The Blindboy Podcast - Ode to a princely bin chicken

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

A relaxing ASMR experience. Join me as I talk out of my arse about plants in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. This week's podcast is a special, I don't know what the fuck it is, an ASMR, oral experience. in Sydney and I'm in the Royal Botanical Gardens which is a a big giant sub-tropical zoo for plants and animals and it's

it's just about to rain now for fuck's sake for fuck's sake, I'm here in fucking Australia, only brought shot, now it's pissing rain, hold on, I'm gonna try and take shelter underneath a, a fern, hold on, wish it up, no, I'm gonna need to find something with more shelter there's a greenhouse oh a fucking lizard

oh my god lads there is literally I nearly walked on him there's like an iguana on the fucking ground huge fucker he's about the size of how big would he be

the size of a butter dish a butter dish sized little lizard. What is the crack with you, sir? I'm literally right beside him. He just came out when the rain came down. Can you hear that? Okay, I nearly walked on him. But it's a beautiful...

I'm just beside a fernery, which is an enclosed area beside a fernery. Which is... It's an enclosed area exclusively for ferns. Hold on, we're going to try and find a greenhouse. I didn't want to put out a live podcast this week. Because I put one out last week and I figured... Look, fuck it, we'll try and have some type of... ASMR experience.

I know, there's a greenhouse yonder. So yeah, I'm, uh, I'm on my Australian tour and right now I'm in the city, it's fucking pissing rain, hold on, I'm in the city of Sydney, And right now I'm in the city. It's fucking pissing rain. Hold on. I'm in the city of Sydney. Having been in Melbourne and Perth. And I'm just coming up to the door of this greenhouse now. And hopefully I can go in and nobody will also come in.

And wonder why a man is recording his thoughts. Oh for fuck's sake. It looks like something I can't get into. Yeah it's an empty greenhouse with nothing in looks like something I can't get into. Yeah, it's an empty greenhouse with nothing in it and I can't access it without a special keycard. This is probably going to need

several fucking edits. Yeah, so... I'm in a botanical garden trying to find shelter from rain. Hopefully the rain will pass. The rain here, it's not like real rain back in Ireland. Like I can't take it seriously.

All I know is there's a little seat underneath a tree what's the crack so I've managed to find some shelter here in Sydney in the botanical gardens I was talking shit about the rain there and the rain came down quite heavy. I'm currently under a little bit of shelter. It's absolutely gorgeous,

I have to say. The climate is subtropical, so there's this deep, a level of humidity that I've never experienced before in my life and it's not pleasant, but at the same time, it's also a privilege to experience it, because I don't know it. I don't know, it'd be like if you take too long in the shower, and it's just steamy, it's like that. So where I'm conscious as well on the ground, there's a lot of ants, you know, and those ants are not like our ants at home. I don't want some cunt biting my ants, you know. And those ants are not like our ants at home.

I don't want some cunt biting my leg, you know. But anyway, the botanical gardens here. Sydney is subtropical, like Brisbane. But around the city of Sydney, like the trees, the trees, like it's kind of designed after an English city. So even the trees in the city, they're not really subtropical. They're like European trees the trees like it's kind of designed after an english city so even the trees in the city they're not really subtropical they're like european trees

that were brought over because the brits when they colonized australia deliberately instead of like listening to the land and looking at the trees and animals that are there for their needs what the brits did is they said, fuck these plants and animals and people. We're going to bring trees from England over or trees from other parts of the empire, from Africa or from Asia. So they replaced the natural kind of plants with their own

and replaced the natural animals with their own and replaced the natural animals with their own, and replaced the natural people with themselves, which led to, from a biodiversity point of view, quite a few problems, the introduction of certain species, you know. So, where I am now, it'd be the ancestral lands, Sydney is on the ancestral lands of an Aboriginal people called the Eora, right? But even the name Eora is quite strange because... So when the Brits arrived in Australia, right?

They met the Aboriginal people here, the people who are the ancestors of this land, the owners of this land. And the Brits met a lot of them and kind of said, who are you? And the Aboriginal people responded with the word Eora, which basically means we are from here. the brits named the people after their response it's it's like saying who are you and you you go i i'm from here and then from then on you call that person i'm from here that's the name what the name iora means i think the cadigal is the actual name of the tribe, but now they're called the Eora, which translates, I believe, to we're from here. And yeah, it's gorgeous here. So I'm beside some trees. So the botanical gardens, like why am I doing the podcast from the Botanical Gardens?

Because it's the only place of peace in Sydney. Sydney's fucking insane. It's incredibly busy, overcrowded and noisy. And for me to try and record a podcast outside in the city would be impossible. So this Botanical Gardens, it's about twice the size of the Phoenix Park is the best place for me to get a little bit of peace and quiet to have a chat with she

I think an ant did an ant crawl up my face? No that was merely the microphone so I'm looking at these trees here they're called canoe trees and they're like big tall fuckers, right? But the reason they're called canoe trees is that the indigenous people of this region, they used to make canoes out of these trees, right?

