Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

Dollop stalwart Mavis Crumble commented on yesterday’s Dollop, saying, “Go on……send it to Ainsley. I dare you!” By “it,” she is referring to my fictional reply to the email that I was sent, which was intended for the other David Eagle, the design consultant from Stoke. Alas Mavis, I had already responded to Ainsley, alerting him to the fact that he’d emailed the wrong David Eagle, so I’m afraid I can’t pretend to be the other dAvid Eagle and email him my review.

It appears that when Ainsley asked for a review of his site layout plan, he was perhaps looking for quite a lot more technical detail than my reply would have offered. Today I received a reply from Mark, who was also copied into Ainsley’s email. I’ll tell you what Mark had to say in a moment, (I know, I’m such a tease) but first, I thought you might like to cast your critical eye over Ainsley’s site layout plan, and have a think about any possible areas for improvement. I’ll then present you with Mark’s evaluation, and you can compare your findings to his. If you have any ideas to improve this plan then feel free to send them to me and I’ll happily pass them onto Ainsley. Wouldn’t that be a lovely, benevolent thing to do? You never know, If we come up with some good suggestions then maybe Ainsley might choose to work with us on a regular basis, and ditch the services of the other David Eagle. Let’s be honest, the other David Eagle doesn’t seem to be the quickest at responding, whereas I’m sure you Dollop readers would be much more proactive.

Perhaps this could be away for you to support these Dollops financially. Rather than adopting the more traditional model of asking for donations, you could offer support by commenting on various preliminary site layout plans. Obviously this is something that I couldn’t feesibly do myself due to being blind. Then, Ainsley would financially remunerate me for the design consultancy work. A perfect plan.

So, cast your critical eyes over this, and let me know if you have any thoughts. Remember, the scale is 1:500@ A3 size0.

So, what do you think? Why not make a few notes, and then you can compare your ideas to Mark’s. This is kind of like a training exercise for you, because we can use Mark’s appraisal as an example of the kind of thing to look out for and comment on in the future. Here is what Mark had to say about Ainsley’s site layout plan. See if you spotted any of these.

“Hi Ainsley,
We will need to show a temporary footway usable by wheelchairs. The foot way should be slab surfaced and allow the residents of the bungalow to access the bungalow from the rear door of the existing laundry. It needs to come around by the plant room and around the footprint of the new activity room allowing a space for scaffold and for services to be redirected around the new extension and link to the existing path to the bungalow. Can you show this on the plan?
Alex we will need to amend the PCIP to show this requirement. We need to highlight that site access for spoil removal will cross this temporary footway so staff will need to escort the residents to and from the bungalow each morning and night and when they return to the bungalow. The temporary footway will need plating to protect the footway.
Regards
Mark.”

So, now you’ve read Mark’s opinions, what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Send me your thoughts, and I’ll pass them onto Ainsley. This could be a great initiative to financially support these Dollops.

You might have noticed that Mark mentioned an Alex. This is the same Alex who emailed me about the completion of faze one of the villa, which I wrote about in Dollop 253 – just in case you were wondering.

Apologies if you’re listening to the audio version of this Dollop. I suppose this probably hasn’t been all that entertaining for you. If one of the readers would like to provide some audio description of the site layout plan drawing, then I will happily include this in the audio version.

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

“Hi David, please find attached a preliminary site layout plan (scale 1:500@ A3 size0) We would be grateful if you could review this regarding the site compound, parking prevision and site access. Many thanks and we look forward to hearing from you in due course, prior to issuing this formally as part of the tender documentation. Kind regards, Ainsley.”

This is yet another email, which came to me today, intended for the other David Eagle, the unresponsive design consultant from Stoke. I’ve forwarded him loads of emails over the last few months and haven’t received a single “thank you” or acknowledgement back. I have a good mind to reply to this email and pretend to be the David Eagle that he thinks I am. Would I be able to get away with it? When the email states, “We would be grateful if you could review this,” how much information do they require? If by “review” they mean a detailed, considered analysis, then obviously I’d be out of my depth, but if they’re just looking for a simple yes or no, then I could surely easily pull off the pretence.

