Category Archives: searing political satire

Swift/Johnson/Shirley

Avengers: Age of Ultron

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If the Western is essentially about Manifest Destiny then Avengers: Age of Ultron is about the Cold War. It is a post hoc justification for NASA, the H-bomb and Coca-Cola. All aimed at the audience from Robert Downey Jnr’s intensely irritating face. He’s like a little five year old brat who has morphed into the hideous body of a fifty year old brat due to some horrific nuclear accident that you find yourself brutally lacking any sympathy for. I especially want to emphasise what a humourless OAP in teens clothing Robert Downey Jnr is. Why isn’t he called Robert Downey Snr or Robert Downey RIP?

Hitchcock said that there is only one place for tension to go – laughter. Following this instruction like a pedant following grammatical orders the film is all structured around a comic rhythm of building some sort of pseudo drama and then cutting it down with a glib remark from RDJ (twat). The key problem with this is that the remarks have zero wit. A typical comeback to some huge crash of giant space ships might be ‘OK’, ‘that was awkward’, or ‘Err yeah’. Big explosion. ‘She’s fit’. Character dies. ‘Well that was sad’. More CGI porn. ‘Whatever’. The audience of filth-gluttons lapped it up. Hearing the crowds laugh was like being at a Nazi rally. I just hoped nobody noticed me. I felt increasingly alienated until finally I think I experienced the Marxist alienation of no longer recognising your self as a human being. I had morphed into a lizard and left the Vue in search of some crickets for dinner.

There are a couple of Eastern European baddies (read commie bastards), who upon releasing a dangerous new weapon which seems safe but then has some hidden danger within it (subtle) realise how silly they were and essentially beg the gang of American philistines to let them join. Thankfully it all ends happily with the obliteration of the East. Guys, you won, you don’t need to spend a hundred years justifying yourselves just enjoy it. We don’t have to go to the cinema and watch all that boring high brow Russian stuff, we can watch this obscenity instead. It is actually worse than obscene, I’d much rather go home and watch ten minutes of YouPorn. At least I wont have seen a twenty foot RDJ call me a moron.

There was an advert for some car before the film started. It was being chased by a CGI monster. The film was then full to the brim with product placement such that there didn’t seem to be any separation between the two. I was paying to see an advert. The logic of that is a piece of evil genius. It is as if we have realised that we don’t even want what the advert is selling us anymore, we want the advert itself. Avengers: Age of Ultron is the finest example yet of this strange new world of Advert/Propaganda/Product/Commodity Fetishism all combined in a Russian doll of layers of facade. The true symbolic meaning of Pass the Parcel. The sadness is when all that symbolic structure is finally placed on an actual object which cannot sustain it. The saddest child is the one who wins and is faced with this Wizard of Oz moment.

* Quasi-spoiler in following paragraph

Another thought is that assuming the target market is teenage males and elderly-teenage males there was a distinct lack of women characters even as sexual conquests. These new trollagers can not even accept objectified sex objects anymore. They have to instead fantasise about masculine ideals. But the masculine ideal is only coherent when defined in opposition to the female. This necessary symbolic function is entirely resting on the shoulders of Scarlet Johanson, whose beauty is, I must admit, almost enough to suffice. I say almost because, I don’t think any one feminine symbol can provide an ontological framework for, what is it, ten masculine ideals? Perhaps they think the male is so infinitely fascinating and the female so much a negative idea that there is only one type of woman. This all leads me to the conclusion that the whole purpose of the Cold War was to provide a working definition of masculinity. Peckinpah’s famous quote that there are two types of woman pussies and cunts springs to mind. We can have an infinite number of males (literally, the climax of the film is an unending stream of baddies; a final affront to the Russian war dead) but only the two tropes bitch and blond are needed from women (apparently there is this whole other group of people called non-whites but lets leave that for another time). Perhaps there was some wife character or something? They needed something to put a character’s son on.

