The Blindboy Podcast - Fallons Volume

Episode Date: April 10, 2018

A woman giving birth to a rabbit, Conor Mcgregor, Irish folk music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

May the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, adorn the gable end of your head with heavy vestments from his lonely sacristy, you championship fist mistresses. and welcome to the podcast I don't know what number week it is it's about 26 27 I don't know I've lost count I've lost count

of the podcast weeks if this is your first time listening to the podcast go back to the start please because we've developed we've developed something we've developed. We've developed something. We've developed something that it's.

You need to go back to the start. To fuck. How are you getting on? I hope you had a gentle week. I'm back on my bullshit. Hold on some cunt is texting me. I'm back on my bullshit. Here some cunt is texting me I'm back on my bullshit here at the blind boy podcast in my brand new studio

which it's got slightly better sound because what I did is I needed to dampen the sound so I just put a lot of books in shells and that can be of great help but the books are within

easy reach if I need to fucking do some research for some shit that I'm talking to ye right now I'm looking at a book 1001 Battles oh thrilling stuff em

ah boys cunts keep texting me hold on you see my internet I don't have a broadband in my studio yet so I'm getting internet

by tethering it off my phone so I can't really put my phone on airplane mode because then I've no fucking internet and I require internet for this podcast on top of that the USB on my phone

is broken so I can't really move it that much and cunts keep texting me so we might get occasional vibrations this week to interrupt with your podcast hug hold on maybe I've got a sock maybe I'll put the phone on a sock

Gartex combat trousers I'm going gonna rest the phone on some Gartex combat trousers if you're wondering what the fuck I'm doing with them Gartex is a wonderful fabric I don't know if you've ever come across it it's

completely waterproof Gartex is a wonderful fabric. I don't know if you've ever come across it. It's. Completely waterproof. But at the same time. Completely breathable. But it's also a brand name. So it's fucking mad expensive. So a set of Gartex. Overtrousers.

Would cost you about 300 quid. Unless you get military surplus. In which case you'll get them for 50 quid so I have camouflaged Gore-Tex over trousers for when I'm walking around in the rain and I want dry legs but a wet torso

a couple of codpests codpest podcast couple of podcasts back What the fuck would a Cod Past be? An area in a river where cods Cod go past you

You count the passing cod The Cod Past The Blind Boy Cod Past Actually there is a fucking In the Plassy River where York the Ahern lives which was York the Ahern is an otter

by the way he's the patron saint of this podcast you'll need to go to earlier episodes to find out his origin story but there's a river I go to the Plassy River and yeah there's no cod there, right?

But there's salmon. Well, not anymore. The fucking salmon are gone. The Plassey River used to have a thriving salmon population. It's in Limerick. And it used to have Shannon River salmon, which are more or less extinct now because they built a big giant hydroelectric power station in the 1930s

called Ardna Crusha. And this made shit of the Plassey River. It made shit of the salmon population for a couple of reasons. The fucking salmon were using certain parts of the river for fucking off into the ocean, coming back into the river to breed or lay their eggs, I think. So when they built this big hydroelectric dam power station, the mad bastards put salmon elevators into the dam. So the theory was that the salmon would go into these little compartments then be raised hundreds of feet into the into the air and go over the dam as a salmon fucking elevator

and it didn't really work that well and the other reason the population was decimated is that overfishing they kept taking the best salmon the ones thatfishing they kept taking the best salmon the ones that were left they kept taking the best salmon out of the river the biggest ones and because they were taking the healthiest ones it kind of made shit of the genetics of the river

so all the salmon that are left now have got fucking big giant ears probably but a couple of podcasts All the salmon that are left now have got fucking big giant ears. Probably. But a couple of podcasts back. We spoke about an artist from the 1600s or 1700s called William Hogarth. Who was a satirical artist. And he was doing prints about how gin made shit of london but when after after i did the podcast on him i went back looking at a lot of fucking hogarth paintings and prints you

know and i came across one mental drawing he did and it stood out from all the rest because it was just nuts and i couldn't get the name of it at first but i'll describe the drawing to you it's it's a lot of lads it's a bedroom with an open door and it's a lot of men walking into the bedroom and on the bed this woman is lying on her back in extreme pain and all along the ground are like dead fucking rabbits and like little bits of rabbit legs and rabbit heads and it would appear oh and someone someone there's a midwife there so the pain that the drawing looks like this woman is giving birth to loads of rabbits. And then all these lads with very primitive speech bubbles walk into the room. And it stands out from the rest of Hogarth's drawings. Because I'm like, what the fuck is this?

This is nuts. This is very odd. So I went doing a bit of research on the drawing. It's called... What the fuck is it called? The Wise Men of Godly Men in Consultation. And it turns out it's a drawing about a woman called Mary Toft, who she was knocking about around 1750. And she was this English woman

who caused massive controversy in England she claimed that she was giving birth to rabbits and all the doctors in fucking England started arriving to her gaff examining her

and she was basically like chopping up bits of rabbits and sticking them up herself and then pretending to give birth to bits of dead rabbit in front of all these doctors and the doctors were all like taking it dead seriously and stroking their chins and considering her a medical anomaly and of course she was just looking for attention I don't know she was faking it obviously she wasn't giving birth to

rabbits she was fooling doctors so Hogarth got great kind of joy out of this he loved the fact that the these educated posh doctors got the absolute piss taken out of them by Mary Toft.

But anyway the doctors were so pissed off. That she had faked the rabbit births. That they had her sent to jail. Which is a shame. Because I think it's gas. Mary Toft giving birth to rabbits. Fair play to her. So this week's podcast.