“Hi Ainsley, thanks for the attached drawings. Good choice of scale by the way, 1:500@ A3 size0 is my personal favourite; you’re a man after my own heart. But hey, you’re probably married, and it’s unprofessional to flirt on the job. Anyway, everything looks tickety-boo (as we say in the trade). No quibbles from my end. But hey, enough about my end; I promised not to flirt, didn’t I? In regards to the site compound, it’s a big fat yes from me; I love it. Parking prevision is more than ample. As for the site access … you’re well and truly barking up the right tree, a tree that no doubt you’ve conscientiously fitted with a ramp, allowing for easy wheelchair access, because that’s the kind of man you are. Normally I’d write extremely lengthy and detailed reviews, full of all sorts of complicated and clever technical design consultancy speak, but in this case there’s no need for any of that, because everything is ship shape (not literally, obviously, because if you’d actually opted to make the site ship shaped, then I’d be telling you in no uncertain terms what a stupid idea that is). Full steam ahead. In fact, I wouldn’t trouble yourself with all that formal tender documentation nonsense you refer to in your email. If I were you, I’d just crack on. No time like the present.

P.S. My bank details have changed. Please send my consultancy fee payment to the following bank account …”

But of course, I didn’t send such a reply; I merely forwarded the email to the correct David Eagle, who will presumably fail to respond, as usual.

“Hi again Ainsley, just to let you know that I have recently been contacted by the cyber police, who have informed me that there is a fraudster who is emailing my clients, pretending to be me. If you should receive an email from david@davidmeagle.co.uk, please delete the email and do not reply. I am warning you in case he should ask you for money. I would hate to think that one of my clients was swindled by this unscrupulous cyber fraud. Many thanks.

P.S. “How many design consultants does it take to change a light bulb?”

Answer: “It is not within a design consultants remit to administer practical installations. A design consultant is qualified to give advice on the most suitable place to install said light bulb. He may also offer advice about the optimum type of light bulb and light fitting, in order to maximise aesthetic value whilst providing a solution that is most energy efficient and cost effective. The design consultant however would not be expected or licensed to offer practical assistance on a site or property, therefore it would not be the responsibility or function of a design consultant to change the light bulb.”

A design consultant friend recently told this joke in a speech for a colleague’s retirement party, and it brought the house down; not literally, obviously, we are building design consultants, and therefore would hardly book an unstable structure to hold one of our parties in. I thought I’d share this joke with my clients, because I know there’s a myth that we design consultants don’t have much of a sense of humour, but as you can see, that’s just nonsense.””

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

I’m writing this after our gig at Bromyard folk festival. We’d been warned by some of the other performers who’d played over the weekend that the stage had an infestation of spiders. A few singers had apparently inhaled a few spiders. This was done accidentally, obviously, because they were singing and the spiders were crawling over the microphone. I don’t want you thinking that There’s some weird craze amongst folk performers to get high by snorting insects. I want to make it clear that neither I or the other two Young’uns have ever tried to get high by snorting insects. Sticking insects up our bottoms, maybe, but certainly not snorting. So I’m glad we cleared that up.

The warnings proved accurate, for on a few occasions, I had to wipe cobwebs from the mic. There are times in various songs where I put my mouth right onto the microphone in order to amplify the bass notes. Despite the fact that I was potentially going to be inhaling spiders, I still put my mouth right onto the microphone. This is the mark of a true professional. I was willing to risk choking on spiders for the good of the performance. And I am such a professional, that even if I was choking to death on spiders, I would of course choke to my death in rhythm, possibly even adding some rasping in the correct key.

This incident reminded me of the song, I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly. The song is flawed on so many levels. He says that he knows an old lady, which suggests that the lady is still alive. He also says, “perhaps she’ll die,” which denotes that the lady is still alive at the time of the song’s inception. Presumably then, the person writing this song is with the lady while she is swallowing this crazy cocktail of animals, yet rather than intervening and saving this woman’s life, he instead chooses to write a song about the unfolding insanity. This old woman is clearly a congenitally woeful decision maker: she makes a series of massively ill-informed choices, which essentially leads to her inevitable death, and she’s chosen a friend, who stands idly by, writing a song, while she dies.

