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I once read the entirety of Ceres: Celestial Legend in a single night. I stayed up until four in the morning and then I went to school at six because you can’t exactly call out on the grounds that you’ve just wasted eight hours of your life on Turgid Melodrama Punctuated With Incest Rape: Celestial Legend.

I made a lot of mistakes in high school.

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It’s hard not to notice that once the right number of white folks are affected, people want to take to the street. Unemployment numbers are high? We’ve had high unemployment for years. People are living in or near the poverty line? Yeah — we know.

When minorities speak up and say there is an issue, we are told maybe we are doing something wrong. Perhaps we are targeted by the police because of what we are wearing. Perhaps we don’t look for jobs the right way. Maybe we aren’t educated enough. But now that it’s affecting other folks, now there’s a problem. Now we need to come together and fight the power. Someone tweeted at me that we need to come together and not point out silly differences like race because we’re in this together!

Ah.

Yes, we can — and have (there is support from various folks of color) — come together within this movement, but you can’t expect us to throw away “race” and ignore history. Even the violence that’s happening with the Occupiers right now is looked at differently because of race. You can’t be surprised that people have reservations about this when you look at how our issues have been dealt with before.

I’m not making an argument for ignoring the movement because a lot of the movement ignored us. But I am saying take a moment to walk away from your righteousness to understand that your newfound plight has been some people’s plight for generations.

We just didn’t have a catchy name for it.

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"First, remember that style comes in all sizes, so the bigger you are, the more style you have. And second, draw attention to your best features by pointing at them, and conceal your flaws by sucker punching anyone who mentions them."

"Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? It is necessary to the American psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history?"

"Finish the sentence: “There have been 16 feature films with Superman or Batman but zero Wonder Woman movies and the main reason is…"

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Rand expresses, with a certain pithy crudeness, an instinct that courses through us all sometimes: I’m the only one who matters! I’m not going to care about any of you any more! She then absolutizes it in an amphetamine Benzedrine-charged reductio ad absurdum by insisting it is the only feeling worth entertaining, ever.

This urge exists everywhere, but why is it supercharged on the American right, where Rand is regarded as something more than a bad, bizarre joke? In a country where almost everyone believes—wrongly, on the whole—that they are self-made, perhaps it is easier to have contempt for people who didn’t make much of themselves. And Rand taps into something deeper still. The founding myth of America is that the nation was built out of nothing, using only reason and willpower. Rand applies this myth to the individual American: You made yourself. You need nobody and nothing except your reason to rise and dominate. You can be America, in one body, in one mind.

She said the United States should be a “democracy of superiors only,” with superiority defined by being rich. Well, we got it. As the health care crisis has shown, today, the rich have the real power: The vote that matters is expressed with a checkbook and a lobbyist. We get to vote only for the candidates they have pre-funded and receive the legislation they have preapproved. It’s useful—if daunting—to know that there is a substantial slice of the American public who believe this is not a problem to be put right, but morally admirable.

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"The drug war is not a failure; rather it works perfectly for its intended purposes. It generates billions of dollars for government agencies at all levels, employing millions of people. It created and supports whole industries such as drug testing, and has enhanced the drug rehabilitation industry. The drug war also protects other industries such as tobacco and alcohol, and even legal medical drug companies. It also protects the lumber and oil industries. The drug war even drives this Nation’s foreign policy. The drug war also funds gang violence at home and terrorists abroad, creating even more American jobs needed to combat these threats. The drug war also has the added benefit of conveniently side stepping Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and liberties, allowing government to control even the most intimate facets of citizen’s lives, increasing government’s control. The drug war also guarantees a ready supply of drugs for children, guaranteeing an endless supply of new participants to support the prison industry, lawyers, law enforcement, etc. The drug war also provides government the opportunity to marginalize those considered undesirable, take away their ability to vote, find employment, get an education, take their children, seize their property, etc. Who in their right mind could possibly want to do away with this cash cow, and return to a time when there was no illegal drug use in this country?"

"What? You make it sound like the impulse to slash characters from your childhood is unusual!"

"The politics of selling out aside, I am deeply troubled with how we read Lady Gaga as a brilliant postmodern pop artist and Nicki as little more than a fake who plays dress up for cash."

"You know what makes people different from animals? We’re the only species on Earth that observes Shark Week. Sharks don’t even observe Shark Week; but we do. For the same reason, I can pick up this pencil, tell you its name is Steve, and then go like this; [snaps it in half; gasps of horror] and part of you dies, just a little bit on the inside. Because people can connect with anything. We can sympathise with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for Screenwriting. People can find the good in just about anything except themselves."

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When I was growing up,
they taught you very young to tell them right away
if you were a boy or if you were a girl.
And from then on you were sent to live in
two different worlds.
Even before you were born, they ask
this question over and over,
and from in there you can’t imagine what
the problem is. And from then on you’re sent to live in two different worlds.

Girls did crewelwork, boys had shop.
They got to bring home breakfast trays made out of plywood: things you had a use for.
We sewed those pictures with the poked out holes. A picture of a rabbit done in yarn. We all did the same picture of a rabbit, or else you could choose a baby chick, but that was it.

The good part about living in the world of the girl
is it prepares you for absurdity.

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