The Blindboy Podcast - Lilac Husbandry

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Multiple Hot Takes about Sourdough bread, Christ and UFOs Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello lads! How are you getting on? Are you having fun? I'm going to start off this week, welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast by the way, I'm going to start off this week with a poem. I was sent a poem, I was sent a poem by Briancfadden from formerly of the band westlife and now currently in the band buys life which is a part not only a portamento of buys on and westlife but it is brian mcfadden from westlife and kate duffy from Bison doing gigs together as Bison Life it's the life of Bison yeah

so yeah this is a poem that Brian McFadden wrote and he sent it to me to read out on this week's podcast the poem is called Take Custody of This Lilac. You know, he says it's a poem, but at the top,

there's like a direction that says exterior shots, empty streets. Me, but it's around 1976 and I have sideburns and I'm wearing flares it's in black and white so i don't know he says it's a poem but there's there's notes on it so maybe he intends this to be like a short film or a short theater piece but uh here we go Take custody of this lilac. I don't want it anymore. I watched it grow from seed.

I watered its young trembling stem. I ran up my heating bill to keep it from the February frosts. I nested its roots in a terracotta pot. I situated it by the garden shed, for it would get the midday sun, and not bear the brunt of the wind. I visited a website about lilac husbandry. I crushed the hungry snails with my fists and laughed at their corpses.

I wiped tears from my eyes as its first pink petals unfolded in April take custody of this lilac I don't want it anymore I don't deserve this much beauty so that was take custody of this lilac by Brian McFadden beautiful poem there Brian thank you Thank you. Speaking of poetry and writing, the Abbey Theatre, which is the National Theatre of Ireland, they are doing an initiative at the moment, which is quite an excellent initiative. During this coronavirus business, the Abbey obviously can't, people can't go in and see

shows because they're closed so what the abbey did is they put a call out right and they contacted 50 irish writers and 50 irish actors and invited us to each write a piece around the theme of dear Ireland right to write a piece that somehow relates to the the current to get a kind of a snapshot of Ireland right now from the writers and creatives of Ireland around coronavirus and whatever and it's nice and open ended so go to the Abbey Theatre's YouTube page because they're showing all those pieces right now

live on the Abbey Theatre's YouTube page my piece I believe is going out this Friday May 1st I wrote a little piece

and the actor Cathy Belton who's an excellent actor she's performing it for me, so get a crack at the Abbey Theatre's YouTube page, I saw a bit this evening, there's some brilliant stuff,

there's some absolutely lovely stuff, it's just, some really great Irish writers, writing, writing pieces, but what's so nice about it is how stripped how stripped down it is how stripped down the process

of it was like it's basically it's taken theatre down to it's utter bare bones and the writer and the actor have to create something at extreme social distance

it's like I had to write my piece I had to send it to Cathy any kind of instructions or stage directions had to be done over the phone and then Cathy had to fill them in herself which is

they're kind of bizarre unprecedented restrictions that you'd place on the creation of a piece of art but sometimes when you put restrictions on something creativity flourishes around it. Restrictions sometimes are good in the

creative process and some of the pieces I saw this evening are absolutely cracking so I'm just really proud and really happy to be just to be one of the writers that's involved in this Abbey Theatre thing, I think it's class so get a crack at that

so what I'm going to do this week is I suppose what you call a companionship podcast where it's conversational based just from feedback from you I know so many of you are listening to this podcast podcast where it's conversational based because I just from feedback from you I know so many of you

are listening to this podcast some people just to hear another human voice just to forget about it all to chill the fuck out and to listen to another human voice so that's what we're gonna do

and I'm going to answer, some questions, that you've asked me, what I did earlier, I went down to Instagram, and my Instagram page, which is the, my Instagram page is,

rubber bandits official, I should just change it, to fucking the blind boy podcast, but, you start changing your name, on social media. Then you lose your fucking blue tick verification. So it's messy as fuck.

So it's rubber band. It's official. But. I asked. I just said to you. Do you have any questions or anything. Do you like me to talk on the podcast. I got loads of responses.

