The Blindboy Podcast - Clancys Pancake

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

How 1990s professional wrestling predicted the 2020s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Take a big bite out of yourself, you mince pie kincillas. Taste your own sugary raisin filling. Notice your teeth. Penetrate your sugared pastry coating. Wipe your crumbs off your chest and then bite into your chest. It doesn't matter that it isn't Christmas. Mince pies are okay all year round. That was a short poem there submitted by

Idel King aka Twink. Thank you Twink for that poem called Mince Pie Kinsolas. How have you all been? Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a new listener to this podcast I suggest going back to some earlier episodes maybe even begin at the start all right don't begin here it's not necessarily sequential but you'll need to understand the the lore and mythology of this podcast which will require

you to listen to earlier episodes okay fuck off all right everyone else um i hope you've been having a charming time i hope the can we say quarantine anymore i don't know what we'd call it i'm not sure we're we're free to roam essentially but it still doesn't feel good okay it doesn't feel right i'm still essentially quarantining last week i met my writing partner in limerick and we did a day's writing and then we went for a bit of dinner and then had one or two pints afterwards nothing mad but it just felt strange it didn't feel right it didn't it didn't here's my problem here's my problem all right i have a history of social anxiety i have a long history of social anxiety and i've spent many many years trying to improve my mental health by saying to myself, being in a restaurant should not be frightening.

Being in a pub shouldn't be frightening. These are normal things and it's okay. And I spent years trying to ward off panic attacks about being in public places. And I've overcome it. But now I'm in restaurants and I'm in pubs and I have reason to be anxious and cautious it's an appropriate rational response for me to be in a restaurant and worried if the waiter or waitress is too close or worried if another patron is too close or avoiding going for a

piss because I'm scared to touch the door handles so that's a tough one alright but fuck it we'll cope em I was doing streaming all week okay I'm streaming almost every night of the week except Mondays and Tuesdays

twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast I'll be streaming tonight I usually go on around half nine at night sometimes a little bit earlier alright open a twitch account it's free it costs you nothing start up a twitch account follow me twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast i'm on most nights i'm either either playing video games and making live music with instruments. Or I'm just chatting.

And you can come online. And. There's not a massive amount of people. Watching. It's a few hundred people watching live. And you can chat with me live. I'm on video. Talking.

And you can get into the comments. And say what's the crack blind by. And it's good fun. So I'm fucking loving it. I've rekindled my love. you can get into the comments and say what's the crack blind by and it's good fun so i'm fucking loving it i've rekindled my love with overnight oats that's the most exciting that's the most exciting thing really that's happened me the past week okay because i'm not leaving my house that much I'm really not my gym is you know I love my gym my gym is open

I'm kind of scared to go my gym has been open over a week and I haven't gone to the gym because again it just it doesn't feel right it doesn't feel fucking right it doesn't feel safe even though my gym have done everything possible.

It just feels a bit mad. So, nothing really exciting is happening to me. I'm not having much contact with other human beings. But I've rekindled my love with overnight oats. Okay? And I'm going to dedicate a small amount of time now to try and convince you it's not just

a breakfast. Why have I rekindled my love with overnight oats? I love breakfast. Who doesn't love fucking breakfast? I love a cup of coffee and then usually muesli. I was going on muesli for a while because it was simple

muesli with a few raisins and nuts and some milk right but overnight oats is a different story and it's really simple to do and i'll tell you why it's so enjoyable because it's mindful right it's not just a delicious breakfast, there's a ritual to it, and you have to do it the night before, okay, all it is, is, and you can be very creative with it, either use a cereal bowl, or the most fun thing to do, to be honest, clean out a jam jar, get a clean jam jar, something that's glass that you can see through, okay, and you get simple dry parajots, that's all it is, that's the bones of it, parajots, and you can look up whatever recipes you want, I use dry parajots,

a couple of chia seeds, I'll tell you why I use chia seeds. Chia seeds, when you soak them for 24 hours, they turn into this lovely gelatinous substance. So oats, chia seeds, a tablespoon of maple syrup for sweetness. I use these things called cacao nibs, which are like raw chocolate. And then I sprinkle in some frozen fucking raspberries or frozen strawberries right

so you layer it and you're doing this the night before now before you go to bed oats, chia seeds whatever you want something to sweeten it up layer it in a jam jar a teaspoon of peanut butter

is nice in there as well and all you do is get it can be I use coconut milk because coconut milk is the tastiest but it can be regular milk it can be fucking almond milk oat milk whatever

pour it in to the oats and leave it in the fridge overnight and something magical happens at night time pour it in to the oats and leave it in the fridge overnight and something magical happens at night time especially if chia seeds are involved the oats soak up the fucking milk and they go all soft and

the frozen fruit slowly melts and amalgamates into that and then it's sweetened by the bit of maple syrup and it's one of the most delicious breakfasts you'll ever fucking taste it's it tastes as nice as ice cream right

but we could all start our day with ice cream if we wanted to if I wanted to I could have a bowl of ice cream for breakfast but it wouldn't feel right because there's too much sugar into it and that's not how most of us were raised

like when you're three years of age of course you want ice cream for breakfast and then your mother says are you fucking mad no you're not having ice cream for breakfast but overnight oats tastes as nice as ice cream

but also has that lovely but overnight oats tastes as nice as ice cream but also has that lovely do you know this is a taste that should have a name and it doesn't do you know when you eat food right so not only is something tasty and it's you know

making your tongue feel lovely and releasing endorphins because it's actually tasty but when you're eating something and you know that it's good for you you're eating a tasty meal but then your brain is going this is really tasty and it's healthy there's loads of vitamins there's loads of nutrients there's no excessive amount of sugar there's no excessive amount of fat or salt you're eating a good breakfast and then your brain goes goodbye you're a good you're a good grown man feeding yourself properly for breakfast and you get that extra kick as well that that flavor doesn't have a name that needs a name like there's an extra flavor in japan called umami which is it's like an enhanced saltiness it's not quite salt but it's an enhanced saltiness that makes other flavors

meld together you get it from soy sauce soy sauce has got umami in it but there needs to be a name for the feeling of something being tasty and then the elevated feeling of knowing and understanding that what you're eating is actually also really really good for you and nutritious and that doesn't have a name do you know what i'll call it the yart factor because when i eat the overnight oats and I'm like yum yum this tastes as nice as ice cream and it's really good for you my brain kind of agrees with itself and goes yart

so it's the yart factor another reason I love overnight oats I'm 10 minutes into talking about overnight oats this is why at the start I'm glad I said to the people who have just joined the podcast overnight oats and 10 minutes into talking about overnight oats this is why at the start i should i'm glad i said to the people who've just joined the podcast the people who are like oh let's check out the blind by podcast i'm glad i told them to go to a previous episode instead of being 10 minutes into me describing the mindful enjoyment of overnight oats but another thing that sets apart overnight oats to other breakfasts it's the

nighttime ritual so i've i've been having my sleep during quarantine hasn't been great okay i've been struggling because i'm in home all the time and I might get my one hour of exercise a day, I don't really have variety in my day, I'm not meeting people, sleep is difficult and keeping track of time is difficult and what I'm really struggling with is going to bed at like four or five in the morning because I'm up on a Wikipedia hole and I don't want that. I want to go to bed earlier. So because I've been making overnight oats. And they're delicious. I make them. And when I make them.

