The Blindboy Podcast - Finucanes Ointment

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

The history of three separate monkeys in Irish History. Polish cans, neoliberalism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh hello, you delicious pricks, you tertiary perfumed fundaments. Welcome to week 14 of the Blind Vibe Podcast. I'm happy to announce that we are still number one in the podcast charts. We're beating the shit out of the charts. We're taking it down an alleyway, pushing it over, ripping off its school jumper and then using the sleeve of that school jumper. To abuse some solvents. At the back of a Tesco. I'm back on my vape. I said a couple of podcasts ago.

That I was going to lay off the vape. For the month of January. And I did. I managed to do it for about two and a half weeks the nicotine was calling me like a siren on the horizon the beautiful snake-like clouds of that vapor was calling to my addiction and I gave in and went back to the vape but I'm only I'm using it half as much I keep it in a drawer across the room and only really use it when I want to but I'm happy to report I haven't uh I said I'd give a crack at dry January and I haven't drank any alcohol for the entirety of January that's more than three weeks now yeah it's pretty class I wasn't a massive drinker anyway

I'd maybe drink every two weeks maybe I'd drink on a Friday or a Saturday yeah I'm not really missing it as such and I also mentioned last week I spoke quite demonically of my slow metabolism. And I don't think I have that slow metabolism. I think the problem, because I do quite a bit of exercise, you know, like I said before, I might run three times a week and I lift weights the other four, take a day off maybe.

I don't think I have a slow metabolism I think I have a normal metabolism I just drink loads of Polish cans at the weekend and this contributes to perpetual dad bod because this month I've been losing quite a lot of weight without effort in conjunction with my normally healthy diet, and lots of exercise, so I think the problem was, loads of Polish cans at the weekend, because, there are about 250 calories each a can,

because it's 6%, and I might drink 6 or 7 of them, so, yeah, I am looking forward to, a Polish can, when February comes around this dry January has made me realise that I might

try and lay off the amount of drink that I drink every month because I'm not really missing it that much to be honest and you know the other thing I noticed now that I'm off the drink it's that I have more free time on my hands which is a bit

of a bizarre one i find my weekends feeling longer because if i have a rake of cans on a friday night now i you know i preemptively prevent hangovers through the consumption of copious amounts of water. But, you know, if you drink a lot of cans on a Friday, the Saturday is a little bit of a write-off. You know, you'll be fully functioning, but it's a bit of a write-off. So I found my weekends have become more productive and ferocious because drink is not a factor so yeah i can report some good things with dry january mainly i did it because why not it's dry january but i i wanted to find out just to check in with myself in my relationship with substances if going off drink for a month would be difficult and it wasn't difficult at all because if it was difficult if I found myself getting can pangs

then I would have to reassess and re-evaluate my relationship with my beloved cans so I'm quite happy to report after a month I think I have a healthy relationship with cans and of course my my darling cocktails but I've a healthy relationship with Cairns, and of course my darling cocktails, but I've made a cocktail decision recently too, I'm not getting pissed on cocktails anymore, cocktails from now on are only to be enjoyed as a singular aesthetic experience, I've just been going out drinking about 5 or six zombies in a row and getting on my ear and there's no point in doing that you know there's no point in that at all

so cocktails are just I'll have one or two and I'll drink them slowly but no more getting pissed on cocktails getting inebriated is for for beer only not with cocktails but there's too many alcohol how have you been? Hope

you've been charming. I was traipsing around Twitter there. An article came up. So anyway Amazon are after opening up a shop over in Seattle called Amazon Go and I saw the article in the New York Times and Amazon as you know they're after buying fucking Whole Foods that's a massive chain in the US and they have them in parts of Europe as well they're over in London I don't know if you've ever been to a Whole Foods it's like it's like hipster heaven you know, in fairness to Whole Foods it's a fantastic supermarket you know what I mean, you get some odd shit and organic food and

it is an altogether pleasurable aesthetic experience, if you happen to be in a state and are into food but anyway, Amazon bought Whole Foods so Amazon have this new shop called Amazon Go. And it's...

How the fuck to describe it? It's a supermarket, right? Where they're completely eradicating queues. Because there's no checkouts at all. You walk into the fucking shop with a special Amazon Go app on your phone, that gets you access past like a sliding door robot. Then there's these weird sensors all over the ceiling of the supermarket, right?

These sensors all over the ceiling. You take whatever you want off the shelf and you just leave the shop. No checkout, no money, nothing and then your phone is automatically charged for whatever you took the second you left they won't divulge what

the technology is like there's just these mad sensors on the roof and they can tell when you've taken a can of Fanta and left the shop with it and the New York Times reporter that went in there he tried the shoplift with permission for the laugh and he couldn't even shoplift so it's this brand new concept where it you just walk into somewhere

take your shit and then your phone is charged as you leave. And it sounds class. And obviously, of course, because Amazon are after buying Whole Foods, all the Whole Foods products are in there. And Amazon, who are class at branding, have packaged this thing in a very hip and desirable fashion. But the workers are gone. There's one or two left, and they're kind of, mainly the article said that the workers are around the alcohol area, so that if you leave the shop with alcohol, you have to show your ID at least. But they've eradicated this, you know, one of the simplest jobs in the world,

which is getting a job uh at a checkout that's now gone and and they say that like okay it's just this one shop in seattle and they're kind of trying to trying to say that oh they've no plans of rolling out these shops but it's like fucking bullshit amazon they've created now this beautifully packaged neoliberal business model that has eradicated the type of jobs that are available to the people at the bottom of the system the people who very young people or people who don't have you know college or leaving sort of education so those jobs are now going to be gone because of amazon's new model and bullshit is it only one store you know well they're gonna they're just testing out this model in seattle

and then they're gonna sell that fucking model of cashier less shops to other they're gonna sell it to done stores they're gonna sell it to fucking Marks and Spencer. And in the next 10 years, there will be no cashiers working in your shops anymore. You'll just be walking in and out of your goods, with your goods. Like, there'll be no one packing shells, because robots will be able to do that. That's not the hardest thing in the world to do.

So, yeah, the jobs are going to disappear for the people at the hardest thing in the world to do so yeah the jobs are going to disappear for the people at the very bottom of the system which is a bit shit because who gets rich off that amazon model people who own amazon shops and people who make products and this is one of the reasons why the global wealth is disappearing into the hands of the 1% to be honest. So anyway I went reading through the article more and it said that in America right there was 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 and their jobs are in direct jeopardy. So they asked Mr. Porini who I think is one of the CEOs of Amazon how he felt about this right and this was his response

we've just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience now the most terrifying part of that sentence for me is that he didn't use the word employee

he's using the word associate so in amazon they're not workers they're associates and when i hear that all i think of is that sounds nice and friendly but if you're an associate then you probably don't then have workers rights because you're not called a fucking worker the liveroo got caught by the bollocks with this earlier on in last year when they claimed that their their couriers are actually self-implied that the couriers are not actually implied by Deliveroo which means that the you know if they're self-implied then they're not liable or protected by Deliveroo, the company. So Deliveroo were just being cunts.