I’m going to go even further and say that the refusal to put their one woman Scarlet (aside from the enemy commie bitch trope a la Xenia Onatopp. Ultimately won over and of course killed) in a sexual situation is actually a feminist regression. The teenage boy can happily drool over endless homoerotic scenes such as Thor in a jacuzzi as long as it is never fully revealed as joy in masculinity. Michelangelo knew he liked men, these guys don’t. The reason I say no sex with Scarlet is reactionary is because the misogyny is so complete now that we cannot even bear to have sex with them. Their only role is in propping up RDJ’s corporate semi-on, a scaffolding built on sand. The women are fully what De Beauvoir calls the ‘inessential other’.

Now that we lack the Soviet union as a sufficient Other and have long given up on women providing the requisite symbolic content (can we try Muslims?) we must find increasingly ingenious ways of justifying RDJ’s fragile emotional state. This is a complicated procedure and I wish Marvel all the best in this endeavor. I suspect it may take at least another ten films.

Yours in drooling wild eyed sarcasm,

Education: indoctrination or emancipation?

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Every sentence in this article should be appended with ‘, man’.

“Most schooling is training in stupidity and conformity”

Have you heard about the horse who could count? His friend would say to him ‘three plus five’ and then tap on the horse until the horse neighed. The horse learnt to neigh at the right number of taps every time. Eventually it was revealed as a scam, the horse could only perform the trick with his ‘best friend’ and it became apparent that the friend was giving some subtle clue at the right number that made the horse neigh. The reason I bring this up is that the friend didn’t actually realise he was doing this. This is the method by which I claim the infant absorbs The Ontology!

The evidence! Oh evidence, my old friend. I love evidence. It is so great. Consider the following evidence: ‘my sons were so much more male that my daughters, it just goes to show’. Leaving aside the principal conclusion that the speaker is obviously a male, lets consider the evidence! I have instituted a rule in my house that I paint all males blue. You will see that males are disproportionately blue. Therefore males are naturally blue. Ergo, we must paint all boys blue (e.g. Iggle Piggle). Obviously the true structure of the symbolic order is quite different because while we have the power to not paint children we lack the language to express un-he-ing. The language has settled in to a very fine set of self consistent grammars and that. The social construct is far harder to destroy than mere biology.

An experiment among Chinese women given infants of both sexes, but told the incorrect sex 50% of the time and unanimously overfed the ones they were told were male regardless of actual sex giving the reason ‘he was more hungry’. Call me it please.

How to escape the inherent structures within language in a means that can be expressed with language?

Being the filthy recipient of a very fine indoctrination I believe education to be highest form of emancipation. The contradiction of a thorough education can be summed up ‘a well educated child should have within them the capacity to overthrow the education’. How can this be instilled without first brutally enforcing obedience. And from that obedience how can disobedience spring? Each stage of education tends to end with an examination which should furnish you with a piece of paper with one of two messages, either ‘fuck off and be a slave idiot’ or ‘congratulations, you are an obedient slave and may remain’. Eventually this process is complete and one group remains who have been wholly failed by the education system: professors. These poor saps are so obedient that they are now given the task of actually doing something in the realm of the mental, by which time they have been so mutilated of all creativity and free thought that they must be retained at state expense like lobotomised giraffes in fancy petting zoo. Unlike people on the dole these intellectuals provide no social use and, because they cost more to shut up than those who were first thrown out of education, they are a huge drain on the country. They are the embarrassing uncle of British public life. The difference between a benefit street type and a public intellectual is that the latter can write an annoying five page essay justifying their pocket money.

The most obedient people are the engineers. Trained to apply current scientific understanding to useful projects these strange automata are celebrated by the governments of the world as STEM graduates. The ultimate in unthinking slaves. We need these slaves for such crucial activities as getting across rivers, increasing economic productivity and furnishing us with the requirements of a happy life. That last sentence was genuinely sarcastic.

If there is one thing worse than the STEM graduate it is the Arts and Humanities graduate. These are the slaves who know they are slaves. They engage in such useful activities as bringing the social order to task, helping organisations to get their message across and expressing the impotent rage of the slaves. Again, genuinely.

