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.

Eviction

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I thought secretly living in my parents garden was going to work out… The plan to be covert was going pretty perfectly until my dad followed the daisy chained power adapters to the shed and uncovered my den of sin.

It was Friday night when it happened. 9pm and I’m layin’ on the bed sewing pre-emptive crotch patches into my new wranglers. I got fan heaters in double figures and there I lay, naked in my vault of vice. My cave of carnal cravings. My garden shed of earthly delights. My castle of sin on a sand pit. Sin upon sin upon sin. Soiled sheets and empty doritos bags. Dangerous quantities of both analogue and digital pornography. Empty cans of value lager and printed out computer game guides. Hard drives and keyboards. Mice and memory cards. DVDs upon DVDs upon DVDs (alphabetized). Terminator figurines on computer manuals on atheist propaganda. my wretched body draped in a sweaty grime cloth from George by Asda.

Don’t look at me! Vice and squalor and dirt. The very air was composed of fart, and cough, and the ghosts of filthy words. My parents are retching and they said `this ground must be condemned for a hundred years’, `ten generations shall pay for this crime’. I was a filthy animal. I knew then I had to move out… and four months later I had. I dunno maybe I’m going over the top.

Al the best,

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Bonus material - Philosophical Investigations Discussion section in unremarkable high definition audio

As part of a scheme to promote my forthcoming Edinburgh show, I am releasing an audio recording of last year’s show, Philosophical Investigations. I’m releasing it in six parts. This week the discussion:

[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/media/PhilosophicalInvestigations/Section4.mp3]

Or download it for your mp3 player here.

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Edinburgh Preview at 9.30pm on 22 July @ The Hen and Chickens

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Hello,

Please come to my Edinburgh Preview at 9.30pm on Sunday 22 July at the Hen and Chickens Theatre Bar, Islington. I’d like it if you did.

Buy tickets here. Or pay on the night to save £0.75 you cheap skate.

If you’re in to Facebook events:

https://www.facebook.com/events/499420723407199/

Many thanks,

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Bonus material - Philosophical Investigations Results Section in mind boggling high definition audio

As part of a scheme to promote my forthcoming Edinburgh show, I am releasing an audio recording of last year’s show, Philosophical Investigations. I’m releasing it in six parts. This week, it is the results section:

[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/media/PhilosophicalInvestigations/Section3.mp3]

Or download it for your mp3 player here.

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Man Dog VII

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To whom it may concern,

Sayonara, baby (translation of “Hasta la vista, baby” in Spanish Terminator 2 over-dub),

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Bonus material - Philosophical Investigations Method Section in devastating high definition audio

As part of a scheme to promote my forthcoming Edinburgh show, I am releasing an audio recording of last year’s show, Philosophical Investigations. I’m releasing it in six parts. This week, it is the method section:

[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/media/PhilosophicalInvestigations/Section2.mp3]

Or download it for your mp3 player here.

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Computer Programmer Extraordinaire

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Dear potential friend/enemy,

I’m taking a brand new show to the Edinburgh festival again.

Do come!

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Bonus material - Philosophical Investigations Introduction in heart breaking high definition audio

As part of a scheme to promote my forthcoming Edinburgh show, I am releasing an audio recording of last year’s show, Philosophical Investigations. I’m releasing it in six parts. This week, it is the introduction:

[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/media/PhilosophicalInvestigations/Section1.mp3]

Or download it for your mp3 player here.

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A recount of a tough crowd

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In the land of small and unappreciative audiences; Raph Shirley’s 2011 début Edinburgh solo show.

I think the worst show at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival was the one I did to a solitary ninety year old man. He’d got lost on his way to the military tattoo. Old people often can’t see very well, and he found himself in/being my audience. They (the elderly) usually navigate in groups. In that respect, they are like penguins, and they huddle together for warmth. If an old person gets separated from the group they will last a matter of minutes. They also enjoy a diet rich in oily fish, but they are poor swimmers.

Anyway, I finished the show and I was swinging a camcorder round on a stick, in an attempt to recreate the sense of excitement at Live at the Apollo (I was hoping to use the footage for my show reel). The man had been politely sitting there for forty five minutes looking terrified. I said ‘well, that’s the end. What did you think? You can leave some money if you think that’s appropriate’. I didn’t scam him. I didn’t say that he needs to replace his roof insulation and it will cost £1500.

Anyway, a bit of the fear went away from his face and he said ‘I fought the Germans in World War II, but nothing could have prepared me for the horror that I just experienced’. I said ‘I’m sorry to hear that’, and I started to leave the stage, and… I tripped up, and fell face first into some nachos, and I looked at the man with a salsary face and said ‘I’m really sorry’, and then my trousers fell down and I farted comically and a little bit of poo poo fell into-the-ankled-pants/onto-the-floor and I could taste a little bit of the sour-cream/salsa/guacamole/beer miscellany and… and… a solitary tortilla chip dropped off the end of my nose, and one corner hit the tip of my penis, and it seemed to spin in slow motion like that man from the Titanic film, and it stuck upright into the little poo poo I was talking about earlier, like a sort of parody of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ our lord and saviour.