Is going to be about something absolutely mad that happened me this weekend i have got a bizarre story for you so as you know what i'm up to at the moment is getting this studio looking nice um and sorting out the sound. There's still a little bit of an echo this week because the floors are wooden. I need to get some acoustic sound panelling in and I think a decent rug.

But what I did at the weekend is I wanted the studio to be looking nice. So what I did is I went down to fucking Heaton's, and I bought some LED strip lights, which are, they're a great way to make somewhere look fucking nice, so I put the, it was, I think it was, it was either Friday or Saturday night, I was putting up the LED strip lights, so I did, and all of a sudden the ambience of the room became absolutely gorgeous you know this fucking i have him on a low strobe setting so the room changes from sumptuous pinks and purples and greens and it's like it's like being in blade runner i fucking love it so i was sitting back

in my chair relaxing gorgeous being bathed in multicoloured lights very slowly, threw on some jazz music and a bit of reggae. So I figure, fuck it, I'll have a lung full of baldy to chill out, treating myself now. So anyway, I am having a great time, really relaxed. And I go on to Twitter and Conor McGregor is trending. And I mean fucking really trending. Everyone from Sky News to lads I know in Limerick is talking about Conor McGregor. So immediately my first thought is, what the fuck has he done now?

So immediately my first thought is what the fuck has he done now? So I went looking at it and I'm accosted with footage of McGregor and a lot of boys fucking some metal thing through the window of a bus. You've all seen it. And it was shocking. It was shocking to me. I was just like, the fuck is he at? My initial response was like, this is a setup. This is like WWE.we you know it can't be real um but then i heard the police were looking for him so it's like yeah it's fucking

real he threw a thing through the window of a bus what a mad bastard and it turns out it was retaliating now i know nothing about sports you know this now i know fuck all about sports he was retaliating for a friend of his guys or a couple of friends of his that they were attacked by uh fighters from dagestan eastern europe or something and he was avenging this he flew over with a lot of lads to avenge this uh which is nuts so i anyway i saw this and i decided i'm gonna put out a tweet now i've spoken about conor mcgregor before and i admire conor mcgregor i'm a person who separates uh i separate the person from the behavior so there's many aspects of conor mcgregor's behavior that i very much admire and i proud of, then there's other aspects

of his behaviour that I'm not too enamoured by, you know, such as that bus incident or kind of when he's not very careful around language that's perceived as racist, little things like that. I'm not mad about that, Conor McGregor. So I tweeted. I said. I can't remember now because I deleted it. But it was. Conor McGregor reminds me of Tupac. Near the end.

Tupac was hanging around. And living up to his gangster image. Even though he'd made his millions something like that and mcgregor does remind me of that you know when tupac like tupac didn't tupac wasn't a gangster tupac grew up on the east coast he grew up in a hard area and he had it tough of course but by all accounts tupac was a good lad you know his ma absolutely loved him she fucking gave everything for him and he went to drama school I think and Tupac was an out and out artist he was a creative artist and he wasn't a gangster the gangster part was his image that was the gangster rap image

and if you listen to Tupac's earlier work the gangster stuff is it's very much from an observational point of view it's what he's seeing but when he joined a west coast label called death row which had some dodgy characters running it Tupac embraced gangster rap in his art but then as a person he also started to embrace a gangster lifestyle. Started hanging around with the wrong lads and throwing his weight around, starting scraps, getting into fights. And you get this sense of, like, what the fuck are you doing, Tupac? Why? What's the point? You've made your money.

You're comfortable. You've nothing to prove. Why are you doing things that, number number one will put you into jail and number two if you have money people will come looking for fights because they want to claim off you if you hit if you hit them so when i saw mcgregor doing that with the bus it reminded me of tupac it's i just like i put my hands on my head and I said to myself, what the fuck are you doing, Conor? What's the point? Why? Would you not relax with your money? You can do whatever you want in the world.

Do something positive, man. You're just bringing it on yourself now. And, you know, he was arrested. So my opinion of Conor McGregor is often conflicted because, like I said, I know nothing about sports, I know nothing about MMA, but what I do know about is art and passion and creativity. So the aspects,

the Conor McGregor that I like, okay, is when Conor McGregor is asked about fighting, he doesn't respond by talking about punches or kicks or technique. He talks about his obsession with movement and the human body. He breaks it down beyond fighting to human movement. And when I hear that, like he's got my 100% attention because that's an artist talking right there about his art. That's a master of his craft. Talking about the mechanics of his craft. In a very intimate fashion.

It's like, that's why this cunt is the best. Because he's not talking about kicks and punches. He's talking about movement. And that's deep, that's deep stuff for the art form. So I thoroughly enjoy that Conor McGregor. And like Tupac, I don't see McGregor as a thug. Because you don't get to be at McGregor's level by being a thug. There's too much dedication, passion,

self-belief required to get to the level that he's at. If he was a thug, he'd have glassed somebody outside of Chipper when he was 16 and wouldn't have had a career so that's why it's um disappointing and disturbing seeing him jeopardizing it all at the moment and acting like a bit of a mickey you know so anyway i chill out from twitter i chill out from twitter i go back to my music i go back to my studio and i've kind of forgotten about the McGregor thing and what's happened. Meanwhile, he's the most wanted man in the world for about two hours. The period after the incident with the bus and before he handed himself into the police, he was, I don't know what he was doing, but everyone was looking for him, from the fucking media to 50 Cent tweeting about him. was looking for him from the fucking media to 50 cent tweeting about him so i go back onto twitter having forgot about the two-pack conor mcgregor status that i put out and i go into my inbox on

twitter and i occasionally check the inbox because like i said ye send me mails all the fucking time i keep i try and respond to as many as i can but i can't because there's so many so i said i'm gonna go in check a few mails i'll respond to the top two or three which is what i do when i catch them and then in my fucking inbox is a mail from conor mcgregor now i immediately have i pull a whitener because it's too nuts it's too insane like what the fuck is Conor McGregor mailing me for it's like what so I kind of start to check my hands and get all sweaty and don't know if this is real or not because it's too too surreal a situation the my eyes could not process that in my inbox is notorious MMA blue tick message from fucking Conor McGregor what the fuck so then I chill out I open the fucking message now what I hadn't realized as well is Conor McGregor follows me on Twitter

