The Blindboy Podcast - Soss Potion

Episode Date: July 4, 2018

How to wash your balls, Daniel O'Connell's rap feud, Horoscopes, Hash Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, you charming Marians. What is the crack with all of ye bastards this week? Welcome to week number 38 of the Blind Boy Podcast. 30 fucking 8. If this was a TV series, it would have run for about 6 years by now. Fucking madness. But that's the beauty of the podcast format i'm lashing out an hour every single week of content that i enjoy making that i think is it's engaging it's ticking all my creative boxes and i'm doing it once a week not like with fucking television where it takes 4 months to make an hour and 20 different pricks have to get involved and dilute it down

into something that isn't engaging em but welcome back if this is your first week listening to the blind boy podcast please go back to the first podcast and go to the start of the journey. Do you know? So last week's podcast was a bit of a...

It was like a non-podcast. What the fuck was that about? I said it was too hot to do a proper podcast, so I didn't do a proper podcast. It's still too hot, but this week I'm going to try and do a proper podcast it's still too hot but this week i'm going to try and do a proper podcast um what have i been doing with myself do you know what like as you know i'm currently in the middle of writing a book and my second book the first one is out gospel according to blind by short stories i'm in in the middle of writing my second book the first one is out Gospel According to Blind by Short Stories I'm in the middle of writing my second book of short stories and I've had a busy

busy fucking year I've realised that since around last October I have not rested in any way I haven't allowed my mind to rest I've been a continual

creativity non-stop so for the past week or so or two weeks I just I stopped literally stopped okay um I have not been writing the only thing resembling creativity like I haven't been writing i haven't been making tunes the only creative thing i've been doing really has been this podcast do you know which is grand but i made a decision to take a fucking break and which is a tough if you're in any way creative that's a tough thing to do because you have to battle the guilt of doing fuck all but I this is something I've struggled with for fucking years but I've finally achieved some degree of mastery over it I found myself when I was writing my short stories it wasn't as thoroughly enjoyable as it should be um flow wasn't happening as easily the state of flow that i talk about all

the time whereby ideas just arrive into my head in this orgasmic flurry of creativity and it's a highly enjoyable process and where writing feels like i'm dreaming when i'm awake and i have control over it that wasn't happening so I knew well if that's not happening it means that my unconscious mind where good ideas come from my unconscious the same place that dreams come from that that the well of my unconscious is kind of it's drying up a bit so what I do in that situation is I allow myself a period of what's known as feeding my unconscious mind and this is an if you are creative no matter what whatever you're doing if you're a musician making theater graphic designer whatever the fuck if you're creative and you rely upon your

flow and unconscious mind to create you must allow for feeding the unconscious mind so what i did was i got myself a fucking xbox an xbox one i haven't played video games in a year and a half because i've been so busy writing got myself an xbox one and i've just been i've been playing video games. For the first time in a year and a half. Irresponsibly. Playing video games. I'm talking. Eight. Nine hours a day.

Of. Far Cry 5 is the game I'm playing at the moment. Just playing video. On the couch. Playing video games. Allowing a certain amount of time for. Either running or going to the gym. But other than that. playing fucking video games.

Not thinking about art. Not thinking about creativity. Not thinking about writing. Watching films. Watching anything. Fucking reality television. Feeding my mind with junk trash. Anything.

My rule for, likeipedia binges too i spent about three hours yesterday reading about rats you know and allowing my brain to do anything that is engaging it doesn't have to be about art it doesn't have to be intellectual i don't have a snobbery around it if i'm engaging in something and that thing is interesting and it's lulling me into this sense of being entertained then i know that all that information no matter what it is it's packing its way into my unconscious mind and when i go back to writing we'll find a conduit. It will find a creative release in some way. So. It's a huge.

That's a very important thing. Five years ago. I'd be feeling guilty about doing this. I'd have had a sense of guilt. About taking time off. To play video games. And. It's an essential part of the process there's no room for self-flagellation

and shaming myself or shaming yourself if you take time out to just engage in some trash and to entertain your brain with whatever that may be it's an essential part of the process so in about a weeks time

I'll go back to writing with a new vigour, that's the other thing too because I've just been playing video games the novelty's worn off now and it's starting to get quite draining it's mad after fucking

after two or three days of like just solid video game playing, the fucking tiredness. Do you know, I'd go, first of all it fucks up my sleep pattern. I was falling asleep at about three or four in the morning. Then, normally I get by on about six hours of sleep.

I'm grand on six hours. Because I kind of hate sleeping, because I just have an active mind. So I love being awake. But after playing video games. I definitely needed my eight hours. But then after waking up after my eight hours. I was fucking still wrecked tired.

Whatever playing video games does to the mind. What I've also been doing. Is listening to fucking podcasts which are brilliant and I haven't really listened to podcasts in a while I went back to Bill Burr what I love and Joe Rogan those are my two podcasts because I'm not huge into podcasts as you know I've pretty much just listened to those two when this american life the odd time um but yeah something mad fucking happened right so because it's been too hot i've been laying off the i'm not running as much you know i normally run maybe four times a week and then go to the gym every other day but instead what i've started doing is past two weeks now I'm going to the gym most days of the week and I might do a run at the

weekend because it's too hot to be outside fucking doing a 10k run and the gym has a swimming pool so going for a swim every single day has been absolutely gorgeous before I lift my weights so I was listening away to the Joe Rogan podcast this week and he had a guest on Ted Nugent and Ted Nugent is old school fucking rock and roll he's well able to play guitar now and I would happily throw on a bit of Ted Nugent alongside ACDC

or fucking who are the boys with the beards ZZ Top you know but the man himself is a right wing wanker total fucking right wing pro gun nut conservative Trump supporting

American and I enjoy listening to Joe Rogan's podcast because he often presents me with people who he's interviewing who I fundamentally disagree with. And I sometimes enjoy listening to people whose opinions I disagree with. But this fella Ted Nugent, you could just tell he was a dickhead. Like he really, really wasn't listening to fucking any of Joe Rogan's viewpoints at all. He had his mind made up about everything.