And this is what's quickly becoming known as the gig economy, where kind of rights are disappearing. And it's one of the greater, it's one of the symptoms of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is, it's a word you hear a lot but and do you know again neoliberalism sounds friendly because when we hear the word liberalism we assume liberalism to mean you know liberal fairly cool equality

liberalism is not cool and equal when it's applied to economics neoliberalism is it's when you treat the economy like a wild animal. It's like, neoliberalism views the economy as a wild goat and this wild goat gets to run around a field completely unfettered and no one stops it because it's so wild and beautiful. But you, let's just say you and I own a shed on this field so then the goat goes over

and makes a fucking bollocks of the shed and destroys it then you and I as the owners of the shed are footed with the bill to repair the shed but the shed was our livelihood so we've nothing left the goat goes completely unpunished and then the goat's owner comes over to you and me and says I see that my goat made a bollocks of your shed I'll buy the scrap off you so we do

and we sell the scrap of the shed for about 20% less than what it cost us the goat is still running around the field like a fucking lunatic, unfettered. We're after selling the scrap of our shed to the man who owns the goat. He's become richer.

Now we're poorer. We have no shed whatsoever. And the goat is still running rampant around the field while you and I are huddled underneath a leaf. And that is a very tired and drawn out metaphor for neoliberalism but that's the economy of boom and bust neoliberalism basically

the richest people get to treat the economy like the wild goat that it is but then the middle class and the poorer classes they foot the bill when the economy goes bust and the economy is the

shed. I don't know what I'm talking about. You get the idea, right? Unless you're in the 1%, neoliberalism doesn't work for you. But this Amazon Go business and this Deliveroo business, these are all symptoms of that. If you want to see how neoliberalism didn't work I won't call it neoliberalism but economic liberalism didn't work before the Irish fucking famine during the Irish famine which a lot of people are increasingly calling genocide

there was we'll say a natural disaster because the potato crop which a lot of Irish depended upon, had a blight, which is a disease. The British, who had a laissez-faire economic policy, you know, don't fuck with the economy,

the economy is a beautiful wild animal, we must not intervene, they saw the potato blight as something that'll sort itself out. Don't give any aid to the irish because to do so would mean interrupting with the natural forces of the market like if you give free food or free aid of any description or free money to the irish who are starving then that is market intervention and that is bad so we must let it sort itself out and it will because it is a beautiful wild animal who

knows what it's doing it's nature if you're wondering where the kind of accusations of genocide come in uh the man who was i think he was lord protector of ireland i'm not sure of his exact role but he was most certainly the crown had told this fella char Charles Trevelyan, his job was to overlook famine relief or the possibility of it. And Charles Trevelyan said he viewed the famine as an act of God and kind of a necessary punishment for the Irish. Oh wait, no, that was Cromwell, was it? Cromwell was the one who believed that his brutality was a god's punishment to the Irish. No, but Trevelyan said that the famine was an act of God and would be quite helpful in reducing the population. And this is the man who was tasked with sorting out the famine. So there you go. There's your,

there's a little bit of genocide for you. Start off the podcast. so it hasn't worked before and it's not going to work again so anyway what point was i getting at so here's a here's what i think should happen if a company like amazon are going to be doing these amazon go shops where they're eradicating the jobs of you know cashiers and things like that then any company that involves itself in this this model where technology is replacing the jobs of humans these companies should be taxed and this tax i feel should go towards what's called a universal basic income which is it's like a form of social welfare, where like every single person in a country is guaranteed a certain wage, usually it's around 30 grand, whatever it is to live, so it doesn't matter

what your position is, whether you're a doctor, or whether you're a street sweeper, you're guaranteed 30 grand a year, now that doesn't mean you get, like if the doctor's on 30 grand a year now that doesn't mean you get like if the doctor's on 100 grand a year that doesn't mean you give him 30 grand because he's already met it but everyone basically no one no one is allowed to drop below 30 grand basically and that is universal basic income and i think that's the only solution we have if technology is to be replacing the jobs of average people what else are you going to do? leave everybody fucking die?

like what the fuck? now some argue against universal basic income because if you start, if you set a precedent in a country where everybody is guaranteed 30 grand then possibly then money loses its value and prices rise and then then the market figures out a way through its natural process where

everybody is poor again and 30 grand is basically worth a euro because everyone has 30 grand because scarcity needs to be a factor but But a way around that is regulation. It's a touchy subject for some people. It is a touchy subject. But what are we going to do? You've got to do something about it. But lads, I will stress, I'm not an economist.

I'm somebody who got a name for themselves by wearing a plastic bag on their head. So when you hear me talking about things like neoliberalism i've got a very wide ranging audience for this so i'm sure there's like students of economics listening to me talking and shaking their heads because i probably have something wrong so when you hear me talking about certain themes don't take my word for it go and do your own original research from far more reliable sources than me, this is just a place for hot takes and opinions and the hot take, the only value of a hot take is that it's a lateral way of looking at a situation that can inspire

further critique from the listener but don't be taking my word at face value because I don't really know what i'm talking about i'm just a person who reads things online i'm by no means an expert on economics failed it for junior cert but uh yeah i shat on neoliberalism there and the thing is with neoliberalism it did start off as quite a noble kind of a noble economic theory but the problem with it is that it is completely open for exploitation if you have power and wealth and by which i mean we say political lobbying groups you know if you're a lobbying group for an industry or a corporation then you can influence politicians to actually directly get involved in economic policy

something that neoliberalism shouldn't do but it does and that's how you end up with huge huge corporations like Facebook not paying any tax that's how you end up with the Panama Papers that's how you end up with Amazon referring to their employees as associates that's how you end up with Deliveroo not giving rights to their fucking workers because they're technically not workers. These are the little loopholes that are used. That's how you end up with free trade agreements

that place the rights of corporations above the rights of citizens. It's what would allow a tobacco corporation to sue a country if that country makes cigarettes illegal this is the abuse of neoliberalism which is happening and it is the reason for the distribution of wealth traveling into the hands of the one percent and that's my hot take and you know what if i have that wrong don't get pissed off at me my twitter is open at rubber bandits tweet at me and send me a decent article

convert my opinion tell me why I'm wrong a lot of people don't get that that's the beauty of a podcast though when you say shit on twitter it pisses people off but I'm saying right now if shit that I'm saying is wrong I welcome absolutely welcome somebody to educate me in

the other direction, because what I want to do really at the end of the day is I want to learn, I want to learn, learn new things, that's what I like doing, yum yum, fill my mind tummy with knowledge, you cunts, today's podcast is sponsored by amazon.com, your one place for it is in it's fuck em fuck sake lads 20 minutes in and I'm after doing a neoliberalism rant I didn't want that at all actually I wanted this podcast to be silly

this particular episode because what did I talk about last week last week I spoke about Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and I deconstructed it from the perspective of Marxist critical theory and I deconstructed its tropes and I got one or two comments negative comments nothing scathing but just like a few oh I felt the podcast was a bit serious this week.

