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Roger -- This is mildly amusing, but I'm afraid I don't get some of
the intended joke.  What r word?

See you at the meeting Monday. Am gathering lists of books and
copying articles on ESL.

Margaret

>
> Rachel Nash and Larry Sianchuk, two graduate students at Waterloo, wrote
> the following story and before reading it in class announced that it had
> a moral. I asked them for their permission to publish it here.  So what's
> the moral to the story.
>
>                          TV Guide
>
>                        The WRiting ER
>
> In this week's episode:  A demure sophmore is rushed in, her poli-sci essay
> haemorrhaging with run-on sentences.  Meanwhile, WritingER staff are
> already against the wall--literally--trying to cope with a raging freshman
> suffering with a severe case of protracted writer's block (he's been in a
> chemically-induced psychosis since frosh week).  Eventually, a couple of
> football players, cramming for their English Language Proficiency Exam,
> step in and subdue the lad.  In the midst of the melee, perennial PhD
> candidate Shirk Grantless, who's been serving as the assistant director
> of ER for the last five years, experiences a spiritual crisis when he
> finally confronts his own addiction to figures of speech: cliches and
> similes being his tropes of choice.  He adds to the commotion by wailing
> like there was no tommorrow over the pain of his cross-addiction,
> screaming that no wonder he can't even write a successful funding
> proposal--the ER is (and has for too many years been) desperately in need
> of computer upgrades and an expressivist-writer's heart-on-sleeve
> defribrillator; and no wonder, Shirk continues to ruminate, that he can't
> even muster the discourse to ask the Chief Writing Surgeon (elegant
> 30-something Justin Case) out for a date.  But, in the end, everything
> works out when a former patient, the now rich 'n famous documentation
> guru Perc O'Tooles, endows the ER with an ultra-generous donation of both
> cash and volunteer writing consultants from the REAL WORLD.
>
>
> The hint that Rachel and Larry provided us with was:
>
> Never use the R word.
>