I’m also confused by her friend’s reasoning. He doesn’t know why she swallowed the fly. Presumably it was an accident, unless he knows that she deliberately swallowed the fly. But even so, I don’t think the swallowing of the fly is the major incident here. But despite the old lady’s decision to swallow a spider to catch the fly, swallow a bird to catch the spider, swallow a cat to catch the bird etc, and despite observing the old lady’s great discomfort, and mind boggling stupid actions in a desperate attempt to remedy her situation, he nevertheless keeps going back to the fact that he doesn’t know why she swallowed the fly. Forget the bloody fly, she’s just swallowed a dog to catch the cat. Do something, you idiot. Don’t just sit there, pontificating about why she swallowed the fly. The fly is inconsequential.

This old lady’s friend seems to have a severely warped sense of perspective. She swallows the fly, which causes him to remark that “perhaps she’ll die.” Why would she die? It’s only a fly. But then, when the old lady swallows the spider, is reaction is exactly the same. He expresses his confusion as to why she swallowed the fly, and then restates that “perhaps she’ll die.” He retains the same level of concern throughout the entire ordeal, even though she starts swallowing cats and dogs.

The lady is clearly getting more and more desperate as the situation progresses. Even though her first few ingestions were ill-advised, at least they made some sort of sense: spiders eat flies, birds eat spiders, cats eat birds. But then she clearly goes all to pot, and makes increasingly weird choices. She swallows a dog; but dogs don’t eat cats? She swallows a goat? Then a cow? A horse?! There is now no semblance of logic. She is presumably hysterical, desperate, and growing increasingly mentally impaired, as a result of ingesting all these live animals.

The other odd part of the man’s account of this event is at the end, when she swallows a horse. “She’s dead, of course,” he writes. He doesn’t seem overly surprised that she’s managed to survive swallowing a cat, a dog, a goat and a cow. If I saw an old lady swallow a cow, a goat, a dog and a cat, I’d be astounded that she was somehow still alive. But if it was me, I’d have intervened at the swallowing of the spider. This man has just seen an old lady swallow a horse, a cow, a goat, a dog and a cat, and watched the resultant carnage and subsequent death of this old lady, and yet he still remains impassive. This man is in a way guilty of murder. This old lady has clearly got mental health problems, and this man has failed to intervene, despite the fact that he clearly knew what was going to happen if she kept swallowing all those animals.

The only explanation as to the man’s behaviour is to assume that he too has serious mental health problems. This would explain his compulsive journaling, his absurdly apathetic nature, his complete lack of perspective, and inability to offer rational and practical assistance to his friend.

So, this begs the question, why were these two severely mentally ill people unsupervised. This raises many concerns about their local social services, as these two people clearly needed special attention. I am also confused as to why this old lady had such easy access to so many animals. Presumably she was on a farm. Maybe this is why social services hadn’t intervened, because they were living in a remote area, away from local resources. Given that she was able to get access to all these farm animals, I assume they must be on a farm, because surely all of this was happening in a fairly short space of time. Surely this scenario occurred because of a series of increasingly desperate attempts to remedy her plight. Surely this wasn’t a premeditated series of thought-out solutions, that involved her driving across town to find a cow and a goat. I am doutful whetehr she would have the time or the ability to drive across town to find these animals, with a dog and a cat inside her. I think we can safely assume therefore that these two people were seriously mentally ill, and living on a remote farm.

I wonder what happened to the man, and if his diaries are still in existence. He has unusually repetitive way of writing, but it would be interesting to know more about the people behind this tragic story.

I might do some digging and see what I can unearth. If anyone has any ideas then feel free to get in touch. I know I’ve hit you hard with a lot of thought provoking ideas about this famous story. It’s a lot to swallow, isn’t it?

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

Yesterday I mentioned that I frequently receive emails intended for another David Eagle, a design consultant from Stoke. I try to email everyone back, explaining that they’ve got the wrong David Eagle, and this is quite an undertaking, because David Eagle the design consultant from stoke gets a hell of a lot of emails. But my efforts don’t seem to do anything to stem the flood, and more and more emails keep coming in. But then a few months ago, I finally received an email from the other David Eagle.