Comedy, as the means for amusing the slave population forms the uttermost conservative medium. The crown of the symbolic order – the pleasure gravity that settles the lines and connections down over the landscape. Ha Ha jobs crap but I’m above it. Ha ha sexually repressed but above it cos laugh at it. Ha ha misery but me separate from it. Ha ha problem of evil. Ha ha every slave can have their own slave in the form of a family. Unha unha. No, unbut seriously.

Still, the crucial thing is to make sure everyone leaves some sort of slave finishing school. Otherwise, how can they play a useful and fulfilling role in their team? The team is full of twats.

It takes a very rigorous and tough training to write with such clarity of purpose as this. Have I deviated from the central thrust of argument once? What is the central thrust of argument? I feel like I’m going to start talking about Jesus again. His own passivity was his act of violence. Simply by absorbing his education consistently he overthrew the whole social order. He allowed humanity to pass from total belief in God to total unbelief in god. The first atheist showed the way to overthrow the ontology. To free yourself from the shackles. To absorb the education and let it dismantle itself. To finish the whole thing and find yourself educated. The ladder pushed over. The contradiction complete.

All the best,

Having Sex

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The difference between you and me, dear reader, is that we are not currently having sex. While that cannot be claimed a perfect definition (of sex), nor even a logical or grammatical sentence, it may suffice a little while. In due course as the full power of my argument is built upon the page, like a three slice sandwich, we may construct a a better one, but until that day, and I do expect this taking days, we must make do. We must show an economy of thought. Not a slight memory, fancy, or atom of analysis may go wasted. No backwater of your brain, currently storing the phrase ‘I’m lovin’ it’ for instance, may go unused for I shall be putting forward a most serious and elegant proof. I ask you please spend a minute removing the phrase ‘I’m lovin’ it’ and make way. Have you forgotten ‘I’m lovin it’ yet? Do not proceed until you have.

I refer of course to UK tax law and the ways in which it will interact with your sex having. Where sex is the aforementioned difference between you and I-not. If you When you die and if you are having sex with exactly one person (officially so/paperwork etc) then they can have your stuff tax free. Let us hencforward call this the romantic inheritance tax benefit. Let us call it that frequently and at high volume. The romantic inheritance tax benefit is now available to homosexuals. Something I strongly agree with as a monogamists rights activist. I don’t care if you have sex with men or women if you are a man or a woman or with women or men if you are a woman or a man so long as it is one on one. This is what a mathematician might call a one to one mapping. If that is the case then you should be able to take the other one’s stuff for free on the difficult day. I’m loving it.

Oh the vulgarity! This ether of vice that underlies The Discourse! The savage heart in all of us and how to legislate around it? This brutal element in us all must be tamed by the full force of UK tax law. It may be said that good prose style is that which denies the Daily Mail a quote to be used against you in the event that you commit a union of tax offence and sex offence (a breaking of the one to one mapping in particular). What can be quoted here? Those familiar with my writings will know my words to be beyond reproach and without any possibility of misquoting. Now that I have proved the excellence of my own prose style I move on to the real stuff of this paragraph: I therefore propose an Arousal Tax.

Modern technology permits a sensor located in either the mind or the groin which will tax arousal and aid a reduction in vulgarity. Something you must realise I abhor and wish to eliminate from my verse and soul.

I am quite literally loving it.

I propose 10p in the £ound over the twelvemonth. Enough to hit the savages where it hurts (emotional centre oblongata) but not too much so as to stifle innovation. I predict this will create a total of 1 billion new jobs. While this figure is greater than the total number of unemployed and even the total population. I propose a simple mechanism for ensuring its reality: Each job shall be decomposed into many smaller job. Every brick laid by the brick layer is now one job and said brick layer performs 250 jobs per day. You should now see how the figure of 1 billion is reached with the following simple formula:

$latex H_{tot}=\sum \dfrac{p_i^2}{2m}+\sum\dfrac{p_I^2}{2M_I}+\sum V_{nucl}(r_i)+\dfrac{1}{2}\sum_{i\ne j} \dfrac{e^2}{|r_i-r_j|}+\dfrac{1}{2}\sum_{I\ne J}\dfrac{z_Iz_Je^2}{|R_I-R_J|} $

