Paragraphs for A.G.

It's been brought to my attention that my blog never has any paragraphs. I never even considered it really and I don't know why. Maybe on a subconscious level I didn't add them because the name of my blog is Ryan's Rant, a rant being a long winded diatribe speaking out about something....but I don't know.

So here it is! My first blog incorporating paragraphs, funny that it comes along on my very last post for this class. There is some irony in that we just watched Hitler orate to his German youth last Tuesday and my blog being one continuous un-paragraphed mess. Anyone who is masochistic enough to have suffered through the literary goulash that is Mien Kempf knows that Hitler had no background in writing...and it is VERY apparent. Run on sentences, dozens of commas in one "sentence", and never ending paragraphs saturated with bitter politics.

While Hitler was in prison writing this 400 + page mess, you'd think that he would be able to find some semblance of structure for presenting his ideas to the world. I mean, there has got to be someone in the cell block that knows how to structure a paragraph somewhere. Spending two years in the clink gives a man time to think, apparently not about sentence structure though. Normally I wouldn't speak ill of the dead but I can't think of a more deserving person than this particular "author" and orator.

It's interesting to watch the video of Hitler and listen to him mesmerize the youth of the next generation with his ideals for the future of his nation. Watching a master puppeteer at work, wielding the strings in a maniacal puppet show that culminated in one of the largest tragedies in modern times.

I would never liken myself to Hitler, but every time I write now I will be very aware of my structure, adding paragraphs where they need to be and cutting down on my comma use. Readability is very important if you want to be a writer so I hope that here at the end of my English 402 blogging days that this is way more readable than my past posts!!!

Inappropriate Nudity

There is a disturbing aspect to our guest speakers lecture that I feel the need to address. I have mixed feelings about the idea that anyone can go to Amazon and get a book made just for the hell of it. On the one hand I like the idea that you don't have to have a fortune or a huge publishing house to get your thoughts and ideas out, that the story that you have within you can come to fruition even if your name isn't Cussler, Rowling, or King. On the other side of this coin is the idea that scares me, and that is the idea that a lot of the people that really want to get their stuff out there are the people you least want to hear from. Kind of like a nude beach....the people that really want to go there are the people you really don't want to see bump, set , spiking the volleyball in their birthday suit. I don' want to bag on the idea at all, I feel this is a great way for authors to get their ideas out there. I'm just scared that it will turn into a virtual dollar store of literary garbage clogging up the web site like coupon day in my mailbox. With so much garbage on the television and in the media in general, do we really want it on our bookshelves too? I personally like the idea that an editor or someone would tell me what aspects of my book are bad or telling me "they're all gonna laugh at you if you publish this". But that is just me. I guess the upside to this really would be that literature and authorship would then be available and less daunting to a society where the written word is already starting to become an antiquated idea. Being able to dovetail literature and technology is undoubtedly the future, and I would rather see this happen then to see it disappear entirely. See you at the beach.

Wash your mouth out with soap...box!

I feel violated. In the grand scheme of things I would like to think that even though we are a flock following the pack , that there lies within all of us a uniqueness, that we are our own individual snowflake in the vast snowbanks of our existence. We have all heard the evils of the "big five" and their devious ways of shaping and molding our minds and our images into their odious molds, but I must say that what I've seen on this Frontline video takes the proverbial cake. Acxiom is my new target for distaste, distrust, and general disdain. We are people dammit, not fish in a barrel to be put on a list so that we can be pigeon holed and harassed by political candidates. We are more than rusty cogs in a failing diplomatic machine, merely meant to shut up and turn with the teeth of the other rusty cogs. By doing so, these unwanted solicitors infringe upon my right to privacy in my own home by clogging up my mailbox with their junk mail flyers, they interrupt my dinner time by knocking on my door like Girl Scouts.....yet there are no Thin Mints too be had. I believe in the quintessential ideas of democracy, but I feel that this type of "campaigning" runs counter to the founding ideals of this nation. I don't want to be a serial number, and I feel that Acxiom is merely a digital plantation owner selling serial numbers to the highest bidder, yoking those with certain predispositions to an agenda and guiding them to the slaughter. I'm sorry if any of you tripped on my soap box as you entered this blog...!!

Next week, on a very special Blossom...

I love a good conspiracy. The idea that someone somewhere knows who that very elusive second man on the grassy knoll really was. Or that what happened in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 really was not a "weather balloon" after all, worst....cover up....ever. The point is that reading between the lines of all the information that is thrown at us is our responsibility. With the big five manipulating the strings like a sadistic puppet master, we owe it to ourselves to cut the strings that would tie us to someone else's master plan. Seeing the demons in everything can get you labeled pretty quickly, so proceed with caution. I always knew that everything thrown at me by the media was a ploy to swindle my hard earned money, but this class has been instrumental in putting labels on the dubious tactics that the media employs. Using rhetoric to appeal to certain aspects of our psyche, the media has dares to violate us. By tapping into our minds, the media can control what we buy, thus slyly robbing us blind and essentially with our permission! I recently sat down to read a magazine about cars and was confronted with this issue. Although appearing to have no agenda other than dishing out the specs of the featured vehicles, I started to question the magazine's motives. I started to question as to whether or not if I had to go into a controlled slide would my Z-Rated tires do the trick? Or should I upgrade to the ZR-Rating? Would my 4 piston Wilwood calipers stop me in time? Or should I shell out the bucks for 8 piston Brembo brakes that will stop on a dime and give change? Do I use the right motor oil? These are the questions that should not interrupt me during a REM cycle. I'm sure that the magazine has noble intentions, yet I am glad that I am an individual that will question the things that are put in front of me. At the risk of sounding like an after school special, taking things at face value is a dangerous gamble no matter what you are talking about. No longer will the shepherds crook drag us around telling us where we should graze, we are hip to your high jinks and we are reading between your beguiling lines to seek the truth, and we will find it.

