From the Editor’s Perch

I Love a Rant!

Reasoned discourse is fine if you are trying to learn something; to absorb some information.  But for full disclosure, I prefer the rant.  The rant is an emotional outpouring lightly sprinkled with the facts all helter skelter like on a chocolate donut.  A rant is a somewhat intelligible discourse with an address.  A rant lets you know where that person is coming from.  A rant surfs the emotions, often using colloquialisms and argot.  A rant can be a description with a personal stamp to it.  Take this one by one of my favorites, Celine:

“As for sick people, patients, I had no illusions . . .  In another neighborhood they’d be no less grasping or jugheaded or weak-kneed than the ones here.  The same wine, the same movies, the same sports talk, the same enthusiastic submission to the natural needs of the gullet and the ass would produce the same crude, filthy horde, staggering from lie to lie, bragging, scheming, vicious . . .  brutal between two fits of panic.”

Notice how this master of the rant does not raise his voice or descend to foul language, neither does he spit or wave his arms.  No!  He evokes his emotions and his argument through a calm display of observation.  Each of the little sprinkles on his donut smells like a turd.

A reasoned essay will give you lots of reasons something is believed; but the rant will disclose the reason.  It’s said that a good discussion will cover both sides of an issue.  Well, a rant will disclose the underside.  Perhaps that’s why I love the rant.  It’s all about subtext not being happy where it is, and demanding more.  A rant is you, wanting to put your face to things.  A rant is the slave unbound!  A rant is the language of the underdog.  A rant is the flesh talking!  And the flesh is weak.  And the fact that we are all weak is probably the truest thing ever said.  Which isn’t to say that every rant need be emotionally ugly…

 “When you’re not used to the comforts and luxuries of the table, they go to your head in no time.  Truth is always glad to leave you.  With next to no encouragement it will set you free.  And we manage very nicely without it.  Amid this sudden plethora of comforts a fine megalomaniacal delirium finds no difficulty in overwhelming you.  I started telling tall ones in my turn, intermittently discussing hives with the young cousin.  You extricate yourself from your daily humiliations by trying, like Robinson, to put yourself on a level with the rich by means of lies, the currency of the poor.  We’re all ashamed of our ungainly flesh, our inadequate carcasses.  I couldn’t make up my mind to show them my truth; it was as unworthy of them as my rear end.  I had to make a good impression at all costs.”  – Celine

A rant can reveal a vulnerability (as above) – or even a lukewarm tribute:

“When we walked through the busy streets together, people turned around to pity the blind man.  People have plenty of pity in them for the infirm and the blind, they really have love in reserve.  I’d often sensed that love they have in reserve.  There’s an enormous lot of it, and no one can say different.  But it’s a shame that people should go on being so crummy with so much love in reserve.  It just doesn’t come out, that’s all.  It’s caught inside and there it stays, it doesn’t do them a bit of good.  They die of love-inside.” – Celine

A good rant can describe just about anything a human can (and will) do.

Photo by Carl Nelson of a Scene from Saving Harry, (Nick Cameron yelling, and Daniel Wood suffering).

From the Editor’s Perch

Editor’s Note:  My last posts really left my numbers flagging.  So to kill off my readership altogether, I thought I’d share some new thoughts:

I’ve Been Wrong Before.  I’ll Probably Be Wrong Again.  And I May Be Wrong Now, But…

I’ve recently been called a Troglodyte (not personally, just my relations) because of my views on ‘Climate Change’.  It used to be because of my views on ‘Global Warming’.  But that moniker has changed, since there hasn’t been any for the past ten years.  Now we’re supposed to be very frightened because the weather is changing.  

               “Doesn’t the weather always change?”

               “No.  This is Climate Change.”

              “Well, why are we experiencing ‘Climate Change’?

              “Because of ‘Global Warming’!”

(Return to beginning of article…)

We’re supposed to be getting even more frightened as the days pass, because Climate Change is supposed to be occurring along an exponential curve.  This is what all of the august scientific bodies tell us. 

               “Are you sure it’s all.”

               “Yes.  All credible sources.”

               “And these are the same sources who warned us about Global Warming?”

(Return to beginning of article…)

             “But aren’t these the same sources which warned us some 30 years ago that we may very well be entering a phase of Global Cooling,  and might have to consider spreading coal dust on the ice caps to absorb more of the sun’s energy.”

             “We’ve learned a lot since then.”

(Return to beginning of article…)

It used to be that CO2 was just something plants used to grow, and animals produced when they breathed.  Now, however, it has been declared a ‘pollutant’ by the EPA, and needs regulating. 

(Start holding your breath here.  And we will try to make it to the end of this piece before you are forced to break a future federal regulation.  Think of it as being like pushing in a DVD and seeing that FBI anti-piracy warning that flashes on.  No biggie.  You can DO this.)

Apparently CO2 is one of the determining causes of ‘Global Warming’.  Which, though it does not currently exist, is the cause of Global Climate Change.   Which DOES exist.  You got it?   (Or are you just STUPID?)   …because of Global Warming. 

(Return to beginning of article…)

CO2 does this through a process called the Greenhouse Effect, wherein excess CO2 causes more of the sun’s energy to be trapped in our atmosphere.  This extra energy in turn produces more violent storms…. but apparently not Global Warming.  At least in the last 10 years.   Even though it apparently did so before this.

All credible Scientific sources apparently agree on this, even though the evidence apparently does not.

For example, fossil evidence and geological measurements indicate that in the past, levels of CO2 twenty times the current level did not accompany the extremes in temperature currently predicted.

In this case scientific sources apparently disagree on this, though the evidence agrees.

Alright.  We’re done. You may duck around a corner, out of sight.  Small breaths, now.  And don’t be greedy!

Photo by Carl Nelson