If I was to eat them. If I was to make it right now and eat it. It'd be shit. I'd be crunching down on the oats. And it'd be yucky. It needs to incubate for 8 hours. In the fucking fridge. Before it turns into this

wonderful tasty mushy goodness so I make the overnight oats it looks lovely in it's little jam jar I can see it's layers and I put it into the fridge and then I'm really excited I can't wait

to go to bed and go to sleep because I know when I wake up, I get to have a cup of coffee and my delicious overnight oats, do you know what I mean, this isn't sponsored, this is not sponsored, all right, overnight oats, you, anyone can make that man, don't be going around thinking oh man were you listening to blind boy he's he's after he's a shill to big oats big oats has gotten blind boy he's a corporate shill no fuck big oats all right use whatever oats you want but i don't know i just wanted to tell you about my love for overnight oats how i've rediscovered them rekindled them and you can have any recipe you want mine's fairly basic coconut milk oats and fruit you can go mad you can have whatever you want you can use acai

i went through an acai bowl phase there about six months ago if you're listening to the podcast um i kind of fell out of love with acai. Because it's a tiny berry from Brazil. And I just, it's something about it. I just feel that someone's being exploited for me to have my acai bowl. I just have that vibe about it. It's this berry that is very, a staple crop for indigenous people in Brazil. And then all of a sudden it becomes mad popular in the west as a superfood. Anytime I hear that I go, nah.

Someone is being exploited in order for me to get this bowl of acai. But not the overnight oats. No cunt is being exploited for me to have a few oats, you know. On the subject of big oats, I was accused today on Facebook by a number of people of being on the government payroll because I'm advocating the use of face masks in public spaces, which is my own fault for posting on Facebook.

Everyone on Facebook appears to have brain worms. The amount of fucking Irish people if, okay if you don't want to wear a face mask because they make you feel uncomfortable they're itchy okay I appreciate that argument

I disagree with you I appreciate it but if you are an Irish person. And you genuinely believe. That the wearing of face masks. Is like. Some type of. I got accused of being a government shill.

Who's promoting face masks. Because it's a Trojan horse. For totalitarianism. And it's just. It's some lad called Ken from Offaly in his thirties and like what do you do with that

what do you do with poor old Ken you know Ken needs some fucking overnight oats is what Ken needs start acquainting yourself with a mindful breakfast Ken and then you won't believe that me advocating for face masks during a pandemic is me receiving money from Leo Vradiker so I could introduce Chinese totalitarianism.

Fuck me. So this week I have, um... I suppose a hot take. It's not a fully farmed hot take it's not a fully formed hot take I have something in the region of a hot take I have a hot take type feeling and a hot take for me is kind of an assumption about something which is

more entertaining than entirely fact-based it's it's a hunch it's it's it's a creatively informed hunch and what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to encapsulate and understand what we call the current zeitgeist. Now, zeitgeist is one of these words that, it's a wankery word. It's one of these words that's, it's always used in wankery contexts. When you hear the word zeitgeist,

you want to switch off, because part of you goes, oh my God, did that person just say the word zeitgeist. But it's a nice word. Because. It does the job. It does the job. It's one word.

That encapsulates and describes. A fucking sentence. And it's a borrowed word from German. I think it means. Ghost of the time. or spirit of the time but what what zeitgeist is it's it's a way to describe an era okay like it's the all encapsulating like you think of we'll say i don't know the 70s the 60s the 80s right when you when i say to you the 80s the 1980s or even the 2000s you know what comes up for you let's just say the 2000s what comes up for you okay because that's recent um what images come up what fashion comes up for you? Okay? Because that's recent. What images come up?

What fashion comes up in your head? What? I mean, when I say the 2000s, what's the big strong flavor for me? 9-11. Politically, 9-11. The war in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq.

Social media. Myspace, fucking nu metal music, bling culture and hip hop. That's the zeitgeist, alright? That's the zeitgeist of the 2000s. Zeitgeist of the 80s. And it's hard to think of the zeitgeist of the 80s because zeitgeists are what get reappropriated when we're nostalgic so when you think of the 80s you're probably not thinking of the actual 80s but rather the

nostalgic pastiche of the 80s that we saw in the 2000s which is quite ironic but when you see, no one has I don't think anyone's ironically tried to make a post-modern pastiche of the 2000s yet but zeitgeist just means an era and when you're living in an era like the current era

it can be hard to figure out what the zeitgeist is because you're living through it you usually need like it's hard to when you think of the 2010s which was last year it's hard to get a strong flavor for the 2010s we're getting hints of it you think of barack obama isis you know and it's it's different to what we kind of have now but what i want to what i want what i want to figure out and try and understand is what is the current zeitgeist it's something i always battle with because you need time to figure out what that zeitgeist is so I I've lived through the 90s the 2000s the 2010s and a little bit of the 80s

but I was a baby so I don't remember anything of the 80s I have no context for the 80s other than like I said versions of it but I remember the 90s I remember the 2000s I remember the 2000s I remember the 2010s

and all those separate zeitgeists and what sounds, emotions opinions they bring up the current zeitgeist which I would I would say 2016 onwards

like you're trying to think the current zeitgeist the current era has definitely got the it's the most unique and has the strongest flavour of anything I remember okay

the 90s didn't feel like this the 2000s didn't feel like this the the 2000s didn't feel like this, the 2010s didn't. I think the current zeitgeist begins with Trump. The election of Donald Trump was a world-shaking event, and the current zeitgeist feels like I'm being shaken non-stop. It's confusing as fuck, and I can't put my feet anywhere because the

ground underneath me is continually moving and shaking and I haven't experienced that before and I'm trying to understand this and put it into words that's really it it's it's the current era is is nothing but a set of feelings and how do you verbalize and vocalize that. So that it becomes an abstract thing you can. So that it stops being an abstract set of feelings. And becomes language and images that you can look at. And have an opinion about. And ironically.