His email address was the same as mine, except for one letter. He said that he’d heard that a few emails intended for him had come to me, and wondered whether I could forward them on to him. A few emails? There were hundreds of the bloody things. He also asked if I could forward any future emails straight to him, and he would respond to them letting them know that they’d emailed the wrong person. I don’t think the other David Eagle was prepared for the amount of emails I forwarded him. I trawled my inbox for the emails and began forwarding them onto him. It took me hours. There was no shortcut that I could think of. I had to click on each email in turn, and then forward that email to him. I was potentially saving his business here. Each email was potentially rescuing thousands of pounds worth of work, which might never have been gained if it wasn’t for my act of altruism. If I’d have been more savvy, I would have done a bit of haggling and tried to wangle a fee for my half day’s work. But I am far too soft and nice, and so I forwarded him every single email and agreed to forward him all future miss sent messages.

The other David Eagle replied with his thanks, his apologies and expressed surprise by the sheer volume of emails. Over the coming weeks the emails kept pouring in, and I would forward each one to the other David Eagle. At the start he would respond with a “thanks,” but after awhile he stopped responding. I received a couple of emails over Christmas and I forwarded them onto him with a little friendly Christmas message, telling him that these were his Christmas presents from me. I didn’t get anything back. I got another email for him a few days later, which I forwarded to him and told him that because he’d been good, I was giving him two Christmas presents this year. He clearly wasn’t interested in my attempts to engage in such idle banter. I continue to forward his emails to him regardless, in spite of his lack of gratitude or even acknowledgement , because that’s the kind of nice person I am.

Without me, he might never know that his villa project was ready to have faze two implemented, and he might be sat at his desk, twiddling his thumbs, wondering why faze one was taking so damn long. Recently I got an email for the other David Eagle from a company who had booked a rather posh hotel for him with breakfast included and it was all paid for by the company. All the information about the booking reference and the people who had booked it was included in the email. I could have gone to the hotel, handed over the dails, pretended to be the other dAvid Eagle, and had a free stay and a breakfast. But, because I am nice, I forwarded the details to the intended David Eagle. And did I get a thank you? No.

If this ungrateful silence from the other David Eagle continues, then I may be inclined to ask you all who are reading this to email david@davidmeagle.co.uk and make loads of Dollop related references, as if you thought you were emailing me. And we’ll see how he likes it? And we’ll see if he forwards the emails to me. I don’t think this David Eagle realises who he might be potentially making an enemy of. I have the power to instruct my army of readers to never use David Eagle from Stoke’s design consultancy services, and this could have disastrous consequences for David Eagle’s business. After all , I have at least 200 people reading this, David, and there’s a chance that maybe one or two of those people might have needed some design consultancy doing, and maybe they might have come to you, but not now. So as you can see, David, you don’t want to be messing with me. A thank you costs nothing, but a lack of a thank you could end up costing you dearly. It’s a shame to war with my own namesake, but you are forcing my hand, David Eagle. I’ve stopped putting little jocular messages in the forwards now, because it’s clear that you’re not up for bantering, and that’s fine. But a thank you would be nice. And I don’t even require a thank you for every email; just once in a while would be nice. We David Eagles have a reputation to uphold, and this lack of common curtisy is not doing the David Eagle name any favours.

Thank you.