I don't think these people found it too serious. I think what they found was that it was uncomfortable because I spoke about issues of race. And issues of race can make some people uncomfortable. People, in general, people are okay with the definition of racism being don't openly hate people of a different colour. I think most people are okay with that. But white people or whoever's on top of the system can feel uncomfortable when you start to point out the more hidden aspects of

racism and power and that's what critical theory does but lads just so you in case you think that my my take was too hot last week some people were thinking jesus man he is analyzing the film robin hood prince of thieves and he's gone too far it's just a film but like no look it up um and I'm talking evidence-based stuff not conspiracy theory theory or rumor look up how many films are like actually sponsored and funded by the CIA for real you can look this up um and the reason they do it is the thing I spoke last week the ideological state apparatus the conscious use of entertainment to

promote an ideology or viewpoint that keeps a structure of power in place Transformers, James Bond the Hulk Top Gun these were all actually sponsored by the CIA.

And the way the CIA do it is that. They've got what's known as a dark budget. Which is money where we don't know where it goes. They'll set up companies. And these companies will fund. Fucking TV. TV and films. The directors mightn't even know.

Because the companies are five or six steps removed from the CIA. And some of those are nuts. But you know Zero Dark Thirty great film if you if you haven't seen it about the capture of Bin Laden openly funded by the CIA and the reason being it's like you know why would the CIA fund this film because it normalizes the idea of torture and that's the official reason Zero Dark Thirty shows that you can use torture and waterboarding to capture and kill Bin Laden and that's why they funded it the CIA famously as well bought the

film rights to Animal Farm George Orwell's novel Animal Farm the CIA bought the rights to that film in the 50s. They bought the rights to, if it was going from a book to be adapted into a film, the CIA bought the rights to it because they felt that Orwell's piece of work was so powerful that if it was turned into a film that it could be twisted to be very critical of capitalism and pro-socialism.

So the CIA bought the rights to the film and how it would be represented on screen, then had it animated into a cartoon in England, because they, again, separating themselves from it, and they made George Orwell's Animal Farm into a cartoon that was highly, highly critical of communism and Russia at the time of the Cold War. And that's what the CIA did. And if the Yanks are doing it, lads, you can bet your hope that the Brits are doing it as well, that MI5 are getting stuck in.

And even recently there, I was watching, I'm halfway through that film, Darkest Hour, about Winston Churchill. And it is oddly, it is inappropriately nationalistic. It is a very odd misrepresentation of Winston Churchill. Now fair play he beat the Nazis, you can't deny him that. But Churchill was a notorious cunt. He invented the black and tans, which are the Irish, you know, to him that, but Churchill was a notorious cunt, he invented the black and tans which are the Irish you know, to the Irish, they're the SS

he performed many genocides and war crimes throughout the British Empire he's a high class cunt, but to the point that it's strange it feels like a wartime film I don't mean a film about war, which it is,

but it feels like a film that is released during a war to increase a sense of unity and nationalism in Britain. And the same with Dunkirk that was released last year. And my hot take on that is Britain at the moment because of Brexit it's quite a fractured divided country you know

very fractured divided country and I often wonder with films like Darkest Hour about Winston Churchill and Dunkirk is there a secret MI5 hand there trying to get that whole keep calm and carry on thing trying to get some british unity a sense of british nationalism again but we'll say good in inverted commas good

british nationalism the british nationalism that fights the nazis not flag waving uh we hate all muslims british nationalism which appears to be on the rise. Maybe the Winston Churchill film is the attempt at solving that, going back to the old school British nationalism. Also, and not a lot of people know this, there is a style of painting called American Abstract Expressionist Painting. If you're not into your art, you'd know it as the type of painting that just pisses you off do you know when you see a painting and you go a three-year-old could do that that's just a load of blobs on a fucking canvas now i personally happen to enjoy this type of painting because

um i studied art so i like it um this is modernist painting it's about it's it's complete abstraction it means the the painters who were painting these paintings fellas like robert more the whale or mark rock or jackson pollock jackson pollock famously used to just fuck a lot of paint on a canvas they had completely abandoned figurative painting they had abandoned trying to paint and you know any type of realism anything that the mind could see as an object or relate to and instead chose complete abstractions as a way of expressing emotion on canvas because this was the early 50s mid 60s and television and the camera had made you know painting a bunch of flowers fucking pointless so they were trying to paint emotion but a lot of these painters were kind of ex-communists you know they were american liberal communists and we only found out about five years ago

the cia fully funded the american abstract expressionist movement of painting which was massive that like that dominated painting worldwide in the 50s 60s 70s and the reason the CIA did that was because this was at the height of the cold war so it was an ideological battle between western capitalism and Russianussian communism and eastern communism and one of the sticks that russia russia used to beat america with was russia would say all the yanks have all the money and you know they're capitalistic and greedy and but one thing the yanks don't have that we do have is history culture and art because america is a young country so america was always seen as dumb and young and having no culture and history

so the cia as well as that the center of art historically in the world was always paris which is european and the cia felt that if they pumped all this money into abstract expressionism this abstract expressionism as an art form is it's it's the painting equivalent of jazz music in that it's very free-formed and it's about you know it it fucks with the traditions and standards of what had gone before it's modernist it thinks forward and that's what abstract expressionist painting is and it's also uniquely american so the cia funded it because what it did is it moved the cultural center of painting and art from europe to america which in terms of propaganda against russia could only strengthen the kind of the power of American imperialism you know it's

the hearts and minds aspect of warfare it's lateral warfare how can the Russians take the piss out of the Yanks and call them stupid cunts when the greatest artists are now coming out of America whereas previously they had been European so yeah and none of the painters know that it was actually funded by the CIA. You can look that one up. So I'm not a lunatic if I'm inquiring into artifacts of culture with critical theory. It's quite a normal thing to do. Half an hour into the podcast now, lads, and it's been a big long rant about politics, and I promised it wouldn't but I am

now going to get on to the topics of what I wanted this podcast to be about I had intended this podcast to be about three separate monkeys yes three separate monkeys I have three separate monkey stories for you but uh we're nearly 30 minutes in now so I think it's time to do the weekly ocarina pause which is where I allow a segment for a digital advert to be inserted into the podcast which some people hear and some people

don't the weekly ocarina pause is like it's a form of digital angelus that allows you to reflect for a few seconds while I play a Spanish clay whistle here it is on April 5th

you must be very careful Margaret it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe 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 omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario 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 you may or may not have heard an ocarina or an advert I don't know so on to the monkeys the monkeys that I promised you I will now recount

there's three separate monkeys in Irish history I say monkeys but only one of them was a monkey and I think the other two were apes, they were simians and there are three simians in Irish history that they keep me

they won't, I might wake up in the middle of the night and think about one of them you know so the first monkey of Irish importance I'd like to talk about goes by the name of Tojo. And Tojo was knocking about a place in Cork called Clannachilty in 1943 at the height of World War II. one day 7th of April 1943 there was a

large US bomber this was in the middle of World War 2 and Ireland wasn't involved in World War 2 we chose to remain neutral because we just had 800 years of war with the Brits and we just didn't want anymore so we remained neutral and

1943 is near the end of the second world war so the the yanks were getting stuck into the japanese mainly after pearl harbor so this plane full of yanks it was a flying fortress actually which is the fucking massive u.s world war ii plane were coming from south america right and they ran out of fuel or whatever and they thought they were over German occupied Norway so the Yanks took an emergency landing in what they thought was Norway but it turned out to be a field in Clannachilty so when the Yanks landed the locals from Clannachilty came out and you know were, were nice and friendly. And the Yanks were quite happy.

