I have just been commissioned by Surrey County Council to write the 2011 Guildford pantomime. I have decided to write a light hearted look at the twentieth century. There will be one minute for every year.
The characters:
The dame – capitalism
The villain – totalitarianism
The hero – democracy
The love interest – socialism
Plot summary:
The show will consist of ten scenes, one for each decade. For each new decade the dame will get a new dress. The final scene will be a cocktail party on the roof of the twin towers.
News flash – Surrey County Council has just cancelled the contract.
It is a little known fact that over 99.999% of the world’s energy is currently consumed by other people. It is also true that over half of all other people are in an other country. That’s why I’m arguing that we need to expend a lot more effort reducing other countries’ energy demands and less reducing our insignificant own. This must be achieved through a number of schemes and we have to get away from the notion that it can be done purely through total war.
While all against all may be able to account for perhaps 80% reductions in consumption/population, the last 20% could be significantly harder to eradicate. And the remainder will not be solved through serial killers. They make significant contributions to the problem of global warming yes, but they can never take off on a grand scale. The Toyota Prius has often boasted that it is ‘almost as much good as one percent of one percent of one percent of Jack the Ripper’, but the truth is he could have done so much more if it weren’t for the petty legislation handed down to us by Whitehall. It stifles murderers and it harms the environment.
Nuclear holocaust has been a controversial solution and I’d rather not get bogged down in the arguments for and against it here. It is a red herring. Really, what we need is the forced abstinence of other people. That is why I’m asking for an outright ban on opposite sex marriage. Is it not unnatural that up and down the country, people continue to produce further people or what I call ‘carbon multipliers’?
Consider suicide.
Your children’s inheritance will be a cleaner, greener planet if other people’s children aren’t there to ruin it for them. With a little perseverance and a lot of camp we can make this the last human generation and leave a perfect world for all posterity.
Am I too moderate? We must seek to reduce not just the impact of human life but of all life. Our brothers and sisters the deer and the snail, and our fathers and mothers the oak and the pine; all shall be curbed! And then we shall leave a perfect sphere with all its mould and moss forever destroyed.
Exclusive reader offer! Download your free pirate copy of Jessie J’s Absurdist Price Tag pop song here now! Right click. Save as. It’s what she would have wanted.
Was that joke worth 99p considering that it is eight months and two days past its sell by date?
And now to a discussion of the important question of the day: why does Raph Shirley give his writings out for free when he could probably sell it for a shed? ‘It’s not about the money.’ I jus’ wanna make the world happier, more informed, and a better place for all. ‘Why is everybody so serious?’
‘I love life.’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock.
‘I don’t need your money.’ It just seems like all the mainstream bloggers are doin’ it for the wrong reasons. ‘Am I the only one gettin’ tired?’ All I need is a key board and six pack o’ Tesco value to blow your mind. That is how I will achieve the level of blogging attained by Genuine Thriving. And all without even the most basic grasp of good prose style.
‘We get on a treadmill together, two things: You’re gettin’ off first, or I’m gonna die! It’s that simple.’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock.
No, but seriously, why do I blog?
 Sheer plagiarism. Blogging is the ideal sphere for passing off other people’s ideas as your own.
Beauty.  I don’t need to be surrounded by sexy women offering me love 24 hours a day. I am, but I don’t need to be. I just take a look through past blogs, that’s more beauty than any normal man could handle mate. Allow me to introduce, Truth, Beauty, Beauty, Truth.
Truth. I believe in it. End of.
Changin’ the world.A: in August 2011 my blog received 78 hits from 3 countries, and only 44 of them were from my home. B: I rule your dreams.
‘I want the world to be a better place because I was here’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock.
When I sit down to write a blog post, I don’t think ‘right, now lets produce another masterpiece of insight for the grateful masses’. I don’t think. Period. I watch this Will Smith video:
I recommend watching it through.
cu,
‘The universe is not a thing that is gonna push us around’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock, while orbiting the sun.
‘True greatness…’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock, while promoting Hancock.
‘I study the patterns of the universe’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock.
‘There’s a flow to the universe that I’ve learned to… you know… to just go with it’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock.
‘You can’t be scared to die for the truth. The truth is the only thing that’s ever gonna be constant’ – Will Smith, star of Hancock and Wild Wild West.
