The Blindboy Podcast - The Barefoot Accountant

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Hot Take EpisodeLast week there was a standoff between Irish Fishermen and The Russian Navy. I draw a connection between this and a proposed plan to breed cats that glow in the dark around Nuclear Waste, as a warning to future humans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. You know, we haven't kicked off an episode with a poem in quite some time. And I was recently sent a poem that I'd like to read out for you. The poem was sent to me in December by singer-songwriter Rod Stewart. And if you have any children listening to this podcast, I suggest you put them outside the room or put your hands over their ears because it's a very adult poem

and it's also quite frightening. So the poem is called The Ghost of Prince Philip is Getting Tit Wanks on Jupiter by Rad Stewart Look up The ghost of Prince Philip is getting tit wanks on Jupiter The shadow of Europa glints against his pupils His heels sink in a soup of hydrogen and helium

His cum weighs a thousand tons His celestial mickey rests on a ten-foot chest. These are not human tits. They are giant lumps of swirling gas in the shape of tits. He is shouting at the tits, but there is no air to carry his howls. Look up! Oh, the ghost of Prince Philip is getting tit wanks on Jupiter. and if you watch him on your pervert's telescope you will have 35 minutes to prepare because that's how long it takes

for light to reach Earth from Jupiter Thank you Rod Stewart for that poem Rest in peace Prince Philip of England So before we continue just a little bit of housekeeping. I have some live podcasts that I need to promote immediately because there was a lockdown and then there wasn't a lockdown all of a sudden.

So these gigs that I didn't think were going ahead are going ahead. The problem is I now have half the amount of time to actually promote them, which is a difficult situation to be in, but fuck it, we'll go for it. So Dublin, I have three Vicar Street gigs, live podcasts, one at the end of March, on the 22nd of March, and then April the 5th and the 12th so that's three Dublin Vicar Street live podcasts please come along to them

because they're going to be unbelievable fun and they're going to be great crack and they're nice midweek gigs as well so

that's a perfect time for a live podcast because you can go to a gig have a lovely night maybe have one drink or no drink at all and be back home in bed

and ready for your day the next morning so please buy those tickets if you're thinking of coming to those gigs in Dublin and not just my gigs any fucking artist lads in Ireland who all of a sudden is like holy shit this gig that I thought wasn't happening is now happening

please buy tickets please consider supporting artists over the next few months because the old lockdowns were quite tough there on anyone who had a gig to promote there's Cork as well I think the opera house is sold out

is it? There's a Cork opera house in 2 St Luke's so check them out if you're in Cork that'll be good crack and I know I said I'm going to be doing less gigs going forward but I don't want to be leaving out international listeners to this podcast so I don't know if these are

actually on sale yet but to my listeners in Barcelona and Madrid I will be doing gigs in Barcelona and Madrid in May really looking forward to that that will be my first gig in Spain and in Catalonia it will be boiling hot and I'll be horsing into a lot of white sparkling sangria so i have a hot take for you this week um a rambling hot take and also the process of how i made this week's podcast is quite different because so if i'm if i'm really focused on something or if i'm in a state of flow or thinking or creating

i can lose track of time very, very easily. And this got really, really bad over the pandemic. Last week's podcast, I finished recording it at 8am. And the thing was, I didn't know it was 8am because I don't have natural light in my studio. So whatever happened with last week's podcast, I got time mixed up and finished it

and then actually looked at the clock and was like oh fuck it's 8am shit and it kind of made a bollocks of my week so if because I had to sleep for the entirety of the next day you know and I know that sounds a bit far-fetched but literally if I'm really really focused on something like even though there's a clock in front of me and there's time on my computer if I'm really really focusing on something I'll see it but I won't see it it's there but it doesn't register in my head as as numbers because I'm thinking about something else it doesn't register in my head as numbers because I'm thinking about something else. It doesn't happen all the time, but it can happen. So for this week's podcast, I enforced structure on myself.

I mentioned about a month back that I got myself an office that I try and go to like a nine to five. So I get up in the morning and I go to my office at 9am and I stay there until 5 and in that period in the middle I research the podcast so I did that this week and because if I don't if I don't enforce structure on how I work I'd literally I'd end up like living in the woods and just shouting this podcast into a tree and the other thing too you know I was thinking why don't I just record the podcast in my office why don't I record

the podcast between the hours of 9 and 5 and record it in there but the thing is I can't and I'll tell you why so I started getting this office because I wanted to emerge from the pandemic I wanted to re-socialise

myself okay over the period of the pandemic where I was spending so much time indoors I was finding social anxiety kind of returning so I was like right I need structure and I need to go somewhere everyday where I just see people and I was like right I need structure and I need to go somewhere every day where I just

see people and I was thinking too fuck it an office that'll be like school it'll be all these accountants and loan acquisition managers and all these people with regular responsible structured jobs and this will brush off on me because it's a shared office there's all these different businesses in this giant building and i just wanted it to be like adult school now this is not the case like in school like teenagers are insecure and self-conscious so they they they behave themselves school didn't have adult men in their 50s and this office has shown me that some men in their 50s just say fuck it and go mad

and there's this cunt and he walks around the corridors barefoot I think he works in finance he walks around barefoot doing zoom calls on his fucking mobile phone so I can't record my podcast because there's a man walking barefoot up and down the corridor doing zoom calls into his phone and i'm like going great i came here for fucking structure and some cunt is barefoot so i'm now in the position where if i

want to record this podcast in the office i have have to confront the barefoot accountant. It's like Dungeons and Dragons. But I'm thinking in my head, how the fuck do I, how do I go to this man? Because he's always on a Zoom call as well. He's really, he's always on a Zoom call. So finding the moment when he's not on a Zoom call

and then just going to him and saying, can you stop walking up and down the corridor barefoot, shouting into your phone because I'm trying to record something in here and it is like Dungeons and Dragons because I'm spending all my time strategizing how to get past the barefoot accountant I'm not I'm not finding out his email and sending a passive-aggressive email I'm not writing a passive-aggressive note on the wall of the corridor I'm not ratting him out to reception i'm just in the door of the place i'm out of my comfort zone this is a level 50 barefoot accountant and i need to cast an appropriately powerful spell

so i'm just going to go to him and i'm going to say nicely here buddy I'm recording things in there I'll lie I'll say that I work in the radio or something and I record adverts I'll say buddy I'm recording adverts inside there right and I've got a microphone on and I'm picking up all your conversations conversations that you're having with clients and I'm accidentally recording them and you're violating your client's GDPR rights because the data of your phone call I'm accidentally recording them. And you're violating your client's GDPR rights. Because the data of your phone call, I'm picking it up. So I have to cast the GDPR spell in order to pass the barefoot accountant. And I reckon that's going to work.

