Category Archives: other stuffs [sic]

just general stuff I post about the place

A theory concerning the eradication of poverty

Posted on by

I hate the poor. The uncouth uneducated unsophisticated smelly poor. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the only people I hate more than those people with less money than me are those with more, and especially those with the same (current account = £1226.23). I will deal with the latter two groups some other day but here and now I wish discuss a scheme I have devised to eliminate the world’s poor. The mechanism I propose is to declassify the world’s poorest as animal life and therefore open up the very real possibility of firing them into the sun. This will achieve three main objectives: 1) Entertainment value 2) A sustaining meal for the sun king and 3 )the extinction of the poor and the end of poverty. This section of the plan is easily achieved. The hard part is in stopping those not quite poor from slipping down and becoming the new poor. It is in this theoretical direction that I shall invest the most energy here.

I have always done my bit for social mobility. Being born the greatest aristocrat in the land this could mean only one thing: sliding downward and fast. The silver spoon that I had in my mouth at birth was so big (serving) that I could not remove it from my lips manually but instead had to swallow it and then hope for the best. Unfortunately it is still there in my stomach. However, the good news is that I once swallowed a family of middle class children who now use that spoon to serve up Sunday roast in there. Sometimes I find it irritating having to swallow a roasting joint every Sunday and especially so when a new gas canister must be swallowed for the four ring cooker I sent them a few years back. The little notes they send me (I wont be so rude as to explain how they send these) are humorous though and I find them to be quite charming in a parochial sort of way.

This is the way I see myself: as a beneficent father to the little adorable family residing within me. And they themselves see themselves as looking after the men and women who now live in my lower intestinal cavities and process the stomach people’s waste. The unmarried couples who live in my anus however are very lazy, and hardly ever contribute anything to the whole scheme of things. I often swallow some especially trivial books such as Orwell’s novels just for them and they show no gratitude. To punish them I refused to swallow any batteries for their torches for a month. I must say, sitting here in the sun with my whisky sour I sometimes find it a rather quaint little set up I have here.

Moving swiftly on, like a family with no time to look around Calais in the rush to Paris, I come to the central thrust of argument. Where were we? We have extinguished the poor. Let us define the poor as the lowest 10% by earning potential. That is done. Where they are gone to we know not. Did they make it to the sun? Did the improvised cannon merely burn them into a smoldering heap at the bottom of my garden? Who can say? They key thing is they no longer exist. Now to the very pressing issue of stopping the next lowest 10% from becoming the lowest 10%. To use a personally relevant metaphor; can I remove my anal canal without generally pissing with the good operation of the digestive system? Who will wipe my arse? It is most certainly not going to be me.

The solution I propose is the following: any especially pretty arse dweller may swim upward if they please me. After they have all been given the chance to better themselves in this way I will have my body up to my belly button removed. This will allow me to eat well for a week. But if I used these legs to fashion the means to walk to the supermarket, I will eat well for a year or so. Eventually, I can have the legs added to the top of my head. I will be the first to celebrate this. True, I may here and their begrudge a little their new lofty position. If they mock me and my petty ways I may show a little ill humor. But fundamentally I will say ‘well done’. Let me tell you, this is what I did, but my feet and legs were so useless and lazy that they just lay on the floor bleeding and providing no useful service to anyone, least of all me. So you see the difficulty?

The arsedwellers are so crude in their world view that they have never bothered to better themselves. So I gave everyone a pat on the back, swallowed a load of batteries for each layer of human garbage, and settled down to another rereading of Animal Farm. My father who rests in my mind disapproves but let him! Let him read what he wants but I love a good old fashioned yarn. I decide what to read by asking all the lovely little people what they want and they know Dostoevsky gives me a stomach ache.

The reason I write all this down for your perusal is that it sets the stage for a most remarkable change. Last, Friday I passed around a hundred seeds through my vaginal opening. I quickly reached for the magnifying glass and found these seeds to be little men. Most of them were utterly grotesque little gloop covered things but one of them reminded me a little of my father.

Over the coming weeks, I began to fall in love with that little man. I fed him up on a meal of milk and bread and, while somewhat uncouth, he has a certain gritty charm. He is now just three quarters my size and getting bigger all the time. His soft caresses and gentle suckling at my breast make my body shimmer with sexual energy. He is my pride encapsulated in the form of a sweet little darling x

A great surprise

I have come to dislike those around me. The little seeds I passed from my nethers were all collected by these horrid neighbors and taken as lovers and darlings and friends. I find this most unsporting and wish they would all go hang with their red and blue scarfs and their cheep little sofas.

