Following on from my amazing fascinating and intellectually inquisitive blog post about the use of the word “hark” in modern day language, I started thinking about other words that are under used and really shouldn’t be. (Yes work is a bit scarce at the moment. How did you guess?) I was thinking about the use of the word “whelm”. People seem more than happy to bandy around the fact that they might be overwhelmed, the word “under whelmed” is used (though it seems to be less common). But what about “whelm”? Why does nobody feel the need to express a state of whelm. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many of the people who claim to be overwhelmed are in fact, in actuality only really whelmed. The word “whelm” means “overcome, as with emotions or perceptual stimuli”. I would therefore argue that most people are wrongly stating that they are overwhelmed, when a simple statement of being whelmed is most likely much more accurate. So why do people feel the need to be so histrionic about a simple case of the whelms? So maybe next time you recklessly go to bandy around the notion that you are overwhelmed, perhaps you should pause to think about whether a simple declaration of whelm will suffice in this instance. Maybe save the overwhelm statement to something more dramatic that deserves it. If we all made a conscious and concerted effort to be more sincere and truthful about expressing how whelmed we actually are, then maybe one day the word “overwhelm” will once more have an impact, rather than simply being a term we frivolously and thoughtlessly bandy around. OK?

Now, something that definitely will warrant the term “overwhelming” will be the first southside Podcast of 2010. I discovered today that the company that host the podcasts are disbanding their service so that we can’t upload any knew material. Fortunately, I may have found a better alternative and we’ll be launching a new series of podcasts very soon, along with a new exciting podcast that I’m planning on making. Prepare to have your whelm horizons well and truly broadened.

Yours whelmingly, David Eagle

The initial point of my last blog post was to wish you a happy new year and to write about some new year related shenanigans, but then I got sidetracked by my discovery that I was number one and two in Google search results for “David Eagle”. So I’ll attempt to post what I meant to post last time and we’ll see how it goes.

Firstly, let me wish you all a happy new year. (There. Good start.) I hope you all had really good New Year’s parties. I imagine many of you were holding David Eagle parties, with David Eagle blog posts projected on to a big screen and selections from the
””David Eagle Youtube channel
pumping loudly out of the sound system. I’m sure it was amazing and I wish I could have been there, but obviously I was hosting my own party for a select few lucky fans.

The party was being held at my house and to be honest, things didn’t get off to the best of starts as half an hour before the first guests arrived, my toilet broke. The toilet decided in its infinite wisdom (because everyone knows that toilets are infinitely wise. That’s why King Solomon hardly ever left his toilet) to not flush. (Check out my sentence structuring skills!) Anyway, try as I might, the toilet refused to flush. What to do? I couldn’t exactly postpone the New Year’s party till another day. It’s a new year’s party for goodness sake. It wasn’t really an option to cancel the party because people had obviously traveled far and wide to gather in the presence of the Eagle. I therefore sent texts out to all the people due to attend the party, warning them that any toilet activities must be only liquid based. If they think they might need to pass solids, then they may prefer to refrain from coming or to try and do the necessary before leaving their house. For the rest of the night, the toilet was out of bounds and people had to resort to buckets, plant pots and a whole array of interesting objects. I was moved by the camaraderie and resourcefulness among the guests that this situation induced. Some people were very creative with their choice of objects, and the creativity of the choices increased the more drunk people got. Unfortunately, one person (who will remain nameless) got a little too drunk and sadly forgot the toilet embargo. So much for “out with the old”.

The next morning I switched on my phone to find a number of voice mail messages. A few friends (who were at another party) had rang up to wish me a happy new year. Sadly for them, they must have been not quite sober enough to remember that they had rang my phone a few seconds ago, and so ended up leaving me numerous voice mail messages that relayed the happenings of the party. Let’s just say I have quite a lot of incriminating evidence on my phone. I’ll be seeing some of these friends tomorrow night and if they fail to buy me enough drinks, I might just post the messages on my blog – and everyone knows how popular that is. The funny thing about it is that I seem to know more about what happened at the party than some of my friends, who were obviously too drunk to realize. I’ve had great fun winding people up about this. In actuality, most of the things I heard weren’t incriminating at all, but it’s fun to get people all self-conscious and anxious. The most incriminating message consisted of a game of ‘I have never…’ which is were people have to mention something risqué or secret that they have done in their lives, and the rest of the room have to take a drink if they’ve done the same thing in their life. Thanks to this accidentally left voice mail message, I now know who has and who has not had sex in a field. Ironically, I always said she was a bit of a cow, turns out I wasn’t far wrong. Excellent blackmailing material!

