AUTHOR | ELDERLY SCHOOLBOY | IDIOT
How’s your reading? Does it give you headaches? Perhaps you need glasses. Do your lips move? Doesn’t matter, because I need a couple of people who can match the noises coming out of their mouths with the corresponding symbols on the pages of a book, just like back when books were thrilling accounts of all manner of adventures which people in coloured hats were having. Continue reading “50/50 Share in Proceeds for Northern Lass and Southern Lad Able to Match Mouth Noises to Written Symbols”
Pinocchio! So this is where I find you! How do you ever expect to be a real boy? Look at yourself. Smoking! Playing pool!
– Jiminy Cricket
Sex during SNRI discontinuation is like the first time – if you lost your virginity concussed, held up against an electric fence in a rainstorm. During the relationships, flings and longer first dates of the last six years I’d gotten used to the numb pounding of dutiful copulation; I knew I should have been enjoying it more, and sometimes a girl would go the extra mile, but more often than not sex was there just to remind me what a worthless bloated addict I’d become. Continue reading “SNRI Discontinuation Laugh Riot”
My closest friend is writing a book – and by closest I mean the one that is physically the furthest away – so I’m reading the drafts as he believes I’ll be cruel but constructive though unavoidably gushing in my feedback because he is obviously a far better writer than me.
I’ll get it set out in carbon for the tattooist but at the moment I’m still wrecking my idiot brain with the script I stupidly jumped at the opportunity to write, and by wrecking I mean coming off the codeine with Captain America and Valerian tea. Continue reading “I’m Not Dead but I Was There”
Christ, I don’t know. I suppose I should say something; it has been a while, after all. What have I been up to lately? Well I didn’t kill myself yet but don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind, fellow travellers. Continue reading “In Which I Talk About the News, Drugs, Star Trek and Make a Picture for John Lennon”
I guess after thirty-three years without a filling and around twenty without anything being pulled out of my jaw I’d grown complacent in the face of tooth decay – arrogant even. Then early last week I took my last bite as a complete human – the tooth fairy had found me, and we had some catching up to do. The pain started slight and became an agony that spread around my face like a burning hedgehog that existed partially in another dimension but flickered in and out of it as it rolled through me, pausing only to kick my tooth in the balls when it got tired of this pan-dimensional torment. Continue reading “Failed Toothache Remedies and This Brave Soldier’s First Filling”
Day Eight.
Tuesday 12th June seems a world away. I’d been on a two day bender around the city; walking here and there; taking the odd photo; talking to people almost as much as I spoke to myself; and crawling in and out of pubs along the way. I woke up the next day fully dressed with all the lights still on, Bowie still stuck on his Berlin Trilogy and cold chips too close not to be breakfast. I clawed at recollection more smoke and dust than memory and came to the conclusion that it’d been fun; but what now? I need a dog, not another hangover. Continue reading “One Week Without Alcohol or Coffee: A Psychonaut’s Cautionary Tale”
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.
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”
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”
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”
CHRIS PARLETT 