My kind of hot take about it. It's rooted in my childhood in the 90s now i don't like sports right you know i i don't i really don't give a fuck about sports i don't understand sports i don't get soccer harlan i just i just don't get it i what i always say because i don't want to disparage anyone who likes sports because I know people who fucking love sports so are they wrong? no, they love sports but I don't get it

so what I say is I don't have the gift of understanding sports and I never liked sports but what I did enjoy when I was a child was professional wrestling I really really liked, it would have been the WWF at the time, I loved wrestling, I used to watch it, it was on twice a week I think on Sky, maybe once a week, I used to love watching fucking wrestling, WWF The Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan

all those early 90's wrestlers something about it made me feel deeply passionate and emotional about it, the drama of it and my older brothers

and my da brothers and my da I'd be like four or five and my older brothers and my da would come in and they'd see me watching this wrestling and I'd be standing in front of the fucking TV as a little child taking my top off and screaming at the TV

and roaring at it and being very heavily invested in what these wrestlers were doing, not just fighting, but what they were doing outside the ring, the arguments they were having, the drama of it. And my brothers used to laugh at it but my dad used to have a particularly strong reaction okay what used to he used to make him upset my dad used to get upset when he saw me watching professional wrestling wrestling wwf and it wasn't like the violence of it what used to upset him were the crowds the crowds on television watching the wrestling matches okay

like my dad my dad wasn't a fan of america my dad was very very left-leaning socialist borderline communist and he he really disliked and he really disliked American imperialism. He disliked capitalism, but what he especially didn't like was American imperialism. America being this giant colonial bully. Now he'd grown up with stories of colonialism from his father who had actually fought the Brits and that had radicalised my dad in a way but my dad

his dislike of America was that their colonialism was different it wasn't as explicitly forceful as British colonialism. It was a colonialism through capitalism and consumerism.

And this used to make him upset. I remember, I don't know, it must have been about fucking 10 or something, and Grand Theft Auto 1, the video game, was in shops, right? Grand Theft, the first ever Grand Theft Auto 1 the video game was in shops right Grand Theft

the first ever Grand Theft Auto and I really I think was it my birthday or something I really fucking wanted this video game I really really wanted it because one or two of the lads in school had it

and they were just like there's this video game called Grand Theft Auto. And it's unlike anything. It's amazing. And Grand Theft Auto 1 was amazing. It was incredible. A whole different, it's a new era of video games got ushered in with Grand Theft Auto 1. So I wanted this game.

But the game was 18s. You had to be 18 years of age to get this game so I couldn't just go into town myself and walk into what was the name of the shop it was game the shop was called game I couldn't walk in there myself and say can I have a copy of Grand Theft Auto because I was clearly a child so I had to bring my dad I had to say to my dad this is what I want for my fucking birthday I want Grand Theft Auto 1

that's all I want I want this game so my dad said yeah he came into town with me and we went into game and I went up to the counter and I said, look, can I have this fucking game? And then the lad behind the counter, who was probably 18 or 19, was like, do you have an adult with you? So my dad came over and your man behind the counter had to do his job and basically just say, this game is 18s.

So this game is for for adults so you need to know this if you're buying it for your kid now i knew by the fellow behind the counter that he really wanted me to have this game because he was a games nerd and he knew this is a fucking brilliant game and this young fella needs to have it but he was doing his job and the thing about my dad was I had that Irish upbringing where violence was okay so if a video game or a film if it had violence

if it had cursing this was okay even if it was 18s but if it had fucking sex forget about it that's not happening because that would bring in that Irish awkwardness if you're consuming media that has sex on it then you might come to

me and ask me questions about sex and that would be embarrassing so my dad goes just tell me why it's 18s what's the game about and the dude behind the counter says and it was really fucking embarrassing for me dude behind the counter says uh oh it really fucking embarrassing for me dude behind the counter says oh it's just this game where you're like you steal cars and you steal cars and you go around shooting people

in a city in America and the game really is just like you steal cars and you can shoot whoever you want and you're a criminal and my dad heard this and like he started roaring in the shop going

damn America America and he started slamming his fist on the counter inside and game and he didn't want to curse and he started saying blast it blast it blast America blast america i wish

someone would take a bomb and blow up america and i was fucking mortified and my dad bought the game anyway but this to him he wasn't upset like he was getting me the game because I wanted it and my friends had it and the problem wasn't you're playing a video game where you're robbing cars and killing people, that wasn't the issue, he knew that I was a smart young fella and I had the critical faculties to know the difference between playing a fucking video game where you're shooting and robbing cars and the real life his issue was that this is what the Yanks

were doing now that the normalised culture of on screen violence as a tool of American exceptionalism and colonialism. That they had managed to monetize this.

And turn it into a game. That now his son was asking for. And this is what had him shouting. Blast it. Someone take a bomb and blow up America. While this poor fucking 19 year old clerk behind the counter is just going. Who the fuck is this man. Who wants to blow up america and why is his son so utterly embarrassed but that was my dad's issue

and when i was younger and i used to watch wwf wrestling on television and my dad would come into the room and be visibly upset at me reacting to the tv he wasn't upset because i was looking at violence he wasn't upset because there's two men on tv and they're in the ring and they're boxing the heads off each other it wasn't that what used to to make him deeply upset was with wrestling okay you've grown men in their underpants with fucking ridiculous costumes and they're speaking with

these exaggerated voices and they're clearly playing characters my dad's problem was the audience it would cut immediately to audience shots of this huge stadium filled with mostly the audiences were men over the age of 30 and then young children and that was it and there wasn't a huge representation of women but it was grown men and my dad used to get very bothered seeing

these men in their 30s and 40s with their faces filled with with rage screaming and roaring at these ridiculous wrestlers and my dad used to put his head into his hands and he'd say those yanks, those poor yanks they think it's real they're adults they think that this is real and it used to terrify the fuck out of my dad that you had all these adult men

deeply emotional at a character called the ultimate warrior in a set of fucking jocks deeply emotional at a character called the Ultimate Warrior in a set of fucking jocks with designs on them up on stage or up on the ring and Hulk Hogan ripping his fucking top off or you'd have various characters like fucking

Hacksaw Jim Duggan or Sergeant Slaughter who was supposed to be a parody of like a US military drill sergeant. That you had these ridiculous characters, utterly ridiculous, exaggerated, clearly fake characters. But you had a full auditorium of grown adults taking it dead seriously and that used to upset my dad seriously because he always viewed America as a threat that is slowly seeping into Ireland through commodities and culture and what that level of brain dead

he called it brain dead brain dead yanks in Americans he worked in an airport so he had to deal with Americans all the time and he wasn't a fan of him because he found him to be privileged privileged and rude not all americans but he had to deal with some very privileged rude americans in his job as customer service in an airport now the reason my memories of my father

seeing wrestling fans and being visibly upset by these wrestling fans the reason that is coming up for me when I'm trying to understand the current zeitgeist when I'm trying to understand what is the mood of the world at the moment

what words and language can I put upon the world and the climate uh the political and cultural climate in order for me to understand it because i don't understand it right now i feel like like i said like the earth is shaking underneath me and i can't figure out what what's going on in particular with two things. Donald Trump and Brexit. Okay. Now Brexit, there's one you haven't heard a lot of in a while but Donald Trump and Brexit. Those are

two things that have happened in the past four years that have they've just shaken the world. They've just changed. They've changed the order of things. So the thing is with wrestling so when I think back to the early 90s and I'm looking at television with my dad and you're seeing these grown adults

