Author Archives: Raph Shirley

About Raph Shirley

I have been creating strange material for the internet for over twenty years. A kind of failed artist yet I refuse to stop.

The Labour leadership

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Hello Labourites,

It has been well documented of late that Labour did not win the last election. The Labour Party (oxymoron), is now looking for a new leader. I shall be giving a low down on those seeking to lead.

David Milliband
This man is actually a slug moulded into the shape of a man and controlled by a small bee in the toe shaped region of the slug. That is not true but it may as well be because as we all know, slugs might make good grub in survival situations but they are no politicians. Milliband gave me a kiss once but I didn’t want to take it any further because he made me puke over himself. Vote Milliband!

Ed Milliband
This brother is one thousandth of The Beatles. That was a lame pun but this guy is lamer still. He believes in capital punishment. You have to spend an hour talking on msn LIKE THIS!

Ed Balls
Despite the popular misconception, Ed Balls actually doesn’t have a silly name. He does have a silly head and body though and should not be trusted around children or adults.

Diane Abbott
This one is fucking mental. Seriously. On the plus side she is both black, and female, and an MP, and someone who’s name is Diane. A rare combination indeed. Will her novelty features allow her to avoid embarrassing questions about her loony sensibilities?

UPDATE – Andy Burnham – UPDATE
Oops, Andy didn’t make the original list. This is categorically not due to the sloppy management of a sloopy blog. It was definitely an intentional and subtle allusion to his lack of presence in the campaign. I am convinced he is a robot and that he will kill us all if elected or if not. UPDATE 2: just realised I did one of those shit jokes where you go I’m not doing something I’m evidently doing. Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.

Who should I vote for? I’m thinking Abbott. That seems like the most sarcastic vote.

Thoughts?

Grand designs

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Dear Grand Designs team,

I have designed what I believe to be the perfect house. As you are no doubt aware, this is a significant and historical turning point and I am sure you will be keen to check over the blueprints (above). Please call me ASAP RE getting this show on the road.

Also, I request that you destroy Kevin McCloud. He is not appropriate for this project.

I await,

Fan mail

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I know what you’re thinkin’, “You’ve got it all Raph, a blog readership approaching double figures… a website… your health”. Well yeah I guess I do have it all but it’s my fans who really put the icing on the cock cake. Take this delightful little offering from the (slightly simple) little boy Jon Baba:

Thanks Jon, you’re right, me and my website are clever and pretty and cool. You are a very special boy and add a lot to the world. I shan’t be sending an autograph.

I get practically thousands of letters just like this every day.

Keep ’em comin’,

Jesus et. al.

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A rather risqué look at the current intellectual malaise. I’m basically having a go at offending as many people as I possibly can with this one. That’s right I am showing a wholesale lack of respect for Jesus Christ, Mohammed (first name?), and Richard Dawkins.

Alternatively it might just be rather crass and banal. You decide.

Have a good weekend,

Update:

Just thought that Dawkins comes off best because he isn’t homophobic. But rest assured I do find him an old bore. I mean literally stop going on about it. Change the record!

Is science good or shit?

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I can’t decide.

Everyone knows the old hack debates about roses looking better to a poet than a scientist or some shit. I’d always written them off but am starting to agree. Who cares what the world is actually like? What has that got to do with me? Genuinely. Stumbled across Blake’s Newton on google images and thought “yeah, he’s right, Newton was a wanker”. Also, they’ve put a copy of it outside The British Library. What exactly are they trying to say with that? They have science books in there but they are simultaneously taking the piss out of it in the forecourt.

Quite a few people go on about how good it is. It’s not that good. I mean at best it’s fine. If they make a terminator I’ll concede it’s good. There’s your challenge science. Come back when you’ve done something other than tell me we live in an unsympathetic universe. Yeah, thanks I really needed to know that.

Tell you what, I’ll work on talking about something I have a fully formed opinion on next time.

Thanks for reading,

The old bastard who went to a sweet shop

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The old bastard really knew how to walk into a sweet shop like a bastard. The misery guts walked in and said ‘I want the lot’. The owner, despite this becoming the best day of business in his life, was upset by this.

