The Blindboy Podcast - Swingers Saunas and American cows eating Skittles

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

A relaxing hot take about Swingers Saunas and American Cows who are force-fed Skittles. Also some mental health chats about anxiety and anger Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dog bless you hesitant Kevins. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Let's start off this week's episode with a piece of short prose that was sent to me by Sting. This prose is called My Ten Ton Horizontal Cousin. My ten ton horizontal cousin was unfairly dismissed from River Island. They said they needed cutbacks, that the pandemic had impacted demand. People are buying their clothes online, or on apps on their phones.

Fast fashion they call it, and it is killing retail. My cousin is 60 feet long, from every angle, and fully horizontal. He is two inches thick, with a heart of gold, a type of human tarpaulin, stretched skin and teeth,

ten tons of kindness. And every morning he would fold himself in the door of River Island, and every evening he'd fold himself out, the greedy, high-street bastards. What about his long children and their big stretchy mouths River Island only care about profits

that was my 10 ton horizontal cousin by Sting thank you Sting for that piece of prose why am I thinking about River Island I'm thinking about retail shops in general as I've done a little bit of travelling since lockdown ended River Island. I'm thinking about retail shops in general. As I've done a little bit of travelling since lockdown ended.

I was in Spain and I'm all around Ireland. And I remember retail shops used to they used to feel glamorous or something. And now they're all just moving online. Like there's this street in Limerick called Cruises Street which could

only be called a failed street and all the retail shops are closed but the facades are still there and instead of saying we've shut down or we've moved to a different location it just says we've moved online. Like over in Oxford Street in London now at the moment which used to have loads of retail shops, like flagship retail shops. They've all disappeared. They've moved online and they've replaced them with American candy shops, like Oxford Street in London that used to have a huge big HMV and a Top Shop and a H&M, the whole shebang, they're all now American candy shops.

But completely empty American candy shops. And there's not that much demand for American candy. So you have Oxford Street in London, which is one of the most expensive streets in the world.

And like the former HMV flagship store is now a giant American candy shop and there's no prices on any of the candy and all these conspiracy theories are emerging online about the American candy shops of Oxford Street people think that it's a giant money launderer in operation because none of the candy has any prices on it. And when journalists try to find out who owns the shop,

the owner and the company like changes every month. So the theory is that giant international crime gangs are opening these giant American candy shops where no one's inside it. You can't trace any of the goods. There's no prices. And the reason they're choosing American candy shops

is because American candy is so artificial and so full of shit that it has a shelf life of like 9 years so they never have to replace any of the stock

one theory is that a lot of these shops are owned by Afghani business people. And that aid that was given to the Afghani government when the US was occupying Afghanistan. That a lot of money was given to Afghanistan to the government that was supposed to go to the people. was given to Afghanistan to the government that was supposed to go to the people. And now this money is being laundered and funneled into people's pockets via these American candy shops. And somehow, like the FBI or the CIA are involved and complicit in it,

and they're giving them access to all this American candy. It's like the Yanks are making all this candy that they can't sell, so they're giving it to these businesses in exchange for them to launder money. Because the Yanks are weird with candy. Like in 2017 in Wisconsin, these people were driving along a motorway early in the morning, and then all the cars started swerving. And going off the road. And there was nearly a crash. And when the people got out of the cars, they realised that what their cars were swerving on

were millions and millions of skittles. So all over the motorway was just skittles. As far as the eye could see. And it was causing a hazard. And a big convoy of skittles had exploded on the road and the contents spread everywhere. But then when they went to investigate

why was there a big skittle spillage? What's going on? What's all these skittles doing? They were secretly delivering skittles to farmers so they could feed them to cows and they went to Mars who makes delivering skittles to farmers so they could feed them to cows and they went to Mars who makes the skittles to ask him what the fuck's going on here why are you giving skittles to cows

and Mars were like oh we're investigating it we don't know and then they looked at the skittles and they were regular skittles but they didn't have the S on them they were S-less skittles but it turns out yes cows in were S-less Skittles. But it turns out, yes, cows in America

are fed fucking Skittles. Because they don't have like the strict food standards that we have here in Europe. In America you can do what you want. They bleach their chickens and they feed Skittles to cows. And then when you're thinking,

why are cows in America eating Skittles? Can they not give them grass? And it turns out that Skittles are cheaper to feed cows in America than corn because they're making too many Skittles and this is another weird thing with America so in order to keep all the

skittles factories open they're making too much just to keep employment up and then they're giving the excess skittles to fucking cows and the cows are eating them and it's the same economic structure that has all the police

forces in America with like tanks and guns. Like you notice over the past 10 years it's like. Fuck me what are the police in America doing with tanks. And armoured personnel carriers. Why did the American police look like the military now. And it's because they're making too many tanks.

