The Blindboy Podcast - The tumescent glans of Ronald McDonald

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

I dislodged a marble from the eye of a dalmation and this got me thinking about fast food as an ideological weapon of American foreign policy  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Snart the stonewashed Jarts, you haunty morons. Welcome to the Blind By podcast. Are Jarts still a thing? They seem very pre-pandemic. I haven't seen a set of Jarts in a while. I never wore Jarts. And I can't, I can't see myself. I don't think I'm gonna start now. Especially if it's pre-pandemic fashion.

I don't want to make the full path of wearing pre-pandemic jarts. And no one needs to see my fucking knees. I've got dente ostrich knees. I look like I've been attacked with two hammers. So I'm recording this podcast this week. From my studio. From my studio in Limerick. This is a pre-record. I recorded this last week because technically right now, when's it the 24th of April?

Right now I'm in a hotel room in Glasgow. Well future me is. Me next week is. But you listening to me right now, I can't do this shit. I can't do this shit where I'm playing with time. I'm recording this last week, and you're listening to it now. And me from the past is telling you that right now, Future Me should technically be in a hotel room in Glasgow.

Unless... Unless I died in a jarts related accident. Unless last week after recording this podcast I decided to try and put on a pair of jarts and then fell off a balcony. My ma is listening to this podcast now and she's wondering what jarts are. They're jean shorts, ma. They're denim jeans that have been cut at the bottom so that they become shorts. It's a portmento. The word is a portmento between jeans and shorts. They're jarts. I'm pre-recording this podcast just in case the sound in the Glasgow Hotel room is shit.

I actually rang up the fucking hotel. I rang up the Glasgow Hotel and started asking very specific questions, like, what type of carpet is in the room? Is it a thick carpet? How thick are the curtains? Would you mind going up to the room? Shouting in the room, and I'm gonna listen to see if I can hear your echo. The person at reception started to get very anxious and consider my questions to be strange. And this was my fault because I forgot. I forgot to say the part where I'm like, I'm coming to your hotel next week and I'd like to record a podcast and I'd like to know what the acoustics are like in the hotel room. I'd forgotten that bit and just went straight into, I'm staying in your hotel

next week and I want to know how thick the carpets are and how thick the curtains are. I reckon they thought I was in the IRA. Or if not the IRA. Like why would you ring up a hotel and ask how thick the carpets are? Do they think that there's an Irishman coming with the world's most sensitive feet? Why does he need thick curtains and a thick carpet? What's gonna happen? What's he gonna do? What noises does he plan on making? Will he be doing ghost impressions? Will he be honking? Is there a honking Irishman on the way? So I didn't get any satisfactory answers about the acoustic properties of the hotel

room that I'm gonna be visiting. And hotel rooms in general are not great places to record a podcast. So I'm doing this week's podcast as a pre-recorded podcast which I recorded last week. So this is me from the past talking to you in the future now. I don't have to tell you this at all. I could have just pretended and said I'm in Glasgow right now. That would have been far less complicated. I need to believe me, I could have lied. Could have said I'm in my hotel room in Glasgow now, with its fantastic acoustic properties and its thick carpet and thick curtains. Glasgow doesn't seem like the right place to test out jarts.

If I was gonna test out jarts. Because that's what you do, isn't it? If you're trying out new clothes. You don't try out new clothes in your hometown. I'm not going to try out, I'm not going to experiment with jarts in Limerick. But I don't think Glasgow is the right place. Glasgow just seems like a big Limerick. If I was going to experiment with jarts, I might wear them in Cambridge. I have a gig in Cambridge, I could try jarts in Cambridge. London of course, you get away with jarts in London. You don't want to get a nickname. You don't want to get a nickname. That's

why one wrong move in Limerick and you're stuck with a nickname. I told you about like three years ago I came back from the shop. Came back from the supermarket. Forgot to bring a disposable shopping bag. I bought an Old El Paso taco kit, walked home with the Old El Paso taco kit under my arm, and then a group of teenagers called me Old El Paso for a full summer. So if I was to experiment with Jarts in Limerick, they'd go look at him with his Jarts and his ostrich knees. The Jostridge. That'd be my nickname. The Jostridge. Did you know he's blind by? Oh, the Jostridge. Fuck off. Yeah, he's blind by. Not the Jostridge. So if I was to try out jarts, it'd happen in my UK tour. No castle doesn't seem like

a safe space for me to wear jarts or to try them out. And I definitely can't do it in Glasgow now because if I walk into the Glasgow Hotel wearing jarts, they'll say, there's the Irishman, there's that Irishman who rang up last week asking if he could hunk like a goose in the hotel room. Which one, the man over there in the jarts, with the knees like an ostrich? Well then surely he wants to make the noise of an ostrich up in his hotel room. They wouldn't say that because no one knows what an ostrich sounds like. One of my favourite videos to watch is ostrich related. There used to be this TV chef, this English TV chef called Keith Floyd. He used to be on TV when I was a child. Now Keith Floyd, he was before fucking Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, any of them.