in the crowd and they're clearly taking the wrestling very seriously even though what's happening on the on the the in the ring is ridiculous all right it's clearly ridiculous one man is called the ultimate warrior and he's in his underpants and he appears to be some type of ancient warrior character and then another man is called Hulk Hogan who is this strange colour of red bronze and rips his top off and he's got a skullet and yellow underpants and this is absurd hyper masculine

absurdity yes the people in the audience are at an intensity of emotion that would be equivalent to fucking as if one of their friends was fighting in the wrestling ring or if they were at a football match or a soccer match like i don't understand soccer or hurling but it's real when two teams are going together to to compete that's real that's no you don't know who's gonna win it comes down to skill and professionalism

wrestling you know who's gonna fucking win with professional wrestling you know who's gonna fucking win all right but what what conditions are in place that has probably otherwise cognizant intelligent adults think behaving as if this wrestling is real and it's not just the 90s in america now this is this is ireland now professional wrestling is a thing now in ireland and this isn't, I've great respect for professional wrestling, alright, I'm not shitting on it, but,

here's the crucial thing, why is this happening in wrestling? So, wrestling, professional wrestling, it's not quite sport, but it's also not quite theatre, it's a mixture of the two.

Okay? Professional wrestlers are, they're athletes. They're incredible athletes. Right? But they're athletes, they're athletes in the way that, they're athletes and actors at the same time.

In theatre, okay, you have what's known as the fourth wall so if you go to a theatre and let's just say this wrestling was actually happening in a theatre and not a ring okay

with a ring that's a panopticon right a ring is surrounded by the crowd and the ring is in the center. And you can trace this all the way back to the fucking, the gladiators in Rome. But the ring is in the center. A theater isn't. A theater clearly has three walls, okay?

One at the back, two at the fucking side. And then an audience observes this. It's on a platform in front of them. Okay? If the wrestling was to take place in that environment, on a theatre stage, people wouldn't be... They'd be entertained, but their faces wouldn't be red with anger. They wouldn't be as emotionally invested in what's happening on the stage.

Because there is the existence of the fourth wall. The fourth wall is the invisible wall at the front of the stage, which we all, we recognize it as a boundary. It's not there, but we recognise it as a boundary. And when you have the fourth wall, when you're sitting in a theatre, and let's just say the Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan are on a theatre stage, you understand, as an audience member, that there's an imaginary line between you and those performers,

and there's two different sets of rules regarding reality you understand those people up on stage are actors no matter how dramatic no matter how violent things are happening on stage i know that it isn't real. It's entertaining as fuck. But it's not real. Afterwards. The ultimate warrior is going to take off his makeup. He's going to take off his jocks. And he's just a lad called Jim.

Okay. But with theatre. You don't do what's. Known as breaking the fourth wall. So when you break the fourth wall, the imaginary line, it's when someone on stage, the ultimate warrior, acknowledges the presence of the audience, or even antagonises them. Now breaking the fourth wall, it is a part of theatre.

It's a huge part of we'll say post-modern fucking you know the fourth wall also exists in cinema. You think it was a big thing in the 80s. No sure fucking Woody Allen was doing it in the 60s. But a classic example of the 80s would be Ferris Bueller's

Day Off. Alright that classic 80s film. What does Ferris Bueller's Day Off, alright, that classic 80s film, what does Ferris Bueller do, you're watching this film on your TV, or, you're in the cinema, actually yeah, when that came out, because one of my brothers told me, when that came out in the cinema, people used to take a day off school to go and see it, that was the culture, but you're in the cinema and ferris bueller's day off comes on and what happens the fucking main protagonist is talking to the audience he's acknowledging the fact that he is in a film and now he's talking to the audience that's called breaking the fourth

wall and it can be used really effectively in theatre and in cinema. But with wrestling, the fourth wall doesn't exist. The fourth wall has been torn down. And the wrestlers at all times acknowledge the audience. The wrestlers will antagonize the audience. There's no separation between the theatrics of the professional wrestling ring and the panopticon

of the audience around them. So you don't have the safety net. And what that's known as in professional wrestling, it's called kayfabe. And kayfabe is the reason that those American adults that were making my dad so upset, kayfabe is the reason that grown adults get incredibly emotionally involved at a wrestling match something which is clearly clearly fake before i go into kayfabe it's perfect time for an ocarina pause okay

so a digital advert is going to be inserted by a cast uh i don't know what it's going to be inserted by Acast I don't know what it's going to be for it'll be different for everyone depending on the algorithm depending on what you've been looking up if you've been looking up lots of different horses then you might well get an equine themed ad

don't know what it's going to be so here's the ocarina pause for the digitally inserted ad so it doesn't frighten you when it comes on shit ocarina 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. It's not real. Who said that?

The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. Wear that cape, be that superhero. On Saturday, March 23rd, it's Marvel Superhero Night in Rock City. You dress up as your favorite superhero and watch the Toronto Rock drop the hammer on the Halifax Thunderbirds at 7pm at First

Ontario Centre in Hamilton. Punch your ticket to Marvel Superhero Night on Saturday March 23rd at 7pm in Rock City at torontorock.com. Because my two good ocarinas are in the dishwasher. No pitch on it, man. The disappointing ocarina pause.

That was the ocarina pause. that was where something was advertised to you buy it if you like I don't give a shit even if it was me reading out an advert so this podcast is supported by you the listener via the Patreon page

we are in the midst of a global pandemic i genuinely don't know when i'm going to be able to do a live gig again um my industry will probably be the last probably be the last industry to be fully normal it's a tall order during a pandemic to say let's get a thousand people into a small room for a gig. So I don't know when I'm going to be gigging again. So my only source of income, the only thing I have to earn money, because this is my full time job, is the Patreon page in this podcast. OK, so please consider becoming a Patreon supporter. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint

or a cup of coffee once a month that's it alright and in exchange for that I'll give you four podcasts a month cheap as fuck what becoming a Patreon supporter also does and this is really important do you see the way there I was able to talk shit about the advertisers

that's because i don't rely upon them i don't rely upon advertising because if when a podcast relies upon advertising then the advertiser can have editorial control over what that podcast is okay i don't have that i can speak about whatever the fuck i want and the reason this podcast is effective at what it does is because i have full and utter editorial control i have absolute creative freedom which allows me to do it and the reason that exists is because it's funded by you the fucking listener okay it's a lovely model that is incredibly liberating and it's funded by you, the fucking listener. Okay? It's a lovely model, that is incredibly liberating,

and is the exact opposite, of everything that's wrong, with television and fucking radio. The reason it's so fucking difficult, to have decent quality, TV shows or radio, the fact that it's so rare, is because,

a lot of content is beholden to advertisers or powers up above this isn't so please consider becoming a patreon or patron for those reasons patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you can't afford to be a patron you don't have to right if you're working and you can't afford it, please consider it. It's just paying me for my work, that's what it is. There's a lot of work in this podcast, so it's paying me for this work. But also, if you can afford it, you're paying for a person who can't afford it. And that also is a lovely, a lovely little model. As a treat for patrons patrons what I'm doing

