Rants, Raves, Ramblings, Blah, Blah, Shoot Me
The temperature of my blood rises one degree Fahrenheit every time I see a list of words of like this, clumped together, most often in the description of a blog (found somewhere near the title).
I’ll break it down for you:
-A RANT, in the most famous Dennis Miller sense, is a tangent, a detour for your train of thought. Technically, moreover, it is writing or speaking with an angry tone. Most writing that declares itself a “rant” is not a rant at all; its detached sarcasm dilutes what little actual anger there is. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine violent, angry writing without profanity. Even so, the word “diatribe” seems like a better fit: dictionary.com defines it as a “bitter, abusive denunciation.” But “diatribe” has three syllables, and sounds more like a body part than anything communicated.
-RAVES are reserved for lunatics, film critics, and teens with glow stick obsessions. 100 to 1 you’re actually a film critic. And blogging doesn’t seem to gel with E. That leaves one other option.
-RAMBLINGS. I doubt your entry is long enough for you to ramble. You’d need to establish a subject before diverting from it. And I see periods and spaces and words I understand – so this can’t be stream of consciousness. What you write must have some low level of clarity and narrative. If you write about your goings-on, how you did this and did this and did this in the vacuous laundry list that is your life, it may be rambling but to me it’ll be BORING. That’s even worse. And if you stick to a subject, and write about it for four paragraphs, that is not rambling. Even if you compare one day’s entry, about dishwashers, with another’s, about diabetic hamsters, your mind will have had 24 hours or so to get from one subject to another. Must be hard to live with your thoughts skipping around like a little frog like that.
-MUSINGS are okay. I see the word too often, and am offended more by its overuse than by its meaning, which I dislike because of its weakness. “Musing” is weak. “Joke” is strong. “Jokes” are funny. “Musings” are not always funny. “Musings” are sometimes-witty pieces of writing or speech that evoke a smirk. Subtle. “Jokes” make people laugh. Not subtle. I prefer “jokes,” but will settle for the occasional “musing.”
If I see a dollop of these words at the top of a blog, I’ll assume that you’re assuming either of two things:
1. That you actually are crazy, and that your rants and raves and ramblings are part of your therapy. I would respect that wholeheartedly.
2. That I would sit and read writing that’s self-described as horribly disorganized.
Live and write with purpose. Admitting your lack of focus is no excuse for poor writing.
February 6th, 2005 at 3:10 am
Oh? My God!! I have the same pet peeves. A few of the blogs on my links include these words, but I forgive them because they actually do say something I like.
But GAWD get some new words.
Every time I hear the word “Musings”…I think of Peggy Hill from “King of the Hill.” She called her lame columns “musings.” For that fact alone, I can’t use that word.