It's like, fucking class, we're after landing in Ireland. There's a war going on, we can chill out. And we're not in German-occupied Norway, thank fuck. So the locals of Clannachilty were like, come on Yanks, come into the pub, we have a bit of crack, because, you know, there's no TV or nothing, so a plane full of Yanks is quite a lovely novelty in Clannachilty were like come on Yanks come into the pub we have a bit of crack because you know there's no TV or nothing so a plane full of Yanks is quite a lovely novelty in Clannachilty but on the plane there was a monkey the Americans had taken a monkey from the jungle of South America as a souvenir and they had named him Tojo and Tojo was a name Tojo was a general in the Japanese imperial army and Tojo became a pejorative term for Japanese during the pacific campaign of world

war ii so Tojo the monkey was on the fucking plane with them so the people at clan of Kilty were like come on in for a pint you might as well bring your monkey with you so basically kind of it turned into a week-long sesh where the Americans didn't leave the local pub in Clannachilty and just had crack for a week but the locals of Clannachilty could not get over Tojo they thought that this monkey was gas so they started to feed him little bits of drink and at first Tojo, they thought that this monkey was gas so they started to feed him little bits of drink and at first Tojo was resistant to the alcohol

they started off giving him bits of Murphys which is a cork version of Guinness and it calmed him down because Tojo was, he was a wild fucking monkey so he was running all around the pub and everything and but when he got the little bit of drink it calmed him down and he chilled out Because Tojo was. He was a wild fucking monkey. So he was running all around the pub. And everything.

But when he got the little bit of drink. It calmed him down. And he chilled out. Then. They started giving him something stronger. They gave Tojo bits of. Bits of rum. And he loved it.

He absolutely adored the rum. So by day three. Of the Americans. In Clannachilty. Tojo was like a fucking hardcore drinking monkey on the sesh in this pub

and I know that sounds nuts but there's entire communities of monkeys in em I think it's around

Barbados and the Caribbean the Holiday Islands and there's these I can't I don't know I think they're macaques in the Caribbean, the Holiday Islands. And there's these, I can't, I don't know, I think they're macaques. They might be macaque monkeys. But anyway, they live in the holiday resort islands of South America. And monkeys came to the Caribbean, to Central America,

as stowaways on slave ships that contained human cargo from Africa. And that's how monkeys got to the Caribbean, right? And mainly what the Caribbean was used for was growing sugarcane, which is, it looks kind of like bamboo, but sugar comes out of it, sugar juice. Rum is made from sugarcane. So these African monkeys that found their way over on slave ships with slave cargo started to enjoy the sweet sugary sugar cane. I'm going back 300 years now. I'm divulging from Tojo for a minute, but this will give you some context.

So these monkeys in the Caribbean were drinking the sweet sugary juice of the sugarcane but naturally what would happen is the sugarcane juice would ferment and turn to alcohol so they got a taste for drink but nowadays if you go to the beaches of the caribbean there are entire communities of monkeys 400 300 years old Not years old but generations old. And they're fully addicted to drink. So. Their whole shtick is stealing. Tourists alcohol to drink it.

But now behavioral scientists. Are looking at these communities of monkeys. And. Studying human alcoholism. Because they've found that the. Exact proportion of Caribbean monkeys that are roaring alcoholics moderate drinkers

and teetotallers is actually reflected quite similarly in human populations but not all Tojo so back to Clannachilty 1943 we're five days into the sesh now and Tojo is

on his ear pissed on rum every single day and the locals are having grey crack dancing with this drunk monkey the Yanks are loving it too and then unfortunately after day six Tojo drinks himself

to death and he dies from From rum consumption. Because he's only a tiny little monkey. And. He was obviously one of these. Monkeys that. Didn't know how to handle their drink. And he killed himself from it.

So. Everyone was really upset. And then the Irish army. Held a military funeral. For Tojo the monkey. Through the streets of Clannachilty. And they buried Tojo. Under the dance floor.

Of the pub in Clannachilty. Where it happened. And I think it was last year. They actually. I think that the pub is called Tupper's. I think it's called Tupper's. The people think that the pub is called Tupper's. I think it's called Tupper's. The people who own it are called the Tupper people anyway. But last year they unveiled a statue in this pub in Clonacilty to Toad the monkey.

So Toad is the first. Kind of Irish monkey. In today's podcast that keeps me awake at night. Oh but there's another monkey. And this one goes back a lot further than 1943. This monkey goes back 2,500 years. I'm going to talk about a place called Navanfort, which is in Armagh in the north of Ireland.

And Navanfort is an ancient Irish royal site. Do you know it's like a hill fort. And it's quite important because it was the seat of the Ula. Which is where the province of Ulster. Who the province of Ulster is named after. Conchabar MacNassa. Who's a bit of a legend in Irish history and mythology. Would have been one of the Ula.

But it was the seat of kings. It was a proper fort, you know. Now, I'm talking lads, 2000 years ago, that's biblical times, you know. There was no Vikings in Ireland. There was no British. This is, I won't say Celtic but this is

ancient Irish shit so anyway in 1985 they started to you know archaeologists started to poke around Navan Fort because it was being threatened by a nearby quarry

and after they found you know pottery and you know fucking armlets and beads and shit like that the usual shit they would expect to find in an ancient Irish fort they found the skull of a Barbary ape from either Algeria or Morocco now what the fuck is the skull of a Barbary ape doing in Armagh 2,500 years ago? What the fuck is happening there? And it has people utterly confused and there's answer to it it's here's a bit of a hot take so the common understanding of the irish people is that people we often get called celts right now the celts were a a culture of people from Western Europe a few thousand years ago that were gradually kind of pushed from Germany to the West by the Goths and other tribes. And they were pushed as far West as Britain, Scotland, Ireland. And we've always believed ourselves to be Celts, you know,

the Celtic culture. And you can see evidence of the Celtic culture in some of our art. But if you look at the Irish DNA profile, we didn't come from like Germany or Britain. Most of us, the Irish DNA comes from Spain, the west coast of Spain. So this is where we start getting into hot take territory. There's a theory of Irish origin called the Atlantean theory. Now this is a caught in a hot take because it's unproven but it's quite interesting and the Atlantean theory which was posited by the historian Bob Quinn it kind of inquires as to maybe the Irish did not arrive from Europe that the Irish actually trace our origins from Morocco and Algeria in North Africa

