The Raven

Thursday, January 16, 2003

Meta-Rant

I love a good piece of criticism (at least, when it isn't directed at me). And while it might seem rather unsporting, the more unbalanced the contest between reviewer and subject, the more I like it. At some point early on, when I see the critic rolling up his or her sleeves to unleash a torrent of abuse, and it becomes apparent that this won't be a common tongue-lashing but an epic holocaust of raging invective, then I feel my heart quicken and I lean forward with the same rapt expectation-tinged-with-embarrassment that one feels when watching an overwrought parent laying into a child in the toy section at WalMart. It's going to get ugly. It's going to be bloody. But above all, it's going to be first-rate entertainment.

Man in Road Rage Incident Goes 'Berserk'

You see something like that, well, it's human nature to take notice because we're all straitjacketed by life's network of petty rules and social strictures. On the one hand, you're awed by the spectacle of a man who cracks clean in half under the pressure of it all to erupt into a shocking tantrum of bad behavior. At the same time, we feel both pity for the object of this vehemence and no small measure of vicarious fear. The sublime act of outraged artistic criticism can thus become the literary equivalent of the shower-stall scene in Hitchcock's Psycho.

So it was with considerable enthusiasm that I embarked upon my own investigations of the Weblogging phenomenon because a surprising number of these blogs are titled or described with the word "rant" in some form or another. Looking about, I found my textual decks awash in an ocean of of Ranting Emporiums, Mad Ranters, and things with names like No Reason, Just Rants, whose authors gaily promised that "Herein I rant upon all matters great and small." Finally, I thought, I've found fellow souls who also burn with incandescent heat at illiteracies like "Ten Items or Less," to whom a backward-turned ballcap is tantamount to poking a stick at a rabid bobcat.

My anticipation turned into horror when I discovered, as you well know, that nearly all of these pages are nothing more than false-fronted promises, hollowed shells concealing a hodge-podge of "heart-warming" musings on whatever catches the writers' passing interest—penned not in the heat of fury but rather in the lazy late-night doldrums of a bored and drunken dilettante.

The point of the matter is merely this: That if something is going to be labeled "Rantspace" then it had deucedly better well contain something more than ill-thought ramblings of a mild nature. We expect to find therein an explosion of maddened genius, words backed by fire, and all the evidence in print we need to surmise that the author's fingers left the keyboard stained crimson.

A true rant smashes and stomps its way through propriety while trumpeting in a semi-coherent rampage that sends the nearest villagers running for their lives lest they be gored on the tusks of a timpanic frenzy.

A single exemplar should suffice. How about this writer who bemoans the new bread-slicing technique used at Subway sandwich shops? "Bring back the classic cut!" he exhorts us after viewing the carnage wrought on his lunchtime treat.

I'm in shock. There's just no way I'm going to get all the toppings I want on this sandwich. I'm in such a state of disbelief that I pay, slackjawed, and leave with an $8 mutation under my arm.

In summary, if you call it a rant, then for the love of the countless people who've died for your freedom, rant from the soul.

6:39:25 PM

Take a Hike

That's what we did this morning as we foraged through the wilderness of a world gone oddly awry. Of course, you can't just toss on a sweater and venture into the wilds—you have to prepare for the excursion by bringing the essentials and knowing what to look for. Here's a short list:

A Game Plan

Perfect planning guarantees you'll enjoy your time outdoors. Be sure you know where you're going, what you're going to do, and prepare for contingencies just in case the unexpected occurs. Some people fail to heed this advice and get in all kinds of trouble. People like Edward Blaine of Spotsylvania County, Va., who set out to rob a Port Royal bank this week and ran into complications as he tried to make off with the loot.

He left $100 bills in his wake and, when he reached his rented getaway car, he found the keys had been locked inside.

So he started banging on the window of the vehicle with "a large piece of wood," drawing the attention of some auto mechanics who chased him down the street. Blaine fumbled an attempt to draw his weapon and shot himself in the leg. In the ensuing scuffle, one of his pursuers shot Blaine in the leg again. He's been charged with 8 felonies, which is serious since he's already served one 20-year stretch in the pen for—yep—bank robbery.

