Tag: Denmark

A Rambling Thesis on the Sexual Nature of the Danish, Masquerading as a Review of a Viking Exhibition in Edinburgh

Mum at the Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, 2008. Red haired like Boudicca - perhaps from Celt ancestry, or a contribution from the strapping Norse rapists of more than a millennia ago
Mum at the Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, 2008. Red haired like Boudicca – a sign of Celt ancestry or a genetic contribution from the strapping Norse rapists of more than a millennia ago?

Vikings! is at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh until the 12th May, 2013. £9 for adults and less if you’re not one of them; free for members or those that cannily held on to the tickets my ex left behind.

There is an Anglo-Saxon grave marker at a Christian Monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, North East England. It depicts warriors who were undoubtedly Viking raiders carrying out their first recorded raid on our green and pleasant land in AD 793. The following year is recorded in the Annals of Ulster as: “a laying waste by the heathen of all the islands of Britain.” Continue reading “A Rambling Thesis on the Sexual Nature of the Danish, Masquerading as a Review of a Viking Exhibition in Edinburgh” →

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The Love of My Life; With Name-Dropping of Philosophers, Fugitive Policemen and Others

The signs in my kitchen have long needed a reason to be shared. As for Katharina, I've not met her; she could still be here among my fellow poltergeists or perhaps the mice have carried her off. Shame - we might have had something.
The signs in my kitchen have long needed a reason to be shared. As for Katharina, I’ve not met her; she could still be here among my fellow poltergeists or perhaps the mice have carried her off. Shame – we might have had something.

Childless women in their thirties staying in bed until the mid-afternoon, reading their first book by Schopenhauer, Seneca or Montaigne – contemplating the apathy with which they regard their own mortality over the first gin of the afternoon and rubbing one out before the news kills the passion – these are the kinds of women you don’t seem to meet dating online.

I just read the manifesto of the vengeful L.A. Cop-Killing Killer-Cop who is currently running rings around his former colleagues after swearing to take the corrupt all to hell with their loved ones for a lack of honour, honesty and common decency. Continue reading “The Love of My Life; With Name-Dropping of Philosophers, Fugitive Policemen and Others” →

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Safe. Secure. Reasonable. Informed: Coming off Sertraline

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 psychotherapy.
Bruce Wayne had other rather more exotic coping mechanisms than psychotropic medication. He also had Vicki Vale and the Batcave.

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. Continue reading “Safe. Secure. Reasonable. Informed: Coming off Sertraline” →

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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. Continue reading “A Haunted House and Falling off the Danish Bandwagon” →

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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 Redback 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’. Continue reading “Lukewarm Turkey and an Ode to the Single-Bed” →

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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. Continue reading “My Return to University and Another Death in the Family” →

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A Gløgg is Not Just for Christmas

Wherever you are right now, dear reader, my money’s on it being cold outside. Granted you could be somewhere temperate – the southern hemisphere for instance  – in which case why not bookmark this for winter, because the last thing you want right now is a hot mug of spice infused heaven washing down your bare, tanned, fortunate throat. But for those of us who have to wrap up warm to walk the streets and – in a job without windows – wouldn’t see the sun until March, I have a tasty little treat for you that, like all treats, is ripe for abuse.

I only discovered Gløgg – hot spiced wine – a few years ago in Scandinavia, and much like when I first stumbled across masturbation, I decided it surely had to be my own invention rather than an encounter with something people have been enjoying for a long, long time; otherwise however did people manage to leave the house in winter? Continue reading “A Gløgg is Not Just for Christmas” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three

G.A.Harker. Don Quixote: Windmill
‘Tis better to gasp one’s last breath twixt the unspoiled hill and valley than suffer the ignominy of the turbines!

Question Time. BBC One, 10.35 Thu, 17 Nov 2011

Against a more newsworthy day’s backdrop of the biggest strikes in 30 years and my own Senior Lecturer – a former journalist at the News of the World – being arrested in connection with the Leveson phonehacking enquiry (later bailed until March), I have a deadline. I should’ve written this a week ago but I’m shit and lazy and I think I might be losing it, again. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Two

Empty bottles and cans; a big bag of papers and a broken piece of redundant electronics – a typical week’s worth for an unmarried male in his thirties. Teenagers produce twice this.

I’ve spent the majority of my adult life living abroad, and for the most part I found it more bearable than not doing so; but if history has taught us anything it is that all foreigners are little more than vile savages before a fear of the Christian Lord and a good command of the Queen’s is raped into them.

One thing that some of them do seem a hell of a lot better than us at though is recycling; from India’s slums to the supermarkets of Denmark, it is understood that there is money in ‘waste’, be it sorting through what others throw away or collecting the deposit on all the dog-end filled empty bottles littering your apartment after a party. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Two” →

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About Me (2008)

A couple of years ago I was studying Multimedia Design and Communication. A prerequisite was a personal web-site containing an e-portfolio. All that code is redundant now but for posterity’s sake here is the content from the old ‘About Me’ page. Please understand that at the time the side effects of my pills were quite, quite maddening.

Christopher John Parlett (born June 5th, 1979) is a British mongrel dog; a drunk, a hack and spiteful, anchorless trash. He is best known amongst those unfortunate enough to be acquainted with him for his pernicious satire, gluttonous hurtful appetites and poor life-choices.

Hark, such a vicious degenerate was not born – it was fostered by a cruel fate. Continue reading “About Me (2008)” →

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