STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 13 January 2012

[Demeter]

24. I Was Shitting You People - A Message From Ayn Rand

http://paulbibeau.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-was-shitting-you-people-message-from.html

I gave my lawyer instructions to release this message after my death. A joke I concocted when I was a kid has gone way, way too far. The most important thing you should know is this: Nothing I have ever written was meant to be taken seriously...Back in the early 1940s I was living in Tenafly, New Jersey with a guy named Ronnie Hubbard. He was hiding out in his brother's basement so he could avoid the draft, and I was working at a rendering plant. Most nights we'd lie on this cot he'd found on a curb and drink, fuck like weasels, and smoke opium. I'll be honest: We smoked a shit-ton of opium. Anyway over the course of a few weeks -- it's hard to piece it all together -- we started talking about pranks.

"What's the worst prank you could possibly pull?" he wanted to know. I can still see those piggy little eyes glinting while he said it. He was an ugly man. I have no idea how I ended up with him. But he asked the question a few times, and I didn't really have much of a reply. Until one day, the answer just came to me. "The worst thing you could do would be to somehow take the most terrible people in the world, and make them even greater douches than they already are. Find a way to zero in on all of their ugliest faults and vices, and just... just amp them up beyond belief. That would be something..."

"Fine," he said huffily. "Who would you go after?"
"Rich white college kids."
"Jesus," he said. "That's... that's perfect."
"I know, right?"
"They're the worst."
"God, they're horrible."
"But what are you going to do to them?"
"I'm going to convince them... that they're just too nice."

...We laughed for twenty minutes. I was tearing up, and Ronnie was wheezing like he was going to stroke out. I didn't even know where I was going with this idea. But it felt just so fucking wrong. In a good way. In a great way. Of course we never thought we could do any of this. You figure even the most entitled, morally backward people kind of know they're being dicks. No one is going to believe that being selfish and irresponsible is actually a good thing. Right?