But at certain parts of the day, when the sap was running in the tree, they'd cut out a big lump of bark and then dry it over a fire and make a canoe out of it to go fishing or whatever. Sydney's weird. The interesting thing about this tour that I'm doing is I'm visiting different Australian cities almost every day that are miles apart. And the contrast between them all is phenomenal, not only in terms of the climate, but in terms

of the culture and in terms of the built environment. And one thing that always excites me is, we'll say, the psychogeography of an area. How the built environment of an area can influence the culture of that area and the vibe and feeling that you get. And Sydney... get and sydney so melbourne melbourne has this i don't want to say chilled out vibe but sydney sydney sydney feels chaotic sydney it's aesthetically beautiful and whatever but the central sydney area the city the central business district not talking about the suburbs but the central business district of sydney is

it has that feeling that you get from london or new york or certain parts of dublin Dublin. A sense of restless anxiety, a sense of, it's when you're planted in the middle of a city and everyone, literally every single person around you appears to be running late for something. And it's this chaotic swirl of human bodies where they're not making eye contact with anybody but they have stress in their face because it looks like they're late for something and it's so bustling and everyone's busy and everyone's going somewhere right that's the vibe i get from the central business district of sydney melbourne also has a central business district of Sydney. Melbourne also has a central business district and people are busy, but the anxiety isn't there.

And this is just me fucking arriving into the place, lads, and having a big sweep and hot take about an area. But I think architecture is a factor. Architecture and urban planning. So Sydney is quite old by Australian standards. It's like 200, 300 years old, and it's one of the first cities to be properly built

by the British colonisers. And as a result of that, it's not like... It's like London. it's very cramped you can't comfortably predict a direction like i tried to jog this morning i tried to do it a fucking eight kilometer jog and what you want to do when you're doing a jog in a new city is you just want to look north we'll say and you say to yourself i'm jogging north for seven kilometers and usually that's okay i couldn't do it in fucking sydney because you try and jog north

and the streets are too compacted and everything's bearing down on you and you try to go one direction and before you know it you've done a full circle and you're back from you're back where you started. Because that to me, when a city's like that, it suggests that it was hastily built and unplanned and it suggests conflict. It suggests conflict over where certain things are built. People, like the culture, the historical culture of Australian colonisation is one of frontierism.

And frontierism, the same as America and as a northern part of Japan as well, frontierism is basically where white settlers arrive in a land, decide that they own it, and then frantically white settlers arrive in a land, decide that they own it, and then frantically adopt a culture of expansionism, where you get somewhere and you go, go out and discover and take the land for yours and fuck anybody who's in the way.

And you get that real frontierism vibe here in Sydney, because for a city to be so compacted and to have so many corners and bends it's it's like take the land build your house don't even think about it just do it whereas melbourne melbourne as because i was looking up i visited the melbourne museum which was the history of melbourne there melbourne is built on a grid called the hodl system after the fella who fucking built this his name was obviously hodl and he he basically planned a a very strict grid of how the streets should run in melbourne like new y, like Manhattan,

or in Limerick we have an area called Perry Square, which is built on a grid system. And when something's built on a grid, if I'm getting up in the morning to jog and I want to go north, I know I just have to take one road and that'll take me north. And what that does is that relieves the anxiety of an area when you're in sydney if you don't know it you feel confused and unsafe because everyone's darting all around you and i can't predict what direction i'm going

or whether a street is gonna to. Confuse me. I feel like the streets here are my enemy. That sounds a bit dramatic. But that's the sensation you experience. When you're in. A new fucking city. It's like I don't trust these fucking streets. All I know is a lot of.

There's three or four ants on the ground. And they're collectively. Dragging a beetle, huge fuckers, so there's all, there's these tiny ants, right, but then there's these bigger ones,

that are the same type of ant, they're obviously the workers, they're the cunts I'm afraid of, that'll bite me, but two or three of them, are together dragging away, this dead beetle, wow,

and their, their mandibles, or their jaws, are stuck into them, fair play to them boys, wow, and their, their mandibles, or their jaws are stuck into him, fair play to them boys, um, so yeah, I don't feel safe, um, and I don't mean, I don't mean I don't feel safe as in, I'm afraid of something happening to me, it's not that, nothing, and it's not, I am afraid for my safety. It's a perfectly safe, absolutely beautiful, gorgeous city. What I mean is the way the city is planned inspires an anxiety in me which means I don't feel settled. Melbourne is the opposite. the grid system gives me the capacity and ability to predict my surroundings I can know

if I go straight I'm going to arrive there if I go left I can predict that each block has alleyways in Sydney you can't it's all over the place it's a fucking Sydney is the concrete jungle

if you go off into a a jungle It's all over the place. It's a fucking, Sydney is the concrete jungle. If you go off into a jungle and you don't know the crack, you don't know the land, you will be consumed with an anxiety and an uncertainty. Sydney is uncertain. Melbourne is certain. But an interesting thing about Melbourne,

when I was looking into the Haddelfella, is it Haddell or Huddle? The Haddelfella who built the grid? He built, he designed the city of Melbourne around 1846, right? And a big feature of cities at that time in Europe was that if you built a city, you must have a square, a town square or a series of squares. And this Hoddle fella deliberately didn't build a square

within the Melbourne grid system because, and I'm quoting him, I saw this in the Melbourne Museum, grid system because and i'm quoting him i saw this in in the melbourne museum he said he wanted this deter the spirit of democracy so the city of melbourne was built so that people couldn't have public gatherings or protest or criticize the government in a square because squares are dangerous squares are where people fucking meet up and have revolutions so this fucking huddle cunt was like i'm not putting a square here because that will that will make people feel that they must follow the rules and that there's nothing outside of the rules and from speaking to some Australian people here I was told that

they do enjoy their rules here part of the culture which I might relate back to frontierism is the Canadians can have it too but this is me paraphrasing Australian people that I spoke to now not me casting aspersions based on being here a couple of days but two or three people said that

they like to obey rules here and they like to not question rules and they like to think forward as opposed to we'll say like the french the french don't obey the rules the French question the rules the fucking French revolution Ireland we have a strange situation in Ireland we will question rules we're a philosophical people we're a revolutionary people but we're also

a post-colonial people and when you're a post-colonial people and when you're a post-colonial people our history is based on challenging the rules but receiving extreme death and brutality for doing it so we talk the talk but when it comes to walking the walk we're a bit cautious but we do talk the talk but according to some australian people they don't even talk the talk over here they kind of follow the rules and there's a bird is that one of them screaming there i don't know i can't identify bird screams there's a bird here in in uh they're in brisbane and they're in sydney there's one over there

