The Holy Grail Press: March 2006

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Submit Your Stuff

If you're one of my students (what the hell, if you're not) and you'd like to submit your poetry, short stories, or general comments on life, living, and the cosmic whatever... well... then do it. I'll read just about anything, and I may just post it. My criteria: Whatever I happen to like. Send your stuff to: soetaerm@otc.edu

There is no deadline. There is no subject matter that's taboo. However, keep in mind that I took the political compas test ( www.politicalcompas.com ) and was more liberal than Ghandi.

Monday, March 13, 2006

This Week's Heavy Thought

If the average person is an idiot, who would want common sense?

Monday, March 06, 2006

More Fun With Citations

For those of us who think the MLA is nuts.

Citing email

Berry, Christi. "Las Vegas." Email to Row 3. 6 Mar. 2006.

Citing an Attachment to an email

Thomas, Joel. "joel.Doc" 05 Mar. 2006. Email to Jason Knight. 06 Mar. 2006.

Citing an interview in an online Chatroom

Maryjoe."Business and Financing".06 March 2006. Yahoochat. 06 Mar. 2006. .

Citing an author quoting another author on a website, but you do not know the quoted author’s original work

Hillerman, Tony. Qtd by Linford, Laurane D. “AOTW Author News.” Authors on the Web. 06 Mar. 06. www.authorsontheweb.com.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Citing Electronic Sources

Citing an electronic source is a lot like citing a written source, although for any given electronic source several parts may be missing. Ideally, you would be able to cite all the following:

author's name (last, first)
title of work cited
date it was published (in this format -- i.e., where it's published right now)
title of web site
web address.

Eldridge, Earl. "Works Cited Sucks!" 23 Oct. 2005. Useless Information. 4 Mar. 2006 < www.moreuselesscrap.org >.

Blog sites create some problems in writing. For instance, it is really hard to indent lines. For all works cited entries, the first line is not indented, but all subsequent lines are.

All of the punctuation is critical in a works cited entry. Every comma, every period, every underline, even those little triangles, must be there. And for goodness sake, spell the stuff correctly.

The following is an example of how I would cite Mr. Eldridge in a text.

There are many scholars who claim "...citing Internet sources are about as fun as have a root canal...." (Eldridge)

Notice that there is no punctuation following the parenthesis.

If something is missing from a works cited entry, for instance, if the entry had no author, then you would just move everything over one notch as follows.

"Works Cited Sucks!" 23 Oct. 2005. Useless Information. 4 Mar. 2006. < www.moreuselesscrap.org >.

When citing it in the text of your paper, you would cite it as follows:

In addition, there are those who state "...hell is an eternity of citing sources off the Internet." (Works Cited Sucks)

In short, whatever appears on the top line to the left of each works cited entry is what you cite in text. Notice, though, that I didn't include the quotation marks in the text citation. The object of an in-text citation is to make it as unobrusive as possible (hence, the lack of punctuation). Had the title been especially long (for instance: "A Brief Discourse on the Effects of Teaching Quantum Physics on the Psyche's of Kindergarteners when Introduced Before Nap Time") I could have shortened it (A Brief Discourse). You shouldn't, however, make them too short (for instance, A).

On Internet cites, it is often hard to tell what the title of the web site is, or even to know what the dates are. If in doubt about what the title of the site is, guess. Your guess is as good as mine.

All Internet citations, regardless of how confusing, will have a minimum of three components:

The title of the web site
The date accessed
The web address

If you are uncertain of the web title, it could very well be the web address.

With the web address, sometimes they get downright silly. The address I'm looking at right now is http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=23419226&postID=114149750822561233. That's short for some. If you were citing this address, all you would need would be: .

The one thing for certain with citing the Internet is that it will never be easy. Oh yeah, that and don't forget to capitalize the word Internet. Don't ask me why, only that it's a proper noun. Personally, I wouldn't've made it a proper noun. I've seen some of those web sites, and boy howdy, there's nothing proper about them. And don't use double contractions in formal papers.

That's pretty much it.

Going to California

Larry and Dave
were really bummed out with February.
It was cold and cloudy
and there was that miserable kind of wet
that just seems to be waiting for you everywhere.

So they decided to go to California.

It wasn't like either of the themhad any reason to stay anyway.
After all, Larry was waitin' tables
down at Pizza Inn,
and Dave's unemployment checks were just about to run out.

So they piled all their stuff
in the back of Larry's '76 Dodge,
and late one after they just took off.

"Wow! I can't believe we're goin' to California!"
Larry said as he reached out the window
to bang the ice off the only wiper that worked.

"In California there's all these babes
just walkin' around in string bikinis.
Just waitin' for dudes like us,"
said Dave."

Wow," Larry replied.
And they drove on."

And there's all these places to work at --
right on the beach.
Like surf shops and head shops
and places where you just hang out
and get paid to do it,"
said Dave.

"Righteous!" Larry replied.
And they drove on."

