Yesterday I was standing on the moorland in York, singing a folk song about a witch, playing my accordion to rouse evil spirits, and asking people to kill their dogs for Satan, as part of a BBC 6Music documentary presented by Danny Robins. I’ll explain more in a blog which I’ll post on Monday.
But first, it’s Friday, which, by my calculations, means it’s time to give you Friday’s audio blog.

Download it here.
Subscribe in ITunes,
or View the RSS feed.

I’ll be back tomorrow for Saturday’s podcast.

Today’s podcast is about old ladies, cats, and me nearly dying.
Download it here.

View the RSS feed, or Subscribe with ITunes.

Notice how today I put the RSS option before the ITunes option, whereas it was the other way round all the previous days. Just keeping things exciting and fresh. I’m a maverick, an untameable force. Don’t try and second guess me, you’ll only embarrass yourself.

Today I read a blog post from April this year. This particular blog post got quite a big reaction (well big by my standards).

Download it here.
Subscribe in ITunes, or View the RSS feed.

Back tomorrow.

Every day this week I am reading a previously released blog post and publishing it as a podcast. Today I read a blog post from April 2012.

Download it here.

Subscribe to the podcast with ITunes or view the Rss Feed.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another podcast.

P.S. In case you don’t follow me on Twitter (what’s wrong with you) I have now tried a jazz apple, and can report that the experience was most enjoyable. It was both crunchy and juicy. I’ve now had other types of apples recommended to me, so there could well be more apple news to follow soon. Apparently there are over 7500 different types of apple, so this could be a long running blog feature. Try and contain your excitement.

Back tomorrow.

Everyday this week I’ll be releasing blog posts as podcasts. Today we go back to February 2012 and I read my post called ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’. Download it here.
Subscribe with ITunes
or View the RSS feed.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another podcast.

In the past, readers of this blog have had to read the blog themselves, or perhaps get a loved one to read it to them. I’ve heard that quite a few parents read it to their children at bedtime. Michael Gove was particularly keen to see it on the national curriculum. Or at least that was the case before I posted the blog Fuck All Bus Drivers.

A few people have asked me if I would consider reading my blog posts and publishing them as podcasts. Well, not only have I considered it, but I’ve actually gone and bloody done it. So take that all you doubters who said it would never happen, all you nay sayers.

I have so far released one blog post as a podcast episode, which is my most recent blog post about Jazz Apples and porn stars. From now on i’ll be releasing all my blogs as self-read podcast episodes, apart from the short ones that basically advertise a Young’uns podcast or something like that. I might even read some old blog posts and release those at some point. I will obviously still be publishing my blogs in the traditional format on here, so you can read it yourself if you prefer, though why would you? Do you think you can interpret my blogs better than I can, do you? ey?

You can subscribe to the podcast with Itunes here.
You can view the RSs feed here.
Other subscription options like Google to follow soon.

I’d like to end with an apology to Stephen Fry, who I know was very keen to read out these blogs, but in the end I decided that I would do it myself. I hope this doesn’t send him back into the depths of depression.

P.S. I’ve had a few people wondering whether I’ve tried a jazz apple yet. I’ve been doing some training with the BBC over the last few days and so haven’t gotten around to it, but I will remedy this soon and let you know my thoughts. I know, I should get my priorities right.

Thanks for reading.

Never mind knowing your onions. This blog post is about a person who concerns him/herself with knowing their apples. Although this statement is not entirely accurate, because this person is not interested with apples universally – oh no. They do not give a damn about Granny Smiths, nor are they concerned with the pedestrian golden delicious. They are not remotely interested in the mundane Braeburn. Oh no my friends. This person is enthused purely by one particular type of apple; an apple that until last week, I had never even heard of. This person is all about … the jazz apple!

“What is a jazz apple?” I hear you cry; or at least I think that was you. That was the very same question that I found myself positing just the other day. For I too was once like you, ignorant to this particular fruit. But now I’m one of the enlightened. And if you stick with me over these next few paragraphs, you too shall share this knowledge. Or you could just Google it I suppose, and save yourself a few minutes having to read the rest of this blog. But before you make such a rash move, let me alert you to the fact that this blog post also contains content of a pornographic nature. That’s right, I have called this blog post “Twitter Gets Fruity” not only because I am writing about apples, but also because I will be writing about porn stars.

