The ranter's life is the life for me, and it's not so much that I chose it but rather it chose me. I'm glad the life of a sonnet writer or Haiku writer didn't choose me - I really chafe under those kinds of structural limits. I know Shakespeare wrote a lot of sonnets, but my guess is that he wrote those on his "off" days. You know, when he sat down at his desk and a "King Lear" or "Hamlet" didn't come spilling onto the paper from that silly chicken feather he used as a pen. "Bloody 'ell, looks like another blinking sonnet day methinks", is probably what he mumbled under his breath.
The Haiku writers of Japan have a far easier life than the average English sonnet writer does. Something like 5 syllables followed by 7 followed by yet another 5 (as I seem to recall from my younger days as a Haiku writer in Ancient Japan). No silly rhyming constraints or anything - it's fine if you only want to talk about watching geese fly silhouetted against the August moon at midnight, things like that. (Big deal, I say - they see that kind of thing all the time in Japan. Why not try writing a haiku about skydiving from 30,000 feet with no parachute? Now THAT would be a Haikuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!)!
But a rant maker follows a very unstructured structure (oxymoron #13) which keeps to a highly disciplined yet chaotic form (#13 again) leading to an abrupt conclusion in five paragraphs or less (the Webster definition, if you will). Obviously it depends on the size and spacing of the paragraphs, so don't get overly literal on me. And some can even be 10 paragraphs, which I call a "dec-o-rant" (A dec-o-rant is obviously twice as long as the more familiar "quint-o-rant" like this one.)
These are ultra-modern forms of the rant, however, which I am inventing as I go (and my business card clearly states that I'm an inventor, if you recall). People who ranted back in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare had no idea where the art form would end up in the distant future we now call "today". Well, I am that distant future of then, alive in the misty moment of Now! (He takes a long sweeping bow, to the thunderous applause of the multitudes cheering in his head).
Seriously now, folks - while the words "rant" and "rave" go together like peaches and cream, the ranting of which I speak is not altogether peachy nor is it always creamy, but it can both if it is not sour and bitter. In other words, it is equally possible for a rant to be a rave as it is a full-blown rant-o-thon, or even ranting about raving about ranting about.. (recursion #23). Above all, there is a kind of Cosmic Rant that takes me over, which comes from the very depths of that universal urge to express hilarity in countless forms. Like God dreaming up the rhinoceros and the hippo, things like that. (But hey, I'm obviously not THAT creative!)
Now that I have now reached the fifth and final paragraph of this rant. There are more esoteric aspects to the rant structure that I can only reveal to trained initiates, those who have signed the non-disclosure agreement my attorneys have drawn up that gives me immediate and unconditional possession of their eternal soul should they ever disclose it to anyone. Care to know more? Just sign on the dotted line below and I'll tell you all about it!