Actually he was a real pioneer as TV chef, Skaw. Keith Floyd used to travel the world cooking, usually out in the open, and he'd travel the world as a TV chef with a tiny crew, just like him and a cameraman and a sound man and that's it, but he used to get shitfaced He'd be pissed drunk half the time like openly He'd be cooking and every single recipe would need brandy or wine and he'd be chugging out of the bottle Radd-hearthed on screen and I make TV so I can I can tell when I'm watching TV make TV so I can I can tell when I'm watching TV when unplanned things happen and one of my favorite clips is Keith Floyd he's cooking in Africa I think it is and he's pissed and he tries to make an omelette out of an ostrich egg. So he's there in like the African plains, rat-arsed, cooking this gigantic ostrich egg

omelette with an ostrich feather in his cap. Like terminally British behaviour. Fucking colonial tomfoolery. No respect whatsoever. In the middle of the fucking where ostriches live, cooking an ostrich egg with an ostrich feather in his cap. And as he's cooking, this big herd of ostriches shows up and they're really pissed off with this fucking, this drunk English man.

Cooking an ostrich egg with an ostrich feather in his hat, they get real pissed off. And the ostriches start pecking at him. And he's like, fuck that ostriches, I'm in the middle of a cooking show, I'm not gonna be bullied by ye. But the ostriches gang up on him and they start pecking at his head and pecking at him and trying to eat the omelette. And eventually Keith Floyd, rat-arsed, has to give up and the ostriches just take over. And they eat all his ingredients and they attack all the camera crew. It's like 1989. It shouldn't have ended up on TV but they left it in.

I saw that on TV when I was a child, when I was a tiny little child. And then bizarrely, the prodigy have a song called Out of Space from 1992. And if you look at the music video for Out of Space, there's one or two tiny clips of ostriches, but those ostrich clips are taken from that footage where Keith Floyd was attacked by the ostriches. So this happens every tour. Every tour. I don't get nervous about the gigs. I don't get nervous about the travel. I get nervous about the predictability of the hotels. Last time I was anxious about... Trumescent English breakfast sausages. English sausages are more firm than Irish sausages, so I have to mentally prepare myself

for the snap of sausage skin at the hotel buffet, and now I'm creating a fantasy scenario where my kneecaps are being judged by hotel staff because I've chosen to wear jarts none of which is going to happen. I'm not going to Spain, I'm going to Glasgow. It's not, it's going to be colder. It's the middle of April. I'm not going to be wearing jarts. It's not going to happen. So after this tour of England, Scotland and Wales is done tour of England, Scotland and Wales is done. I'm actually going back at the end of May to do a thing called the Hay Festival which is in the Brecon Beacons, a Welsh mountain range that I've always wanted to visit because it's called the Brecon Beacons, which I strongly wager without even looking it up. I bet you the Brecon Beacons has a completely

different name in Welsh that means something, but then the English anglicised it and just decided phonetically it's called Brecon Beacons. Because it doesn't make sense. I wouldn't call a mountain a beacon if I saw it. There's a strong waft of anglicisation of it, which we're well familiar with in Ireland, where the English would just make up names for places that mean nothing, rather than learn the original Irish word, which probably has a meaning and a mythology and a story that goes back a few thousand years.

So I'm going to be at the Hay Festival, and the Hay Festival is, it's a literary festival. And it's like an invite only literary festival. They have to invite you to this Hay Festival, carry on. And I'm very, you know I don't like external praise and I'm very cautious about what amount of external praise I take on, what I listen to, and what I don't listen to. But I am, I'm happy to be invited to the Hay Festival because it represents the accomplishment of a goal that I set out to do.

You know for the past two years I was writing my collection of short stories, Topographia Hibernica, my first goal obviously was to enjoy the process of writing the book, to truly involve myself in the process and to pay respect to each part of the process, because if you do that then the work tends to be good. Rather than trying to write a good book or a bad book, I'm gonna fully involve myself in the process of writing in a very meditative and playful way, but a desired outcome of writing that book was I really wanted it to be taken seriously as writing so it's not seen as

novelty work It's not seen as a funny book by a fellow with a bag in his head or a Christmas stocking filler. I wanted my peers, other writers, to just recognize the book as, oh, this is an actual piece of writing. This is a living, breathing piece of work.

It's clear from this book that the person who wrote it really cares about every bit of it. So being invited to the Hay Festival signifies that. So I'm very pleased to be invited to the Hay Festival with other Irish writers as a fucking proper Irish writer. But as part of being invited to the Hay Festival I had to do a little bit of literary press. So one thing I was asked to do was write a little piece for The Guardian about a book that has potential to create change.