However, the true complexity comes in when dealing with the following formula:

a + b = c,

Where a is taxation, b is borrowing, c is spending. This is such a complicated formula because the change in any one variable necessitates a change in the other two variables which can lead to equality in an infinite number for ways. I cannot have more taxation, more borrowing and less spending can I? Or can I? You see how impenetrably difficult this is? You need the attention span of saint and the moral saintlytude of a high level drug baron with a calculator to even begin. I can see that 1 + 2 = 3. but 1 + 3 = 4 at the same time as 2 + 2 = 4. And that’s before one even begins to talk about decimals, fractions, inflation and heterosexuals.

Let us regain some clarity. Let us simmer down from the giddy highs of mathematical analysis. Let us be no geeks nor no robots. Let every Conservative produce only two sentences; ones that contain the word chaos and ones that contain the phrase long-term. Let the ontology collapse to the lulling void of binary equations. One is so at home with:

x = y

That said, let us not worry too much about equality and while we’re talking about lefties. I hereby declare that they speak no word other than ‘better’.

No, but seriously, that’s why I believe in a better long-term chaos instead of a, b, and c all being bigger with more a, more b and more c and less x and more y and less a and less c but more b of the better alternative in the short term.

Nowadays has become a difficult subject in light of Einstein’s disruption of our conceptions of the present and past etc. And the other one too. That’s why I believe in the alternative chaos of a better past nowadays depending on your frame of reference. I really am lovin’ it. A Big Mac is mid gob now. The taste on my tongue rendering concentrating on the writing of this essay problematic. I can barely see the paper for ballistic gherkins and rapid chewing shaking my eyeballs beyond all visual coherence.

In conclusion, let us again return to the filthy potty mouth of the soldier. The stresses of battle dancing with their full vessel of courage and displaying itself in the vulgar stream of conciousness. Reams and reams of half nonsense half gibberish half fruity tongue in the voices of honourable men and women nowadays. All washed down with a lovable stream of dark sugar water. The real unspeakable It.

With love and sensitivity,

An Argument in Favour of Hypocrisy

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The well known filthy tramp Jesus Christ famously said that ‘Hypocrites suck’ (Mathew 23:3 Raph Shirley’s 2015 translation). Therein lies the first argument in favour of hypocrisy. The Right is obsessed with hypocrisy for the obvious reason that one cannot argue against one’s current behaviour without committing hypocrisy. Slavery cannot end without someone being a hypocrite. Does the murderer who believes murder is wrong prove murder is right through his otherwise necessary state of hypocrisy? Does the man who once bought something undo himself by arguing against a privatised police force, since he has himself interacted with capital? He who has touched the coin must believe in the coin else he commits the ultimate sin of hypocrisy. And that leads us to the beautiful argument by contradiction at the heart of Christianity:

If the unhypocrite necessarily renounces all worldly possessions then since I have worldly possessions I would be a hypocrite to renounce worldly possessions. Therefore, since I am a hypocrite, I would be a hypocrite to argue in favour of unhypocrisy. Ergo, I must remain a hypocrite otherwise I would have to commit an act of hypocrisy in becoming the unhypocrite. And most of all you are a hypocrite for criticising my hypocrisy. What I preach is not to preach what I don’t practice and therefore all my practice is perfect and must never be changed.

One might think of this like the famous law of special relativity that the speed of light is the same for all observers. Hypocrisy is an equal evil to all observers regardless of the observer’s evil. Therefore since the Hypocrisy as Greatest Sin law of morality permits evil, then unhypocrisy is itself evil.

Finally, since I believe it is important not to practice what you preach, and since I preach that one should practice what one does not preach then I must begin by practicing what I preach in order to not practice what I preach, which is that one should not practice what one preaches. The antichrist has decided to argue against being immoral since otherwise he would have to be an unhypocrite which he disagrees with on moral grounds. Or is it ethical grounds?