I’ve written so much brilliant blogs these days exposing the wrongs of the great (err hello, not so great) and good (err hello, bad). But, I’m like, sometimes I need to step back back and say hold on there, you’re a cool guy with an excellent blog and everything but what about your (my) failings (from their (hypothetical man who is better than me) perspective). Seriously, I do have them! No, but in seriousness there are some things I have done on this blog that would shock you to the very core.
As you will know I was head boy at Eton and the next year the headmaster had to come out to the school gates cos I wouldn’t leave and kept watching it with binoculars and still, like, leaving comments on their website and stuff, and I was like, “can I stay forever” and then it got genuinely embarrassing. I was in floods of tears and I was like ‘nooooo’ and the new first year boys were arriving with their parents. It really was embarrassing.
Well, I’m sorry to say that it was me who last week updated the school wikipedia entry to say that King Henry VI was a stupid idiot and that Anthony Little MA is a stupid idiot. And I’m sorry that it was me too. So, soooo sorry. Bear in mind that I’m thirty now! I left twelve years ago!
For this (‘that’?), I am sorry. I did it because I believe that to be a great man one must somehow be involved with something great even if one doth become but a minor nuisance to said great thing.
Hello, welcome to my zine. I believe that sci-fi, or more properly science-fi, can teach us about the human experience of the human condition, and aliens and cool spaceships too. That is why I have created this cool weblog (to share my stories). I wrote this story in 2005 during my emotional period (because all my pets died on the same day because my uncle had a funny five minutes and shot them all). I hope that you can enjoy it and that some good can come of that difficult time. Please enjoy…
The Search for the Left Edge
The key is in the circle of 8s. The key is in your heart. I’ve never spoken with more emotion.
Part I: The real map of the world.
In what sense is the world round? Because some guy sails one way and comes back the other way? Is it not possible that the man from the other way is merely an exact copy of the man going the other other way?
Every time I went ‘around the world’ I noticed slight but fundamental changes in the nature of the place. My mother seemed slightly more irate in every new version. I knew it was not the same but a replica. I continued to search for one half of the two mysteries: what is left and what is right?
Figure 1. Have you ever noticed how the floor is flat yet they still try to pretend the world is round. They lie. This is a more accurate map of the world. The two problems are the poles and the photos from space. All explorers are lie tellers. This map uses the now outmoded and deeply offensive name Birrel Quarrel instead of Birrel Quabble.
I have been searching for the left edge for ten years. I have sailed by banana boat. I have flown by banana plane. I have eaten an orange. At 5am on January 1st 2012 I found it. I found the land of Birrel Quabble and the left edge.
Part II: Birrel Quabble; The Land Outside Reason.
Figure 2. The inside of Birrel Quabble. This imagery is heavily influenced by the Shirley Pet Massacre and the nightmares that preceded and proceeded it.
The return journey was a nightmare.
My thoughts are with you at this sad time. The sadness of realising the truths my stories reveal.
My 2011 Edinburgh show, Philosophical Investigations, is now available on DVD for the incredible price of 10 pounds. I have made DVD cases out of left over flyers and then burnt a PDF of the script on to an Intenso 4.70 Gb DVD-R disc using the Sonic RecordNow! software on my Toshiba Satellite Pro.
I am releasing a limited run of 1000. This is your chance to own a piece of performance art history. I have also thrown in a pirate mp3 of Jessie J’s absurd Price Tag song.
My fans are the most important thing to me. P&P £2.50.
Figure 1. Conventional cameras can not capture the sublime performance of Raph Shirley.
The show of which The Telegraph said nothing at all, the show nominated for under 1 awards, the five star masterpiece (five one star reviews from audience comment website edfringe.com) has finished with a faintly audible plop.
Figure 2. Raph Shirley sensitively discussing the role of Islam in the West.
Highlights
For me the highlight has to be an extremely angry man yelling ‘call me soft of mind again and I’ll knock your fucking head off’. If that’s not the reaction every comedian wants I don’t know what is.
Or perhaps the show performed to three silent octogenarians?
What of the various people who found it ‘deeply offensive’? Including the American lady who kindly inquired ‘Have you been doing this for long?’.
Whatever your favourite moment is, remember:
‘Any logically coherent doctrine will always be painful to current prejudices’ – Bertrand Russell.
Edinburgh 2012 is in the making and promises to be even more confusing to audiences everywhere.