So I did that and I wrote about the writing of Liam O'Flaherty. And then the other piece of press I was asked to do was for the Times Literary Supplement and I was asked to write about a memorable sporting event, either one that I witnessed or something I took part in. Now that was a curveball. That was really difficult. I don't know anything about sports. I've got no interest in sports. I don't think about sports. Entire sporting events can be happening all around me and I don't even notice them. Limerick could be playing in the All-Ireland final and I've such little interest that I can nearly ignore it. I do not possess the gift of understanding sports. So when this request came in,

can you write something about a sporting memory? My initial reaction was to refuse the piece, to give in to the initial anxiety and turn the job down. Now, people are always asking me on this podcast, what advice do I have for people who would like to become artists? And something I always say is, have an awareness, an emotional awareness about how you respond to opportunity.

Sometimes we turn down opportunities because anxiety and self-doubt tells us we're not good enough. The fear of failing. When someone says to me, write about a sporting memory, my initial reaction is fear. I don't know anything about sports. I know so little about sports that whatever I try to write would be stupid. I'm better off not doing this. I'm frightened of this. I'm scared of failing at this task. I better say no. A skill that I've developed over the years, which has really stood to me, I always critically examine my emotions

when I find myself saying no to an opportunity. I ask myself, why am I saying no? Generally there's only one good reason for me to say no to an opportunity. A good reason for me to say no is I don't have enough time to deliver the best piece of work. So when that's the situation, I'll say no to something and I'll be okay with it. But if I feel like saying no because I'm frightened of failing and the thought of saying no and turning down a job gives me a little weird feeling of comfort, whenever that comes up I challenge it and I say hold on a second, where's the evidence that I'm gonna fail? You've just been offered an opportunity to do a piece of writing in the Times literary supplement. Hundreds of thousands of people might be introduced

to your work. There's lots of writers who dream of that opportunity. Show some respect for the opportunity. Don't let anxiety win. And in my experience, nearly 20 years at this point, the artists who I see that are like earning a living, that have careers that are lasting, they tend to have a very healthy proactive attitude towards opportunities. When opportunities arrive, they fucking take them and they risk failing. Whereas the artists who at one point were doing something and now they're not around anymore, they tend not to jump at opportunities. Or they have a lot of blame going on or a lot of excuses. They turn stuff down or they simply don't show up as a type of self-sabotage.

And it's something I notice, having been doing this for 20 years in writing, TV, and the music industry. And the comedy industry. This time 10 years ago, I was making comedy shows for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Often the best answer to opportunity is, fuck it. What's the worst that can happen? Let's try. And if I fail, I fail. And when you say no, it's like, I'm not scared of this job, but I can confidently assess that I can't give it my best, so I'll sit this one out. So I said yes, yes, I'm gonna write about a sporting memory. Even though I know

fuck all about sport, I've never really played sports, and I don't give a shit about sports, I'm gonna figure something out. And also I recognise the conflict of that. Anytime you have conflict, there's great opportunity for creativity. And the conflict is, I don't have any sporting memories, and now I've just agreed to write 500 words about a sporting memory. So I began the process of trawling through my childhood memories to think back about sports and its slim pickings. Like I didn't even do PE. I was the kid in school who intentionally forgot his PE.E. gear

so that I could just sit on the sidelines watching. When any of my friends were playing soccer in a field, I was sitting by myself under a tree daydreaming. When I got older, if any of my friends went to the pub to see a match, I'm at home. The one thing that did come up was a memory of my dad when I was maybe eight years of age.

My dad used to talk to me about a game called Bowls which he used to play when he was a young fella in rural West Cork. Bowls is called Balls but my dad pronounced it Bowls and it's a very strange Irish game where you get a lead ball or a big heavy metal ball and you throw it as far as you can down a country road and down

in West Cork this is serious business people take bets on this sport of bowls you're talking about throwing a metal ball down a country road over a distance of miles. And I think the skill is, how can you throw this metal ball down the road and reach the end point in the least amount of throws? That's the skill. Now, I'd never seen bowls being played, but I adored my dad's descriptions of it, the violence of it. You're talking about strong people throwing a very heavy metal ball.

He said people would line the road while a metal ball thudded down, almost like a Spanish running of the bulls. Except it's a small metal ball. And my dad said he'd seen people have their shins broken, spectators with their shin bones splintered from a lead ball smashing into it, and all the people gathering round with wads of cash, betting on who's gonna throw this steel ball over miles of road in the least amount of throws.

And the image that really impacted me was when my dad told me about the history of this game Bowls. He told me that when Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland in the 1600s, Cromwell fired so many cannonballs all around Ireland, that people would pluck cannonballs from the brains of the dead and then invent a game where they throw the cannonball down a road as an act of defiance against Cromwell's murder with cannons. Now I looked that up and it's half true. Bowls isn't an Irish game,

but it came to Ireland during the Williamite Wars of the 1600s. Most likely Protestant soldiers from the Lowlands of Scotland, they used to use their little metal cannonballs. Because you think of a cannonball as being the size of a football, but a lot of cannonballs are about the size of a golf ball or a tennis ball. So most likely in the 1600s during the Williamite Wars, Lowland Scott soldiers used to play a game of balls with their cannonballs. So my dad used to be saying to me when I was eight years of age,