Many happy returns,

An Argument Against Logic by Sarah Vine

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If and only if logical arguments are un-logical then and only then I shall here present a short discussion rejecting out right the application of logic in matters of the un-heart. First, consider the kitchen. When one makes toast does not one first think I shall not make toast but instead shall enjoy some good humour and just make some toast, whiching I might describe as ratherable to seeing a ghost? No. Unbuttering done I walk through to my husband whom I love and say ‘if love means affection from the heart and not the mind then if I am in love with you (since it would be logical to kiss you and cuddle you) then in true unlogical fashion would I be better off pouring a bucket of cold water over your head? However, if it is unlogical to do such a thing and since love and cuddles are built on unlogical then might the ununlogical response be instead to kiss and cuddle’. It is jokes like this that keep me and my husband warm while we throw faeces at an image of Milliband on a white horse of logic and howlier than how?

Starting again from the first word in the sentence and building not sensibly from the unlogic in good humour. My kitchen is warm and nice. Now that is what I call entertaining. So Gove comes in and he’s like ‘I decided to crash my car because I didn’t want to’ and to do otherwise intentionally would be logical my dear Watson. That’s logic. Il logicarium in faeces. Yesn’t? Gove is wearing his nakedness to work and his suit to bed because he is an unholy sinner just the way I (don’t) like ’em. Stupid clever idiots on telly say no to my non’t if and only if it is.

And beginning at the beginning with the sage and necessary proposition on which to build the lovegument. Let me introduce the figure Gove. Glowing. Resplendent. Inswarzenegger untemperate. Blowing forth in cruel lowlier then Mao under siege in ancient anti-logics. Swearing in black hell of born under chaos in the kitchen of sewers and the sewer of kitchens in popular culture form and looking through the glass.

The 6 physics undergraduates that you will find inconsistent with trite generalisations

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We are all familiar with the popular opinion regarding traits in common to college physics majors! Let us take you through the six types that might not be in line with those ideas!

1. The Australian Feminist whose Mum is Dead.
You don’t know what I’m talking about! She spends the evenings doing unremarkable college activities but retains a minor sadness caused by the premature death of her mother in 2001.

2. The Socially Competent Bland Male.
You don’t know what we’re talking about! He will have a successful career in business and marries his studious approach to work with actually completely median social skills!

3. The Spanish Tall Underweight Football Loving Brunette Incompetent Bitter Rounded Good Egg.

4. The One Who You Fell In Love With.
Everybody? She is beautiful and walked into your world one spring evening on June 24 2012 in Hemel Hempstead, UK.

5. The Misogynist and/or Racist and/or Homophobic Representation.
This one gives you pleasure by containing implicit tendentious statements in the subtext. Eh unlad!

6. The Set of All Objects Outside Those Traditionally Associated with the Group in the Title.

This article was written by a Physics Major. Typical? Topical! Topology.

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Script meeting

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– Hi, William! Sit down.

– Hi, how are you?

– Good. Good. Right. The script. The script! Wow. I love it.

– Oh great, I’m so glad to hear that.

– I love it. Not everyone does but that’s fine when your writing is this fresh. It’s gonna take a while. How do you feel about making a couple of changes? Just… to bring people on board. Like, for instance our questionnaires show people just don’t know what to make of this Hamlet guy. I mean, what a loser. I mean like why does he do all this stuff?

– I hear what you’re saying and I respect it but I do feel I would struggle to rework him without totally changing the character of the piece. I mean I’d have to change the title for a start.

– Ha yes. pause. About the title. My marketing report shows audiences find it a bit hammy to be frank. How about we go with something more kooky. The Great Danish Traj Fest of… no. I Am Dane? Timothy Hamlet’s Danish Nightmare?

– I hear what you’re saying.

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A chance meeting in the House of Commons canteen

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Gordon Brown is fumbling with the coffee machine. He stops and stares at the accent in Nescafé for quite literally one minute.

– Sorry can I get to the machine says David Cameron.

– Oh, yeah. Oh, how’s it going?

