… they’d never greenlight tosh like Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 (part one!). Although perhaps the immense suckage about to be inevitably generated by this waste of cinematic talent will finally bring randroids the level of mockery from the general public that they have always richly deserved? We can always dream.
A classic strip from Bob the Angry Flower | www.angryflower.com
Transcript:
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Title Panel reads: Bob the Angry Flower’s Classic Literature Sequels – ATLAS SHRUGGED 2: ONE HOUR LATER
- 1st Panel: [on the horizon is a city in flames, in the foreground is Bob the Angry Flower with three prime-mover heroes of Atlas Shrugged]
BOB: At last! We, the CREATORS, the ENTREPRENEURS, the TITANS who make the world work, have GIVEN UP on the compromised bureaucratic society that held all of us back!!!
BOB: And LOOK! It’s on FIRE now!
BOB: That’ll teach ‘em to submit to GOVERNMENT COERCION!!! - 2nd Panel: [closeup on Bob with one woman standing behind him]
BOB: Man, being proved right makes me hungry! What’s for lunch?
PRIME MOVER WOMAN: Lunch? - 3rd Panel: [mid-shot of three prime movers]
PRIME MOVER MAN 1: Don’t servants create lunch?
PRIME MOVER WOMAN: I CERTAINLY can’t cook!
PRIME MOVER MAN 2: I only know how to pay people to create new alloys! - 4th Panel: [wide-shot of all with flaming city in distant background]
BOB: Waitaminit – NOBODY remembered to bring an inexhaustible labor force of ROBOTS???
PRIME MOVERS: um. er. ep. - 5th Panel: [closeup of Bob the Angry Flower shaking the shoulders of a new figure - the author, Ayn Rand]
BOB: What’s the plan NOW, GENIUS?? - 6th Panel: [closeup of an anguished and panicking Bob]
BOB: We’re all gonna have to TILL the SOIL!!! - Final Panel: [wide-shot of a barren landscape under a blazing sun, Bob and a human figure in the background are wielding hoes and sweating buckets]
Text: Hard Months Later
BOB (thinking): This sucks.
H/T to book_gal on the Shakesville thread for the Angry Flower link.
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* Quicklink to recent open threads
mindyhoyden: 
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We can always dream.
LOL!!!
Melissa McEwan’s last post ..Question of the Day
I dream of a world where the entrepreneurial spirit is no longer crushed by faceless bureaucrats! I want to have my entrepreneurial spirit to be free to shine brightly in a world of unscrupulous plutocrats and oligarchs unconstrained by any commercial regulation whatsoever! I just know they’ll recognise me as a kindred spirit rather than a naif waiting to be fleeced! Why wouldn’t they?
@ TT. Absolutely. Hey actually I have this great
Ponzisurefire get rich quick scheme that will totally makemeyou rich.I just know they’ll recognise me as a kindred spirit rather than a naif waiting to be fleeced! Why wouldn’t they?
Kind of reminds me of all the people who want to live in the Middle Ages blissfully unaware of of how unlikely they’d be to be nobles.
@ SN – speak for yourself. I can trace my family back to French nobles who fled the revolution and married into the Irish aristocracy. Or at least the legit ones did. I suspect, given that the holder of the family castle in Ireland died without issue or heirs, that my connection may be on the wrong side of the blanket as it were. Apparently there are still lots of people with my former surname in the village near where the castle is. So even though they didn’t get the inheritance they got to keep the name at least.
*well aware that by now I probably would have either died in childbirth or of some horrible disease, nobility or not*
The world is a better place because of this comic.
Mary Tracy’s last post ..The Story So Far
Yep. More people should read Bob the Angry Flower, full stop.
@Mindy, death by childbirth in the middle ages vastly exaggerated. I wrote a paper on it in my final semester at uni.
However, being pregnant meant you were more likely to die of communicable diseases, particularly the plague.
Sorry, misconceptions about death in the middle ages are one of my bugbears!
@Rebekka, I have read that deaths associated with childbirth were far more likely to be due to puerperal fever days/weeks after labour had ended than during labour itself, certainly (e.g. Jane Seymour, 3rd wife to Henry VIII (not middle ages, I know)). My impression (and I realise I might well be misinformed) was that this still was a fairly common cause of death for women.
