caroljane

That one either. Is it in a restaurant? Carol up past my bedtime again

Great, thanks. I haven't seen this one.

Mine's Glengarry Glen Ross at the moment because I just re=watched it. Wonderful.

Sorry, Daunce is only unisex in the way that Stanley is. If you are shopping for a new one there's always Virago Termagant, the name of the moustachioed landlady from To Lorne Dieterling. Oh, you flatterer. No, I will keep my managra, just as some of us keep our avatars which may weary repeat viewers. I don't mean yours, actually.

No, wait! Daunce is a unisex name, like Gail.I can be a man and a woman both. God what a relief. I was trying to think what I would tell my kids, not to mention the regulars at the Hag & Sporran.

Why not start a Palin thread from the clips then? If it stays on LOL it'd look like she was being made fun of.

You're right. My mistake.

Ted, I'm not a man - you even called me a housewife once! Hope you're still laughing anyway.

I can't follow Cathcart when he skips his meds and turns into the Linda Blair of SOLO. I do know that the non-Objectivist Libertarian Goode does swallow the Singularity whoopup, but he doesn't pretend to be other than an individual loon, not a stand-in for One True Truthy Cathcartian Truthburger. On a related note, Henrik the Spanking Swede now has a blog (in English unfortunately) in which among other delights he explains how Harry Binswanger persuaded him that his predilection was not innate but only a biological variation of some Randian principle thingy. Henrik handsomely admitted that Binswanger was right, though Henrik is always right and had expected to demonstrate that and embarrass Binswanger, but HB was just too smart for him. Henrik has decided that Binswanger is immoral, however, for other reasons, and has Crossed the Rubicon and said so and now fully expects "to be thrown out of the Objectivist Movement" but he is unafraid. No cheese on that Truthburger, please.

Reggie still maintains his moribund website, dead links and all, at The Autonomist. He has a newerish website, which appears to be the poor mans's WND, called the Independent Individualist, on the same server, with such lovely articles as "Islamic Maggots" and "Islamic Maggots II." I tested his online empire in my Alexa rankings of Objectivish forums, and came up with a ranking somewhere around five million. One of his favourite targets are the mean old Objectivists (in name only) who don't accept Christianity. He has also 'corrected' David Harriman in an Ultimate Crank crank-on-crank opus whose stupidity burns to the bone. Monart Pon was a nice, if ranting, Rand follower at the old SOLO. He segued from being a fairly standard autistic teenager evangelist objectivish bore into an adherent of the wackaloon Objectivish Star People cult, an offshoot of the already loony Singularity nuts, who believe in a mush of Star Trek, Rand, AI and We Can Be Immortal. Reggie must have heard it was Crank Month at OL. Singularity...wait...does C. Cathcart the Ultimate Philosopher with the new unfollowable rules for Rand criticism belong to that? He seems crazy enough.He worships Stanley Kubrick next to Ayn Rand, is that part of it?

His latest is actually a breezy read. Lots of fun too, and reportedly going to be adapted for film by the director of Magnolia. Vineland's fairly easy reading too. Gravity's Rainbow is up there with Ulysses, though. Mason & Dixon is probably his best. OK, sold. It was GR that I plodded through about 50 pages of before giving up. I'll try the shortest one.

Some OLers have expressed concern to me about how Ayn Rand is doing in literary heaven, considering the fact that she doesn't believe in it and that she has been assigned to the Plato's Writers Retreat sector. I am pleased to report that her soul has remained undaunted. Once the fraught first meeting with Plato was over (it turns out he doesn't believe in her either, so they just ignored each other)and early adjustment to a new environment was made, she continued her unique pursuit of her own values. She has had her setbacks, of course. Aristotle has been holed up in a fortified cloud since 1987, and has taken out a restraining order against her, but she continues to lob clear, precise, irrefutable communications over the gates. She was friends with Margaret Mitchell for a while, but they fell out over the intellectual property rights of epic rape scenes. The intellectual grandeur of her ideas has attracted the brightest of the younger set, of course. You can probably imagine who they are. Envious second-harpers foully lie that her students are secretly plotting to "get Kant once and for all", simply because of casually curious questions as to his whereabouts. Smiling scornfully at these irrelevant creatures, the self-made soul continues, productively achieving, occasionally reaching down to give Leonard a piece of her mind that she no longer needs. Heavenly days!

