Author Archives: Raph Shirley

About Raph Shirley

I have been creating strange material for the internet for over twenty years. A kind of failed artist yet I refuse to stop.

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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The Wolf of Wall Street – A Review

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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

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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!

Larry the lobster

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A story for children and the young at heart.*

I’m Larry, and I’m just like any other lobster. I totally swoon if the water temperature is jus’ right baby! Oh yeah, I’m as much a blue blooded lobster as the next lobster. Every time I see another lobster I imagine a whole swathe of obscene sexual occurrences. I mean, I consider myself rational, but the sight of hot young lobsters turns me from the sensible bank manager I am into a real brute. I introduce myself this way, because I know what you’ll think when I tell you what I’m going to tell you in the next sentence, and I want you to know that I am not an incrustacean pervert. I recently went in a human ornamental string box.

The practice of lobsters putting themselves in the hairless mammal’s handicrafts (which, my friend, Barry, tells me, are part of some adorable sexual display) has been going on for some time. Indeed, it has become the white elephant fish in the cave. The fact is, we all have fantasies about these, and the supposed sensations when you get in one of their strange hot water baths. I made the decision to have a go so went down to the shady part of town in Criehaven, Maine. Some dodgy lobster told me somewhere he’d seen a few handicrafts in return for a few bits of old crab. As I saw the handicraft, already loaded with other sex fiends who had probably found out about it online, I started to feel like I did when I saw Jennifer Worthington molt. My heart was racing as I went through their little conical one way entrances (My mate Dave told me that this is cos they think we think it is rude to leave via them, and that our presence renders their treasures more attractive to aficionados).

My proximity to the other blokes (surprise, surprise, they’re all blokes – If I get my claws on the dodgy guy that recommended this string box!), was extremely irritating. What was especially aggravating was that most of them were offensive laddish types. The exception being a shy, strange looking fellow called Ted. One of the bigger lads was pushing Ted around a bit and I said ‘leave off mate’. Big mistake. I barely survived. In this instance I would happily, have had a two way door. After a severe beating, I passed out. Thanks for helping me out Ted.

When I awoke I was in a fish tank. It was bizarre, being next to all these total cunts was really starting to piss me off. I lashed out a few times. In reality, everyone was getting angry. I shut my eyes and tried to stay calm, and have a little empathy for the other poor buggers. Through the glass I could see a hot bath and realised that a human was coming to get us. He picked three of us out and took us to the hot bath. He put the other two in and left me out because there wasn’t room. I saw everything I expected. The scream of gas escaping from under the skin. The crazed sexual writhing induced by the heat. In the moments of final sexual bliss, seconds before they expired in a moment of pure pleasure, I suddenly started to question the sensibility of this whole endeavour. I imagined what they would have thought, when they inspected their end at close hand. For the first time in my life, I made a decision.

I slipped the rubber bondage bands from my claws, and went at this cheffy mammal. I took his right upper eye lid in two. I hit the floor and ran right out the restaurant. Outside, I jumped on a bus and made for anywhere. I got off in the countryside. I scuttled into a bush of stinging nettles and began to assess the situation. Perhaps you expected it, I didn’t, but perhaps you did. This is to be a story of brutal vengeance.

I found the chef’s house. I found his bathroom. I set the boiler temperature to 95 degrees. I waited.

He got in from work, tired, and came into the bathroom, where I hid in a cupboard. He took his clothes off and showed me his hideous pallid meat. He took a glass of red wine and put it on the side of the bath. He set both taps running. I waited some more. He got in to the bath and started to wash himself. He masturbated and his vile ejaculate floated around on the surface of the water. As he took a sip of red wine, his eyes fell shut. The scar on the right eye had turned into a purple line that made his eye look like a leafless pine tree on the horizon after a volcano has ejaculated.

This was the right moment. I started to rock back and forth on the top shelf of the cupboard. Eventually, I had enough momentum and the cupbard fell across the bath. It was a large mahogany number and the weight held him there. He could breath cos his head was just missed by the edge of the wooden tombstone. I immediately jumped out and threw his iPhone in the bath rendering it as useless as a door on a human ornamental string box. I then turned the hot tap on. I struggled with the slippery tap but I got there. As he tried to turn the cold tap on or the hot off I snipped his toes. He died a gruesome death after what was an horrific ordeal. I torched the restaurant.

I went to the sea and swam off. I still think about that time in my life. I regret it because humans are objectively more intelligent and capable of a greater degree of suffering. Truth is, I’m not a typical lobster. I’m just not like the other lobsters.

This article owes a great deal to Michel Comeau and Fernand Savoie’s seminal Journal of Crustacean Biology article, Maturity and Reproductive Cycle of the Female American Lobster, Homarus Americanus, in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.

Savour life,

* Not suitable for children.

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

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– 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.