America didn't have enough wars, but they kept making the tanks in order to keep employment up. So they just give them to the police for nothing. Which is that weird form of American hyper-capitalism where it's not really capitalism, it's socialism for corporations. Like the fucking arms manufacturers in America are

wanking themselves off now with Ukraine. Like with Biden giving all those missiles and guns and everything to Ukraine. And it looks like Biden is helping the people of Ukraine. But ultimately it's American tax money going directly to the arms companies who now get to make

shit tons of javelin missiles to give to Ukraine and then you start to think oh fuck do they want to end the war at all? I mean if these arms companies are so powerful with lobbying and the government

why would they possibly want a resolution to Ukraine they're making loads of money but back to the American cows so Mars are making too many skittles, more skittles than humans can eat

so they're giving the excess skittles to the cows the cows are eating skittles and as a result of this the milk and meat that the cows are eating skittles and as a result of this the milk and meat that the cows are producing is shit like I don't know if you've ever eaten American butter but American butter is terrible it's pale and flavourless

and the average American can tell this and ironically Ireland is benefiting from American cows eating skittles because if you've been in America in the past 10 years, you go to a restaurant or you go into a supermarket,

one of the most heavily fetishised products in America is Kerrygold butter from Ireland. Like Kerrygold in America is Kerrygold butter from Ireland. Like Kerrygold in America is incredibly fancy and expensive. It's like champagne or good quality extra virgin olive oil from the south of Spain. Kerrygold is fetishised. Now we take Kerrygold for granted. We take Irish butter for granted. Like Kerrygold is delicious, but even any Irish store-bought butter, if it's made in Ireland, is unbelievable quality, but we're used to it. In America, they can't believe it. Kerrygold is marketed as premium

Kerrygold is marketed as premium grass-fed butter. Now we'd never call our butter grass-fed because we just take it for granted. Our cows are in fields and they eat grass. Because the thing is with Ireland, we get so much rain that our grass grows really quickly. So our cows are incredibly well-fed on a diet of grass. So our cows are incredibly well fed on a diet of grass. And then this translates into high quality butter, which is fetishised as a luxury good in America. But the reason we get so much rain is because the climate of Ireland is, we're a temperate rainforest. Like that's the actual Irish climate, temperate rainforest.

But there's no forests because in Ireland all the forests are gone and it's just pasture land of unnatural grass for cows to eat on so this is why Kerrygold butter is a type of champagne but this is where it gets even more strange why doesn't that Ireland any forests? because the Brits cut them all down specifically Oliver Cromwell so when the Brits like properly colonised Ireland in the 1600s with Cromwell

it wasn't just ideologically driven it wasn't just we want to get rid of Catholics and replace them with Protestants it was also driven by a fuel crisis. Throughout the 1500s and 1600s, Britain was running out of timber. So they wanted to conquer Ireland,

because we were a fucking rainforest with lots of timber. So they did. Cromwell cut down all the forests for the wood, so that Britain could expand its navy and its ships and all this shit. So they cut down all the forests for the wood so that Britain could expand its navy and its ships and all this shit. So they cut down all the forests in Ireland, took the wood, replaced it with pasture land so that cows could go there. So that's why we have incredible butter, which is considered a type of champagne-like product in America.

But even stranger than that, in the 1600s, even though Britain had taken all of Ireland's timber and exhausted its own timber, a huge industry in Britain at the time that needed all this timber was the glass industry. Britain exported a lot of glass and in order to make glass, you have to burn something really hot to melt sand and make glass. So a lot of Britain's wood consumption in the 15s and 1600s was to make glass and export it around Europe. But as they started running out of wood, wood got more expensive and then their glass became too expensive. So the Brits started going fuck it we need a new type of fuel. So then they started burning coal. Now before that they'd preferred to burn timber than coal because it's easier to

chop down a tree than it is to dig a mine and extract coal from the ground. But they had no choice. They started burning coal to make their glass. But what they realised was coal could burn way hotter than wood. So the glass that the Brits started making out of coal was much better quality and stronger than any glass they'd made before. So British glass became very popular around Europe as like the best glass available at the time. But at the same time as that in France, there was this monk. He was a Benedictine monk called Dom Perignon. And Dom Perignon in his monastery was making champagne, sparkling wine.