And he didn't have the skill of listening. He was well able to talk and he was engaging and he was interesting. And he made some great arguments as well about hunting. He's an avid hunter. And he made some arguments about hunting from an ecological perspective. That I'd never heard of. And I was grateful to hear it from that perspective. But what kind of pissed me off was, here's this total fucking right winger.

Anti-PC. Anti-liberal. And he was complaining about American hunting laws. And his general argument was, if you are not a a hunter yourself if you are not from the hunting culture then shut up then you shouldn't be legislating for it then it is not your voice he was basically making all the arguments that the liberal left would make about minorities or the sexes except about hunting yet he couldn't extend that empathy towards their position, do you know what I mean, it's like, I'm a hunter, I hunt every day, I am the expert on this, my voice has more authority than yours, because this is the culture I live in,

fair enough, I agree with you Ted, can you say the same thing for black people? Or for Latinos? Do you know? Or for women? So that grinded my gears. But I was thoroughly engaged in this podcast. While in the gym. Right? So I have a normal ritual when I go into the fucking gym. I completely disrobe.

Right? The changing rooms is there. And beside the changing rooms is the the shower and just beyond the shower then is the swimming pool so normally i don't use the swimming pool that much i am using at the moment normally i strip down i get completely naked and i go into the fucking shower but because i was so engaged in this podcast that I was listening to I was fully entranced with it which is brilliant that's what I was looking for I got a podcast hug I was 100% absorbed in this fucking podcast so I stripped down to my bollocks as you know ready to go into the fucking shower but forgot to take the fucking earphones off so I'm ready to go into the fucking shower but forgot to take the fucking earphones off so i'm ready to go into the shower with the earphones in and my phone in my fucking hand can't do that obviously

but i wasn't going to the shower i was going to the fucking pool so before i noticed i bypassed the shower and now i'm in the pool area with headphones on completely fucking naked i was bollocks naked in the public pool because of this this podcast was so enamoring that it had distracted my logical faculties and now i'm a grown man naked in a fucking pool in a public pool luckily there was only one person there there was another lad at the other end i I think he saw me, I quickly realised, holy fuck, you're bollocks naked in the pool, this is a crime, ran back into the fucking, the changing rooms, had it have been a Thursday, there would have been a children's swimming class there, it wasn't, it was just one lad, and that was fucking fine. But Christ, but it is tantamount to how truly engaging a good podcast can be.

When, I just forgot, I forgot. My usual, I think what happened is that I went into autopilot. Like if you're cycling a bike or driving a car. My physical muscle memory was so used to getting to the gym going to the locker taking off all my clothes and then going into the shower that is a muscle memory thing that I can do autonomously so I did that except went into the fucking pool and again it was another reason I'm grateful that i've got a fucking bag in my head if that was des bishop and sorry des to be singling you out again but if that was des bishop it would have

made the papers but uh that is a weird thing as well about the the gym the the fucking the chain changing room etiquette in in the lads gym right or in the in the lads' gym, right? Or in the lads' area, and it's something that I've noticed. In my gym, the men's changing rooms and the men's showers, there's zero privacy, right? I know from talking to female members that in the women's changing rooms they have cubicles in the showers but in the men's fucking gym or the men's area the showers are like just a big open room with showers hanging out of the walls there's zero privacy so something i've started to notice over the years in the like in the i don't know anyone in my gym i don't have any friends in there that's just a lot of strangers men do this thing in gym space in the gym locker room space whereby

to show how much of a confident alpha male they are they be as naked as possible are they be as naked as possible all the time okay and you'll see it with like the younger lads lads of about 17 18 19 always have the towels around themselves often shorts in the fucking shower right which is a bit of a taboo it's a bit of a no-no because i think what it does is it suggests to the other men you think i want to be looking at your dick i don't taboo it's a bit of a no-no because i think what it does is it suggests to the other men you think i want to be looking at your dick i don't know but it's after about the age of 20 shorts in the shower is frowned upon we say within unspoken male gym changing room culture so what lads do in the fucking changing room is completely naked very not making eye contact with other lads but in no way hiding or disguising or being in any way discreet with any part of your body letting it out there it's kind of like

shover all lads we all have willies we all fucking arses, you're not going to look at it anyway, and the more confident a lad is, the more likely he is to be outright displaying his body, right, it's something I've noticed, the lads who are trying to exude how alpha male they are are most likely to like throw their leg up on something and wipe their arse and balls very openly and very loudly in front of everyone else so if you get three or four lads in the gym and they all fancy themselves as fucking kind of alphas they're in competition with each other about how open they are with their bollocks and arses, and I haven't spoken to anyone about this, it's just, and it's a feeling in the air, it's something you notice, it's, and I have to participate in it too, because I'm just of that

age, where I, you know, this is the culture and etiquette in the gym. So it's like. Dicks out. Arse out. If fucking something falls on the ground. I'm picking down. I'm going down and picking it up. And you might have to deal with my arsehole.

That's how it is. And as well. I'm not about to be alpha male. By these other fellas. So. There's my fucking langer. Deal with it. And it's a very. It it's it's it's a weird thing of course if someone was to bring it up in the gym then that would make everything very

uncomfortable it's so unspoken it's like in a restaurant where all of a sudden people start eating with their knife and fork properly you know but no one tells you to and it has nothing to do as well with uh how someone looks do you know it it you know you could be tall you could be short it has nothing to do with how muscular someone is how much fat someone has how thin somebody is has nothing to do with the size of someone's langer it has to do with the confidence that you exude with your naked body around other men so this one day gym was fucking packed so we all head into the fucking shower so this shower like i said it's a tiled room it's a square tile room with about eight shower heads coming out of the wall and if there's too many lads there

especially if it's about five in the evening then you might even get two lads half shaving or half sharing a fucking shower even if they don't know each other because it's that's the culture you're comfortable with your body you put it out there if you have a problem with someone else's nudity then that's your issue and that's unconfident behavior so everyone's there in the fucking shower backs to the wall right essentially projecting your chest and the front of yourself and your dick out towards all the other lads in a square washing yourself but not looking at anyone no eye contact nothing like that and it was a big alpha male competition it was just openness with your fucking body wiping your ass wiping your balls all of that full view of everyone else and it was clear there was a big alpha thing going on and then beautiful thing happened this lad walks into the shower he was about five foot four i'd

say sharp man in his mid-50s type of fella who's been bodybuilding since he was 20 you know uh you'd describe him as a terrier of a man or a pit bull of a man. I'm in the fucking shower. Myself. Fucking Polish lads of about six foot fucking three. Fucking other limerick rugby hard lads in there. Everyone dicks out. Covered in fucking soap. Not. It's not homoerotic.