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

I checked my emails. I was still in bed. This was another of my delaying tactics to gain me a bit longer before I got up. I’ve already checked Twitter, Facebook, The Guardian and the Huffington post, replied to Dollop comments from my adoring fans – hello by the way. I also checked my emails when I originally woke up, but that was over an hour ago, so I should really give the inbox another quick check, and then I’ll definitely get up, I reasoned

I opened my new email. “Morning David, Alex here, just to let you know that we are ready to implement faze two. Details below. I look forward to your response, plus any news you have about the villa.” Ah, that’s nice, excellent news, good old Alex. Hang on, who is Alex? And what does he mean by “faze two?” Is he referring to my Dollop from a few days ago entitled Eaglebot Faze One, where I suggested that there are so many recordings on the Internet of me speaking – with this daily blog and such – that if I ever found myself in a similar situation to Steven Hawking then I could have a specially programmed voice which would be my actual voice, rather than the synthetic Steven Hawking voice. This would also be rather practical, especially when I’m communicating with any of my blind friends, as they would know that it was me talking, rather than getting confused and thinking that they were chatting to Steven Hawking. Maybe Alex was a computer programmer who had gotten to work on this project, uploading recordings of my voice saying various words into the database, and now he’d reached the stage where he was ready to implement faze two, what ever that was, but it sounded exciting, almost as exciting as an anecdote about socks (see yesterday’s Dollop).

I was a bit puzzled by the line, “I look forward to your response, plus any news about the villa.” If this computer programmer had managed to create a prototype of the Eaglebot and send me an email about it, then presumably he was able to use the Internet, so why couldn’t he get his own football news – I assumed he was referring to aston Villa football club. Perhaps he was emailing from somewhere like China, and the government for some reason had blocked the Googling of Aston Villa, and this poor computer programmer was bereft of news about his chosen English football club. I don’t know why the Chinese government would be concerned with their citizens finding information about aston Villa, but I am merely a British folk singer and blogger; I am not clued up about Chinese Government policy, and to be honest, it wasn’t an area I wanted to be interfering in. I was unsure of how to proceed. Obviously I wanted to know more about his work on the Eaglebot, but was it worth making an enemy of the Chinese Government over?

I read the rest of the email, wondering what the “details below” would reveal. It soon became clear that the email was not intended for me, but for the other David Eagle. The other David Eagle runs something called a Design Consultancy company in stoke. It’s something to do with the design of buildings. So the reference in this email to “the villa,” was about an actual villa, as opposed to Aston Villa.

I’ve been getting lots of this David Eagle’s emails since the start of last year. It started with an email from one of David Eagle’s clients, wanting his input on some attached floor plan drawings. I emailed back to let him know that I was very ill qualified to help him in this regard, given my lack of knowledge regarding floor plans, and due to being unable to see the drawings because of being blind. I got an email back apologising, saying that he must have taken down the email address incorecctly.

But the seed had now been planted, for there were about another fifty people copied into his first email to me, and their computer had presumably saved the email address, meaning that every time someone went to email David Eagle, they got me instead. Over the next few weeks I replied to so many emails , requesting advice about various attached drawings and documents and I received a whole host of questions, and often there would be other people copied into the message, and so the chain grew, and I got more and more emails. As the weeks went on, I amassed quite the collection of confidential documents, invoices, contact details, information about business deals. I considered getting in touch with a rival design consultancy team, and seeing how much money they’d cough up for access to all this information about their competition. I kept replying to them and explaining that they’d got the wrong email address, but the emails kept coming and coming.

Then, after a couple of months of this, I finally got an email from the other David Eagle. What the email said is something I shall divulge to you tomorrow. Oh yes my friends, a cliffhanger, although to be honest, the cliffhanger is born more out of the fact that I am falling asleep at the computer, rather than it signifying anything of dramatic value to come.

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

This is probably going to be a really short Dollop, because I am out and have no time to write anything. My plan was to spend the train journey writing, but when I got on the train all the seats were taken – you’ll have to take my word for it, in lieu of CCTV footage. I know that Corbyn traingate jokes are a bit old hat, but I haven’t got the time to think of anything more original or clever – sorry.

Last week I managed to write a Dollop on a train with no free seats by finding some space underneath the luggage wrack and sitting on the floor with my laptop on my crossed legs, but this train was too packed to even afford me any floor-sitting space, so I had to stand whilst people jostled for space, rubbing themselves against me (so it wasn’t all bad).