But it might not. Because a man in his 50s working in finance who's been driven to the point that he's rambling up and down the corridor barefoot I don't think that's a man who's too concerned about other people's boundaries and it's not even it's not like a hippie type of barefoot where he finds a type of spiritual freedom in being barefoot you know you'd be thinking all right here's this fella just doing his job and then in the evenings he goes home listens to a bit of Pink Floyd has a craft beer it's not that because if it was that it'd be grand that's that sounds like an agreeable person we'd probably end up talking about music this is new this is different it's I fucking hate shoes and socks and I need the feeling of fire retardant

carpet on the soles of my feet in order to just do my job it's that type of energy and I don't know how to fuck with that and apologies if it's your father but like do you know what if that is someone's father he's wearing shoes at home

he's wearing his shoes at home this is a different thing I've never shoes at home this is a different thing I've never seen this before this is a little thing he has going on in the office so that's been kind of fucking with the podcast a bit to be honest because I've been I can't stop

I can't see into his office you see so he does go back into the office and I was thinking do you remember when you were a kid right again this is this is before the internet do you remember when you were a kid right again this is before the internet when you were a child sometimes you'd

rub your feet really hard against the carpet in order to build up static and then you'd do that and put a balloon against your head and then your hair would stick up and I was thinking maybe that's what he's doing

maybe he's he just fucking hates the job and he's walking up and down barefoot trying to build up static in his feet and then once he's off the fucking zoom call he just goes thank fuck closes the door and takes out a balloon

and makes his hair stand up and that's his thing that's his treat maybe he used to smoke cigarettes maybe he used to take cigarette breaks and then he's like fuck it man I gotta quit these cigarettes so he can figure out something new

and his new thing is building up static. And sticking a balloon to his head. It's possible. I'm glad I got that off my chest now. Yeah because the specter of the barefoot accountant. Is looming large. In my life at the moment. And I wasn't sure whether to tell you or not.

But fuck it. I kinda have to. So I've got a hot take this week em I've got two types of hot take I've got ones that are fully farmed where I know exactly what the hot take is and then I have other hot takes that are

they're more questions they're exploratory questions in hot take territory and that's what this is. What I can tell you about this hot take, what I do know, is that it's going to begin in the now and it will end 10,000 years in the future. So with this podcast, I'm going to explore something called semiotics. Semiatics is the study of signs. Now when I say sign you think like a sign on the wall but a sign is any unit of information that communicates meaning via language and again the word language,, language doesn't just mean speaking words. Language is any system of signs that communicate meaning.

Like that barefoot accountant. I spent a long time there wondering about his bare feet. His bare feet are a sign. Are his bare feet just for him because he likes being barefoot in the corridor? Or are his bare feet a sign? Is he trying to communicate something to someone else? Such as, stay away, I'm the barefoot accountant. I don't know.

Are his bare feet language? Is it intrapersonal language, which is just for him? Or interpersonal language, which is just for him, or inter-personal language, which is for other people. Is he trying to communicate with me using his bare feet? Because it could mean stay away. Sign language is a system of signs. It's still language. It's still communication.

It's incredibly complex. But there's no words, but it's still a language. And then something more obvious. Road signs. Road signs might not have words on them, but there's no words but it's still a language and then something more obvious road signs road signs might not have words on them but we understand what they mean and that's a system of language it's a piece of information that communicates meaning fashion is a system of signs if you choose to wear a certain pair of pants today. You're not just wearing that pants for you but you're wearing that pair of pants to operate within society. What do your pants communicate to other

people in a culture? What does it mean and what do other people extract from your trousers? So that's what a sign is. It's a unit of information that communicates meaning within a system of language and semiotics is the study of that. Now I'll get on to that a bit more in a minute. I studied semiotics in college the first time I went to college when I was a young fella because when I was in my early 20s and I went to college first for my degree, I went to art college, but what I actually studied was graphic design. Now, I am not a graphic designer and I don't really enjoy graphic design or even appreciate graphic design, to be honest. Just doesn't do anything for me.

And I ended up studying graphic design because I suppose it was my parents there was this old school attitude that if you went to art college the only thing you could do and actually get a job out of was graphic design so my parents kind of who are old school pushed me towards that

and I didn't really give a shit because I'd failed my leave insert and I was just happy to actually be in college I couldn't believe I was in college I'm actually really glad I studied graphic design even though I didn't like graphic design because the process of studying graphic design was really, really helpful for me. So I never gave a fuck about what magazines looked like. I didn't care about typefaces. I didn't care about posters.

Web design. I didn't give a shit about all this. But what I did adore about doing graphic design in college was it's really structured. So the thing with graphic design in college was it's really structured so the thing with graphic design is you go in there and they're like okay you're all creative

you're all creative artistic people here's a way to take your creativity and structure it like we learned how to design our own briefs. And we weren't making art. We were doing projects. And we weren't making a piece of art.