Like the 700 Club!! I remember that. And we used to have PTL Club parties with bets on which Bakker would start crying first. I was sad when he went to jail.

What is CBN? If it's Palin I'll just wait for the experts such as pippi to pontificate so I will know what to think. I'd really like to know why her deductions are so heavy, and why she thinks they are supporting us. Of course Obama is a communist, but so are we, and even he would surely give the money to the American communists, and oh I can't figure it out.

I don’t get it, have you run out of new things to read? There’s nothing you’re itching to reread? Here’s someone you won’t find on the lecture circuit, try his stuff, it’ll keep you busy for a loooong time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR0588DtHJA Ninth, it is no use, I am not smart enough to enjoy Thomas Pynchon. I said here somewhere that I quite enjoyed Joyce's Ulysses, but I lied. I don't like to work hard at reading or study, though I know there's a real intellectual buzz payoff when you do, such as with chemistry or algebra."Euclid alone hath looked at beauty bare" and all that. So I quite enjoyed working at reading Ulysses, and I really liked the "Yes" ending, and not only because it was the ending. But as a novel, as I like to enjoy novels, I didn't. If there's anything I hate, it's a challenge. Of course I have not run out of wannareads, they are piled up, but my beloved living authors are not replaceable though I always find new irreplaceables.

Half a century of Objectivist thought has reviled American education as a foul Pragmatist horror (see 'The Comprachicos') or otherwise slack and awful; by your estimation, the rest of the world has caught up with this revulsion. The thing is, Phil, your estimation of the world's admiration or lack thereof is not true -- at least in regards to worldwide estimation of post-secondary education. I won't bother to do your homework by citing the stats I dug up yesterday, but if one looks at global rankings of Universities, American is Mecca for serious students. The greatest universities of the world are in America. Of course, from an Objectivish standpoint, the US universities are also dire anti-reason shitholes, so I guess that you, Phil, can square the circle. It would help the persuasive power of your rant if you based your conclusions on some reasoned and accessible references. Otherwise, you just come across as another smug "America is doomed" fuckhead. Oh, please. Cite something, anything in support of your claims. Why don't you assemble a rational, objective argument instead of these tiresome rants? You can do better. It's true about UCLA etal of course, and of the highly-educated young Americans who enter them from excellent private or public schools. But I thought we were talking about the public education system, Grades 1-12.

It's OK, we're alone. Listen, this is wild but...what if the NH government is on our wavelength about, you know, and they are sending the workers' money to us in preparation for, you know, remember the Underground Railroad?Should we wait for the Rites or call the Grand Shaman right now?

Seriously, 40% deduction from gross earnings seems ridiculously high to me because 1) I worked in call centres for nearly 3 years and they all under-deducted if anything. I ended up owing income tax on minimum-wage jobs because the company did not deduct enough 2) Now even with proper deduction, optional deduction for dental etc., and union dues, and our usual socialist wage grabs, I still get waaaay more than 60% of gross. I still owe taxes though, and I really want to pay them. Mr Gilles Savoie of the CRA, if you are reading this, I really mean it this time. 3) I thought NH was a low income-tax state, and that the US has a lower income tax rate than Canada. ?????????????????????????????

Joel, you better stop getting your "just good friend" Ashlee in payroll to "garnish" those wages. I'm scared she might be getting suspicious about the Secret Plan we have been plotting in the Sacred Igloo, you know the "Really New, Really England") one.

An interesting pictorial of world rankings on Math, Science and Reading, from OECD countries, featured in the Guardian. This really surprised me. I thought Philip was being hyperbolic. And Finland, who knew? Quite pleased with the showing of the old Feuille d'Erable once I figured out how to stop Canada morphing into Switzerland. I'd love to see such a breakdown over the whole 20th-century, preferably president by president so that Blame can be Apportioned. Is that doable, O Wazir of the Sacred Stats?

Phil, I laughed out loud at Honest Abe in a tutu complete with top hat. It's interesting that the greatest American thinkers, the philosophers of the Revolution such as Jefferson, were all educated in the classical (English) tradition of the time. 100 years later, so were the Fathers of Confederation. Such a difference geography makes.