I looked up at the great cathedral of gut in which I reside. Foie Gras was raining down through David Cameron’s throat and we basked in it. Eating and laughing and enjoying the merriment. My little love looked sad and cried. I have never been so upset in my life. I lay down in the champagne and liver, hugged my husband and sobbed. We made sweet love in the mixture of acid and wine. For the first time in my life I reached climax. I could hear through the walls of Cameron’s side he was listening to ‘I Had the Time of my Life’ at full volume. We embraced and my peasant boy looked almost my size. His face, now drooping in the final stages looked more like my father’s ghost than ever. ‘Let me look upon you with my own eyes’ he whispered and for the first time his eyelids parted and he looked at his first sight. My glowing post-orgasm flushed cheeks his first and final view. He died in my arms and shriveled to the size of a bean. I put him in my vagina and lived a fulfilled life and flew a plane or something. In a hundred years divers will enter Cameron’s throat and find my valuable furniture. My body on a bit of wood, floating in the icy sea.

Some notes on Dirty Dancing

Posted on by

There are two types of music in Dirty Dancing. The diegetic music is from the era in which the film is set; the sixties, and the non-diegetic music is from the era in which the film is made; the eighties. There is one exception to this. The final dance is to ‘I Had the Time of my Life’ a song newly composed for the film. Given the film’s explicit parallel between dancing and sex (surely sex is dirty dancing), we are warranted to inspect the metaphor a little more closely.

In a previous scene Baby is unable to do ‘the lift’. She struggles to reach orgasm because she lacks confidence and is hidden from the paternal gaze. Only when performing the sex act in full view of her father can she finally perform ‘the lift’. The lift involves Swayze (vertical, firm) and her gracefully horizontal above him. The young working class stud has of course frequently lifted other dancers, the problem is not his but purely hers. Baby cannot masturbate, she requires Swayze for gratification but is still having difficulties. They have previously practiced lifts ‘in the water’. Twice she came close but ultimately, she failed and dived under water. In The Water his body below this waist is submerged; she needs more than just his fine chest, face and luscious locks.

What is the meaning of the new musical frontier associated with the final dance scene? The whole film is clearly the fantasy of an old woman remembering her first sexual encounter (there are some minor diversions from topic such as a lazy critique of Ayn Rand: the toe rag who gets that peroxide blond pregnant (fake hair = fake love) offers Baby a copy of The Fountainhead. Presumably an allusion to Rand’s arguably pro-rape ideology (the middle classes can both patronise the irresponsible immoral workers and out-philosophise them)). As she masturbates furiously she first inserts the young working class stud in to the fantasy which is not enough. Finally, she must have her father watch her with the working class stud at which point the pure sexual virility of the peasantry can flow through her exhibitionism under the gaze of her father, two realms of reality and fantasy are combined (the two musical types are one) and she successfully does ‘the lift’. I jest when I say this middle aged Jewish woman is masturbating! She is of course, making love to her husband. The only way she can bear this is to dissociate and think of her happy youthful sexual awakening. Unfortunately the power of imagination is not strong enough to completely banish the present (eighties music). However, the orgasm only comes when the reality is melded with the fantasy. She imagines her father’s gaze and the working class lover, but the real present of sex with her hideous husband (actual physical stimulus) provides the final phantasmagorical push and orgasm is achieved. The film must finish immediately.

I had the time of my life. Yes I swear. It’s the truth, and I owe it all to you. The only question remaining is whether this ‘you’ refers to her father, the young stud, or the idea of working class virility in the mind of a middle class Jewish woman. There is, however, a more radical possibility: you.

Regards,

Why I am not a Russellite (Bertrand)

Posted on by

In which I offer a refutation of Russell’s teapot argument as an expression of weak atheism and proffer in its place the one true Strong Atheism.

This is a direct response to Russell’s original essay which can be found here. It has informed a century of British atheists leading all the way to the naive materialism of Dawkins et al. The central point of this article is to criticise the implicit philosophical assumptions of the essay and to establish a more solid atheism in which God is not merely negligibly unlikely but actually necessarily absent from a consistent framework of thought, sensory data, and that on which sensory data is contingent (the ‘real’).

Can we forgive the absolute pacifist who rejected the virtue of fighting the Second World War? Perhaps we can view his stance as logically coherent and a sad loss given its replacement by the vulgar pragmatic ‘game theory’ of Von Neumann and the fools who gave us MAD.