We were. Solving a problem and creating a solution. And graphic design showed me how to. Take my creative thoughts. And to. Stick to deadlines. And how to farm out creativity and most importantly like I said how to design my own briefs and that means like okay I'm doing a project how do I set out the goals of the project what are the aims of the project what will the final piece look like what are the deadlines for this project and this was really really helpful for me because I had quite a scattered brain

and all that that stuff that I learned in graphic design that 100% I still use every bit of that today that's my entire if I hadn't studied graphic design I don't think I'd have been able to work in like television or even make this podcast because graphic design showed me how to farm out my creativity and how to structure it so that I had a final piece

and that I understood that I was making something for an audience whereas when you study art fine art that's more introspective that's you're not working to deadlines you don't know what the final piece is it's very very very open and some people are suited to that but me when I was like 20 I wouldn't have been suited to that I needed structure and self-imposed structure. And graphic design gave me that,

even though I really disliked graphic design. And my tutors used to say it to me. My tutors used to say, you're a fine artist. Like, that's what you are. You're an artist. You want to make art. You think like an artist,

but for some reason you're in graphic design. But they were really sound about it. Instead of chastisingising me for it which is what would have happened in school they were like you're a fine artist how can how can we help you to express your fine art talents in a way that works within graphic design and that gave me a huge amount of confidence. And it showed me that. Creativity can be fucking anything. If you have. Any type of artistic imagination. If you just structure it.

And plan it. And have a system in place. You can turn your creativity into anything you want. So by the time I was in third year of college. I was like. Making the first rubber bandage tunes learning how to make videos for youtube and getting little offers for scripts and stuff for tv and the structure of my graphic design education gave me that confidence and gave me that ability but something I studied in graphic design was called semiotics So graphic design is also known as visual communication.

In the absence of words, how do you use colours and shapes and typefaces to make a person feel a certain thing or to communicate an idea to someone without using words? How do you do this? That's why graphics is called visual communication and one of the

underpinnings of this is semiotics and the two main semioticians that I admire would be a fella called Ferdinand de Saussure and an essayist and semiotician called Roland Barthes and the hot takes that I do are, they're very informed

by the work of Roland Barth check out his essay collection Mythologies which he released in the 50s and Roland Barth's method of using semiotics I'd use it in like I have a podcast called Chicken Fillet Rolls

from about 6 months ago where I basically I looked at the chicken fillet roll not as a food stuff but as a piece of language what does the chicken fillet roll mean about being Irish right now what does eating or saying you eat a chicken fillet roll communicate to other people within Ireland what is the structure of the language that chicken fillet rolls operate within what do chicken fillet rolls say

about our economy, our history our cultural identity and that process of arriving at those conclusions I'm using Roland Barthes type semiotics to arrive at some of them and a bit of fucking post-colonialism bit of post-structuralism all these different things

but mainly my heart is in Roland Barthes and when I was in school like in secondary school I used to get chastised for that type of talk they used to call that overthinking and then when I was in school, like in secondary school, I used to get chastised for that type of talk. They used to call that overthinking. And then when I found semiotics, I was like, this isn't overthinking at all. This is a way to reverse engineer culture. And reverse engineer basically means, if someone handed you a bicycle and you didn't know what a bicycle was,

then you'd take it apart to figure out what it is and how it works and semiotics allows you to do that with ideas like barth has a very famous essay from the 60s called the death of the author and it's one of the the defining texts of post-modernism like what did the death of the author mean the simplest way to explore it is just because an author writes a book and that author has intentions about what this book is and what this book means ultimately the person who reads that book can construct their own meaning about what the book is about therefore the, the reader can become the author. So how the viewer interprets a work is just as valid as what the artists themselves intended.

And that's one of the defining tenets of postmodernism. We're kind of, we're moving away a bit from that right now and in 2022. Like, Jesus, I see people on Twitter and they might be talking about a book like American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis and that's a book about a psychopath it's a book about a murderous psychopath who does horrible things

but it's a work of fiction it's a fictional character but there are people who are demanding a kind of a literal interpretation to the point that they believe the author, Bret Easton Ellis, is morally wrong for writing a character that is morally wrong. And that's not widespread, but it's something that you see creeping up

where some people are demanding a moral perfection from fictional characters as if they exist in real life. You see a more flippant version of it in Amazon reviews of books. I give this fictional book one star because the fictional character in the book was a horrible person and I dislike the author for bringing this horrible person into my life. So what has me thinking about semiotics this week? There's a story in the news this week, which is international news, and it happened in Ireland.

And you'll all be familiar with this. So currently there's tensions because Russia appears to be amassing troops on the border of Ukraine and NATO are going, what the fuck is going on what's this about so there's a conflict situation there's a conflict situation and Russia also the same week decided to do naval military exercises off the coast of Cork in Ireland which they shouldn't be doing they shouldn't be doing that they shouldn't be in that. They shouldn't be in Irish waters. We're a neutral country. Our government did fuck all about this. But what did

happen was some fishermen from West Cork, right, a small group of fishermen decided that they would peacefully protest, that they would say, we don't care if the Russian Navy is doing naval exercises. We will continue to take our fishing boats out to sea as a peaceful protest. And Russia backed off. The big mighty Russia said, out of respect for the Irish fishermen, we will move our military exercises out of Irish waters.

So Russia was moved by a couple of fishermen from West Cork and the media ate this up. The international media in particular, America, this became global news because as a narrative it is the perfect David and Goliath story. It is perfect. And me personally, I have the utmost respect for those fishermen. I think they're fucking legends. It was incredible to see what those fishermen did because it reminded me of a different Ireland. It reminded me of the Ireland I remember being a child. Ireland is a small little neutral country that was known for its sense of social justice. Those fishermen reminded me of the Ireland that went on strike to support the ending of apartheid in South Africa in the 80s. I got that lovely feeling when those fishermen did that. It reminded me of this is who we are. And it was beautiful.

So my utmost respect to those fishermen. But what I'd like to speak about is the bizarre and strange media narrative that unfolded around it. Because it operated on a set of signs that were 30, 40 years old. The semiotics of the media narrative was not relevant to now, it was relevant to 30 years ago, and it was very, very strange to see this happening. And I think the reason it happened is because Cold War semiotics were so powerful. Now, semiotics is a bit of a cunty academic word.

So I'm going to try to explain this in simpler terms. So the Cold War was the period from just after World War II up until 1989. And the Cold War dominated culture for the majority of the 20th century. And basically what was the Cold War? You had two huge superpowers you had the US and then you had the USSR and these two huge superpowers

were equally as powerful and locked in not battle but at all times ready to fight. And not just ready to fight, ready to annihilate each other with nuclear weapons. And this was the dominant cultural narrative for the majority of the 20th century. So what did the US signify during this period? What were the signifiers of the US? Well, the US meant freedom, democracy, capitalism,

nuclear might. And then the USSR, which was Russia and everywhere where Russia had taken over, the USSR meant communism, lack of freedom, authoritarianism but also a terrifying superpower with nuclear bombs. And what did Ireland mean? Ireland was literally a third world country. Ireland was literally classed as a third world country. It was a neutral country. It never got involved in wars or any major global conflicts. Ireland was a peaceful place to be left alone.

