Category Archives: other stuffs [sic]

just general stuff I post about the place

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,

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,

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.

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,

The economy

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What? I’m supposed to just listen the whole time? No. No. And no. I will have my revenge. On Stephanomics et al.

Right. You should now have realised that I’m weighing in on the economy (satirically). I would first like to combine the things of being ‘in the zone’ in a sporting sense and being a member of the ‘Euro-zone’ by observing the shared sound. Further consider the Greek stereotypes that any wretch has in the ink cartridge of even his cheapest pen. Finally, watch as that pen plops the whole menagerie on to a computer screen and we must be left with a sensation of emptiness, which would be compared by a cruder man than myself to the feeling of having ‘shat out a battleship’. ‘HMS Massive Floater’.

Pause for laugh.

If a coin be reduced to the word it is then the fungibility becomes a matter of some concern no? If I must work for cash then how can I employ the techniques of contraction, allusion, and (for the love of Christ) brevity. Oh dear, I fear this is an opaque little piece that can not reach the mainstream.

Allow me the comparison of the comedian Lee Evans with Professor John Money. Both detail gender roles but, crucially, where Evans deals in spurious tendentious statements such as women like hotter baths than men, money proffers the hyper-un-amusing ‘multi-variate sequential determinism’. However, as I always say ‘John Money ain’t funny cos it’s true’. I think we can agree that this at least partly explains their divergent popularity.

Nah, but seriously, women are a pain in the arse especially given the modern fashion for use of strap on phalli in heterosexual relationships.

Pause for clap.

WTF indeed.

Valentines satire

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Hi Sarah,

Our union is the result of a carefully orchestrated procedure to locate a male-female pair of equal ‘attractiveness’. I find your personality delightful, which is why I was willing to sacrifice some ground on the looks front.

Likewise, I’m only too aware of my own cold manner, which traditionally is frowned upon in these matters. I hope my excellent computer programming skills and above average career prospects (I earn £35,055.00 – well above the national average) will go some way to counter these failings.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Shirley.

PS I find the prospect of genital contact with you to be arousing in the extreme (sexually).

Stefan at a dinner party

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A short internal monologue from Stefan, who is at a dinner party.

Stefan Right. Here it comes… Here it comes… Ok, get ready people …

One person stops speaking, beat, another person cuts in just before Stefan.

Stefan Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. There’s still time to make it… Is there still time to make it? Oh who am I kidding? The joke is lost. Lost somewhere in the mud of this conversation. I finally scrambled together an ok joke after 20 minutes without saying anything other than ‘I find most contemporary cinema banal’. Why did I say that? Why did that utterance happen? What purpose did it serve? It is the most stunning example, that I have seen at a contemporary dinner party, of the banal itself. What could I even have meant by that? I lump together the whole of ‘contemporary cinema’ now. What is ‘contemporary cinema’? Why even use the word cinema. Only use the word cinema to refer to anything other than a specific cinema if you are going to say something that is not utterly moronic. That is my lesson for you Stefan from this dinner party. The word cinema in a sentence when not referring to a specific cinema is to say ‘I consider myself knowledgeable about the history of cinema’. Cinema! What I really mean is DVDs. scornfully Cinema!

I’d decided that this dinner party was going to be a washout before I arrived. Essentially the same approach I take to watching films. What exactly did I want from this dinner party? How have I become someone at a dinner party? I have absolutely no control over the person I present myself to be, which more and more, is the only sensible definition of what I actually am. I am this dullard know it all who knows nothing to the extent that he uses words to imply he knows something about things which he knows nothing. I know nothing and I don’t know that I know nothing. Great! In addition to being a bore, I’m also a fool.

I really don’t know why I should have to say anything. I mean, I’ve got nothing against any of the other guests. I have absolutely no feelings whatsoever towards the other guests so why would I have anything to say to them. I happen to be in the same room that is all.