that imagine this picture a map of Western Europe the Atlantean theory states that the Irish arrived on boats they went from Algeria, Morocco up the sea hopped on to Spain for a bit and then went from Spain up to Ireland on the west coast and never went near Europe now the first thing you're thinking there is

jeez that's nuts, how could that be possible because North African people are black and Irish people are white but Ireland was first inhabited maybe be possible because North African people are black and Irish people are white. But Ireland was first inhabited maybe between 9 and 12,000 years ago and the gene for white skin is only 6, 7,000 years old. So there was a very strong evidence-based possibility that the first people that arrived on Ireland were dark-skinned because white skin is so new. So some people say that this skull of the Barbary ape from Morocco that's 2,500 years old and found in Armagh is evidence

of a continued connection that the ancient Irish had with traders or cousins or relatives from the area of Morocco and Algeria and Bob Quinn of the Atlantean theory he looks at cultural similarities between Irish music and art and the music and art of North African cultures he sees a huge similarity between Shannos, Irish singing, and Islamic call to prayer. He sees a similarity in the abstract expressions and concentric circles and lozenges and designs of what we call ancient Irish art and that of Islamic and Moroccan Algerian art from a similar period. Islamic and Moroccan Algerian art from a similar period. So that's a major hot take. But still we're left with these bones of this monkey lads. What the fuck is a Barbary macaque.

Or whatever the fuck he is a Barbary ape doing in Ireland 2500 years ago. How did he get there? And that keeps me awake. That boggles my fucking mind. The third monkey I'd like to talk about. He's not really a monkey. This one is most certainly an ape. It's a gorilla.

And this is a Belfast gorilla. Up the north again. There's no midland apes I want to speak about really. There's Tojo down in Cork then this boy in the Navin Fort from Armagh which we're going to call Tony and this particular

other ape I want to talk about the gorilla his name was Big Mick and he was in Belfast Zoo in the mid 70's right now here's the story of Big Mick and he was in Belfast Zoo in the mid 70s right now here's the story of Big Mick the gorilla so a newspaper clipping from a northern Irish newspaper which looks like mid 70s started to go viral online about a year ago and when I first saw it I broke my whole laughing because it's one of the funniest newspaper clippings

I've ever seen in my entire fucking life so funny that I just refused to believe that it was true I'm going to read out the newspaper clipping the headline reads Up the Ra Danny McBride 27 from Twinbrook

has been suspended from work at Belfast Zoo after claims by fellow staff that he has been suspended from work at Belfast Zoo after claims by fellow staff that he has been training silverback gorilla affectionately known as Big Mick to say up the ra. McBride had allegedly been using food to get Big Mick to make grunting sounds similar to the phrase in question. So apparently a lad called danny mcbride at the height of the troubles was working in belfast zoo and trained a fucking gorilla to say up the rah and was then fired so this one was keeping me awake for a while and i had to just find out what

the fuck is the crack with this because i googled the bollocks off it and there was no verification there was no evidence of a source there was nothing just people sharing this newspaper clipping and that was it so I put it up on Twitter and I asked lads does anybody know anything about this clipping is it real whatever I waited a while and then I got a direct message from an anonymous source and this source said to me How are you man? I'm currently in my aunties in Twinbrook which is the area where the incident happened and we're now talking about the gorilla.

They vaguely remember the case. My late father knew more of it. It seems that Danny was sacked because he was Catholic. They made excuses that he was Republican but by trying to get the guerrilla to grunt the rhythm of up the rat. By all accounts Danny wasn't that fond of the job due to sectarianism. Also this was late 70s early 80s. Twinbrook was a really strong Republican area. Sands is from here first built in 72 was a mixed estate up to the late 80s Twinbrook was

still called Twinbrook by some even in road signs and press I must point out there there's a difference in the spelling Twinbrook with no E or with an E those saying it's fake news because of the misspelling aren't even aware of the confusion

around the name in the early days. Should point out that in Danny's defence, he swore he never taught the gorilla to grunt up the rah. His bosses were sectarian cunts. So there you go, somebody from Twinbrook whose family remember Danny McBride. The presumably Protestant employees or employers at Belfast Zoo fabricated an utterly bizarre story about poor Danny McBride training a guerrilla to say up the ra as an excuse to fire him on sectarian grounds

which I believe that's a world exclusive no one else knows that story. Sorry that Danny lost his job. But it doesn't make it any less hilarious. That is fucking gas. So those are the three monkeys. That keep me awake. The three Irish monkeys.

Tojo. Tony. And Big Mick. And I can only assume Big Mick is dead you know. This was the mid 70s and gorillas only lived to be about 30 so rest in peace all of those three noble Irish monkeys you gas cunts. So old Donnie Trump's been having an interesting week of it hasn't he? I haven't visited any of Trump's tweets from the perspective of your drunk limerick aunt in a couple

of weeks and many of you have been requesting the return of this fixture so I'm going to return it today yeah Trump has had a fun week the government has shut down he's been fighting with the democrats he's realising that

being president does not necessarily mean that you are all powerful shut down. He's been fighting with the Democrats. He's realising that being president does not necessarily mean that you are all powerful. So here we go. Here's some choice tweets from Trump in the past three days, three or four days. In the style of your

limerick aunt who has just arrived in from her 30 year 60 year reunion and she has been drinking Tojo's dark rum and is a little bit angry Democrats have shut down

our government in the interest of their far left base they don't want to do it but are powerless big win for Republicans as Democrats cave on shutdown left base. They don't want to do it but are powerless. A big win for Republicans as Democrats cave on shutdown. Now I want a big win for everyone, including Republicans, Democrats and

DACA, but especially for our great military and border security. Should be able to get there. See you at the negotiating table Even crazy Jim Acosta Fait no say in any degrees Trump world and W hate sources

Dancing in the end zone Trump wins again What did I tell you you fucking goal Schumer and the Dems caved, gambled and lost. Thank you for your honesty, Jim. Finally, I swear to God, swear the holy picture. So that was Donald Trump's last three tweets as your drunk,

drunk limerick aunt, rattling her eyes in your ear, spitting on your eyelids. I would like to thank everybody who is contributing to the Patreon the Patreon page is patreon.com forward slash

the blind boy podcast and the reason I'd like to thank these people is because I'm having a bit of difficulty getting a sponsor for the podcast I had a sponsor, for about a month, they only signed up, for a month,

but now I'm sponsor less, and, from asking around, when, generally, if a podcast, deals with themes, of mental health,

or if it's too kind of, mainly mental health, because it's too kind of mainly mental health because it's a touchy area this tends to frighten off sponsors for some reason they feel kind of I don't know responsible or something

if something happens or they feel that it's they're just frightened of it if there's a podcast that deals with mental health issues that's what I've been told by other people working in that area