Now sparkling wine was being made in France for ages. Back to the 5th century with the Romans. But the thing with sparkling wine is it's fizzy. And you know yourself if you have a pint, if you have anything with fizz in it, the fizz disappears very quickly. There was no way to hold the fizz in a bottle. It just, the fizz would always escape. So all of a sudden, Dom Perignon starts importing

this really strong English glass bottles because of the coal, because they'd ran out of wood. And then finally he figures out, I can keep champagne in a bottle now. I can make champagne and I can put a cork on it

and the fizz is not going to escape. You see, the bottles used to explode. With the weak glass that was made from wood, you tried to put champagne in it and it would just burst. But not with this new coal glass. It was strong enough to hold in the effervescence, the carbonation. And that's where modern, high quality champagne comes from. Brits clearing our forests, using all of our wood, then running out of that using coal,

making high quality glass bottles. But then leaving us with a rainforest that had no forest, just the rain and a load of pasture land. And now we're making the champagne of butter for Americans who are feeding their cows Skittles. But I have glass on the brain this week because I mentioned earlier that street in Limerick, Cruises Street, which is a failed street, a dead street,

where all the retail shops are disappearing and going virtual, going online and will probably soon be replaced by American candy shops. The next street up from Cruises Street because Cruises Street used to be like our main shopping street now there's no shopping. It's a rainforest without a forest. The next street up, Thomas Street

is now kind of exploding into a street full of restaurants and for a while it was really really beautiful we have this one street in Limerick with loads of restaurants and cafes and everybody's sitting outside because of the pandemic and it felt genuinely European and now they've fucking ruined it

with glass I've spoken about Limerick City Council before Limerick City Council is. Limerick City Council is, it's less like a council and more like a very cruel type of performance art committee. When Limerick City Council do anything, you know they're going to fuck it up. You know they're going to fuck it up. You just don't know how they're going to fuck it up. That's where the surprise is. How are they going to fuck things up you just don't know how they're gonna fuck it up that's where the surprise is how are they gonna fuck things up like last year they wanted everybody to get out onto the streets and start eating outdoors like the europeans do and you know because it was the

fucking lockdown or whatever but instead of putting tables and chairs outside for people to sit down on they just hung giant forks and spoons from the lampposts utterly ridiculous made no sense and then instead of getting lots of small tables and chairs for people to sit on they made one giant set of tables and chairs

that was 20 foot high as a piece of art to add insult to injury it was directly behind the fucking Terry Wogan statue. So we're all there in Limerick going great we can eat outdoors now where do we sit? You don't. You stand beside Terry Wogan and stare at a 20 foot high set of tables and chairs. That's not a joke. That's a real thing that happened. There was outrage. It made the national news. They removed the giant tables and chairs and the giant cutlery. They removed them overnight and pretended it never happened. But the people

of Limerick got outraged and they said, we want to be able to eat outdoors. Thomas Street has got lots of restaurants and lots of cafes. We want to sit outside like European people. We want to be like we're in fucking Milan and we want to sit outside and eat and drink on a bustling street. But Ireland isn't Milan. Ireland is a temperate rainforest where it rains 80% of the year. So how do you have an outdoor dining culture when it's raining all the time? So Limerick City Council said, don't worry about it. We are going to build outdoor tables and chairs with a roof over all the restaurants and cafes on Thomas Street.

We're going to spend millions doing it. We promise you you and it's gonna be ready for 2022 so we all said great but how are you going to fuck it up and they did fuck it up so the whole point of outdoor dining like if you go somewhere even like galway or cork the whole point of outdoor dining is formal the fearO, the fear of missing out. So if you walk down a bustling street and everyone is sitting down outside a cafe or a restaurant, eating, drinking and enjoying themselves, you simply want to be around that. You want to be around all that action and you want to look at all these people sitting down eating and you want to say I want to be doing what they're doing. That's what makes the great cities of Europe so wonderful.

Everyone is sitting outside enjoying food, enjoying life and you just want to be part of that. So Limerick City Council designed some outdoor seating for the entire street and whoever the fuck they got to design it has never eaten outdoors in their fucking life. So they went outside every restaurant, they put down tables, they put down chairs, they put down roofs and wrapped it all in completely opaque frosted glass that you can't see through

that's six foot high. So they've created outdoor seating that feels more inside than the interior of the restaurant that it's outside. So now when you walk down the street you can't tell if anybody is outside eating because you can't see anybody. They're hidden behind opaque grey glass. The type of glass they've used. It's not the type of glass you'd see in a restaurant. It's the type of glass that you'd see in a bank. So now when you sit down outside one of the restaurants in Thomas Street to eat, you feel claustrophobically entrapped inside the Bureau de Change. It feels like being in a fucking AIB bank from 2006.

