I’m still grinding my way through Atlas Shrugged (I’ve made it past the 300 page mark! I’m a quarter of the way through! … Urg.) But, it also appears to be taking over my life.
For instance, The Colbert Report talked about The Atlasphere: a dating site for fans of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. (It starts at 1:55 in the clip below.)
(Wowza. Plus, given the skeeviness of the sex scenes in this book, I would not want to date anyone taking their pointers from it.)
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I also joined a new gaming club, for board games and card games and the like. I’ve learned two new games in the last few weeks. Both of them are a lot of fun… and both of them involve building train systems.
Welcome to “Ticket to Ride” and “Trans America.”
And finally, when I was just talking (read: venting) to Anna about the book, my playlist comes to Billy Joel singing about living in a small dying industrial town, Allentown:
Atlas Shrugged is taking over my life!
But at least the extra bits are really fun.
When I was looking around for discussions about The Atlasphere, I ran across this blog, which also discusses how pro-rape Ayn Rand often comes across as, and how that really would be cause for concern when it comes to an online dating service:
http://franklycurious.com/index.php?itemid=3792
So far, no actual rape in Atlas Shrugged, mostly just rape-adjacent sex.
It makes a certain amount of (disturbing) sense: If you like power and admire people who take what they want while disapproving of people who think of others before themselves, you’d be pro-rape.