I didn't know I didn't know he follows me on Twitter. I hadn't spotted that he was following me. So the message reads, Be very careful speaking on my name without full facts. Are you assuming I'm to be shot soon, with your Tupac reference? By your response it seems that way. I respect you and your opinions

regarding the treatment of irish people by our own government i have listened to many of your talks but do not ever speak my name in this disrespectful vein again you are a man with a bag on his head don't get left in it so i'm like fucking hell what is this real i still can't tell if it's real and i don't want to tell anybody either so i'm just kind of pacing around in my room kind of going i actually just got a mail from fucking conor mcgregor and it's like jesus christ man would you not fucking respond to 50 cent why do you give a shit about some nobody in limerick but i guess he does and i responded what i responded i respect i i then felt bad i felt bad because what i started thinking about was holy fuck if the entire internet is talking about mcregor and he decides to respond to me then that means something I said

actually genuinely probably hurt him and that's what he needed to respond to and so what he picked up is that by me comparing him to Tupac he chose to look at the fact that Tupac had been shot I never even thought of that that wasn't. That wasn't in my head at all. McGregor just reminded me of how Tupac was behaving, but I certainly wasn't suggesting that he was going to be shot. And for McGregor to get pissed off about that, he's completely within his rights, because you can't go on Twitter fucking pontificating or fucking wondering about another human being life ending.

That's not my style. I would never do that. So I just responded back to him. I was embarrassed. I didn't know what to say. I just responded back. I just went, sorry, Connor. When I tweet shit like that, I forget that there's a real person behind it all who might be reading it.

I'm going to delete it. And no, I never meant nothing about you getting shot. Just reminded me of Tupac scrapping in Las Vegas. I'm just spouting internet shite. Look after yourself. Because that's all I could say, you know. And, I don't know, that's fucking nuts. That's just, it took me about two hours to process that it

happened, and to kind of think in my head, why me, why the fuck is he responding to me, like, he's proper, proper famous, like, I'm fucking nobody, um, but it must have really, it must have really gotten to him and I then felt bad because that's that's not the type of shit that I say I'm not a nasty person to suggest that someone would be shot is a nasty thing to say so I felt bad over that you know now right now I know

I know a lot of journalists listen to this podcast and I know it's your job but do me a favour please don't go writing a big stupid clickbait article now about Conor McGregor threatening blind boy he didn't fucking threaten me he took exception to something I said and even though at the end it says you're a man with a bag in his head don't get left in it that's not a fucking threat he's not threatening me, he still follows me on Twitter please don't take the clickbait route

and write an article about that because it's not true and it will result in my life will become less quiet I don't want a lot of Conor McGregor fanboys thinking I'm being threatened by him, I'm not we're grand quiet. I don't want a lot of Conor McGregor fanboys thinking I'm being threatened by him. I'm not.

We're grand. Do you know who loves clickbait as well? Blind Boy loves clickbait. I could have called this podcast, I could have called the name of this podcast, this episode Conor McGregor Threatens Me. And I could have had the thumbnail image

me with a shocked face like Macaulay Culkin and a bad photoshopped image of McGregor in the background I could have done that quadrupled my listens but I didn't because I've got integrity so please don't report it in a clickbait fashion I'm talking to the responsible sound journalists that are listening the uh the pricks are going to do what they want anyway. But more than likely... So I went into my followers because I didn't notice that Conor McGregor was following me. So he started following me in the past month or two by the looks of things.

So he probably listens to the podcast and he could very well be listening now, so, if you are listening Connor, look sorry about that, I didn't mean the two pack thing, but at the same time, I would like to see you, not throw things through buses,

because, I don't know man, that's very fucking, that's very angry you know, I mean, that's a destructive emotion and you won't find content happiness in that type of behavior what what what it'll give you is a a short-term relief for whatever frustration or if you feel that you've been slighted in some fashion or disrespected it'll just give you

a temporary release from that emotion but it won't bring you to a fucking happier place do you know what I mean that's just my opinion on it em the other thing as well that there's so much more to be gotten from acts of positivity

than there is from acts of negativity for yourself for your own mental health for your well-being for the happiness of you and the people around you that love you and one thing that i would that did bother me is there's lads like you're from fucking Crumlin right there's lads in Crumlin young lads there's children

9-10 years of age in Crumlin in fucking Limerick in parts of fucking Cork in Darndale, in Summerhill. Young lads who don't have a hell of a lot going for them.

Young lads who don't have decent male role models, right? And these young kids, the role models they have in their communities are the lads in BMWs selling coke. And every Friday night they see these lads perform spectacular acts of violence in their communities. Kicking the head out of someone in the street to send a message. And these are the role models they have.

