The Silence of the Rands

From our guest blogger Juliette


Well, I concede defeat. In the space of a mere 75 pages, my hatred for the mind-blowingly cold, humourless, conceited and unlikeable Dagny Taggart has grown to truly alarming levels. In fact, it's actually come to exceed the contempt I have for for Polly Toynbee. And if you're a regular reader, you'll know that's really, really saying something.

In fact, the only way I'm ever going to get any pleasure out of this book is if she meets an untimely end at the hands of a particularly twisted serial killer.

As this seems somewhat unlikely - after all, she's supposed to be the god damn heroine - I've put the book aside in disgust. Well, at least it might come in handy for squashing spiders.

However, a girl can dream. So here's a brief outline of how I'd like the book to go from this point onwards...


THE SILENCE OF THE RANDS

by Juliette


'Who is John Galt?'

The words took Clarice Starling by surprise as she stepped into Crawford's office. The distinguished looking grey haired man was sitting behind his desk, apparently deep in thought, and had spoken almost offhandedly. She struggled to retain her composure and think on her feet. His good opinion meant a lot to her. Perhaps more than it should. And of course, she already knew the answer to his question. As did every trainee at the FBI.

'John Galt - it's the name we're giving to the new serial killer, sir. The one who's killed eight people in the last six months. Four men, four women. He cuts off their skin - that's his trademark. And we're still no closer to finding him.'

Crawford smiled slightly, as if impressed by her speed and alertness of mind.

'And what do the victims have in common?'

'They're all obnoxious, sir.' Clarice spoke with more confidence now, sure of her subject. 'He's targeting arrogant humourless rich assholes who think they're God because they've made a few quid ripping off gullible idiots. Already, he's claimed the lives of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, Mark Thatcher and Jeffrey Archer. And although we haven't found a body, Craig David was reported missing last week.'

'Very good,' Crawford said warmly. Something darkened in his eyes as he spoke again. 'Clarice - I have an assignment for you. I must warn you, it's dangerous and it's difficult. But it could help us catch this man. Have you heard of Hannibal Lecter?'

Something cold ran up the back of Clarice's neck.

'Hannibal the cannibal,' she said quietly.

Crawford nodded slightly.

'He's a psychopath. but he's a brilliant mind. And with our investigation having reached a dead end, this man is our only hope. Go to him, Clarice. For my sake. Ask him about John Galt.'

*

In The Sunnyvale Home for Homicidal Maniacs, a long echoing corridor extended before Clarice. An expressionless turnkey opened a heavily barred door to let her through.

'Don't get too close to any of the cells,' he warned her tersely. 'Stay in the middle.'

She nodded numbly. Then she began walking down the corridor, tiny and alone. Insane, twisted faces appeared at the bars on either side of her, as she passed the psychopaths' cells. Snatches of sentences drifted to reach her, hissed and gibbered from the lunatics' twisted mouths.

'Actually, I'm going to vote for Gordon Brown at the next election -'

'I think Katie Price came across really well in that ITV interview -'

'Well I think Noirin was really sweet, it's not her fault those weirdos all fancied her on Big Brother -'

A chill ran up her back, and she quickened her pace. The words implied a depth of insanity that made the ground open up before her feet. She desperately wanted to turn back, but forced herself to walk on, approaching the cell at the end. A man was standing in the middle of the cell with his back to her. He made no move of recognition, and she could not tell whether he had heard her footsteps approaching. She forced herself to speak confidently, and not to let her voice falter.

'Doctor Lecter?'

He turned slowly at the sound of her voice. His eyes were dark red and oddly reptilian.

'Who is John Galt?'

Clarice took a step back, unable to help herself.

'How did you know I was going to ask you that?'

'Crawford sent you, didn't he? Because you're still no closer to catching Mr John Galt. I gather that Craig David may be his newest victim. What a bad boy he is.'

'Doctor Lecter - help me,' Clarice burst out impulsively. 'Even as we speak, another rich obnoxious entitled asshole may be facing certain death. You understand John Galt, don't you? Who is he? Who is he, and why is he doing this?'

'First, tell me something in exchange, Clarice. Quid pro quo.'

She stared at him. The dark red eyes stared back at her. A moment of pure electricity passed between them. She felt herself blushing slightly. For a murderous cannibal nutjob, he was kind of cute.