Oh no. Oh good god. Oh Jesus Christ. I need to fart. Oh great. Yeah thanks body, it’s because of you that I have to say anything and now you’re making sure that my two contributions to this social event will be that awful sentence and, now, an embarrassing sound. That is how these people will remember me and they’ll be right. What does a fart say about someone? It says they lack the necessary moral fibre to castrate their arse into silence. They lack the intellectual capacity to understand the effect that the sound will have on their status among their company. They are a worthless little man with no hope and no prospects and they must expect the ridicule that they will justly receive.

Beat.

There is a fart noise.

The End

Presentation to GreenLight

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Here’s a little light relief before we get into the blog proper:

One of the great things about being a programmer for one of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the south east is you get to do a lot of travelling. This week, I was going to Newcastle to give a talk on account management systems to GreenLight; a fellow green power company.

I arrived at the Newcastle travelodge around 6pm. I’d had a tough train journey and fancied a litre or two of strong lager, or as I say ‘I’ll have a lagerita, neither shaken nor stirred’ before explaining exactly what I mean by that. I walk in to town and go the local Wetherspoons (I know!). It was actually, a lovely little place. An old university lecture theatre with a number of interesting pictures on the wall.

By closing time I’m drunk as a carefree business guru and head back to my temp pad. I’m singing like a bloomin’ mad man mate! I stumble through the streets filled with those few of years and fewer of clothing (two years blogging for Two Hour Blogger equips one to turn a pretty sweet phrase, often inside of half an hour), but exercise enough restraint not to shout and merely fall over six times. But wait! I’ve noticed something. Something beautiful! A small entrance in the wall leads to a multicoloured rainbow escalator (not in a gay way (not in a homophobic way (regret nested parentheses))). I climb on and ascend into the antechamber of a shopping centre. Lo, I’m greeted at the top by a gigantic Christmas tree. It is a great hollow cone of tinsel that you can walk under and look inside.

I go underneath it. I look into the eye of the Christmas tree… and I pass out.

I woke up at 9am on the floor of the shopping centre. The Christmas tree hanging above me is like a big sick inducing finger down my throat now (again, I think yule agree my extensive blogging experience shows). Shit! 9am! Shit! I have to be at the presentation. I get there and I decide to come clean and tell them the above ;-) I can tell by their feigned embarrassment that they are deeply impressed. It is clear these guys need to be taught a thing or two about partying! And taught/party hard!

Afterwards, I’m informed by email that they will not be offering us the contract. In hindsight it was a mistake to tell them I was drunk presenting. I craft a perfectly worded email to me’ boss painting them as a backward company who don’t understand how powerful the internet is. I mean, that is basics! I add a little joke about me giving them a business 101. I’m confident I won’t be fired and at most will receive a harsh telling off. Nothing that my rearrangement of the secret Santa and purchase of a hilarious card for my boss, which makes a cheeky accusation of infidelity at his wife (hinging around a Christmas based demi-pun), can’t solve.

Web log entry 100

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Welcome to web log post number one hundred! Can you believe it?!

1) First off, a little scene from my week

2) The main body of text

The bulk of this one is a script about Socrates and Rachel of Friends fame. It is partly a sideswipe at the Socratic method and partly a send up of compilation shows.

Rachel
Do you remember that time when Raph first started blogging?

Socrates
Yeah, he came in and went ‘Hi’. and then…

Wavy lines then fade to screen shots of the first blog. The style is not yet fully formed.

Socrates
But what about the time he did that cartoon do you remember?

Rachel
Yeah, I do.

A snazzy lick on a bass guitar as we fade to a picture of Raph’s first cartoon; a satire on the humorist Ian Hislop.

Rachel
… but so much has changed since then. His web log has come on in leaps and bounds.

Socrates
Yeah, but I still don’t get it and it’s still shit.

Rachel
YEAH!

They both laugh to an emotional music outro.

3) The exciting finale

The most exciting thing has got to be that I’m now in a position to announce that there will be a book released of the blog! Thanks to the vulgar extravagances of our times it is now possible for anybody to publish a zero quality book without the hassle of having to make any effort into making it good. It will be out in time for your Christmas stockings!!!

cu,

A PROOF THAT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR SUN

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May, in Absence of Further Evidence, be a Necessary Evil Since it Self-Evidenty Embodies a Most Egregious and Offensive Arrogance.