There's a bird here in, they're in Brisbane and they're in Sydney. There's one over there. And this bird is called an ibis, right? And the ibis is, they're about the size of a small goose. Yeah. And they're white and they've got a long black neck and a very strange little sharp long beak and the ibis they're all over the city of sydney and they're all over the city of brisbane and they're considered a pest and people here now i didn't know this when i got into brisbane

i'm i'm walking around a park and I see all these beautiful little white birds walking around and they're not too concerned about my presence and they're pecking into the ground and I took out my camera and started taking photographs of these ibises and everyone who saw me doing it was looking at me like I was disgusting

they couldn't understand why this man was taking his phone out to get a photograph of these birds. And I found it strange. I noticed, Jesus, people are looking at me like I'm an object of disgust. And then I went asking a few questions about this bird, the ibis. And the ibis here is fucking hated. They call the ibis the bin chicken.

they call the ibis the bin chicken they're seen as a dirty filthy pest of an of a bird that shits everywhere and they're loud and they jump into bins i don't know if i got a fucking hand crimson i don't they jump into fucking bins and they rip things out and they're really really disliked and when people see an ibis they'll kind of kick them away and the a lot of the areas here you're not really encouraged to walk on grass and people don't because of the climate you know but the ibis will walk on the grass and i think now this is just me having a sweeping hot take, I think, because in Ireland we have like pigeons, we've got pigeons and we've got seagulls and we've got crows, and these birds behave in a similar way to how the ibis behaves here.

There's lots of them, they're loud, they, crows will fucking fucking crows will attack you and so like if you've got a a sandwich in your hand a crow might come down and try and have a crack at it you know so we have these birds in Ireland that eat out of bins that mess the place up that shit on your head they do all this but people don't really hate them in Ireland we recognize them as potential trouble but you coexist if someone is hating on pigeons or if you see someone throwing a kick at a pigeon or if you hear someone talking shit about crows or talking shit about pigeons in Ireland it'd be considered odd if someone kicks a pigeon or kicks at a pigeon, that person is considered odd. Over here, it's perfectly normal to do it to a bin chicken,

to an ibis. I think, from a cultural perspective, right, the ibis, what the Ibis represents deeply irritates Australian people because they love the rules. I think the Ibis represents in their behaviour, because they rip open bins, because they walk on the grass when no one else will walk on the grass, because they don't care because the ibis isn't scared of humans the ibis i'm like i'm looking at an ibis right now and there's two tourists beside it and the ibis is a foot away from him he doesn't give a shit that they're there the ibis is just walking around pecking into the ground going i don't give a fuck about you tourists they're very um they're not confrontational they're not aggressive

they're just like I'm here buddy I don't give a fuck what you're doing but I'm interested in this bin I don't give a shit what you say that's what the Ibises

personality is and I think Australian people would like to be like that I think Australian people would like to say fuck the rules I'd like to walk on the grass I'd like to walk on the grass

I'd like to rummage through this bin I'd like to challenge things that I don't accept or that I don't like and I think the ibis represents a I don't know

what would you call it a spirit animal of a rebellion that they might like to have. I don't know, I could be miles off. You could be listening to this as an Australian person and fucking rolling your eyes. And that's probably going to be the case

because I've just been here a couple of days. So I don't know anything about the culture of this country. The culture of, we said, the white settlers in this country. So what was I going to talk about this week? I was going to answer a couple of questions that you had. I'm going to answer a couple of questions and then we might do another little walk around the botanical gardens when the rain chills out because you can hear that. The rain's not going anywhere.

It's not too bad. A few little fat droplets. It's not as extreme as it was a while ago. What questions was I being asked yeah I got some questions on Patreon that I'm going to answer for you so one question was

I won't say the name I am the mother of two boys how do I raise them to be men when masculinity is often called toxic that's a weird one now because I hear that a lot when masculinity is often called toxic. That's a weird one now, because I hear that a lot. I would say, like you hear lads saying,

oh, you can't even be a man anymore now. You can't be masculine anymore. And it's like, yeah, you can. You just can't take advantage of the privilege of masculinity and use that to be a prick to other people it's simple as that being masculine doesn't mean you have to be physically confrontational with other men it doesn't mean you have to objectify women it doesn't mean you have to make women physically uncomfortable in your space by demonstrating your masculinity you know what i mean but what i would say to a parent who's concerned about how do i raise my my boys to be men, like I would say just fucking take gender out of

it altogether, take gender out of it, like when I was training in psychotherapy what you're what we were the word that was always used was never it was never learn to be a confident man learn to be a confident woman it was learn to be a fucking adult

so don't concern yourself with raising your boys to be good men raise them to be good adults. Similarly, if you've got a girl, raise her to be a good adult. Or if you have a child who's trans, raise them to be a good adult.