Anyway, I was actually quite embarrassed at this point, so I tried to leave the stage, but I slipped on the poo (another bit) and I fell over in such a way that the aforementioned tortilla chip stuck up my rectum. The man, who actually had a purple heart, stood up and said ‘I will never forgive your generation for your decadence’, and he fell off his chair dead, and then my parents, who had come to see my show but had been distracted on their way to the theatre by the Twilight Saga came in and saw the whole scene. I said ‘It’s not what it looks like… Ah, who am I kidding it’s exactly what it looks like’, and then my bum made this noise:
[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fartNoise.mp3]

Anyway, there’s no need to go into unnecessary detail, but I think that was probably one of my worst shows.

There was one show that was worse than that maybe, but… I dunno, do you wanna? Well, there was this one time where there was no-one there except the barman and I thought – well I’ll do it anyway, so I started to do the show, and then the ceiling started to come down on me and the barman was, like, ‘ah shit’. That was inconvenient, but I carried on, and then the cieling was, like, pressing on our heads, and I said to the barman “maybe I should stop”, and he’s like “no, no it’s cool, its cool”, so I kept going and then the barman’s head actually popped, and I was like “fuck… fuck it… fuck… I’m going to be blamed”, but I thought… I’ll keep going, and I’m a third of the way through, and the cieling is still crushing my head, and then my brother starts growing out of the barman’s neck except he hasn’t got any skin like Robbie Williams in that video, and his mouth is a speaker just saying all this really offensive stuff. It’s like he doesn’t understand our ways but he’s just heard what we find offensive and is saying it all and it’s, like, all the standard racist, and pornographic, and violent, and misogynist, and all that but there is also this stuff in there that seems to get to the real heart of what makes you a pathetic animal, and what means you are not a dignified human being but a sort of rat, and all your insecurities and weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and it is, like, the sort of speech where after you’ve heard it you’ll never be able to smile convincingly again. It completely undermines you.

Anyway, I look at my watch and notice that time has completely stopped. It has slowed down to nothing at all, but this kind of intense pain and shame is swelling inside, and every centimetre of my body is in agonising pain, and… the thing is, when time stops space also dilates… I don’t really understand it, is something to do with Einstein or the atomic bomb or something, but all your skin and anywhere with nerve endings is getting elongated so that my capacity for pain and suffering is increasing. At this point I’m thinking – maybe I will stop the show because this is fucking inconvenient, but I’m not really in control of my actions and I thought – It can’t get much worse than this, but I start to grow new limbs ‘cos during this I was thinking “well at least my body is finite so the pain can only be on my ten digits for instance I could have twenty digits with all this pain. But as I had thought it I did have twenty digits and actually then my thoughts led to more and more body parts until I’m actually infinitely big, and a little side point, I thought back to that Doctor Pepper advert that’s like ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’, and I realised the answer of course is ‘infinite suffering’. Now I say “right, that’s it – the show is cancelled. I’m not doing it any more”, but as I mentioned – I no longer have any control and this is where it really gets rather annoying, and this is what makes this probably the worst show I did, I then start to destroy everything that I love. The worst thing about it is that all the time Rock DJ by the aforementioned Robbie Williams is playing on the stereo. That’s when I thought – maybe my show shouldn’t be listed in the comedy section.

Anyway, it turns out that my mates had spiked my drink before the show with LSD. They had had some careless talk about doing it but hadn’t really been serious. One of my mates, SexyPete99, had thought they were being serious and came to Edinburgh to do it. When you think about it, it takes six hours and two changes to get from Hemel Hempstead to Edinburgh and he did that whole trip alone. It doesn’t bare thinking about.

Love to all earthly souls,

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Bonus material - Philosophical Investigations Abstract in mind blowing high definition audio

As part of a scheme to promote my forthcoming Edinburgh show, I am releasing an audio recording of last year’s show, Philosophical Investigations. I’m releasing it in six parts starting with the abstract:

[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/media/PhilosophicalInvestigations/Section0.mp3]

Or download it for your mp3 player here.

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Reflections on the Hubble Deep Field image

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“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

– Albert Einstein.

Turns out Einstein was better at Physics than jokes.

“In awe I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebon void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought… I really must repair the roof on this toilet.”

– Les Dawson.

That’s more like it.

Sit down and prepare to be terrified. The following picture is of a region of the sky smaller than this full stop.


Figure 1. The Hubble Deep Field. It is unclear whether the correct response to this is laughter, screaming, or suicide. Bear in mind that each little spiral is a whole galaxy. Bear in mind that if the universe is infinite then the whole observable universe is itself a negligible part of the whole universe. I often have a bear in mind (Yogi, if you must know).

I advise printing this out and looking at it whenever your life blows.

I was sittin’ on the bog in an Odeon on an industrial estate the other day (Prometheus 3D (washout)) and the picture above slipped out of my pocket on to the floor. I looked at it and then caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and had an epiphany.

Here endith the front matter and any pretence of humour.

This blog post makes the following assumptions:

  1. The universe is infinite.
  2. Materialism is true.

I aim to show that if these two assumptions are sound then we are immortal. Furthermore, if they are true then Hell exists, and your actions have no consequences.