The other role model that these young lads have is you they look up to you as someone who comes from their area someone who talks like them who behaves like them who looks like them someone they can truly relate to and you're a success you're a positive light at the end of the tunnel for these young lads who don't have who don't see a future or opportunity and when you behave in a way that's kind of anti-social it takes away that light at the end of the tunnel it takes away the the narrative the story that the story of conor mcgregor which is if you work really hard at something if you're passionate if you stay away from the bullshit that is at hand when you come from a tough area if you stay away from this and you

work hard and you stick to your goals you can become a success a positive person someone who's celebrated for being a brilliant sports person but when when you act the mickey it sends a message back to these kids that there's no point do Do you know what I mean? And just keep an eye on yourself. There's no point. There's no point in that stuff. And what I would say to you as well. If you, you know, as you said.

You respect me and my opinions. And all of that. And as I do you. Like I I said when certain things that you're talking about come down to Limerick sometime no fucking press no nothing get onto a bus, take a loan of a friend's punto

we'll go down to the Plassy River in Limerick right we'll go into Aldi get a fucking tin of mackerel go down to the Plassy River when the sun is going down Right? We'll go into Aldi. Get a fucking tin of mackerel. Go down to the Plassey River. When the sun is going down.

And we'll pick the mackerel. And put it into the river. And we'll wait for the otter. Yorty Ahern. To emerge from his couch. As the sun goes down. And connect. With the earth.

And the river. No social media. No bullshit. Nothing. Just fucking the humility of nature. And the only goal in our evening is whether or not an otter appears. I think in my opinion, you can tell me to fuck off if you want. That's where your head needs to be.

And to be getting away from the nonsense. Scrapping is for the octagon, man. But outside of the octagon, it just brings negativity on yourself and everyone around you. And you won't find a lasting happiness from that. And I'm not fucking rich or wealthy. I'm not particularly fucking famous either. But one thing I can say is that I'm mad happy.

I'm incredibly happy. 90% of the time. And the only time I'm not happy is when I have a genuine reason to be unhappy. When I receive bad news. But other than that, I've got all the riches in the world because I'm very happy with me as a person and that then causes me to view the world around me in a positive fashion I don't feel like it's very difficult for me to be offended by things it's very difficult for me to feel slighted to feel that I've been to feel that someone's taking the piss out of me because my daily mantra is

I am better than nobody else and nobody else is better than me and all I can be all I can be is the best version of me that is that that's the all i can do and i can't be the best version of somebody else nobody else can be the best version best version of me i can only be me and with that grounding and that internal locus of evaluation shit just seems to slide shit slides it becomes kind of funny and laughable it's like what someone else thinks of me is none of my business

you know and there's a psychological theory that would be of benefit to you there was a psychologist called Maslow and maslow came up with this thing called the the hierarchy of human needs and it's a pyramid model of what the internal pyramid of of a human's growth right so at the bottom of this pyramid. Like the food pyramid. The very bottom of this pyramid.

What humans need for. Fulfillment and happiness. At the very bottom. Is physiological needs. Right. So the first needs that we need. To be met as human beings. Food.

Water. Warmth. Rest. Okay. Once we have that. That's the most basic need. Then. Above that. Safety. Security. And safety. okay once we have that that's the most basic need then above that safety security and safety then above that we need relationships and friends so those are the first three tiers of the

what a human needs for fulfillment then the fourth tier the second was it's the second to last tier is esteem needs a feeling of prestige and of accomplishment right you've reached all four of those things you've got food and water you're safe you've got security you've got friends relationships and without a doubt you've accomplished you've got you've accomplished unbelievable things now the very top of this pyramid and very very few humans get to reach the top of maslow's pyramid at the very top of maslow's pyramid is what's known as self-actualization it's achieving one's full potential including creative activities okay most people never get there that's the next step for you

for conor mcgregor to be the best version of conor mcgregor that you can be and to achieve true contentment and happiness self-actualization and philanthropy is self-actualization you know self-actualization is what can the human being do to genuinely better their community to make life more enjoyable and to make life more pleasurable for the people within the community that is self-actualization and you do that a lot of the time you know when the entire country gets behind you for a fight but psychology says that the it's somewhere in the top of that pyramid is where you will find the contentment and the happiness that you need and to not be so overcome by anger

that you're lobbing something through the window of a bus you know. I mean you know yourself. If you're in the fucking ring. And you get. Over emotional. With anger. You're going to lose the fight. Because you're not fighting anymore. You're not being skillful.

How can you bring those. Bring those. That skill. To your emotional world. You know. And that's what. That's what my day-to-day obsession is you know you said your obsession is human movement well my obsession is my internal fucking movement i'm not talking about taking a shit my emotional internal world

and making sure that i'm as happy as I can be, day to day, regardless of external events, because I know what it feels like as well, to have a relative amount of success, you know, when I fucking release a song and it goes viral or something, it's nothing compared to your success,

but for me, be a big deal, but I know what it feels like to have that type of success, to have everyone telling me I'm brilliant, and on the the inside for me not to feel very brilliant at all for me to actually resent people that are telling me I'm brilliant because inside I feel not great and I never want to return to that place I don't give a fuck if I release something that gets 100 million views if I'm not happy I don't care I'm much happier releasing something that gets no views as long as I'm happy with it and most importantly I'm waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night and in the middle I'm doing what I enjoy

and what makes me feel good and I'm not getting upset by what other people are saying about me you know so that offer stands Connor give me a shout now to Limerick we'll tell nobody and for some of you wondering out there hey blind boy why aren't you just contacting Connor directly and telling him this in person well number one um I wouldn't the only way I can contact Conor is by sending him a big long mail on Twitter and I don't trust

I don't trust the written word for conveying sincerity and conveying tone so I can convey my sincerity and tone via the podcast. The other thing as well is that the conversation is essentially fucking public, you know?