And the tenets of adulthood, really, and I'm taking these from transaction analysis, of adulthood really, and I'm taking these from transaction analysis, like, a good adult is, someone who has learned to react to, their environment in the present moment, that's the key really,

raise your boys to be, mindful people, people who boys to be mindful people, people who grow to be adults, who respond to things in the present moment. So that means that they're not reactionary, that they're not judgmental, or they're not needy, or that raise them to be emotionally intelligent, to understand each and every one of their emotions to know that if they're if they're if if they're actually

anxious what they're experiencing it as experiencing is anger like when i was talking yes uh talking earlier there about saying that Sydney makes me anxious like I'm in a bustling city surrounded by people who are stressed because they're at work and work is working them hard and they continually have to go places so their faces are stressed when I when I look around me in the city to see other humans i'm met with people who aren't making eye contact who look very worried and enough of that around you will bring up anxiety then when i try and ground myself in the certainty of urban planning i can't because i don't know where the streets are going to lead me. So that then causes me to feel anxiety.

And that anxiety is an appropriate response to the environment. It's okay to feel anxious in that respect. But if I'm not careful, that anxiety of not feeling safe can cause me to act, could lead me to become irritable. So if I'm in Sydney and I'm feeling uneasy and afraid because the environment is so chaotic, and now all of a sudden I walk into a shop and I'm short or rude with the person behind the counter, then I'm not responding in the here and now. I'm allowing my environment to dictate and control my internal world, my internal emotions,

which isn't an adult way to behave. The adult way to behave is to notice my anxiety, to ask myself questions about why I would be feeling anxious, and then to say to myself, even though my environment appears to be threatening, I have a choice over whether I'm going to let that dictate my emotions and therefore my behaviour. So I sit with it i sit with the uh the anxiety of being

in a new chaotic place where i have to i sit with uncertainty i accept in the present moment that i'm in an environment of uncertainty and that allows me to be calm so it means that when i walk in to buy a cup of coffee in a shop i'm not being a prick to that person behind the counter i'm instead being appropriately polite and treating that person as a human being because if the whole place is surrounded by people who aren't checking in with themselves then that poor person working in the coffee shop is dealing with nothing but stressed out dickheads all day. Because they're not, some people aren't in the here and now. That sounds unfair. Some people aren't actively attempting to be in the here and now. I actively work to be in the here and now when I can. And that is a tenet in psychology of being in the adult frame of mind,

because the other two frames of mind are to be in the parent or to be in the child. I don't know how I'm answering this question properly. I keep taking it back to being in Sydney and the chaos of this city and how it influences my emotions, I'm going to diverge slightly into speaking about transaction analysis psychology and we'll say my experience in Sydney, right? I've done podcasts on transaction analysis. Transaction analysis is a type of psychotherapy that states that humans have three kind of ego states in how we behave in society.

And those ego states are parent, adult and child. And it explores how in our everyday life we behave in a mindset that is either replicating parent figures from our childhood or replicating how we used to be as children and avoiding living in the present moment as adults and how this can cause us a great deal of emotional discomfort so when I speak about the chaos and anxiety of being in a busy incredibly busy crowded city like Sydney where the people are anxious and the architecture is anxious the fear and the anxiety that I experience right that's my child as in that is the ego state of me being in child what do I feel when I'm in central Sydney surrounded by anxious people and feeling not rooted not knowing where I am I feel like I felt when I was two or three years of age in a shopping centre and I lost my ma. You know when you're a kid and you lose your mother and it's fucking terrifying.

You know, you're in a shop, you're in Dunn stores or something and you're a little kid and you see something, you see nice sweets on the shelf and they're about 15 feet away. So you walk away to look at these lovely sweets on the shelf because they're drawing you towards them, because you're a little child. And the thing with being a child, children act very much on impulses without critical thinking. Children don't have the capacity to think critically. Children act on emotional impulses.

So when you're three years of age and you see some nice biscuits or chocolates in the shopping center you're not thinking about your safety you're not thinking about it's in your interest to stay in the proximity of your mother what you're doing is you're running over to the chocolates so we've all done that as kids run over to the chocolates and you look at them and then you turn around and you can't see your mother and it's fucking terrifying and for a lot of us that can be our first experience of deep abandonment and fear and feeling deeply unsafe. And when a child, three, four years of age, can't find their mother in a shopping centre, that child isn't saying, ah, she's probably around.

The child experiences it as, I'm going to die. My mother, my caregiver, isn't here. The child experiences it as, I'm going to die. My mother, my caregiver, isn't here. I don't know anyone else, and I'm going to die. And I had those experiences as a child. And we've all had them. And often, they root in us as trauma. And when we experience anxiety or abandonment as adults you're kind of returning to a moment like that and that that can even be in fucking relationships like

if someone if someone had a particularly traumatizing experience where they couldn't find their mother in a supermarket or their father as a child, and then they're in a relationship where they're unsure if their partner, their boyfriend or their girlfriend is going to stay with them, or they need to continually know that their partner is going to stay with them and won't leave, that can actually be reliving childhood trauma from an experience in a supermarket. But me being in Sydney and feeling anxious in Sydney, that's going right back to that. How do I feel? I feel, not as intensely, but I feel the uncertainty and the lack of safety that I would feel when I was three years of age and I couldn't find my mother in a supermarket.