Written in the Year 2011

DON’T THINK I DON’T CONSIDER THE DANGER in speaking against the commonly held adoration for it. Trust that I have considered all consequences and yet continue to hold my beliefs. I ask you to bring to the fore of your headmatter remembrances of any of your beermates that might endeaver to swing the earthe bout themselves with an invisible gravitether. I propose that you know no such vagamate. I further submit that no other of the manifold stars in our sky does demand so much attention as our nuisance own, which considers no harm in dictating our each and every day and of creating a sometimes rather hot sensation ‘pon the coverskin.

Further consider the centuries in which it mocked our lack of understanding of nuclear power. Excreting its vulgar rays into our servile faces as if to decree ‘u don’t understand me silly devilbeasts’. Like a hideous flabby father of forty year, rinsing its weakling son at the chess board.

And what more that it planted the seed of vaingodly stuff that form the core of our Christfan and Moslem brothers’ astrolgies. That it incited worship at it and mocked our glorious moon, our melancholic friend in the sky; her with more dignity that it not warm the face or inflate the plant. And it is she that offer to plop her icy spear into the heart of that yellow spherijerk and annihilate its flame to let us bath in the starry night on straight path through eternity.

Let the ice spear eclipse the hot death o’ hell in perpetuity o’er the five day week.

Largely a plagiary of Swift.

Cheers,

An apology

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I’ve written so much brilliant blogs these days exposing the wrongs of the great (err hello, not so great) and good (err hello, bad). But, I’m like, sometimes I need to step back back and say hold on there, you’re a cool guy with an excellent blog and everything but what about your (my) failings (from their (hypothetical man who is better than me) perspective). Seriously, I do have them! No, but in seriousness there are some things I have done on this blog that would shock you to the very core.

As you will know I was head boy at Eton and the next year the headmaster had to come out to the school gates cos I wouldn’t leave and kept watching it with binoculars and still, like, leaving comments on their website and stuff, and I was like, “can I stay forever” and then it got genuinely embarrassing. I was in floods of tears and I was like ‘nooooo’ and the new first year boys were arriving with their parents. It really was embarrassing.

Well, I’m sorry to say that it was me who last week updated the school wikipedia entry to say that King Henry VI was a stupid idiot and that Anthony Little MA is a stupid idiot. And I’m sorry that it was me too. So, soooo sorry. Bear in mind that I’m thirty now! I left twelve years ago!

For this (‘that’?), I am sorry. I did it because I believe that to be a great man one must somehow be involved with something great even if one doth become but a minor nuisance to said great thing.

I, apologise

Hi fi sci fi. Why? Because it rhymes and rhyme is equal to reason.

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Hello, welcome to my zine. I believe that sci-fi, or more properly science-fi, can teach us about the human experience of the human condition, and aliens and cool spaceships too. That is why I have created this cool weblog (to share my stories). I wrote this story in 2005 during my emotional period (because all my pets died on the same day because my uncle had a funny five minutes and shot them all). I hope that you can enjoy it and that some good can come of that difficult time. Please enjoy…

The Search for the Left Edge

The key is in the circle of 8s. The key is in your heart. I’ve never spoken with more emotion.

Part I: The real map of the world.

In what sense is the world round? Because some guy sails one way and comes back the other way? Is it not possible that the man from the other way is merely an exact copy of the man going the other other way?

Every time I went ‘around the world’ I noticed slight but fundamental changes in the nature of the place. My mother seemed slightly more irate in every new version. I knew it was not the same but a replica. I continued to search for one half of the two mysteries: what is left and what is right?


Figure 1. Have you ever noticed how the floor is flat yet they still try to pretend the world is round. They lie. This is a more accurate map of the world. The two problems are the poles and the photos from space. All explorers are lie tellers. This map uses the now outmoded and deeply offensive name Birrel Quarrel instead of Birrel Quabble.

I have been searching for the left edge for ten years. I have sailed by banana boat. I have flown by banana plane. I have eaten an orange. At 5am on January 1st 2012 I found it. I found the land of Birrel Quabble and the left edge.