And when you cross the border
they stop every car,
and there's this guy there
whose only job is to say,
'Wow, Dude, welcome to California.
Here's your Frisbee.'
And then he gives you a real Frisbee."

"Coolness," Larry replied.
And they drove on.

They drove on all night long
and never noticed Kansas,
the darkness and their enthusiasm
hiding the fact
that there really is nothing there at all.

In the morning they were in Colorado,
but Colorado looked just like Kansas,
only worse,
because neither of them had really slept,
even though they were supposed to be taking turns driving,
and the tappans started knocking so loudly
that you could still hear them
even with the radio turned all the way up,
not like there was anything worth listening to anyway
way out in the middle of no where,
which is exactly where the car overheated.

"Wow, man," said Larry,
"I didn't think a car could overheat
in the middle of the winter."

And Dave wanted to yell,"
Of course it will, you idiot!"
But he hadn't known that either.
But he was furious just the same,
especially since he lost the coin toss
and had to walk four miles back to the last town they'd seen
just to get some water for the radiator.

And when Dave returned three-and-a-half-hours later
dragging this half-frozen can
full of rusty water
that he'd actually had to pay a deposit on
(the can, not the water),
he found that some farmer
had helped Larry get the car going
over two hours ago.
And Larry had just sat there
eating all of Dave's Twinkies
and drinking the last Dr Pepper
instead of thinking that maybe,
just maybe,
he ought to go back
and give Dave a hand with the water.

This time Dave really did call Larry an idiot.
And he continued to call Larry an idiot
all the way to Denver,
sounding all the more hateful
the more the smoke plumed out of the back of the car,
until Larry mercifully turned the car off
across the street from this discount pizza place,
where Dave went into
and got a job.

"Wow, man, I thought we were goin' to California,"
said Larry."

Screw you," said Dave
as he tied on his apron.

"But what about the babes?
What about the Frisbees?"
asked Larry.

"Get real!" said Dave,
putting his hair net on.

"What about those places on the beach
where they pay you just to hang out?
asked Larry.

"Man, I got a job!"
Dave said with a snarl.
And with that he grabbed his bus tub
and went out into the dining room
to pick garbage up off the tables.

So Larry tightened down the tappans with an old pair of pliers
and poured in this really thick, nasty stuff
that was supposed to work better than oil,
and after he'd given Dave back all his stuff,
Larry headed for California.
Without Dave.

And it did take Larry longer than he'd planned;
his car died just inside of Utah
and he had to thumb the rest of the way,
but he got there just the same.

Larry would've written Dave from California,
but he didn't have his address.
I mean, you can't very well send a letter simply addressed:
"Some Pizza Place
Denver, Colorado"
and really think that it would get there.
Now could you?

But just the same,
Larry kept this Polaroid picture
tacked up on the wall
of this place that he worked at
right down on the beach,
and he really intended to send it to Dave.

It was a picture of Larry
standing down on the beach
with his arm around this really hot babe in a string bikini,
and in his other hand was a Frisbee.

Moobert

Moobert was having a hard time keeping focused.
Moobert was a cow.
Well, he wasn't really a cow,
but he wasn't exactly a bull, either.
That was one of those things that Moobert was supposed to accept.
That was one of those things that Moobert had been assured that he could accept
if he could only stay in focus.
Staying in focus supposedly would have helped Moobert accept all sorts of things,
like standing outside in the cold rain all night long trying to ignore coyotes,
or having silly tags stuck to his ears and his skin seared with red hot pokers,
or being fed all sorts of weird chemicals,
only so some day he could be taken away and chopped to bits.

Lord knows,
Moobert had tried.
He had chanted the sacred mantra for hours on end,
both forwards and backwards,
and he had listened to the words of the Old Wise One,
telling him the futility of even trying to be anything more than what he had been destined to be,
and that was a cow.
But one thought kept coming back to Moobert.
One thought would not go away.
One thought kept Moobert out of focus,
and that one thought was:
"This life is insane!"

And that thought kept at Moobert,
until one day,
right in the middle of a moo,
right when Moobert should have been focusing on his eternal oneness with all
instead of even noticing that the steadily falling sleet had no intentions of ever turning to snow,
Moobert said,
"The hell with this!"
And Moobert walked out the gate and across the grate that hadn't fooled anybody,
and he headed down the road into town.

It was there that Moobert got a job working in a factory
that made implosion devices for nuclear bombs.
Well, yeah, of course they knew he was a cow,
but they didn't care as long as he was willing to work twelve hours a day for minimum wage,
which was hardly enough to pay the rent.
Well, it was enough when he added in his evening job down at Bob's Burger World,
which also gave him enough extra to afford basic cable.
He wasn't home enough to have gotten his money's worth
out of any of the premium channels, anyway.

Day in, day out,
pretty much seven days a week;
that's what Moobert did for the rest of his life,
right up to the day he died.

Sure, Moobert could've retired
if he'd only made it another fifteen years,
and maybe then he could've spent the rest of his life off in some field somewhere,
but cows don't live nearly that long.