Ahh, yes, I thought you might still be here.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had joined Twitter. You can follow me if you like: @the Davideagle. Follow me, and join over 50 other enlightened people. The trouble is, when you find yourself being followed by over 50 people, you bare a great degree of responsibility. Obviously I don’t want to let my followers down. I need to write tweets that will inspire, enrich, enlighten and enthuse. I can’t just write any old drivel; it has to be specially considered drivel. And this is an example of that specially considered drivel. This is what you are missing out on if you don’t follow me on Twitter; although I suppose you’re not missing out on it because I’m now going to include the tweet in this blog.

“Just doing an online shop. What on earth are jazz apples?”

The question had been posed, but none of my followers had an answer, and that night I went to bed ignorant about the jazz apple. But that night was to be my final night of jazz apple ignorance, because tomorrow was going to bring me an answer. Perhaps you might like to revisit this blog post tomorrow, and savour your last night of jazz apple ignorance. Trust me; your life will never be the same again. It will be much more bland.

The next day I went on Twitter and was surprised to find a tweet from someone by the name of Jazz Apples. The tweet contained the answer to my question. “Jazz is natural cross between a Garler and a Bribern. How did you like it?”

I was taken aback. Not only had I received an answer to my jazz apple question, I had received the information from someone with the name Jazz Apples. I assumed at first that it must be a friend playing a joke, but when I went on to Jazz Apple’s Twitter page, it became apparent that this person was a genuine Jazz Apple enthusiast. Jazz Apples had posted a multitude of Tweets going back months, each and every one of them about Jazz apples. For instance: “apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning”, and, “Say no to candy. The natural sugars in jazz apples will give you the energy you need to get you through the 3pm slump”, and, “A jazz apple butter and plane cream cheese on warm French bread. Seriously you need to try it”. This person had managed to clock up over 4600 tweets, all about jazz apples. There was no way this could be a friend playing a joke. This was the real deal. My jazz apple related question had been answered by none other than Jazz Apples him/herself. This was truly an honour.

I responded to Jazz Apples immediately. It would have been rude to have done otherwise. I wouldn’t want him/her to feel snubbed. “Never snub an apple enthusiast”; that’s what my mother used to say to me. She was on powerful medical drugs at the time, but still … Plus, Jazz Apples had over a thousand followers, and I only had about 50, so I didn’t fancy my chances if it came to a fight.

“Hi Mr/Mrs Apples, or can I call you jazz? Thanks for the info. Good to know there are people like you out there primed and ready to answer any jazz apple based questions. Sadly Tesco had run out of jazz apples. Probably because jazz apple geeks like you buy them up in bulk. Watch this space though”.

It appears that Jazz Apples is not simply an apple nerd, he/she grows and sells jazz apples and uses Twitter as a promotional tool. You can do searches for certain keywords , and so this person presumably regularly searches Twitter for the phrase “jazz apples” as part of promoting their jazz apple business. Perhaps I should do the same for Eskimo Kiss or nose rubbing. Then someone like me, new to Twitter, will become very surprised when they get a response from a random man about something they posted on Twitter for their handful of followers to read.

“OKAY, enough of this jazz apples nonsense David, you promised us porn”. Indeed I did.

My friend has also recently signed up for Twitter, and was rather taken aback to discover that he was being followed by a porn star called Lakisha Shaulis, at I-Want-Cock67.info. This porn star presumably isn’t doing too well with their career; given their ratio of followers to people they’re following. Lakisha at I-Want-Cock67.info is following 1525 people, but, perhaps tellingly, she only has 284 followers. This suggests that she wants cock more than other people would like her to have it, which is sort of contrary to the concept of porn really.