that it makes it difficult so thank you very much to the people that are contributing to the Patreon because you know some people are giving like a euro a month or four euros a month some people even more it's really helping because it's financially keeping this thing it's keeping it going for me like it doesn't cost me an awful lot to make the podcast because i already own the equipment and software that i'm using but when i know i'm getting a few quid for it it allows me to dedicate more time to doing it and most importantly what it does if i wasn't getting paid anything for this podcast i don't think i would have the incentive to deliver it exactly

every wednesday as i do i'd be a little bit more i will upload a podcast when i feel like it but the fact that i've got patrons giving me a few quid and i know it means you know it's nothing to eat it's the equivalent of a cup of coffee or a pint but enough of you're doing it for for me i'm like this is lovely so thank you very much to all the patrons you're truly keeping this thing going in the absence of a sponsor to the show thank you so much and if you do enjoy the podcast and you'd feel like giving a couple of euros or whatever please do uh because it's very much appreciated but if you can't afford it it's grand you don't have to

that's absolutely fine I'm still going to keep doing the podcast because despite that I do love making this podcast I absolutely adore it because I've got complete and utter creative freedom I've done a lot of TV work before and it and it's it's not often that i'm fully happy with the final finished product of tv tv work because i don't have full creative freedom

you always have to appease a commissioner or someone else you have to make a lot of compromises and compromise and creativity sometimes don't go well together and you can end up with something you're not happy with but there's nobody fucking with this podcast I I just did a fucking full hour rant about monkeys, neoliberalism and cultural Marxism

and it's grand who's gonna stop me? not a hope is that getting on fucking RTE they'd be mad. I'd ask for them to be fired myself if someone commissioned that. So I'm going to move on to a few questions

that you've been asking. Now you can ask me questions either on the Patreon or on the Twitter at Rubber Bandits. Also as well, if you are on Instagram, please follow the Instagram page rubber bandits official because i'm trying to get the instagram followers up because facebook

has gone to a big pile of shit so let's answer some questions boring gillespie asks what did you make of the channel 4 Jordan Peterson interview? If you haven't seen the Channel 4 Jordan Peterson interview, I suggest you give it a look. Jordan Peterson is a controversial figure. He's a psychologist who specializes in personality psychology, who very much challenges, we'll say say liberal politics using the science of psychology and I it's hard

he's fucking I don't know what to think of him you know he's incredibly interesting to listen to he every argument that's posited towards him he does react back using scientific evidence and stuff so he's very i i like jordan b peterson because as you know i'm i'm a liberal cook so anytime i come

across somebody who challenges my ideas i find that quite exciting because it takes me out of my loophole and it keeps my mind fresh. So I can say. I quite like. I like to watch. I'm entertained by Jordan B Peterson. What I find kind of. What frightens me about Jordan Peterson. It's not necessarily him.

But it's the type of people. Who listen to him. And kind of what. It's the people who listen to him and what they then do with his information he tends to be followed by an awful amount of the alt-right and people who are openly racist and nazi and they then use peterson's speeches and books to bolster their own ideas and i don't know can he take any responsibility for that because these are the people that are listening to him but in that respect that makes me feel a bit queasy and frightened in the way that

you know fucking Charles Darwin contributed an awful lot to science but his theories were used to promote Nazism social Darwinism you know if you use pure darwinism to try and decide what races are better than what aren't and start enacting darwinism as a deliberately then that becomes dodgy the other thing about peterson that throws me off a little bit he reminds me a bit of richard dawkins now i'm no fan of religion but but if you look at Richard Dawkins speaking about religion, he's very absolute and black and white. Richard Dawkins will, you know, obviously he has zero time for extreme conservative Christians or extreme fundamentalist Islam. or extreme fundamentalist Islam. You know, fair enough. I don't want those fucking things either.

You know, they're very black and white, rigid, authoritarian things, totalitarian. But Dawkins as well has equal disdain for some Buddhist who's just minding their own business and are into their spirituality. And Dawkins cuts it all off at the root. Dawkins doesn't see any place for any religious thought whatsoever because it is simply irrational and he believes that any religious thinking will eventually lead to a theocratic regime and Jordan B. Peterson is the same. B. Peterson is the same. I find Jordan B. Peterson has zero time for any type of

socialistic or Marxist or liberal ideas because he looks at how communism will say, like one of the main things that Jordan B. Peterson studied in the 90s was how genocides happen, in particular in Eastern Europe and under communism. jordan b peterson lets in zero amount of marxist thought or socialistic thought because he believes that is the first step to massive genocide in the style of the soviet union and that's where i disagree with him um i don't necessarily think that you have to take it that far and I don't think I don't know any self-professed socialists or self-professed Marxists

who want as the end result utter Stalinism they just want some equality and some change to what we currently have so that's a bit of an overreaction on Peterson's part. And even for me, like I said, I'm not into religion. If you follow me, you know I'm hugely critical of Catholicism. But at the same time, I know many Catholics who are good people,

And I know many Catholics who are good people, you know, decent people, and they don't want Magdalene laundries. Way of getting a bit of happiness and personal meaning is through Catholicism, and that brings them happiness and comfort. And if they're not using that to try and control other people's lives, then I'm cool with that. I don't mind. It's none of my business. control other people's lives then i'm cool with that i don't mind it's none of my business the problem i find with religion and ideology is it's it's when it finds its way into the minds mouths and hands of angry hurt people who are very black and white and rigid and angry in their thinking and when they take religion

or ideology or politics and when these people get these ideas they take them as far as they can to punish others and keep control and not not just catholicism lads. I mean, being honest, I know people that are very liberal in their politics and will say that they are committed to social justice. And these people are quite nasty bullies. Some of them. Some people that I know, I'm talking about specific cases. Angry, nasty bullies who have quite a black and white rigid view of themselves, of the world and other people. Equalistic and socialistic thinking. As a means to really nastily bully people online. Or to try and lead smear campaigns.

And to just be total fucking pricks to people. But to defend their actions using their liberal ideology. And I know people like this. And at the end of the day. It bothers me because I share their ideology and views, but I do not share their black and white rigid thinking and anger and means of targeting people. compassion and assertiveness and assertiveness to me is knowing genuinely objectively knowing when someone else is wrong and objectively knowing when yourself is wrong and having the capacity to communicate this opinion but not allowing the way that you communicate to be colored by your own emotion that to me is assertiveness and that's what I strive for every day if I can. Might fall off the wagon now and again.

But then again, what I always find with these people, whether it be an angry liberal or an angry conservative, their issue is internal. It is an internal disquiet, an internal pain, an internal misunderstanding of themselves that expresses itself as an external violent anger and the shield is merely liberal politics

that's what allows them to do it in what we would call a socially acceptable guise I also know liberal people who are fucking lovely sound compassionate human beings who genuinely want social change and the betterment of humankind

it's a human issue lads and I can't remember who said this some psychologist said can't remember who it was people who don't understand their own emotions try and control the behaviour of others

and these are the people i think who they're the ones who run wild with ideology and religion it's not necessarily the religious ideas or the ideology that is at absolute fault it's how they are used and interpreted and the solution I think is individual compassion that could be a hot take lads you are free to fucking disagree you know free to disagree with that

but back to Jordan B. Peterson again highly entertaining and I am not educated enough or informed enough to take apart any of his fucking arguments, because the man's a professor, but on a human level, he's also, he's a little bit into, he's a little bit into God and Christ a bit, and that freaks me out a bit, because the dichotomy of that, how can a man who sticks to science as much as he does also be including Adam and Eve in some of his speeches, that puts me off a bit. But I bought his book and I'm going to read it and I'm going to continue looking at his lectures.

