Wall Street Hi-Jinx
Or: We Told You So
Over the past fifteen years,
we've published readings,
articles and reviews on
investing in general and
Wall Street in particular.
Here are twelve that were
(and in some cases still are)
right on the mark.

NEW TITLES
Music in the Middle Ages
"One of the favorite tunes
of the day was
the simple 'Lullabye,'
Lullay, lullow, lully, lullay,
Bewy, bewy, lully, lully,
Bewy, lully, lullow, lully,
Lollay, baw, baw, my barne,
Slepe softly now."

Unpacking the Boxes
"Hall didn't help his case
by telling the officer that
'he arrested me for
the crime of DWO,
driving while old,
derived from the
well known
crime of DWB,
driving while black.'"

Out Stealing Horses
"Age and years are
meticulously bound and burnished
and recounted, as meticulous as
the points of light that are
caught by the best
of writers."

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
"She goes out
and stuffs herself.
Pig ears.
Squid barbecue.
Duck blood soup.
Chive dumplings.
And, uhm,
pig trotters."

I Want to Take You Higher
"I don't know nobody,
and nobody knows me, and
they don't know what
they are talking about.
I'm only craving fewer
pieces of paper,
fewer words in my letters
and fewer letters in my words,
in order to say what
I gotta say."

Human Rights in African Prisons
"If you plan to go on a rampage,
don't do it in Belarus,
Bermuda, or Russia.
After the USA, they have
the highest confinement rate in the world ---
532 per 100,000 national population.
The accepted places for
you to go ballistic are
Switzerland, Northern Ireland,
and Bulgaria."

Fruitless Fall
"It just ain't out on the farm
that we're running into this stuff:
if you put Advantage on your pet,
if you put Merit on your lawn or golf course
'you are using imidacloprid,
which will kill soil bugs without killing
cats, dogs, toddlers, or duffers.'
Maybe."

Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds
"More recently it became
'coyote' (3/4 Indian, 1/4 Spanish),
'pelados' (low-lifes),
'pochos' (watered-down Mexicans),
'zambos' (anyone with a walking problem),
as well as the more recent
Hispanics, Latinos,
and Chicanos."

Wallace Stegner's West
"One of the ladies is 'hopped.' 'Hopped?...'
'She goes to a joint down there,'
Mrs. Vaughn said.
'Fortune telling in the front,
goofballs and reefers in the rear.
She's a sucker for all three...
Marijuana. Anything. She doesn't care.'"

Casualty Figures
"Every time
I took part in an
action from then on
till the war ended,
I did the same,
so that we never once
hit an inhabited target."

Great Reviews of the Past
The Eden Express
"We dressed in
funny clothes and had
funny hairdos to distance ourselves
from that other world out there
peopled by soldiers, politicians,
policemen and angry workers
marching down Broadway
in their hard hats, singing
God Bless America."

LETTERS
Spam-Letters

MORE LETTERS
Virtual If Not Viral
Advertising on RALPH

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Robert Daley's
The Enemy of God

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Rototillers
Reymundo Sanchez

ARTICLES
Out on Our Assets
"Merrill Lynch set up
a system in which account-holders
could come down and
visit their money.
There would be regular
visiting hours, just
like a hospital, and the visitor
could bring flowers to
make their assets
feel better."

READINGS
Jean-Paul & Simone
"but he knows
he knows me not,
and I know he knows
he knows me not,
and so I am even
more alone in this bed
in this room
in this shuddering trembling body
of mine and
I am free"

The Louisiana Purchase
"The Louisiana Purchase
was like the perfect storm
in which European clouds,
Caribbean winds, and
North America's
prevailing westerlies
converged in one place
at one time."

POETRY
The Guardians of the Water
"In the semi-darkness he could hardly make them out,
the three of them
crouched by the white-edged hole,
muttering something about drought,
the old Arab water course that used to run below the house."

Two from Wales
Dictation
"how I weep inside the porcelain confessionals
admitting my desire to wound, and grievously,
the hairsprayed middle manager;
how I hope to find my guardian angel
crouched inside the stationery cupboard
counting paperclips, ready to unfold
her giant wings and fly me
past the awkward fellowship of office drinks..."

Taxi Drivers
"stubble-headed, right arm browner than the left,
legs whitely shocking in their shorts,
their talk, impossible to tell when distance
seals their opinions off like glass."

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"

SUBSCRIBE
Help perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
With your $25 subscription, you get
a free copy of one or more of the titles from
Mho & Mho Works