It's this horrible frosted blue testicle grey colour. Eating a panini feels like getting a mortgage rejection. Dining is now a private financial experience. No one can see in, no one can see out. And the seating is so unsuccessful that the restaurants have now had to put their own outdoor seating outside the outdoor seating. And this by the way is on the same street where you have those weird statues of Terry Wogan, Richard Harris and Frederick Douglass. So as you can tell I've been walking around Limerick City the past few days. Last week I had COVID. I was quite sick last week with COVID. I nearly didn't do a podcast but luckily my COVID wasn't that bad. It left quite quickly. Now I'm absolutely perfect.

I feel great. However, I am very cautious. A number of people told me that even if you get mild COVID, you should be careful about returning to strenuous exercise because some people say that can bring on long COVID and I don't want that. So I haven't been running or going to the gym. Instead what I've been doing is gently, slowly walking around Limerick City.

And I'm not much of a walker, I usually run. But the walking's been nice because it's allowed me to look around me and stop and pause and contemplate about the streets. It's how I noticed how empty and decrepit Cruiser Street was. It's how I noticed how terrible Thomas Street is with the frosted testicle outdoor dining. But after I finished my panini I went walking some more and I went out towards South Circular Road which is like an older suburban area that's still kind of in Limerick City and it's a lovely walk and I was looking at all the beautiful red-bricked houses and really pausing

and admiring but as I'm walking up I see someone I know who's outside his front garden of his house that he'd rented and I stopped and I had a chat. I won't use their real name so instead I'm going to call them Ignatius Finucane and it was a nice sunny day and Ignatius was in his front garden and he was cutting down this beautiful bush, this gorgeous tall bush. It wasn't even a bush, they were like reeds, Like big, tall, fluffy bamboo that looked like white. The white tails of a beautiful Siamese cat. And I couldn't understand why Ignatius was cutting down such a beautiful bush. And not only was the bush beautiful, but his garden was very small. And I could see that this huge white bush of furry reeds was actually giving his living

room some fucking privacy. It was obscuring the window. So I was asking him, why are you taking down this bush? It's wonderful. And Ignatius said something to me that was very fucking interesting. So he'd been renting this house for about six or seven months. And he said that in the course of those six or seven months, three separate times, kind of older couples from the country, from out the country, had knocked on his door asking if him and his wife would like a drink.

Now, Ignatius doesn't have a fucking wife. He's living in that house with other lads. So he just said no no no you're grand. And he assumed the first time. That this older couple. That came to the door. Just thought they were knocking on the previous occupant's house. But then like two months later it happened again.

And then it happened a third time. With different couples. Now, not elderly, but we'll say people in their mid to late 50s. Separate couples knocking on the door, inquiring about Ignatius and his fucking wife. So the last time it happened was last week. So Ignatius asked the third couple that came in six months what's going on here why did you come here asking if me and my wife want a drink or asking about me and my wife I don't even have a fucking wife and then the couple told him oh because you had the

pampas frans in the front garden we thought you were up for a bit of fun and he's like what do you mean the pampas grass so this giant fucking bush that was in ignatius's garden this lovely white fluffy bush that's called pampas grass and apparently it means that if you grow this in your front garden you're a couple who wants to swing so ignatius unbeknownst to himself had a fucking plant in his front garden then all these older couples from out the country were operating on a type of suburban code that obviously doesn't exist anymore and they were calling the houses that had pampas grass in the front expecting to fuck someone's husband and wife so ignatius was taking the plant down when I met him. I was like, fuck off, you're spoofing.

And he's like, no, literally look it up on your phone. So I took out my phone and I typed in pampas grass and swingers. And yeah, it's true. In Ireland and the UK in the 70s and 80s, couples who used to swing with each other would plant big huge fronds of pampas grass in the front garden and this would attract other swinging couples. It would invite them in to knock on the door

and look for a fuck. So Ignatius had to take it down because he was freaked out by the whole thing. Unfortunately, he did take it down because immediately I had a better idea. Than him taking it down. Because another bizarre thing about Limerick. And I guess these older couples didn't know about it.

Because they're from out the country. And they're operating on a set of codes that were relevant in the 80s. Limerick actually has like Ireland's biggest swinger sauna but it's at the back of this fucking industrial estate. This grubby industrial estate beside the NCT centre and hidden away is this giant swinger sauna. Now I've never gone in there and I don't know anyone who's gone in there but I've looked at the photographs online. Actually that's not true. I know someone who tried to get in there.

The fella who the Rubber Bandits song Dad's Best Friend is based on. Tried to get a woman to pretend to be his wife so they could both go to the Swinger sauna out of sheer curiosity. You're not allowed in there on your own. You have to be a couple. That's the rule. Otherwise it's just a sex sauna. It's not a sex sauna, it's a swinger sauna. On the outside, it looks like somewhere you'd go to rent a generator. But on the inside, it's like a big fancy disco with a wine bar.