There's no sexual. It's not sexual. Maybe it would be if you were an observer. And you were into that. But like. it's a weird unspoken thing. So small lad walks in. Takes out a fucking razor. Takes out a fucking mack tree razor. Bends over in front of everybody.

And begins shaving his arsehole. Shaving his actual fucking arsehole. Pointed at everybody. He didn't even put his arse to the wall. He spread his cheeks. And shaved his actual arsehole. In a room full of about six or eight men showering. And every other lad.

Including myself. At that moment. Turned away. Turned away. It was so uncomfortable. We all that moment turned away turned away it was so uncomfortable we all instinctively turned away and at that moment in my head i said he's the alpha he's the alpha he's number one he's the silverback so that's what i've been doing with my time off i hope i'm not isolating my female listeners now by dedicating 20 minutes to what it's like to be on the inside of a men's shower in the fucking gym.

No, I've been working hard now and I don't know, just diversifying the podcast, keeping an eye on female voices. Because it's with the live podcast. Now, I haven't put out a live podcast in a good few weeks, but many have been recorded. I've been doing a live podcast nearly every two weeks. And I've got some absolute beauties coming up for you. I'm just trying to figure out when to fucking release it.

I've said it a million times before, probably Fridays or Saturdays, I'm going to start looking at putting out the live podcasts that I've already recorded, I recorded one with the author Louise O'Neill, that was unreal, I had a fucking cracking time with Tara Flynn in Cork there a couple of weeks ago. That was brilliant. Can't wait to show you that. It was great crack. It was an incredibly fucking intimate. Fun conversation.

With a room full of 400 people. Which I didn't think was possible. I've got a. Did a class interview with a Limerick historian. Called Sharon Slater. That's going to be coming out. I've got. I can't wait for this, in Ulster Hall in around October, I think. I'm going to be interviewing Bernadette Devlin-Neklaski.

I can't fucking wait for that. And what have I got coming up? Oh man, I did a live podcast last week or the week before at Body and Soul Festival, which was brilliant, Body and Soul Festival, I'm pissed off I didn't fucking say it beforehand, but like, it was a small festival and with gorgeous weather in June, and with gorgeous weather in June it's brilliant but I did an interview with Tommy fucking Tiernan in a boiling hot tent

and there was people got up at 9 in the morning to queue for this tent because we only let about 150 people in so people were queuing for ages to get in for this interview with the conversation with myself and Tommy and myself and Tommy

had a fucking amazing chat it was so much crack it was roasting hot in the tent people didn't give a fuck like I kept it going for about an hour and I could see people sweating I could see people fanning themselves down and I said to the audience I said look you're roasting you want to get out I'll wrap it up and And everyone said, no, keep it going. Because it was that much crack. So we did it for about an hour and a half. And the fucking thing did not record. Okay?

Because it was a festival. And at festivals, you don't get sound checks, you don't get to prepare. A couple of things went wrong. I left the laptop with the sound man the sound man was to press a button on the laptop something went wrong finished the fucking interview with tommy and it didn't record so that's a sickner because it was a great interview but said it's tommy afterwards and we'll renegotiate it with Tommy will come on again and we'll do a live podcast and it'll be recorded properly I immediately invested in a zoom h6 recorder which

is the best portable recorder you can buy and that is coming with me on the road for live podcasts in future it is an incredibly reliable piece of equipment very basic, it can't go wrong as opposed to leaving things up to recording into a laptop tomorrow, I'm in Clan Mill and I'm interviewing, this is going to be fucking great as well Tony Walsh who is a long time activist for LGBT rights and queer rights in Ireland.

He's also curator of the Irish Queer Archives, I think it's called, or Irish Gay Archives, which archives all the gay activism in Ireland. And I'm going to be interviewing Tony Walsh and at the same time my good buddy and Tony's friend Will St Leisure. Will is a gay artist who is I've known Will about five or six years he's the type I've been at many parties with him he's the type of fella me and him will be at a party we we'll latch onto each other, and spend the entire night in the corner of the party, talking about post-disco, or raves,

or tunes, or art, we'd burn the fucking ears off each other, talking about history, art, and tunes, so I'm looking forward to that podcast, that's going to be really enjoyable,

and doing that one in Clonmel, there might be a few tickets left, there might be, I think there's only about 20 or 30 tickets left, but look that one up if you want to be really enjoyable, and doing that one in Clonmel, there might be a few tickets left, there might be, I think there's only about 20 or 30 tickets left, but look that one up, if you want to come to that, that's on Thursday night, you can't,

this week's podcast actually does have, a pint, and a purpose, and something I want to, I want to talk about, and discuss, but, I don't know,

I just went on a 25 minute rant, because it felt right, it felt right, I'm drinking a little bit of red wine, which I don't usually do with the podcast, usually I'll have either a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, but I said fuck it, I'll have a glass of red wine tonight and um yeah my taste in red wine it it betrays my my drink hipsterism you know if you listen to this podcast you know I've got very eclectic taste when it comes to alcohol last week I was telling you to drink Hemingway daiquiris and sangria. And before that it was tiki cocktails. Shit like that. I've fallen in love with a fucking brand of wine recently.

And it is the McDonald's of wine. Called Barefoot. This is not sponsored by the way. This is just me talking about my fucking wine. Barefoot. It's a Californian fucking wine. And it doesn't even have a cork. It's got a screw top. Which is usually a terribleian fucking wine and it doesn't even have a cork it's got a screw top which is usually a terrible sign for wine

but I love it and they've got about 5 or 6 different types of red wine Syraz and fucking Cabernet and what else Merlot and Malbec, I'm drinking the

Cabernet Sauvignon at the moment which I a buddy of mine was uh was bartending in Limerick in Nancy Blake's and he heard someone once ask for a glass of cement block wine because he thought it was called Sauvignon Blanc but uh yeah and i hate myself for liking barefoot because it's the mcdonald's of american sweet wine but that's it it's lovely and sweet i wish i had a more educated palate i don't and you know what i keep it in the fridge cold red wine like they do in spain before i move on to the topic um and the subject of I don't know going to the gym and self conditioning and things like that for lads a lot of people Rob was asking me do you take any supplements and I what do I take just a bit of protein I take take protein shakes. For before I go to the gym.