Be ready,
Warning – everything below this point is written in earnest. The lack of irony and cynicism may make you want to vomit. Please proceed with caution.
Thank you very much to Peter Buckley-Hill, everyone involved with organising PBH’s Free Fringe 2011, and the kind staff at Rush Bar who helped me throughout the festival.
After months of art directors and copywriters, secretaries and assistants, marketing executives and what have you (all of whom played by me) the advertisng campaign is finally here. In the end we decided to skip the TV spots and billboards and go with just flyers and word of mouth in the end.
Bobby Crispy has a good forename, a great surname, and a better website. Yeah, it is that good. http://bobsguitarlessons.yolasite.com/ contains videos of his free guitar lessons, as well as other cool stuff like sci-fi stories. This guy really knows how to do an excellent website. I can learn a lot from him.
You might like to watch him play one of the manifold impressively difficult songs on the site. However, my personal favourite thing to do (favourite of all things including non Bobby-related things (I categorize the world into Bobby and non-Bobby related)) is to watch him play scales extremely fast because I enjoy witnessing the application of virtuosity to something utterly futile.
He knows it’s kinda informal but he’s just doing it for fun.
Dad And Dangerous. We are all only too familiar with the problem of problem youths being problematic. Well, DAD X couldn’t take it no more. He has therefore gone well and truly berserk.
In her,
Shapelessness reached an apogee
(A sphere).
Black sheets,
Slipping off of her revealed form
(Sexy!)
Ultimately,
The Wizard of Oz Woz,
Disappointing.
I thought killing Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf was a lot worse than the fig tree. But actually he was also trying to kill him so maybe fair enough. #notExpertInIslamicCulture
Hardcore gamers like myself have long debated that great quandary; is there such a thing as the perfect gaming mouse? Well, I’m sorry to say to the doubters (not mentioning any names SexyPete99) this IS it:
Figure 1. The CYBORG R.A.T. 9 Gaming Mouse, £84.99. Taken from benchmarkreviews.com.
Whether committing acts of violent murder in It’s Genuinely A Crime: Las Vegas or worser [sic] travesties such as spell checking “Lady Gargar” (not mentioning any names SexyPete99) this mouse gives you all the support you need.
Oh yes,
An excerpt from World of Warcraft online voice chat system:
Me: ‘Why did you buy industrial whisky…you idiot’
SexyPete99: ‘pardon’
beat
Me: ‘I said why did you buy industrial whisky…you idiot’
Life is tough when you’re a white, male, heterosexual, old Etonian like me. My constant struggle against prejudice has, however, yielded philosophical insight. What follows is a translation (from Eton slang) of my [cod] philosophical investigations. Please do not be so intimidated as to think you might not understand this profound exposition of the truth. Remember, I am but a mere great intellectual.
Raph Shirley, Vienna, 2011
1 This statement exists.
1.1 I just done a fart.
1.1.1 It stinks.
1.2 Can we say that the statement and the fart are connected? Is there a connexion?
2 I am embarrassed by the word fart.
2.1 I am embarrassed by the fart.
2.1.1 Remember that it stinks.
2.2 It stinks less now.
2.3 Has the statement dissipated with time in the same way? Does it still exist?
3 Yes.
3.1 What was it again?
3.2 In picturing the fart in a dance with the statement, may we come to dance too, with fart?
4 (Poo poos and bums and wee wees. Willys etc.)
5 One remembers great literature and asks: Is Raph Shirley so great a mind that his bodily functions might be comparable to, say, War and Peace?
5.0.1 Yes?
5.0.2 Yes.
6 I am forced to remember a dream I had when I was ten, in which I asked ‘does God exist, my massive mind?’.
6.1 At 6am I arose, and said ‘My understanding of the situation is so far in excess of the current discourse between the morons Dawkins, Hitchens, Pope, Williams etc, that to engage them in debate would be to whore myself to them; to lower my self from on high to meet with these silly demons; to masturbate.’.
7 The TV section of a newspaper.
7.1 An admission of inferiority.
7.2 Like a husband permitting his wife’s infidelity; buying her the prophylactics.
7.3 Yet our choice of paper is determined largely by their TV section layout and aesthetic preferences.
7.3.1 Jesus shat!
Yours, ever humble and meek, yet wise and everlasting,