So that's what I'm going to do this week. I'm going to answer. As many questions as I can. I got loads of responses. So that's what I'm going to do this week. I'm going to answer as many questions as I can. And speak about some issues. So. What did I get asked here? Michael asked me. Are you going to jump on the bread baking bandwagon? Everyone is making sourdough in particular at the moment

you should look into it em I've thought about it I've thought about it I mean it's the type of thing that's getting flour at the moment is kind of difficult but sourdough in

particular like if I was to make sourdough in particular like if I was to make sourdough I'd do it properly which means it's a fucking it's a damn it's just a slippery slope and I don't know if I want to it's the type of thing

that would take over my life like if I was to make sourdough sourdough bread I'd have to do it properly which means like I don't know loads about it from what I do know about sourdough

and what makes it fascinating is normally if you bake bread you add yeast to the bread and you buy a packet of baker's yeast or whatever and you fuck that into the bread mix with sourdough you're you grow your own yeast because there's yeast all around us there's yeast in the air

there's yeast in our bodies there's yeast in fruit so with a sourdough culture which takes like i think it takes like two weeks to make. You're basically. You get like two types of flour. I think one. Like whole grain or bran flour. Mixed with white flour. And you just mix it with water.

I think. And maybe a bit of sugar. I'm not sure. I've seen people put rhubarb into it. But. You're essentially growing yeast. You have this little jar of viscous flower water. And you're hoping that a colony of yeast grows on it. And by day one you might see a bit of yeast growing.

And then on the second day you have to feed it more flour and you're growing this little yeast monster in a jar and the yeast is coming from your own body and your own breath. Jesus man, you're nearly turning yourself into Christ, are you? I never fucking thought of that. So. When someone makes sourdough. Sourdough bread.

The process of it. The yeast that you're. You're making from nowhere. I think the yeast particles come off your own body. Or your own breath, right? And then you grow your own yeast in a jar, right? That technically makes you Christ. If you make sourdough bread from yeast which came from your own body,

then you're like Christ in the communion wafer. You become... You're eating bread that's a human. Fuck! I never thought of that before. Maybe Christ was talking about fucking... That was unleavened bread though, wasn't it?

Jesus, that's ironic. Fuck it, man. If someone had told Christ on the last supper about sourdough because when christ did the last supper i don't think i think that the bread right that christ gave to the apostles the night before his death it wasn't leavened which meant there was no yeast in it. It was a flat bread. It would have been like pita bread, right? So Christ was just saying, look, here's a lump of pita bread.

Take it, take this, all of ye. I'm going to turn into the bread. So when you eat the bread, you're actually eating me. I'm the bread. How does that work, Christ? Don't ask questions. I'm also my own father but if someone had told Christ

hold on a minute there Christy you don't have to tell everybody that this bread is actually your body because there's a process called sourdough bread where if you just take seven days out of your time, you can use the yeast of your own body, Christ, right? And you can create a yeast that is actually Jesus Christ, and you can hand people bread, right?

It's sourdough fucking bread, and it's's very tasty and you can hand people this bread. And when you say that the bread is you, you're not lying. You're not asking anyone to believe in magic. You're not, you're literally, here's some sourdough bread that contains yeast from my body so you're eating me. Everyone would have understood it perfectly. Everyone would have understood it perfectly. There would have been no Protestant Reformation because the whole huge factor of the Protestant Reformation of the 15th century was whether or not communion wafer was transubstantiation.

Is this piece of bread the actual human being Christ or is it merely a metaphor that was a huge reason that Protestantism came about if Christ had just made fucking sourdough from the yeast of his own body then none of this would have happened I never fucking thought about that man

there's that weird there is that whole. Weird. Oh man I'm getting hot takes bubbling up inside me. So. Oh fuck. So do you remember last week I mentioned right. About individualism versus collectivism?

So in the world you have certain cultures that are individualistic, okay? These tend to be what we refer to as Western cultures. Cultures which, who have their philosophical roots in Greek philosophy, you know, the Roman Latin philosophy, right? Individualistic cultures, Europe, fucking Australia, America, these are individualistic cultures in that our culture, our way of seeing ourselves and our way of seeing our place in the community tends to be selfish. our way of seeing ourselves and our way of seeing our place in the community tends to be selfish it tends to be focused on what can i get um how can i focus on me how can i excel and individual individualism as well means that you don't see the rest of the community as being a safety net everyone's out for themselves right that's an individualistic culture and western culture tends to be individualistic eastern cultures are collectivistic like individualism that tends to veer towards capitalism but in eastern cultures china is an example, Japan is an example, Korea. Collectivism tends to be people traditionally for years and years and years, going back about a thousand years,