The whole world's talking about what happened last week with the bus. And also, the message, it's what I'm trying to say, even though it's to Conor McGregor, I think a lot of people listening. Would take something from it. A lot of us get. I spoke last week.

About emotional hijacking. A lot of us get emotionally hijacked by anger. And act with anger. Driving our. Intentions. And driving our actions. And then regretting it afterwards. You know. So so that's why

I wanted to say it on the podcast but that's just an example of fucking mad shit that happens to me mad shit is always fucking happening to me trying to set up my studio and end up getting involved with Conor McGregor ridiculous shit here's a list of mad shit

right and none of this is spoofing these are real things over the course of my career that I've gotten myself involved in bizarre stuff

I showed Ice Cube how to swing a Harley. I flicked tinfoil off of Beyonce's arse. I smoked some of Hugh Grant's joint while he was wearing bicycle shorts. I watched Fergie from Black Eyed Peas try to shift my friend Davy Hatchet and then Slash from Guns and Roses pulled her off him. I accidentally walked out of a restaurant

wearing Andre 2000's woolen hat. I frantically collected three condoms full of mashed bananas from Frankie Biles' back garden before his children came home from school. Mr. Crumb. Ate a piece of Harvey Keitel's birthday cake. And Mel Gibson is my third cousin.

Every single thing that happened there. Is the gospel truth. I'm not going to give you the context. Behind any of those things. Because that would ruin it. But everything that I just said there actually happened to me in my life, because I get myself into bizarre situations without even wanting to. It just happens all the time.

So let's do the part where I ask you to support me. This podcast is funded directly by the listeners. Via the Patreon page. I thoroughly enjoy this. I think it's fucking great. It means I answer to nobody. I love doing the podcast. And I especially like the fact that. It pays some of my bills.

So if you would like to give me the price of a pint. Or a coffee. Once a month. Please go to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. And donate a couple of quid. Because. I'm putting it all out for free. With the intention of it being consumed for free and there's nothing wrong with that

but if you're loving it and you like it I'd be very grateful if you threw me a few quid I'd love that thank you very much we're now gonna do em we're gonna pause for a digital advert that Acast put into

the podcast which you may or may not hear normally I do it with the ocarina the Spanish whistle for a digital advert that Acast put into the podcast which you may or may not hear normally I do it with the ocarina the Spanish whistle I don't have the ocarina yet it's in a bag somewhere I don't know where the fuck it is I will find it so we're gonna have to substitute this week instead of the ocarina what I do have is a very ornate sherry glass that was given to me as a gift at Christmas. And it's fucking, I can't even describe it. It's this mad bulbous sherry glass that has a long glass tube out of it. And you put sherry into it and you sip it out of it, out of this glass tube.

And when I was in Spain last week, I brought over four bottles with me of, there's a gorgeous sherry from Cordoba in Spain called Pedro Jimenez and it's it's a sherry that's made from sultanas so it tastes like strong alcoholic sultanas and I can't get enough of it so I bought four bottles of it that'll do me for a year because you wouldn't be drinking a load of sherry you know you might have one glass after dinner that's about it you know so some listeners are going to hear a digital advert and then other listeners if you're lucky are going to hear a couple of seconds of me uh gently tapping my bulbous sherry glass with my vape or aren't you lucky birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all no no don't the first o-men i believe the 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 o-men only theaters april 5th rock, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.

I'm being very ginger now with my taps. if I break this I'll be broken hearted, so I'm very open with you on this podcast about advertising and things like that, so if I ever endorse a product or anything like that. If I'm being paid to endorse it. I will actually fucking tell you. I'm never going to slip shit. Underneath the radar and. Endorse some stuff that I don't give a fuck about. Just because I'm getting paid.

I will not do that. I refuse to do that. I'll be upfront and honest. But. Occasionally I get sent stuff. Various products. I get sent stuff um various products i get sent usually by listeners to the podcast who own a company or whatever and they just figure out a way to send things to me and most of the time i get it and i just i send the person a mail and I say thank you very much. But sometimes I will get sent something that's like, this is actually fucking class. I'll talk about it on the podcast. So I'm going to do that now.

I'm not being paid for this. I just, I got sent a couple of bottles of Puccine. Okay. I spoke about Puccine and the history of of poutine making a couple of podcasts back so there's this company down in west cork that makes small batch poutine they're called mad march hair and yeah they sent me a couple of bottles of poutine and it's legal poutine it's like 40 but i tasted it and it was fucking it was pretty gorgeous it was pretty nice and what i like about it too is it's mad march hair recipe number 27 and where the poutine recipe comes from is there was this

there was this lunatic poutine distiller about 80 years ago called Mooney, and he was known as the Mad March Hare. Now hares are like big mad rabbits that scrap each other. But this fella Mooney, he used to run a kind of a mobile fruit and veg shack, but it was only a front. He used to be selling his own homemade poutine out of this shack, and apparently he made different batches and the 27th batch was the nicest poutine that

Ireland had ever tasted, that was the legend so the Madge March Hair Company that are based in West Cork did as much research as they could and tried to replicate this Mooney fella's recipe and created a poutine which won an award, so they sent me a couple of bottles

of poutine and some lovely glasses um an enamel mug that you drink poutine from an enamel shot glass and what I like about them too is they're selling poutine for the cocktail market because as you know I fucking love cocktails and they have a cocktail recipe for me called a Mooney's Mule which is a variation of a Moscow Mule, I'll be making this at the weekend it sounds fucking delicious it's

a shot of the poutine then a shot of cider a shot of ginger beer half a fresh lime and a full stick of cinnamon with a lot of ice. I will be drinking that at the weekend. I tell you, if I had a lot of fucking money, the amount of bullshit hipster ideas that I'd be funding. I don't know why Poutine hasn't been embraced as a cocktail ingredient in Ireland properly. You know?