Anyway, there’s a couple of jolly and inspirational New Year’s anecdotes for you. I’ll probably get a commission from radio 4 to be a regular speaker on ‘Thought for The day’ based on this blog post.

I’ve got a few new, exciting projects coming up in the next few weeks, plus the first
“”southside Podcast
of the New Year. I’ll give you more information on all that very soon, but that will do for now. I don’t want to overload you with too much quality in one sitting.

P.S. The toilet has been fixed. You can sleep soundly now.

You might think by the title of this post that I’m a bit too late to hark. Harking seems to be chiefly used at Christmas time. Personally I think that the word hark should be used more in everyday speech, and shouldn’t simply be wheeled out on one specific seasonal occasion. I see no reason why the herald angels should use the word “hark” and not I, therefore this is I David Eagle in 2010 harking with pride. I suppose people often “hark back”. The phrase “hark back” is used now and again, but did anyone never think to try harking forwards. Perhaps it’s quite painful to hark forwards. I’ll try a spot of forward harking over the next week and report back with my findings. O yes, I’m a pioneer, a trendsetter. This time next year we’ll be harking all over the place in any direction we jolly well please. I think 2010 should be the year of the hark.

Well, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve probably managed to increase the likelihood of coming up in internet search results for the word “hark”. If I keep writing the word hark over and over again, perhaps I’ll usurp the herald angels in the google search rankings.

Anyway, after all that I expect you’re all wondering why I was actually requesting your harking in the first place. Well I have very good reason to do so. Once more, after a lapse of a few months, my blog has once more risen to the top of the google search charts for the search query “David Eagle”. What’s more, my myspace radio page is at number two. This happened once before and I wrote a huge blog about it, arrogantly gloating about how brilliant and popular I am, only to be ignominiously instantly way down the charts the next day. But this time I think it’s for real. I really do. However I’m not taking anything for granted, therefore I’m going to do my very best to stay at number one. I’m going to try every trick in the book, but Tolkien doesn’t seem to have written much on the subject of googgle rankings. Hahahaa, you see what I did there? So my intention is to try and write a blog about something nearly everyday. This is kind of good news in so much as I’ll be blogging a lot more, however it does mean that I’ll be churning out a lot of inane nonsense, simply in a bid to maintain my google search ranking.

Another trick to increase the likelihood of scoring higher in google searches is to include links to other pages on the Internet. This apparently makes your website look more active and involved. One of my recent Christmas blog posts contained a huge amount of links. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned on linking to anything in this post as I haven’t really got any cause to, but if I’m serious about being number one then I’m going to have to play hardball. Therefore,
“”here is a dictionary definition of the word “hark” for your perusal.
Please click on the link. It will probably help to make Google think I’m really popular and that people pay attention or “hark” to what I actually write.

I was actually going to write some more for this post, but I think I’ll save that till tomorrow. I mean I don’t want to use all my material in one go, especially if I’ve got to blog everyday to keep at number one. I think you’ve had enough quality material for one post. I’ll let you hark off till tomorrow.

Before I go though I’d just like to say how intelligent and attractive all the people who work for Google are. (There, that should do the trick.)

O, happy New Year by the way!

Once more I return with another festive gift. The Christmas Southside Podcast has been released.
Here’s the dowload link
and here is the description:

The Southside Podcast returns with a rather festive feel – which is fortunate as it’s Christmas. Guests include top-class newsreader Angela Rippon, Rupert Adams from ‘William Hill The Buckeyes’, award winning television director Graeme Harper, and The Nolans. Plus: Christmas chemistry carrels; sing along to the classic carol ‘Away In A Spectrometer’, and traditional Christmas singing courtesy of the Stockton folk club, and there’s jingle bells as sang by a five-year-old child who gives us her interpretation of Christmas.

Merry Christmas from everyone at Southside.

—

And I’d like to again extend a merry christmas to you all. I’m making it my new year’s resolution to blog a lot more frequently.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and to be honest the Eagle will probably put on a bit too. Anyway, I come baring gifts. But first: A group of local scout members decided to go into business. Sticking to the scout ethos, they decided to set up a business that dealt with fixing broken car horns. What did they call the business? The answer to that shall be revealed at the end of this post. And that doesn’t even technically count as one of the gifts.

