May 22, 2012 New Review but not really: Whyte & Mackay, Special Blend
Whyte & Mackay, Special Blended Scotch Whisky, 40.0% ABV
Last week I wrangled some volunteer hack work with the Flaneur Art Blog for this year’s Edinburgh Festival. They said there was no need to wait until the festival itself started and mentioned, among other things, a desire for people to write for a new food section; the words ‘whisky reviews’ were used – well okay then.
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Tags: Alcohol, blended scotch whisky, Edinburgh, Food, Glasgow, Leveson, Review, Scotland, Whisky
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- Posted under Science & Nature
May 15, 2012 Please ensure that you write at least 200 words per box.
They taught us to always include an image with an article so here’s this one of the guitar I’ve just stripped down and finished. It has nothing to do with the post itself, but then nor does my sex life, which is what it pretty much replaced for a fortnight. It doesn’t have any strings because I was an idiot and thought I’d save a pound by ordering them online.
I remain connected to my Teesside classmates through Facebook and Twitter. It’s fun to see the relationships between them growing; strangers becoming buddies, flirts becoming fucks – all that dirty romance.
I’m selling my untouched textbooks on Amazon; stubborn, arrogant and poor to the last. I was part of all that, and it was a good crowd, but I chose to leave; and today, when my public affairs lecturer asked for my old reflective essays, rather than be a dick about it and tell him to look in his inbox under my name in the relating period, I looked them up myself.
It was an assignment his visually arresting predesseor had given us an hour or so to write. It was a Thursday morning colder than the canteen bacon rolls; I had a gin hangover but she wanted answers. I did my best.
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Tags: Journalism, Middlesbrough, Multimedia, Review, Students, Teesside
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- Posted under Homework
May 8, 2012 “We don’t accept children’s teeth.” or: Owing money to Teesside University
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Tags: Dinosaurs, End-times, god, Middlesbrough, Multimedia, Nudity, space, Students, Teesside University, Time travel
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- Posted under Mockery & Satire
May 7, 2012 Safe. Secure. Reasonable. Informed: A few words on mental health.
DISCLAIMER: The following post took place over the course of several days of teeth gnashing. Its contents are intended for my own amusement only. Any medical advice adhered to that results in your own suicide and/or the murders of your loved ones in the most bloodthirsty and inhumane way conceivable is neither my responsibility nor anyone else’s, you fiend.
Bruce Wayne had other rather more exotic coping mechanisms than psychotropic medication. He also had Vicki Vale.
If you get treated like a patient, you’re apt to act like one.
- Frances Farmer
So I made up my mind and will not be going back to Teesside, nor will I complete the year. From here on in, this guff comes straight from the heart.
I’m going to mention mental health now but I promise I will touch upon it as briefly as I’m able; then we can get back to talking zoo animals, gig reviews and reasons why the white man will be the death of us all.
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Tags: Batman, Britain, Denmark, Drugs, mental health, Portsmouth, Psychotherapy, Scotland, SSRI, Strawberry
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- Posted under Rants & Tirades
April 28, 2012 Ten opinions from Edinburgh Zoo
Back in December, along with several billion pushchairs, I visited Edinburgh’s pandas. Four months later and one mating season already given up on, I decided I didn’t care what everybody’s favourite asexual bamboo aficionados were up to; instead I wondered how all the other animals were feeling.
1. Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)
"Hey, wanker. That's shit on the glass and it's there for a reason; take a hint and fuck off."
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Tags: Animals, Australia, Britain, december 21st 2012, Edinburgh, mayan prophecy, Nudity, Pandas, Scotland, Vox Pop
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- Posted under Mockery & Satire
April 17, 2012 Graham Coxon at the Liquid Room, Edinburgh.
"What'll it take to make you people dance?" - Coxon and band visited Edinburgh to perform songs from the new album A+E plus oodles of old favourites.
7PM Monday 16th April 2012.
Graham Coxon hasn’t had a drink in ten years; I’m itchy and twitching after ten minutes stood in the queue outside the Liquid Room; waiting for the purple doors to open; wishing I new someone, anyone in this town that could sell me drugs.
He’s in town to promote his new album, A+E; here’s me from the future – as far as this tale is concerned - with a few words about it:
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Tags: Alcohol, Edinburgh, Gig, Multimedia, Music, Review, Video
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- Posted under Homework
April 10, 2012 A Haunted House and Falling off the Danish Bandwagon
This is where I live. Please don't come and murder me.
So it turns out that the squirrels that scamper around the bounding bunnies to the refrain of robins and mischievous magpies (sorry) are the descendants of the very rodents my great grandmother enjoyed watching before she died.
Yep, call it coincidence or providence, but this old hospital I’ve moved into is where my mother’s nan spent her final months. She passed away metres from where I type these words.
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Tags: Animals, Books, Britain, Death, Denmark, Edinburgh, Money, Music, Scotland, Writing
- 6 comments
- Posted under Rants & Tirades
April 8, 2012 Lukewarm turkey and an ode to the single-bed
The height of Summer 2000 in the north of the great State of Victoria. Cells like these were home for itinerant farm workers. On moving in to this one I discovered my bed was home to a Red Back nest. It was too hot to cry.
Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
- William Gibson
It’s good that, isn’t it; I love that sentiment. Saw it on a t-shirt the other week and looked it up. Not familiar with William Gibson, but from scanning his wikipedia entry he sounds interesting. I think Rickerby told me about him, back in the day.
Anyway, it was with this thought in mind that I decided to radically cut down on the little white pills proffered by a long line of GPs with an angle on going straight. None of them have ever been able to adequately explain what is ‘wrong’ with me anyway; and, oddly, most seem to lambaste my desire to find a label, calling them ‘unhelpful’.
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Tags: Alcohol, Britain, Denmark, Drugs, Food, Middlesbrough, Nudity, Scotland, Students
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- Posted under Science & Nature
April 4, 2012 My return to university and another death in the family
Cities of Gold and Mirrors: Got a little high and went along to MIMA before I left town. Not as big as it looks but definitely worth a look if you like your art modern and your staff friendly.
A girl I developed a debilitating and unrequited crush on once called me a drifter down her perfect nose. We’d met at a staff party; I’d been drinking warm beer in a friend’s apartment, watching England lose to Germany with the sound off, A-ha on repeat and bag of something expensive went up my nose before I could leave the house.
I’d just broken up with my girlfriend and everything was a mess, then this divinely sculpted creature asked me to dance. I took offence at the drifter tag, but then again I was younger and stupider back then – now it seems to fit.
This week marks the 11th time in seven years that I’ve bundled my life into a van and driven off at speed. I moved to Middlesbrough from Glasgow six months ago on an awkward and ill-planned mission to grab a bachelor degree by the balls before the price went up; I seemed to be doing quite well but somehow it didn’t seem to fit.
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Tags: Alcohol, Britain, Death, Denmark, Dogs, Drugs, Middlesbrough, Pandas, Scotland
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- Posted under Rants & Tirades
March 14, 2012 The future’s bright – the future’s dinosaurs
Polishing the brass on the Titanic? – An economy in crisis; cheap, out of town hypermarkets; and the ease of internet shopping could change the UK high street as we know it forever.
Middlesbrough town centre’s future as a shopping destination has received an eleventh-hour reprieve in the form of two exciting initiatives.
The projects come at a time when the town’s failure to secure city status in its recent bid has disappointed many locals; the first is a ‘Portas Pilot’ town bid and the second, a proposal to introduce a Business Improvement District (BID).
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Tags: Britain, Dinosaurs, Middlesbrough, Money, Politics