August
3 Word of the Day: Rant
Rants
Ranked
10
The Full Bottle This familiar ranter starts in hubris and goes further.
Humility and equal time are not in the vocabulary. Knowledge of the subject is
comprehensive and on full display, regardless of the level of informativeness.
Previous lack of experience or knowhow is no barrier to broad-ranging opinion,
fuelled by the bottle referred to.
9
Rank Outsider A ranter who at all times deluges the reader with sarcasm dressed
up as wit. A different point of view exists, mainly to be treated with scorn by
Rank Outsider. Ignorance is bliss, in fact is a virtue employed to full
advantage as someone’s solid argument is demolished by arrant irrelevancies and
red herrings of whale-like proportions.
8
Loomin’ Troll The appearance of this handle in Comments anytime prompts
collective sharp intakes and rotational eye-rolls. Neither man nor machine but
some unnameable energy from the backseat of the school bus, Loomin’ launches
into a disproportionate rant, its one connection to the ur-text addressed being
it’s in the same language. English is the language in question, though grammar,
spelling, capitalisation and other incidentals take on new dimensions,
especially the lack of full-stops. Non-stops prevail.
7
Rank Odour The vile expletives and vulgar deletives of this unseemly particular
ranter explode the myth that more is less. The myriad ways of the eff word are
here laid bare, a spectacle wearisome with overuse. An Impressionist of sorts,
the sheer number of effs applied to any one page adding up to an image that’s
one big effing eff.
6
Roll Over Moldova Exists, according to the adjacent avatar, in a highwire cottage
on the other side of a placid lake. Rants generally focus on the ineptitude of
all politicians of any country or class or party or ideology or suit. On the
days when ROM can focus. Displays a serious weakness, bordering on obsession,
for Moldova jokes, most of them not funny.
5
Living Proof A life lived online with everyone in a room of one’s own with a
view and a mouse and bottomless coffee, all alone. Never an unpublished
thought. An examined life examined by everyone in other rooms, until the view
bloviates and the mouse flags and thimbles of living proof vodka go into the
bottomless pit.
4
J. Arthur Rank Organisation As the gong soundeth out the start of a brand-new
blockbuster so the days of our lives aboundeth in high-sounding accumulations.
The Organisation, as it likens itself, sets out quotes and counter arguments,
incontestables and dismissals, in serried battalions down the endless page of a
barely disguised rage, quite suggestive. Not for the fainthearted, this is rant
by filing cabinet.
3
Show Me The Evidence The last vestige of the Enlightenment, destroys all in the
way with rants that customarily conclude with that teasing request, shower me
with the evidence, Holmes. The implication is frequently that others in the
conversation are missing that vital ingredient.
2
Anonymouse Armchair, aka The Mouse that Roared A revolutionary in his own lunch
hour, AA is about to take over government within the next 48 hours. The armchair
always wins these contests, however, some devotees of AA referring to it as the
Napoleon Complex, the Sir John Kerr Rocker, the Et Tu Brute Suite and other
percipient epithets.
1
Rank Xerox A cut-and-paste king, Xerox copies slabs of other ranters‘ effusions,
then changes vital nouns, verbs, adjectives, and proper names into
scintillating satires of what surfers have just imbibed above. Some call it
art, even, and the jury is still out on whether Xerox is a zany of the
zeitgeist or a total waste of time. Some of the re-rants are already collector’s
items.