1 You are the motion of material. I call this your Shape.

2 Your shape depends on its environment but part of your shape is unchanged by this process. I call this unchanging part your Essence.

3 Your Essence is composed of a finite number of objects which can have a finite number of arrangements.

3.1 In an infinite set of randomly arranged finite forms there will be an infinite number of each type of arrangement if and only if the total possible number of objects is finite.

3.2 You and your Essence are composed of a finite number of objects.

3.3 In an infinite set of arrangements of the objects that are contained in your Shape there will be an infinite number of realisations of your Shape and your Essence.

4 If you want to believe the truth then you must base all personal decisions on the assumption that there are an infinite number of your Essences making all possible decisions in an infinite number of both identical (your Shape) and different (your Essence) environments.

5 All your choices have an infinitesimal impact on the universe since they are repeated and contradicted an infinite number of times by an infinite number of yous (your Shape).

6 For as long as you are possible you are. You are immortal and will always exist if and only if the universe exists.

 * * * * * * * * *

Every major scientific discovery (starting with realising we have a bum-hole around 1 million years ago) has essentially told us ‘you are less significant and unique than you thought you were’.  Currently, we base our significance on believing we are the only life. Come off it. No serious person does not believe in aliens. The next realisation will be we are not alone. Then we will realise that we are not the only version of us in the universe.

  • There is infinite suffering.
  • Hell exists.

And then I realised it wasn’t an epiphany… it was diarrhoea.

Best regards,

Hemel Hempstead AMateur dramatics Society (HHAMS)

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“Imagine creating something and giving it both consciousness and a rectum. What sick joke is this? And then Jesus has the audacity to say ‘consider the lily.’ Yes, it’s easy when you’re a lily, sans-bum-hole. I did consider the lily and then I shat myself.”

– Raph Shirley, Hemel Hempstead, 2011.

When you’re a busy busyness man you wear many different hats (try to remember that I just set up the word hats for in a minute). Computer programmer yes, computer gamer yes, computer owner… oui, but I release my creative juices in the form of being technical director of the Hemel Hempstead Amateur Theatrical Society; The HHATS (remember?). It’s actually called HHAMS but I don’t wear many hams so it’s harder to fit in, joke-wize. I’ve been wanting to talk about something that happened with HHATS/HHAMS/HHADS for a while now, but so far the emotions have just been too fucking raw.

It is the 2011 Autumn season. A cool wind tickles an oak tree, like a lover tickles his woman during the sex act. The production is Noel Coward’s Private Lives. I’d never heard of it, but I had heard of Noel Coward. The script was formulaic yes, but the (my) lighting design was radical to say the least (it was fucking radical). The venue was The John Smithingwaite Hall. It was a three nighter and on opening night the cast were in a frenzy of conceited theatrical buzz. Line runs and high jinx and irritatingly good spirits all round. You know the sort; great fun when you’re on the inside, sickening when viewed from outside. Like one of Eddie Murphie’s fat suits.

I’d always suspected that am-dram-socs were little more than flimsy covers for provincial swinging clubs for the actors, but that night I wondered if there was more to it than just middle aged infidelity inappropriately on display to the naive sub-twenty members. They dreamed of playing the HH dome the young fools. I’d often take them for a McFlurry and tell them the truth that ‘every creature on this earth dies alone’. A speech no less profound for having been lifted from the over-rated Donnie Darko film. I’d go on to tell them that realizing Donnie Darko is not good is just a necessary step on the path to maturity. Truth is, when you’re one of the Kidz like me (taking an admittedly broad 5 to 31 age range) you dream crazy dreams like that every day, except the night time dreams, which are mainly sexual: The original Catwoman, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oy vey: the realization that even your fantasies have dated badly. I digress.

So anyways, I’m running the lights in the fourth scene and it occurs that this lighting job has been proficient at best. So I start to mix it up a bit. Disco lights and strobes, mirror balls and pyrotechnics. Yearly budgets in seconds. Blackouts over punchlines. Snow machines over set ups. Before I know it I’ve barged the seventeen year old beside me off the sound desk and I’ve taken control of the audience’s ears as well. Zoo sound effects and techno beats at full volume. The Stage manager’s in my ear “what are you doing? Could you stop doing that? I think someone is having an epileptic fit.” I say “believe me Kate you’ll understand when you hit 16.” I’m lookin’ at the audience reaction – they’re bewildered, they’re ecstatic. True, some of them don’t like it, but they gots to admit that it is a truly unique vision, an experiment in to what is possible in a theater.

The show finishes, the bows are taken, the audience leaves. I run down the stairs and in to the dressing room. Bunches and bunches of flowers await me, I’m hugging the flowers to my tingling flesh – I rush out into the car park, where the cast have gathered to smoke and discuss the evenings events. The Leading Lady (LL) approaches dramatically, and says “those are for me you stupid fucking idiot”. “No need to swear.” I think… and say. “Where we goin’ now?”. LL, stares at me, mouth open. Barely able to conceal how impressed she was with the lights. I’ve always been good at judging moods, but I’m not sure what the vibe is here. I decide to go for it. I lean forward to kiss her but she puts her hand on my chest and says “fuck off.” I run in to the darkness, and in to the night, and in to an oak tree (same one), and am informed by email that I am fired from HHATS for 6 months, and that I “ruined” the evening.

