In life, there are always genuine griefs to gripe about, cogent complaints to cry about, and definitive disputes to deplore about. But just putting up a bunch of blah blah blahs would be too easy. We here at TheRantSheet.com dig and search and spend countless hours to find the most interesting topics that give us a reason to rant. We want to bring you (our seven loyal readers) the issues that are in the news in our own self proclaimed ever so clever perspective.
When a milestone like this comes along, others would usually do a flash back episode to highlight some of the best moments that have passed. But we hope to be different, unconventional, and slightly off the norm. Over the past five and a half months, many current events have passed that we did not discuss. Here's our chance to let a few of our most frequent contributors say a some words on some of the topics that we did not cover at the time. Oh but wait... there's more! Stay tuned to this particular post as it will change ever so slightly as our memory of the past stories return.
Cindy Sheehan
[Jawn Lam] - "With all due respect, ma'am... Please don't cheapen the the sacrifice Casey and the rest of the soldiers have made by using their deaths as a political tool of liberal passifists."
[Russ] - "I've never lost a child at war, but at times, I have lost my mind. Cindy has lost all sense of reality as she boldly spreads the unfounded ranting of a disgruntled liberal fringe. Liberal extremists are either really good storytellers or the worst prosecutors in history. If any of their accusations were true, they would have had every opportunity to present evidence and convict these “political criminals”. Until then, my contention is that they are really good storytellers with an incredibly gullible audience. I’m sorry for Cindy's loss, but it's sad to say, she is being irrational and she's being used."
Rising Gas Prices
[Jawn Lam] - "I know the prices are high. I know it's taking more of your mocha latte frappaccino money to fill up your tank so you can make it over to see your hacky sack regional championships. But this is not price gouging. The effects of supply and demand dictate market prices. I'm not saying every retailer abide by this principle. As a matter of fact, most retailers only make one or two cents per gallon that they sell. In a market of high spot price volatility and high demand, many retailers are actually selling gas at a loss. But that's a seperate issue. Market dynamics should dictate prices. We cannot and should not allow artificial price ceilings to be imposed in the name of good intentions. Doing so would result in degredation of quality or the practice of rationing. You don't want to wait in a 3 mile line to get 2 gallons of gas, do you?"
[Russ] - "I don't have knowledge of the inner-workings of market driven pricing, but I can tell you this, I don't believe anyone is selling gas at a loss (anyone who has ever tried to buy a car has experience with this kind of farce). I believe in the free market, I just don't trust those who manipulate it. Some say we should let companies be unethical because customers will remember the jerks and buy somewhere else. I think companies should suffer more than just PR fallout. During times of emergency, fines should be enforced on those who seek to profit on others tragedy. Bottom line, It's extortion.
NOAA Report: Rainbow Push Coalition and FEMA combine to tackle societal woes.
[Russ] - Sept. 27, 2005 — Researchers at the NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory Boulder, Colo., have developed an index that provides a simple means of tracking the annual increase in “Hate Hurricanes”.
The Annual Diversity Index, or ADI, is based on an analysis of the atmospheric levels of all majority and minority hurricanes as measured since 1979 by NOAA/CMDL's global sampling network.
The newly-developed index provides an easily understood and scientifically unambiguous point of comparison for tracking annual changes in levels of atmospheric gases that contribute to the so-called "Affirmative Effect," in which the racism emitted by Earth's inhabitants are re-radiated by the atmosphere back to the surface.
"The ADI will serve as a gauge of success or failure of future efforts to curb hate hurricanes and other discriminatory climate events in the atmosphere both by natural and human-engineered processes," said David Hofmann, NOAA/CMDL director.
Hurricane levels change from year to year depending on human-influenced processes as well as natural processes. The record high annual increase is believed to be related to the 1987-1988 El Niño and the 2005 minuteman project.
NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and race-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources.
I Don’t Know What To Write
[Charles]
The line is a cliché, bound to occur in nearly every television show or movie featuring police officers. The scene customarily takes place in an office where a cop, almost always a Captain, tells another cop, “Give me your badge and gun. You’re suspended.”. There are variations to this line, like saying “You’re off the force” instead, and how the cop relinquishes his badge and gun is usually done one of two ways: either the officer does the reluctant, slow motion surrender of his “shield” and “sidearm” or the angry, “you’ll regret this” throwing of said articles on a desk.
My freshman English teacher told the classroom a similarly clichéd line, one that I imagine is taught to and mastered by all prospective teachers before ever entering a classroom, “Take out a sheet of paper and a pencil.”. I played the reluctant cop, slowly opening my backpack to pull out the paper and pencil, only instead of turning them in to the teacher, never to be seen again, we were being forced to use them.
The assignment was simple: write. Write about anything that came to your mind, it could center on our life in high school or something strange like the adventures of Ferret Boy – content didn’t matter, the point was to keep on writing. And when you didn’t know what to write our teacher instructed us to write, “I don’t know what to write.” and to keep on writing it over and over until we did know what to write.
After nearly three weeks of not writing anything for our 100th post extravaganza, I remembered my high school teacher’s word of advice and began to put it into practice. The only drawback was, after lots of writing, I had nothing worth publishing but a lot of this, which scared me since it reminded me of Jack Nicholson’s novel in the movie “The Shining”, only instead of taking an axe to murder my wife and kid I sat down to watch television.
Television shows frequently have celebrations for their 100th episode, but it’s usually the exact same type of show as the previous 99. I think next time when we get to post number 200 I’ll favor us ranting as we have always done, without the pressure and frustration of not knowing what to write.