they tend to behave in a way which benefits the community rather than themselves. and one theory behind this has to do with whether historically a community whether the staple crop right was rice or whether it was wheat and fucking potatoes or whatever okay okay in communities whereby like asian eastern communities in communities where traditionally they were growing and eating rice the theory is that these communities became collectivistic because to grow rice was a community effort if everybody in the village wasn't involved in the process of growing and harvesting rice if everybody didn't stick in then nobody got any food but in western cultures where they existed on things like wheat wheat doesn't require a community effort you can grow your own wheat so one theory as to why are certain cultures individualistic and why are other cultures collectivistic it comes down to whether they grew rice as a staple crop or whether they grew wheat

or barley or oats as a staple crop and christ and Christianity this is just a hot take that's coming into my head now Christianity is quite an individualistic religion okay it's individualistic and it's monotheistic it's about you and your personal relationship with Christ, and your personal relationship with God, and you worship one God, and there's, it's not polytheistic, there's no room for, many different deities, and I just find it interesting,

that, if you look at, the whole Christ business right, of him, fucking, If you look at. The whole Christ business right. Of him. Fucking. Giving the apostles the bread. Right. Then he gets crucified.

Then he spends. He spends the week in the tomb. Almost like. A fucking sourdough. Like a sourdough starter in in a cupboard and then mary his ma and mary magdalene came in to wash his corpse which is like feeding christ's like it's like feeding the sourdough starter. And then he rises. And there's this weird language. Of baking and bakery.

And making. Wheat and bread. And yeast. And growing things. All around Christianity. And I just find it fucking strange. What is it. With Christianity and bread.

And does that relate to cultures which are individualistic and relied upon wheat, barley and oats as their staple grain? I don't know where I'm going with that. But have I thought about sourdough bread? I have, of course, yeah. I thought about, I haven't done I have of course yeah. I thought about. I haven't done it. I don't think I will.

I've thought about making sourdough bread so much. That this invention came into my head there last week. Because one of the things about sourdough bread. And sourdough bread making. And one of the issues that people have with it online is. If someone's making sourdough bread. You're going to know about it. it they're gonna let you know they will post online that they are making sourdough bread because it's a huge undertaking you're you're growing yeast in a jar that possibly comes from your own body you're making bread that's made out of you like like

you're a little personal Christ. So people are speaking about it. I'm making sourdough bread. I'm growing my own starter. I didn't use. Store bought yeast. Why not? Because the yeast.

Comes from my body. And my house. And my breath. I'm making bread out of me. And you can't have any. So people will tell you. If they're making sourdough bread but the thing is with sourdough starters right when you're making that yeast you have to nurture it

it's it's like a it's a bit like a pet if you're growing sourdough starter in a jar it's it's like having it's a pet it's like but you're growing this single-celled organism that's a cousin of a mushroom. I mean, that's all that yeast is, a single-celled organism that's a cousin of a mushroom. And you're growing this, and it's like a pet. You can't see it, it's an invisible pet pet and you only know it's there by its smell and whether it creates bubbles in the flower and that's how people know that their pet is present if they're growing this sourdough bread

they stick their nose into the jar and it starts to smell sour and then they know, ah we've got sourdough I'm after growing a pet out of my own body but I had this invention Oh, we've got sourdough. I'm after growing a pet out of my own body. But I had this invention. Because you have to keep the sourdough warm all the time, I was thinking, why don't you invent this hat, right?

So it's like a hat you wear on your head. And you get your jar of sourdough starter and you place it in your sourdough hat which is insulated right and then you just you have your sourdough now in your hat on your head and you get to walk about your daily life when you're on your your state sanctioned coronavirus two-kilometer run. You go outside and you run with your sourdough starter hat on and your starter keeping warm, incubated by the warmth of your own head. And then you'll see someone else

who's also wearing a sourdough starter hat. And you can say hello to each other at an appropriate level of social distance and possibly communicate about that's an interesting hat you've got what what's in your hat well um it's a single-celled organism that's a first cousin of a mushroom right and i actually grow it from my own cells and my own breath and I'm going to make bread out of it I'm going to eat me I'm going to become Christ

and the other person will go that's what I'm doing as well isn't sourdough great but I'm not going to do it I'm not going to I've already thought about it at length as you can tell but I just don't think I'm going to go down that path. I just can't see it happening. I can't see it happening.

I go to the fucking... I do enjoy sourdough. It's lovely. It's a very, very tasty bread. You know. I chase the dragon of that sour taste that it has. That's the thing. You can buy it.