You have to give a man a certain credit for the sheer audacity of writing a book on the History of Western Philosophy. I particularly like the self perceived modesty of including the word ‘Western’. Of course, I only mean to put forward the final conclusive remarks on 5000 years of half the world’s thinkers, I wouldn’t dare be so arrogant as to take the whole of world thought as my subject. I am but a modest chicken. But I don’t wish to dwell on amusing biographical details.

The key aspect of Russell’s thought is that he is a British empiricist. A realist like Stephen Hawking with his contradictory statement that ‘philosophy is dead’. Of course, the true irony of Hawking is that his books are purchased almost entirely by people looking for metaphysics not physics. I remember as a child seeing an A level maths book and finding the indecipherable page of symbols to have an exotic religious appeal. That is what people seek in his bland writing and that is what he rejects within the writing. Thankfully, it is far enough in that most people can happily give up and sleep soundly in the knowledge that someone has figured it all out and that it can be expressed in a single equation. There lies the key fault in the teapot argument. By ignoring the sensible aspect of any metaphysical inquiry Russell imagines that we may simply drag God kicking and screaming in to the physical realm and straightforwardly disprove his existence there. If one cannot accept the existence of any object that is not material, it is straightforward to prove that a necessarily immaterial object cannot exist.

Leaving aside the burden of proof question (on what logical grounds should the nonexistence of the teapot be assumed a priori?) the argument falls down because for the argument by analogy to be valid, the objects in the analogy must be of a similar type. If the reader can accept that god is a similar concept to a teapot are they not already convinced? A key facet of God is that all phenomena are smaller than it. By drawing a comparison with some minor subsection of phenomena you have created a false conception of God which is not a useful construct. Perhaps it might even be easier to believe in a teapot orbiting a planet than one consciousness which created everything that could be considered a part of All. Fundamentally, a teapot, is a sensible concept which everyone can accept. That a teapot has position means that a teapot orbiting a planet is a sensible concept. It is easy to imagine an observation verifying it. Therefore I want to first establish the limits imposed on what conceptions of God would be sensible and what would not be. Then to ask how the sensible definitions might be argued to be either necessary, unnecessary or impossible. Where a sensible definition is one which is not contradictory. Contradictory being a subspace of impossible.

God as necessarily existent

Kant is widely regarded as one of the dullest writers in all philosophy. The boredom associated with ploughing through a hundred six syllable words per sentence is close to that required when humouring children. Nevertheless, even he finds it impossible not to mock the ontological proof: ‘One may as well assume a market trader to have made a profit simply by the fact of writing so in his accounts’. Zing.

The only necessarily existent objects are tautologies. If God is a tautological concept it carries no meaning. Therefore any sensible conception of God can not be necessarily existent.

God as a possible finite object within reality

This is the classic atheist conception of god because it is so easily dismissed. If God were some being who somehow created the universe and resides within the universe but hidden one has a very small enemy to attack. This God can see your thoughts and influence the world due to infinite power but is fundamentally limited by existing within the world. That is this god evolves in time and is not outside time, which leads to the classic paradox ‘how can god both know the future and have the power to change his mind about what will be future events’. This conception of God is the only one successfully attacked by the teapot argument. What is so silly about this argument is that all physical theories treat time as a dimension which may be viewed in its entirety. In all modern physical theories time is treated with a god’s eye view. Therefore to allow ourselves to occupy the position of objective viewer outside time but reject the notion of one viewer of all space and time is simply hubris. Only the naive materialist can think this way.

God as a possible object outside all phenomena but capable of interacting with phenomena.

This conception of God is straightforward within a purely deterministic framework. However again one is then forced to refute God’s full power since full power must encompass the ability to change events. In a full conception of God outside time, as looking at all experience, why then would we accept its ability to change the future but not the past?

God as a fundamentally unknowable and therefore useless concept

Another typical materialist atheist conception is that any unobservable is something Wittgenstein would say ‘we must pass over in silence’. This is probably a misreading of Wittgenstein. Clearly in the Tractatus he is frequently talking about things other than sensory data, namely logical structures of a pure language.

God as necessarily absent

Is this section I will adopt the traditional male conception of God for the reason that I claim the standard ontological framework is based on the male subject and object and the female as object. That is how I move to my claim that in renouncing the conception of any human as purely subject or purely object one must reject all notions of fundamental subject, which is the very essence of God. God is the pure subject with zero object qualities. He can not be acted on only act. One might state the basic traditional hierarchy as: God is the pure object, male is the authentic part object, part subject and the female is the pure object. This is worldview I espouse in my atheist Christianity. Jesus’ femininity is his object form. The thought experiment of Jesus as the manifested object form of God raises the ultimate contradiction in the climax of the absence of a response to ‘Why have you forsaken me?’. Jesus is the theoretical authentic animal who has passed from the false knowledge of his own subjectivity.