Oh I'll take you to West Cork with the windy boharine roads. I'll take you to West Cork and I'll show you how to throw a bowl. You could never do it here, you couldn't do it here in Limerick City. You'd smash someone's car, you'd break something, but in West Cork, or it's nothing but countryside, you can roll these heavy steel balls down the road and I'll show you how to do it someday. And I think it was the fact that he was describing it to me and wasn't showing me anything. The game of bowls had to live in my imagination. Shins being split open, cannonballs plucked from brains, the thud of metal, careering down a boharine with the countryside all around. It really stuck with me. And it was the only time I felt an

urge or an inspiration to want to participate in a sport of any kind. And I kept thinking about bowls, but I didn't have a metal ball, and I didn't have country roads. But what I did have were little glass marbles. So I went out onto the road in front of my house, eight or nine years of age, and just started throwing a marble down the road, trying not to hit cars, trying to get a dead straight down the centre, trying to see, can I get this glass marble to the end of the road, in the least amount of throws. And it was just me by myself doing it. Then my neighbour's dog, Jeff, came out.

Jeff started to get involved. Now I've spoken to you about Jeff before. Jeff the dog. He wasn't my dog, he was a neighbour's dog. But I'd consider him a friend. In my mind, when I think back of childhood friends, Jeff is there, Jeff is up there. Jeff the dog. He was this lanky, German, pintor, Dalmatian, weird, mongrel. And there was something wrong with him mentally. Jeff the dog was perpetually in a state of sexual excitement. I was eight, so I didn't really understand it.

My ma used to say, oh, Jeff is forever taking out the lipstick. Referring to his shiny pink dog's cock, Jeff had the lipstick out all the time. I mentioned this before on a podcast from a couple of years back, but the first time I mentioned this before on a podcast from a couple of years back, but the first time I ever saw

semen. It was when Jeff the dog had mounted my other friend who was eight or nine years of age and ejaculated all over his back. We didn't know what it was. So anyway, I'm playing bowls with a marble out in the road and I'm throwing it down the road. And Jeff the dog is getting involved. And it starts off with Jeff the dog. Kind of fucking my shit up. I'm trying to throw the marble down the road, and then Jeff intercepts it, puts it into his mouth, runs away with the marble, now I have to chase him to get the marble back. But eventually, after about an hour,

Jeff the dog becomes a bit more helpful. He's not intercepting the marble. He's waiting until the marble gets to the very end of the road. Putting it into his mouth and now bringing it back to me. So now I've got a new game of fucking bowls altogether, and Jeff the dog is my partner, he's loving it and he's understanding the rules. So now I'm getting up early every morning to go out onto the road and roll this marble down to the very end. And Jeff the dog is chasing it, bringing it back. And this is

it. I'm playing fucking sports. This is sports. It's a game. I'm rolling a ball. There's a purpose to it. I'm trying to get it to the end of the road and the least amount of rolls Jeff understands. It was the height of summer and it was very hot and One visual image that I have Is like I said Jeff was Jeff Jeff had the lipstick out all the time. So Jeff was always on a boner and He used to leak. Fluid would drip from the pink of his Mickey and when I'd be throwing the marble down the road he'd be leaving zigzag trails of dog pre-cum on the tarmac and the neighbors would be out watching. But this look of disgust

on their face as Jeff comes back with the marble in his slobbery mouth delivering it into my hand. And now I know what they're thinking. I hope there's no dog come on that marble. So we keep at it. I say for about an entire week, I was just playing with Jeff the dog every day, throwing this marble up and down the road. And then one morning, I throw the marble. Jeff goes to run after it. I throw it really hard and it bounces off a curb. And the marble hits Jeff in the face and he whimpers. And when I go over close to Jeff the dog he's acting kind of strange. He's quiet and still and his paw is he's trying to like rub his nose with his paw and then

when I get closer I see that the marble, the little small marble that I was using to play this game had lodged perfectly in Jeff the dog's left eye. He's trying to get it out with his paw but he can't because his paws can't reach up to his eye, they're just at his nose. I'm kind of horrified and taken aback in shock because I can't believe that a marble can lodge into an eyeball. It didn't make sense. It shouldn't fit in there. How did this happen? I get incredibly anxious.

I feel guilty. I'm frightened. I'm eight years of age. I think that I've done this to poor Jeff. I think that he's gonna die. A year previous to this, I had witnessed a Jack Russell Terrier receive a very severe eye injury after he was hit by a car and then had to have the eye removed and that was a one-eyed Jack Russell Terrier that walked around the roads. I was way too young for that, it was very overwhelming. So that's coming back to me now as I look to Jeff. I'm thinking Jeff's gonna lose his eye like that other dog. I start to imagine how horrible it would be and how painful it would be for me if I had a glass, a glass marble lodged into my eye

beside my eyeball. Jeff's after taking in the lipstick so he's not even on a boner so this is serious business. And then this sudden feeling of responsibility comes over me. There's no adults around, it's just me and Jeff. Jeff is in pain, he's whimpering. And I just get this sense of, if I don't help him get this marble out of his eyeball, then nothing can be done. So I got down onto my hands and knees then nothing can be done. So I got down onto my hands and knees and put my hand close up to Jeff's cheek. And when you're a child as well, your parents say to you,

no matter how friendly a dog is, doesn't matter how much you think you know a dog, never approach a dog who's in pain. If a dog is in pain, they'll bite you, they'll attack you. And I remember thinking this and being frightened, but the feeling of responsibility was stronger than that anxiety. And I reached my hand real slowly towards Jeff's face, and he let me do it. And I pressed my thumbs in against his cheek, likeaging him and then the marble popped out and clanked onto the tarmac and there was no blood, there was no injury.