I go to Dunn's once every fucking two weeks and I'll come out with a loaf of sourdough and what's the point of fucking baking it then you can just buy it what have I been doing with it

that's lovely this is gonna sound mad now but this is what I do with a slice of sourdough bread That's lovely. This is going to sound mad now. But this is what I do with a slice of sourdough bread. Most people put avocado on toasted sourdough bread. If you've read any news articles in the past five years, this is the reason that people under 40 can't get a mortgage. I've turned off avocados. i've fallen afoul of avocados

since i found out that apparently 70 of the avocado market is controlled by the mexican mafia the mexican mafia are moving away from drugs and into the control and exportation of avocados through extreme violence and exploitation so that's kind of put me off avocados a bit but what I do with a slice of toasted sourdough and it's fucking delicious and simple I learned it over in Spain this is what

when I went to Spain last year to do a bit of writing in my book in Cordoba what they eat for breakfast over there is they they have crushed tomato and toast and sourdough toast so i toast the sourdough bread light with a bit of extra virgin olive oil i get one tomato and put it in a blender right leave it in the blend once you blend it leave it there for a half an hour. Because blended tomato.

It kind of fluffs up. And becomes viscous. Spread. The fresh. Blended tomato. On the sourdough toast. With olive oil. And it is delicious.

Even if you have strong opinions. About tomatoes. Which I do. Um. Another. about tomatoes, which I do and another you know for someone who fucking has no intentions of making sourdough I do kind of I have quite a lot of sourdough facts

so one thing that's just arriving into my head now so I was in San Francisco this year and One thing that's just arriving into my head now. So. I was in San Francisco this year. And. I was there twice this year. I was in San Francisco twice.

As you'll know. From listening to this podcast. So San Francisco. Is famous. World famous for its sourdough now a lot of people think that sourdough bread was invented in San Francisco it wasn't but sourdough bread was perfected in San Francisco it's synonymous with sourdough bread there so I'm walking around San Francisco and I need to take a slash so I see an Italian restaurant I go in I go into the bathroom when I'm there on the wall is the history of the restaurant this place is over a hundred years old steeped in history it

started off as a tent in the California gold rush that used to feed Italian immigrants who were working in the gold mines then it became a restaurant and I just got the sense of this place is important I think I'm going to stay here and have a bite to eat so I do now the thing is with California is you get a bit of a culture shock

with the people the people in San Francisco they're psychotically friendly now I'm not saying Irish people aren't friendly but San Francisco

people their level of friendliness is oh god I don't know how I explain it it's friendliness mixed with an intense childlike politeness explain it it's it's friendliness mixed with an intense childlike politeness okay so it's when you meet people there it's like you're talking to the nicest person you've ever met but they're so nice and polite that it's intimidating and instead of feeling relaxed

around them I feel like it like I have to behave myself. I can't let loose around this person because they're so lovely and friendly and nice that I must be ultra polite back. And as a result, I don't feel like I'm having an authentic conversation. So I'm sitting in this incredibly old heritage Italian restaurant in San Francisco I choose to sit outside under underneath a veranda it's sunny but it's cold by their standards warm by my standards so I'm outside the rest of the punters are inside so I kind of have the outdoor area to myself and it's gorgeous a waiter comes out dressed in that lovely classic

american waiter garb and the waiter says to me have you looked at the menu what are you having really fucking polite and i just say yeah that meatball sandwich looks class and then he says are you Irish and I says I am and immediately at that moment now there's no one else around any other punters are inside in the restaurant and I'm outside I tell him I'm Irish

and his posture changes it's like he relaxes just goes oh how the fuck are you getting on man and I start roaring laughing and he starts cursing and he goes yeah I spent my life working in Irish bars in New York and the waiter was this he was a New York Jewish fella living in San Francisco who grew up in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in the 1970s,

when it would have been a working class Irish-American area. And he'd spent his life working in Irish bars, working with Irish-Americans and Irish people on J1s. And when he heard that I had an Irish accent, it's like he could relax. It's like East Coast Americans, it's like east coast americans they're kind of freaked out by the utter friendly politeness of san francisco people too so when he met me it was like he'd met someone from new york and pure fucking mad banter out of me he was sound as fuck we immediately got on brilliantly i ordered my food when I was finished with the food

he came out give me a free shot of limoncello because he's like look I know it's three o'clock in the day but you're Irish here's a limoncello I was like yes I will have a limoncello so when I finished my my drink then I had nothing to be doing for the rest of the day so I said fuck it I'll go into the bar and I'm gonna have a pint in this restaurant because it was a little bar area and I'm gonna chat more with this lovely sound waiter from New York and he told me all about his life and he was a great storyteller he was asking me what am I doing I told him I was writing he knew about James Joyce he knew about Flann O'Brien and honest to god he was such good crack and a natural storyteller that I nearly considered saying to him would you mind if I came

back tomorrow with a microphone and interviewed you for the podcast but I didn't and I kind of regret that I didn't but while I'm sitting down at the bar, behind me is the restaurant. And there's only a couple of people at tables. But there's one table in particular. And the thing is with this table, it was two older men sitting down. They must have been in their 70s. And there was something about them that... They weren't... I'm not trying to say now that they weren't being rude.