March Hare, will ye send a bottle of poutine to my favourite drinking spot, Pharmacia in Limerick? Will ye send them a bottle of poutine, please? and the lads in Pharmacia I'm going to ask them to make me a tiki cocktail that has poutine as it's main ingredient I would love that please do because I don't trust myself with making cocktails yet

I arse around with a few things I can make a Mai Tai but I don't have the gift of inventing cocktails but the lads in Pharmacia do so please send them a bottle of your Puccine. I love the idea as well though. Just cider.

Cider and fucking spirits. Reminds me of. There's a song. I'm awfully noisy today. I'm fucking knocking everything. There's a song. A traditional Irish song. And I fucking love it.

It's called. johnny jump up and i knew this song i had a lunatic of a fucking tour manager called bachan uh he was managing our tours and doing our sound for about four or five years and he used to travel all around the place with us and when we'd be pissed drunk, Bakken would sing this song, Johnny Jump Up. And I never knew what it was or where it came from. It was only years later that I heard Christy Moore's version of Johnny Jump Up. So Johnny Jump Up,

I'll read out the lyrics for you in a minute, but what I love about traditional Irish music is the lyrical content focuses is nuts it's not it's not always about you know music pop music is about falling in love with someone or having your heart broken 90% of the time Irish traditional music is not about that it's about mad exaggerated stories and Johnny Jump Up is it's about a type of cider called Johnny Jump Up

and it's a cider that's it's brewed in whiskey barrels so it drives you mad and if you want to hear the song Johnny Jump Up I recommend Christy Moore's version but I'll just find the lyrics here and I'll read out the lyrics to you

because it's a fucking wonderful story so here are the lyrics I'll tell you a story that happened to me one day as I went down to y'all by the sea the sun it was high and the day it was warm says I and I'll pint wouldn't do me

no harm I went in and I called for a bottle of stout says the barman I'm sorry the beer is sold out. Try whiskey or paddy ten years in the wood. Says I'll try cider I've heard that it's good. Oh never oh never oh never again. If I lived to be a hundred or a hundred and ten I fell to the floor and I couldn't get up. After drinking a pint of old Johnny Jump Up. After drinking a quart I went out to the yard where I met up with Brophy the big local guard. Come here to me boy don't you know I'm the law. So I jumped up on the counter and shattered his jaw. We fell to the floor

and we couldn't get up but it wasn't I that hit him twas Johnny Jump Up. And the next thing I met down in Yall by the sea was a poor man on crutches and says he to me, I'm afraid in me life I'll get hit by a car, won't you help me across to the railway man's bar? After drinking a quart of that cider so sweet, he threw down his crutches and danced round his feet. A man died in the union by the name of McNabb. They washed him and shaved him and laid him right out on the slab. And after the undertaker his measures did take,

his wife took him home to a very fine wake. It was about twelve o'clock and the beer it was high. The corpse sat up and says he with a sigh, I can't get into heaven. For they won't let me up. Till I bring him a drink of old Johnny Jump up. Oh never oh never oh never again. If I live to be a hundred or a hundred and ten. For I fell to the floor. And I couldn't get up. After drinking a pint of old Johnny Jump up.

Isn't that fucking class. It's like what's your song about. It's about a cider brewed in a whiskey barrel that fucking is so mad it causes me to box a guard into the face then it makes a crippled man walk again and then a dead man rise but he can't get it to heaven because God wants some

that's fucking songwriting lads Jesus Christ and years and years I was thinking, the fuck is this song, and I kept asking Bakken, who used to sing it at parties, I kept saying to him, what's the song, what's the song, and he'd just say, it's Johnny Jump Up, it's traditional, it's traditional, and then I did research on the song Johnny Jump Up, and it was far as I know it's like an early form of viral advertising when it was written in the 30s or 40s or whatever some company or brewery were trying to market cider to the Irish and people weren't drinking it cider wasn't an irish drink people wanted porter and whiskey so first

off they had to spread this rumor that johnny jump up has got special qualities that it's not just cider it's brewed in a whiskey barrel so this drinks company went to a traditional musician i don't i think it might have been jimmy crowley but i'm not sure even if he's the originator the drinks company went to a musician and said will you write a cracking song about our cider sing it in all the pubs and then hopefully people will start buying cider because nobody's buying cider so that's what the song fucking Johnny Jump Up is it's early viral advertising via the form of traditional music but Bakken who showed me that song

he's a mad bastard first of all his real name isn't Bakken I'll tell you why we call them Bakken when we were doing gigs and we'd go to different venues the people at the venues would always say to us

where's your sound man, where's your sound man because the sound man is if you go to a venue as an act the sound man is the most important person because they're the person who connects, makes sure your sound is right and that you can do a proper gig so we got kind of tired of describing Bakken to people,

going, oh, he's wearing bootcut jeans, or he's got black hair and a slick back, or whatever. So what we decided to do, myself and Chrome, for the laugh, and also because Bakken is such a character, we said, here's how we're going to have you recognised as our sound man. We're going to make you wear a sword at all times. So a bakken is actually, it's a wooden Japanese sword. It's a practice sword.