Thus Spoke Zoroaster

The origin of man as a species is a controversial yet fascinating topic. Those on one end of the argument will scream at the top of their lungs that man, in amoeba form, dragged itself out of the primordial ooze and evolved into the dominant species on the planet. Then there are those on the other side of the argument who would deliver from their pulpit the words of the scripture that would have man embrace creation as the true nature of their beginning. Whatever your beliefs are, the fact remains that when it comes to technology some of us are dead in the water even when it comes to basic computer functions. Championing the cause for me, a right-brained, technologically quasi retarded individual, is Meadow Nelson. We all had to do the re-write on shared drives for Kat Ricker's English 402 class, yet compared to Meadow Nelson's re-write, mine looks like the equivalent of a monkey beating up a rotting carcass with that very carcass's femur bone. Her digital prowess splashes across the screen as she has gone above and beyond to create a very user friendly explanation in reference to sharing drives. The addition of pictures to the concise instructions is warmly embraced by visual learners such as myself. Normally computer instructions are like attempting to read Homer's Odyssey in ancient Greek, but thank the maker (or the primordial ooze), that Meadow Nelson comes through like a Rosetta Stone and deciphers the steps, effectively demystifying sharing drives, making this process approachable to those of us with much different skill sets.

Every Rose has it's Thorn

Of all the Saints throughout all time,

I loathe the most Saint Valentine.

I am all about celebrating amore,

Just don't make it into an awful eyesore.

The candy, the flowers, the hotel bills,

It's all enough to give me the chills.

The candy hearts and the tacky lingerie,

Why won't it all just go away?

The arrows, the diapers, the little wings,

If I didn't laugh I'd cry at all these things.

It seemed fitting to lead with a Valentines poem as I segway into the rhetoric saturated holiday that's been depressing the masses since Pope Gelasius set aside February 14th. to honor St. Valentine in 496 A.D. This year falls just over 1,000 years before they were introduced to chocolate, so you can get out of here with your Whitman's Sampler. As early as January 3rd. the isles of the markets seemingly start to blush as they turn various shades of pink and red in preparation for this over commercialized holiday. Like a filthy predator skulking in the grass, stalking the unsuspecting pathos of singles all over the world. I feel that there is nothing wrong with being single and I resent the fact that I am made to feel as though my life is somehow sad and incomplete because of my single status. Please don't take my tone for bitterness, I am wide open to the possibilities that love has to offer, I just don't appreciate being pitied. Love should be a natural process, not a stressful last minute hail Mary pass to find a date, ANY date, to take to a romantic comedy and to a restaurant that you can't afford. Appealing to my pathos, tugging at my heart strings like a maniacal puppeteer with his marionette has got to stop. It is everywhere, even Papa Murphys is offering a heart shaped pizza for the budget minded Valentines victim. Dating is difficult enough as it is without all the pressure of this holiday. I'll be spending Valentine's day alone this year with a wee bit of Scotch and a heart shaped pizza, and I wouldn't have it any other way!!

Internet Killed the Video Star

I don't have T.V. Most people upon hearing these words screw up their face in a fashion that would be more appropriate if I had kicked their dog or stole their lunch money. I do own a television on which I watch many films in my free time, I merely do not have any form of cable or local channels. I hate to "veg" out and watch television. The canned laughter of the sitcoms, the drama of Days of Our Lives, the loco antics on Telemundo!, and the bloody commercials...oh for the love of all that is good and pure on this Earth, the commercials. I am painfully aware of the blatant attempt to lull me into submission, to buy whatever product is being peddled at the moment by gently caressing the ethos, pathos or legos of my psyche. And this makes me mad. The logical side of me knows that I am more than capable of turning on my own lights, but rhetoric within a sales pitch makes me think that my life is a dismal existence filled with the mundane switching of plastic toggles as I am not a proud owner of "The Clapper". Is my life an empty, filthy cavern of disgust because my cleaning supplies don't include the Shamwow? I want to run out and by Tide because it cleans twice as many stains as its competitors, I want to buy a bed at Mattress World because who DOESN'T want to sleep like a baby? I want to cast my vote for Senator so and so because he's a "family man", and he has "values" and "morals", and somehow I feel the need to run out and buy Ladies Speed Stick, no idea why, but they have me sold. I feel like I've been duped, hornswaggled by the strategically placed buzzwords within the media. The attempt to sway my vote, to beguile me of money, to saturate my mind with an endless supply of jingles upon jingles for various products that I don't want or need is over for me. I have chosen to shed the manacles of cable, to stop the flow of worthless information at the source. The piper is still there, seducing and cajoling the rats with a melodious tune and a greasy dance of joy, and I am happy to say that my dance card is full.