Jeff just got back up with his big stupid head and wagged his tail looking at me to start playing the game again as if he didn't just have a marble lodged into his fucking eyeball. So that's the closest thing I have to a sporting memory. That's a sporting memory, that's what that is. And I didn't play marbles again. Now I was very young when all that happened and my memory of the whole incident is quite vague, I must have been quite anxious about the whole thing, about the procedure of having to push a glass marble from a dog's eyeball. The reason I reckon I was very shaken by the incident is because later that day, I went to McDonald's for the first time in my life and my dad brought me. I got a happy meal

I saw drawings of Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar's McDonald's had only been in Limerick like three years at that point and my friends had gone there and I hadn't and I wanted to go to Fucking McDonald's and my dad brought me to McDonald's that day. My father hated brought me to McDonald's that day. My father hated McDonald's. He hated Ronald McDonald. My dad hated America. He hated American capitalism. He was a union organizer and he considered McDonald's to be a totem of American cultural imperialism. My dad considered McDonald's to be a sign of downfall. We're gonna turn into little America, he said. This is the early downfall. We're gonna turn into little America, he said. This is the early 90s.

We're gonna turn into little America. And being a union organizer in the early 90s, he's just watched Reagan and Thatcher completely upend labor conditions. So when he said he hated McDonald's, what he would have meant by that was unions are going to disappear, full-time jobs are going to disappear,

workers' rights are going to be eroded, pensions will be gone, healthcare will be gone. Workers are going to be fucked in this country, just like in America. And McDonald's is the sign that this is going to happen. And my dad banged that drum up until he died. Like throughout my childhood,

if I brought McDonald's home, if I said that I was at McDonald's, it was followed by my dad going on a rant about American cultural imperialism. So if he brought me to McDonald's for the first time on the same day that I pushed a marble out of a dog's eye, that meant he felt guilty and I was very distressed. Probably my ma killed him for telling me stories about bowls and telling me stories about plucking

cannonballs from the brains of the dead. He probably felt responsible for the state of shock I would have been in, because him taking me to McDonald's for the first time, that tells me that. If my dad was getting me chips, he'd taken me to a place called Luigi's. A regular limerick chip shop run by an Italian family, been around for years, it's still there. If I wanted McDonald's, my dad said, we're going to Luigi's. McDonald's aren't even real chips. That was the line.

McDonald's chips are made from powdered potatoes. It's not real spuds. We're going to Luigi's. That's where they have real spuds, real chips. We're not going to fucking McDonald's. So I must have been in a bad way for him to cave in and go fuck it. I'm taking him for a happy meal.

I'm taking him to suckle at the capitalist teeth of Ronald McDonald. But you know what, he was right. He was 100% right. McDonald's is a totem of American cultural imperialism. McDonald's is a weapon of war, and I'm going to explore that in the second part of the podcast. But first, let's have a little ocarina pause. I'm gonna play a little South American instrument here that's shaped like a wooden frog. This instrument is supposed to sound like a frog croaking. So I'm gonna play this instrument and you're gonna hear an advert for something. Hopefully not McDonald's, I don't think they advertise on this podcast.

So here's the wooden frog paws. (*chirping*) From the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, a new hero arrives. I am ready. Is there anyone stronger? No. Tougher? No.

Funnier? I do not make jokes, I make warriors. Knuckles, now streaming only on Paramount+. Yes! On May 10th, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is coming to IMAX and theaters everywhere. What a wonderful day! This summer, one movie event will reign.

It is our time. Apes hunt humans. That is wrong. Bend for your king. Never. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Only in theaters May 10. Tickets on sale now. That was the wooden frog paws.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. I adore making this podcast. That's why I don't miss an episode even when I'm incredibly busy. I love having the opportunity to write and tell you a story each week. And if you're a regular listener, if this podcast brings you marth or merriment or distraction, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast because it's my full-time job.

It's how I earn a living, it's my full-time job. It's how I earn a living, it's how I pay for my office, how I pay my rent. This podcast is possible because of patrons. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month, that's it. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward

slash the Blind By podcast. And if you are signing up to Patreon, make sure you sign up as a paid member and not a free member. There's this free member option that's there now. The free membership, it just benefits Patreon. It's a way for them to get your data. It doesn't provide any financial support for this podcast and also there's no point because I don't post anything on Patreon. I try and keep my Patreon page just as a place where people can pay me if they feel like it, but I don't put content on there that people can only access if they pay. I don't want to do that. I'd like everyone to get the exact same podcast, whether they pay or not.

