The Holy Grail Press
Proudly Made On Earth By Earthlings
Word of the Every So Often​
rapid, unscheduled disassembly: (noun phrase) also abbreviated: RUD. a sillyism for a catastrophic explosion, usually involving something you really did not want to explode, such as an airplane or a rocket. Only Elon Musk could come up with something as contrived as a rapid, unscheduled disassembly to explain what just happed to his rocket ship.
​
The Almost Daily
​
March Forth, because it’s March Fourth, and that means it’s National Grammar Day! Today was created to encourage good grammar. Both spoken and written. Including complete sentences. Grammar, pretty much, is a system for understanding language. But here’s the deal. Whereas there are countable rules for written language – a lot if you really wanted to count them. I mean, really, “countless” only implies that you were too lazy to count all of those rules. And they definitely can be counted. I mean, they’re not infinite. But who wants to? Even old English teachers don’t want to. All that aside, there is only one rule for spoken language, at least for spoken English. And that one rule is that you’re understood. So next time somebody corrects your spoken grammar, you can tell them to Bug Off, and not worry about ending a sentence in a preposition. And while you’re at it, split all the infinitives that you want. And the difference between who and whom... who, or whom, cares? Shall and will? You need a chart to know which to use when. So, yeah. Mrs. Bimbaum will be celebrating National Grammar Day, but that’s about it. So go forth on the fourth and speak good, or well, or good and well.
​
Cartoon of the Week
SOS
STUFF
Maggie
Maggie was a cat.
She was a good cat.
She did what cats are supposed to do well.
She slept, she ate, she laid around,
and she caught mice.
Maggie was good at catching mice.
She ate them, too,
which her people found rather disgusting,
but they were willing to ignore it,
because they really didn’t like the mice.
Maggie’s life was good.
But it wasn’t enough.
So Maggie decided to go to college
and major in philosophy.
Well, sure, most people in her undergrad classes
noticed that she was a cat,
but the further she went
the less anybody seemed to care,
until she got in grad school,
and then nobody noticed at all.
The trouble began
before Maggie finished her Ph.D.
She started to question things, like:
Was the unquestioned Mouse
Really not worth eating”
Was any mouse worth eating?
Was there really any mice at all,
or were they a collective illusion?
Perhaps Maggie herself
was an illusion of a mouse.
And the more Maggie thought,
the more she came to realize
that she could never stop.
The logic followed QED:
If you meow,
and therefore you are,
then if you don’t meow,
then, therefore, you’re not.
But perhaps she wasn’t anyway,
for after all,
how could you ever know anything for sure?
And Maggie became totally useless as a cat.
Of course,
it took the mice a whole three minutes
to realize that not only was Maggie
not going to chase them anymore,
but Maggie wasn’t even going to move,
even after they discovered
that the quickest way to the kitchen
was going over Maggie.
And in marginally less time
than it took the mice to realize
that Maggie was less than useless,
the mice had overrun the entire house.
It was about that time
that Maggie got the boot.
She was replaced by a tomcat
who was so stupid,
that he thought his tail
belonged to somebody else.
He had the mice whipped into shape by nightfall.
Maggie might’ve starved
had she not made her way to the University,
where she came to stay,
spending the rest of her days
in the Philosophy Department.
Well, yeah, she was just as useless there,
but nobody there noticed the difference.
CONTACT US
Comments? Criticism? Insults? Money Orders?
Earl, our editor, wants to hear from you!
(But that doesn't necessarily mean you'll hear from him.)
Send your messages or your bank account information to:
​
​​