once a month I will pick one patron at random and I will send this patron a hand drawing in the post ok a custom hand drawing one of a kind I will send you a drawing in the fucking post and you can have that and no one else

will have it a one of a kind piece of art for one random patron a month as a thank you also what i'd really like you to do um let's just say you listen to this podcast on your iphone go into the podcast app rate the podcast and give it a little review give it a review, you can do this as much as you want, do it once a week, that really helps me, because what it does is, it means more people get suggested the podcast on the app, okay, so whatever app you're using, see if you can give it a good review, because the Irish podcast space at the moment, not just the Irish, the entire podcast space at the moment is becoming really, really fucking crowded with not independent podcasts, all right, podcasts from big media companies, from state broadcasters, there's big money now behind

podcasts, and these are choking out small independent podcasts like mine. Okay. And the content of them is fucking shit. They just have a load of money to advertise on radio. And to push the thing and get huge sponsorships. And it's pushing out smaller podcasts. Like mine that are fully independent. So a way you can help me there is.

Leave reviews. Rate the podcast that's that will help me not get drowned by all this big corporate money okay thank you for listening to that what is kayfabe and why is it relevant to the current zeitgeist zeitgeist so what like like i mentioned with theater when you go to the theater or when you watch a film on tv the fourth wall exists as a clear delineated line when you enter a theater you know i am watching something that is written, that is dramatic, that is fake, and I'm watching actors, and it's really clear because I can see the stage, and there's a clear barrier between me, the audience, and the stage, and I'm going to allow it to entertain me. professional wrestling has an unspoken contract professional wrestling because it doesn't have the fourth wall because it it actively absorbs the fourth wall and it's it's not even there to break the fourth wall doesn't exist in wrestling audience and wrestler are one in an environment once you step into the stadium of the professional wrestling match you are now part of the show

the the the fucking wrestler will talk shit to the audience and kayfabe is an unwritten understanding between the spectators and the wrestlers which is basically you know it's fake okay you know that the ultimate warrior isn't a real person you know that hulk hogan isn't a real person you know it that Hulk Hogan, isn't a real person. You know it. But because, of the theatrics of it, it's presented to you, as fully real, in the stadium,

with no fourth wall. Okay? Hulk Hogan, and the Ultimate Warrior, would never say, I am a character. They don't do interviews, afterwards, really, outside a character. Unless don't do interviews afterwards really outside a character,

unless it's on a completely different TV show. But even the backstage bits, it is 100% in character all the time, including the interaction with the audience. And it's a completely unspoken contract, and it's like, I'm the ultimate warrior, I'm'm Hulk Hogan me and Hulk Hogan fucking hate each other this is about good and evil and you the audience what side are you on and the emotion of it is really really fucking intense and it uses the language it you know what it does it co-opts the language of sport when you enter a soccer

stadium or a harlan match it's a similar thing there's no fourth wall but why should there be a fourth wall you're not watching theater you're watching athletes genuinely competing and you're either on this team or you're on the other and it co-opts the language of that skill and athleticism it co-opts that but it it involves theater but it will never ever acknowledge that the theater is real so it's sport but pre-written theater and it must never be acknowledged the audience will never say it's fake the performers will never say it's fake and as soon as anyone does say it's fake the magic is fucking ruined and the night is over as soon as you point out this fight between hulk hogan and the ultimate warrior hulk hogan is is represents good and the ultimate warrior is evil this is predetermined you're in the audience with your

face all red screaming for hulk hogan to win and you know he's going to win because they're role-playing stories of morality that we've already seen before and the main thing with professional wrestling it's very binary these wrestlers are good good wrestlers are known as faces and these wrestlers are bad and bad wrestlers are known as heels and it's a fight between good and evil and it reflects the values of whatever society it's in so within american society and the great myth of American democracy which is in itself fucking kayfabe American democracy

is like kayfabe is almost another word it's within the realm of hyperrealism it's not far off hyperrealism it's a more theatrical version hyperrealism being and i've done podcasts on this

a theory positive by jean baudrillard in the 1980s which basically states that events such as wars he gave the example of the iraq war baudrillard said the iraq war did not happen and then you're thinking what the fuck do you mean the iraq war didn't happen buddy we know that they're dead people and then baudrillard said the Iraq war did not happen and then you're thinking what the fuck do you mean the Iraq war didn't happen buddy we know that they're dead people and then Baudrillard says no hold on a minute the war that you in the west

consumed was not the actual Iraq war what you consumed was a media version of the Iraq war you consumed the Iraq war through your television and through what the news chose to show you

and that can be the Iraq, Baudrillard was talking about the Iraq war in 91 but if you think of the Iraq war that George W. Bush led in 2003 that there is kayfabe American culture is this concept of democracy and freedom okay america we all know american democracy doesn't actually mean freedom it might mean democracy

it doesn't even mean fucking democracy in america because it's tinged with racism you're free in america if you're white and you have money okay but this concept of we're going to iraq to liberate them and provide freedom in iraq and and give these poor people in iraq democracy we are the face and saddam hussein is the heel and we will literally topple him the iconoclasm of taking his statue down that's kayfabe everyone in america there's you're going to have a few people who are genuinely i didn't have access to education but everyone knows you're going over to get oil you're going over to fucking iraq to take a load of oil and to establish a base of auto Other American imperialist power in the Middle East. Okay.

And that would benefit America. That's kayfabe. It's an unspoken contract. Where you don't talk about the rules. But you allow yourself into the theatre of it. And that's how wrestling. Professional wrestling works. And the culture

of kayfabe it's been a part of American politics definitely within I would argue that it really started with Reagan in an intense fashion but also Obama

you know Obama is a type of liberal kayfabe the thing with Barack Obama what was so good about Barack Obama is he was incredibly intelligent, incredibly well

spoken, when you saw Barack Obama speak no matter what terrible thing was happening in the world once obama spoke about it you got to walk away with a feeling like the horrible world events are overwhelming for me and for you if you think like, we'll say school shootings in America, or terrorist attacks by ISIS in the last decade, which were fucking terrifying. Circa 2014, 2015, when ISIS were going mad all over Europe, that was frightening. Travelling wasn't fun. The news was scaring the shit out of us. It was frightening frightening and when Obama would go up and speak

in a very concise compassionate and intelligent way all it did is it it allowed you to go there's an adult that's a parent um I don't have to worry about this thing now because someone really smart is in charge then they will fix it but you know that's not the case and you know too that Obama like Obama I said it last week or two weeks ago Obama

still carried on American imperialism Obama drone striked loads of people Obama took out entire weddings in Yemen and and tons of innocent people killed if it meant getting one terrorist obama is one of the first i think the only american president who assassinated an american citizen um no he was a fucking member of isis or something but he was an american citizen was assassinated deliberately by a drone.