Does an equilateral triangle exist?

If we take a strict Euclidean definition of an equilateral triangle, then within real Euclidean space, no such triangle can exist because one can inspect the three points to a finer degree of accuracy until it is revealed unequilateral. Could God be of a similar form? A sensible concept but that can never exist in reality. One may see God as a perfection to be approached but never reached like a converging infinite sum.

Hawking and the multiverse

Stephen Hawking is a long time exponent of the multiverse conception of reality. I bring this up because in recognising it as sensible concept one must reject outright the author’s materialism. If no information about the other multiverses can ever be known then how are they useful concepts. They fail Popper’s definition of science and fall in the realm of pure metaphysical speculation, of what Hawking himself might dismiss as philosophy. His weak atheism is contradictory in that it takes as granted a God’s eye view of reality on which our universe in one part. I have my own views on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. I am working on my own interpretation which I aim to publish shortly but for now, I will just say that the it is my view that the inherent contradictions in modern physics must be overcome by a revolution in our conception of reality. In short, I believe that the problems at the heart of physics are philosophical problems and not mere absence of observation.

Transcending Bayesian probability into a state of total unbelief from total belief

Taking a Bayesian treatment, we are forced to choose a ‘prior probability’. That is, in trying to treat God as a possible entity which we don’t know exists, we are forced to first adopt a belief about how likely it is that God exists (0, 1 or in between). This only leads in one direction, namely to Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith. I take this to be assuming knowledge that God exists prior to sensory experience. Of course, if one does this then no sensory data can reject the knowledge of God’s existence. the exact same is true of adopting an a priori unbelief. If we take the liklihood as something like 50% (straightforwardly absurd like any other fraction) one needs to make yet more assumptions about the likelihood of all actual phenomena both given God and no God (unknowable). The only concrete thing one can say here is that we can only see God directly if God exists, and even that is problematic if we accept the possibility of sensory fallibility (the one true definite).

The ludicrous conclusion of choice

To summarise, my central argument is that the issue of god is intimately related to the materialism/idealism debate and one must take a different approach within both realms. I argue for an idealist approach to building a coherent atheism based on the impossibility of the pure subject or pure object. Jesus Christ represents the first discussion of the contradictions associated with an all powerful God interacting with the human world, one that ultimately concludes with God himself rejecting his own existence (as a glib aside I’m going to claim this the key difference between Catholics and Protestants, that Catholics accept the absurdity of Christ give themselves total freedom and Protestants consider him an ideal to be achieved through mimicry). Any supernatural power must lose all power in entering the natural. We are left with an idealist atheistic worldview which denies any supernatural power because in interacting with the ontology that God must first destroy the ontology. The true test of this argument would be to consider the implications within the Simulation Hypothesis (we are almost certain living in a simulation in future computers (genuinely serious)) of the author’s of the simulation entering the simulation after the start and interacting with the simulation. Since the simulation progresses from the initial conditions in a predetermined way, the full history of the simulation is encapsulated in the initial conditions and is only conducted in order to reveal itself to the author. This permits a full representation of reality as encoding in the initial conditions if and only if evolution is deterministic. We can therefore say, either we are free or there is pure subject perspective on all history. You should now be aware of the deep logical connections between the central philosophical arguments of materialism vs idealism, free will vs no free will, god vs no god, female vs male as sensible grammatical distinctions etc. I fear on all counts we are left with the unsettling conclusions one way is necessarily true and yet one can only hold a consistent worldview by adopting the belief in the opposite.

I at once want to ask you take this deeply seriously and to treat it like an especially boring and unfunny piece of comic nonsense,

Some notes on the Central Metaphysical Question

Posted on by

In which I offer some physical insights into the difference between a physicalist and an idealist metaphysical approach.

One of the most striking aspects of Kant’s Critique to the student of physical sciences is a seeming pre-empting of Einstein’s relativity and other twentieth century advances in theory. In particular I refer to the central thesis that our conceptions of time and space preempt and facilitate experience. It is almost certainly true that Einstein was totally unaware of Kant’s work, but nevertheless his advances might seem to rest upon the key idea that 4 dimensional space-time is a framework with which to interpret sensory data and not built upon sensory data from purely logical principles. Otherwise how could he become convinced of un-common-sense new representations.