But the thing is, I'm a fucking adult. I am an adult man. So there's no rational reason whatsoever for me as an adult to experience these feelings of anxiety. It's like, grand, you're in a new fucking city, you don't know where you are, internet isn't great because I don't have a proper service provider over here. It's okay

for the situation to be mildly confusing, but there's no rational reason for this to allow me to feel anxiety and fear. No rational reason. I'm perfectly safe. So that's the adult present moment response

to the anxiety we'll say that I was experiencing earlier being in a new confusing anxious city. And those are the thoughts that would run through my head. city and those are the thoughts that would run through my head and that's the child state of transaction analysis feeling the anxiety of abandonment in a supermarket because I'm in a new city that is me in the ego state of being a child now let's say I allow that anxiety to make me feel uneasy, and then I go into the coffee shop, and I'm ordering a coffee or a tea, and the person behind the counter who's serving me,

I now fail to make eye contact with them, I might fail to communicate with them in a respectful manner, I might fail to acknowledge their presence as a human being, and it might even be communicate with them in a respectful manner. I might fail to acknowledge their presence as a human being. And it might even be short with them. What would you like? I'd like a flat white. Do you want any biscuits? No, I'm grand.

What's your name? Blind boy. Okay, here's your coffee. And then you leave without saying hello and you don't leave a tip. And I've had an inauthentic experience now with another human being. That's the parent state. So I've now been in child earlier on because I felt abandoned in a new city. And now I'm in the parent state where I'm being short and judgmental with someone who's trying to serve me coffee.

where I'm being short and judgmental with someone who's trying to serve me coffee. And I'm not in the adult state, which is to respond to my environment in a mindful present moment, where I'm questioning my emotions. And to question the emotions that I'm feeling, that's called emotional intelligence, which is another tenet of being an adult. Emotional intelligence is to have emotional literacy, by which I mean you have a large vocabulary, vocabulary to trust and truly trust and know what you're feeling. And that takes a lot of time to develop that,

because I used to not have that. So, to invest it for me the the most efficient type of emotional literacy is when you can feel a negative motion emotion and you can question it to the point that you can trace it to childhood. That's often a goal of, we'll say, psychotherapy. So for me to feel, like I said, I'm in the botanical gardens now, but I'm 100 metres away from the chaos of Sydney and I'm at peace here because I'm surrounded by beautiful greenery but 100 meters away I'm now surrounded by people with concrete looming down on me and that's a triggering environment for me it took many years of me for me to learn

to sit with all that chaos to sit in that chaos and to comfortably ask myself what am i feeling right now and to have the comfort and knowledge and emotional literacy to feel the anxiety in my stomach and say i know this feeling this is the feeling of being three years of age and that time that i couldn't find my ma in duns and i'm an adult and i shouldn't be feeling this there's no rational reason for me to feel this and then it goes away because now it's no longer confusing do you know what i mean so i know I went on a fucking mad tangent there, but I've no notes and I'm just here responding to some questions that I wrote down on my phone. So that's what I'd say. Don't be worrying about raising a child to be a man or raising

a child to be a fucking woman or raising a child to be masculine or feminine raise your child to be an adult and an adult is someone with emotional literacy who can who strives and puts effort into attempting to live their lives in in the here and now present moment and it includes mindfulness it includes emotional intelligence all that stuff that's that's the good stuff that's the good shit when it comes to raising that raising a healthy human i'm guessing i don't know i don't have any fucking children this is based on what i've read from books and my own experiences with my own mental health, you know? What time are we? 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, 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.

What's not real? Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. 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.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Like, here's the crack. As you know from last week,

I'm on a very, very intensive schedule here. So I only have like an hour here in Sydney to get the podcast done. So that's why I don't have a big massive fucking hot take. I'm slightly walking away now, right? Because the weather is... The weather's after chilling out. The rain isn't coming down. So I'm going to walk over to the area that has all the ferns.

Where I saw a lizard here earlier. Ah, this is beautiful. This is like a Jurassic area. So I'm surrounded by indigenous ferns. I'm surrounded by the plants that should be all over Sydney before they replace them with European plants. Ah, listen to the sound of that water. Huge fucking giant ferns, massive ferns and

big trees. I'm going to try and walk into an area now. Hold on, I don't want to step in any more little lizards. We're near water here, so those little beautiful lizards are around. I'm coming up to an area here. Which is a fern. The Sydney fernary. And it says, the soft green companions of dinosaurs quietly call you to a place

where time passes at a gentler pace. You cunts. Fuck me, this is gorgeous. I wish you could see this. So I'm under the largest ferns I've ever seen in my life I think ferns are now I could be talking out of my fucking arse here

but I think ferns are called angiosperms Jesus don't quote me on that right but I think what makes ferns so special is they were one of the first plants on earth, essentially, right? And ferns don't fertilize each other. By which I mean, we all know that flowers have male and female flowers. And pollen is basically a flower's cum, and flowers like, flowers wank off into the air, and their cum floats into the air and goes into a female flower and then makes a seed, so flowers fuck each

other via the air, and plants do, but ferns don't ferns evolved at a time before sex, before sexual selection became a thing so I think ferns don't have any gender at all they what the fuck

isn't him I don't know what type of bird that is. But he wants to make himself known. But yeah, ferns are genderless. They reproduce within themselves somehow. I don't know how it works, but it's not sexual selection. Which leads to problems, because the thing is... Sexual selection evolved...

I don't know how long ago maybe a billion years ago sexual selection evolved as a way to enhance genetic diversity because it meant that before sexual selection plants and animals were basically clones of each other and what sexual selection

did is it allowed plants and animals to choose mates based on what they considered to be attractive. And this was great for the health of the species. Before that, if a disease came in and got one fern, then it got them all. Because they didn't have the capacity to build a resistance towards the disease through sexual selection. All right, we're after seeing our first spider, ladies and gentlemen. So I'm here in Australia, terrified of spiders,

and right in front of me here is... I've got a web, and it's a foot in front of my face, and on this web, right in the centre, is this spider, pretty big by Irish terms, he'd be half the size of my palm, and I'm looking, again, I can't be assuming that it's a male or a female, I don't know, but an orange underside, now, I'm trying to look at its fangs. I don't know. Oh, oh.

