What you're buying into here are a series of 13 essays I posted as 35 blog entries to my website between the end of 2005 and just before the November 2010 election. Most of the first 32 were published weekly throughout 2006 and are organized around 13 distinct themes; the last three were random, and later.

I decided to compose and post Rants for these reasons, from least to most important:

(1) All the web design sources I consulted said you're supposed to;

(2) As explained in the first post, I'm a big fan of the classic essay form;

(3) I'd pretty much finished my dozen short stories for "Matters Familiar" and wanted to mess around with something different; and

(4) Excepting the last two postings, to keep the domestic peace and my sanity during the last three years of the Bush Administration.

Obviously, some references will be dated. (You'll learn that most of them are obscure, at best, anyway.) I've updated hyperlinks where referenced information is still available online.

Enjoy.