At first, I thought that there wasn’t much to say about Vikings. I’ve been watching TechnoViking on YouTube quite a lot, but everyone knows he isn’t a genuine Viking anyway. I considered giving them the benefit of the doubt and broadening the General Banter category to include virtually all barbarian hordes of all stripes.

Then I realized that there’s a reason that people still talk about Vikings - they were the dog’s bollocks. First of all, as far as true Vikings are concerned, there is Beowulf. Yes, he was a Geat - but that’s a lot closer than a lot of other Viking heroes get to the frozen tundra of the Northlands. Vikings terrorised Europe, their descendants conquered this country, and they pioneered trans-Atlantic exploration and colonization, established colonies in Greenland and Canada.

Viking mythology is fucking brilliant. The eddas and sagas outline a divine opera with contains the underpinnings of some Christian lore and rivals Greco-Roman mythology as far as internecine bitchiness is concerned. Not only that, but while Zeus was just another sky-god, Odin had a pair of ravens and only one eye. Not to mention the eight-legged horse. And let’s not forget one of the great tricksters of all time, Loki, and Ragnarok, the end of the reign of the gods, in a giant cosmic battle that pits god against titan.

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Why does everything have weird names? Every container, shelf, cabinet or appliance had some odd name, as if people from Planet Sweden anthropomorphized these objects, naming each one they encountered as best they could:

BESTA
HEDDA
BJARNUM
LERBERG
INREDA
EKTORP
GRUNDTON
BERTA
KARNA

It turns out, Bryne writes, that the Wikipedians had already cracked the code:

Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)

Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names

Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names

Bookcase ranges: Occupations

Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays

Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names

Chairs, desks: men’s names

Materials, curtains: women’s names

Garden furniture: Swedish islands

Carpets: Danish place names

Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms

Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling [cuddling?]

Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives

Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms

Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions

Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

I love discovering a nomenclature’s inner structure; it’s so satisfying to know that someone has taken the time and care to think creatively about the work that names do.

Still, the IKEA taxonomy is no less enigmatic for having been described. I’m sure there are several PhD theses waiting to be written about it. Music, chemistry, and nautical terms for lighting? Feminine names for curtains, masculine names for chairs and desks? And what subtle intra-Scandinavian tensions or harmonies are revealed by the assignment of Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish words to certain categories but not others? Is there some national stereotype about the Finns (for example) setting an especially attractive table? Or, more perversely, not?

The Wikipedia article continues:

Because IKEA is a world-wide company working in several countries with several different languages, sometimes the Nordic naming leads to problems where the word means something completely different to the product. A well known example was the bed frame GUTVIK. As the word can be pronounced Gootfick it invites German-speaking people to understand it like gut fick which is somewhat close to “good fuck” in German.

Then there’s this tidbit:

Company founder Ingvar Kamprad, who is dyslexic, found that naming the furniture with proper names and words, rather than a product code, made the names easier to remember.

Take heed, O ye makers of automobiles and techno gizmos.

The name IKEA, by the way, is an acronym. IK stands for Ingvar Kamprad; the E stands for Elmtaryd, the farm where Kamprad grew up, and the A is for Agunnaryd, Kamprad’s home village.

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5. “They told me at the Blood Bank this might happen.”

4. “This is just a 15 minute power nap they raved about in the time management course you sent me to.”

3. “Whew! Guess I left the top off the Whiteout. You probably got here just in time.”

2. “Did you ever notice sound coming out of these keyboards when you put your ear down real close?” And the NUMBER ONE best thing to say if you get caught sleeping at your desk…

1. Raise your head slowly and say, “…in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

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I’m feeling lazy, and this blog needs an update. No more bitchiness!! Just good quality plagiarized lists and the like from now on, until I can be arsed to write a proper post. So here it is. Yawn.

1) You don’t need to worry about drinking and driving, although it does pay to check that your chauffeur’s hip flask does only contain water every once in a while.

2) You don’t have to worry each year about filing a tax return. Your accountant makes sure you don’t pay tax.

3) Your parents don’t care if you crash the car.

4) You can use your body clock in the mornings, not the alarm clock.

5) Why rent a porn video when you can rent the porn star?

6) You don’t have to worry about how expensive this petrol station is compared with the rest.

7) You can use a new razor blade every time you shave without feeling wasteful.

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Hello, my fellow reader(s?), please allow me to get something off my chest for a moment. I’m fed up with the people I care for the most taking me for a constant, never-ending ride. Before you turn away and think you’ve heard this all before, stick with me for a moment longer - you might even be able to answer some of my questions.

I’m wondering, perhaps it’s just a part of human nature or is it just those I choose to associate with? Maybe our God, Mother Nature or whatever non-celestial body we entreat to, has a twisted sense of humour… So macabre that it has followed me everywhere I go ever since I came out of my mother’s womb. Or, could it be that I am unlucky enough to be cursed with the “dodgy DNA”: the type that clings to only those who constantly feel the need to break me down. Maybe that’s what my “friends” are attracted to: The appeal of emotionally tearing me into tiny little pieces until I am completely at their mercy. I wish I could sit here and say I didn’t care… but I do. I care very much and it hurts.

As the cliché goes, “why is it that the people who make you the happiest can also make you the saddest”? Truth is, I’ve been asking myself this question for months. And I’m glad to announce to you all, that I think I’ve finally cracked it! There’s a big fat tattoo across the entire width of my forehead that simply reads: “MUG”. I caught a glimpse of it in the bathroom mirror just now when I went for a piss! It’s acts as a magnet that attracts all the wrong people. They see me as nothing but shit on a shoe. A giant, figurative piece of dog-do that exists purely to bump up their number of “friends”, with scant regard for me (it’s all “me, me me” today, isn’t it?)

Well, I’m tired of associating myself with phoney people, I would really appreciate it if I could find REAL people who can appreciate me as a FRIEND. I need to break away from all of this. Will someone please hit my fucking F5 key real soon? I am in desperate need of one giant kick up the backside that’ll force me to move into first gear and get out of this rut I’ve been stuck in for months. My question is, how do you find that? How do you force yourself to leave everything behind (even it it’s in tatters, it’s still immensely difficult to let go, you know) and jump ship? I’d love to do that. Then when that’s all done and dusted, I’ll need some “true” friends who I can fall back on and trust. If you know of any, please tell them about a party I’m hosting on the 19th of October 2007 at my apartment:

Flat 58,
Chump Towers
Dupable Lane,
N4 IVE
United Kingdom

I look forward to seeing some of you there. Thanks and good night.

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