They were perfectly polite. It was... I could tell by them, right? The way that they were calling the waiter over. There was something about the way they were doing it. These were two people who were very used to. Being around waiters. Or possibly.

Being around. Possibly having servants. Do you know what I mean? There was something about the vibe. It's like. It wasn't how I would speak to a waiter. It's like. These people.

They connoted. Some type of power or authority and really being used to people waiting on them. And I immediately noticed that. And I also noticed the waiter's demeanour changed a bit when he was dealing with them versus when he was dealing with me. It was an extra layer of professionalism. So the lads left anyway,

and the waiter said goodbye to them, and it was clear that they were regulars. And when they left, I says to him, I said, who are those two? And he says, oh Jesus, those lads are legends in San Francisco. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, have you heard of sourdough bread? And I'm like, yeah.

And he says, like, they're from like, they're like the original sourdough makers of San Francisco. So apparently these two lads, if it wasn't them themselves, it was their family, were part the san francisco sourdough empire whatever bakery or company company got san francisco sourdough going from years ago those were the two lads and that's who was in that's who was in the uh the restaurant that day and then i asked him like why why sourdough bread in San Francisco? What's so special? What's the relationship? And the waiter said to me, it, again, it goes back to the gold mines of San Francisco in

the 1800s. So apparently the miners, when San Francisco was like a little village, the miners would be leaving the village of San Francisco or the town and going off into the mountains to dig for gold and what they would do is that they would buy their sourdough starter right the the fucking the the yeast we'll say they'd buy that in San Francisco town have it in a little jar or whatever put it in their backpacks with all their mining equipment and then make the long journey up to the mountains but the journey was so kind of warm and hot and it's in with all the equipment and the sun is beating down that the sourdough

starter was maturing faster and becoming extra tangier or something because of the warm conditions so when the miners would get up as far as the mountains and they'd have flour with them and they'd bake their bread in a fire pit in in the gold mine they'd use this extra sour starter and then the sourdough bread that was created had an extra layer of like pungency and funkiness and that became the famous san francisco sour bread because of the gold miners so there you go fuck it man that was just one question about whether i've considered fucking sourdough and then i obviously do think about it a lot if i have that much sourdough information in my head that I didn't know I had I'm still not going to do it

I'm still not going to do it so I tell you what I was thinking of doing because I'm a fucking hipster I'm not going to do it this isn't going to happen I'm not going to do this and I don't suggest you do it but when I was seeing everyone else making their sourdough bread on the internet,

I started to think, what could I do that's similar but different so I could talk about it and show off? And I entertained the concept and idea of making a substance known as pruno. and idea of making a substance known as pruno pruno is wine that people make when they're in prison and basically it's a black you get a black bin bag plastic bin bag and you fill it full of you need at least one piece of fresh fruit like an apple or an orange right and you put in at least one piece of fresh fruit into this black bin bag and then you fill it up with sugar ketchup if you're lucky some my wadi sweet shit and you put it into this bag and the purpose of the piece of fresh fruit is that that contains natural yeast in its skin. And then you get this bin bag full of fruit and sugar and ketchup and water.

And you leave it behind a radiator. And then you come back and monitor this bag of rotting fruit behind your radiator. You monitor it every day. And as the yeast digests the sugar to create alcohol, it creates carbon dioxide, and you burp the bag behind the radiator every day, but you have to be careful that a prison guard doesn't come and catch you, and you release the carbon dioxide.