I then had to wait at the station for my connecting train. I searched for a seat, but they were all taken. I needed somewhere to sit so that I could get my laptop out and hurriedly write today’s Dollop. I found a narrow metal bar. It wasn’t very comfortable, and it was angled so that I kept nearly falling off it, but, bloggers can’t be choosers. That’s a good line, I thought (something which I’m sure you also have just thought) I must remember to write it in today’s Dollop. I got out my laptop to make a note of my hilarious play on words and to make a start on the blog, but it was impossible; the bar was too angled, and the laptop kept falling off my lap. I would have to wait until I got on the next train, where I would have just half an hour to write something.

The next train did have seats free, but when I sat down, a new problem presented itself. There were no double seats free, only seats next to someone or shared table seats. I opted for one of the table seats, and was just about to pull out my laptop when …

“Lovely day for it,” came the elderly posh sounding voice of the man on the seat opposite me. I wasn’t sure what exactly the “it” was that it was a lovely day for, but I didn’t have time to get into a discussion about “it,” so I muttered my agreement as politely as I could. The trouble is that I am too polite and self-conscious to snub someone’s invitation for a conversation. Despite needing to get immediately to work on the Dollop, I nevertheless was unable to merely give a non-committed grunt, indicating to the man my disinterest in talking to him. Instantly I felt awkward and guilty about my lacklustre response to his friendly, “lovely day for it,” and my next course of action was to do all I could to redress my initial weak offering. Even though I knew that if I didn’t get this Dollop written on the train then I would have to do it while I was out, and thus be extremely antisocial, at least I’d be being anti-social with close friends, and that, for some reason, didn’t make me feel as uncomfortable as ignoring a stranger’s small talk. My brain was sending me messages that this man and everyone in the carriage was looking at me and judging me as a dull, anti-social misery. It was now up to me to save the situation, turn it around, and show them that I was no such thing.

“Yes my friend,” I said with piles of enthusiasm, “it certainly is? So,” I clapped my hands, “To where are you bound, my friend?” I jovially intoned. No, now I’d gone too far the other way. I was sounding far too energetic and excitable for a casual bit of small talk with a stranger on a train. I’d tried to compensate for my earlier taciturn response, but had clearly overcompensated. I’d been far too loud and energetic, called him my friend twice, which was a bit desperate, and clapped my hands. Why had I clapped my hands? And why did I say, “to where are you bound?” Who says, “to where are you bound?” “Where are you off to then?” would have been more conventional, rather than loudly enquiring, “to where are you bound, my friend?” with great relish. I’d also employed a weird singsong posh accent; I have no idea why – maybe I thought it gave me a more cheery, friendly manner, but actually it just made me sound odd.

The man told me to where he was bound, and we fell into conversation. I instantly decided to ditch the weird posh singsong voice, assuming that he’d soon forget about it once he’d become distracted by my scintillating conversation.

Scintillating it wasn’t. My mind was on the Dollop and the fact that I was going to have to somehow write it while I was out, and ignore my friends. I have no idea how we got onto the topic, but he was talking about the fact that he had to buy a new pair of socks because when he woke up this morning he discovered that there was a hole in one of them. I then became aware of the sound of my own voice saying, “I always get holes in my socks. I don’t know how it happens. I don’t remember them having a hole in when I take them off, but when I put them back on again, there’s a hole.” What the hell was I blabbering on about? Both me and the man gave almost identical timid, joyless laughs. I’m not sure why we laughed, it wasn’t very funny, but I suppose it just felt like the right thing to do. If he’d said the thing about waking up to find a hole in his sock, and I’d have countered with, “oh, darn it,” then that would have been very different, then we’d have had good reason to laugh, but I was being altogether too dull for that kind of hilarious wordplay. I wondered what the other people near must think of us. They must think we were the most boring people on the planet. I expect that you are thinking the same thing right now, having just read this Dollop. Sorry. Anyway, I must go, before my friends disown me.

Today’s Dollop might rankle the Dollop purists and cause them to cry Judas, for today I hand over the reins to Niall Boylan, a radio talk show host on Northern Ireland radio station 4FM.

Download today’s audio Dollop here

In today’s audio Dollop, I conduct an experiement to try and make jokes using the articles generated by Wikipedia’s Random Article feature.