I obey their dictat (except for one drunken final show where I sneak in to the audience on closing night and steal the microphone while that same dreadful leading woman thanks her husband for being ‘a rock’, and I tell the baying crowds how narrow minded they would seem to aliens if they landed on earth and what a slapper the leading lady is, and my beret disguise droops off my indignant face as I realize my life behind the lights must end, and it is time to walk… befront of the lights).

Cheers,

Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani launches internet cartoon competition

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Emergency extra blog post.

I just read this in the Guardian.

Iranian MP, Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani, took offence to a cartoon by Mahmoud Shokraye. The cartoonist was then sentenced to 25 lashes for the crime. Ashtiani has therefore, in playing with the serpents tail, effectively challenged the global internet to produce as foul a portrait as possible.

Here is my humble offering.

Yours faithfully,

On sex with a slightly fat man

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Yielding to the cycle of guilt, hunger, and McDonalds (oh the vortex!), the slightly fat man builds himself a vile home.

‘You see, at the heart of sex lies a contradiction. The show of abandon and the reality of forethought embodied and emphasized by the prophylactic’ I’m sittin’ w’ Claire in a McDonald’s on an Industrial estate. Claire has just made a complaint about my crying during sex, which she claims kills the mood like a dog in a cattery. ‘It [the sex act] is a symbol of the temporary, and if you don’t find that either deeply sinister or profoundly sad, then you are the one who needs professional help’. I’m watching her leave the carpark in a (Mc)flurry of spinning Nissan wheels and raised (index) fingers. I look to my right at a man with Down’s syndrome who has been watching all. ‘Do you know what I mean though?’ He doesn’t know what I mean. And let’s be honest nor do I.

I set about finding the best value product on the menu in terms of calories per pound sterling, with aplomb. Aplomb turns to reckless abandon. Reckless abandon turns to a smashed Casio scientific calculator. A smashed… to an arrest. Blah, blah, yada yada, you’ve heard it all before. ‘Fucccckkkkkk’ I scream, and dramatically. (Large coke)

Heading over to PC World; I’m out of control. The mood I’m in, I’ll end up like buying a £50.00 mouse/keyboard gaming combo or some shit. It is times like this that I am liable to have a major relapse into over dependence on World of Warcraft. Stop. Count to ten. Remember what we say at the meetings (which incongruously take place inside the on-line world). I’m in PC World and calming down. I’m pretending to be considering buying a MacBook Pro in order to check the internet. A man comes over asking too many questions. I keep him busy with an enquiry about mains power adapters. He perseveres. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’. ‘Alright, I don’t really want to buy one I just want to check the fucking internet, Listen mate, I worked here for ten years, I’ve spent shed loads in this place’. I leave £1500 poorer. ‘Most expensive fucking internet cafe ever’. ‘You really didn’t have to… I was just trying to help’. ‘Yeah right, help… my arse’.

The automatic doors part in a sort of parody of Moses and the Red Sea, and I decide to go into Pets World (as far as I’m concerned it is effectively a free zoo) to Chill Out. In a spectacularly unfortunate turn of events, I am again harassed by a shop worker. I walk out of the automatic doors, MacBook Pro in my left arm, Flemish Giant rabbit in my right arm. I look up at the sky and shake my fist. ‘What have I done to deserve this?! Have I not been a good man? Have I not insisted on tipping in inverse proportion to meal cost so that the poor souls at McDonald’s get something and the relatively lucky devils at Pizza Express get a fairer cut?’. And then, just as I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I shit myself.


Figure 1. Sergeant Harold.

A shatting myself of biblical proportions (hat tip Michael Buerk (via @MichaelBuerk)). I also wet myself. I lay on the floor soiled and humiliated. Even the (genuinely huge) rabbit looked embarrassed. I felt sorry for the rabbit for having me as an owner. Oh well, no use crying over pooing your pants in an industrial estate, with a massive rabbit watching.

Tonight, I’m getting home, logging straight into World of Warcraft and entering a giddy dream of lager and Doritos.

Best regards,

Accidental booze cruise

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Friday, 1700h, I’ve just finished programming a total hog of a Dell XPS 15. The rain knocks on my window and I’m compelled to literally run outside to demonstrate my quasi-youth (thirty one) by taking part in a typical Friday night out, that will no doubt involve significant use of the the sound ‘woooo’. I’m drivin’ out of the industrial estate where I work and buzzing with the adrenaline of a man who knows that within one/two hours (tops) I’ll have traversed the B2264, the A1273, the M1, the A1145, and the B4432, the doors of The Regal, and the upper annulus of a tapered glass cylinder with a blocked end that contains the first pint of like seven/eight with my mates mate.