And then after about three weeks, you have a black bin bag full of a mushy mildly alcoholic substance that you then have to strain through socks into a drink that's known as pruno which is a type of alcohol that's made in prison that when you drink it you'll most definitely get sick and I entertained the concept and idea of doing that but I'm not doing it I'm just not going there I'm not going to do that what further excited me then was there there's another drink that can be that's made in American prisons from pruno which which is the rarest of all, which is known as white lightning. And within American prison culture, this is where it's usually owl lads who work in the kitchen are most important and powerful so there's certain owl lads in American prisons that

if you make pruno in your cell and you have it in a little jar you bring it to one of the owl lads who works in the kitchen and really skilled lads in the kitchen can take the pruno alcohol which which is maybe 6-7%, right? And they get two frying pans. One frying pan, they keep it in freezing cold water. And then the other frying pan is on the hob. And they put,

they pour the pruno into the hot frying pan and they fry it off. And then they have this incredibly skilled method where they get the freezing cold frying pan they place it over the hot frying pan with the boiling pruno and the cold frying pan catches the vapors of the pruno and they can run off the vapors right as the as it hits the cold pan the vapors run off into a receptacle and what you're left with then is called white lightning which is a distilled prison whiskey which only the most skilled lads and owl lads in the kitchen can make like distillation from a hot and cold frying pan.

And that's the rarest substance in prisons, white lightning alcohol made from behind the radiator bin bag pruno. So that's something I entertained. What's a ridiculously complicated hipster project that's far beyond sourdough bread, I'm not gonna do it, I don't suggest you do it, if you are gonna do it, don't drink it, just don't, don't be making your own prison alcohol or prison spirits and And then drinking it. Don't do that. Because.

You'll end up. You'll end up fucking blinding yourself. Alright. But. I'm just here to let you know that it exists. And it's something that's been. Bothering me we'll say. And haunting me.

So it's time now for the ocarina pause. And. I just don't feel like. Blowing into the ocarina this week. I'm just not, I'm not feeling it so I have here, it's a metal percussive drum that's made out of an old gas canister which has, it's just got a nice sweet pleasant noise

so you might hear an advert here for something. If you don't hear an advert, you're going to hear this metal percussive drum. Okay, let's go. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

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The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That's fucking gorgeous man So there you go That was the metal percussive drum pause We'll put that in the ground I can't remember who sent me that but thank you I get immense joy

from that device so this podcast is my job it's how I earn a living and support for the podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page patreon. the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast um due to coronavirus i i can't gig anymore i can't do any live gigs so that's a huge part of my income gone and because i postponed a gig in

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it on your social media subscribe to it leave a comment you know the crack so valerie asks blind boy where is your drunk limerick aunt? We haven't heard from her in a while. You're right, Valerie. We haven't heard from my drunk limerick aunt in a while. Who reads out Donald Trump's... No, we haven't heard from Donald Trump's tweets as read by your drunk limerick aunt in quite some time. So let's do it right now.

So I'll set the scene your limerick aunt is wearing a onesie and sitting on her couch sitting on the couch in a way that her her legs are folded underneath her thighs and she's slanted slightly to the left looking out towards the window and she's thinking about you know she'd like to be outside but she can't because she's stuck inside with quarantine and she notices there's a stretch in the evening so this lovely peach band of sunlight comes in the window and just creates this band across her eyes this peach band of sunlight and she's decided to make white lightning she's done it she's she's has a lot of time on her hands. She hasn't been to work. So she's made bin bag pruno. Behind the radiator.

Has successfully distilled it. With two frying pans. And now has a glass. Of highly potent. White lightning prison whiskey. And she's sipping on it. And it's going to her head. And so she says.

We're doing far far far more and better testing than any other country in the world and yet the media does nothing but complain no matter how good a job is done the same as with ventilators

they will never say we're doing a great job. They will only viciously gripe. Fake knows the enemy of the people. There has never been in the history of our country a more vicious or hostile, lamestream media than there is right now. or hostile, lamestream media than there is right now. Even in the midst of a national emergency, the invisible enemy. You can blame the Democrats for any lateness in your enhanced unemployment insurance.

I wanted the money to be paid directly. They insisted it be paid by states for distribution. I told them it'd happen. Especially with many states which have old computers. So there you go, there's, uh, three random, like, they're from April 20th. What a lunatic of a man. Just three random tweets from Donald Trump on his page there. What a prick fuck me

I haven't done that in a while I have not read out his tweets as your drunk limerick aunt in a while which means I don't visit his twitter page that often because I'm just fucking sick of him you know the shock value is gone I'm just waiting

for him to go I don't know what's going to happen but what a prick dose of a human being Yasmin asks any new found passions or talents that you've discovered during this time I won't say talents right but as you know i've been i've been setting up a live streaming

setup which it's very complicated and stressful i'll be honest it's it's something new and it's several different pieces of equipment and getting them to talk to each other and it's it's very complex and frustrating and you think you have something right and then something goes wrong and then when something goes wrong it means i have to order another piece and then i'm waiting six days for that to arrive so stressful but not so stressful that it's pull your hair out stressful. Do you know what I mean? It's not like that level of stress. So I'm obsessing quite a lot about getting this streaming set up perfectly. But one thing I'm starting to fetishize is cable management. Which is just one of these things that I thought that like I'd never give a fuck about that