Because it's easier than eating a lot of chicken breasts. And I take a tiny bit of creatine. But there's one supplement. That I recommend to everybody. And to all my friends. And again. This is not advertising. I do not make money from this. I have no stake whatsoever in this supplement.

I merely want to tell you. it's actually pretty class, again it's one for the lads, after about 25 right, your testosterone starts to level off a bit, it starts to level off and decline, It starts to level off and decline. And it's communicated to your body usually by kind of a lack of energy. But there's a supplement called ZMA. And I take this. And what I've been doing is all of my buddies. I've been saying to all the lads. Go off and buy yourself a bottle of ZMA tablets. And all it is, it's it's the closest

thing to legal steroids you can get it's zinc magnesium vitamin b6 zma and i said to the boys take that come back to me in two weeks and tell me what you think of it every fucking single one of them coming back going holy fuck that shit's amazing and what it does is after 25 your testosterone levels off zma basically it's like eating a lot of oysters i think they get it from oyster shells but it it stops your testosterone level leveling off it keeps it at a healthy level so you end up with very decent sleep increased kind of focus and energy and most definitely sexual

greater sexual energy you'd be wanking like you're fucking 14 back to 3 times a day and morning horns so ZMA is a fabulous fabulous supplement to take, and I can't recommend it enough for those that were asking.

I don't know what happens if you take it if you're a woman. I don't know. Sure, it can't be any harm, zinc and magnesium. Everyone needs that, don't they? But for lads, it is specific. Not a testosterone booster. It just keeps the testosterone production healthy, and a load of other shit as well

your metabolism all that stuff so I've got a hot take that's been brewing inside in my head for the past week and it's it's a bizarre connection

between we'll say the tradition in hip hop music of beefs you you know, hip-hop beef. It's a big thing now in particular with the younger hip-hop artists, the SoundCloud rappers on Instagram and stuff, calling out, you know, making diss tracks and calling out other rappers,

you know, if they say something insulting in a track, you know if they say something insulting in a track and it going from you know insulting each other on a rap you know two rappers to it becoming an instagram or a twitter feud and then eventually spilling out onto the streets and people actually getting shot You know we saw this with famously Tupac. 22 years ago. Where Tupac fucking. The East West Coast feud in hip hop. Ended up with Tupac and Biggie Smalls getting shot. But even. Jeez in the past month.

Past two months. There's this silly rapper called Tekashi69. And he was feuding with a Chicago rapper called, Chief Keef, and, Chief Keef had shots fired at him when he was in fucking New York, and they reckon Takashi69, started it,

but, I've got a hot take, about, the great emancipator, Daniel O'Connell, and rap beefs getting violent. And the genesis of this hot take actually happened because about two weeks ago, I was at the Docky Book Festival, you know, which was great crack. I was up there doing readings of my book and I was doing a talk with a scholar. He's a lecturer. He's an expert in James Joyce and Flann O'Brien called Declan Kilbird. And he's an absolute gentleman.

And I was doing, he was interviewing me about my book up in the Docky Book Fest so once that finished anyway there was a free bar so I started lashing into the pints and there was all sorts of heads there you know what I mean writers and journalists and all that crack and actually the last person I recommended ZMata was the economist David McWilliams who runs the festival but aside from that I bumped into Ryan Tuberty and had a very quick chat with him about

Daniel O'Connell the great emancipator and something Tuberty said to me put this hot take into my head now dog shit in the letter box for anyone who accuses me of name dropping Tuberty listens to this podcast, so I have to just give him credit where it's due

because he put this fact into my head. So first off, who was Daniel O'Connell? Because for my listeners in the UK and America, but also for just fucking Irish people who, you know, because like Daniel O'Connell has taught to us in school, you kind of forget that shit. Even though, you know, the main street in Dublin is O'Connell Street with a massive statue of Daniel O'Connell. But Daniel O'Connell was a very, very important Irish patriot. He was known as the great emancipator.

And Daniel O'Connell, he was knocking around in the 1800s, okay? And life for Catholic Irish people in the 1800s was not good. There was the Irish famine, but part of that system of oppression with British colonization of Ireland, there was a thing called the penal laws which had been brought in in the 1600s. And the penal laws were an explicit legal system of oppression to eradicate native Irish people. And when I say native Irish people, Irish Catholics, okay? Now, religion was very, very fucking important at that time. I mean, the Enlightenment was the 1700s.

The Enlightenment hadn't really reached Ireland. Your religion was all you had. So not many people were willing to change over to fucking Protestantism or to become British like that. So these laws were brought in from the 1600s to decimate and destroy Catholic Irish people, native Irish people Catholics weren't allowed to become MPs, judges solicitors, they weren't allowed to vote Catholics were not allowed to own land they couldn't lease land

they weren't allowed to own weapons if a landowner died he couldn't pass on that land to his fucking eldest son they couldn't be an orphan's guardian catholics were barred from living in towns and cities so they were forced to be purely rural where they couldn't actually own fucking land um and basically like practicing catholicism was

more or less fucking outlawed. Actually, I only learned recently, I think I told you before, but my great-great-great-grandfather was the first ever Catholic to successfully sue a Protestant over their land rights at the height of the penal laws, which is pretty class. The penal laws went on to inspire, we'll say, the Jim Crow laws in the South, in the American South after the Civil War, which were very similar laws against black people.