So we went online and bought a bakken. And then Mr. Chrome made like a scabbard, like a sword holder. So our sound man had to wear this wooden sword around his waist for like three years anytime he was working with us. And we made him do it because we were paying him. So anytime a sound man said to us, where's your fucking sound? Where is it? Anytime a venue said, where is your sound man? We could just simply say it's the only man here who's got a sword around his belt and for that reason we called him bakken and he's a fine singer he's a great singer

and he told he he's he's got some fucking stories the stories he had he he claimed that a man was trying to poison him by bleaching duck eggs he was buying duck eggs off a fella and he claimed that he was dipping him in bleach to try and poison him these type of mad stories but there's one story he told us

and fuck me it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard so when Bachem was about 18 he was called over to America, to New York, to sing some traditional Irish ballad for a bunch of Irish Americans at a dinner in New York, right? And it was for Paddy's Day. So Bakken and his friend head over to do this Irish American convention and it was a big honour

so the night before the gig they're only young lads they go to a pub for a few fucking jars so when they're in the pub there's two or three huge massive American football players in the pub right

and they notice that the two young lads Bakken and his friend are Irish so the American football players they don't have much of like they don't know much about Irish people other than it's Patrick's day tomorrow and apparently Irish people are great at fighting so the drunk American football players went over to Bakken and his buddy and said we'll give ye 300 dollars if ye fight each other out in the car park we want to see two Irish people fight so Bakken and the buddy are only

fucking 18 so they say to each other 300 fucking quid man look we'll go out to the car park I'll throw you a dig you throw me a dig we'll keep it going and then one of us falls alright that's what we're going to do and we'll go out to the car park. I'll throw you a dig. You throw me a dig. We'll keep it going and then one of us falls, alright? That's what we're going to do. And we'll take the money off the lads.

We'll make them think we had a bit of a scrap. So the two boys head out with the American football players into the car park. Being young lads, they square up. Ready to fucking play the game. Anyway, someone throws a dig. Bakken gets a slap. And as soon as he gets a slap. He then gets very angry.

All of a sudden the two lads are now actually in a real fight. Boxing the heads off each other. So they get the 300 quid. But both of their faces are fucking destroyed. Bakken's lip is smashed open. With blood coming down his chin. Next day he wakes up. Mad hangover looks into the mirror.

Goes oh fuck. I have to sing to all the Irish Americans later on. And my face is busted open. Big fucking lip hanging off him. So he says fuck it anyway. I'll have to chance it. So he goes to the dinner to sing for the, to sing for the Irish Americans, to sing, I can't remember the song he was singing,

but to sing some Irish traditional song. Last minute, they find out it's not just a dinner for the Irish Americans, it's going to be broadcast on the East Coast after the news, as part of some Irish American thing. So all of a sudden, now there's a television company involved

so they look at Bakken and they see the fucking state of his face so they drag him into makeup but his face is so destroyed they basically have to plaster him up as he described it like a drag queen with full face of makeup on him

and they covered up the scar on his lip so it looked like he had a huge big herpes thing on his lip and then at the last minute they also asked him not to sing the song that he prepared but to sing Danny Boy now no actual real Irish person sings Danny Boy Danny Boy is an Irish-American song. So Bakken didn't know the lyrics. So he does it anyway. So there he is,

broadcast on the fucking East Coast, wearing a full face of makeup, harpies, half singing a song, Danny Boy, that he doesn't even know the lyrics to. That's the type of gas cunt that he is. So anyway, we'll get on to the questions the questions section this week because i'm nearly an hour into the podcast now so the first question it is it's a sponsored

question from wolfgang digital who are a small irish company who've taken upon themselves to sponsor a question each week on the podcast. So thank you very much, Wolfgang Digital. And what we do every week is they ask me a question, I give an answer. And then they have, you can search for it on YouTube, Wolfgang Bytes. They then create a video as a response to the question that I answer. So this week's question from Wolfgang Digital is people have asked how you can appeal for a capitalist sponsor when you are a Marxist. Do you believe Marxism and capitalism can coexist to the betterment of everyone? How? Well that's a bit of a loaded question um when i call

myself a marxist i'm kind of taking the piss i get called a marxist by the alt-right they call me a a marxist george saras funded cook um i wouldn't describe myself as a marxist at all like like i'm into my cultural Marxism. Which again is a pejorative term. I'm into critical theory. Which is. A school of thinking. Various different schools of thinking.

That try to deconstruct. Culture and society. To extract where power is coming from. And that is called. It's detractors call that cultural marxism people who are not detractors of that simply call it either critical theory or the frankfurt school of thought um but like i'm certainly socialistic do you know what i mean mean, in how I think, I fully believe,

I want to live in a society where nobody is without housing, healthcare or education, because they can't afford it, I want a society where that doesn't exist, i fucking i i i never want someone who doesn't have opportunity because of what they're born into with money and we're increasingly moving towards that because of neoliberalism which i'm not at all happy with but i operate fully as a capitalist within a capitalist society that's it's as simple that. I'm essentially a fucking entrepreneur. That's what I do. I don't have a boss. I interact in a very capitalistic fashion and make my money that way.

The Patreon thing, in a sense, I don't know is that capitalist, is it? Because it's suggested donation. So that's kind of socialistic. But I like... Because it's suggested donation. So that's kind of socialistic. But. I like. I do like. Striving and working hard.

And having a monetary goal. I do like that. And I want to see. My taxes. That I pay. Used ethically. That's the fucking problem I have. It's like.

I'm going gonna earn money in a capitalistic fashion but please take some of my taxes and can you then get those taxes and make sure it goes to good things like health care and education and housing but unfortunately the taxes are not going there the taxes are going to fucking austerity. You know and that frustrates me. I pay a tax. And this tax is being used. A big chunk of it is being used to pay. For.