but I have to so cable management is so with a streaming setup you've got like a camera microphone two computers three monitors multiple lights

an Xbox internet Ethernet cables and fucking external hard drives if i want to record the stream and keep it you have a lot of electronic equipment a lot of stuff plugged in and maybe 25 different cables and when you have 25 different cables coming from devices and going into other devices, it's chaotic and stressful. It's like fucking Medusa, man, you know? It's not that Greek myth with Medusa with the fucking, her hair was snakes and if you stare at it, you turn to stone. It's a bit like that. You stare at it.

You turn to stone. It's a bit like that. When I stare at the back of my computers. And my monitors. And my microphones. And the streaming setup. And it's just all these wires. And I don't know where they're going.

It can turn me to stone. It can stop me in my tracks. With the stress of it. So. What I've started to do is, the solution to this is called cable management. So I've been on like office supply companies, looking up different ways that you can tie all your cables together,

into these lovely perfect braids, so that you no longer have the Medusa like chaos, of these swirling cables that can hypnotise you and turn you to stone instead you just have very well organised streamlined channels of cables that go from one computer to another

and that's been the recent like I'm not obsessive about neatness or tidiness but when it comes to an excess of cables you have to have it fucking tidy or it will interfere with your capacity to do your job so basically when I start live streaming if I'm staring at a bunch of cables intertwined with each other I'm not going to be able to create. So my new skill and talent is

having opinions and strategies for cable management. Which is not something I thought I'd ever say. So there's your answer there, Yasmeen. Someone asks, Blind Boy, what's your real hot take to that. What that's referring to is, if you've ever spoken to a person who has experienced the British education system, they are not told about the 800 years of oppression that britain inflicted on

ireland nor are they told about the colonial oppression they inflicted on the caribbean or africa or india or pakistan or the middle east you know um generally when colonialism is touched upon in the British education system it's kind of Jesus the Portuguese were bad weren't they the Spanish were bad weren't they so there's no hot take like

why in British schools do they not teach students about the horrors and evils of the British Empire why did they not teach students about the horrors and evils of the British Empire why did they not do it because they need soldiers and they need nationalism and pride

and how are you going to convince an entire country to join up as squaddies or join the army or anything like that and to care about their country and to become part of the system

if you tell them about the horrors that the... Like, there's nothing great about the fucking Great Britain at all. Anyone from a former colony will tell you that. There's nothing great about it. It's a horrendous machine of death and oppression and a culture of quote unquote discovering places and stealing resources

you know there's no hot take it's quite simple, ideological state apparatus Britain needs to continue by miseducating its fucking students and making them think that Britain is great and it's called Great Britain

and it did wonderful things for the world. That's all I can say. Ned asks, Any opinions on the Pentagon releasing footage of the UFOs today? Yeah, that one's interesting. Releasing footage of the UFOs today. Yeah that one's interesting. So the Pentagon in America.

Released military footage of. It's own fighter pilots. Encountering unidentified flying objects. And footage of it. What's really interesting about that is. It's the. Ex lead singer of Blink 182. The punk band from the 90s tom de long has quit music and dedicated his career to making the u.s government release files on ufos and he's doing a good job at it so yeah the pentagon released footage of u.s fighter jets chasing down some pretty queer looking

objects that are moving fast is it aliens doesn't necessarily mean it's aliens could be early drone prototypes it could be u.s military technology that we don't know about yet i don't know what the fuck it is could be weather phenomenon but the pentagon chose today to release footage of ufos i find it odd that they do it in the middle of the fucking coronavirus pandemic do i have a hot take yes um why release why as a government release footage of fucking ufos well because the because the US has the highest amount of coronavirus cases in the world, a completely privatised health system, the US government is not handling coronavirus well, okay,

it's taking it back to individualism and collectivism, the individualistic, capitalistic nature america means it's not equipped for coronavirus and managing it and providing free health care for people so releasing ufo footage works as just this lovely distraction and specifically it's a nice distraction for there's lunatic conspiracy theorists armed malicious at certain government buildings right now in america protesting coronavirus quarantine who truly believe that coronavirus isn't real that it's made up and i think by releasing video videos of us, what it says to these people is that their government is actually transparent.