– Oh hi, yeah great thanks. How are you?

There is a pause.

– Really great says Gordon Brown. Busy. What are you up to at the moment?

– I’m Prime Minister, David says quickly and matter of factly.

– Oh of course. How is that? We must meet up some time, I’ll give you my notes cos it really is silly to go through all the you know stuff a second time.

– Yeah, says David Cameron. Gordon Brown seems unconvinced.

David suddenly notices William Hague and George Osborne sitting at a table across the canteen. They are clearly laughing and miming miniature violins. David can feel giggles swelling from deep inside him like a force of pleasure they rise to his face and push against his cheeks turning them a deep purple. Gordon Brown is furiously pressing a picture of a coffee on the machine. David Cameron reaches over and presses the button marked Cappuccino. The machine makes a sound like steam coming out of ears and Gordon Brown says:

– I wanted a hot chocolate.

Your humble servant,

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Raph Shirley

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… is on the internet.

Raph Shirley: Actor. Author. Librarian. Pedagogue. Publisher.

BLOGGER extraordinaire!

 

Raph Shirley has been winning awards since birth and wowing the world with his award winning awards.

Before GCSE‘s he shared a toothbrush brand with Tom Cruise.

Raph Fought in the second world war… and won. Twice.

Whether you are looking for a friend or a foe or a lover or a petrol station. RAPH shirley provides it. Cheap. Free. Luxurious.

BUY NOW!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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– What do you do?

Imagine opening with that. We have just sat down. I’ve conceded on location and gone into this stinking Carluccio’s. My preferred McDonald’s is staring jealously from across the street, and she pulls that one out. It speaks of a corruption in your soul to choose Carluccio’s over McDonald’s. On judgement day, Carluccio will have a lot more to answer for than McDonald, whose only crime as far as I can tell is exploitation of poor workers. A far lesser evil than balsamic vinegar at £8.99.

– Oh, you know, bedroom comedian, writer, thinker, philosopher… I lead a rich inner life.

– Seriously, what do you do?

– I work part time at an offlicense. Fuck sake. What do you do?

I might have a massive knob for all she knows. I am getting irritated. There is actually nothing wrong with my knob. It’s fine. Good even; I wouldn’t swap it for the world. I would swap it for the world. I’m not stupid.

– I’m a lawyer.

Yeah, that fits. I maintain that I might have a massive knob for all she knows.None of this bothers me because I’m a feminist. I would happily have sexual relations with a woman who could partially fund my lifestyle. She looks at my steak, visibly regretting her salad.

– I only ordered this fucking thing cos you decided to play it Cosmopolitan.

This is reference to her mulling over the menu in a way that revealed she was going to order in a self concious manner thinking I both noticed or cared. I’d rather be eating three double cheeseburgers, three chickon mayos and three medium fries, but you don’t see me forlornly staring across the street.

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough it becomes increasingly apparent that she is going to put out. It is a general principle if mine that I won’t have sex with any woman who would stoop so low as me. So on top of the contempt I now feel sorry for her. Just as I’m thinking of all the ways I might change her mind, including such wild possibilities as frequently using the word knob. I see her hand bag move slightly to reveal Dawkin’s The God Delusion. That is a step too far. It’s not the atheism that bothers me but the sheer basic level of it. I can just imagine her nodding innanely at phrases like ‘the wonder of the universe’, ‘the beauty of the universe’, or even ‘the wondrous beauty and mystery of this most complex universe’. That final one is too much to think about and I let out an audible “eurgh”. I’ll save you the embarassment of the rest of the evening, especially from the gross Dessert Ordering Fiasco. It is plenty to say that we did make… not so much love or hate as an affront to nature. I’m not going to bother with the comic tropes of impotence and bathos. They aren’t the worst of it. The whole shag was just the biggest lie I ever told. To add to the depravity she actually managed to climax. To further add to it she used the frankly hackeneyed ‘yes’, with about six ss, and more exclamation marks. Finally, to cement this occassion as winner of Most Vulgar Sex Act, she lay back in faux contentedness and said… brace yourself for embarrassment… ‘yummy!’ All this inspite of the depressing nature of instigating it in my Hemel Hempstead bedsit in front of The Terminator looking on from my adolescent poster. I think the anthropologists need to revise their theories because I have uncovered new evidence that Hemel Hempstead was built on a native American burial ground.