I’m sure you all know (unless your from another planet or something – perhaps a spaceman that came traveling) I perform in a folk group called
The Young’uns
and for two years we ran a podcast. My first two gifts to you, are the links to download those Christmas podcasts.
Here is the link to download:
2006 podcast
Which includes an improvised version of the nativity, lots of Christmas music and Christmas folky DJ mixes,
And the
2007 podcast.
which features an avant-garde interpretation of the nativity, more Christmas mixing, lots of live Christmas music, and lots more.

You can download last years Southside Podcast
here,
Which includes interviews with two actresses, an award winning Pianist, and a director of a pantomime, and of course me being hilarious.

The gifts continue a coming, because I also want to provide you with links to some Christmas material I’ve produced over the years.
my Christmas song parody
about Jesus – I don’t know if you’ve heard of him or not.
I also did a project as part of my Creative Music Technology university course in 2005. It’s a short Christmas radio drama called ‘The Return Of The Real Farther Christmas’. I thought I’d include it in my list of gift to you because I do still actually think it’s quite good, although that’s probably got something to do with my ego than anything else.
Here it is.

And now moving away from me and my ego, here are a couple of random Christmas rap songs that I found on an excellent website
sweetthunder.org/tapes
which archives random tape recordings that someone collects, by purchasing old cassette tapes from charity shops and car boot sales etc. There’s a lot of interesting stuff on there, including people’s diaries, and crazy home recordings. Here are a couple of Christmas rap songs that I downloaded from the site. I don’t know much about the artists or anything, but these songs really have to be heard to be believed. No words can do them justice, so I recommend you just listen and be moved in a way you never thought possible.
The first is a version of the Twelve days Of Christmas, which consists of twelve rappers rapping.
Here’s the download link.
The second is a song called the Santa Rap, which is a work of genius.
Here’s the link.

And there’s more. I’ll be back tomorrow with 2009’s Christmas Southside Podcast. And there’s even more. It’s time for the reveal to what the scouts called their car horn fixing business. The name of the business was: ‘Beep Repaired’.

I bet you there’s a cracker joke writer out there reading this, envious of my comedy genius.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Coming soon: What do you think I might have said to the arrogant jockey who was bragging about making his horse race faster by feeding him ecstasy? But first …

As you probably know, I am part of a folk group calledThe Young’unsAnd for the last three years I have performed at a Maritime festival in a small Dutch town named Appingendam. We stopped doing ‘The Young’uns Podcast’ but we did say we would feature a few specials. Well it’s taken over a year to do our first special, but then doesn’t that only make it so much more special?

You can follow The Young’uns’ adventures in Holland in this documentary, which features recordings from 2008/2009’s festivals. There are live sea shanties, random interviews with Dutch people, comprehensive Dutch language training courtesy of ‘The Young’uns’ language school, plus we venture into the Dutch ghetto to experience Dutch gangster rap.

I was wondering whether it would be best to split it into a few parts, but in the end just decided to lump it altogether. You can download the lump
“”here.
Of if you prefer to stream the lump (if that’s not too oximoronic a concept)
“”here.

I feel I should personally apologise to the BBC and everyone involved at ‘children in need’ which is being televised tonight. I expect that you will have significantly less viewers now, due to the fact that they will all be listening to the Young’uns in Holland. I assure you that I did not intentionally usurp ‘children in need’, although the BBc might want to consider asking me to present the programme next time, to avoid this kind of thing in the future.

And now: What do you think I said to the very arrogant jockey who was bragging about making his horse run faster by giving him ecstasy?

I told him to get off his high horse. (yes it really is that simple. Perhaps I should start writing the jokes in Christmas crackers. Well my jokes are just as unfunny, although they are a little bit on the lengthy side, as the set-up to the joke goes for a whole paragraph. We might have to invest in bigger crackers, or maybe put the punchline in another box of crackers. We could sell the punchline crackers separately. What a great money making opportunity. People would have to buy the punchline crackers to get the end of the joke. I could take this a step further. I could make a really long joke with a number of punchlines and twists, so that people have to buy cracker after cracker. I would sell the crackers individually, and people would get addicted to the story of the joke, and keep buying and buying until the end of the joke was reached. Except, the joke never ends, and hapless, helpless cracker addicts are forced to buy Christmas crackers all the way through the year, long beyond Christmas time. Right I’m going to work on this idea right now! But as an extra treat for reading, I’ll leave you with one final joke/question that didn’t quite meet the cracker standard – in other words, it’s not lengthy enough.