Novelists whom I like, listen up. This is from me, but I speak for a fed-up multitude. If you are doing anything except writing your next novel, stop doing whatever it is this minute, and get back to your desk and do not get up until you are finished to my satisfaction. Don't go to anymore book festivals and literary conferences and do not give any more readings. I don't care what you look like and I can read faster than I can listen. I don't want to ask you questions. I want to consume your product in solitude at my own pace. Don't let your publisher bully you into book tours. Stay home and write. Enough with the publication parties and literary awards dinners. Have a sandwich at your desk. Don't you realize you are not people, but just the means through which I get to revel in a great story, well-written? You are words on paper. Stop wasting time with author websites, I don't care if your cat had kittens or you need a double-double Tim Hortons to become inspired. Vikram Seth, I appeal to your better nature. I am sure you have a mother. You wouldn't make her wait for SIXTEEN FREAKING YEARS for something she craved that you knew you could give her, would you? Well, would you? Your poetry is very nice and human rights are very important, but just drop them right now and finish A Suitable Girl. I am an old lady, I don't know if I can hold on until the Royal Wedding in April, who knows if I can make it to 2013? Pick up the pace! Dead authors, don't think you're off the hook. It's all fine and well for you now up there in Plato's Writer's Retreat, but down here some of your books are going out of print. You must have made some connections up there by now --get those books, all of them, back into print and into the libraries where I don't have to pay for them. Norah Lofts, I'm talking to you! Ask Ayn to pull some strings. I will address the publishers at another time, although....Sue Townsend and Peter Dickinson! I see you back there trying to sneak over to the Fabian Club..get back here at once! At once I say!... Ranter's Note: The above, since it is my attitude, is the attitude of the Silent Majority of novel-readers. The Vocal Minority, i.e. other novelists and aspiring novelists, cause all the readings and websites and most of the evil in the world, and are ruining it for the rest of us.

Like Boydston, I like to view and ponder the works, primarily -- though of course I am also curious enough to read and ponder critical evaluations of particular works (an early immersion in ArtCritSpeak gave me an appreciation for lunatic prose that I still hold). The Bacon canvas is in the collection of the Des Moines Art Center. If they ever need a new roof, they can sell it off. One of the last Bacon's on auction went for over 85 million smackers. I would love to see other folk's faves. Here's a video a friend did of a few of my drawings dating from the 1980s, which I think I have posted before at OL. I like. Have you ever considered moving to bucolic Sackville, N.B.? You could study in the Colville school and meld Canadian art into a transformative, bicoastal whole, while learning to speak with an Acadian accent.

John, it might even be possible that because of your age, you are experiencing the worst of your condition now, and that the future will be better simply because of the passage of time. Many depressive and delusional related conditions present first, and most strongly, in the early 20's. With proper diagnosis and treatment they often can be improved, and such things as future psychotic episodes avoided. Acute depression can often be successfully treated with medication alone, the results sometimes seeming almost like magic, though the combination of meds and therapy is the ideal. I know that some depressive disorders just resist all treatment, which is a tragedy. But the mood-drug industry, bless its greedy corporate heart, treats the sick increasingly well, although it wrongly tries to convince the well that they are sick too. I, like everyone here, say this knowing nothing of your medical condition.you have indicated that you know it best and are master of it. Is this attitude entirely wise? Just like everybody has a boss, everybody always has somebody who knows better. Even Ayn Rand.

Studiodekadent, let me add my kudos on your stellar commentary. Have you read any Mary Renault? Her fictional re-creations of classical and mythological times in Greece are unsurpassable, and her literary skill is, in my opinion, greater than Rand's. In The King Must Die, the love between Theseus and Hippolyta depicts the kind of sexual equality Rand was struggling towards visualizing. Throughout her novels the casual acceptance of homosexuality that characterized the classical age is portrayed. Mary Renault was herself a lesbian. Obviously, I recommend any and all her novels of Greece (I have not read the contemporary ones) to anyone who loves a good story, beautifully written. And oh yes! Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are significant characters in her books, and the beauty of pure philosophy is one of her themes. The reader also gets to attend the original Olympic Games, fight Sparta for Athens, and so on.