Lakisha’s tweets are also a bit out of sync with what you might expect a porn star to be writing about. There is rarely a mention of sex or cocks. Instead she opts to write ephemeral quotes like: “Here is the test to find out whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re a live, it isn’t”; “A lament in one ear, but always a song in the other”. Yes, very good Lakisha, but what about those cocks? “; Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap on a rope”. Yes, very kitsch Lakisha, but seriously, what’s that got to do with you being a porn star and wanting cock? “I think some how we learn who we really are and then live with that decision”. Yes Lakisha, and you apparently made the decision to be a porn star, but you don’t seem to be doing too well at living with that decision. If you want to go into life coaching then that’s great, but I think a rebranding exercise is a definite must. For a start I-Want-Cock67.info is probably not going to help if you want to be taken seriously in the life coaching world. I’m all for people finding their special niche, but I’m not sure if cocks and life coaching really go well together.

My favourite quote from Lakisha is: “it’s not taking things up that makes you rich, it’s giving things up”. This is somewhat ironic for someone who’s meant to be making a living from “taking things up”.

Like me, my friend is also blind, and so I can’t tell you whether Lakisha’s picture is particularly appealing, although her paucity of followers seems to suggest not. Feel free to have a look though. If anyone catches you looking then just say it’s supplementary reading for my blog post. They’ll understand. Or you could just say she’s a life coach, and you’re interested in her unorthodox approach to life coaching.

Well, I’ve probably lost half my audience now to I-Want-Cock67.info so I might as well leave this post here.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. If you haven’t sent me your nose rubbing video yet, then why not? No, stop talking, I don’t want to hear your excuses. Get to it. Email them to david@davideagle.co.uk

Perhaps I can get Lakisha to send one in. I’ll have to specify to her though that it is strictly noses that I want to see.

Well wasn’t that a great blog post? Combining cock hungry porn stars with Fruit based trivia. Come on Radio 4! What are you waiting for?

I am reunited with my wires, and so the 110th Young’uns Podcast has arrived. Featuring special guests Megson; A new story from Sean Cooney; some synchronised phoneme delivery; hip-hop jingles; obscure details about the Basten folk Club toilets; a recording from an incendiary Young’uns performance; Terrible Mike Harding impressions; a cold call; details about the Young’uns’ formative years; and a track from the Young’uns new album. It’s the 110th Young’uns Podcast, with a Yohoho and, of course, a pompompom. Listen to be enlightened.
Download here.

For previous Young’uns Podcasts and subscription options go to the Young’uns Podcast page.

Firstly, apologies if you are an ornithologist who has clicked onto this page hoping for an article on the subject of the eagle and bird calls. I am planning on writing such an article at some point in the future, but this particular blog post concerns itself with advertising the fact that I have a twitter page. Not only that, but at the time of writing this post, I have posted one tweet. I obviously plan on doing more tweets, hence why I am drawing your attention to my presence on Twitter.

Follow me on Twitter @thedavideagle.

Currently I have twelve followers, which is the same number as the disciples of Jesus, so I’m feeling pretty smug; although, my followers have only had to click a button, where as Jesus’ followers left their families and friends and actually followed him around, which shows a little bit more commitment. I’m not particularly keen on the idea of you doing that though; I’m happy simply for you to follow me on Twitter. And don’t expect me to wash your feet or anything. In fact, stop going on, comparing me to Jesus.

I’m a little uncertain as to how well me and Twitter will get on. As you may have noticed from my blog posts, I am not particularly well versed when it comes to brevity, and Twitter insists that tweets must be 140 characters or less. I hate imposed maximum word counts. I was also asked by the BBC today to send a biog, no more than fifty words long. Damn them, they had found my Achilles’ heel. To add further insult to this outrageous request, the brief about what the biog should contain was 54 words long. They were patently gloating, rubbing their unfettered pros in my face. No one rubs their unfettered prose in my face and gets away with it; I’ve always said that. I’ll get my own back one day. But to add further insult, they asked me to write the biog in the third person, meaning that I would have to write “David Eagle” rather than “I”, robbing me of a precious word – 2% of my total allowance. But Twitter and the BBC will not grind me down with their word embargoes. I have done my first tweet and I intend to tweet more.

the 110th Young’uns Podcast will definitely be released next week. I left my bag with my wires in Sean’s car after a Young’uns gig, and he has taken it to Manchester. So when I am reunited with my wires this weekend, I will release the podcast.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @thedavideagle. I’ll be practising at being concise and brief on my Twitter page; but I don’t think there’s any chance of that brevity and conciseness making its way over to this blog. Perish the thought.