But today, unlike the Fridays of 27/04/2012, 20/04/2012, 13/04/2012, 6/04/2012 etcetera, I’m feelin’ hot. Hot with the ecstasy of electronic conquest, bathing in the fizzing glow of slave central processing units and magnetic storage devices yielding to my deft touch. Today I’m wild. Today I decide to go on an unplanned trip to Eurodisney just for the fuckin’ shit of it. This is the sort of thing an employed single man’s disposable income was invented for mate.

Hour after hour whizz past the window of my Ford Focus. My mobile telephone not beeping a single bleep of “mate, why aren’t you comin’ out with us?”, “mate, seriously, when do you think you’ll be here?”. “Ha” I chuckle to myself, if they aren’t even texting me they must be really mad! I group text them “don’t worry lads, you’ll have an ok time without me, sure – not as good as usual, but Mickey calls! wink wink. I’m sure you realise that the implication of that is that yes, I am off to some text missing” [sic]. This weekend is going to be fucking awesome mate!

I arrive at Eurotunnel at 2345h, still essentially hot. “I’ll have one return to France comin’ back Sat’ bro’ ” I bark at the automatic ticket machine in a language it evidently doesn’t understand. A trip to the office, and I’m gettin’ somewhere. “Two hundred and fifty pounds! Are you fucking serious?! Jesus fuckin’ hell. Mate! Seriouly, mate”.

***

Saturday, 0900h, I’ve got my passport, a speeding ticket, and I’m sporting a jittery caffeinated mania. I’m back in Folkestone, and before I can say “which carriage?” car plus train equals transport symbiosis and a potent symbol of technological and diplomatic progress. “Freight? Am I freight? Shit. Shit. Shit”. Articulated lorry to my fore, articulated lorry to my aft, am I to be crushed? Is this my last moment on earth – Tired, groggy, and with an unsatisfied appetite for Disney products and theme parks? No. The driver brakes with the virtuoso ease only a professional haulier knows.

A minibus is collecting all the drivers to be taken to the restaurant carriage and I’m cheek to cheek (arse and face) with flabby tattoo riddled arms from various EU countries. All the while concealing my true identity as a non-commercial-driver. And then, I take a long smooth inhalation through my two nostrils. An unharmonious funk filters through my olfactory canal and nerve bundles overwhelm my brain with wave upon wave of atonal funk. I mean no offence to professional wagon masters, but based on this (admittedly small) sample they stink disproportionately. The apparent leader (the fattest) is talking to the minibus driver using only the response “fuckin’ ‘ellll”. By the return journey I will have developed an ear for these smells and will understand the joy to be had from that sharp vinegary BO cocktail. An odyssey of exotic flavours from that sense organ residing at the very centre of one’s face.


Figure 1. A new notation system for malodorous humans.

I digress. Ok. How should I put this? Lets just say me in Eurodisney is like a drunk old man in a pub with free beer: I’m drunk and a man and I can have as many gos on space mountain as I like, but I’m not old (thirty one). By 2200h I’m back at Calais. A short stop at Boozers: The Spirit of Calais, and my voyage of self/theme-park discovery is complete. By Sunday 0300h I’m tucked up in bed tired, drunk and completely satisfied. I can’t wait till next friday and tellin’ my mates about my awesome… accidental booze cruise. I haven’t seen Neil since I told him he was my best friend. He changed the subject – clearly moved to the point of silence. After I tell him ’bout this he’ll almost certainly invite me to his BBQ on Saturday. A perfect opportunity to give him the 1.5m Winnie The Pooh teddy that I (tried to win and then gave up and just) bought him.

See you Sat’ lads,

Yeah?

Sheer Power Alert

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As you almost certainly will have heard, last summer I holidayed in [Las] Vegas (baby!). Trouble is, whilst I had arranged to go with my mates, there was a catastrophic breakdown in communications and I ended up arriving a week before them, thus being forced to holiday alone in a big bad city of sleaze and high crime rates (even by American standards and this despite there being very few activities that are still illegal in the state of Nevada – babyyyyy!). Essentially when they said 13 June, they had actually meant 20 June, an easy mistake no doubt, and there is no doubt in anybody’s mind that it was a genuine mistake. No doubt whatsoever.

I have seen the photos mate, where they were reduced to consoling themselves with alcohol to the point of vomiting, due to my absence, and their lack of proper planning, I was taking a luxury helicopter ride for one over the strip/Hoover dam (the original pump priming – gives you a lot to think about) ($300 is too much, I’d recommend seeing on foot). ‘Is it just you’ said the helicopter pilot surprised. ‘I’m flying solo. Affirmative. What’s the ETA on this bad boy?’ I said, displaying an impressive knowledge of helicopter terminology. ‘Bet you don’t get to many MPGs on this baby’ – I added, further cementing my status with the fifty year old driver, a man with a saggy bag of a face hidden behind cheap aviators.

It is true that I did pass vomit due to a highly unorthodox turning manoeuvre that the old fool beside me insisted was the ‘safest way to land’, but there is no evidence that I cried and/or shat myself. None whatsoever, and I challenge anyone to produce any. I was busy telling the man that whatever the reasons for my not fighting in Afghanistan, cowardice is not one of them, when he span the iron bee on a sixpence and plopped it down on an H sign.

