I Wanna Rant and Rave, Too!

I was reading, as I tend to do. Just bopping around to other websites, other blogs, other emails, ad nausea. It was quite lovely. I was reading http://pussyranch.blogspot.com/ and thoroughly enjoyed the rant on reality TV eugenics. It got me thinking about an article in the MediaFile from San Francisco's Media Alliance. In it, the writer broke down news anchors and how they fit their roles. My friend Rebecca has a series of emails she has sent me (maybe soon to be posted, pending permission) titled "Rant #[Fill In The Blank]" that would expound about the many absurdities and inconveniences of her day-to-day life. Other people I know are able to hold vociferous conversations regarding idiocy.

And then there's me.

There are plenty of things that up my dander, irk me, rile my ire, and whatnot. Just writing the paragraph above goaded my guff. My heart is beating slightly more rapdily than it was two minutes ago. And yet, whenever I go into a rant about something, I sound like a pouty five year old pushing angst through tears and last all of two to three minutes. I generally blow my contrary wad too soon. In ranting, I'm a lousy lay.

So now what? Do I try to move slower, building to my point until climaxing in a witty and ironic rebuke of the object of my agression?

OR

Do I take pity on the poor saps who have something to say? Do I thank the stars that I am not obsessed with the things that fuck me up? Feel grateful that I need not pound tables and take up space with my antipathy? Maybe those capable of rants are really insecure, needing to pick apart external things to try and find their place in the universe. Where does that leave me, being so deeply insecure that I want to be like the people so insecure they develop the skill and need to rant?

The only thing I really seem capable of picking apart in an obsessive manner is myself. I'm not particularly good at figuring out my faults and defaults and adjusting, changing or discarding them for the purpose of general self-improvement and mature introspective growth. I just notice the things about ME that annoy ME.

Besides, I never actually seem to get anywhere. The closest to Debate Club I got was timing a match. It was big fun, not being a geek who actually was in Debate Club, mind you, but one who gave up a Saturday morning going to school to TIME Debate Club. How lame? So, when I start to run my mouth, my brain ends up taking many sharp lefts, u-turns and complete tangents, never completing a thought and generally ending up nowhere but exasperated. Without a conclusion, it doesn't seem like much of a point, does it?

There was a time when I thought I would make a hell of a lawyer. I loved to argue. Sure, I lost all the time. Sure, arguing a point was tiresome and draining. Sure, I often was won over to the opposing opinion by the seductive persuasion of the way other people argue a point. Sure, ninety percent of my desire to become a lawyer stemmed from the shock value of telling my parents I wanted to go to Law School.

As it turns out, I had a couple of the skills to make it in law. First, I have a knack for mind breaking tedium. I can fill out forms, wade through bureaucracy, sit on hold, make cold calls, sign people's names, paper clip and file without any thought to boredom or mind-rot. That is, as long as it has nothing to do with me personally. For some reason, if all this involves my life, I turn into a shrivelled, quaking mess. (For more on that, please refer to an, as yet, unwritten rant on Matthew's (Im)Personal Affairs). As long as it is impersonal, and generally for pay or some other form of me-benefitting reimbursement, I do well. Second, to make it in law, you must have an inroad, I've already been to jail!

There. See.

So where does that leave us?