Okay, the bass of my voice caused the fucking, caused them to flinch, so. I'm just going to get away with this. I'm looking right now at, in the farnery, obviously, all the different, what I love about botanical gardens. I like museums in general, lads, you know. And I consider this a museum, but I've,

I like natural history museums. I like, I prefer to look at artifacts and history and things and zoos and botanical gardens rather than i've kind of grown out of looking at art unless it's renaissance paintings isn't it and modern art and contemporary art i kind of can't be fucking arsed going to a gallery to see it because it's so conceptually based i mean there's an art gallery there at the front of the Botanical Gardens, and they said there's a few Rembrandts in there, and there's a couple of paintings by Titian and Giotto. Giotto is a painter from the 12th century who's credited with inventing, I don't want to say inventing, but popularizing and discovering perspective. perspective which is before Giotto and a fella called Paolo Uccello who were Italian artists in the 11th century when humans would paint on two dimensions on a flat surface they didn't understand that if you want to make something look like it's in the distance you draw it smaller

and Giotto is credited as being the first painter to really do that. So if I have time, I might go into the gallery and look at some Giotto's. Rembrandt, of course, a fantastic painter with oils. And Titian. Titian is a painter from, I think, the 14th century. He's a real early painter. But Titian... Titian's paintings are incredible. He was a master of oil paint,

but if you look at his later paintings when he was an older man, he kind of nearly predicted expressionist painting, by which I mean expressionist painting is something we'd associate with the 19th century, where paint is used not to represent what's a picture but rather to represent human emotion and people paid more attention to the paint but Titian was doing this 600 years beforehand but I think it's because he was going blind he was going blind and the world to him became a smudge so he started smudging his paint okay we're going to go over to another little spider here oh fuck me that's not a widow is it i don't like the shape of that

spider's arse i do he's they're uh building their web i do not like the shape of that spider's arse i am most certainly looking at some degree of widow right now yeah that's a fucking widow i don't know is that there's a spider in this country called a redback and if you get bitten by a redback you have to go to hospital in a half an hour or you die is that a redback i can say with 90 certainty that i'm looking at a species of widow. I know this by the shape of the fucking, the shape of the legs and the shape of the hole, the shape of the arse. So it has a large

bulbous arse. I'll do it as your drunk limerick aunt. I'm looking at a spider here in the botanical gardens in Sydney and it's got a huge arse. It's crawling around on its web, trying to build a web and it's it looked like it looked like it floating in air because i can't see the web because it's going to try and catch

some flies but it's got a huge hole on it and i hope it doesn't come up and bite me on the face it's going to come over and bite me on the face i'm moving on now slightly there's an area here with some what what have they got, they've got, oh yeah, I'm looking at Japanese moss, I'm looking at a lot of Japanese moss, watch the state of it, pure showing off,

that moss thinks it's great, fucking goal, but you know what though, yeah, another thing I do enjoy about ferns, there's a great sense of humility to a fern, you know? Ferns aren't about showing off, ah, there we go, back to the sexual selection. So even though I'm here in the fernary surrounded by ferns, and they're beautiful, and they're beautiful in their own right, they are quite repetitive, and

these are ferns from all over the world but it's essentially the same shit you know it's a central little trunk or if you'd call it that and then a big green set of leaves that are great at keeping the sun out but there's not a lot of visual diversity i'm what the fuck is that is another lizard oh look at that, look at that boy. Look at that boy. I think he might be a blue-tongued lizard.

He's right in front of me. Okay, so look back to the ferns. I'm surrounded by all these different ferns from all around the world, and they all kind of look the same. They're different sizes. But why is that? Because they're not engaging in sexual selection a fern doesn't like certain trees are beautiful certain plants are beautiful because this benefits their sexual

selection now it's not like if a plant has a nice flower another another plant wants to fuck it no if a plant has a particularly inviting flower it's because it wants to draw insects and bees and and fucking birds over to it so if a bee goes into a flower he gets a lot of flower comb on his back and then he gives that to another thing so So these ferns are not engaged in sexual selection. And that's why they're... I'm not going to call them... I won't say ugly. That's not fair.

That's not nice to the ferns. Especially now that I'm here in their home in the fernary. They're just... They're just like men in jumpers who aren't interested in... They're not looking for, they're not looking for a girlfriend, let's put it that way, they're not looking for a girlfriend, they're interested in reading books and keeping their heads down and a bit of wanking, that's it, but they're not interested in attracting a mate, so they're just chilling out, they're just like, I'm

a fern, what's the crack, how you getting on? I know I'm not interested in a cup of coffee. Leave me alone. So let's see what's happening now. I'm after moving out of the fernery. Shit, there's an area there. It's like a greenhouse of traps. Cunts. Royal Botanical Staff only. Let's see if we can get in anyway. Fucking pricks. No. Door won't open. Okay, I've left the fernery. And... How are you? A man just went past there on a skateboard

and he works in the park. I think I alarmed him. Oh. So now I'm in an area, a palm forest. And there's a tree'm in an area, a palm forest. And there's a tree in front of me called a suicide palm. Discovered in 2007, this gigantic palm is thought to live for up to 50 years before producing an enormous inflorescence and subsequently dying.