After slaves, the abolitionism of slavery, the American South introduced the Jim Crow laws to keep black people down in a similar fashion no land ownership no education nothing like that you know that continued into the 1960s but the irish peeling laws this was a system of oppression designed to eradicate the Irish and for them to be replaced with British, Protestant, English people in our own country. And it culminates with the Irish famine. Do you know? The degree of poverty and lack of opportunity and lack of education. Catholics weren't allowed to be educated either, that results in something that's,

because the famine, and we covered this on a podcast before, with Finn from Irish History, but something about the famine, it bangs of irrationality, you know, if you're a British person, you kind of say, why would you not,

why did the lack of potatoes kill you, would you not get something else, it's like, no, the penal laws had crushed Irish people to the point that there was no other fucking options at all so Daniel O'Connell in the 1800's

came out near the kind of the end of the most extreme penal laws he worked his whole life to emancipate Irish Catholics to give us basic human fucking rights under the British crown. And he was a huge,

had huge solidarity with slaves, African slaves in America at the time. He brought the abolitionist Frederick Douglass on a speaking tour of Ireland. So O'Connell was a fucking legend okay and that's why O'Connell Street is named after him a fucking legend and a pacifist you know O'Connell gave a speech at the hill of Tara where half a million people turned up at the height of the famine you know and the government tried the British government tried to shut him down because

they were afraid of such a powerful voice causing a revolution. But O'Connell was a pacifist. But there's something, if you look at any painting of Daniel O'Connell, and there's conspiracy theories about it, right? Daniel O'Connell always has his hand in his fucking, his hands in his jacket. He always hides one hand. So some people look at that and say, oh, he was a Freemason. Well, he was a Freemason, but like some people say, oh, he's in the Illuminati, he's hiding his hand. That was not the reason.

When you look at any representation, visual representation of Daniel O'Connell from when he was alive, you never see both his hands. One of the hands is hidden inside the jacket. The only time you do see both his hands is on the fucking, the statue that was created after his death. But in his hand, he's holding something. And I think what he's holding is his glove right and this is where things get hot takey and interesting so O'Connell's main kind of ideological enemy was the Protestant

descendancy right and the Protestant descendancy were the group of privileged descendants of English colonisers in Ireland, Protestants, who maintained power in Ireland through political and oppressive structures and who forced this power through legislation. So a lot of O'Connell's fucking chat was basically trying to take this ascendancy down and pointing out how wrong it is so O'Connell gave a speech in 1815 and he was criticizing the Dublin Corporation which he considered to be a tool of the Protestant ascendancy which it absolutely would have been at the time. But he referred to Dublin Corporation. As beggarly. Right.

And there was a lad. John De Stere. D-E-S-T-E-R-R-E. Kind of a fucking. Typical. English. French name. Do you know what I mean.

Pure posh. Cunt. He took great exception. typical English French name do you know what I mean? Pure posh cunt he took great exception to Daniel O'Connell giving this speech and referring specifically to Dublin Corporation as beggarly because the stair was going through bankruptcy at the time so he

interpreted O'Connell's speech as a personal fucking attack so the stair sends out a letter to O'Connell, right? And like an open letter going withdraw that particular statement right? Where you called the ascendancy in Dublin Corporation beggarly, withdraw that statement.

So O'Connell said nothing. Like fuck you. Right? So then John the Stair was furious about this. So he takes to the streets of Dublin with a bull whip you know like a horse whip and starts walking around Sackville Street

at the time, now O'Connell Street starts walking around the place cracking the bull whip on the ground, roaring and shouting going I'm gonna fucking kick Daniel O'Connell's head in he's a prick I challenge fucking Daniel O'Connell I challenge him to fucking kick Daniel O'Connell's head in. He's a prick. I challenge fucking Daniel O'Connell. I challenge him to a duel.

Which was normal at the time. In the 1800s. Especially like. Kind of in the legal profession. It's like law is class. But there's certain things that law doesn't work for. So you have to get out a gun. And shoot a man.

So the stare challenges. o'connell to a jewel pure fucking rap beef shit you know i want to shoot the cunt now the stair used to be a royal marine and not only was he a royal marine he was considered a crack shot but the stair made a bit of a mistake and it's a mistake that you'll see rappers making today when they're having beefs a mistake and it's a mistake that you'll see rappers making today when they're having beefs don't declare a beef on the other rapper's territory like if you're a rapper from chicago and you're beefing with a rapper from florida don't go down to florida and start talking shit because the people on the streets will turn against you and that's what happened with the stair he starts walking around dublin city around and all the fucking catholics are like fuck you just there hold on a

minute now you're a crack shot in the marines you're clearly gonna beat daniel o'connell in a duel you're calling him out you're a coward dublin city corporation is beggarly the protestant descendancy are a show of cunts fuck. The stare then with his bullwhip. Had to fight back the crowd. And ran into someone's house. To take refuge. Because the crowd had turned against him. So at this stage then.

The people were like. O'Connell. Daniel. You now have to. He's after calling you out. You have to show face. You have to respond. He's after calling you out.

For the duel. You have to duel with this you have to respond, he's after calling you out for the duel, you have to duel with this man, so a few, like a week or so passed, and like, everyone was talking about it, you know, everyone, like, this wasn't gonna disappear, and O'Connell had to show face, so a letter was sent, an official letter was sent by the stair to O'Connell saying, look, we're fucking having a duel, man. We're fighting. So it was agreed upon that they were to duel on an estate in Kildare, belonging to Lord Ponsonby. Is there ever a more British colonial name? On Lord Ponsonby. Is there ever a more British colonial name

on Lord Ponsonby's land in Kildare? And I often wonder, is this, I speak about a film before, a Stanley Kubrick film called Barry Lyndon. I think I spoke about that in a podcast, but there's a jewel in it and I wonder, is it directly

inspired by Daniel O'Connell's jewel, which would have happened around a similar area but anyway the duel was set to happen in Kildare on a big fancy fucking estate O'Connell was like fuck it I'm going to have to go through with it even though he's a pacifist

so anyway a small crowd gathers for the duel and O'Connell is given the opportunity to apologize. Because everyone is going like O'Connell is dead. Do you know this guy is a former soldier. A Royal Marine. O'Connell is dead.

O'Connell doesn't apologize. So the Stair is given the first shot. And there's only one shot each as well. That's it. Simple as that. One shot. And there's only one shot each as well. That's it. Simple as that. One shot. There's no second shots. So.