Consider the following system: A three dimensional Euclidean space-time in which a two dimensional space develops in time. Point particles evolve continuously over time. In any instant velocities are never infinity. Now let us give each particle an ‘internal coordinate’. Each particle can be defined by two spatial coordinates and a further physical property x. The question I am going to ask here is ‘how do physical theories in this universe differ if x is some physical quantity such as mass compared to if it is a third spatial dimension?’. Regardless of whether or not the latter would essentially be a coordinate transformation leading to a mathematically more complicated set of governing equations (dependent on the forces operating in the universe) this must be accepted as a possible representation. For instance consider a classical gravitation simulation with two bodies. One can consider the two bodies as having 4 coordinates which vary in time (3 spacial and one mass). Obviously mass is fundamentally different from the three spacial coordinates (it is constant for a given body/it plays a very different algebraic role in the governing equations). My claim here is that although the current representation of three spacial dimensions is the simplest in terms of the algebraic size of the governing equations, it is not a unique representation.

If you accept the proposed scheme laid out in the previous paragraph, then will you accept it leads to the following broader statement:

“The common sense descriptions of reality built originally upon forces acting on particles in four dimensional space-time is one of a set of greater than one representations.”

And finally if you would accept the arguments laid forth here, could you accept the following possibility:

The common sense representation of the world which precedes and makes possible experience built on sensory data is determined by the evolutionary principle that the models used to represent the world in consciousness are those models which require the smallest brains (in terms of energy expended in production).

If one can accept that that final un-empirical statement (I know of no experimental evidence for it) is a logical possibility then one has moved some way to a rejection of physicalism.

The Wolf of Wall Street – A Review

Posted on by

There is an old story in Hollywood that a young Martin Scorsese (not THE) approached the camera with two feet in the air and with a wry smile added ‘so maybe I DID work upside down’ deliriously. At which point everyone laughed and the rest, as my old film professor used to joke languidly, was Raging De Nero. That may or mayn’t be how it went down but his latest offering (sacrificial) shows he’s still got an infatuation with the rich and fetishism.

The opening shot of his most present proximate offering gives a heavy Leonardo eat a giant watermelon erotically and morph into a wolf. Gee wizz Martin, we didn’t see that one coming. I decided to meet the ‘italian film maker’ in a little (1 cubic metre) upstate New York coffee shack. I’ve brought him a souvenir from St Martin’s college as an ironicalitude. He sniggers and urinates champagne from his erect bottle into my moist flute. The ironicalized eroticism is not lost on the Academy Award Winner James Cameron whose film Titanic set sail in 1997 implicitly. Unfortunately, I suspect this moving picture with coincident sound WON’T unsink when it hits the icebergman from AlcatraZ wryly.

The rather large press theatre (4 parsecs) shook at the laughter when Leo the Wolf spoke of crime, drug use and prostitution dryly an eyely in the housewifi. Sorry Martin, this reviewer suspects Vertigo, Citizen Kane etc WILLn’t bee given a run for true money. And Psycho anyone?

20% one star etc. No quality is normally distributed etc etc. Cumulative with standard deviations. Democracy! Popular opinion. A man I’ll never meet. A film I’ll never saw.

Safe emotional journeys,

The bench opposite Aquasplash

Posted on by

Lets be honest, Hemel Hempstead has some great benches. I’ve often spoken of the one opposite Forbidden Planet on the high street, and the one on Gadebridge park. OK, the second isn’t strictly speaking a bench (it’s a log), but when I fancy a sit down, I ain’t interested in semantics mate. In this work, though, we will be talking about the bench opposite Aquasplash. Not the one by the bus stop, but the one outside the entrance next to the bins. I’ve got a lot to say about that bench, and indeed the bins, but if you require a mere summary because you lead a busy life and believe in delegating responsibility to experts, then hear this: I would describe it as excellent.

Key features of the bench opposite Aquasplash:

  • Bevelled arm rests
  • Close to Aquasplash
  • Beauty

Picture, if you would be so kind, my buttocks. They are tired; tired, yet spectacular, pert and wondrous things. They require support. Preferably, they would like a horizontal plane in order to prevent my upper torso and head from succumbing to gravity, that most long range of all the forces. Therein lies the bench and/or seats more generally (they represent a victory of electromagnetism over what Newton called gravitas, itself derived from ‘grave’ and the action of burying (alas, even the bench opposite Aquasplash cannot slow our journey to oblivion and I aint talkin’ Alton Towers)). I often use chairs but I miss the ability to move side to side to dodge approaching missiles or just because I fancy it. The bench opposite Aquasplash offers all this and more (there are multiple bins at hand for banana skins etc).