It's a lovely little carrot to hold in front of the donkey. These militias who are holding guns, thinking coronavirus isn't real, it's a bioweapon from China, it all has to do with 5G, all this madness, the government are worried about these armed militias. So

dangle some UFOs in front of them. Nice shiny thing for them to get distracted with. And it sends the message of we've told you about the aliens lads. It's our biggest secret. We just gave you our biggest secret.

Of course you can trust us. Look how reliable we are. We're telling you about the aliens. Area 51. All this conspiracy theory stuff. We're coming right out with it. Because we're transparent. You can trust in your government.

That's the only hot take I have for that. I'll take, one last question now, Jonathan asks, does your pool of creativity, ever become bone dry, if so, what causes it,

and how do you replenish it, I wouldn't view, if creativity creativity isn't really a pole i don't view it like that there's no such thing as uh i have a finite amount of ideas and i'm gonna run out of them or me or any other creative person creativity is a process so because it's a process it's never ending right that doesn't mean that you can't go through periods where it dries up like right now it's i'm fine what i'm finding very challenging is i'm not leaving my house obviously because of quarantine so i'm not I'm not meeting human beings like I'm I'd keep to myself anyway but like on a day a normal day for me pre-coronavirus I'm at least going to the shop every day and I'm also going to the gym every day or every second day and And those little rituals.

Stimulate my brain. So currently I don't have a huge amount of stimulation. It's me and my four walls. And I'm also losing track of time. Days are blending into each other. A day to me during quarantine. It feels like six hours. A day doesn't feel long anymore.

It just feels, it just runs into one another. You know? Because I'm not leaving the house and being in routine. And what I'm finding from this is that that's not stimulating me. The act of leaving the house, the act of empathy,

of seeing other people. Rock City are 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 host 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 would stimulate my brain and stimulate the part where ideas come from so that's a real struggle at the moment i mean what do you do if you find yourself in a state of creative block it can affect your confidence the only way out of creative block you have to engage in the act of doing okay don't be tempted if you're a writer or if you're a painter or whatever the temptation is to read about creativity and then that makes you feel as if you're creating but that's just procrastinating you have to involve yourself in the act of doing so if I want to be creative I just simply have to start writing it doesn't matter what it is it can be anything but I have to be doing if it's music I have to be doing I can't think about it I can't read about it I can't research I can't enjoy other

people's creativity they can just be ways to procrastinate so i feel as if i am creating you have to do that's how you get out of it and you must do not through a pressured way where you're like i'm gonna write now and it's gonna be good or i'm gonna create music and it's gonna be good or i'm gonna do a painting and it's going to be good or I'm going to do a painting and it's going to be good you have to incorporate play it has to be playful so to get out of creative block get at your tools whatever your tools are regarding your individual discipline get those tools out and use them for play and play alone and if you are wondering what what is play it's what you used to do with lego when you were a child children play with lego they don't necessarily decide that they're going to build something through the act of playing

they may end up with something being built and it could be cool and it could be a fire truck or it could be a cave but a child doesn't sit down and go i'm going to build a cave a child plays with blocks of lego and allows the lego to the journey and the process to define what gets created and if you can go there then you'll you'll get rid of creative block you're immediately back in the creative process the opposite of play is internal critique so to engage with the act of playing which you'll know it because it feels like daydreaming to engage with the act of playing you have to silence your adult internal critic that says this is good or this is bad. They don't belong in what I'm speaking about.

You must just play and enjoy and do. Get your fucking hands dirty. And if you do that, creative block won't be an issue. There's no guarantee through the act of playing you'll come out with something good. But what you'll come out with is something and something is better than nothing when you procrastinate you have nothing and it gets worse and worse and worse and it gets into a feedback loop whereby you then end up with anxiety and the idea of sitting down to do and create becomes terrifying so just keep doing whatever it is, do it

get your hands dirty play with the tools so that's all we have time for this week that's like, that's one hour I'll be back next week hopefully with a hot take hopefully with a fucking live stream it's taking longer than i'd originally intended because

like i said if i need a piece of equipment i'm waiting fucking six days and i've had many a fuck up so hopefully within the next week i'm going to be fucking live streaming and you know what even if if i can't get the x to work, if I can't get whatever else to work, I know I can get my camera to work. So even if I'm not playing games or making music, I'm going to be live streaming and just talking. Because like I said there with the act of doing, I'm now getting frustrated about the live streaming. Because equipment is preventing me from doing. So regardless of what happens. I'm going to start doing by just. Me and the camera.

And talking. I think. I got to set that goal for myself. Okay I'll talk to you next week. God bless. Thank you. Thank you.