'What - what do you want to know?'

His voice was soft, implacable. 'What did you dream of last night, Clarice?'

'It - it was - it was a bad dream I sometimes have. A memory from childhood.'

Silence pressed in around them for long seconds. Finally, she spoke again, as if hypnotised or drugged.

'When I was young, we lived on a farm. There was a family who lived next door to us. They were called the Rands. God, they were weirdos. Fanatically right wing Russian fruit-loop neocons, with the most fucked up ideas about life, sex and the universe you ever imagined. They were all butt ugly, and wore more gold jewellery than Mr T, and looked like they'd just stepped off a Nazi propaganda poster. Someone ought to have banned them under the Race Relations act.'

In her mind, Clarice was remembering those strange, hauntingly ugly faces. A family that could have turned Julie Burchill into a raving anti-semite within minutes of meeting them. Cold sweat had broken out on her forehead. Suddenly she was no longer in the Sunnyvale Home for Homicidal Maniacs. She was ten years old and walking alone across dark fields. Hearing the deafening, discordant sound of the unthinkable.

'One night, I was coming home from the barn when I heard voices coming from the Rands' house. They were screaming that their daughter Ayn had just got a fuck off six figure book deal despite being incapable of writing a realistic or sympathetic character if her life depended on it. It was the most terrible sound I ever heard in my life. And that's what I hear at night, Doctor Lecter. I hear thse Rands, screaming, near the barn...'

*

'Who is John Galt? It's the name police are giving to the serial killer who has been terrorising obnoxious rich assholes across America...'

Dagny Taggart sighed impatiently, turned off the news and put on a CD. She did so with the rare speed and deftness which characterised everything she did. Ever since she had been a small child, Dagny Taggart had had a rare ability to put on CDs. While other children fumbled and dropped the silvery discs, she had always been able to manipulate them with an effortless fluid dexterity that was almost godlike. Really, it was amazing how much better she was than everyone else. The song came on immediately.

'She's an American girl...'

She sang along to the music as she drove on through the night. Dagny Taggart had a rare ability to sing harmoniously, and had done ever since she was a small child. It was little wonder she had so effortlessly ascended the ranks at her father's company, in a series of promotions that had absolutely nothing to do with nepotism and she'd sack anyone who said any different. Dagny Taggart had a rare ability to sack anyone who said any different, and had done ever since she was a small child.

Parking outside her apartment block, she got out of her car. There was nobody in sight except a man on crutches, laboriously attempting to get a cumbersome piece of furniture into the back of a van. Dagny stepped towards him. She owed it to the small irrelevant people around her, to assist them in endeavours that came so hard to them and so effortlessly to her. Dagny Taggart had a rare ability to get cumbersome pieces of furniture into the back of a van, and had done ever since she was a small child.

'Do you need any help, lesser mortal?'

'Thank you. That would be very kind.'

His voice was mumbling and strange. She barely noticed, intent as she was on getting the cumbersome bit of furniture into the back of the van, with the single minded determination which characterised everything she did. As she climbed into the back of the van to pull it in, she noticed the stranger stepping towards her. Dagny Taggart had a rare ability to notice strangers stepping towards her, and had done ever since she was a small child.

'Are you an obnoxious rich asshole?'

She stared at him in confusion, the words only beginning to sink into her mind. Then, as the chloroform soaked pad pressed down over her face, the truth hit her with the power and speed of a sledgehammer.

Oh my God, Dagny Taggart thought starkly. It's John Galt.

Then there was nothing but a featureless field of grey.

(To be continued. Maybe. If anyone gives a fuck. Let's face it, if you've never read Atlas Shrugged AND Silence of the Lambs, this parody will mean cock all to you. So I'm basically speaking to about three people. Hope you're all having a good weekend anyway...)

J x

Editorial note

This was really funny when I read it last night, which is why I have to post it.

Atlas Bugged

From our guest blogger Juliette.



Following my recent musings on whether or not to read Ayn Rand, I couldn't find The Fountainhead - and thought I'd go straight for the motherlode. So I've started reading Atlas Shrugged with some curiosity.

First, the good. Ayn Rand's prose style is way, way better than I was expecting. In fact, I'd say that she is, technically, an extremely good writer.

But I have to say, sixty pages in, it's still not gripping or inspiring me.

This is probably because I want to attack her cast of smug, annoying assholes with a length of two by four.