‘How crass! How vulgar! May we hear more for the sensitive soul, whose mind is unburdened with concerns over her arse?’ Yes, you may. This bench is in memory of Henry Shadows 1913-1995. Henry Shadows was a local farmer, who once met a Royal person. He also stood as independent candidate for Hertfordshire in 1974 and 1979. I like to imagine him standing here surveying the scene, tired butt in his head. Looking out at the beautiful view (pre-Aquasplash – all his memorial plaque can see now is Aquasplash) and yearning for this greenfield development, such that he may one day have his name celebrated on brass coated steel on elm.

To Henry!

Claire Thomas publishes an offensive drawing of the Royal baby in the school magazine

Posted on by

– Well, I mean thing is, I wanted to capture the horror of childbirth. I just thought it was an amazing moment because it was where they were just like animals before the propaganda starts. I mean I suppose it goes without saying, I’m a republican.

The headmaster was not impressed by this. He shifted his weight in his chair looking at Claire. He shifted his weight the other way.

– I mean, I certainly wasn’t evoking violence on an infant. You realise there is blood in a childbirth?

– Yes but, the children are not comfortable with that.

– The children liked it.

– Yes. The parents are not comfortable with that.

Claire let out a ten second breath with moaning undertones.

– You’re right. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. See you round.

Claire got up and wandered out of Mr Weed’s office wistfully looking at his degrees on the wall. The last one made her laugh out loud.


Figure 1. The offending cartoon of the Royal baby, George Windsor.

The picture had made the previously bland woman a figure of great respect and admiration among the children. They started to pay attention to her slight disinterested tone. Often gazing out the window she would reel off the syllabus without any interest, but she couldn’t help herself from throwing in unusual observations on the material. She would talk about the manner in which the more subtle elements of a subject were sometimes omitted to aid simplicity, to the extent that it was occasionally necessary to include a fallacy in order for the simpler system to be consistent and that most crucially this didn’t matter in the slightest to progress of education. Where before these went by unnoticed, now they were spoken of after the lesson. Written down and repeated to anyone not in a class with her.

Today, she sat back in her chair looking benignly at 7B, heads down in a test. She looked at each in turn and said to herself ‘I hate you’. Each fleshy innocent appeared to her a gross corruption. She had come to find her job one of transmitting a field of force that might hold these people down. She wandered how they could go about their day without feeling dread and shame pulling them toward a noose. On a more positive note she looked at James Worthington. Being the best student in the class, she obviously despised him the most. She had given him a different test to the others after wasting an evening in despair after seeing the look on his face receiving the previous test score. His paper had questions such as ‘formulate a theory that predicts the values of prime numbers’, ‘write a beautiful sentence using four words’ and ‘solve the measurement problem’ among others.

She stood up and went into a small room which separated her classroom from another. Looking into that classroom, at Dr Brown pointing at some ridiculous diagram of an atom, she took out a pen and wrote in red felt tip on to his folder of lesson plans ‘Fuck Dr Brown’. She went back in to the class room, walked around the students a little and then aimlessly walked out of the school and back home. It was a matter of some amusement to her to ponder the manner in which the students finally left the classroom.

She sat on her toilet lid, legs crossed and leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. She looked over at her mother’s corpse. It was two weeks old now and rank with maggots. She moved gaze over a picture from Disneyland, stood up and threw the cigarette on to her mothers bed and walked out the front door; a cold banal manner without and within.

Like you

Posted on by

May I recommend the following piece of music to enjoy while reading: open in new window.

I recently found out that I have an exceptional IQ.

My…

I…

Q…

is…

zero*. I was not happy. I took the exam and stuffed it in the mouth of the examiner, which I thought should get me at least one point for a slam dunk. Alas, Alan Quantick, 57, of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, was an old bore and called security.

Consider the following question (this was an example, before the test had begun!):

For the following series of numbers, select the number that should replace the question mark.

1,2,3,4,?

Is it 1, 7, 3, 4, or 5?

True answer = how can we possibly know?, or whatever I say it is. Supposedly, the right answer is 5. Why? If the question was ‘what do you think most humans would put in place of the question mark?’, ‘What number produces the sequence of minimum entropy?’ (even then I think the answer might be 1 or 0), ‘do you speak English?’, or even ‘Play ball cunt!’, then yeah I’d put 5, but I honestly don’t see how 5 is a meaningful answer to the question. In short the question asks you to perform induction, which any a-hole knows is not valid. No matter how far Al Gore goes up a scissor lift it remains not valid.