Download it here

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

Today I have been working on the final part of The Young’uns In The Mix, which I shall release on The Young’uns Podcast and David Eagle’s Pick And Mix in the next couple of weeks. Thanks to one of Youtube’s recommended videos last night, I came across a tutorial that gave tips for removing unwanted noise from recordings. This video surfaced at an opportune time because it may come in useful for the bit of The Young’uns In The Mix that I am currently working on. I am taking samples from a variety of old radio recordings and records, and there is quite a lot of crackle and hiss on the various samples. But I’ve been able to strip a lot of that extranious noise away, thanks to this tutorial video. Basically, you play the programme a sample of the noise you want to remove, it then analyses it and removes that specific noise from the recording.

However, even more beneficial and exciting than removing unwanted noise from old recordings, is the notion that theoretically I can now use this tool on The Young’uns Podcast to automatically remove Michael Hughes and his various inane comments. This will save me a hell of a lot of editing time.

It will also come in useful when I release Now That’s What I Call David Eagle, Volume One, which is the much anticipated compilation album of songs made by me between the age of seven and ten. I will now be able to use this noise removal tool to delete all the tape hiss in order to create remastered versions of the songs. This is very exciting, as imagine how incredible it will be to hear Daniel Wet Himself Today in Crystal clear sound. There was also a video that autoplayed on Youtube, as I began to fall asleep, about a tool that creates stereo or surround sound tracks from mono files, using some kind of clever audio trickery. So I will be able to release a special enhanced version of Now That’s What I Call David Eagle, Volume One, meaning that you can listen to Daniel Wet Himself Today in 7.1 surround sound. This will be especially useful for when some big budget film company wants to turn my life into a blockbuster movie; they will be able to incorporate my childhood recordings into the film in immersive 3D audio.

Also, when I was a child I recorded everything, meaning that I have so many cassette tapes of me talking. This means that I probably won’t need to have a voice actor playing the part of my seven-year-old self, because I could cobble together my dialogue using samples of my actual seven-year-old voice.

I suppose this is also a benefit of recording so many Dollops and Podcasts. If I ended up having a trgic accident or had a condition that meant I was unable to speak and had to communicate using a device like Stephen Hawking, I could probably still speak with my old voice rather than using the Stephen Hawking style voice. I’ve recorded so many hours of me talking, that I most likely have a recording of me saying nearly every word in the dictionary, or at least every word that I’d be likely to want to say. I could then put all these words into the machine and thus, despite not being able to use my mouth, I could still speak with my own voice. Granted, it would take a rather long time to go through every single word I’d ever spoken and add them to the computer, but I’m paralysed for goodness sake, so I’d have plenty of time on my hands. Plus, nowadays, I could probably get people to help me over the Internet. All they would need to do is download the speech programme, sift through all the Dollops and Podcasts and add the words to the speech programme’s database. I’m sure I’d have plenty of Dollop listeners who’d be happy to help out with such a project.

Once all the possible words have been added to the database, we can then role out Eaglebot faze 2. If there happens to be a word that I want to use that I don’t seem to have ever recorded me saying, then my team of helpers can start taking syllable from other words and editing them together to form the missing word. So for instance, let’s say that there is no recording of me saying the word “infrastructure,” but there is a recording of the word “infrared” and the word “structure,” we can take the “infra” from “infrared” and place it before the word “structure,” to create the word “infrastructure.” Obviously, there will now be lots of instances of me saying the word “infrastructure,” because I’ll have said the word quite a few times when I come to record the audio version of this Dollop, unless of course something terrible happens to me overnight before I get a chance to make the recording, but I am confident that regardless, I will still have enough words recorded to make the word “infrastructure,” so I’m not overly concerned.

I suppose there is also commercial viability in this project, as people will be able to download my voice onto their computers, tablets, phones
and satnavs, and have my voice reading their text messages and emails, and giving them directions. Maybe I’ll setup a kickstarter campaign to get this off the ground. Get in touch if you’re a programmer who fancies helping out.