Her great tragedy is to have the mind of an fifteen year old trapped in the body of a thirty four year old. Returning to her orgasm (with apologies): she came with excessive vocality as if she was proud of her pastiche of pornography; the parody of love1. Her ability to climax efficiently only revealed to me that she masturbates excessively, mind probably still glowing from some banal fact about a spider. I call this Her Grand Lie.

She did at least have the dignity to sneak out at 5am and block me on e-harmony.com.

– e-anharmony more like.

I say to a friend in an email.

Glasses raised to Sam Harrigan, attorney at law.

Love from,

1 Martin Amis said this sometime.

US enters new era of post election US

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Something very remarkable happened to me last Saturday. I was going about my business like any Saturday. Except it wasn’t Saturday and it wasn’t happening to me but the USA. It was 2008 and they’d just elected their first Hawaiian president. You may have heard of him. A man called… Barack was it? No. Because we are conducting an outrageous thought experiment where America had voted for John McClane. Yippee kay ay mother… no, just mother? You guessed it, it’s election time again, the jolly democratic carnival is back in town, and this time the outcome depends on the voters… again. It. Where Americans everywhere and especially in America go into a little box to place their plops and drips in a pool of water before heading out to vote, but sometimes they get it the wrong way round, something Tony Blair benefited from in 97. It is often said that up to 95% of Labour votes that year were actually accidental toilet-roll/voting-slip mishananigans, but the true figure may be much higher. And John McClane was from Hawaii.

I’ve been spending the last two weeks gauging emotions, and not to mention political temperatures, after mentioning it that one time, in the streets, and roads, and cul-de-sacs, and carparks of the people of this great place of Hemel Hempstead.


Figure 1. Militant? As in you take up arms?

I’ve spoken to the fishmonger who smells so bad that she can’t get a job since November. ‘Who will you be voting for?’ I ask with clothes peg nasality. ‘I don’t have a vote’ she says, as if entirely aware of the gross inequality facing gross fishmongers every second in every way just because of their Britality. I’ve spoken to the schoolteacher who smells so bad she can’t remember the one times table. I’ve spoken to my brother who smells so bad that I realised the smell was coming from me.


Figure 2. A display of my disdain for the actor Daniel Radcliffe. He is seriously pissed off about this.

“One man is a president. The other has a magic hat” – Ricky Gervais, on Letterman. Yeah, but Obama supposedly believes in the virgin birth.

But when it comes down to it, there’s only one poll that matters. There’s only one poll every four years that matters. There’s only one poll every four or two that matters the most, more than the polls which gauge opinion and are not true indicators given the small sample sizes, but there’s only one poll that matters because I know about politics and important things in the world.

But one way or another, we’ll have a new world leader come Wednesday. It is important. It will have a profound influence on you because you don’t understand it like I do. Perhaps that fishmonger will be able to sell her fish for a few extra dollars, but come Romney, or Obama, or a strange hybrid monster of the two, or a total surprise like it was all a dream, politics will be important. Have you ever eaten a meal? Politics. Have you ever seen a tree? Politics. Have you ever fought in a war? Politics affects every aspect of your life except your ear size. Accept your ear size! Listen to what democracy is telling you.

Your man in Hemel,

Life on earth

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And in the ancient earth, where empty ground held vacant sky, magic and sorcery gave this nothing a new vanity. Proto-life was born in an inclement world and the day’s order was suffering. The injured rock took more punishment in quantity unbound when animals looked around. And final indignity came in man making a mirror for chimpanzee to inspect her own arse.