It isn’t intelligence to play ball, or to find similarities between objects, intelligence is the ability to hold contradictory beliefs. Thus I saw the best answer to every question to be ‘How should I know? Now shimmy off you old bastard!’.

Didn’t wanna do well anyway mate,

* I realise that in actuality getting zero points on a test doesn’t give you an IQ of zero. The number of standard deviations from the norm given a hypothetically perfect test i.e. in comparison to an infinite number of humans on a test that no-one scores zero on, would still depend on the minimum number scored by any human. Therefore lets assume a sample of 8 billion (global population) from a normal distribution, with mean = 100**, and standard deviation = 15. Then the IQ that is likely to be attained by the lowest scoring human is 5 ish:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F2+*+erfc+%28%28100+-+x%29+%2F+%2815+*+sqrt%282%29%29%29+%3D+1%2F8000000000

I’m ignoring higher order terms. i.e. the lowest IQ that we would expect exactly 1 person to have in a sample of 8 billion humans is 5ish. However having a score of zero on any good test (that scores no-one else at zero) would yield a negative IQ. I could have said -infinity but I thought that didn’t have the same oomph as zero. So sue me.

** Why is the mean 100? Why not 0? And why not make the sd equal to 1?***

*** More the the point, why bother?

Simple harmonic motion

Posted on by

The further I get from Hemel, the sicker I feel. A malicious electronic communication.


Figure 1: Mood against time.

The setting sun put an orange light across the back wall of my bedsit, which I found beautiful in the way a honeymoon waterfall appears to a lonely woman reading a holiday brochure. the aim now was to stay awake for my nightly dose of cartoons and masturbation.

– Hi James? It’s Raph, have you seen the sunset? It is a really good one.

– What are you, Gay or summat?

– No, fuck off.

and I shut the curtains.


Video 1: Overview.

Toby carvery were offering some sort of deal about as appealing as buy one year get two free on e-dates. I sat at my booth and read a book. It was too good for the occasion so I couldn’t pay attention beyond the first sentence, but based on the quotes it had profound things to say about this and that (this being the human condition and that being contemporary culture).

The noise of the motorway was slightly louder than from my bedsit, which cheered me up.

I caught a glimpse of someone in a hotel window across the car park who was also asking which of our lots was the more existentially repulsive.


Video 2: Deleted scenes.

Fare thee well,

Thoughts, theories and a description

Posted on by

His hair was as greasy as a Christmas pudding (solid opening line). His hair looked like someone had stuffed a Christmas pudding on a bald man and then carved a bit away from the eyes and then run a fork down the sides to make it more hair like. It really was remarkably like a Christmas pudding. I am talking about myself. I just described myself because this is a story about my kidnapping, in the youth club where I was then working, and without having a clear picture of me you will not be able to visualise the horror that I experienced. Finally (we are nearing the end of the paragraph), it is a story about redemption, retribution and absolution (with escaped chipmunk as priest – see later).

Did I mention this blog was set in 1998?



Video 1. Advanced lesson on creativity.

I was workin’ a few extra hours at the youth club at 4 per. I was hot and young. I was mad and dangerous and something about that fire breathing personality (fucking shed loads of C2H5OH 1, on a Fri’ night mate) did not chime with the kid’z ultra conservative herd mentality. And on the night of 12 December the little grubfaced schoolyarders acted on their prejudice and hatred for those who dare to be outrageous, like the UK legal system circa 1949. Wilde/Turing/Shirley (unified by brilliance/not sexual orientation. When it comes to batting for the other side, I would intentionally let the bowler knock my wicket off in order to sabotage their team. Seriously, I am not gay.)



Figure 1. Self portrait with hand signal.

Simply put, they led me into the store cupbard with the promise of a Spliffy bomber2, locked the door behind me and left me for dead until the next youth club meeting, a fortnight later, when, surprised by their scheme’s success, they let me out. They messed with the wrong youth club worker.



Video 2: My thoughts on inequality.

Perhaps you can imagine spending 14 days in a youth club store cupboard? Perhaps you don’t see the big deal? Perhaps you would have the resourcefulness and strength of character to eat nothing but strawberry laces and quench your thirst with nothing but cherry pop, without so much as a tooth brush? Perhaps, ignorant reader, you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about mate? Like, seriously, my teeth were furrier than a, like, Sylvanian Families figurine, or some shit.

