking king so Midir says I'm going to the human realm and I'm going to appear at the court of this king and I'm going to see his I'm going to see his wife who Etan's spirit is trapped inside I'm going to see her and I'm going to woo her I'm going to woo her back so Midir travels to the to the human realm goes to the king's court the king of Ulster's court realm goes to the king's court, the king of Ulster's court, and he looks at his wife, Etaan, in this human body, and she doesn't remember him. She can't remember being a fairy goddess, she remembers fuck all. And now King Midr, the fairy king, is like, Etaan, it's me! And she's like, who the fuck are you? And then Midr says to the king of Ulster,

that's my wife, that's my wife in that woman's body, I love her, I love her to bits, you don't even treat her well. And the King of Ulster laughs and says, fuck off you lunatic, what do you mean that's your wife? What do you mean she's a fairy goddess, will you sit down and be quiet? And then Midar recognizes that this King of Ulster is real narcissistic. So Midr challenges him. Challenges him to three games of like an old Irish form of chess. I think it is. So the first game, the King of Ulster wins, Midr loses.

Second game, the King of Ulster wins, Midr loses. On the third game, the King of Ulster says, I've beat you two times. And then Midir says, okay I give up. I'm a lunatic. I'm not really a fairy king from the other world. And my wife isn't trapped in your wife's body. I was talking out of my arse. But I'm gonna challenge you to one more game. And if I win, will you at least let me hug your wife? Can I just hug her? I fancy her, that's all. And then the King of Ulster laughs, laughs and goes

alright so one more game and if you win so you can hug my wife. So then they play again and Midr wins. And Midr says to the King of Ulster, can I hug your wife? And then the King of Ulster says alright go on so. He says to the woman go over and hug wife? And then the king of Ulster says, all right, go on so. He says to the woman, go over and hug him. And then the second that Midr embraces the woman, he transforms them both into swans and they fly away. And she remembers that she's a fairy goddess and that she's married to Midr.

And they land on Loch Né and float together. So that's one version there of the the wooing of Etanus, a mythology about Loch Né, this the biggest fucking lake in Ireland that's dying. A story like that exists about a lake for one reason only, to make the lake important for it to be feared, for it to be respected, for it not to be exploited. Don't drink too much from that lake. It's the goddess Etain. Don't kill the swans on the lake. Those swans are the goddess Etain and the fairy king Midir.

This is a sacred place. There's important stories here. This body of water is to be respected. And if you're wondering how this lake came to be, to be owned by someone called the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, well you can take it back to 1601, just a few years prior to the plantation of Ulster. The deliberate colonization of Ulster, by the English Crown, a fadacol Sir Arthur Chichester. When that lake was taken in 1601, Arthur Chichester said in a dispatch, "...we have burned and destroyed along the loch, even within four miles of Dungannon,

where we killed man, woman, child, horse, beast and whatever we found. I know it's a long time ago. And the sadness in my voice, the sadness in my voice when I read that out is because that's what I'm seeing now in Gaza. That's what I'm seeing right now. It's the same fucking shit. But Arthur Chichester in 1601 who violently colonized, murdered men, women, children, the whole shebang,

everything he fucking saw along that lake, he then transferred ownership to the first Earl of Shapsbury. And through generations and generations and generations of fucking royal inheritance, now a DJ in New York owns it, owns the biggest lake in Ireland, and it's dying with cyanobacteria and green algae. This lake that, for thousands of years, was the soul of a town, it's deeply fucked up.

And not just because of the romantic idea of mythology and stories. The very real impact of biodiversity collapse, of having the largest lake in Ireland dead, that's dangerous. We don't know what the tipping points are. We don't know what losing the largest lake will do. Lakes are very important to ecosystems. We're animals. We're part of ecosystems too. We need ecosystems to survive. That lake shouldn't be owned by Mr. Lord Fauntleroy.

That shouldn't happen. It needs to be publicly owned. All right, I'll catch you next week. I'll catch you next week. I'll catch you next week. I enjoyed this week's podcast. Wide ranging. It makes me sound a little bit mentally ill. Just how I like it. Just how I like it. Tag bless. Wave at a swan. Wink at the aurora borealis. Wash the legs of a herel.

I bet the people who live here are really happy. Witness how the strangers. Hello? Became the Strangers. You have to get out of here. What the fuck is going on? Why are you doing this to us? Because you're here.

The Strangers, Chapter One. Only in theaters Friday. You Thank you.