It might not necessarily change any of my opinions but it's certainly entertaining and I like listening to him Dan Bradley oh this is a similar enough team what are your thoughts on transgender do you reckon it's a mental illness no I don't reckon it's a mental illness a lot of

what is considered mental illness is defined by the diagnostics and statistics manual which is a manual that psychiatrists use What is considered mental illness is defined by the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, which is a manual that psychiatrists use. And what I always remind myself with this manual is that being gay was considered a mental illness up until the 1970s. The reason I don't consider transgenderism to be a mental illness is because I actually know transgender people. I know people

that are trans I know the pain that they go through I know that it's you cannot relate to it that when I speak to some of my friends that are in this way they're I don't even have the fucking words for it they are not at one in their skin and i do not believe that that is a mental illness i and and too if you look at nature uh you know transgenderism exists in nature like clownfish will change gender throughout their lifetimes if if in a family of clownfish if there's no males left and they're just females that they will simply change gender and i also do believe that sex and gender are quite separate so i wouldn't go around calling transgender people

i wouldn't call it a mental illness and i also have absolutely fucking zero problem with shared bathrooms because let's face it we all grew up in houses where we were in a bathroom that was used by both men and women so who gives a fuck similarly um I've no problem calling somebody by the pronoun that they want to be called by. What do I give a fuck? Someone wants to be called they. I don't give a shit. And people who get pissed off about it. Oh, we can't call people.

You get in trouble now. If you don't call someone their preferred pronoun. Like, that again has always existed. Like, okay, but Jordan B. Peterson, to take it back to him, what made him internationally famous is they brought it into Canadian law that he had to legally recognize people's pronouns if they wanted to be a they or a ze. And he, on democratic grounds and freedom of speech grounds, he disagreed with that because he didn't like how language was being brought into law but think of it this way right if a college lecturer is in a class and there's a boy there a cisgender a cisgender man and this college lecturer starts off the day by calling let's just say their name is alan they call Alan she Alan's gonna laugh it off go oh

that was weird that must have been a mistake then five minutes later the lecturer calls Alan she again then Alan laughs but this time it's a little bit more uncomfortable then an hour later the lecturer calls Alan she for the third time at this point alan says to the lecturer why the fuck are you calling me she you said it three times there could you stop please so the lecturer says no so then the next day class again and the lecturer is still calling alan she alan at this point is fucking furious because it's like are are you picking on me? What's the crack? I'm a he. I just told you my name is Alan. I was born a he and I am a he. Why are you calling me a she, sir?

So then eventually Alan gets pissed off. He reports it to his lecturer's bosses. And the lecturer says, I just feel like calling Alan a she. I don't care. A week later, the lecturer gets fired for bullying. This system has always existed, as applies to cisgender people, so what's the big deal? Try it in your own life.

Go call your friend Niall Shee for the day. See how you get on. See how Niall likes that. It's no different with somebody else who just doesn't recognize as being cisgender that's gonna piss off a lot of people who are listening but um that's how i feel about it that's how i feel about it lorraine wilson asks what do you think comedy is huge question i know i first came across your work at the Edinburgh Fringe. I've stopped going now because I feel I can't breathe there. It overwhelms me with thousands of giant posters of stand-ups pulling faces and talking shit about whatever that year's big subject is. Your late night performance at the Gilded Balloon was such a refresher and in many ways the antithesis of everything else that was going on.

the antithesis of everything else that was going on do you think you're still working in the field of comedy or if someone gets a laugh it's just a bonus um that's an interesting one specifically there what Lorraine mentioned about the the Edinburgh festival it's it's an Edinburgh I don't know is it specifically a comedy festival it's a theater and arts festival but it's mostly comedians and we first did the edinburgh festival in 2013 okay and it kind of happened by accident this was just after horse outside and when horse outside happened we ended up with this very rambunctious, fucking drunk, loud, wild, crazy audience, this very aggressive audience, wasn't necessarily enjoyable gigging to them, these were people who just liked one of our songs, didn't have any time for the rest of the material and just came along because. We were.

Kind of. We had our 15 minutes then. So everyone was showing up. It was a bandwagon. And the gigs were fucking horrible. The gigs we were doing in Ireland. So when you've got an audience that are that aggressive. An audience that will boo you.

Even though they're paying to see your own gig. An audience that will scream at you. Do the one about the horse. Do the one about the horse. do the one about the horse, non-stop, that forces you on stage to meet that aggression from the crowd with a similar level of aggression and shouting and energy. And that's what we did. It was the only thing we could do to not get booed off stage or have bottles thrown at us. had to meet the crowds aggression with our aggression to create a standoff and a bit of crack so we had become quite an aggressive in your face loud act so in 2013 we were asked to gig at the Edinburgh festival I didn't even really know what the Edinburgh festival was to be honest um my main interest always has just been writing, I never give a fuck about live gigs,

it's just something we had to do to earn money, for me I like making music in the studio and I like writing, that's when I'm happiest or doing a podcast like this but because of my history with social anxiety, doing a gig is not, it's something I do and it can be crack, but I don't like doing gigs. So I wasn't aware of the live circuit. We'd never gigged a comedy club. We'd never gigged to a comedy audience. We'd never heard of the Edinburgh Festival. We gigged in music gigs, in music venues, in pubs to drunk audiences. So we met a fella called David Johnson. He was a British comedy or theatre booker. And he saw us after we'd won an award

over in England. I can't even remember what the award was. So Johnson said to us, I want to take you to Edinburgh for 30 nights in 2013. We said, fuck it, why not? Get us the fuck out of Ireland, it's horrible. And we did our first gigs in this place called the Gilded Balloon. Now, we didn't know this, but normally at a festival, at the Edinburgh Festival, it is standard when you do a gig for the audience to be sitting down. This scared the living shit out of us

because we'd just done two or three years playing to packed standing up crowds of loud people so when we got to the gilded balloon venue we demanded take the fucking seats out we can't play to a sit-down audience that's terrifying for us we need a stand-up audience we also, what do you mean you're putting the gig on at 7 o'clock in the day? Put it on at 11. Let the audience get a bit drunk. We had become accustomed and acclimatized to very violent, aggressive shows with an aggressive audience and us aggressive on stage. So when we did our first Edinburgh shows, the audience were this sober, British, middle class, comedy audience, which we didn't expect. But we still delivered to them the violent energy that we had been used to doing back in Ireland.