And swinging couples travel from all over Ireland and Europe to go and fuck each other in an industrial estate in Limerick. And what's even more bizarre is this particular industrial estate happens to have a high proportion of wandering horses. So some couple travels all the way over from fucking Italy to swing at two in the morning. And they must just think, is this the right fucking place? Because it's a sprawling, wet, dark industrial estate

with tens of untethered piebald horses eating dandelions out of the cracks in concrete. And there's a beautiful tragedy to it. eating dandelions out of the cracks in concrete. And there's a beautiful tragedy to it because the Limerick Swinger Sauna appears to be far more well run than fucking Limerick City Council. But the idea that I had for fucking Ignatius before he cut down the pampas grass

he should have left the pampas grass in his front garden and then attached a sign on it with directions to the Swinger's Sauna. And the people who run the Swinger's Sauna, if you're listening, ye should find every single house in Limerick with unwanted pampas grass and advertise your business on it. Pay the owner of the house.

If they have pampas grass there and they're not swinging, put a sign up there instead. Because there's all these older couples from fucking Kildymo and Pallaskenery. Who are dying for a swing. And they're unaware of Europe's finest swinger sauna in the industrial estate. With the untethered horses. But after I learned that about Pampas grass outside people's houses. Which I was completely unaware of,

obviously, naturally then my brain starts to think back, think back to every single house you've ever passed that has pampas grass outside, because I've definitely seen it, like I've seen it outside houses, you don't see much of it anymore, but growing up I do remember that big giant plant in certain people's gardens and if your parents had that your parents were probably swingers and it got me thinking what other plants were people using to communicate things about themselves to other people and the only other example I can think of is. There's a type of palm tree. It's the only palm tree that grows in Ireland.

It's called. Cardeline. I hope that band Codeline have named themselves after this palm. But it's called Cardeline. It's otherwise known as a cabbage fern or a cabbage palm

now you'd know them if you see them because it's the only giant palm tree that you would see in a garden in Ireland

there's only one they're usually very tall some of them can grow to be like 20 feet tall and it's them can grow to be like 20 feet tall. And it's just this one singular trunk. Like

the outside of a pineapple. And then at the top, just these big frongs of palm. And then the palms would fall off and go all over the... Here's how you remember these trees. If any house had this big giant palm tree in the garden, when the palm leaves would fall off

you'd jump into the garden and collect them and play swords with them. You'd fight your friends with these long palm leaves and I think the only houses that had these cabbage palms or card line palms growing in the front garden. They were people who went on foreign holidays. Like when I was a kid in the 90s, not everybody went on foreign holidays. It's like you went to Spain once and loved it so much that you had to grow this palm tree in your garden as a way to remember that wonderful time you had. And not necessarily because it was prohibitively expensive. Because in the 70s, 80s, 90s, going off to Alicante or Corfu,

obviously it was more expensive than having a holiday in Ireland. But it wasn't like exceptionally expensive. Like travel agents existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s. So some families could afford to go on foreign holidays. But before Ryanair, we'll say, before the Celtic Tiger, a foreign holiday was seen as kind of a shameful thing. In Ireland, it was viewed as almost like a type of sex. There was too much Catholic shame. Like in the 80s and 90s in Ireland, the type of parents who would go to Alicante, they weren't swingers, but they were the type of parents who might consider it. I think it was like, we're going to go somewhere hot and drink on a beach in swimming suits.

And we'll be slightly nude, drunk, talking to loads of other couples who are also in Terremolinos or Alicante. So in the 80s and 90s in Ireland, it was kind of sexual. It was shameful and secretive and not Catholic because the only acceptable foreign holidays were Lourdes or Metzigerne or one of those weird Catholic places where you're going on a pilgrimage but really you're just going to a warm place to drink. We didn't understand foreign travel. We didn't have it in our culture. It was too indulgent. So we viewed it as a type of sexual swinging.

And I think couples used to plant these cabbage palms, these big tall palm trees in their gardens to let other people know that they were holiday couples. Do you know what it is? In the 80s and 90s in Ireland.