And also by having this podcast as being listener funded, it means I've got full creative control. I get to show up each week and make something that I'm legitimately passionate about. As opposed to advertisers sponsoring the podcast directly and having a say in the content. That's what has television and radio fucked. That's why TV and radio is shit. So gigs. I'm in the middle of my tour. This Friday the 26th I'm in Nottingham. Saturday the 27th I'm in Cardiff at the Wales Millennium Centre. Come along, there's tickets left for that. Come along to that. I'm going to be at the Wales Millennium Centre. Come along, there's tickets left for that. Come along to that. I'm gonna be chatting with the magnificent Charlotte Church.

Then on Sunday I'm in Brighton, then Cambridge, Bristol, and then finally on Monday the 1st of May, the Hammersmith Apollo in London. There are some tickets left for that. Then a relatively quiet summer. 31st of May, I'm in the Pavilion in Dunleary, that's a small gig. 18th of June, I'm in Vicar Street in Dublin, come along to that.

And then July, set theatre in Kilkenny, on the 18th, I'm doing two little small gigs there. So when I was thinking back of that story about Jeff the dog and the bowls and unlodging the marble from his eyeball, it got me curious about my dad's hatred for McDonald's. His belief that McDonald's wasn't just a restaurant, that its presence in Ireland in the early 90s, that its presence was a symbol that Ireland was turning in a certain economic direction, a more American model. And I don't think he was being paranoid because McDonald's is actually inextricably linked with the threat of nuclear war.

I explored some of these themes a couple of weeks ago on a bonus podcast about the atomic age in America, the period after World War II, specifically from about 1946, which was the year after America dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. From about 1946, up until the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, 46 to 62, are referred to as the Atomic Age. America was drunk on power. America had ended World War II. America had demonstrated the terrifying power of nuclear energy and everything in culture became atomic and nuclear. Las Vegas was called Atomic City. Tourists would visit Las Vegas to witness nuclear bombs being tested.

The aesthetics. America's late 40s, 1950s aesthetics, especially in design, felt very atomic. Think of like cartoons like the Jetsons. There was a space age atomic feel to everything. If you've ever played a video game called Fallout, which I think they're making into a TV series now, Fallout parodies the 1950s American atomic age. America was experiencing a massive economic boom in the 1950s. America didn't have to rebuild itself like Europe did. America hadn't been bombed to bits after World War II. In the 50s America was booming and this is where you get the phrase baby boomers. Loads of babies were born right after World War II, they were the baby boomers. There were lots of jobs in America.

Manufacturing jobs. Cities were expanding rapidly into suburbs. And American cities, particularly on the west coast, started to be built around cars, traveling in your car and something really interesting began to happen with architecture because of this. So in the 1950s we didn't have a visually saturated culture like we do right now. People had radios in the 50s, people had televisions in the 50s, people read magazines, print and TV was still in black and white.

Advertising existed on TV, radio, magazines. Advertising was a thing, but it wasn't as completely unavoidable and as ubiquitous as it is today. So in the 1950s in America, if you owned like a restaurant or a cafe or a business, you couldn't just rely upon radio ads or an advert in a magazine to get customers. Your business literally had to physically stand out on the side of the road. So you have this new culture where people are in cars driving to and fro work and going into the suburbs. So if you have a restaurant,

your restaurant or your cafe or your business, it needs to distract the person as they're driving past. And this led to a style of 1950s American architecture called googie. Now googie's hard to describe, but when you see it, you fucking know it. Because googie is the feeling of America. The sign at the front of fucking Las Vegas, welcome to fabulousness, Las Vegas.

That's googie. The Jetsons, the look and feel of that, that's kinda googie. The Seattle Space Needle, that's googie architecture. The type of cafes and locations that Quentin Tarantino fetishizes in the likes of Reservoir Dogs has a bit of it, it's all over Pulp Fiction. The diners that Tarantino chooses, that's gogy. When you think of a big, bright, neon, huge American diner. That's Gougi. It was a style of architecture that screamed for attention. It felt space-age. There'd be a lot of dramatic shapes, futuristic looking,

big neon lights, and a central tenet of Gougi architecture are very large, curved shapes. And the curved shapes within Gougui architecture, that comes from the Atomic Age. If you look at a drawing of an atom with the nucleus and the protons spinning around it, quite a ubiquitous image in the 1950s, if you think of that image, that's where the curves of Gougui architecture come from. It's Atomic Edge, 1950s American architecture that's designed to grab the attention

of a person who's driving past. It's hard to describe, but once you see Googie, you'll know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about because it lives in your head as a feeling of quintessential West Coast America. It's the thing, it's the thing I want to see if I was to go to America as a tourist. But interestingly, one example of Googie architecture is the first ever McDonald's restaurant that was opened in 1953 in Downey in California, right? So when the first McDonald's opened, it wasn't a