The stare. Takes his shot. And misses badly. And. Some wonder. Like. Did he do it deliberately? Did he show a bit of compassion in that moment?

Was he kind of showing face? Did he deliberately miss O'Connell? In the hope that O'Connell. Would respond and miss too and then it's sorted because the stair is not a man who's going to be missing with a fucking gun he's a royal marine but anyway the stair misses o'connell is given his fucking chance shoots it bam straight into fucking the stairs into his stomach and out his back shatters his spine the stair is carried away

manages to live for about a day or two and then fucking dies stone dead and it broke Daniel O'Connell's heart and as he made the trip from Kildare back to Dublin City, there was like riots of support.

The people of Dublin were setting shit on fire. Do you know what I mean? Everyone was like, fucking hell, because this was a symbolic victory. Do you know what? The Catholics had no rights. This is a couple of years before the height of the famine. Like, this was a symbolic fucking victory. Daniel O'Connell's after shooting this Protestant descendancy prick but it broke O'Connell's heart and he immediately like he set up uh

I think it was like a fund for the stairs daughter you know and he did a lot of legal work for the stairs widow he was very guilty but here's the thing O'Connell's way of expressing the shame of having murdered somebody was he had this black glove he had a black glove that he would wear on his hand and refused to look at his actual hand and this is why when you look at portraits of daniel o'connell he's hiding his hand it has nothing to do with freemasonry or anything like that he considered this hand this this instrument of death to be a shameful thing and he hid it from sight and if you look at the daniel oConnell monument on O'Connell Street, which is a fucking gorgeous statue, mainly used now for pigeon shitting on it, but I think in his hand what he's holding is his black glove of shame,

and O'Connell, he successfully emancipated Catholics, he made it so that Catholics could become members of parliament, and represent themselves in British government. And it was a massive step towards Ireland's independence. And not just for fucking Irish Catholics. You know, Jews, British Jews weren't allowed fucking represent, become members of Parliament either. But because O'Connell did it for the Catholics, thes were allowed to become members of parliament too because you can't make one rule for one group and not for another and his work was hugely inspirational for the abolitionist movement in america you know he's palling around with frederick douglas but that's my hot take that's my hot take on daniel

o'connell and why you will not see his hand in a portrait. And why he was involved in. A rap beef. Which ended up. With the other rapper dead. So it's time now I think for the Ocarina Pause. Every week. I do a little digital Angelus.

And the reason I do this is that, the app that this podcast is put out on, Acast, they insert digital adverts, which you may or may not hear, so what I do is I do a little, I play a Spanish clay whistle called an ocarina, a very little peaceful pause,

and if you're lucky you'll hear the ocarina, and if you're unlucky you will hear a digital advert. For some shit that I have no control over. Although I have been told. That in Britain. The British Army have been trying to recruit people. Through advertising on this podcast. So I told Acast.

Get the fucking British Army off my podcast. So I don't think the British Army have been infiltrating this podcast in a while if they have let me know because I explicitly said I do not want the fucking British Army recruiting my listeners fuck them okay here's the ocarina 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 Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first O-Men. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying.

Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that?

The first O-Men. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as

we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com That was, uh... That ocarina pause was like, um... An oral representation of the... The last heartbeats of John the Stare. After Daniel O'Connell drove a bullet through his spine. This podcast is supported by you the listener very occasionally i have sponsorship but sponsors aren't too fond of me because of my liberal use of the word cunt and subject matter but fuck them don't really need them because Because you lovely charming people.

Contribute to the Patreon account. And what it is. Is basically. I do five hours of podcasts. A month. I love it. I love doing it. I wouldn't change it for the world.

Ye enjoy it. And I don't know. It's like digital busking. If you were walking along the road, and I was standing on a fucking on the corner, orating about Daniel O'Connell and his black gov, and you enjoyed that chat, would you throw a fiver into my hat, and would you do it every month, you know, so I could buy a cup of coffee, or a pint, or pay my lighting and heating bills, or whatever the fuck but uh that's what it is if you would like to contribute to this podcast if you enjoy it if you like what i'm doing

and you want to become part of the community that supports it financially go to patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast and give me the price of a pint once a month and if you don't want to do that if you want to listen for free that's fine you can do that as well it's a fair system based on soundness no one's forced into anything everyone gets the same content and it's to be for myself it's almost like a little social experiment as well it's it's appealing to people's kindness and natural reciprocative nature do you know so please consider that it makes a huge difference to my fucking life i bought an otter fountain recently like do you know that was the first thing i bought with the patreon money it's a a fountain with otters on it and water comes out

of it i've got led lights on it and it brings immense joy into my life so thank you for that also what you can do is recommend the podcast to a friend especially if you live outside of Ireland put it on your twitter your fucking facebook your snapchat whatever the fuck and if you're using the iTunes

app on your iPhone give it a review leave you know give it five stars in the review all that type of shit everything like that helps and it keeps this going so thank you so much you kind kind people okay I'm going to read out some of your

bastarding questions and answer them we haven't done reading out Donald Trump's tweets as your drunk limerick aunt in quite a while, I think I'll do that next week I don't know, has he been tweeting anything saucy recently getting a bit sick

of his shit feel like the world is with Brexit and Trump it's like do you know when you reboot your computer and you're just in that waiting period like, do you know when you reboot your computer, do you know, and you're just in that waiting period. Or no, when you're, you know what it is, if you have a fucking Windows PC like I do,

and it automatically updates, and you're just waiting, looking at a progress bar, waiting for it to go back to normal. That's what the next four years are with Trump and Brexit. It's likexit it's like it's madness you're looking at a progress bar and you're waiting for it to go back to normal go back to the usual neoliberal cunts that run things who have the decency to hide how much of a prick they are as as opposed to Trump, who just puts it out there. David asks,