Going on holidays was like saying you used condoms. Now that sounds nuts. But condoms only became legal in Ireland in 1978. Under prescription. And in 1985 was the only time you could actually buy condoms without prescription in a fucking chemist where it was a very very embarrassing thing to do

so people were terrified to buy condoms in the chemist this is why condoms started appearing in fucking men's toilets and vending machines because the idea of buying it off a person was mortifying and shameful now i was born in the 80s i remember being a child and watching tv and people in their 20s made the news because virgin Megastore in Dublin started selling condoms and the news showed up

because it was so... and this must have been early 90s so news cameras showed up to interview people in their 20s who were buying condoms in Virgin Megastore. That's how scandalous it was. Like the church were really powerful. Don't like

there was a Magdalene Laundry in Limerick that was open until 1996. It's the art college now. Like I went to art college there in the mid 2000s and wandered around the bits upstairs that were still like an unrenovated magdalene laundry so holidays holidays in the 70s, 80s 90s, foreign holidays in Ireland they were seen as a little bit sexual and holiday couples

were the same couples that probably used condoms and these couples used to put palm trees in their front garden to let everybody know we're going to go to Terramalinas and talk to people with our tops off and drink and have sex with a condom and that's what those trees mean when you still see them. A lot of them are dead now because those cabbage palms which are from New Zealand, a lot of them died in 2011 when we had that long winter full of snow. This episode was supposed to be a mental health podcast.

Because I can tell when I have a little dose of the crazies coming up and I want to ground myself in some solid emotional reasoning. But you know, fuck it. solid emotional reasoning. But you know, fuck it. I did a lot of walking this week due to COVID recovery and I think differently when I walk. It's a slower type of contemplative observance.

Actually, I did want to do a podcast on the flaneur, which is a type of walking that happened in France. I'll be doing that in the coming weeks. I need to research into it more. But I think let's have a little ocarina pause, and then when we come back for part two,

I'll do a little conversation around emotions and mental health. So here's the ocarina. I'll play it nice and low so I don't terrify your dog. Jesus Christ, the ocarina's sounding a bit, a bit wheezy this week. 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 things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe a girl is to be the mother.

Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real.

It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. 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. Paltry ocarina. Paltry ocarina.

I think the ocarina caught COVID off me. That was the ocarina pause. You would have heard an advert for something there. This is an Acast podcast, so I am contractually obligated to have a certain amount of adverts. But it is also an independent podcast, so I can also tell advertisers to go fuck themselves if I don't want them on my podcast. But this podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This is what I do for a living this is how I pay my bills I love

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that have money behind them and celebrity names and all this crack. So support whatever independent podcast you're listening to. Also, Acast deleted their app there about a month ago, and I lost quite a few listeners and subscribers because of that. So if whatever fucking podcast app you're using, whether it's Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever the fuck,

please subscribe or follow this podcast on whatever podcast app you're using. That's completely free, but please subscribe and follow so that you get your weekly updates. Also consider leaving a review, sharing the podcast. These are all ways that you can help independent podcasters. I have some live gigs coming up this month and then I'm taking a big break from gigs after that. I'm in Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Manchester. Come along to those gigs. There's still tickets online. They're going to be great crack. Also I'm at the Docky Book Festival. If you're around Dublin I'm in the Docky Book Festival this month. I don't know the exact date but come along to that. The Docky Book Festival is good crack.

My voice is still a small bit croaky from COVID this week. I'd like to speak briefly about a concept in psychology called experiential avoidance, which is, it's something within emotional awareness. It's where when we experience feelings, thoughts or memories and we avoid them by replacing them with another emotion. Here's an example. Anger. All of us can experience on a daily basis or weekly basis, we can struggle with feelings of anger. Now by which I mean, in your private moments with yourself,

the way that you're thinking about other people, or thinking about yourself, or thinking about a situation, intense feelings of anger can come up and you notice that you're feeling anger, like anger is an easy one to identify. You could be clenching your fists, gritting your teeth, all of a sudden feeling furious because of something someone said or you could be rehearsing an argument in your head, but generally, intrusive, unhelpful, feelings of fucking anger,

that you could really do without, that are stealing time from your day. Anger, unhealthy anger as an emotion, is a particularly insidious thing to experience because it really steals time if you're struggling with anger you could be thinking about whatever it is that's making you angry it can feel like five minutes but two hours have passed anger is a tremendous waster of time it also takes a lot of physical energy

and it can leave you feeling exhausted and unhealthy anger is when when you're ruminating on it when you're by yourself and instead of enjoying the moment or enjoying your day you're fucking furious with yourself, a situation or another person

and it's intrusive and you could do without it sometimes if you're experiencing anger and you know this is unhealthy and you want to try and think about it and you want to try and use your tools to tackle it sometimes

even though anger is what you're experiencing the underlying issue isn't anger at all it's anxiety so my main I'm an anxious person what I've always struggled with is anxiety I'm someone who can worry quite a bit and this brings on anxiety but I haven't really experienced anxiety, the emotion of anxiety in quite a long time. I haven't gotten a panic attack in years. When I speak about anxiety what I mean is shallow breathing, the experience and feeling of being terribly, terribly afraid. I haven't actually experienced that badly in a long time. But what I can struggle with is feelings of anger. Especially since the pandemic, what I've struggled with from a

mental health perspective more and more are feelings of anger. And I really started to notice this around the start of lockdown. Like one example, when I used to go for my runs in the daytime and I'd always come up to this zebra crossing. So I'm running and there's a zebra crossing. And sometimes cars wouldn't stop at the zebra crossing. Cars just wouldn't stop. They'd go right past. And I would be fucking furious.