Just over a week ago I was checking my emails, hoping for more nose rubbing videos. As I mentioned in my last blog post, videos were coming in much less quickly now, and it seemed as if they had almost dried up. I hadn’t received a nose rubbing video for a couple of days. I don’t know what I was expecting. I’ve only told the readers of this blog about it, and yes, there is a good number who read this, but I surely couldn’t expect that that alone would be enough publicity in order to get the quantity and quality of videos that I’d require to create a smash hit viral video. How many nose rubbing clips does it take to make a smash hit viral video? That’s the trouble with our education system; they just don’t teach you important stuff like this. But what ever the answer to that question is, I would definitely need to spread the message about the Eskimo Kissing song a lot wider.

I scrolled down my emails. “You won’t satisfy girls with that. Get a much bigger manhood”. Bloody X-girlfriend again; she just won’t stop. I don’t care about penises; it’s noses I’m interested in. An email from EBay. Damn. One from Papal. Bugger. One from a university friend. No attachment, no links to videos. Damn again. Where were the nose rubbing videos? The Olympics had finished now. What were people doing that was so much more interesting than recording and sending me a nose rubbing video?

I continued to scroll down my emails. Some more spam. A load of emails from Facebook; none of them relating to nose rubbing. An email from Youtube. Ahar! This could be one. But no, it was informing me that someone had subscribed to my Youtube channel. Damn them. An Email from the BBC; something about some possible radio work, and a meeting with the new director general. Why weren’t people sending me their nose rubbing … hang on. The BBC? Some possible radio work? Meeting the director general? OK, this wasn’t a nose rubbing video but it was pretty special.

I did a little dance around the room; sort of between a foxtrot and a tango in case you’re interested. I was just considering a cheeky little cancan when a thought struck me. Hey! Maybe the director general would do a nose rubbing video.

“But isn’t the term Eskimo racist?” said Sean, on the way to aYoung’uns gig.

“Racist?” I replied.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s not politically correct to say Eskimo” said Mike, “; they’re called Inuits”. He did an Internet search and read me an article about how the word Eskimo was deemed a pejorative term by certain Inuit people of Greenland and Canada.

“OK, well I’ll just have to keep it quiet from the Inuit people of Greenland and Canada then. I’ll just make sure not to tell any of them”. For some reason, they didn’t find this to be a convincing solution.

“So you’ve created a racist song. And you want other people to join in and support your racist endeavours. You want to get people involved in creating a racist video that goes viral”.

“That’s not the idea at all” I protested. “I want to unite the world through the power of the nose rub”.

“We can’t have a racist in the group”.

“Racist is an adjective. You can’t say I’m a racist. That’s like saying I’m a disabled”. It’s important to have a sense of perspective about these things. “I may be racist but at least I can speak English”. Again, I don’t think that argument was winning them round. I was starting to get a bit worried. What if I am racist? I’m not sure I’d like myself very much if I was racist.

I got my phone out. This would be a difficult moment, but it had to be done. There was no point putting it off. I called my friend Aisha. I’ve known her since I was six. Being blind, I’d never even realised that she wasn’t white until I was in secondary school. I’d never even given it a moment’s thought.

She answered the phone cheerily. “Aisha,” I began, “I think I’m a racist. So I was thinking, maybe it’s best if we don’t talk for a bit, until I’m sure about …”.

“David”, she interrupted. She always interrupts me; I think it’s because she’s Asian. “Racist is an adjective, not a noun”.

“Yes I know that, but that’s hardly the point.
The point is … hang on, how dare you correct my use of English. You’re not even originally from here”.

“That was a bit racist David. As was that thought about me interrupting you” she responded. How did she know about my racist thought? Ah yes of course, she’s Asian; they can read your mind … or something.

That was a difficult phone call. We’d not managed to say a proper goodbye because her phone had cut off. Maybe the call had been intercepted by the government who had started monitoring it due to its racist nature.