I have never in my life read a book packed to capacity with so many toxically self-satisfied, unbelievably unlikeable pricks. So far, I particularly hate the so-called heroine, Dagny Taggart
(all Ayn Rand's characters have names like movie stars in Jackie Collins bonkbusters. Don't even get me started on Midas Mulligan.)

Dagny Taggart - who, like the heroine of Cassandra's Conflict, really isn't classically beautiful at all - is a world-class pain in the rectum. She's always doing things like gazing out of her office window at the ant like hordes far below. And constantly thinking how superior she is to the little people around her, with their petty lives. And how she has no interest in anything in life apart from her family business and, as a child, mathematics (which must make her fun to sit next to at dinner parties.) And how her unique energy, vision and talent have seen her rise - with incredible speed and ease - to become Head of Operations at Taggart Trains.

You can't help thinking that this extraordinarily rapid rise through the ranks may have something to do with the fact that HER FATHER OWNED THE FRIGGING COMPANY.

But this is clearly something which has never occurred to her.

Likewise, I dare say Kim Jong Il frequently pats himself on the back for his astounding achievements in life.

'Just think. Twenty years ago, I was the obscure eldest son of the Dear Leader. Now, through pure talent and hard work, I've managed to become the Dear Leader myself. Kiss my ass, little people. Rock and roll.'

I haven't got to the Big Message Bit yet. But - having read a few reviews, and knowing the basic storyline - I can see it approaching me like an oncoming train with every passing sentence.

People who make a lot of money do so because they have vision, genius and unlimited creative energy - and we ordinary, little people should be grateful to have such godlike entities in our midst.

This was clearly written by a woman who had never heard of Jeffrey Archer, Sir Fred Goodwin or Katie Price.

If they were to fuck off to some deserted island (oh, if only), I sincerely doubt that the world would grind to a halt.

Although of course, I might be wrong.

I can see it now. London has become a burning, dystopian wilderness. Weeping commoners lurch through the crumbling streets like haggard ghosts, tearing at their hair as they survey the nightmarish desolation before them. Desperate cries ring out through the rubble, rising through the smoke towards an unseen and indifferent god...

'Have mercy! Who will steal our profits now!'

'Come back! We can't live without your awful ghost-written books about ponies!'

Meanwhile, on an idyllic deserted island, Fred, Jeffrey and Katie are having a gang bang (apologies for the haunting image). Musing on how much better life is, now they're no longer surrounded by the intellectual midgets, petty detractors and small-minded fools who have held back their titanic genius in the regular world - which rewards banality, dishonesty and mediocrity, and fears and punishes true visionary greatness such as they possess.

Before, hopefully, they're all eaten by a passing shark.

It takes quite something to make me feel like a commie.

But - by popular consensus - Ayn Rand really was quite something.


Posted by Juliette who is being brave and reading Atlas Shrugged

Editorial footnote

Its an allegory.

Katie and Peter Stateside : Reality Bites

From our favourite guest blogger Juliette


I've just been reading about the Katie Price and Peter Andre separation.

Which, I must say, doesn't particularly surprise me. For as I may have told you before, their Stateside show has become something of a guilty pleasure chez Juliette.

As with so much reality TV, including Rock Of Love and Jodie Marsh : Who'll Take Her Up The Aisle, Katie and Peter was far darker and more complex than it was ever - or will ever be - given credit for. IMHO, reality TV is only ever as dumb, clever, banal or insightful as the person watching it. Because nobody, ever, is a good enough actor or actress to conceal all traces of their true self from cameras when they're working without a script and being filmed at random intervals. In situations like that, the underlying personality has absolutely nowhere to hide.

Oh, you can try to show the cameras exactly what you want to show them, and nothing more.

Trouble is, it doesn't always quite work like that.

Ask Les Dennis.

Or Vanessa Feltz.

I defy Barbara Vine herself to create characters as complex and terrifyingly memorable as some of the folks I've seen on 'mindless' trash TV.

Take the obsessively needy, cruel, controlling, sinister and insecure Rex and his passive-aggressive nightmare of a girlfriend Nicole on last year's Big Brother - a relationship of such darkly, disturbingly compelling strangeness as to make the goriest car crash resemble Mamma Mia.