Anyway, all this is by the by, I haven’t said anything that we don’t already know for certain. After the first day’s thrill ride I was running out of activities faster than shit down a scared man’s leg (note to self – that’s a good simile – use in conversation at work). I sat in my motel room looking out the window at a car park with an argument going on in it. I guzzled some beer, which had the effect of jolting my mind into an important realisation and causing my mouth to emit a slight burp. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do that week, I would start working on my screenplay, and ASAP.

Ever since I saw a film I knew that I’d quite like to write one, so I went out to the shops and bought a pen. I went back out later remembering I needed paper, stocked up on beers galore and ‘potato chips’, and began. It’s called Sheer Power Alert and I plan to blog it as I write it so that I can get feedback before I send it to Spielberg et al. SexyPete99, please stop leaving comments telling me to ‘f*$% o&* it’s s*^%’. I wont publish them. It is trolls like you that ruin good forums.

Here is the first segment (segment/section/scene?).

***

Sheer Power Alert

A Screenplay by Raph Shirley

INT. DAY. A LAS VEGAS MOTEL ROOM.

The camera peeps at the rippling flesh of Ken Goodman. There is a beautiful/sexy woman lying on the bed naked except for a tattoo of a computer mainframe on her bum cheek. There is no question as to whether she wants remuneration, because she does not, and Ken is the sort of guy who knows. There is no question as to whether he has homosexual thoughts, because he categorically does not. Ken is counting the bullets left in his machine gun (Steve, should I be more specific – M16?).

KEN
Fuck, I need more ammo man.

WOMAN
Come back to bed Ken, I know you are a secret agent for the US government but can’t you take a break from trying to stop the rise of the machines for once.

KEN (raising his eyebrows)
Women! You know as well as I do that there is a terminator [will there be copyright issues here? – exterminator? abolitionist?] out to get us.

Ken is flicking through TV channels, there is genuinely nothing on.

KEN
There is genuinely nothing on. Perhaps I should get nothing on too.

WOMAN (giggling)
Yes, you are so good at jokes and… sex.

KEN
I know. So are you.

They have sex. (What can we get away with here Steve?) During lovemaking The Abolitionist smashes through the wall and opens fire with a helicopter cannon.

KEN
Fuck!

WOMAN
Fuuuuucccckkkkk!

KEN
Get down! (good time for innuendo maybe) Shhhiiiiiit.

Ken has been badly hurt but he managed to destroy The Abolitionist after the woman put a bag over its head like you would an ostrich to sedate it.

CUT TO:

EXT. NIGHT. A LAS VEGAS MOTEL CARPARK.

The woman (Sarah? Claire maybe? Claire Sarahly) is pushing Ken in a wheelchair at full speed in to a McDonalds! She grabs some tissues with which to cover Ken’s stumps. They get Happy Meals and get the ‘hell outta there’. The scene fades as Claire pushes Ken into the sunset and the desert.

***

Let me know what you think. Please send any funding offers or contracts to Flat 6D, 16 Rushworth Gardens, Blanche Road, Hemel Hempstead, HH13 6TR.

A proposal concerning a change of use for Buckingham Palace

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Due to a freedom of information request I have come into possession of this letter from government records. It seems to be a memo from George Osborne to David Cameron. I decided to risk libel action for publishing it, for ethical/heroic reasons.

To The Rt Hon David Cameron MP Prime Minister,

As you know, the Royal Family is currently enjoying a period of unparalleled public adoration, similar to, for instance, the initial popularity of Adolf Hitler. We, the people, collectively recognise that it offers significant value for money in terms of increased tourism revenue and national branding. All the proposals contained herein, stem from these facts, which I hold to be self evident truths. I hope that you will implement my recommendations in time for the forthcoming Olympics festival of sport and the crowd-pleasing Jubilee rally, so that we can profit from the unique set of current circumstances and use them to maintain our position on the global stage (that of spotlight operator).

Therefore/thus even the most earnest misanthropic republican will agree that it follows naturally that we should do everything in our power to promote, expand, and capitalise on this important asset. I am of course suggesting that Buckingham Palace be converted into a brothel. Up to 90% of American visitors to London, are attracted to the Theatre district and are most likely perverts driven more by the sordid honey of Soho. The Queen herself would be a highly sell-able commodity to these tourists and the prices we could charge, along with substantial gains from auctioning off the lower level staff would more than cover the losses made due to lower sales of Jubilee memorial coins by elderly people who will doubtless be against these proposals, along with everything else, as per usual. The over sixties are after all the last prim generation, and these important modernising steps will be shunned by them in the same way that they can not and will not understand the internet.


Figure 1. Possible flyer design.

Kate Middleton’s sexual attractiveness accounts for eight tenths of tabloid interest in the new couple (a canny pairing Hague! You showed a lot of foresight, mate). With her and William doing two shows an hour at one thousand pounds per ticket and an audience of three hundred, we could write off our debts, which were handed down to us by the last Labour government, in a couple of years, probably.