Part II: Birrel Quabble; The Land Outside Reason.


Figure 2. The inside of Birrel Quabble. This imagery is heavily influenced by the Shirley Pet Massacre and the nightmares that preceded and proceeded it.

The return journey was a nightmare.

My thoughts are with you at this sad time. The sadness of realising the truths my stories reveal.

A tribute to Bobby Crispy

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Bobby Crispy has a good forename, a great surname, and a better website. Yeah, it is that good. http://bobsguitarlessons.yolasite.com/ contains videos of his free guitar lessons, as well as other cool stuff like sci-fi stories. This guy really knows how to do an excellent website. I can learn a lot from him.

You might like to watch him play one of the manifold impressively difficult songs on the site. However, my personal favourite thing to do (favourite of all things including non Bobby-related things (I categorize the world into Bobby and non-Bobby related)) is to watch him play scales extremely fast because I enjoy witnessing the application of virtuosity to something utterly futile.

He knows it’s kinda informal but he’s just doing it for fun.

Bobby you are a beautiful beautiful man.

Love from,

CYBORG R.A.T. 9 Gaming Mouse

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Hardcore gamers like myself have long debated that great quandary; is there such a thing as the perfect gaming mouse? Well, I’m sorry to say to the doubters (not mentioning any names SexyPete99) this IS it:

Figure 1. The CYBORG R.A.T. 9 Gaming Mouse, £84.99. Taken from benchmarkreviews.com.

Whether committing acts of violent murder in It’s Genuinely A Crime: Las Vegas or worser [sic] travesties such as spell checking “Lady Gargar” (not mentioning any names SexyPete99) this mouse gives you all the support you need.

Oh yes,

An excerpt from World of Warcraft online voice chat system:

Me: ‘Why did you buy industrial whisky…you idiot’

SexyPete99: ‘pardon’

beat

Me: ‘I said why did you buy industrial whisky…you idiot’

Stupid nonce

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Swizzled in the swiller,
Brushelled with a buzzer,
Splish splashelled and bathed,
That’s the bloody shower over with!

And in a waze he filled his trouser,
With fleshy leggo pegs.
It took forth owls and still not done,
To be ready for the meeting.

Ten peeples peeped at powerpeep,
And of the frothy thquarters,
Superintendent Ben asked,
What is a krackerjangerang?

Jizzle jobble did bobble unbalanced,
Till tippled off it did,
Into the black, doleful void,
Oh shit.

The early Shirley (logical foundations of the weblog)

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Life is tough when you’re a white, male, heterosexual, old Etonian like me. My constant struggle against prejudice has, however, yielded philosophical insight. What follows is a translation (from Eton slang) of my [cod] philosophical investigations. Please do not be so intimidated as to think you might not understand this profound exposition of the truth. Remember, I am but a mere great intellectual.

Raph Shirley, Vienna, 2011

1 This statement exists.

    1.1 I just done a fart.
      1.1.1 It stinks.
    1.2 Can we say that the statement and the fart are connected? Is there a connexion?

2 I am embarrassed by the word fart.

    2.1 I am embarrassed by the fart.
      2.1.1 Remember that it stinks.
    2.2 It stinks less now.
    2.3 Has the statement dissipated with time in the same way? Does it still exist?

3 Yes.

    3.1 What was it again?
    3.2 In picturing the fart in a dance with the statement, may we come to dance too, with fart?

4 (Poo poos and bums and wee wees. Willys etc.)

5 One remembers great literature and asks: Is Raph Shirley so great a mind that his bodily functions might be comparable to, say, War and Peace?

      5.0.1 Yes?
      5.0.2 Yes.

6 I am forced to remember a dream I had when I was ten, in which I asked ‘does God exist, my massive mind?’.

    6.1 At 6am I arose, and said ‘My understanding of the situation is so far in excess of the current discourse between the morons Dawkins, Hitchens, Pope, Williams etc, that to engage them in debate would be to whore myself to them; to lower my self from on high to meet with these silly demons; to masturbate.’.