Then all of a sudden the reviews start coming in. then all of a sudden the reviews start coming in and the reviews were all these five star reviews about the rubber bandits deconstructing comedy deconstructing theatre bringing this anarchic punk energy to comedy and we're looking at the reviews going alright the Brits are going a bit mad

we're just having crack and then we ended up eventually winning an award at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival for most original act at the Edinburgh Festival and to be honest it was kind of an accident it was born out of necessity

we brought we just played it like we were playing in a fucking shebeen in Ireland and you know playing a gig like you have to dodge a pine glass at your head at any minute. Because that's what we were used to. And the Brits accused us of deconstructing theatre. So I'll take that if it's going. Yeah, I'll take that. Grand.

What is comedy? I believe humour is an evolutionary mechanism that serves only to de-escalate conflict. That's all I can think of it. If two people are squared head to head ready to slap the faces off each other, really angry. If one person farts, that's it. There's no fight. You know, tension goes from 100 down to 20. That's the purpose of humor and comedy. And aside from, we'll say, interpersonal conflict,

in the larger scheme of society and culture, humor can serve to de-escalate stress. It can serve to... Like when Trump got elected, when Trump got fucking elected uh you know when trump got fucking elected and it was quite frightening for a lot of people because we didn't know what's he gonna do and the second he got into fucking presidency as well he immediately started doing these uh executive orders which scared the shit out of everyone we saw the momentary

comeback of saturday night live and old school sketch comedy being relevant again for the first time in years because comedy serves to de-escalate societal conflict too that's what I think do I consider myself a comedian no not really and I never did em

I'm a writer I'm more interested in just weird shit like if you read my book, like there's moments in there where it's funny, but mostly what drives me to create are highly irrational ideas that try and probe at the human condition, or probe at society, that's what I'm into, because I never even had that many comedy influences, I was. I loved Reeves and Mortimer obviously. And Chris Morris. But that's about it.

I couldn't give a fuck about watching stand ups. It just doesn't do anything for me. My influences would have been. Flann O'Brien. And like Dada. The Dada art movement. Which was about. Irrationalism.

And absurdity. That's what i'm interested in and half the time as well the some people write reviews of this podcast and call it funny and i'm going jesus i wasn't even trying to be funny brilliant i was just talking shite jimmy bray asks hi blind boy you previously described the frustration of trying to get funded for creative work in ireland and by irish tv what is it that stops you from moving to london like so many Well, we did fuck off to London for a while because Horse Outside became insufferable in Ireland and we didn't like being well-known, so we wanted to stop being well-known.

TV is just a dying medium man it's as simple as that uh it's kind of you know to take it back to an earlier theme in the podcast what's happening to television is kind of it's like neoliberal in the way that the middle is disappearing the tv that's available for funding is either really really cheap reality television or observational documentaries which cost fuck all to make it's either that or high-end massive budget netflix stuff the stuff in the middle is disappearing and the middle always tended to be comedy, sketch shows, things like that. So the opportunities out there are actually disappearing. Most comedians, when they get asked to do something for television, it's usually like a cheap documentary that they'd make,

rather than a properly funded sketch comedy show or a properly funded piece of written comedy. It doesn't really exist as much anymore unless you've got a massive profile to be honest i think the future is in online like i've never been happier doing this podcast and i would like to move the podcast and to have a video element or to at least start vlogging or something i think that's where the future is that's where the potential to earn a decent living is earning a decent living on music as well lads i don't think someone like if frank zappa was around today we wouldn't even hear of him because his music was so left to field it wouldn't get funded. He wouldn't have a record deal. Steely Dan wouldn't be famous. Lots of strange odd creative artists that had modest

record sales in the 70s and 80s would no longer exist but Frank Sapa's moderate record sales in the 60s and 70s still made him a millionaire. Now he'd just be uploading onto Soundcloud, if anything. You know, Randy Newman wouldn't exist. Tom Waits, Tom Waits sold fuck all records until his later career. He wouldn't exist, but Tom Waits was still able to earn money back then. Not anymore. Alright, I'll take one more question. Paul Leamy asks, Blind Boy, would you ever go to a restaurant and eat on your own? Fuck yeah. I do it all the time, man. I go on holidays on my own. I fuck off to Spain. I go off to Cordoba in Spain for like two weeks, just me and write and go to restaurants on my own and go to bars on my own. Man, I go to the cinema on my own. I'm an utter introvert. I truly enjoy my own company.

I'm not. I like being around friends and stuff. But in general 90% of my time. I'm quite happy with just me. Going for walks with me. Going for runs with me. And yeah I'll go to a restaurant on my own. Absolutely.

Anything. No hassle at all. I love going on dates with myself grey crack so I think that's all we have time for this week I'm going to try and catch the end of that Winston Churchill movie because even though it is imperialistic nationalistic shite it's quite a well made film

and Gary Oldman is class so I'm going to take out the popcorn and watch the rest. And be entertained by it. And leave my politics aside. So I'm going to sign off now. If you haven't left a rating on the podcast. On iTunes.

Or left a review. I invite you to please leave. A rating or a review. Especially if it's a good thing. You're going to say. If you want to say something bad about the podcast if you could do that on Twitter instead that would be class

but if you have something nice to say please leave a rating or a review that would be great that really helps in how many people see the podcast I think I think it promotes it more or suggest it to a friend thank you very much I hope you

enjoyed this week's podcast um I hope too many of you don't think that it's getting too serious if I talk about political themes again if you find yourself listening to things that I'm saying that are in areas that make you uncomfortable just allow that discomfort into your body and allow it to kind of pass through you're whenever i say something that pisses you off you're fully entitled to disagree with it and just notice these opinions that i'm saying going past you and just leave them flow out and go i disagree with that and if you want send me a tweet send me a message and try and educate me because i love i strive to be proved wrong and shit you know there's a lot of that's a i do try and have that attitude in my life where it's like if someone can prove me wrong brilliant that's something new i

learned that day embracing failure if you want to get fucking if you want happiness and any type of goal, embrace failure in your life. Realize that failure and being wrong is a necessary and obligatory part of simply being human. And don't get stuck on people pointing out things that are wrong. if you disagreed with anything about neoliberalism disagreed with anything I've said fucking give me a shout no hassle I'll engage with you now having said that I'm getting a ridiculous amount of direct messages on Twitter all the time I'm getting about 60 a day and I'm responding to as many as I possibly can but I'm not getting around to all of them so I really really apologize if I haven't responded to your messages and the reason is and i've said it before a lot of the messages i get are quite personal rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first

ontario center in hamilton at 7.30pm. 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 can see that the people who have written them are putting a lot of thought into the message

and I don't want to just write back with thanks for the message. If I do write back, I want to actually give a decent, considered human response to what you're saying. So apologies if I have an unread message from you. I just don't really have the time. So please go and look after yourself for the rest of the week. All right? Have a bit of self-compassion.

Reflect on some of the things that I've been saying. If I said some shit that you found interesting, go and research it. Learn a bit more. Learn a bit more. And this is just a place for opinions you can't all right god bless