Obama is a type of liberal kayfabe. You know that Obama is still the face of this imperialistic evil empire, but he's a face. He's Hulk Hogan. He represents all that is good. And the emotion of that is enough for us to go along with it but the thing with Trump

Trump is a heel and Trump is the first US president to really openly address and use kayfabe and what makes Trump so fucking nuts in all of this Obama knew what he was doing,

Obama's a deeply intelligent man, okay, Trump, I don't know what the fuck to call Trump, but I'm just gonna tell you this, and this is a fact Trump first of all has a history with WWF WWE wrestling he appeared in Wrestlemania as a face he was like a guest

I think he was body slammed but he's friends with the owner of WWF Vince McMahon and Trump was he's in the wrestling hall of fame so Trump has friends with the owner of WWF Vince McMahon and Trump was he's in the wrestling hall of fame so Trump has involvement with the WWF but what makes Trump so exceptional in this if you've ever watched wrestling you know that there's the shit that happens in the ring and then there's also these little dramatic bits that happen outside the ring where wrestlers will continue their feuds backstage and they'll give interviews.

They'll give interviews the way that a soccer player would give interviews after a match. But in a wrestling interview, if they're speaking to the wrestler about how do you feel about beating the ultimate warrior and then the ultimate warrior shows up backstage and they have a fight backstage and that then as well as part of the theater of wrestling the backstories and the backstories or the backstage stories in wrestling get increasingly more bizarre and the owner of WWF WWE Vince McMahon here's the other crazy thing about kayfabe and wrestling, they mix in what is objectively real with fiction, so Vince McMahon actually is the actual CEO of WWE, he's the actual owner of the company, in real life, the man's a billionaire, in real life, and he runs the company, but he also is a character, so he plays a version of himself

on the telly, now when I was a little kid, Vince McMahon was a face, he was a goody he was almost like the like zeus he was he was god he was the all-powerful ever-loving force that would bring balance to things but somewhere in the mid-90s vince mcmahon became a heel he became a baddie now that's the thing within wrestling the characters who are good will turn bad and can turn back to good again they'll go from face to heel face to heel and we understand this when we watch it it's the continual cycle of morality and good and bad so there's one plot line that happened around 2001 and in it it's a backstage scene where vince mcmahon right on tv steps into the back of his limine, and there's a car bomb in the limousine, and it explodes, and it was really dramatic, clearly not real, okay, it's fucking WWE,

this is a storyline, it's a plot, it's drama, Vince McMahon wasn't blown up. It just happened to the character of him on screen. When that happened in 2001, what do you think Donald Trump did? And this is a fact. You can fucking look it up. Donald Trump saw Vince McMahon getting blown up on an episode of WWF. And he genuinely believed that it was real, and he rang up the WWF offices, and wanting to know if Vince McMahon was okay after he got blown up by the car bomb.

And that man is now the President of America. So Donald Trump, who's friends with Vince McMahon this is his friend saw him on TV and thought that he had actually been blown up in a car bomb

so he's fully and utterly absorbed into the spectacle of kayfabe now even those Americans in the audience with their red faces screaming and roaring, if you went to 99.9% of those after the show and asked them,

how do you feel about Vince McMahon getting blown up? They would react emotionally and say, oh man, it was amazing, it was incredible but if you pressed them and you said to them now really, do you really think that Vince McMahon was blown up in the back of a car 99.9% would go

no, but you're not supposed to ask me that man, don't tell me it's not real, I know it's not real but don't tell me but Donald Trump genuinely thought his friend Vince McMahon got blown up on WWF on the fucking television and that's a fact and the interesting thing is with Trump his niece Mary Trump I believe she just released her book

today which is like a tell-all book, and what makes it interesting is she's a clinical psychologist, and she said something in this book, which I found quite interesting, which she said, you can't diagnose or pathologize Trump. So a lot of people have tried to understand Trump's mental state.

A lot of people from a distance have tried to say, is he a narcissist is he a psychopath is he delusional but Mary Trump says you can't because Trump has been institutionalized his entire life he has been he has had access to so much wealth and privilege for the entirety of his life since he was born that you can't analyze him the way you would analyze you or i who has to exist in society so the rules are different and now that he's in the white house he's similarly institutionalized within the white house there's no repercussions for Trump. People don't chastise Trump the way that you or I would be chastised.

When Trump rings up WWF and says, Is my friend Vincent okay? I saw him get blown up on the television. No one turns around to Donald Trump and says, Donnie, it's's fake you stupid prick no one said that what happened is the person picked up the phone and it's like oh fuck it's Donald Trump the billionaire

and this really really wealthy man who could have me fired thinks that Vince McMahon has been blown up what am I going to do I better respond to him on his level oh no no no Donald Donald he's actually okay don't worry about that What am I going to do? I better respond to him on his level. Oh no no no Donald. Donald he's actually okay. Don't worry about that.

Best wishes. I'll let Vince know that you rang okay. And then the person put the fucking phone down. And turned to the person beside them and said. You won't believe what just happened. But Trump didn't get the response that you or I would get. So he's institutionalised within it. But Trump uses't get the response that you or I would get. So he's institutionalized within it. But Trump uses kayfabe as an essential part of his fucking presidency. And that's why I can't tell what's happening in the world today.

Because I'm a rational person. Most people are rational. most people search for evidence most people have a degree of criticality in how they think and that's not working right now I mean we all remember when when when he actually got the power and he's blatantly lying and his press secretary, what's her name Kellyanne Conway when the press the press had never seen it so there's a pre-existing contract

right, that at the very least your politicians have to be serious. Like within the rules of Kayfabe, which did exist with Obama, the unspoken contract is, okay Barack, I know there's going to be some corruption. I know there's going to be some weddings being blown up in Yemen. I know there's going to be some human rights abuses I know that there's a giant black budget that goes to the CIA and we don't know what it is I know that you've actually been tapping everyone's phones and observing everyone without their consent through the NSA all this bad shit I know that you're pursuing Julian Assange.

I know that Hillary Clinton wanted to bomb Julian Assange because he leaked secrets to actually keep people safe. We know all this, Barack. Okay? But we won't admit it. What we'll do instead is we need you, at the very least, to be very professional. Okay?

So when we challenge you on on us we know that you're not going to give the honest result or the honest answer but you're going to appear as if you do care and that at least you're trying and we're going to be okay with that we can sleep then because these huge problems we don't want to be burdened with them personally so we need you as president and this goes for most of the politicians in western democracies please pretend at least that you have things under control and you're professional and you're trying your best can we do that and the politician does it and then you and i can sleep at night trump didn't and doesn't so when Trump started lying at the start

the first one was when he when he had his fucking inauguration and the crowd wasn't big it was nothing compared to Obama's and then Trump started to obsess over this was the biggest ever inauguration of a president and he started presenting he started doing press conferences with doctored photographs and every single adult in the room is going no no no no no you're actually lying now man you're fucking lying you're literally

lying and then he'd shout fake news and then Kellyanne Conway would come out and she would say someone would ask her a direct question breaking the rules of Kayfabe and would say to Kellyanne Conway the president is lying about how many people attended his inauguration

here are facts that show that this man is lying and at the start people tried to break the kayfabe that's like standing up in the wrestling match and going wait a minute is your name really Ultimate Warrior

because it says on Wikipedia that your name is Jim why are you wearing that face paint wait a minute do you know that Hulk Hogan is going to beat you and that this match that you're going to do is actually fake

that's breaking the rules of kayfabe and if you do that it fucks everything up for everyone and the reporters tried it and then Kellyanne Conway and this for me was the moment where the earth shaked underneath me, and I didn't know,

I couldn't understand the zeitgeist, when Kellyanne Conway responded with, these facts that you have regarding the inauguration, or whatever it was, well, we have alternative facts, and at that moment then, anyone with any degree of criticality, your brain just explodes.