As I began to talk to more people about the Eskimo Kissing song, more people were posing that same question: “but isn’t the word Eskimo racist”. I began to become deflated. I could hardly go ahead with this project if people were going to think it was racist. But as I mentioned in a previous blog post, it didn’t feel like I’d done any of the creating. The song just seemed to pour into my head. Perhaps I had a racist subconscious. But I could hardly use that as an excuse. 80 % of the brain is subconscious, so that would make me 80 % racist. I think I’d rather be consciously racist; at least that would only make me 20 % racist. And the subconscious part of the brain also works on autopilot, meaning that I am being automatically racist, without even having to think about it or even knowing that I am being racist. Goodness knows what racist things I’m doing on a daily basis; what racist things I might be subconsciously thinking now as I write this blog post.There is of course another explanation, perhaps a more logical one: maybe I’d been possessed by a racist spirit. That would just be bloody typical. Why does this kind of thing always seem to happen to me?

Then I had a terrible thought. What if someone from the BBC had been reading all of this? I checked my emails to see whether they had contacted me to say that the director general had changed his mind about meeting me, because he’d read my blog posts and heard my song, and couldn’t be seen to be holding Meetings with someone who was racist. “The BBC has a very strong policy on people with racist subconscious minds. And anyway, the BBC has changed their mind and recruited Ricky Gervais instead. We just can’t afford to take risks like we used to do”. That’s an idea: maybe if the word Eskimo is racist, I could just do a Gervais and say I’m reclaiming it – brilliant. As a sidenote, Ricky Gervais’ website isn’t particularly accessible for blind users with screen readers. An accident?

There were no further emails from the BBC. There were also no nose rubbing videos. Obviously all my racist readers had sent their videos in early. I was impressed; they might be racist but they were very efficient.

The paucity of nose rubbing videos coupled with some people’s negative perception Of the word Eskimo had somewhat dampened my enthusiasm. I also realised that if anyone from the BBC had recently started reading my blog then they would probably be a bit bemused by the fact that all I seemed to ever write about is nose rubbing. “Well there might be a one off show on the subject of nose rubbing, but he’s hardly going to sustain a whole career with us out of it”.

I decided that I should probably do some research about the term Eskimo and see how I felt after that. Naturally, I did what all of us would do in such a situation and went on Wikipedia. Wikipedia would tell me definitively and indisputably whether I was racist or not. I found very little to substantiate the argument that the term Eskimo is racist. Yes, it is seen as a pejorative term by certain parts of the Inuit community because there is a school of thought that the word translated means “roar meat eater”; but I don’t think this is considered as definite fact, as it is a translation of an extinct language. However, the word Eskimo does not solely refer to the Inuit people. The word Eskimo also encompasses the Yupik people, and therefore it would be wrong to suggest that Eskimos are simply Inuit people. The word can also refer to other groups of people. So I think the word Eskimo is fine in this case, certainly the term “Eskimo kissing” which is a western colloquialism and a westernised concept. And I can hardly sing “We’re Inuit and Yupik kissing tonight”. It would somewhat ruin the song’s catchiness, and probably be detrimental to its success as a novelty hit. Then there’s another problem: what about the Aleut, hey? Did you think about that? No, I bet you didn’t even give them a second’s thought. You could perhaps say that I should include the Aleut people. “We’re Inuit, Yupik and Aleut kissing tonight”. And there are all sorts of other people we’d be discriminating against if I didn’t mention them.

So, now who’s racist? Perhaps Mike and Sean are racist. After all if it was up to them, they would have me discriminate against the Yupik and Aleut people, something which I condemn very heavily indeed. I’ll let you – the discerning reader – be the judge of that. Perhaps I should eject them from the Young’uns and replace them with band members who are less racist. Maybe I could audition some Inuit, Yupik or Aleut band members. I’ve always wanted some throat singing in the group. Mike had a go once but it didn’t really have the desired effect.

Anyway, I have decided to keep the Eskimo Kissing project going, but to let it develop over a longer period of time. This will mean I can concentrate writing about other things other than nose rubbing. I think we’ve probably missed the boat for this year’s Christmas number one anyway, so we can take our time a bit.

I am in Germany this coming weekend with the Young’uns, so I might be able to get some international nose rubbing videos. In the meantime, Email me your nose rubbing videos to david@davideagle.co.uk. If you don’t then you are clearly making a racist statement. Maybe I can start an antiracism campaign: I’m a rubber not a racist.

In other none nose rubbing news: the 110th Young’uns podcast will be released next week.

Download the Eskimo Kissing Song here.