7 The TV section of a newspaper.

    7.1 An admission of inferiority.
    7.2 Like a husband permitting his wife’s infidelity; buying her the prophylactics.
    7.3 Yet our choice of paper is determined largely by their TV section layout and aesthetic preferences.
      7.3.1 Jesus shat!

Yours, ever humble and meek, yet wise and everlasting,

James Bond (asexual gay Lord and master of sexy epigrams)

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This post is dedicated to Sirs Isaac Newton and Bobby Charlton (They don’t make them like they used to).

Figure 1. Sir Bobby Charlton, “A Football Man”.

Bond had just graduated from Oxford with a massive degree, inferior in magnitude only to his perception of it. The careers office recommended the civil service but little did they know that he was not going to be civil, and even less servile was he going to be.

MI6 it was then.

One evening, while Bond was composing bizarre introductions and engineering contrary opinions regarding the correct serving of cocktails, he got his (phone) call to arms. M told him by text to go to Darlington and get the train timetable off of some guy working for Great North Eastern as a test.

Those of a nervous disposition should look away now. Even the most hardened reader, used to the frank, honest, and often uncompromising style of this weblog, may find the graphic homosexual pornography that follows too much to bear, and… hardened might also refer to the state of male genitalia during sexual arousal. I must also apologise for breaking one of my own rules of sex scene writing that one should always include a pathetic fallacy but never a pathetic phallus.

It drizzled. The antiquated Bond was obviously a huge homophobe but his first assignment was to get the train times from this fat controller by any means necessary. He was going to have to be a gay Lord.

Against my better judgement I am still amused by the phrase gay Lord.

Bond lay still, ruined. He pondered the etymology of the word gay and wondered where it might go next. A desperate mixture of blood and semen dribbled from his anus to the bed, beating a primal rhythm, syncopated with the pitter-patter of rain on the window of this northern motel. This seemed to suggest that gay might describe a new school of linguistics? A homophobic teenage boy? (e.g. look at those gays studying Nuts magazine and learning misogyny) An ecstatic metaphorical explosion?

The next joke is set in the year 2000.

Bond hated political correctness and whenever it was mentioned would say “I believe one is incorrect to take the correct approach to anything. 1+1=2! That is mathematical correctness gone mad!” in his usual nonsensical idiomatic style. He did not play by any rules, and certainly not the rules of formal logic. He was extremely proud of this personal brand of cod philosophy and, now, it led him to a choice. Should he remain a low level spy in the hope of future promotion to heterosexual humiliation in more expensive hotel rooms, or should he stop being such a Top Gear type, car fan, and arse?

Right there, right now, he decided to change his life and become a professor of language, right where our story began…

Figure 2. Professor James Bond, professor of syntax and philology at the University of Oxford.

It shows how personal decisions can impact real lives. Real people. Real lives.

Thanks in advance,

My brother – review

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Despite some flashes of interest, Raph Shirley is underwhelmed.



My brother entered the scene in late 1989 and has been wowing family-occasion-goers ever since. Unfortunately, his performance has become rather stolid of late. Now he’s a sort of lumpen drudging knock off of better brothers such as David Attenborough and Ethan Cohen.

In a characteristic scene my brother, Ben, is reduced to limping about the kitchen moaning about unemployment and a lack of family support. A modern updating of the prodigal son it might be, but p-lease I haven’t seen melodrama this hammy since breakfast with the Aflecks.

One of the major problems are his frequent, often rambling soliloquies. Any editor worth their salt would surely take a large pair of scissors to about half of what he says. I’m still trying to forget Ben’s final speech of 2010; a rather ostentatious display of Brotherhood with a capital B, making outrageous claims about my disloyalty. Lets just say, Ben, you ain’t no Shakespeare, get back to the physical clowning.

Ben is clearly capable of amusing us, we still talk about him falling over in the paddling pool in 97, but he’s going to have to figure out what it was that we once liked, nay really liked. This brother needs to put more effort into the script and a little less into “not being such a prick all the time”. Sorry parents, but a few cuts would have gone a long way.

Lots of love,