And these are the cultural signifiers of the Cold War, the period up to 1989. And for some mad reason, the media narrative last week operated under that structure. Let's look at what the signifiers are right now for these three places I mentioned. So what does the US mean right now? Does the US mean freedom, power, democracy? It doesn't. Right now the US looks like a failing state that's creeping towards fascism with huge amounts of human rights abuses, racism, poverty, the crumbling of democracy

and it's losing its place in the world to China. But it won't admit it. The US is like a prize fighter who's still fighting but now they're a little bit too old and it's weird to watch. That's what the US brings up right now. What does Russia mean right now? Russia is geographically a huge country. Economically, it's about the same size as Italy. It's not communist. We're not sure what it is exactly,

but it's not good. It feels a little bit like if a country could be a gangster. And again, like the US, it's kind of trading on its old reputation of being the big, huge USSR. But it's not. But you definitely don't want to turn your back on it. Now, what does Ireland mean? Is Ireland still this lovely, small, little, quaint, neutral country? No, Ireland is a tiny island that is globally viewed as an incredibly corrupt country where the largest multinational corporations launder their money. That's what Ireland is now.

It's where huge corporations who earn billions, they come here, they pay less than 1% tax in exchange for giving us some jobs. And we, this tiny country, are directly facilitating the widening global wealth gap. And Ireland just says, sure, if we don't do it, the Polish will. So these are the current signs and signifiers of this situation. But yet the media narrative last week about the fishermen and the Russians, it played out under an old Cold War narrative

because the signs and signifiers of that time were so powerful and so simple to understand that it had to be turned into a wonderful moralistic tale like David and Goliath. So how did it play out in the media? Well the story went, tiny little Ireland. Tiny little Ireland where they still have donkeys and carts. And don't even have roads.

Their fishermen stood up to the might of the superpower. The giant communist USSR. And they stood their ground and the big USSR backed off and the might of America and the Irish Americans stood in the background and watched like an older brother

like an older brother who when the younger brother is being bullied in school the older brother comes along the older brother is America comes in school the older brother comes along the older brother is America comes along and says I'm not going to beat up the bully

you have to beat him up but I'm going to stand back here and watch and if it gets out of hand I'm going to jump in so that was the narrative that played out and it was fucking bizarre like even in Ireland even in the Irish Times

in the opinion pieces about what happened last week, they're still using the hammer and sickle to refer to Russia. The hammer and sickle is the USSR, that's the Soviet Union. It refers to a giant superpower that was communist. That fell in 1989. It doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore. What Russia is now is something very different and smaller, but not that. And you still have reliable journalistic publications speaking about Russia as if it's the USSR. Because the Cold War narrative, the signs and signifiers, they're too powerful and too simple. They took over. And you know why we all loved it? Because for the first time in a long time in the media,

something made sense. Something could be reduced to very simple, big baddies versus small goodies. It's what's known as the grand narrative the simple moralistic tale that used to encapsulate the zeitgeist of most of the 20th century and we've lost that in the past 10-15 years now the news is continually confusing ever changing with multiple layers of meaning and we get consistent anxiety from it and that

fisherman versus Russia story made us feel ah good versus bad oh I miss good versus bad I understand this this is way better than not knowing who's good or who's bad it made us pine for the simplicity of nuclear war. Like war back then meant Russia has a load of nukes and so does America and if they fight, kaboom! It's terrifying but we understand it. Not now with asymmetrical warfare where if Russia do invade Ukraine

it's not going to look like a big giant war. It's going to be troops in nothing troops in ukraine i don't know who they are i don't know who's backing them and then troops other troops going i don't know who's backing them are they nato i don't know who the fuck these people are they're not armies i don't see any countries at war but there's a war like what's happening in yemen at the moment which is effectively a war between sa Arabia and Iran but Saudi Arabia and Iran aren't at war, it's just these groups and

no one knows where the weapons are coming from or who's backing them. The fishermen gave us the old reliable comfort of nuclear destruction. And let's look at the narrative of little Ireland stood up to the might of the USSR and fought them off. That narrative that America wanted to promote

like is that actually what happened, is that actually what it's done, no what it did and I mean this has no disrespect to those fishermen, what those fishermen did was fantastic and fair play to them I'm speaking about in the wider context and in action from Ireland

the government, when Russia agreed to withdraw its navy from Irish waters because a group of fishermen protested, that actually made Russia look good in the eyes of the world because what it did is it made Russia look chivalrous. What would have actually happened if Russia instead said, you Ireland we're gonna do what we want in your neutral waters we're gonna do what we like what would that have actually looked like what narrative would have played out well Joe Biden is Irish American Joe Biden leans on the Irish American thing so if Russia even looked sideways at Ireland then immediately America can construct

this huge big brother narrative of Russia picking on someone who can't defend themselves. So by Russia actually respectfully backing away and the Russian ambassador speaking with the fishermen that makes Russia look chivalrous it doesn't make them look sneaky anymore it makes them look like they're fair fighters it makes them look like they would not pick on someone who's smaller than them it's a type of masculinity it's like the man who won't hit a woman. It's Russia saying to the world, I only fight people my own size. And then the world kind of went, fair play to Russia, have a bit of respect for them.

