The Rant Keeps Turning

The Rant has only one New Year’s resolution: avoid the Norovirus at all costs. Once the province¹ of cruise ships², (Come for the buffet, stay for the vomiting! Would you like a side of seasickness with that? Enjoy), the Norovirus has extended the brand to solid land (trademark pending), while producing a spinoff strain that runs rampant through your holiday meal before your crazy Uncle Mitch can finish explaining why fluoridation keeps him from holding a steady job. The CDC estimates around 25% of the population was carrying the virus at the end of the year. People are hard at work on a vaccine, but not close enough yet to spawn any conspiracy theories or chants of, “My projectile vomiting, my choice!”.

A virus is gonna virus. If we temporarily defeat it, Norovirus will just keep chain-smoking and mutating until it finds a new way into your chicken salad.³ Nature just does its thing. The Rant remembers watching one of those the-world-is-ending-and-it’s-your-fault documentaries, the ones with the weepy soundtracks, and a quite cheerful scientist saying, “The world doesn’t care if we’re here or not. It will go on just fine without us.” If there is one thing a self-conscious being can’t tolerate, it’s the thought that anything, from our ex-partner to an ungrateful rock, could enjoy their benighted⁴ existence without our glowing presence.

Because the moment humanity became self-conscious it became self-absorbed and transformed into a survival of the fittest destruction machine. Our superiority is just a flicker on the timeline of the universe. If our extinction proves to be self-inflicted rather the result of something cool like a giant meteor, we’ll still be as gone as the dinosaurs. The cockroaches⁵ will not view us as a cautionary tale, and they have no appreciation for irony.

The Rant finds it amusing people believe we can convince each other to plan and sacrifice for our future survival when we have constructed an entire culture predicated on the idea that any delay of gratification is no gratification at all. When the planet has become consumed by water and those with gills⁶ are enjoying their salad days, The Rant hopes a cockroach will pause briefly on its floating box of Ding Dongs and think, we’re doing just fine. Except for that nasty case of Norovirus I got from some cream filling last week.

1. While verifying the correct usage of the word, The Rant stumbled on a delightful site that provides charts on the rates of usage for a word throughout history. Province has shown a sad decline since the nobility stopped wandering around and claiming you owed them half your sheep for grazing on their land, bestowed upon them by crown and God. It made you want to get stabby with the sheep shears, bestowed on you by Harold the Blacksmith. The Rant notes with pride the tiny blip on the chart for the usage of “fantods” derives almost entirely from us and high school goths forced to read Mark Twain
2. Do yourself a favor and watch a rerun of the Love Boat, picturing Charro hurling over the Lido deck
3. We’re betting you didn’t know viruses love cigs more that a film noir detective. And shut up about vaping; that’s for losers that think they’re badasses. They wish.
4. As you might imagine, benighted isn’t faring too well on the usage chart. Except for the death metal band with that name.
5. The Rant came of age at the tail end of the Cold War, when we pondered and discussed the coming nuclear holocaust almost daily. Our teachers took an odd delight in describing how, after we had been burned alive from the inside out, the cockroaches would have free reign over our Hostess products no matter the level of devastation. Thus our recurring nightmare of a hellish landscape of bugs and Twinkies.
6. In case you are wondering, carp will quickly consolidate their world dominance. Because the carp are coming for us my friend. We know, you have your environmental undies in a wad over global warming, but you should really be wringing your hands over invasive carp consuming every last edible aquatic food source and befouling our water. Carp are nasty and they have a plan. You have been warned.