What are your thoughts on the possible legalisation of cannabis in Ireland? I found CBD oil a godsend for anxiety, depression and pain. As an add-on to the cannabis debate, what do you think of psychedelics being legalised? I'm all for full decriminalisation and legalisation. Regarding cannabis in particular, I've spoken about this before. Cannabis currently, as it stands in Ireland,

is unethical and unsafe because it is illegal. Alright? How is it unethical and unsafe because of league because it is illegal all right how is it unethical well first off the main suppliers of cannabis in this country are triad chinese triad gangs who grow cannabis in massive grow operations they smuggle chinese people into the country chinese people who are trying to leave china and just want work in ireland they're illegally smuggled in by triad gangs they tell the poor people that are coming here who are being brought in and shipping containers that are going to get a job in a takeaway or a job as a cleaner they arrive on irish soil they're forced to work in cannabis grow

houses under terrible conditions for months at a time not allowed to leave okay to repay the debt to the gangs under threat of violence that are families back in china to repay the debt to those gangs they have to work in these grow houses when When the grow houses are raided, these poor workers who are forced into this are the ones arrested and sent away for 14 years in jail. It is a horrible, horrible system in Ireland because weed is illegal. It's an unethical drug on that basis. I say to anyone who's smoking it,

if you have to get fucking weed, make sure you get it from somebody you know who's growing it. Don't support that horrible fucking illegal system. The other thing that makes weed dangerous in Ireland is that cannabis psychosis is a thing, alright? And anyone who says it isn't is spoofing. We all, if you're from, look, we all know people who smoked too much fucking weed and went nuts and developed...

I shouldn't say nuts, actually. That's not fair. That's silly language. We know people who smoked a lot of weed and developed mental illness. and developed mental illness, okay? I know about six people, at least, in Limerick, who developed mental illness and cannabis triggered it, right? One of the reasons that that is the case is because the cannabis that's available in Ireland is, it's got incredibly high THC and very low CBD.

Excessive amounts of THC, and they've proven this in trials, is not good for mental health. It's especially not good for people who are prone to mental illness. It can trigger mental illness. CBD has a protective quality. It protects the brain from the negative effects of pure THC. Actual decent cannabis has got a balanced amount of CBD and THC. It is safe. Illegal skunk weed that's grown in these grow houses is unsafe. It's not, I wouldn't recommend smoking a hell of a lot of it. But we don't have access to healthy legal cannabis with a balanced amount of CBD and THC

because it is illegal so we need to have full legalization for medical and recreational use of cannabis in Ireland so that like in California or Colorado or Amsterdam you can walk into a shop like a cheese counter and you can pick exactly the cannabis you want exactly the effects you want all of this and know that it's safe if this was alcohol and it was illegal we'd all be drinking poutine made in someone's shed and people will be dying every weekend because there'll be antifreeze in it so 100 legalized cannabis regarding drugs in general i like the portuguese model where all drugs are completely decriminalized people who use drugs are not sent to jail they're offered

treatment and the figures show it portugal had a massive heroin and hiv problem this has been decimated over the years since they massively liberated their drugs laws so that's my hot take on that cbd is is legal in ireland you can buy cbd tea you can buy cbd fucking oil and it's quite pricey but a lot of people are swearing by it especially friends of mine with problems with sleep you know they were taking sleeping pills a lot of problems were associated with that then they started doing cbd oil and it gave a lot of improvement to their quality of life people with pain as well what is illegal is THC um now I'm going to tell you a story and I want to tell you this story in the most responsible fashion possible I am not for one

fucking second advocating this what I'm doing is i'm communicating to you as autonomous adults who are capable of making their own minds up and i don't believe in censoring protecting adults from ideas but i want to tell you a story about a friend of mine who i know a long time and who was an upstanding honest person who has no reason to be spoofing or lying to me whatsoever so this buddy of mine he's in his 50s was diagnosed with prostate cancer about four or five years ago and thc has cancer fighting properties okay so this buddy of mine gets his prostate cancer goes to the doctors and with cancer there's a thing called i think it's psi levels in your blood it's the level of cancer in the blood so they said to him we want to remove the tumor from your prostate but in order for us to operate

safely you need to reduce the psi levels in body. So they do this through radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which are not the greatest treatments in the world. Very traumatic and damaging and harmful to people who undergo them, but it's kind of like, it might get rid of your cancer, so do it. But chemo is no crack. So this buddy of mine had been online reading about THC. And he figures, fuck it, I'll take the risk. I'm going to be waiting around for chemo anyway in about a month or two.

I'll try this. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't really affect anything because I'm doing the chemo anyway. So he gets on to a buddy. And the buddy sorts him out with about two grams of weed and he then has the weed the buddy knew how to make it into this tincture a very very potent cannabis oil with high thc so my buddy goes online looking for directions he puts a drop of this stuff under his tongue twice a day now he told me it was not pleasant it was very very high thc concentrated oil you know two grand's worth of weed in a bottle and he was basically tripping every day it wasn't

pleasant but he goes back to the doctors after about a month and his PSI levels are down massively. And the doctors are like, what the fuck do you have to do? He's like, well, to be honest, doctor, I had this THC tincture made by a buddy and it did reduce the cancer levels in his body. They operated on him, removed the tumor, and now he's fully cancer free. He didn't need to do radiotherapy or chemo. He's self-medicated with thc cannabis he could be talking out of his arse but i know this person well he's not the type of person to say that i believe him 100 i am not fucking advocating that

you do this whatsoever i am not advocating that anybody um should irresponsibly self-medicate with something as serious as fucking cancer i'm just saying this is what a buddy did and isn't it a shame that we don't live in a country whereby the doctor is the one going have a go at this instead of chemo here Here's an option. This doesn't exist. It should exist. That's why I'm telling you that story. But please take that information responsibly.