I respect Russia for listening to those fishermen now. I thought that Russia was like these snaky gangster fucks who'd glass you outside a bar. But no, no, I quite respect them now. You know, they seem pretty tough. They're not going to pick on someone who's smaller than them it made Ireland look cowardly

like as in not those fishermen, those fishermen are legends fair play to them it made the Irish government look cowardly because a group of fishermen could accomplish what the Irish government couldn't what the Irish government was barely even willing to address

now what could the Irish government have actually done because there was a bunch of people on fucking social media during the week saying send out the Irish Navy I think we've only one ship literally I think we only have like one ship so sending out the Irish Navy would have been ridiculous. But what's an actual thing that the Irish government could have done? Well, here's a newspaper report. This is an investigation that was done by the journalist

Aoife Moore. So more than 118 billion was funneled from Ireland to Russia between 2005 and 2017, a new research paper from Trinity College has revealed. So over the course of 15 years, Russian oligarchs and state-backed companies, right, that had been subject to sanctions because of criminal activity, they managed to launder and funnel 115 billion euro using Dublin and the Irish Financial Services Centre. So the economic power of Russia is actually using Dublin to launder money. Maybe do something about that Ireland, because stopping that, that's actual real power.

But no, instead, what Ireland actually is, as I mentioned, Ireland is where people launder and wash cash. So 115 billion of Russian money, that's a lot of money, was laundered and cleaned through Ireland. So it turns out Ireland actually does have quite a bit of power, as far as Russia is concerned. It's soft power, it's not military power, but 115 billion is a lot of money. And that's not conspiracy, you can look it up, that's from a Trinity College

research paper. So the picture I'm trying to paint basically is that the contemporary definitions of the US, Ireland and Russia have changed massively in the 30 years since the Berlin Wall fell. But yet the media narrative over the past week operated exclusively under Cold War semiotics because that was the more powerful story. David and Goliath is much more interesting than that. Way more interesting. And the Yanks ate it up

and they drove that story. And to be honest I loved it because I'm fatigued and for five days the world made sense and we had goodies

and baddies again. So I'm going to do an ocarina pause and after the ocarina pause I'm going to come back with some words on nuclear semiotics because

this fisherman thing got me thinking about semiotics and then this led me on a little trail into a field known as nuclear semiotics which is incredibly interesting and this is where I said we're going to start with now and end in 10,000 years in the future. So this week we're going to have again the perfectly legal herb

grinder pause which I did last week where I got my a grinder that's used to grind herbs that are perfectly legal and I did this as the little pause for the digitally inserted adverts. I got quite a lot of feedback where people said they enjoyed the sound of the perfectly legal herb grinder, except for my mother, who didn't know what it was and said she couldn't hear it.

So here's the perfectly legal herb grinder. Pause. No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real.

What's not real? Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. 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. So you would have heard some adverts there? I don't know what for. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast.

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two very large advertisers on this podcast because I wasn't ethically happy having them advertising on this podcast and it feels fantastic to be able

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Thank you very much and thank you to everyone who's a patron. Thank you so much for putting me in a position where I'm in an office working, coming up with ideas, worrying about the barefoot accountant. Thank you. I think if I was in that same office and I was doing a job I didn't enjoy or not being able to pursue my passions, I'd have a very different attitude

towards the barefoot accountant. I'd probably hate him. I don't. I'm curious. I want to know about him. I hope he's trying to make his hair stand up on a staticky balloon. So back to semiotics.

Semiatics, like I mentioned, is a system of understanding signs, understanding language to deconstruct the mythologies that we have within culture. And it's very effective if you're doing cultural

critique, like with my hot takes, or if you're doing cultural critique, like with my hot takes, or if you're an artist and you're making art. Like, how would I use semiotics to create art, to create a piece of work, a creative piece of work? Well, here's an example of how I would have used semiotics to write a short story. I have a short story in my first book, The Gospel According to Blind Boy,

and this short story is called Arse Children. And basically what this short story is about, what part one is about, is Michael Collins discovers that he has Holy Mary's immaculate womb in his bowels. And Eamon de Valera has to have sex with Michael Collins to get his bowels pregnant with these arse-children warriors

that will save Ireland from British occupation. It's like an alternative history. So that's the structuralist approach. That's part one of that story. And then part two of that story is, it turns out that that story is a work of fiction, and part two is all about how the internet would react if it had been released.

So that's the post-structuralist approach. That's the death of the author bit. And literally in that story, in the second part, the author of the author bit. And literally in that story, in the second part, the author of that story dies because he's eaten by the readers. The readers consume him, literally eat him. And I used semiotics to kind of formulate that idea by thinking about Irish masculinity. Thinking about Irish masculinity. Thinking about what were the mythologies and constructs of Irish masculinity and heteronormativity that helped to create the myth of 20th century Ireland.

What were the dominant signs and signifiers or ideologies that were present that led to things like the Magdalene laundries, the abuse of power of the Catholic Church, the fact that being gay in Ireland was illegal up until 1993. Well, I looked at Holy Mary, Eamon de valera and michael collins and i would have used semiotics to reverse engineer all of those things break them apart into all their constituent meanings what they meant in terms of irish history culture take all those pieces apart and then put them back together wrong and you put them all back together wrong

and what are you left with? Absurdity. And then through that absurdity you look at Irish masculinity and heteronormativity differently. Michael Collins has got the immaculate womb in his fucking bowels and Eamon de Valera has to get him pregnant

so he can have warrior arse children, so that's an example of how semiotics can be used to to actually create something, to create a piece of work or to put my head into a space where I am creating a piece of work and I'm using my own example there because

I'm speaking from experience, from my own experience, but semioticians and semiotics it's not just used for cultural critique or for making art semiotics is quite important to understanding the world and also creating ways that we communicate And one way that semiotics has been used is, I think it's the field of nuclear semiotics, I think it's called nuclear semiotics, but basically, when nuclear power became a thing,

and I'm not just talking about nuclear weapons, I mean nuclear power plants, when they started to be used in the 20th century to create energy, the thing with nuclear power is that it can create loads of energy but you're left with nuclear waste and the problem with nuclear waste is what do you do with it? And the only real solution we have for nuclear waste is you have to bury it very very deep in the ground because nuclear waste is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years nuclear waste is dangerous for a long long time and i mean

very dangerous so it's buried deep in the ground but around the 1960s and 1970s, when humanity started to bury nuclear waste in the ground, humans had to start thinking about so we're burying tons and tons of this shit deep into the ground. What happens if someone digs it up in 10,000 years?