I should like to tell my son about the birds and the bees; how the virgin queen leaves her cell and vows to kill the others until the survivor celebrates by mating with many drones in a “drone congregation area” and uses that mixed seed for the rest of her life until she is too old and must be superceeded; that when a new queen is available, the workers will kill the reigning queen by clustering tightly around her until she dies from overheating. That went down well but the birds with their rape and infidelity, with their murder and most of all the pecking out the sperm of a rival from one’s lover’s vagina left the boy frightened. He asked why no animal had ambition beyond basic personal suicide. Why does no animal set a noose round life? “Technical difficulties” I reassured. And anyway plants aren’t so bad. We watched a Venus fly trap in slow motion on the telivision for pure entertainment value.

All the planets gossip about earth catching life. They giggle at the itchy green patches and vulgar animals; particularly the literate ones. They wonder if earth the slut caught it off an asteroid from out of town like Mars insists. Or whether “it just developed naturally” as earth says, through a sneeze. There is only one cure says Jupiter. But how to throw earth out? How to deny the addict its vice; its Sun?

“It is gossimer thin! This veil of ugliness hides a pure heart of rock and fire. Let me have light. You will not catch it. You are safe.” But they are not secure. They are in great danger. They have let the host free too long.

I hope you enjoy my new and bawdy direction,

A parody of 50 Shades of Grey by replacing Grey with Brown

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Before we begin, may I politely remind you that my Edinburgh Fringe show, Computer Programmer Extraordinaire, opens tomorrow of all days! 16:45, at Globe Bar, Niddry St, 4-25 August (not 14), Free.

Warning: this post contains scenes of a deeply pretentious and pompous nature.

50 Shades of Grey has successfully duped the last major group of people still unaware of free online pornography; middle aged women. I’m going for another, not so major group; materials scientists.

She came in to the room and looked at his dick. “mmmm, nice knob” she… SHOUTED… seductively! It is fair to say that he was hard. As hard as steel. As hard as diamond. Literally harder than diamond. She took a Vickers hardness tester out of her vagina and struck his cock with it. His penis… scratched… the diamond. Yes, it was a fucking 2000 on the Mohs scale. Coincidently the number of years since Christ’s visit to Jerusalem? Me thinks not. Assuming Dawkin’s proto-theory of the penis in human males fulfilling a kind of health display role, like the Peacock’s tale (they do spin a good yarn!), his blood pressure was fucking insane, indicating this guy had certainly been taking his cod liver oil supplements, if you know what I mean1. He was so fucking hard that his sex organ… fucking… popped. “There’s plenty more where that came from” he… SHOUTED… seductively, before sprouting a new one “down there” like a lizard grows a new tail. Yes, it is fair to say that Chris Brown (strange direction?), is, capable of autotomy. His blood dribbled down her face like a money shot gone awry. “Odd” they thought.

1 I mean I find the book offensive in it’s mildness. A kind of stark symbol of the timidity and lack of imagination of modern humans.


Figure 1. Vickers hardness tester.

“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck,” he said. They reached sexual ecstasy in Unison (they were inside the HQ of the public service trade union).

Now.

He produced a contract. A patent. She looked upset, as if there was something distasteful about deriving sexual pleasure from simulating literal and intellectual bondage. A concept that is, of course, completely abhorrent. Oh, did I mention he was a… billionaire. It was Bill Gates pretending to be the violent Chris Brown.

Infinite suffering was inflicted upon the woman. Sensory and cognitive oblivion. Wastes of pain and horror. Sexy pain. Sexy horror. He also, and more importantly, provided financial security, something that is all too rare in the current economic climate.

But she wouldn’t do anal and he wouldn’t do gay.

*         *        *

Claire Sarahly left the stage of the Canal Cafe theatre. Her satire had gone down a storm. As in everyone wished it hadn’t happened. Forty years of her life flashed before her. She looked back at her younger self with scorn and said ‘I was a bit of an idiot for writing that’. She died poor and alone.

Yours with love and devotion and an erection,

PS As a little bonus, if you insist, you can listen to a stand-up set I recorded recently sans audience:

[audio: http://www.raphshirley.com/media/RaphShirley-BBC-NCA.mp3]

or download it for your portable digital media players here

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,

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?

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,

.

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,