I'd be so angry that it would ruin my run. Now that's not rational. It's unpleasant if I'm at a zebra crossing and a car doesn't stop for me. But I can't expect everybody to do it all the time. There's a number of reasons why people might not stop at the zebra crossing. Also, I'm also expected as a pedestrian to stop at the zebra crossing. But over the pandemic and over lockdown, it was making me fucking furious. To the point that I was gritting my teeth and clenching my fists.

And not enjoying my run. Or throughout my day, I might all of a sudden think about someone I know. And for no reason whatsoever in my head, I'm fucking furious with them. Like really furious with them in my head. Shaken with anger. And then I'd snap out of it and I'd go, what? I don't even have a reason to be angry with this person. What the fuck is going on here? Why am I angry with this person? They haven't done anything. They haven't said anything. Or I might find myself snapping at people all of a sudden for no reason just being a very angry person

or feeling as if I want to punch a wall and generally just having moments in my day where I'm consumed by a sensation of rage and anger for no real good reason. Now usually, if you're suffering with toxic anger, you can at least think of a reason. Usually it means someone has broken a personal rule. We carry around these personal rules of I must be treated a certain way. People must be polite to me. People must say hello to me in a way that I consider to

be acceptable. And when we carry around these strong personal rules, which are unrealistic, when anyone breaks them, we can get very, very angry with that person and end up fantasizing about revenge or payback or regurgitating in our heads and how you would have liked the argument to go. That's normally the situation when you're dealing with anger. But for me, I don't have any of these things. Sometimes I'll get a strong feeling of rage or anger which can fleet from different things all the time and I can't understand what it's about or why it exists

because I can't think of a good reason as to why I'm angry. But through a lot of mindfulness, emotional awareness, meditating on my anger, I've come to realize that anger isn't the problem for me. What I'm doing is known as experiential avoidance. What I'm struggling with is anxiety. The same thing I've always struggled with. Anxiety and worry. The pandemic brought a huge amount of worry into all of our lives. It was incredibly uncertain.

There was a huge amount of change. I couldn't predict things. And for me, because I worked in the entertainment industry, It was incredibly uncertain. There was a huge amount of change. Couldn't predict things. And for me, because I worked in the entertainment industry, it completely threatened my livelihood and way of living. So anxiety is about when you feel threatened. Your sense of self or your view of self might be threatened. Or your livelihood might be threatened. Or your capacity to survive and self might be threatened or your livelihood might be threatened or your

capacity to survive and cope might be threatened now when you experience unhealthy anxiety you focus on this threat massively and you don't allow your brain won't allow in any alternative information that might say yeah things are shitty right now but it might get better with anxiety that doesn't happen you focus only on the thing that you're worried about you completely overestimate you predict how terrible things are definitely going to be you completely underestimate your ability to cope you have no capacity to tolerate the frustration of that threat and that's anxiety. And usually when you think that way what happens is

you start to experience the symptoms of anxiety which are feelings of fear and panic. Well I've stopped doing that. Instead what my brain decides to do is to respond with feelings of anger. So I'm worrying all day. I'm waking up in the morning with a feeling of dread thinking oh no everything is going to be terrible. Everything's going to fall apart. I'm going to be fucked. I won't be able to cope. How am I going to live my life? These are my thoughts which are very anxious thoughts. But the negative emotion that comes in is furious anger and I don't know what it's about. So when I stop at a zebra crossing and a car just goes past it.

Instead of going so what? I want to kick the fucking driver's head in. I'm furious. And then I'm left with the shame of that's a bit of an overreaction. Maybe they didn't see you. Who gives a shit? No, I'm fucking furious. And then I forget about them. And then later on in the day, I think about somebody and now I'm furious with them in my head. And I don't have a reason. And that stops and now I'm angry because I burnt my dinner and I'm just angry all the time and I don't know why and I don't have good reason for being angry

and no amount of exploring my emotion of anger or trying to see where are my angry thoughts coming from nothing turns up I can't find anything there I'm just unexplainably angry all day the fact is the anger is just a mask what I need to be looking at and addressing is the worry and the anxiety it's thought it's anxious thoughts it's worry underestimating my ability to cope overestimating the threat all of these anxious thoughts are now turning into angry emotions and for me I think the reason is is that when you get anxiety or you get an anxiety attack, you tend to withdraw. You tend to pull back. When you feel anxious, like when I used to have agoraphobia, I would not go outside.