And what will civilization look like in 10,000 years? And what will civilization look like in 10,000 years? What if society collapses multiple times and in 10,000 years there'll be humans or other creatures on this earth? And they'll be curious because you think if humans now, if we find something buried in the ground, we don't leave it alone, we're curious, we dig it up we call it archaeology we go straight down there and dig it up so the humans in the 1960s were going

fuck so what we need to do here we need to make sure that in 10,000 years if someone finds our nuclear dump and decides to dig it up, we need to find a way to let them know

that this is really, really dangerous and they shouldn't do it. But how do you do that? How do you communicate with someone or something in 10,000 years? Because right now, we can't understand shit from 10,000 years ago.

So who was hired to do this job semioticians semioticians who studied how humans use signs and language to communicate meaning and semioticians were given the very very difficult job of trying to create warning signs for nuclear waste that might be dug up in 10 000 years and how did they create a system of communication that can effectively tell something in 10 000 years don't do this go away they came up with three main solutions two of these solutions kind of make sense the third one is fucking mad and it's one of the most interesting things I've found out recently so first let's look at the the first two solutions they came up with which were more simplistic but still fascinating so someone who was hired was a semiotician called thomas seabook right and he he's a legend in the field of semiotics

and specifically he was interested in the field of biosemiotics biosemiotics is how animals use signs and signifiers to communicate amongst each other and also how humans understand the semiotics of animals. Now that sounds mad, semiotics and animals. But what I mean by that is a wasp. A wasp is black and yellow. We know that wasps are not to be fucked with. The black and yellow bright colourings of a wasp,

they just communicate to us, stay the fuck away. And humans have learned from this. This is why road signs use yellow and black or orange and black. Because that takes from the field of biosemiotics. We intrinsically understand black and yellow together stay the fuck away so important road signs are those colours. Semioticians did that. Snakes, poisonous plants use bright colours, use patterns to warn people away. Some plants and animals that aren't dangerous at all will evolve to adopt the dangerous colours of animals that are dangerous

to operate within a system of communication, signs and language. Sorry to keep harping on about the barefoot accountant, but why is that so jarring to me? Why is it sticking with me? Because you wear your fucking shoes in the office. If you're in an office, you wear shoes. This is a social code that we've agreed upon. We've agreed upon this. So if you're walking around barefoot in the fucking office? I don't know what that means. Unless I speak to the man.

Is it a warning? Cats use semiotics. Specifically related to their relationship with humans. Cats have evolved a way to meow that sounds like a human baby that makes us care for them. Domesticated cats meow into adulthood they're not supposed to. Wild cats don't meow in adulthood. A domesticated cat meows even when it's old because this allows us to care for it. But anywayomas seabrook this semiotician who was interested in biosemiotics how nature uses signs and communication he was hired as a person

to have a think about long term long-term nuclear waste warning messages he was given the task of how do we communicate messages to someone or something in 10 000 years to let them know stay the fuck away so one of the proposals that was put forward and i think they've actually done this in certain nuclear waste dumps i don't know if it was seabrook who came up with this but a team of people who are working in this area of long-term nuclear warning messages and nuclear semiotics so one solution was known as hostile architecture so basically you've got a nuclear waste dump everything's buried miles miles underground so what would be created would be above this nuclear dump you'd get huge stones monoliths again kind of taking inspiration from ancient archaeological sites like

huge stone spikes i mean massive the size of houses so you create a landscape that looks fucking terrifying so even in 10 000 years a human comes across this place with these huge stones that just look sharp or you create an area that you make it impossible for anyone to inhabit. This terrifying forest of stones that looks deliberately made by something intelligent that just gives you the feeling of this isn't good. But would that work in 10,000 years? If a human or another creature, an intelligent creature in 10,000 years comes across these giant stone monoliths, no matter how scary they look

someone's fucking with it someone is going to fuck with it we fuck with everything we dig up Newgrange we want to see the pyramids humans are not going to see something old in the ground and just say better leave it alone

the only exception to this rule is when folklore and mythology is present folklore and mythology is very important to this shit right and i'll give you a prime example and it happens in ireland fairy forts in ireland so all around ireland and in parts of england as well mounds of earth that were once castles or whatever. Whenever, like these are still there. You can go around Ireland today and you will see a mound of earth that was once a fort or was once whatever. And it has remained there for 2,000, 3,000 years and no one has really fucked with it. Why?

Because mythology made that area dangerous. We call them fairy forts. In Ireland, there's fairy forts everywhere. People don't fuck with fairy forts. The fact that they're still there now after possibly a thousand years means people never fucked with fairy forts because a mythology was created around it that basically said this shit is dangerous the fairies built

that mound the fairies built that don't fuck with it bad things will happen that's the only way that humans stay away from something that's very very very old. And fairy thoughts are an example there of how it works. So what Thomas Seabrook came up with was, if we're going to have this hostile architecture, if we're going to have these monoliths that are terrifying, that signify in 10,000 years that something is buried underneath here and it should not be touched, what we need to do is to be touched. What we need to do is to create mythology. He looked at religion. Religion is ideas that can last for thousands of years. So Seabrook suggested, and I believe they're still doing it, to try and construct superstition mythology. It's known as the Atomic Priesthood Project to create a fear and terror and folklore around nuclear waste

that will hopefully last thousands and thousands of years into the future like religion but using the science of semiotics to find the most effective messages that would last and survive through what he called deep time. So hostile architecture was one solution. A second solution is to simply write messages. To have a nuclear waste dump and once you dig beyond a certain point,

there's a large piece of stone with a message written in English or whatever language and then maybe what you might have around it is something similar to the Rosetta stone so you can't guarantee in 10,000 years that English will still be understood like I said society could have collapsed multiple times. We could have gone back into the Dark Ages. Humans might be gone, and there's something else here. We don't fucking know, it's 10,000 years. So, if you're to write a large message in English,

how the fuck does someone understand it? Well, how did we understand the ancient Egyptians? The ancient Egyptians wrote hieroglyphs. How the fuck did people figure out what wrote hieroglyphs. How the fuck did people figure out what these hieroglyphs meant? Well, this artifact was discovered known as the Rosetta Stone. It was discovered in the 1790s.