chain store, it was just one restaurant that sold hamburgers, like a thousand other restaurants in California that are trying to sell hamburgers to people who are driving from work to their home in the suburbs. And the first ever McDonald's restaurant wanted to get the attention of these drivers when they're driving past. So it incorporated gogi architecture. The first ever McDonald's restaurant, which is still there in fucking Downey California, the building literally had big giant yellow neon arches. The literal yellow McDonald's arches were initially

on a building and they were designed after the curvature of the atom. Because it's gogy, the McDonald's golden arches are based on the atomic bomb. The actual design represents America dropping atomic bombs on Japan, ending World War II, and becoming a superpower ruling the world. And those same golden arches that we see on the side of our McDonald's bag or the side of a fucking Big Mac,

those same golden arches now that are part of the logo, those golden arches come from the golden arches that were once on the building. So the McDonald's M represents a nuclear bomb. But if we look at the golden arches of McDonald's critically, it's not just the logo of a fast-food restaurant. McDonald's means so much more than that. McDonald's is the symbol of American cultural imperialism. America is a colonial empire. Just like the British Empire before it, America is a colonial empire.

Whereas the British Empire was very explicit with their intention. Rule Britannia. We're going to take your country over. We're going to replace the flag of your country with this Union Jack. We're going to change your language. We're going to be very explicit about what we're doing here. We rule.

We own this place. America's a lot more sneakier than that in how it denotes its empire. America doesn't fly the American flag within its sphere of influence. It plants a fucking McDonald's. If you're in a country that has a McDonald's, you are within the Western sphere of influence, which is controlled by America. And this isn't some lunatic hot take by me, or that I took from my dad. There's an established economic theory called McDonald's Peace Theory, which states that no two countries that have a McDonald's will go to war against each other. Like I remember when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

I remember watching that on the news, watching the propaganda in real time. When America invaded Iraq and created the coalition of the willing, the countries that were willing to invade Iraq, like France were like, fuck that America, this is an illegal war, you can't just invade Iraq. What did America do? They changed the name of fries from French fries to freedom fries and when I watched US bases being set up in Afghanistan and

being set up in Iraq on the nose, McDonald's would open up in these bases in these US military bases and it was shown on television as this puff piece. You get this feeling of safety, this sense that, oh no, America's not invading Iraq and killing people. No, they're bringing these military bases that have McDonald's. They're bringing Happy Meals. How could that be bad? What's communicated there is the eagle has landed. Democracy has arrived.

Western values has arrived. Efficiency. Fast food. Comfort. Ronald McDonald smiles on children's faces. That's the feeling that's communicated. To us, American invasion co-ops the branding of McDonald's. They go hand in hand. Much more effective and far less

vulgar than planting the flag of your nation. You don't have to plant an American flag, you plant the fucking golden arches. When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, this represented the end of the Cold War. The Cold War was... like World War III that never happened. There were two superpowers, America and the Soviet Union. Capitalism versus communism. Two nuclear superpowers, that if they did go to war, the world would end in Armageddon, in nuclear Armageddon.

So when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, this represented the end of the Cold War, the end of the Soviet Union, communism lost. What happens two months later, two months later, the first ever McDonald's is opened in Russia. This was major news. This was huge. This, the feeling of that, represented the fall of communism. You didn't need to plant an American flag in Russia. No one had to say they'd won a war. There's a fucking McDonald's in Moscow. A McDonald's, my god. The golden arches are in Moscow. The golden arches which I can demonstrate with evidence are

designed after the atomic structure. Once you see those golden arches in Moscow, it communicates the Soviet Union has lost. We won. We didn't need to drop an atomic bomb. We just needed to drop two golden arches that are designed after an atomic bomb. McDonald's means... You can't be nuclear bombed by America. That's what McDonald's means. You can't be nuclear bombed by America. What happened when Russia invaded Ukraine?

Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February, 2022. What happens? Within two fucking months, McDonald's pull 800 restaurants from Russia. There's no McDonald's in Russia anymore. The McDonald's went in in 1992 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall and then as soon as Russia invade Ukraine, McDonald's is gone. All the restaurants are pulled out. It was all over the news. We saw it. Why is this big news? Why is it important? What does that mean? What it communicates to us, what we feel? You take the Golden Arches away from Russia and really what it means

is Russia can now be nuclear bombed. There is now a threat of nuclear war with Russia. That's what the removal of the golden arches means. Lots of companies pulled out of Russia when they invaded Ukraine, fucking loads of them. But McDonald's was the one that stung. Like, Putin was worried about the removal of the golden arches from Russia and what that would say to his own citizens.

So, Putin got straight in and said, we can't let the fucking golden arches fall. So when McDonald's pulled out in 2022, Russia immediately invented a new Russian McDonald's in the same restaurants. They got the fucking McDonald's golden arches, the M, and they flipped it on its side. And McDonald's tried to sue them.