I would not do things. I am afraid of this. And because I'm afraid, I'm going to not do the thing I'm afraid of. But I've done too much work on myself around that. That's not going to happen anymore. I don't think I'm going to not do the thing I'm afraid of but I've done too much work on myself around that that's not going to happen anymore I don't think I'm going to withdraw anymore I don't think I'm going to experience the helplessness that I would experience with anxiety but when anxiety gets too overwhelming for me I manage anxiety with furious anger because anger is proactive. Anger

with anxiety you withdraw from the threat. With anger you search for the threat and you try to eliminate it or hurt it. Anger feels like you're solving a problem even though you're not

you're creating way more problems. But the experience of anger is very outward. Whereas the experience of anxiety is quite inward. So now if I experience intense fury or intense anger for no fucking reason. What I do is I calm myself down. And now instead of exploring the anger and asking myself where are the angry thoughts? Who wronged me? Who hurt me? I don't go there. I say to myself where are the anxious thoughts? What am I afraid of? What am I afraid of what am I afraid of what am I worried about what fear do I have and then it becomes clear to me it's like I haven't been thinking angry thoughts all day I'm not angry

with anybody I don't want revenge I don't think I've been hurt, I don't think anyone's done anything wrong to me, this isn't what's bothering me, what's bothering me is good old anxiety, the same anxiety I've always had, it's just not coming out as anxiety anymore, now it's coming out as anger because my brain thinks that this is proactive but ultimately I'm responding to a threat. And that's called experiential avoidance. I'm avoiding the experience of anxiety by using anger through something that's known as negative reinforcement. Bursts of rage or gritting my teeth or clenching my fists provide me with a momentary relief from anxiety and it's not just anxiety or anger can prop up if you are struggling with feelings of depression so with depression you view things as hopeless you view your life as pointless. You ruminate on past failures. You don't see a possibility for happiness.

Normally that will result in depressed feelings of sadness. But sometimes your brain can just be like, we don't want to feel like that today. We don't want to stay in bed all day. We don't want to feel like that today. We don't want to stay in bed all day. We don't want to not look after ourselves and wallow, which is depressed behaviour. Instead, anger can pop up because anger is proactive. And now all of a sudden, you're snapping at people you love for no fucking reason. You're clenching your fists, clenching your teeth.

And you feel furious and you don't understand why. When actually what you're dealing with are feelings of fucking depression. It's just not being expressed as sadness. Our brains are dealing with the emotion of depression by avoiding it and putting anger in its place. Same with shame. Shame is something that people struggle with. If you're experiencing shame, you want to hide. You want to hide yourself away from other people.

You have the feeling that you're not worthy. You're not as good as other people. That you don't deserve to participate in society like other people, that you should be squirreled away and hidden because you're so shameful. Intense feelings of guilt, cringe, the emotion and experience of cringe, thinking about something you said three years ago and utterly cringing at the thought of yourself. years ago and utterly cringing at the thought of yourself that's the emotion of shame but that too can find itself out in anger so I suppose what I'm teasing at this week with this little brief mental health chat that I wanted to wanted to say is if you're struggling with unexplained bouts of anger, fury, rage,

and you can't explain why, and you can't think of a good reason why you're this angry, and you don't know why you're doing it, and you don't know why your fuse is so short today, and you feel like a prick because you're fucking furious, what are your thoughts? What are you ruminating about? Are you actually anxious?

Are you actually feeling a bit sad? Are you feeling shameful? What are the themes and thoughts of your internal monologue and dialogue to yourself? And if those thoughts and feelings aren't angry, if they aren't about a sense of injustice or a sense that something wrong was done to you and instead these thoughts are much more to do with anxiety, shame or depression, then that is what to meditate on, I suppose.

Because that's what I do. What I will do is I will sit quietly breathe in through my nose so that I feel my stomach expanding make sure I'm getting a lot of oxygen and I will sit calmly for 10 minutes breathing at a steady pace, counting my breaths, and I will think about the thoughts, the thoughts, themes and ideas that are bothering me that day. And that's what I focus on. And when I do that, then I don't feel the anger anymore because I've dealt with the underlying emotion that I was using anger to avoid. Because anger is proactive. Anger isn't about withdrawal.

Anger is about doing something. Anger is about identifying a threat and wanting to eradicate it. And that's not necessarily healthy. But rage and fury can trick us into thinking we're solving a problem, when we're not at all. We're just getting ourselves worked up. so that's what I wanted to speak about

on the second part of this podcast I'll be back next week with a little hot take don't accuse anybody of being a swinger if they have pampas grass in their garden it might be completely innocent they might not have a clue.

Rub a dog. Enjoy the weather. Have a wonderful week. 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.