A group of local scout members decided to go into business. Sticking to the scout ethos, they decided to set up a business that dealt with fixing broken car horns. What did they call the business?

I will of course provide you with the answer the next time I make a post, but in the meantime, enjoy the Holland documentary.

Coming soon: What do male homosexual prostitutes, deep-sea divers, and investigative journalists all have in common? But first:

The 99th Southside Podcast is here. This is its description:

Have you ever wondered about what a Lama might write in a blog? No, of course you haven’t but anyway … This week comedy writer dean Wilkinson introduces us to the Lamadali, as well as discussing the subject of children’s literature.
Science Fiction writers Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore talk about the science Fiction drama ‘Faction Paradox’.
Actor Trevor Cooper shares some acting anecdotes and reminisces about working on Doctor who.
Plus, find out all about a couple of lesser-known sexual orientations, and take part in our new, exciting competition, ‘Where Am I Scratching?’ And which science fiction monster or alien would you most like to enter into a physical relationship with?
O, and what are the two fastest fish in the ocean?
Find out by Podding ON™ to the 99th Southside Podcast.
Warning, this week’s Southside Podcast contains material that certain listeners may find unnerving, such as the sounds of unidentified monsters tearing human beings apart. Well what did you expect?

You can download it
here.
So now on to my little riddle:
What do male homosexual prostitutes, deep-sea divers and investigative journalists all have in common?

Answer: They’re often paid to get to the bottom of things.

I’ll be back in a few days, but in the meantime, have a think about what I might have said to the rather arrogant jockey who was bragging about giving his horse Ecstasy so as to make it move faster.
I’ll give you the answer when next I blog.

P.S. I’ve just received a phone call from a friend who I’ve not heard from in a while. We’ve known each other for ages and she always does stuff like this. Baring in mind we’ve not had a conversation for quite some time, So she calls me up and (before even saying hi) she whispers “Tell me what Albus Dumbledore’s brother was called”. Now you may think this is some kind of really weird sexy talk we’ve got going on, but it isn’t. I could tell by the background sound where she was, plus it’s not the first time she’s done this. In the background I could hear the quizmaster asking questions. She was ringing me from a pub quiz, and insisted on cheating because their team always lose. Last time she did this she kept me on the phone, for a whole round, making me answer questions for ages. Most of the time I didn’t know the answer and so I had to do an Internet search. I’ve got one hand on the keyboard and the other holding the phone, and while I make my search, she just keeps telling me to hurry up or bombards me with even more questions before I get a chance to answer the last one. And her quiz team aren’t any use. All they do is keep asking “Has he got the answwer yet? Has he got the answer yet?” You’ve never known true pressure until you’ve been on the phone to my friend asking quiz questions ten-to-the-dozen, with her friends and her cursing me and telling me to hurry up. Also, the last time I spoke to her she rang me from a pub quiz. I’d like to think she was choosing me because she saw me as the friend with the most knowledge, but the tragic fact is simply that I’m a sucker. So I look forward to our next reunion (maybe in a couple of months) when I have to tell her what year the Spanish armada occurred, without so much as a “hi, how do you do” from her. But as the British rock band ‘Placebo’ so sagely put it all those years ago, “A Friend in need’s a friend indeed’. (I’m sure they were the first people to coin that saying.)

O and just in case you are at all interested, the Spanish Armada was in 1588, and Albus Dumbledore’s brother was called Aberforth, but then you all knew that already didn’t you?

Well, it’s all happening here folks – or at least three quarters of it is anyway. The Holland documentary should be complete very soon, I’ve got loads more stuff to go up on
The Youtube channel
and I’ve got the 98th ‘Southside Podcast’ uploaded. Here’s the description:

Ever wondered what is meant by a ‘Systems Management Engineer’? No? Well never mind, you’ll find out on this week’s Southside Podcast as we speak to ‘Systems Management Engineer’ Ken Evans, who attempts to explain how he could save businesses millions of pounds, but then gets a bit sidetracked talking about aquatic life and 17th century philosophers. Ken also tries to teach renowned actor
Shane Rimmer
a thing or two about business, while performing a hilarious comedy double act routine alongside
comedian Charlie Ross.
Journalist John Pilger
talks about how the media can shape the political agenda
and public opinion. All this, plus lude insinuations, and a complimentary text message when you
download the 98th Southside Podcast.