Back to Rand, here’s another comic from Angry Flower – Murder in Galt’s Gulch.
* Panel 1: A long-shot of a mountain valley, the sun just rising. A word-bubble hangs at the top of the panel.
Multiple voices: GASP!
* Panel 2: Bob and a group of prime movers stare at the headless corpse of a man in a suit.
BOB: Midas Mulligan, greatest banker of our epoch, is DEAD!
DAGNY: Who could have done this?
* Panel 3: close-up Bob’s face
BOB: Not who…WHY.
* Panel 4: Dagny and Bob
DAGNY: Perhaps someone desired his WEALTH?
BOB: To the extent of initiating the threat of FORCE?
BOB: COERCION?
BOB: IMPOSSIBLE.
* Panel 5: A prime mover and Bob.
Prime Mover: What about a crime of passion?
BOB: NONSENSE! Emotional actions are IRRATIONAL.
* Panel 6 & 7: Closeups of Bob hypothesising.
BOB. No. There can be only one conclusion.
BOB: There is no rational motive; therefore…
* Panel 8: Bob strikes a pose before the gathered onlookers
BOB: …this murder…DID NOT OCCUR!!!
I can trace my family back to French nobles who fled the revolution and married into the Irish aristocracy.
You realise I’m going to have to call you Milady now?
@tigtog, depends what you mean by common – around 1/100 throughout the middle ages in Europe. It certainly happened, and most women would have at least known of someone who had died, but the numbers are not actually huge. Like I mentioned though, death of an infectious disease during pregnancy – particularly during the later stages of pregnancy was very common indeed – so common that in Venice, for example, if a pregnant woman died, it was assumed she had died of the plague and that was what was recorded.
Women’s writing about birth – what little there is of it – largely centres on their fear of pain, rather than death.
Thanks Rebekka. I’m not sure exactly what ratio I had in my head, but I’m thinking it was more like 1/20 or 1/10, so out by an order of magnitude.
Tigtog: There’s excellent confirmation of Rebekka’s figures in Superfreakonomics (yes, those guys again). The figures for maternal death both in and after childbirth were at their worst in the 18th century, where they climbed to nearly 40% of birthing mothers. Levitt and Dubner also managed to get hold of a whole heap of hospital records and compare maternal death under the care of midwives and maternal care in the hands of doctors. In short, the latter were a disaster. Lots of nice tables etc and well worth a read. Apparently, too, the figures for classical antiquity (where we have them) are also surprisingly good: about 1 in 200. Apparently to do with the Roman hygiene obsession and the fact that Roman midwives were trained always to put the mother’s life ahead of that of any children (which goes back to the Twelve Tables).
skepticlawyer’s last post ..Roman à clef- not quite
That makes a lot of sense to me in where I had my impression of the higher death rate – those 18th century figures coincide with the explosion of the novel, and those novels were full of motherless children.
I already knew about the disastrous results of midwives vs accoucheurs, but it’s nice to be reminded that there is actual data.
I’m sure that the Romans’ remarkably (and often remarked upon) robust physical health (all those hills built amazing calves) helped the matrons of the city when it came time to delivery as well.
Doctors not washing their hands! Well that’s what I read in a novel about a motherless child anyway;)
Thanks for the fact check Bek. Nice to know that it happened less often than is usually assumed.
Tigtog, Romantic (as in, the Romantic period, obvs, not as in Mills & Boon etc) literature colouring modern impressions of the medieval period is actually a recognised phenomenon – I’ve read whole books on it, so you are definitely not alone!
Skepticlawyer, v interesting about the classical period, I haven’t really read anything on that, I’ll have to do some more reading.
And I’m in Rome at the moment, and it is definitely a good work out for the calves!
You’re quite right about hospitals being disasterous of course – and Mindy, it was definitely partly because doctors didn’t wash their hands. Until the advent of antibiotics, it was STILL the case that you were vastly more likely to die of an infection in a hospital than at home. You’re still more likely to get one in a hospital, of course, but it’s less likely to kill you now.