The kids arrived two weeks later and found the doors open, the lights on and everything stolen. They opened the door to the cupboard. They were scared when they saw me. I was wild. I was shaking and screaming madly. I stank from the two weeks worth of soiled trousers from fibre free food. The biggest of the children untied me. I quickly and efficiently set about the children and locked them in the cupboard. Their fear of my mania compensating for my weakness. Ten minutes later their patents were back having been phoned up. I threw my useless phone from its position outside the cupboard at the biggest dad who had broken the door down. It hadn’t rang once. I had one text from T-Mobile. We paused a while to regard each other. I was the first to run. I ran all the way to my bedsit. I cancelled all my shifts at the offlicense for a month. I set about debasing myself with Dominoes Pepperoni Passion and PlayStation 3. All I can remember from the month is possibly watching a couple of Family Guy episodes.

I was free. Gradually my wounds healed and I readied myself for the systematic attack on the innocence of all the children who wronged me. What follows is my catalogue of retribution:

Name Retribution
Arthur Browning Hamsters head in bed (his (both)).
Ben Kingsley Urine filled super soaker (mine (both)).
Sarah Amis Showed her her parent’s internet sex page.
Kalif Abdullah Campaign of hate against his mother’s YouTube cupcake cookery course through obscene comments.
Autumn Shirley (coincidence) Air rifle pellet in dad’s Ford’s wing mirror (he ended up beating me up; I sued; I won; I paid fee; who’s the real loser?).

Table 1. Repercussions of youth club terror.

Autumn’s dad is… eugh. I told him I’d get him and I mean it. He has beaten me up three times now. I mean come on.



Figure 2. Dignity. I’ve always been interested in oriental culture ever since I first saw Enter the Dragon.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. Here’s what we can talk about next time:



Video 3: A song about Chessington World of Adventures.

I’ll tell you more about the trip to Chessington another time but the key thing is that while I was hidden out in Bubbleworks I met a hamster that I’d earlier freed and told him all I have done and he told me that god forgives me.

Yours feeling the searing heat-pain of truth,

Footnotes

1 Booze you idiot.

2 A type of jacket.

The stomach of a fifty year old British male

Posted on by

A soft Hovis loafish catastrophe. A white sagging mess with blue accoutrements in the opaque soup of a cold and second-hand bath.

“A man should get married, because if he has a good wife he’ll be happy, and if he has a bad one he’ll learn to be philosophical” – Socrates. I wonder what the great philosopher’s wife made of that.

Yours faithfully,

Lessons from a provincial dickhead

Posted on by

I woke up at 1523h and checked my mouse trap. It was missing! I made myself a tea n’ dried milk and ate a couple bags o’ penguins (Buy 1 get 2 free).



Video 1. A lesson about how to act.

I go to get my lunchbox (made sandwich yester’) but what do I see when I peep under the bed but a little mouse with a trap round its conical face. It squeaks and I feel sorry for it so I let it go. It runs straight into my shoe (that explains a lot) and I reset the trap out side of it.



Figure 1. Mouse trap and shoe orientation.

When I get back from my day in the park, the job is finished. I take it out to the trash but on the way I notice it is a different mouse because I can tell by the eyebrows. I feel like that guy in Saving Private Ryan when he lets that German go and then later he kills his friend except not so strongly.



Video 2. A li’l tour o’ my quarters.

Yours with a damp right sock,

An attempt to provoke a lawsuit for publicity purposes

Posted on by

Dear St James’s Palace,

Please consider suing me for posting the following image. It would be very useful publicity for me. Ideally I could take the Daily Mail approach and feign dissaproval of the original publication and still give my readers the tillation of the thought of a young woman’s breasts. This already commercially viable approach, if muddled with the popular mythology surrounding the tragic death of a mother, has the potential to become a winsome narrative/self fulfilling prophecy and could make us a lot of money, while maintaining adoration levels for your vulgar traditions.


Figure 1. Pwooooaaaar! Please note that I am not the copyright holder for this image. I made the rare decision to post it anyway for purely selfish reasons.

Kind regards,

PS for the manipulation of my google page rank may I politely say “Kate Middleton Kate Windsor duke and duchess of Cambridge topless Wills and Kate Prince William British Royal Family French paparazzi peeping tom”.

Eviction

Posted on by

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,

*************************** BONUS MATERIAL ***************************

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.

*************************** BONUS MATERIAL ***************************