But Russia couldn't let the Golden Arches leave the country. They have to keep them in some way, flip it on its side. And why? Because the McDonald's logo, it's not a fast food restaurant. It's a flag of American cultural imperialism. It means democracy, safety, stability. And even though the Russians were like, fuck America, fuck NATO, they were fearful

of the psychological ramifications on their own population of removing the golden arches and the feeling of safety that it communicates. But the world is wising up to this and you can see this recently with Israel. So when Israel declared war on the people of Gaza, McDonald's in Israel started giving free meals to the Israeli army. And this led to massive boycotts of McDonald's, mostly in Muslim majority countries that have a lot of money. So I'm talking Saudi Arabia, Dubai Indonesia, Malaysia These are countries that have McDonald's so when the Golden Arches are present in those countries

The people understand that to mean it's effectively an American flag. If we have a McDonald's Then we are in the good books with the Yanks. They're not going to nuclear bomb us. They might warn us first. But the boycott of McDonald's in those Muslim majority countries, it wasn't just, let's boycott McDonald's specifically because McDonald's in Israel is giving free meals to the IDF. It was more than that. It was Muslim majority countries going, we reject the invasion of Gaza. We reject the American support of this.

We reject America and what America is funding and the debt that America is funding. And it fucking worked, because a couple of weeks ago, McDonald's Corporation is purchasing all 225 Israeli franchises of McDonald's restaurants in Israel and McDonald's had to release a statement saying we are dismayed by the disinformation and inaccurate reports regarding our position in response to the conflict in the Middle East.

McDonald's Corporation is not funding or supporting any governments involved in this conflict. And what you see there is McDonald's basically saying, can we just go back to selling chips and burgers please? It's McDonald's corporations, like, on the one hand, benefiting massively from American cultural imperialism. Benefiting massively from being the American flag, the golden archers that get planted in a country to let the world know that this country is safe. It's McDonald's going, I don't like this anymore. I don't like that Indonesia and Malaysia are costing us billions because they're boycotting

our brand. Can't we just go back to selling them burgers, please? And fuck this, Eagle has landed. Shit. And it's like, you can't. You can't. The golden arches, they're designed after the atomic bomb. McDonald's is the flag of American cultural imperialism. And my dad was right. My dad was right. He was on the ball. He wasn't being a lunatic, killjoy, an eccentric. He took me to McDonald's when I was eight. He got

me my happy meal. He didn't have a problem with burgers or chips. He didn't have a problem with fucking Ronald McDonald. What he had a problem with is what McDonald's in Limerick represented. It represented the opposite of everything he was fighting for. As a union man, he was fighting for pensions, secure contracts, the rights of workers to not be exploited by their employers, the right to collective

bargaining, for workers to have power even though they don't own the company. For a company to be frightened of its workers if they all decide to get together and say, we want better treatment. That's what my dad fought for. And when McDonald's arrived, he saw that as the starting point of the erosion of those types of rights. And he was correct. That's what did happen. Like my family home, my dad got a loan from the council with no interest on it.

He didn't even go to a bank. The council were like, we want people to have houses so we're giving out loans to people so they can buy a house and own it and we don't want interest because we think it's a good idea for people to have access to affordable housing. And now look what we've got. Fucking McDonald's landlords. There's people in this country and their apartments are owned by investment funds and they're renting from a corporation. There's corporations who are landlords who are trying to find loopholes in the law so that when you rent property you're not legally considered a tenant. The complete erosion of regulation and rights in how we work or how we live because of neoliberal

economic policies. And that's what McDonald's represented to my dad. That's what McDonald's in Limerick represented to my dad. This is the beginning of that. That's what's going to happen. And he was right. That's all we have time for this week. That was a mad podcast. That was a mad podcast. That all happened because I had to ask myself, do I have any sporting memories? The conflict of that led me down a rabbit hole story of playing bowls, getting a marble stuck in a dog's eye, and deconstructing the semiotics of the Golden Arches. Alright, I'll catch you next week. I don't know what I'll catch you next week with. Because, like I said, this one, I'm pre-recording it in Limerick.

But next week's podcast, I'm really gonna have to be in the trenches for that. I'm gonna have to record next week's podcast in a hotel. There's no way around it. I'm going to be on tour. And if the sound isn't right, if it's too echoey and I can't deliver a podcast hug, then that means me crawling into a fucking continental quilt in a bed and trying to record the podcast in a bed underneath a quilt. That's not pleasant. That's not enjoyable. So hopefully, hopefully the hotel room will have decent acoustics, the carpets will be thick, the curtains will be thick, and I can deliver an effective podcast hug.

Fingers crossed. Guarantee you, my ma is listening to this, my ma is listening to this and she's going through her head thinking of what different saint she can say a prayer to that would grant me a hotel that has thick carpets and thick curtains she's thinking which which saint is the best one for that alright I'll catch you next week wink at a swan genuflect to a worm enjoy the wonderful beautiful the wonderful beautiful spring weather that fucking late April weather, get stuck into that. Start smelling it, start smelling buds. I'm warriors. Knuckles, now streaming only on Paramount+. Yes! You Thank you.