RALPH Magazine --- Help Wanted

It will consist of the most artful --- if not the most testy --- reviews, essays, poems, articles and letters that have appeared in our "Folio" or on-line at www.ralphmag.com. A literary agent has offered to present the manuscript to various publishing houses around the country.

Trouble is in the selection of what to include. Those of us who work at the magazine are too close to it to be able to figure out what is Best and what is Not-So-Best in the magazine. Some of the reviews that have gone up have been written under deadline, so they sport some degree of incoherence, as you may have noticed. In others, some of our writers have some terrible need, possibly born of senility, to continually beat the same horse. These, too, would not be included ... and the horses might be sent out to permanent pasture.

We need someone with a good critical sense, a love of words, and an affection for the magazine to go through the last 110 issues, pick out what he or she thinks are the very best articles, poems, reviews, and whatnot, and arrange these in suitable order for presentation to the world.

*Our editors at play*

It is, as you can guess, not a permanent job, and the pay would probably not be so hot. But the successful candidate would work closely with RALPH's multifarous if not multitudinous ediors and writers and participate in what might end up as a wonderful volume of criticism, poetry, letters, writings, and general tomfoolery.

If you are interested, please contact us at the post office box or the e-mail address given below.

A note to those who plan to apply by means of e-mail.

Because of the appalling flood of garbage that has taken over the once pleasant world of e-mail --- offering us sex lotions, low-interest loans, larger privates, peeks at celebrities in unusual positions, and (most noteworthy), appropriate software to get rid of spam --- be sure to put something like "RALPH JOB" in the subject line.

If you must include a CV, please do not send it as an attachment We're scared to death of them: we've been told that once we open a mean one, our computer will turn into plasma-juice and ten years of our magazine will dissolve and go down the drain. For this reason, please send any and all information about your past, present, future, dreams, hopes, and foibles as part of the main text.