Take the haunting malignity of the (mercifully now forgotten) Nicola McLean on last year's I'm A Celebrity, with her call-centre voice, and her space-hopper boobs, and her thin veneer of perky good-fellowship stretched wafer-thin over bottomless chasms of bitterness, resentment and malice. She was like what would have happened if Hammer had ever made a movie about an Essex hairdresser possessed by the devil.

And nowhere were these dark complexities of character more visible to the sentient viewing public than on 'Katie and Peter : Stateside.'

While I'm far from a fan, Katie Price fascinated me like a particularly large snake in the reptile house. I'm completely astounded by the praise showered on her 'warmth' and 'reality' in some quarters - which makes me wonder whether the brain-dead chav fangirls in question even count as sentient beings as opposed to members of the vegetable kingdom. La Price has the coldest eyes and voice you're likely to see and hear this side of 'Serial Killers - Before They Were Famous' (Incidentally, don't even think about stealing that idea. I'm pitching it to ITV2 next week. I've already got footage of Aileen Wuornos in a staff training video for Wal-Mart, and Dennis Nielsen playing a sheep in his school nativity play. If I can only snap up that tape of Fred West auditioning for Blind Date in 1985, this could be the show that makes my fortune.)

'Katie and Peter - Stateside' made for fascinating, if chilling, viewing. Katie's almost inhuman coldness and joylessness - her granite-hard face lit up solely when someone mentioned money or plastic surgery - was counterbalanced by a husband so spectacularly cheerful, good-natured and dumb, he made the famous labrador Marley look like Vladimir Putin. Peter bumbled about chirpily, losing car keys and wiping kids' faces, weathering his wife's arbitrary and venomous insults with the bewilderment of a randomly kicked puppy - only to be immediately distracted by a bowl of spaghetti or a brightly coloured bouncing object being waved up and down in front of his nose. You got the feeling his brain cells had to jump up and down and wave to one another to attract one another's attention, for all the world like like fans at at a Steve Brookstein concert.

And whenever they were hugging or kissing, the body language and expressions were so palpably one-sided, it reminded me of nothing more than a dramatic moment of betrayal in a soap opera. You know the sort of situation where pretty-but-treacherous Barbie's secretly arranged to have loving-and-unsuspecting husband Ken bumped off by a hitman so she can collect the insurance money?

The sort of situation where Barbie hangs up the phone on the hitman as Ken comes into the room, he asks her who that was, and she says quickly that it was a wrong number?

The sort of situation where Ken then says, 'I love you so much, darling,' and Barbie says 'I love you too' ?

The sort of situation where Ken then hugs Barbie impulsively and passionately, and Barbie stares over Ken's back, and the camera closes in on Barbie's cold, unblinking face right before the closing credits start rolling?

Well, Katie and Peter's onscreen moments of intimacy were just exactly like that.

Always.

So it doesn't surprise me that, after four years of this sort of thing, one of Peter's brain cells finally succeeded in attracting the attention of the other three - semaphoring SHE'S MUGGING YOU OFF, MATE across the vast empty stadium inside his head.

Although I would have thought that the split would cost them both something very important in the public eye.

She gave him marketability. He gave her likeability.

I've no idea what the next chapter might be in this particular saga. In fact, in the normal run of things, I would strongly suspect their separation of being a PR stunt ('Jordan - My Divorce Hell EXCLUSIVE' - 'Jordan - I Want Pete Back EXCLUSIVE' - 'Katie and Peter ; The Reconciliation Diaries' - 'Jordan and Pete renew wedding vows in lavish ceremony, exclusive pictures inside' - etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.)

However, I was proved rather embarrassingly wrong on that front re St Jade (who is now up in heaven screaming racist abuse at the pretty angels, bless her.) After several months of sneering that her illness was all a vast PR stunt - how gullible were some people, funny how she suddenly got cancer when her public profile had slumped dramatically, she'd somehow make a last-minute miraculous recovery and write a bestselling memoir about it, surprise surprise - I was rather chastened to hear that she'd just snuffed it.

And am hence apt to shut my mouth on similar issues in the future.

But whatever happens next, I'm sure it'll make great TV...

J x
Posted by juliette


Editorial note from Henry
As I heard the news on Twitter yesterday from @Skynews this was my response

@SkyNews Utter bollocks Katie is doing it to drum up publicity & sell stuff, They'll be making up in two months time for more publicity