Hence the common name. What the fuck? What's an inflorescence ah so this tree and it's huge it's in front of me it lives for years

and then it produces a flower and dies bit harsh calling it the suicide palm butcher there we go man and I tell you what Like I'm walking around a walkway Oh there's a lovely little pond over here What are we looking at here

Pond lilies This is a beautiful place lads And I look into the air And I can see that imposing bitter The imposing bitter city of Sydney I'm looking at palms Imposing, bitter. The imposing, bitter city of Sydney. I'm looking at palms. How do I feel about palms?

Sure, fuck it, there's none of them in Ireland. But yet, naturally, my pace... There's some gorgeous lilies here. There's pond lilies to the left of me. Palms to the right. And there's an ibis over there. It's not, why is that a... What's the crack, sir?

That looks like a loon. So I've got this little bird in front of me. Waggling its tail, orange legs and an orange beak. What's the crack with you? I don't want to get...

Yeah, I look like I'm bothering birds. You don't want to get... Yeah, I look like I'm bothering birds. You don't want to look like that. Can you leave the botanical garden, sir? You're bothering the natural wildlife. Can you hear that rain? There's a

termite mound or something over there. We've had no fucking ocarina, Paz. We've had no nothing. Have I any gigs to promote? I've got a gig in Belfast. I've got a gig in Cork in the Opera House. I've got a gig in, my fucking English tour, right, Glasgow's sold out, London is sold out, there's tickets available for Liverpool and Birmingham, I've got a live podcast in, well they're all live podcasts, Belfast Cork, I'm fucking, I'm missing one Ennis Do you know what I need? A fucking website With all my gigs on it And I can say to ye

I've a load of live podcasts Go to this website And read them As opposed to me Each fucking week Having to remember Where my live podcasts are Forgetting one

And then getting an angry Fucking text Hold on now where my live podcasts are. Forgetting one and then getting an angry fucking text. Hold on now. Oh, it's Ibis Central over here. We're going to walk over to some Ibises. No, fuck it, we won't. I look like a mad cunt.

Okay, I'm walking now towards... Is there a panond Lily area? We'll investigate the Pond Lilies. The Pond Lilies that I was looking at a while ago, that was only a little, a small bit, but coming up here now, there looks to be some serious business with Pond Lilies.

The rain has stopped, thank fuck. And I am again confronted, affronted by a curtain of humid air. It's about 35 degrees. I'm wearing shorts. Shorts. Luckily there's not a lot of people around because

if you're noticing where you haven't I've been moving around quite rapidly and there's also a little bit of a wind which if you're recording audio is not a particularly good idea, but I've got a really, really good wind jammer,

which is a big fluffy furry thing that goes on top of my microphone, and it means that no matter how strong the wind is, you will not hear any unpleasant noise. But it does make me look like a mad cunt. Hold on a second, have they got eels? Two seconds, so now I'm in a ponded area in the botanical gardens. And it says, okay, who put eels in our ponds?

Watch the surface of this pond and you might just catch a glimpse of an Australian native freshwater eel. I'll read it as your drunk limerick ant. Watch the surface of this pond and you might just catch a glimpse of an Australian native freshwater eel. The garden didn't introduce the eels. They colonise our ponds by themselves, the cunts. We drain the ponds regularly and after refilling the eels are back within weeks. Staff have seen baby

eels, elvers, squirming across the damp grass at night from the harbour. Fucking mad cunts. So the little baby eels, so I'm here. There's a pond right in front of me. Quite an ornate, beautiful pond. But about 60 metres away is the Sydney fucking harbour. Right? So the little eels,

the elvers, tiny little boys, are crawling across the ground to get into this fucking pond. It's only natural. It may not be a pleasant sight to see a fluffy duckling taken by an eel, but it is the way of nature. Ducks, in turn, find baby eels a tasty meal. At times when the ducks and waterhens are breeding profusely, the eels help to maintain a natural balance. There's a fucking seagull here now. Can we get some noise out of this boy?

Hello, sir. How are you? Hello, sir. He's used to humans. So right in front of me now is a seagull. Like, I'm talking a foot. He doesn't give a shit about me because he's used to humans feeding him. And I'd say he's looking at me going, Have you got a bit of bread, buddy?

Can we get some noise out of you? Ah! Ah! Ah! going, have you got a bit of bread, buddy? Can we get some noise out of you? Yeah, he's not, I tried to make some seagull, oh, for fuck's sake, there's a lot of people behind me. I tried to make some seagull noises to get some noise out of him. But then I just realised I'm a fucking grown man on his own talking into a furry fucking, into a furry microphone making noises at a, at a seagull. Alright, I'm going to go down closer to the pond to see if I can actually see an eel.

No, fuck them. Okay, walking on. I have a canvas bag I'm gonna have to make the very The very strange European choice Of putting this canvas bag Over my shoulder Like a handbag

It's not working Oh god if he could see me now For fuck's sake Hold on two seconds Bollocks Oh God, if you could see me now. For fuck's sake. Hold on two seconds. Bollocks. Okay. I'm going to take out my phone and see if there are any more questions.

That you cunts asked me. I hope you're enjoying this week's fucking podcast. Look, here's the crack, lads. It's essentially me walking around the fucking park talking out of my hole, alright? But it's either that

or another live podcast which I don't want to do or no podcast at all. And you know well I'm not doing that I'm not doing no live podcast or no podcast, that's not happening I'm in the Chinese looks like a Chinese area

probably it was probably called the Oriental area at one point until someone said you can't say that anymore, because Oriental is a, it's just one of those disrespectful colonial terms, that refuses to acknowledge the, individual areas of Asia as different countries,

and just kind of says all those people over there in the east, the orient what's slippy? if I was to walk a further bit north I'd get up as far as the fucking Sydney Opera House hold on fucking Sydney Opera House.