So archaeologists had been digging up all over Egypt and finding that, okay, here's evidence of this ancient civilization. The Egyptians were, i think they were three thousand four thousand years ago and they're digging up mummies they're like holy fuck these people lived here long ago we we don't really know what they were but they seem pretty advanced and they had a writing system and this writing system is hieroglyphs but we can't read this

writing system and then one day they found but we can't read this writing system. And then one day they found this thing, the Rosetta Stone. And what the Rosetta Stone was, was a large tablet. And on the Rosetta Stone contained three messages. One in ancient Egypt hieroglyphs, one in another language, and one in Greek and because we understood Greek that was used to translate hieroglyphs and the Rosetta Stone is the reason

that humans could understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs so the suggestion is if you're going to put written warning messages in these nuclear dumps to communicate through deep time to someone in 10,000 years who digs it up, you have something that's the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. Using very basic simple semiotics so that anyone reading this could crack a code and understand the English words. words now I don't know fully how that works but what I'd like to do I'm gonna read you one of the messages that's put in a nuclear waste dump that if someone

dug it up in 10,000 years because this message is terrifying but also very beautiful so you imagine 10,000 years in the future you're wandering along and you find something and you go fuck, something's buried underneath here and I don't know what it is. Call everybody, we need to dig, we need to get curious and find out what treasures lie underneath. And then you dig a little bit and you find this message and the message reads, This place is a message and part of a system of messages. Pay attention to it. Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

Nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location. It increases towards a centre. The centre of danger is here, of a particular size and shape and below us. The danger is still present, in your time as it was in ours. The danger is to the body and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. So that's a message written now about nuclear waste that someone might dig up in 10,000 years and I just find it so fucking beautiful and I tell you why I find it beautiful. It reads like what we'd call foundational literature. It sounds like it was written a thousand years ago.

This place is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. It's just so... Foundational literature is like really, really old books or old scripts. So one example would be the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is like 2,000, 3,000 years old.

I could be wrong there, I didn't check it up. Or Beowulf. Beow like 2-3 thousand years old, I could be wrong there I didn't check it up or Beowulf Beowulf is a thousand years old it's an epic Anglo-Saxon poem and that warning message that's written now for someone in 10,000 years it reads like

an early Anglo-Saxon poem it sounds like that. There's a directness and a loneliness to the language that's the exact same. And interestingly, what it reminds me of specifically is there's an Anglo-Saxon poem called Gutlack, right? And this poem is a thousand years old. And basically, here's the crack with the anglo-saxons britain was roman then this so britain was roman 1500 years ago i think rome collapsed britain fell apart went into kind of dark ages Anglo-Saxons who were

tribes of people from like northern Germany started to arrive in Britain 1500 years ago there abouts the Anglo-Saxons weren't particularly advanced as a civilization they were very superstitious and they kind of find their way into England and Rome has collapsed so they see like cities like London and some of them had never seen a city before so they assumed that Rome was or that like London was built by giants so they stayed away from London

and also this gut-like poem that I'm talking about that's a thousand or maybe even a little bit older it's a poem about a priest and this priest an Anglo-Saxon priest in Britain is wandering around the forest and he comes across an ancient mound this is what we'd call a fairy fort. A barrow. Like an old tomb. But it's basically a mound. And here we have someone. A thousand years ago.

Confronted with. An area that was. From people maybe. Two thousand years before him. And he's just fucking terrified. And he sees this mound. And he believes that this mound is. Within it is a dragon guarding gold and gutluck is terrified of it and it's from shit like that too that you get the image of the dragon guarding gold and stuff in in the hobbit because tolkien was a scholar of anglo-saxon

literature but that warning that's written now for 10 000 years in the future it reads and sounds like paranoid anglo-saxon literature of a culture that had come across a more advanced culture from years before that it didn't know anything about to the anglo-saxons finding this mound in the middle of britain and not knowing what it, it might as well have been nuclear waste. They were kind of like, Gotlach was going, I reckon there's a ton of treasure inside there, but it's being guarded by something dangerous. I better stay away. So here's the third solution that semioticians presented as to how do you warn people in 10,000 years about nuclear waste that will kill them that they might dig up this is the most fantastical beautiful and interesting solution

so a semiotician from Italy called Paolo Fabri right he started to look at a constant throughout human history and one constant throughout human history in particular civilization was the presence of cats right now here's the thing with cats and this is what makes cats so special cats never really became domesticated they kind of domesticated themselves cats only lived alongside humans and became interested in humans when we started the farm. We've had domesticated dogs for a long time because dogs were wolves and then they became dogs, which are, dogs aren't real, they're invented by humans. We bred wolves to be tame and to work with us to hunt but when humans stopped

hunting like 15 000 years ago 10 000 years ago and humans discovered farming what happened was then cats started to step into our lives now the reason for this was when humans began to farm we had surplus and as soon as we had surplus, like extra grain and shit, we didn't have to move, we settled down, we created towns and villages, and then civilization begun. But when you have surplus grain, then all these other problems happen. So rats would show up and mice would show up. And you could be trying to store your oats or your barley,

and all these rats and mice would be eating it so then cats just start appearing cats were these wild little animals that lived in in africa that were like fuck this i don't give a shit about these humans but then all of a sudden the cats started to eat the mice and then cats became useful to humans because if you have surplus grain, you keep cats around. But then what starts happening is humans started to really adore and worship cats in a weird way. Like if you look at ancient Egypt, cats are present fucking everywhere in the mythology of ancient Egypt. People were buried with cats. Cats today, even in the digital world today are really really important

like if you think of the anxiety of using social media what we'd refer to as doom scrolling you're on twitter you're on facebook bad news bad news and you keep scrolling and then in the middle a little cat shows up there's these cat accounts. Cats, in their digital form today, exist as a way to relieve online anxiety. If you're getting pissed off with your timeline or the news is bad and you come across a little cat acting the agent, all of a sudden your anxiety is relieved.