My brain exploded when I heard that. Alternative facts. And you kind of have to switch off then at that point. So now, four years into it, Trump, Trump, last month Trump told people to fucking drink bleach like one thing I'd like to see the media start doing is stop calling him Trump

and instead refer like I'm thinking how do you break the kayfabe because we're all part of it, we're all part of the contract, he lies every single month he lies several times a week and you need to start referring to him i didn't even i don't even know if it would work

don't call him trump anymore call him the president of the united states when i said donald trump suggested that americans should consider drinking bleach to kill coronavirus that might be in their bodies when you say the President of the United States the President of the United States has asked people to drink bleach it changes it a bit

but this is also why you can't do satire at the moment you can't do satire sat the moment. You can't do satire. Satire doesn't work because satire also depends upon the kayfabe, the contract, that politicians are serious. So when politicians are continually serious, you can subvert their seriousness through absurdity. You can't subvert Trump. He just told people to drink bleach. Do you know what I mean?

A real turning point for me. So, like... I still don't know how I feel about it. Like, if you were to ask me right now what are my how what it feels like right now is regarding Trump

it's like there's a storm there's a there's a storm that I can do nothing about and I'm just waiting for it to pass that's that's how I get on with my day

there's a storm and it's not pleasant and I have to wait for it to pass and then things will go back to i mean i don't even know if the storm metaphor like it's it's like it's like someone just someone someone rang me up and and said there's a there's a dog in Kildare and they're after talking and then I'm like what yeah man there's a dog up in Kildare Alsatian and just started talking last week and now the dog's talking loads and then you turn on the news and the news is a dog in Kildare has started talking. And then my ma's ringing me going. There's a dog in Kildare talking.

And it becomes so fucking normalized. That there's a dog. In Kildare talking. That you're. You start to accept it. And you just go. Does he have a Kildare accent? What accent does he have? And that's it, that's it, done

out the window then Do you know what I mean? It's like that that's what the Trump thing is like I'm now asking what the Kildare dog's accent is like instead of, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do?

If a dog up in Kildare starts talking a dog talking, what can I do what can I do if a dog up in Kildare starts talking a dog talking what can I do if that's what the world is giving me right now I just have to go along with it and listen to him I mean what we all like unless America has complete and utter systemic overhaul

what everyone really wants is can we have another president that still keeps doing that awful american shit that they do but at least makes us feel as if they're competent can we have that again or this is why you know i fucking i was a fan of barney sanders and he seems sound but barney is just going to do and he's still going to be he's never going to become president but even if he was barney's still at the helm of the evil empire what's he going to do complete another systemic change but a turning point for me i'm not involved in the trump k-fib because i see what it is so instead i have to switch off

and sit back and watch and that's what a lot of people do i'm no longer shocked by his lies drinking bleach i like fucking hell nothing he does could shock me anymore but a real turning point for me was in 2018 when it's like each week he would outdo himself by saying something incredibly ridiculous while also being president of the United States or do something outrageous or odious or horrible. Like I'm deliberately not even talking about the evil shit, the children in fucking cages, what he's done with ice and immigration i'm not even talking about that instead i'm focusing on the absurd rather than the fucking evil but in 2018 the this book came out called fire and fury so this journalist i can't remember the journalist's name but the journalist somehow had managed to get a press pass and no one had kind

of looked at his credentials or asked him to leave and he had this unprecedented access to the trump fucking the early trump white house and he wrote a book talking about the utter chaos of it and excerpts of the book were going around online and this journalist was talking about the most absurd shit happening in the Trump White House and then one particular passage leaked and I fully believed it and so did a lot of people and the passage was called the Gorilla Channel and I'm going to read this for you so this was a passage from the book Fire and Fury about the Trump White House

On his first night in the White House, President Trump complained that the TV in his bedroom was broken because it didn't have the Gorilla Channel Trump seemed to be under the impression that a TV channel existed that screened nothing but Gorilla based content 24 hours a day to appease Trump be under the impression that a TV channel existed that screened nothing but guerrilla-based content

24 hours a day. To appease Trump, White House staff compiled a number of guerrilla documentaries into a makeshift guerrilla channel, broadcast into Trump's bedroom from a hastily constructed transmission tower on the South Lawn. However, Trump was unhappy with the channel that they'd created, mourning that it was boring because the gorillas aren't fighting. Staff edited out all the parts of the documentaries where gorillas weren't hitting each other and at last the president was satisfied. And some days he'll watch the gorilla channel for 17 hours straight, an insider told me. He kneels in front of the TV with his face about four inches from the screen and says encouraging things to the gorillas,

like the way you hit that other gorilla was good. I think he thinks the gorillas can hear him. Now that's not an excerpt from the book. That's a funny, satirical, fake excerpt that was made by a tweet account called pixelated boat but i believed it when i saw it because like it's hilarious it's really funny uh to think that all right donald trump has a custom-made gorilla channel and he thinks the gorillas can hear him, and he wants them to fight, but this, this man actually,

in real life, thought Vince McMahon, got blown up on WWF, so now, it's like, which is funnier, because one of them's fucking real, so why shouldn't I believe,

the gorilla channel, and, the current zeitgeist, one of utter fucking confusion. That's all I can say. I have no certainty. And I've become nihilistic. I can't, like... You have to just get on with your life you have to just get on with your life

and appreciate this thing is happening I'm not even going to make a call Joe Biden's a prick Joe Biden's a fucking prick I don't give a fuck about Joe Biden but he'll probably be better than Trump but I mean what's better than Trump

I don't want to call it because I was in 2015 I was completely wrong I didn't think I was like how could America vote this man in but the reason he got in was kayfabe he was able to perfectly encapsulate and nail kayfabe and when

you saw his rallies in 2015 his presidential rallies and they were all chanting lock her up and he was saying ridiculous things and he was saying my popularity is so great that i could go down fifth avenue with a gun and i could could shoot someone. And I'd still be president. And everyone starts cheering. And the hats. And people holding up signs. It's wrestling. It's wrestling.