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

I have started adding a few of these Dollops to Youtube. The reason for this is to give people who might not have heard of me, and therefore would not hear any of my work, the opportunity to experience what I do. What a benevolent man I am; it’s kind of like missionary work. Ordinarily, the only people who would read or listen to these blogs/podcasts are people who have deliberately come to my website because they have some idea of who I am. Sometimes there are a few people who accidentally stumble onto my website when searching for things like, “fat gay Hungarian plumbers,” (see this Dollop if you’re confused) but these people are unlikely to stay on my website for long once they’ve realised that I’m not offering what they want. I mean, I suppose there might be someone out there who now regularly reads and listens to these Dollops after accidentally finding me by searching for something like “fat gay Hungarian Plumbers,” and for some reason continued reading, even though it wasn’t at all what they were initially looking for, and now they come back everyday to read each dollop. But it’s doubtful that there are many people reading this who fit that description. Most people who read and listen to these Dollops know who I am.

The great thing about Youtube is that it allows people to accidentally discover things. It recommends videos that you might like, based on what you’ve previously watched. It also has an autoplay feature, meaning that once you’re chosen video has finished, another one will automatically start playing. And it could be anything, especially if you’re like me and you fall asleep halfway through your chosen video, meaning that the autoplay feature keeps moving onto video after video, until you wake up to find yourself listening to a documentary on a man who claims to have travelled to the year 3000. I’ve done the whole falling-asleep-while-on-Youtube thing so many times that my recommended videos section is very weird and unrelated.

I’ve just opened the Youtube app on my phone. Here is a list of the videos that come up for me to watch. Consciousness Is A Mathematical Pattern. A documentary about Near Death Experiences. What If The Middle East’s Borders Were Redrawn, by the American Enterprise Institute. Richard Whiteley Countdown Gotcha. The song Bird In The Bush by folk singer Anne Briggs. Jeremy Corbyn’s tridant renewal speech. Bohemium Rhapsody for Symphony Orchestra and Solo Viola. The Coming Quantum Computer Revolution. Amazing Beat Boxing Girl. Inside The Weird World Of An Islamic Feminist Cult. The Nature Of Space And Time From A Biocentrist Perspective. The Economic Argument Against Neoliberalism. An interview with George Formby. An interview with George Galloway. This Is Why The Zionist’s Want Jeremy Corbyn Out!!! Talking With Hookers Over A Cb Radio. Tom Hanks: America Will be Fine If Trump becomes President.

Perhaps now you have an explanation for why I’m so unhinged, and why these Dollops are often so odd; because this is the collage of craziness that I am drifting in and out of consciousness to every night. And the more Youtube is allowed to use its autoplay feature without human intervention, the more absurd and disperate the video choices become.

So I am putting my stuff on Youtube on the off chance that someone might fall asleep while watching a documentary about 18th Century Russia, and then wake up, completely bewildered to hear me talking about fat gay Hungarian Plumbers, or going on a surreal flight of fancy about the Microsoft Office Paperclip becoming sentient and beating up some MP3 files (see yesterday’s Dollop).

I’m also interested to find out which videos Youtube deems appropriate to play after one of my videos. For instance, if you listen to the aforementioned Dollop entitled Fat Gay Hungarian Plumbers, then the next video to play is entitled beautiful muscle man, which was uploaded by the police Gay Channel.

So far, I don’t think my move on to Youtube has really been successful, given that most of the videos haven’t even gained a single view. I haven’t advertised the fact that the Dollops are on Youtube, but I hoped that some people might accidentally stumble onto me, but alas it hasn’t happened yet. Also, despite being the number one search result for the term “David Eagle” in Google, when it comes to Youtube I am not doing anywhere near as well. I am trailing behind a David Eagle who does Martial Arts, and David Eagle the professional Ping Pong player. So, if you want to help my noble cause to get unsuspecting Youtube viewers to stumble across me and my Dollops, then go to Youtube, do a search for David Eagle and click on the videos that are mine. This is a truly noble task, for one day, with your help, someone masturbating to a video of a beautiful muscly gay policeman might be wiping himself clean to the sounds of my voice, as I read out a lengthy blog all about my kettle. So act now, my friends, and together we can make this happen, and bring these Dollops to the masses.