I’ll be back with a new blog post very shortly, but now I’ll leave you with the set-up of a joke/riddle I’ve just thought up, all on my own, without any help.

“What do deep sea divers, male homosexual prostitutes and investigative journalists all have in common?” …
I’ll give you the punch line in my next post. In the meantime, stay safe, and stay true to the Cores – especially Sharon.

Over the last few weeks, the southside Podcast has featured a couple of renowned psychic mediums. In
podcast 94
we heard from UK medium
Tony Stockwell,
and the
97th podcast
featured the internationally renowned
James Vanpraagh.
The subject of life after death and communicating with the dead is one that greatly intrigues me. We’ve discussed communicating with the dead on a number of podcasts and shows that I’ve been involved in. My first dalliance into the subject occurred by accident. While at University, I was sifting through some old recordings that I had made on a Dictaphone. The files on the recordings were of old notes I had made relating to an essay I had been writing. I used to dictate notes into the machine so that I didn’t forget them. What a revolutionary system that was. I guess I’m a bit of an academic pioneer. I was just about to press the delete button on the digital recorder (as I no longer needed the files) but a split second before my finger touched the button, I heard something that made me stop in my tracks. (I’ll start a new paragraph to heighten the dramatic tension.)

(There! Hope that was effective. anyway.) I pressed the rewind key and replayed the portion of audio, assuming I had misheard, but no, there it was again. But what was it? There was the sound of me speaking, reading some essay notes, then a slight pause, and then a new voice, a voice completely different to mine. It sounded like a Scottish woman. I rewound again and relistened. Surely it must have been me putting on a voice? I thought, but it didn’t seem likely that I would have put on a random Scottish voice while recording some essay notes. I couldn’t make out what the voice was saying. Totally bewildered by this find, I ran into my flatmate’s room and showed him the recording. He agreed that it sounded nothing like me, and that it sounded like a Scottish woman. I remember making this recording. There was no one around me at the time – certainly no one in my room, and the voice sounded too close to have come from outside my room; in fact, the voice sounded closer to the recorder than my own voice. My flatmate had no idea of what the voice was saying. We sat there in amazement, listening to the sample over and over again, trying to gain some sort of semblance as to what the words could be. My flatmate Jim had a look on the internet, basically typing something like “mysterious voices on recorder” into the search engine. And that is when we first discovered EVP.

EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. It transpired that many other people had reported receiving unexplained voices on audio recordings. We found pages and pages of information all about it, and scientific research on the subject too. The popular explanation seemed to be that it was voices of the dead.

Doing an Internet search on this subject will bring up some interesting and (as you’d expect) peculiar thoughts including theories of how it is believed that these voices manifest. If you do want to do a search for EVP, feel free to use Google as there is no need to boycott it anymore, as I am back at number one in the search results for David Eagle.

After this experience, I began to get more interested in EVP and started listening to other EVP examples from the internet. Then, a couple of years later, I received another mysterious voice on a recording I’d made. This time it was definitely not me putting on a voice. I would say that this second example was even weirder, yet more definitive than my first message. Since then, I have picked up a few more potential EVPs, but nothing as clear as my first two recordings.

A few years ago I played the two EVP recordings out on a podcast. I have uploaded the segment to my Youtube channel. You can access it
here.
You can also download it as an MP3 file
here,
and scare the crap out of yourself when you’ve got your MP3 player on shuffle at night, and it comes on randomly just as you’re falling asleep.

I’d be interested if anyone has any comments on this. Maybe you have some idea as to what the messages are saying or even where they might come from. You can leave a comment on Youtube.
On the
97th Southside Podcast
I promised to provide a link to a radio interview with James vanpraagh that goes into a lot of detail about the spirit world and communicating with the dead. It’s in quite a few parts, and is quite extensive.
James Vanpraagh interview.

Right, well there’s some food for thought. we’ll be back to the fart jokes tomorrow.

The 97th Southside Podcast is available to download.
This week:
Find out why people are protesting in the streets of London, harassing government ministers and celebrities all in the name of ice cream, plus, the delights of viagra ice cream.
”Sir Patrick Moore
tells us all about his cat.
We speak with award winning television director Graeme Harper who has recently won another award for his work on Doctor Who.
And Psychic and clairsentient
”James Vanpraagh
talks about communicating with the dead.
Plus presenter David Eagle takes us way back in time, to 1900 BC, for the world’s oldest standup comedy gig.
this
is the download link. enjoy