You've got this lovely little beautiful cat on your timeline and you can develop parasocial relationships with cats i've had to stop doing it like i'd be following online cats over the years but then i had to stop because they they kept dying so i'd like become fixated with an online cat for like four years and then he dies and break my heart so i had to stop forming parasocial relationships with online cats but cats still even in the digital age, served this important purpose for humanity. They started off killing rats and mice

and now online cats relieve our anxiety of using the internet. So what this Italian fucking... this Italian cunt Paolo Fabri figured out was cats are really important to human civilization and they don't appear to, I don't think they're going to go away. If ever human civilization exists, cats are going to be present. So Fabri suggested, and this is insane and people are seriously considering it,

insane and people are seriously considering it to genetically engineer cats so that they glow in the presence of nuclear waste so basically what we start doing now you genetically engineer a cat to glow and this this sounds mad but that's known as bioluminescence and it exists in nature. There's insects that glow. There's fucking fish that glow. So there's gene therapy people, geneticists. There's geneticists right now trying to figure out how can we make cats glow in the dark in the presence of nuclear waste? And Fabry's theory is we create these cats then you create a mythology around the cats you create this mythology i mean you i could see it

easily happening now with meme culture where we have these walking geiger counters. A Geiger counter is a mechanism that's used to measure radiation. So we have cats that glow in the dark and they survive and breed and continue on 10,000 years into the future. And then when civilization has collapsed or

we have forgotten where the nuclear waste is buried, through mythology and folklore that we create. Or songs or jokes. We know that when a cat is glowing. The area is highly, highly dangerous. In 10,000 years. And that's a real thing.

That's a real thing. That people are seriously considering. For the massive problem that humanity has created for itself and this problem is we're burying incredibly dangerous nuclear waste. How do we warn people in 10,000 years? So, it's a semiotician's job,

it's the job of semiotics to figure out how to communicate through deep time. Alright, job, it's the job of semiotics to figure out how to communicate through deep time alright I don't know what I call that episode of Hot Take, that episode was fucking mad that was the maddest episode I've done in a long time that's one of those episodes that it makes me

sound a bit like I'm having a nervous breakdown because there was so many different areas covered, but I suppose what I'm trying a nervous breakdown because there was so many different areas covered but I suppose what I'm trying to do there is lay out my thought process I went from the semiotics of the fishermen in Russia to thinking about semiotics

to thinking about nuclear war to thinking about nuclear semiotics and I don't know if everything tied in there the barefoot accountant threw it off lads the specter of the barefoot accountant is there at all times

like what the fuck is he doing alright that's all for this week I hope you enjoyed that 74 minutes fuck me I'm going to sign off now but i'll be coming back after a short break with a song from my twitch stream which is a new thing i do so i'm gonna play a little song that i wrote on twitch after this break if you're not interested in that you can turn off the podcast now if you are interested in that

in hearing a bit of music you can stick around dog bless 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 tor 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 Toronto rock.com. So welcome back. So each week at the end of the podcast,

I do this new thing. Every Thursday over fucking lockdown for the past two years, what I've been doing is going onto a website called Twitch, which is a live streaming website. And what I do is I play a video game

called Red Dead Redemption, but I don't just play it. What I do is I have musical equipment with me and I write songs. I write, perform and produce songs Just play it. What I do is I have musical equipment with me. And I write songs. I write, perform and produce songs.

Live to the events of a video game. So I use what happens in the universe of the game. To inspire lyrics and songs that I come up with in the moment. As a way to stay in kind of a continual creative flow but also as just a new way to try and write songs and I call it hyper real song writing because traditionally songs are written in the real world and written about things that are happening in the real world and also songs in the real world take a long time to write but in the video game world a day in a video game could be half an hour in my time so I write songs in the moment to the events of the video game but also with the rapidity of video game

time so it's hyper real songwriting it's also a type of participatory art because people are watching me live on twitch doing it and can comment and get involved in the songwriting process so it's a different way to write songs and i'm kind of doing it as a a fun ongoing art project and i just love doing it i just i log on to twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast every thursday night at about half eight and i just write songs to a video game with people watching and talking and it's so much fun i fucking adore it i look forward to it every week it's wonderful so i do about five songs a stream four of them are shit and usually one of them is something i'm happy with so i edit it down

to about four minutes and then i play it at the end of this podcast. So that's what this is. This song is called Nighttime Man. I wrote it this Thursday on Twitch. My character in the game was wandering around a Victorian city. And the lyrics were inspired by what I saw in the video game. So this is Nighttime Man. And so again, everything you hear here

was literally made up on the spot, recorded, performed, produced on the spot. So forgive the rough edges. I'm in the shop and I'm buying some clothes. I'm in the shop and I'm buying some clothes I'm in the shop and I am buying some clothes There's a man behind the counter and he's selling me a lot of books I went outside the door of his shop, I went outside his door And I saw a man with a newspaper on the floor

Because it's night time, night time, man I'm a night time, night time, man Because it's night time, night time, man I'm a night time, night time man. I'm a night time, night time man. Because it's... Oh, I'm a night time man. Going where the red lights are. Oh, boys.

I'm a night time man. Going where the red lights are. I tell you boys, oh boys. I'm a night time man. Walking around the ground, looking for a flat, oh boys, I'm a night time man. Standing in the road and looking at them lights because it's night time, night time man. I'm a night time man I'm a night time man Night time man Because it's night time

Night time man I'm a night time man Night time man Because it's Thank you. Nighttime, nighttime Because it's nighttime Nighttime, night time man, because it's night time, night time man, I'm a night sign Night sign man But I walk around the place When it is the morning

And you're up on your horse Looking down at me And you took out a gun And gonna pull it on me You're up on your horse Looking down on me And you pulled out a gun And took it out on me and there's a tram on

the road and i am walking past and there's a guy up above and i'm walking past him and there's a horse in the coach and a car over there and there's a tram on the road and oh gonna stare at the graveyard We are staring at the graveyard outside this church Wanna steal at the graveyard We are staring at the graveyard outside this church Because it's night time Night time, man Because it's night time Night time, man

I'm a night time Night time, man Because it's nighttime, I'm a nighttime man I'm a nighttime, nighttime man Because it's nighttime, nighttime man And if it's raining in the town, the alleyway Because I'm a nighttime, nighttime man Looking out the alleyways for the winter rain Can only be with my little friend