You can't. Nick wants to know, do you practice the law of attraction or have you ever looked into it? I think, Nick, what you're referring to there is it's known as the secret. Conor McGregor spoke about it it's this kind of it's this weird idea this philosophy online that if you kind of behave positively and surround yourself with positive things and positive people and ask for positivity and ask the universe for positivity positive things will happen to you i I think, right, first off, I'm calling bullshit on it, right,

because it borders on the supernatural. What I will say is, will say something for me, I, as I speak a lot about cognitive behavioral therapy, I used cognitive behavioral therapy, which it's not positive thinking it's rational thinking for myself uh to improve my mental health over many years and from that came like my current fucking career if i didn't have those mental health tools available to me um and i didn't take them on board and do them i don't know what i'd be here

right now i don't know what i'd be here right now I don't know what I'd be alive and secondly I certainly don't think I'd be essentially realizing my dreams and goals by being an artist who's able to earn a living from it what for me it's not the law of attraction but I found that by being rational in my thought processes and eradicating irrational negativity, that I eradicated in myself what's known as a self-fulfilling prophecy behavior. We can unconsciously fuck things up for ourselves

when our self-esteem is low or if our thought processes are irrationally negative a person who suffers from in ill mental health such as myself at the time my internal monologue was consistently i cannot do this I am not good enough, I will never be good enough, there's no point in trying, people don't like me, I don't like myself, why would anybody like me, I'm a piece of shit, this was the internal chatter of my mind and I use CBT to challenge all of those negative internal dialogue and to challenge it with something more rational where is the evidence that I cannot do this what if I try assessing my opinions and rules around failure making failure something that I'm not afraid of but something

that I recognize is failure is an inevitable part of any process towards success. So because of this changing and reframing of my inner monologues and my values and my kind of attitudes toward life, positive shit starts happening. positive shit starts happening, because, the previous negative barriers, and self-fulfilling prophecies of negativity, are no longer a part of my life, so shit starts working out,

but it's because of, I'm working a lot more efficiently, do you know, I was offered a fucking book deal, a year and a half ago, if I'd have been given that book deal 10 years ago or 12, 13 years ago, my mind would have said, you are not good enough. Turn it down.

You will never be able to do this. Give up. And I would have listened to those voices and not do it. But having reappraised my rules and values and internal monologues, I go, do you know what? I recognize that I might not be able to do this, but I'm going to try anyway and I'm going to give it my best. And I'm going to risk failing because what's the worst that can happen if I fail? worst that can happen if I fail and I understand that there is nothing more detrimental to my self-esteem and my mental health than giving up on something because I was scared it is always of benefit right it to confront your anxiety and to use the cliche feel the fear and do it anyway

for shit that's not like physically threatening I don't mean feel the fear and do it anyway for shit that's not like physically threatening i don't mean feel the fear and do it anyway when it comes to fucking your friends daring you to jump off the roof at the side of the house into a swimming pool that could be silly but when the fear is something as i'm not going to take this job because i don't think i'm good enough if you make that decision to go i don't think i'm good enough so i'm not gonna do it that reduces your self-esteem it has a very negative impact on your self-worth and your mental health you're better off going i'm going to try anyway and i'm gonna risk failing because even from that failure i'll grow as a person and what's the worst thing about failing anyway I I have any success I've ever had is as a result of several fucking failures and my book is is fuck how much it's selling my book is a piece of work that I'm genuinely thrilled with and I'm very happy with it

and so that for that that's kind of the law of attraction there but it's it's not supernatural i didn't ask the universe i challenged irrational negative opinions about myself about other people and about the world and through challenging all of them with rationality i success happens to me but loads of failures do as well but my attitude towards failure is very healthy and rational but don't be looking at the fucking secrets don't mind that shit there's better stuff out there that's based in evidence fuck the secret that's up there with horoscopes you know and i don't want to be pissing off people who like horoscopes but horoscopes aren't great for fucking mental health especially if anxiety is your thing okay one of the keys in cognitive psychotherapy and cognitive psychology to

overcoming anxiety is to truly understand and accept that i have no control over what happens to me in life because we don't and suffering is inevitable so I have no control over what happens to me in life but what I do have control over at all times is my attitude towards what happens okay that is crucial for overcoming anxiety that's very very empowering i cannot control what happens i do know do not know what's going to happen tomorrow i do not know what's going to happen later on today it's outside of my control but whatever does happen i have control over how i react to it am i going to cave in or am i going to cope okay the problem with horoscopes and astrology is you can't have that attitude because it's the belief that my star sign I am a Scorpio or a

Virgo or whatever and this predetermines how I'm going to behave or what is going to happen next week you can't say that to a person who's suffering from anxiety because then you have no control do you get me it's like it's predetermined it's like no no no life is utter fucking chaos you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or the day after something you could win the lottery or you get hit by a bus and it is completely outside of your control it's not predetermined you can always control how you react to it and that's why i'm not a fan of fucking horoscopes which is a it's a weird one to say because I see recently, I don't know why, but a lot of, we'd say, liberal, left-leaning people online are embracing,

particularly women, are embracing horoscopes as a form of liberation. And liberation, yes, I've kind of a liberation. liberation and liberation and yes I've kind of a liberation I think the reason why is that horoscopes are seen as a frivolous female thing in the same way that witchcraft is being embraced and it's fine if it's being

embraced ironically and I can see the reason why somebody who's a feminist would say I'm into horoscopes because lads think this is a stupid woman thing so fuck you if that's the case and you take an interest interest in it then grand that's liberating but if you suffer from anxiety and you think that the star signs can control what's going to happen next week and that it's predetermined that is going to exacerbate your anxiety and if you go to remember like a buddy of mine had terrible fucking anxiety and he was

going to a palm reader in thomengate in limerick and it was really fucking it was fucking his shit up you know he was really worrying about stuff and he was spending a five or a week going to this palm reader and i said to him do you are you telling me that there is a woman in tholmengate and she knows what's going to happen to you next week and when i said that to him he immediately said fuck it that's ridiculous yeah this is feeding my anxiety so i would say be careful around fucking horoscopes and anything that dwells on the supernatural because you can't take personal responsibility, you can't take existential responsibility. The universe is chaos. Life contains inevitable suffering. You cannot control that. You can control how you react to it and when you fully realize

that in your heart and soul the liberation and freedom and autonomy you get from that it's fucking it makes you invincible do you know what i mean and that's one it's one of the fucking uh the core kind of totems of my mental health. It's that understanding. Alright, God bless. It's 73 minutes. I gotta go to bed. Look after yourself.

Have a bit of self-compassion for the rest of the week. And through that self-compassion, you will hopefully have compassion for other people around you. And you'll be that little bit more sound. God bless. for other people around you and you'll be that little bit more sound god bless Thank you. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket

to Rock City at torontorock.com.