Matches

Sometimes the difference between life and death can come down to your ability to make a fire. For example, yesterday in the town of Cayambe in Equador, suspected child rapist Marcelo Quinonez was being held in the local jail. His day started going bad when a mob of "about 1,000 residents" showed up to express their displeasure with him.

The mob beat and kicked Quinonez, then doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. Police rescued Quinonez, but when they took him to a hospital the crowd followed. They dragged him out and torched him a second time.

As you can see, in the event you have damp kindling, some type of flammable accelerant will prove invaluable.

Shrubbery

Should you need to answer the call of nature, you'll want to make a mad Daschle for some kind of Bush. Speaking of which, looks like we called it spot-on in our remarks about how delicate the issue of race-conscious university admissions policies is for the administration. Thus far, the IHT seems to have the most balanced coverage, the UK Independent has the most critical, and U.S. reporters are mildly slanting their copy one way or the other.

Sensing an opportunity, Democratic critics are looking to gain some traction, lambasting the President's stand as an attack on minorities, but the logic of institutionalized discrimination doesn't sit well with most Americans. Consider the poll at Fox News this morning that asks readers to weigh in with their opinion. The results are unquivocal:

Equal Opportunity?
Should race be a factor in college admissions?
a. Yes, the goal is diversity. (4%)
b. No, it's unfair. (95%)
c. Not sure (1%)

For more, here's the perspective of an angry student.

Hardware

The essence of woodcraft is having the right tools for the job. But remember that whatever you bring into the wilderness should also be carried out. That goes for surgeons, too. By now you've read that surgical teams are leaving "clamps, sponges and other tools inside about 1,500 patients nationwide each year."

Most lost objects were sponges, but also included were metal clamps and electrodes. In two cases, 11-inch retractors—metal strips used to hold back tissue—were forgotten inside patients.

Maybe they need something like a workshop peg-board that has the outlines of each tool's shape drawn around the space where it's supposed to be stored. The article says that in some cases more surgery is needed to remove the left-behind object, but that "sometimes it came out by itself or in a doctor's office." Came out by itself?

Sporting Goods

People love to play games when they're out and about. You might consider stuffing a Frisbee in your backpack. Or maybe a boomerang. How about a baseball bat?

These lawyers love the game so much they bring their equipment wherever they go. Actually it's a TV ad for the law firm Hard, Wolf & Downing, which ran this spot in Maine and got a lot of people talking. Maine's legal community is looking to draft a set of guidelines for their industry at a public hearing next Tuesday. I'd say the ad firm did a great job of getting people's attention, but maybe the wrong kind. Here's personal injury lawyer Joe Bornstein:

"I think there were some people in the community that thought that evoked thoughts of violence," said Bornstein. "I think there was a lot of negative reaction to that baseball bat."

Me? I'd want a lawyer with a name like "Wolf" who carries a Louisville Slugger into court, especially if your lawyer is a portly schmuck named "Casper."

Walking Stick

A multi-purpose tool, the walking stick serves to steady your progress on treacherous trails (and also makes a good back-up weapon for your lawyer, should he lose his bat).

And here's the famous Diapheromera femorata, which you might encounter during your ventures. I love strange insect stories, and here's one from the Washington Post about Walking Sticks and their bizarre evolutionary path. Turns out that this little critter—I've seen one in the wild, they're amazing creatures—has re-written a chapter of our understanding of genetic mutations. In this case, some biologists studying these things found that walking sticks reveal the first case of "re-evolution" ever found, contradicting what scientists have termed nature's "use-it-or-lose-it" rule.

The team is challenging that assumption based on its analysis of DNA from 37 species of the insect order Phasmatodea—commonly known as "walking sticks"—which showed that they evolved from winged to wingless and back again. In fact, walking sticks made the shift four times.

Which goes to show that the walking stick is a fickle insect that you wouldn't want to take shopping. Anyway, it now appears that a complicated biological feature can be regained after a species loses it. Pennsylvania State University biologist James Marden says, "That's cool, and not just cool for insects. That's cool across the board."

11:46:14 AM