This misanthropic horror requested that all the sweets be put in a big pile in the middle of the street outside the shop. When they were all there he covered them in petrol and burnt every one of them. Then a little mouse who had been on his way to the sweet shop peeped out of the drain and saw this sick scene.

The mouse wept.

He went back and told his friends who conspired to seek revenge. They all stood on each others shoulders and got a nice Burberry mac to hide under. They walked up to the nasty old man and said:

“Listen you old bastard. We hate you. You have no sense of joy. You go around ruining fun for everyone and we are going to get you.”

Then the man looked up and saw a group of mice who had been collecting the molten candy that had dripped off from the fire. They had it in a massive bucket and dropped it all over his head. The man began to writhe and swear like an old bastard and the mice laughed at the horrible scene.

When the candy had solidified he himself had become a permanent and disfigured sweet. The mice were able to lick him a few times a day for a few months until his flesh started to rot and they had to throw him in a river.

Thanks for reading,

Mappa Mundi

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This is my attempt to schematically layout everything that is the case. Inspired (slightly embarrassingly) by the recent BBC4 documentary about maps. You might say it is slightly ambitious to try to summarise the lot of it. You should see my graphical representation of what is not the case!

The middle represents our current position in space and time. Below that goes further into the past and above it goes further away in space. Raph’s projection!

Oh dear,

In defence of shit blogs

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So it seems to me that pretty much all blogs are shit. Certainly, no one is going to read them in the future and think they are any better than very embarrassing.

Consider this blog here. It has an average readership of around 1. My mum tends to read it but she doesn’t tend to enjoy it. Rather, she just thinks it is weird. Well then, why the hell do I do it and aren’t I just wasting everyone’s time.

Well yes that is all “true”. But I reckon it is all right. If I were to insist on only doing things that weren’t shit then I would be forced to commit suicide instantly. Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter in the same way it doesn’t matter that Have I Got News For You is shit. It is all just a big piss against the wall so sit back and relax.

Enjoy the coming century of endless shit dribbling out of the internet and on to your face by putting a smile on it. Blogging is a way of saying that you are willing to live in shit and that is possibly some sort of positive statement.

I hope this will be the start of a new age of optimistic posts.

Have a good week,

Old Hat

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So it turns out most of what I’ve written here is totally old hat. Specifically, all this stuff about getting rid of gender and family is pretty hack. Try googling cyborg theory. Although to be honest, I haven’t got a clue what the hell that is.

Anyway, I had quite a good idea today:

Let’s face it, we need to share the burden of propagation. That is still difficult given we are so backward that we still make new people by GROWING THEM INSIDE OUR BODIES! No, no, no. That has to stop. Full stop:’.’.

How about we grow female bodies without brains. Bear with me.

We grow female bodies without brains and then use those bodies to grow new people. That way no one has to go through the humilation of childbirth and we will have taken the first step away from our animal cousins since we started eating with a knife and fork. Or chop sticks. Or hands, although that is sort of like an animal. But they aren’t animals. For god’s sake the last thing I’m saying is that they are animals.

You with me?

The limits of postmodernism

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I reckon this is a really good idea right. Therefore there are three possibilities:

1) I’m wrong it is a stupid idea.

2) I’m right it is good but someone else had it ages ago.

3) I’m right. Praise please.

In the absence of evidence lets assume they are all equally likely. What is the actual idea? Well, lets say that a central aspect of postmodernism is revealing process. i.e. you know there once was a man who wrote a blog by thinking of stuff. He’s called Raph. Hello etc. If that is the case then there is a fundamental limit to the degree to which the process can be revealed. This limit is that specified by Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. You can put a mirror in front of a camera but still can’t see the back of the camera so need another mirror. That mirror then needs another mirror etc. If this is true then another of Gödels achievements will be to rubbish the current aesthetic and intellectual viewpoint. Postmodernists are forced to make their work either incomplete or inconsistent. Ha ha.