Hold on. I'm in the kind of boring part of the gardens now. Right, let's see is there any questions? While I'm looking for a question, look, this podcast is supported by you, the listener via the... 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 Patreon page so if you like listening to this podcast each week if it does something for you please support me financially and you can do that by going to patreon.com forward slash

the blind buy podcast and give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month this is what keeps my life going, it's what pays my fucking bills, and for the past two years, I have had the absolute, I've been doing this shit since I'm a fucking teenager, I've got a career that's spanning fucking nearly 20 years at this point.

And for about 60% of that, I wasn't getting paid. And for most of it, I was getting paid, but you're getting paid incrementally, so you can't really predict your finances. For the past two fucking years, because of the Patreon, I've been getting regular income, and I have a job. And my job is this, and it's fantastic.

And I just want to say thank you to all the fucking patrons. And please become a patron if you want to. And if you can't afford it, you don't have to. You can listen for free, buddy. You can listen for free. This is a model based on kindness. Okay, so one question I got was as an Irish emigrant those are the people who've left

as an Irish emigrant I'd love to hear your thoughts on loss of identity after a few years living abroad that's not something I can directly empathise with. Because I've never emigrated right. But one thing. That I kind of experience.

One of the saddest parts. Like I've lost loads of friends to emigration. Particularly to Australiaia a lot of people who i grew up with who i went to school with who i went to college with gone and like the way that the weirdest part of it the especially when when i was younger when i was in in my early 20s uh in the recession, and your friends disappear, which means you don't really see them. You see them at Christmas time. And one of the strangest parts of everyone you know on emigrating is you don't see them for a year because they've

gone to Australia or they've gone to Canada. And then when you meet them at Christmas usually, where you're having a pint in your local and everyone you know is there, and you meet your buddy who you haven't seen in two years because they're in a different country, but when you meet them, major facets of their personality have changed. Hold on, there's a car coming. When you meet someone and it's not like the person you knew, it's a new version of that person. Because they've found themselves in a new country,

in a new social group, in a new job, in a new environment, in a new social group, in a new job, in a new environment, in a new culture. And in order for them to adapt into that social situation, they've had to change facets of who they are. Their body language changes. Their... The way they interact with humans changes.

Their accents change slightly. And from my point of view, because it's happened a lot, that's really sad. Because the thing is, you say to yourself, Ah, my friend's gone away, but I'll see them again. But when they come back, you're searching for the person you used to know within them because they've had to

in order to adapt kind of change but also as well you don't get to see the journey of that change so that's an alienating feeling and it's a strange one and it's a real Irish thing

because everyone listening to this podcast has also lost a lot of friends to emigration what can I say to the person who has emigrated and is concerned about losing a sense of identity or losing a sense of Irishness or who you are all I can say is fucking be flexible. You can't fight that

shit. It's natural. That's what happens. You can't fight it. If you move to fucking Brisbane or Sydney or Toronto and you're faced with a new culture and you're trying to fit in, you're trying to make friends and you're trying to operate within the new culture that you find yourself in you just have to be fucking flexible you haven't lost your identity your identity is who you are right now

you can get angry and say if I'd have stayed in Ireland I'd be a different person but look sure anyone can fucking say that like you can get angry and say, if I'd have stayed in Ireland, I'd be a different person. But look, sure, anyone can fucking say that. Like, if you're... I don't know. If... Let's just say you're in a long-term relationship.

If you're going out with someone for seven or eight years, you'd probably be a different person if you'd gone out with someone for seven or eight years you'd probably be a different person if you'd gone out with another person if your partner is with you eight years we change who we are to accommodate social environments at all times and that just you grow so don't be worrying about your fucking identity you are who you are right now and that's fine and there's nothing wrong with it I'm getting slightly out of breath I've gone full circle to the fernery because it was a peaceful place

and there's lizards so I'm just going to sit down on a little bench oh it's going to give me a wet arse I get a wet arse on the bench I'm sitting on a metal table I hope there's no spiders underneath it I hope you're fucking enjoying this

you cunts this has absolutely been intended as an ASMR podcast where it's about the sounds and I don't fully know what the fuck I'm talking about have you any more questions I can answer? how long has that been? I've talked to you for one hour. I've taken you on a one

hour journey around the botanical gardens. And I've spoken a little bit about history, a little bit about psychology. And I made some sweeping assertions about the psychology and culture of Australian people based on me being here a few days and looking at the architecture. So if I'm miles off, I sincerely apologise, okay? I'm probably talking out of my hole. These are just the flawed thoughts that entered my head as I tried to understand the new city that I've been landed into. That's all I can say. So, all right, I'm going to leave you go. Hopefully right now,

the rain is coming down again, hopefully now, I'm going to leave, the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, actually no, there's a carnivorous plant exhibition here, I don't know exactly where it is, but I think it's indoors,

which means I can't be walking around, with this fucking recorder, but there's a carnivorous plants exhibition which has got Venus fly traps and what are those big cunts? Picture plants. They're plants that eat little frogs. So I'm going to go to that and then I'm going to go to the art museum

which is just beside the botanical gardens and look at a couple of Tishons and a couple of Jattos and a couple of Rembrandts until next week yart God bless if you didn't enjoy this just go listen to a fucking old podcast it's better this than doing nothing

yart