However, adult entertainment is not the only obvious use for the Royal Family. I suggest the bulk of the grounds be sold to Disney, who have a better record than HM government for producing trashy, cliché driven tourist attractions and aggressively engineering sinister global brands. It might also be sensible to use the smaller buildings on the palace grounds for manufacture and distribution of narcotics, again a very profitable enterprise and a valid inference from the argument from increased tourist revenue. If so, it is important to maintain the current practice (in line with Disney policy anyway) of only having one Queen visible at any point (the actors, or “Queenettes”, will be paid minimum wage).

I have one further possible suggestion, admittedly not so mild as the inevitable changes I highlight above. Working on the conservative assumption that the queen human can operate at 50% the efficiency of a queen ant (100 eggs/hour) she could share the burden of propagation and save the humiliation and cost of child rearing for a generation of young couples. The ordinary people are not capable of asexual parthenogenesis and can only produce 2 or 3 a decade at best under modern financial and social constraints. Perhaps everyone reaching thirty years of age could be sent an egg from the queen to put in a plant pot and then it turns into a baby clone of the Queen for them to cherish forever. I also recommend building a boat.

I finish with an ode to our queen that I suggest we sing at the opening of Disney BrothelTM.

The queen human lays an egg a minute
She puts her perfect genes in it
May her reign be infinite
And this metaphor hold out for two more stanzas

Her nest is as big as any other
May I make food for our mother?
Or should I say lover?
No, that’s too much

Bottle her jelly!
Ebay her welly
Sell every inch of her belly
To Network South East or First Capital Connect.

Yours sincerely,

The Dishonourable Gideon Osborne.

Thanks for watching,

.

Miss Thomas

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The clearest way to describe Claire Thomas is to say she is fat. It isn’t genetic or due to some other ‘modern BS’. It is because she frequently scoffs. She scoffs indiscriminately. Domino’s Two For Tuesdays by the two, eggs by the eight, and milkshake. She loves food like an English teacher (which she is) ‘loves words’, but she eats a lot more than she reads, and reads a lot less than she drinks, and eats and drinks to excess. That is the main fact. Anything else is conjecture. She is also lazy.


A copy of the photo by Liu Zheng. Does anyone know the copyright situation with this sort of thing?

Splayed, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say ungraciously, over her bed like a dead octopus on a chopping board, she was masturbating furiously. She could just about concentrate on her pornography for a few seconds at a time between checking the news headlines, some of which were reporting multiple fatalities, and reading an email from her school’s headmaster. After around ten minutes and without a proper resolution she gave up any pretence and relaxed, sighed, and turned the volume up on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The now muted laptop still blaring The Garden of Earthly Delights. The film was (is) unsatisfactory.

Now, Claire is watching Stefan Graves, an incompetent maths teacher, telling some children off for making light of Nazi war atrocities. She finds this most amusing and it makes her penguin biscuit doubly enjoyable. She chuckles through chocolatey lips, bubbling hot tea to a dripping foam. She imagines the warm embrace of her bed with its luxurious duvet and ready access to Terminator figurines (and lets be frank, to Terminator paraphernalia more generally). This thought inevitably leads to sexual dreams of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career making character and the thrill available to her by drawing his genitals. To do for them what Dali did for the unconscious; to render them visible. Around ten such drawings are tacked around her room as if to draw this was to own it; to see it was to experience it, and to display it was to go too far maybe. Imagining the machine’s penis is an impressive feat when all that is available to us is the barmaid’s reaction in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

There is a second thing that Claire takes an interest in: The 2011 Royal Wedding. She was lying in her overfilled bath staring at the same patch of flaking wall paper that she has seen every week for the last thirty years. She is next to the room with the bed that her mother died in, demented and miserable, and she is thinking about all the men she has slept with. Atheist, republican, and with an intense interest in Kate Middleton she was again making a show of pleasing herself knowing she would ultimately give up the ghost. She sang ‘I cain’t get no… satisfaction’ and laughed. Her phone beeps, she has an email from me informing her that it is my belief that the Terminator has only a mound, that the waitress’ response was a directorial error, and that all her theories are wrong, that her terminator fan fiction is shabby at best and that I will not allow a further Terminator/Royal Wedding tie in story to appear on the forum I manage.

Yours sincerely,

The George Golding Professor of Contemporary Thought

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Professor Harding pondered the daily problem of finding the end of the toilet roll. Every revolution of the soft pink coloured cylinder revealed nothing to the touch of his arthritic fingers. Quick to anger, he threw it at the wall; it bounced around the room and finally slam dunked its way between his wrinkled thighs and plopped in to the bog’s pool. ‘Not again!’ He removed the sodden and pooey mass using his specially crafted Pooey Mass Remover and dropped it out of the window on to an unfortunate ladybird who happened to be passing by. ‘Not again!’ thought the insect (one presumes). Considering these events he suddenly felt astounded at the remarkable fortuity of having made the grade of Professor. As he took a further unit of Andrex from the packet he felt almost ashamed at the sheer audacity of believing he deserves to spend almost twice as much money in order to use the softest, thickest, and most ornately decorated (repeating flower pattern) bog roll (he’d made a formal complaint). The supply happened to be resting on a pile of the 189 academic papers that he has written over his 40 year career. I think you’ll agree, the simile is straightforward.