Bullshit that some bankers did. And I don't like that at all. I want to see my taxes used for. Good things. For the betterment of fucking society. And I don't get these people who are completely anti-tax it's like why do you want to live

in a fucking a society like Brazil where you've got slums right beside fucking high rise buildings it's like that doesn't benefit anybody you want to have a coherent relatively equal fucking society where if people are earning too much money, it's distributed.

I don't have a problem with that at all. Socialism and capitalism can coexist. It's good to see companies be more fucking ethical at least. To have an awareness of the environment or to contribute to charity. But that in a sense is almost a form of neoliberalism you know companies contributing to charity so they don't have to pay tax so i don't know how i feel about that it's the government um shunning responsibilities onto private industry which is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism. Not a fan of that.

So go to Wolfgang Bites. On YouTube. If you want to see how the lads. Have responded to that answer. I'm going to take a. Question or two off. Patreon now. Off the people on Patreon.

Benjamin asks. I resonate with the way. You weave melancholy. Into your art. like it's not glorifying of sadness or anything more like bringing darkness to the table so we can sit and understand it do you think being at peace with darkness makes you better able to sit with happiness

yes it does if you've read my book of short stories Gospel of Cardinal the Blind Boy a lot of it is incredibly dark and violent

and that's what it's quite young that's what Carl Jung would call your shadow side and it's what Freud too when I delve into my unconscious to fucking right

there's going to be urges of violence and darkness in there you know that's where nightmares come from and i like to represent that on the page because it's honest and it's exciting and like like I said I'm a very happy peaceful person and when I explore darkness through writing it's kind of cathartic for me it's therapeutic it allows me to walk through my shadow side and bring those things up because as Freud said we're just violent animals who want to murder everything but the rules of society via defence mechanisms keep us from doing these

things and they'll come out in dreams and they'll come out in creativity it's very important I think for humans to recognise the darkness in them absolutely because then you can keep it in check as opposed to pretending that we don't have darkness we all have darkness we all have the potential for violence the potential for hate it's not necessarily a bad thing that that

potential is in us that's a natural thing it's just because it's there doesn't mean you have to act in it you can catch it and exploring it through writing and art i think is a positive thing to do dan asks hi blind boy thanks for all the oral hugs what's your take on wahhabism and the west's courtship of saudi. I've heard they're funding ISIS, so it seems wrong that the West sell them weapons and buy their oil. Anyway, thanks again and looking forward to your next installment. That's a bit of a big one, Dan. I don't know a hell of a lot about fucking Islam.

Mainly because there's so much out there and it's so massive it's very difficult from the outside looking in to know what to trust as in what what information is legit and what isn't i understand catholicism and christianity intimately because that's my culture and i come from it so it's very difficult from the outside to look at a religion and understand it but what Wahhabism is is

like Islam's fucking what is it 1500 years old and early Islam was very much about embracing science like a lot of fucking modern scientific discoveries And early Islam was very much about embracing science. Like a lot of fucking modern scientific discoveries come from Islam. But Wahhabism is a branch of Islam, Sunni Islam, that came about in Saudi Arabia in, I think, the 17th or 18th century and the reason saudi arabia promote wahhabism because they export this wahhabi

doctrine to islamic countries all around the world they fund the building of mosques that espouse this particular wahhabist doctrine and i think it has something to do with Wahhabism keeps the current Saudi royal family in the throne I think that's what it is but as well Wahhabism is it's very backward looking it denounces technology it wants

like ISIS ISIS want to live in a society that's essentially agrarian and doesn't have much technology they view technology as evil that they should live kind of simple almost hunter-gatherer lifestyles if you want to learn if you want to see a fucking amazing documentary about this an incredible documentary it's three hours long it is fucking worth it right bitter lake by adam carters watch that documentary it is art it is fucking art and it's dissects the it goes right back to the founding of wahhabism and its current impact on global on geopolitics amazing documentary by adam carters who i'm lucky enough to have made contact with a

couple of times because he's come to a few of our gigs in london and i've had a few pints with him in a few chats and i'm i'd love to interview him sometime for the podcast i'm sure he would because uh like i said we've had a few chats adam asks i heard you speak before of your grandfather who was a soldier in the flying columns was he under barry's control would you have any interest in sharing some stories yeah my grandad and my granduncles they were in the old IRA and they fought in Tom Barry's Flying Column in West Cork and my great grandfather

no my great great grandfather was the first Catholic to successfully sue a protestant landowner for land um at a time when catholics didn't have much rights and all of his great-grandkids were in the rah so yeah i'd love to i'd love to talk about that sometime on some podcast i have a lot of memoirs that my granddad wrote about his time in the ra in the 1920s in cork and i'd love to read them out sometime and talk about him yart all right that's 69 fucking minutes of a podcast which is more than enough for anybody i hope you enjoyed this week's podcast it wasn't very

structured do you know it was a bit nuts it was all over the place i went from conor mcgregor to fucking put gene to i started off with a fucking a woman giving birth to rabbits you know but that's just how this podcast goes sometimes it's focused i have an intention i have something i definitely want to talk about and sometimes i just like having the chats with you having a bit of crack you know i hope you took something from it um going back to that point with the fucking journalists listening don't make a fool of me please with clickbait headlines about that message from conor mcgregor there was crossed wires

there was a misunderstanding no one's fallen out with anyone we're grand alright so everybody go in peace connect with the earth go for a nice walk enjoy the long evenings

have a fantastic week and I will be back next week for some more delicious podcast hugs. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

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