OUR MOST BELOVED PIX
In the years we've been online,
we've uploaded over 5,000 pictures,
photographs, drawings, and etchings.
Here are a dozen that are called up
most often by our readers ...
along with supporting prose,
poetry or other feuilletons.

NEW TITLES
Urgent Architecture
"Without modification, a 40-foot shipping container
can carry upward of 60,000 pounds and
resist being overturned in 140 mph winds.
A 40 x 8 foot container
makes an immediately available home of
about 304 square feet."

Things I Don't Want to Know
On Writing
"What do we do with knowledge
that we cannot bear to lie with?
What do we do with the things
we do not want to know?"

The Art of Dying
"Life is, essentially, a Royal Pain in the Ass
because of the mad-making routine
that drives most of us:
trying to get those things we crave and
trying to shove away
things that give us misery.
It's a never-ending merry-go-round,
although it ain't very merry."

100 Poems --- Rudyard Kipling
"Take up the White Man's burden ---
Send forth the best ye breed ---
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild ---
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child."

Trapped
"So if you ever pick me up off the ground,
please try to understand that any crossness
that escapes from my well-controlled exterior,
any apparent bad nature you may glimpse,
has nothing whatsoever to do with you and
everything to do with how
I have to get by in life."

Kumasi Realism
"Picton apologized, and asked who
he should go to for permission to take pictures.
He replied, 'Me!' He agreed that I could continue,
but please would I buy him a bottle of beer.
This was done, and when I had finished
taking my pictures, I went into the bar and asked,
'Please may I know your name.'
He replied 'Elvis Presley.'"

Outside
"I have to confess that I get a little uneasy
when writers start writing about writing.
I think of the greats of American short stories
and I can't recall any of them telling us
anything about what they were writing
or what they were hoping to write when
they wrote what they wrote."

Great Reviews of the Past
Shakespeare I
"Pity the poor university English Major.
He gets to immerse himself in the works of
such drones as Milton, Dryden, and Alexander Pope.
A weekend read might be the whole of Clarissa,
Wuthering Heights, or Bleak House."

Shakespeare II
                    "My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax; no levell'd malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold
But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind."

LETTERS
From Mr. Warren Buffett

MORE LETTERS
Science Fiction Writers

ARTICLE
A Thousand-and-One Nights of the Ukraine
"Canada is doing its own
'slow motion invasion' of Ukraine.
It has sent six fighter aircraft and
a large contingent of support personnel to Romania,
a warship to the eastern Mediterranean and
soldiers to Poland."

READINGS
The Snowman of Johannesburg
"It's snowing in apartheid South Africa.
It's snowing on a zebra and it's snowing on a snake.
It's snowing on my father's spectacles."

My Life with Cerebral Palsy
"I pitched forward, dropping the bags
I was carrying and clonking my head on a trash can.
My specs fell off and I broke a glass jar of
large green olives, which wept brine over the pavement.
I thought, "At least it is not the eggs"
before I wept loudly and got to my feet,
slowly rescuing bananas and jettisoning shards of glass
as people walked past,
unsure how to help."

POETRY
Iowa & Other Accidents
"The car you will always describe as oncoming
must have slipped into a skid
and now, rising up over the bank,
it startles you --- that reflection. In Moline
the maid corners the bed, straightens the clean
line of sheet. Almost Christmas. On the road,
swirls of snow. On the road."

Great Poems of the Past
My Vision
"I am still taking my pills,
The ones that will make me more seductive.
Boris will be here for dinner:
He will expect me to lie down after the pie.
He may commit fellatio, then again
He may fall asleep or,
As he is so fond of doing,
Blow bubbles into a bottle of
Blanc des Millénaires,
Making bubbles with his
Pretty prim little mouth."

OUR NEW BOOK
(Still Hot Off the Press)
The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World
was published last year.
It contains 200 or so of what we believe
to be the best articles, readings, reviews and poems
from this magazine --- from our very first years to now.
Here you will find all necessary information
on ordering this two-volume set,
which one critic called "magic."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
All the back-issues of RALPH,
including titles of books under review,
along with author, subject, and publisher,
plus links to readings, articles, and poems
that have appeared on-line
since 1994.

A PITHY SAMPLE
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"

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