He. Not in. It may be people around him that were. Smart. But this man. Managed to. Perfect man managed to perfectly managed to encapsulate and to incorporate

kayfabe into what he's doing and for him to also I don't know is he a heel or a face the heel is the bad guy and the face is the good guy to his audience he's a face he's a good guy to his audience he's a face he's a good guy, to the liberals he's the heel

so it's a tough call but what I do know is when you look at his rallies and the way they hold up the signs and the way they react and the way they chant and the the people at his rallies they're the same white

american crowd that were in the audience of wwf when i was a kid when i was a child the same type of white american they're the ones with the red faces truly believing that the ultimate warrior is real and those are the people at the trump rallies those are the people who aren't interested in facts they're not interested in build a wall they're not thinking about that wall was impossible from the fucking start getting mexico to build it was impossible from the start it was never going to happen but it didn't it doesn't matter when you're involved in kayfabe in the same way you know that hulk hogan is going to win you know the ultimate warrior is going to lose but it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because that's

not what it's about it's about pure and utter emotion and catharsis and removing frustration and believing in simple binary morals in that time. Except now, it's the real world. It's at least wrestling happens once you leave the fucking stadium and go out into the car park. It ends. But now the kayfabe is all of America

and the world as a result and it's after leaking into social media that's why as i mentioned earlier i've got a fella called ken from awfully thinking that i'm employed by leo radiker to introduce chinese totalitarianism to ireland because of my fuck because like. I want people to wear face masks. And. Yeah. That's what my dad was prophesizing. When I was a kid.

That's why. I'm just trying to enjoy the wrestling. And then this fucking grown adult. Is beside me. Deeply. Deeply upset upset at the adults he sees in the crowd taking the wrestling seriously because my dad was able to see where that was going to go he was able to tell because he had an understanding of humans that I'm guessing he was just thinking I know it's wrestling but one day that's going to spill out

into the streets and he was right similarly with Grand Theft Auto he wasn't upset that I wanted a game to shoot people it's no you're buying into the American vision the normalisation of violence

to justify colonialism so that's my that's my half hot take for the week Donald Trump and the use of of kayfabe I'm not the first person to say that in case someone wants to get into my

comments and say that's not your hot take it actually was my hot take because I was reading Roland Barthes and I was reading Barthes and his analysis of wrestling Barthes is like the inventor

of the fucking hot take but I was reading about Barthes and his analysis of professional wrestling from the 70s and that got me thinking about this but then I'm not the only person who has pointed out the comparisons between Trump and wrestling

and his career so I just want to say that I'll catch you next week okay or you know you can catch me tonight I'll be on Twitch at half nine I'll be on Twitch unless half nine i'll be on twitch unless something exceptional happens i'm not going anywhere i'll probably be on twitch every night

this week um around half nine twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast you can come chat to me you can see me make music whatever you want it's great crack there will be no kayfabe um only realness except for the fact that I've got a fucking bag in my head and my name is blind boy, alright, that's the only bit of kayfabe here I don't think that's the worst but em, yeah

so mind yourself, look after yourself, be compassionate to yourself be compassionate to your neighbour or whoever you are around wear a fucking face mask wear a face mask do it for other people if a member of your family or someone close to you is veering into conspiracy theories if they think the coronavirus is a hoax if they think that they use the word plandemic if they think that face masks are some type of wider

political plot you try and talk to that person who's close to you you're not going to reach you know the person who's not close to you who's online don't bother arguing with them you're not going to convince them

you're no amount of fucking facts they're involved in kfab conspiracy theories are kfab you can compassionately reach the person who's close to you and in a non-confrontational fashion ask them questions and explain things like evidence and find doctors and at the worst just say to them even if you think it's a fucking conspiracy theory will you just take the risk and wear the bloody mask for fuck's sake

where's the underpants conspiracy lads I can't take my pants off and walk to Dunn's with my fucking cock out I can't do it I'll be arrested alright there's people saying the government want mandatory masks oh who's gonna pay for the masks who's gonna pay

for your fucking underpants you can't get onto the bus with your dick out either that's fine that's an established social fucking norm okay there's no government supplied underpants now i appreciate some people are in such poverty that they're not going to be able to afford face masks but in that respect try and look for there are organizations that are providing face masks for people in direct provision and for people in homelessness look for those um a face covering is all that's needed but like talk to if if someone close to you is is espousing these views you are the person who can reach them they're not going to listen to me and you arguing with a stranger online that's not going to work either we have to as individuals now speak compassionately to the

people that are close to us because everyone has got a fucking friend who is veering in that direction on facebook looking at the conspiracy theory stuff and before you know it they're saying the word pandemic and as soon as that happens goes. The algorithm feeds it all back. And it gets more and more extreme. And an interesting way to look at it. I found. A lovely psychological description. Of people who are into conspiracy theories recently.

It makes sense. Because people I know. Who are susceptible to conspiracy theories. They're not. They're not dumb I don't like using that word these are not people who you would consider unintelligent

friends of mine who sadly are now into conspiracy theories are using words like plandemic 10 years ago these would be the people who if I was at a party I would actually sit down with them and have a quite an intelligent conversation quite a lot of people who are susceptible to

conspiracy theories they're smart people they are getting enjoyment out of doing the research of finding these things out but one interesting thing I heard said about conspiracy theorists is that they're people who were possibly let down by the education system or they're people who didn't have access to opportunities and they're people who, with the right guidance or opportunities or with better luck or with more privilege could have probably ended up being a scientist or being a lecturer or being an authority or an expert but they didn't have those opportunities and conspiracy theories are their kind of, their way of regaining power and feeling smarter.

And when I viewed it through that lens and I look at the people who I know who are conspiracy theorists, it makes fucking sense. It's people with unfulfilled potential and unfulfilled dreams. potential and unfulfilled dreams and that's why it's always so disappointing when you see a friend falling down the conspiracy theory platform hole because for me anyway it's always like ah fuck they're smart ah shit i thought they were on the ball do you know what i mean but it's never the person who's truly realising their goals. No one I know who's into conspiracy theories is also fulfilling their dreams and living out their full potential. Or, you know, has a career based on what they studied. They're people who could have done better.

And I'm not saying it's their fault that they didn't they just tend to be people who i think didn't live up to potential either because of their own setbacks or like i said they didn't have access to privilege or luck or things like that too you know and when you look at it from that point of view that will allow you the compassion to have a conversation with this person because if you go at it from a competitive point of view you're there'll be no conversation and it's hard to not be competitive in these situations because something like a mask is a muzzle how do you not get angry with that but you can't because do you not get angry with that? But you can't, because if you get fucking angry with it,

you're in the loop of our... Wear that cape, be that superhero. On Saturday, March 23rd, it's Marvel Superhero Night in Rock City. You dress up as your favorite superhero and watch the Toronto Rock drop the hammer on the Halifax Thunderbirds

at 7 p.m. at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. Punch your ticket to Marvel Superhero Night on Saturday, March 23rd at 7 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Okay, that was a long goodbye, and I didn't intend that to be long, but there you go. I'll see you next week.