Returning to his desk he bathed in the enveloping glow of post defecation (“not to be confused with Deification” – Wikipedia) satisfaction. This was typically the perfect mood in which to begin a new work. The mood yielded one word (‘Recent’) before he returned to staring out of the window. He could see the man who cleans his toilet and a mix of guilt and contempt refocused his mind to the keyboard. He forced out a second word (‘advances’). With his mouth open and all facial muscles completely relaxed he tapped his right index finger 15 times in sync with the grandfather clock to his rear (yes, his finger was over the delete key).

Four hours and no change later his eyes took nine seconds to shut and he fell rearwards in his chair landing gently on his back. ‘Well, now I’m down here’ he thought, without even opening his eyes.

Four hours and no change later he rolled off the chair and moved to a standing position using as little energy as possible. He stared at the grandfather clock for a full ten minutes until the hour hand (‘finally!’) struck five. He went home and had a lovely fish pie that his wife had made. ‘Oh you work so hard dear, you know I thought when they made you professor emeritus you would be home earlier’. ‘I think I made a breakthrough today, and anyway I still have so much teaching to do’. ‘Oh by the way there was a call from the university cleaning services saying they need to talk to you about the proper use of your window’. ‘Oh yes, the handle has been a little stiff lately, any news from the children’. ‘Oh yes, Mary is pregnant again’. ‘Oh my, oh my’.

Four months and no change later his computer screen shows an open word doc with the badly formatted title ‘The Lindon Riots 2011: a verY NINeteenth Century Phenomenon’.

No offence intended,

Stefan Graves rambles incoherently

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Stefan looked at a picture of Ed Milliband and Ed Balls queing to buy a Cornish Pasty and forced his mind to yield to his instruction that it was an image of two men at ease in their natural environment. Despite being of a socio-economic group that traditionally consumed healthy quantities of said snack (fifth to 75th percentile), Stefan didn’t really like them. In principle though he did like them. He remembers very well the last one he had. He felt obliged to buy it from an empty bakery on holiday, which he’d spent too much time in to leave without buying something. The anger at that wasteful purchase mingled with a general sense of having had an unfortunate life and built to a shaking red faced rage.

The sight of two competent and fortunate men was then all that was required to send him on his way to a breakdown. He had decided to obey the governments suggestion to buy fuel despite realising the inevitable consequences because he wanted to have the wasted time and inconvenience as a weapon against the winner of England’s 2011 best person competition. Is was the ultimate act of self defeating passive aggression since the resulting arsenal could only be used within the confines of his own head. This is because Stefan can not talk in sentences. He prefers to utter opposites in a sort of free association heavily relying on the word posh and garbled references to his own upbringing.

That’s when I enter the Hungry Horse pub opposite the Travelodge I’m staying in as part of my national tour marketing software for solar panel manufacturers. The barman sees his chance and (genuinely) runs away. Stefan now has me in his eyes and we both know that the only way I could turn and leave would be to openly admit that I’m terryfied by what I am about to recieve, and also run.

I sit down next to him and am surprised by the instantaneous start of his barage to the point of almost (genuinely) falling off my stool. Despite aggreeing with the man it takes a huge effort on my part to appear to agree. I leave the pub full of burger and impresseed by the man in two ways. Firstly, by the scope of his discourse, which casually takes in the eastward shift of global power, a general discussion of inequality throughout human history, and science’s usurping of large swathes of meta-physics. Secondly, I’m impressed by his ability to accurately represent the bizzare and insane corners of his brain instead of taking the usual approach of distorting them into dishonest rational arguments.

D’y’ know what I mean tho’?

An unfortunate question

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Now is the time that I must face the gruesome possibility that my undergarments are beyond repair and should be replaced.

Download a high-res version of this image here.

So many memories. You shielded me from the world, or should I say you shielded the world from me. You enabled me to wear trousers for longer and your snazzy two tone front helped me to feel fashionable and sexy. You outlived the overpriced Calvin Klines and never lost your grounding. you loved me well for sure but you let your crotch go. One starts to ask what function you serve without that area of cloth.

The truth is I don’t know how much longer I can go on knowing you don’t have the solidity you used to. I fear we’ve grown apart. The babe you held and grew has grown old and wizened now. The naive boy you loved has morphed into a horrid beast. Where is my loyalty you ask. Have I not shown just that these 14 years. Fourteen years!

All this talk is worthless when the fact is I’ve already been to George by ASDA (A Walmart Company) and bought a three pack of A-flys. I know I’ve done you wrong but I have no choice. I am going to incinerate you.

Goodbye,

On being a slightly fat man

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Being a poem that is in no way autobiographical.

When the necessity to bathe rears its smelly head.
When the pants demand their weekly shed.
When all hope is dread,
The slightly fat man must wash and watch his disappointments unfold.

The water whets his willy’s desires,
And he is compelled to exercise his limbs asymmetrically.
His ugly scene as regularly seen as obscene,
As all his dreams gurgle down the shower’s throat.

The towel cuddles his brimming skin,
But can’t keep up his manifold chin.
Redemption lies beyond the checkout from Gateshead Travelodge.

Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

Cheers,