Rant - Only Three Minutes

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Rant Only Three Minutes An event at the convention I am attending next weekend is called the Rapidfire Infohots event. This involves making a non-too serious three minute rant on any topic of the ranters choosing, before an audience who are invited to heckle if they so desire. This is a rant I am considering entering with. Enjoy. Three minutes to rant about my pet hates – just the list of them would take me about three hours. Nothing good only take three minutes. You can boil an egg in three minutes but hard boiling one takes about five. They say if they start World War Three we get a three minute warning, but how are you supposed to get out and loot all the cameras out of Jessops in that time? It’s not fair. When someone tells me they are going to be late but expect to be with me in two or three minutes I know it’ll be about 20 minutes at least. Most pop songs used to last less than three minutes. You’d barely sit down after putting one on the turntable when you’d have to get up and change it again. Once songs like Bohemian Rhapsody came out at seven minutes plus there was time to chill out and appreciate it. Longer is better. Look at the con for further evidence. I was on a panel earlier, and that ran for an hour, from which I got to talk for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Lots of time for you to realize how lovable and must buy that guy a pint’able I am. How humble and ego free he is. Here, three minutes, blink and you’ll miss me – how can anyone reduce me to just three minutes? It’s inhumane, a breach of the Geneva Convention. No exaggeration. Three minutes doesn’t allow for thinking time. There’s an insurance ad on TV where they show you can take a policy out in the time the ad break lasts and still be back in front of the telly for part two of Corrie. Yeah, if you don’t actually take time to think about what you are doing or read the small print. I’d sooner take my time and enjoy life. Life should be slowed down, not speeded up or condensed into three minute chunks. It’s like swallowing food pills marked all you can eat buffet. I want time to enjoy my food. I hate thee breakfast bars and breakfast drinks you can eat or swallow on your way to the bus stop, multitasking reduced to riding and choking to death as you go, because you are denying yourself the extra time at the breakfast table. If you are choking by the way I hope someone does do the Heimlich Manoeuvre within three minutes, or you might get sent to Heaven, being told Judgement will be with you in 2 or 3 minutes which means waiting for an eternity, just like waiting for a bus in Preston. When you complain the bus was late the driver says it was only by three minutes, but if I was three minute late would the bus have waited for me? No chance. Only three minutes, 180 seconds, it’s never enough. The time needs expanding. Twitter used to be just 140 characters – now it’s 280. Minutes will be forced to expand too, you mark my words. It won’t happen in the next few minutes mind you, nothing good will happen in three minutes, except for this splendid manifesto of course. By stopping this after three minutes you are missing out on so much more. Think what the next three minutes might have taught you, and the three after that. Being silenced after just three minutes of eulogizing the greatest truths of our age is like having five pints left to drink at last orders. You might get some of them down your neck in time but they won’t be too enjoyable, and a lot of great beer will spill. My ideas have feelings too. An Arthur isn’t just for Christmas or for three minutes. Three minutes is cruel. Would you point a gun at a caterpillar and give it just three minutes to turn into a butterfly? No, of course not, but you set a clock on my chance to flourish and share my wisdom. Join in the chant now. Three minutes bad. Four Minutes better. Three minutes bad. Five minutes better. Arthur Chappell