militant gigolo primitive goes shopping for a book

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6190759

Oh my.

The militant gigolo-in-training primitive:

armyowalgreens  (1000+ posts)      Fri Jul-31-09 03:49 AM
Original message
 
I saw a big mural of "Atlas Shrugged" painted on the wall at Barnes & Noble

There were books painted all over the walls.

Of Mice and Men
The Catcher in the Rye
Frankenstein
etc...

Tons of classics.

But as I looked across the store examining all the different book paintings, my eyes fell upon Atlas Shrugged. I immediately wanted to say something to the person working at the customer service desk. But I realized that she probably wouldn't give a crap just like the majority of the population.

So I picked up my copy of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" and walked out.

Amos Moses (189 posts)      Fri Jul-31-09 03:55 AM
Response to Original message
 
1. something I found over at RevLeft
 
after which is posted some sort of chart which might, or might not, be of interest to Ayn Rand fans here; franksolich think's it pretty stupid

Norrin Radd  (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 04:01 AM
Response to Original message
 
3. Yeah, I never got the Rand=classic consensus. In fact, nothing should be hailed a classic in it's own century; that way, we could weed out the pretenders.

MrScorpio  (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 04:36 AM
Response to Reply #3

7. Seeing how Jack Kirby's Silver Surfer was so 20th Century

I think now that we can call it a bonafide classic

Naturyl  (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 04:12 AM
Response to Original message
 
4. "Atlas Shrugged" is the best-titled libertarian screed ever.

The title really says it all. Throwing the weight of the world off your shoulders and living only for self-interest. Leaving behind all compassion and conscience. Rand's anarcho-capitalist utopia is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Hmmm.  One wonders when the natural primitive, a bobbling primitive with a few more social skills, is not self-interested.  It must be when franksolich is asleep.

armyowalgreens  (1000+ posts)      Fri Jul-31-09 06:19 AM
Response to Reply #5
 
12. I think I might attempt to read it in the coming months...

I've read a lot of excerpts and summaries. But I've never actually read the book. And I look kind of foolish mocking the book when I've never read it.

No, no, no, that won't do.

The militant gigolo-in-traning primitive needs to pick up the book How To Pick Up Women Twice Or More Your Age, or a textbook on cosmetology.

TexasProgresive (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 07:43 AM
Response to Reply #12
 
14. Thank you

Not for thinking about reading Rand but the admitting that it is kind of foolish to comment on something that you haven't personal experienced.

This seems to be one of the marks of the last quarter of the 20th century where people gave more credence to commentators and less to their own judgment.

wickerwoman (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 04:29 AM
Response to Original message
 
6. That's what happens when you chose literary classics based on the cover art. 

I think those murals are standards... I've seen them at almost every B&N I've been to.

Are_grits_groceries  (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 07:13 AM
Response to Original message
 
13. Those pictures have been up in all stores ever since BN decided to use them. I have no idea why they picked them. It isn't some sudden idea to take advantage of the uptick in interest. You are also likely to get a reserved response from a clerk because they don't want to get in some discussion that goes wrong. You never know who you are talking to, and what the motive is. I worked in a store where fundies would try to trip people and get them to say something they didn't like.

I worked in bookstores for years. People would accuse us of putting Ann Coulter in the back and hidden away. Oh how I longed to say we held a burning of them behind the store and had burned certain herbs to ward off the evil.

[The Village Idiot]

Very often you go to a bookstore to find they bought 3 copies of the latest conservative best sellers and have tables heaped with liberal books nobody wants to buy.

[GOBUCKS]

So I picked up my copy of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" and walked out.

This is exactly the sort of thing that leads DUmmies to having negative experiences with the police.

But why all the discussion of classics, and not one word about DUmmy Mythsaje? Are none of these people
interested in paranormal sex crimes?

[franksolich]

Very often you go to a bookstore to find they bought 3 copies of the latest conservative best sellers and have tables heaped with liberal books nobody wants to buy.

No kidding.  It wasn't until about two years ago that a familiar phenemeon in bookstores and thrift stores in Nebraska finally at long last evaporated.

For years and years and years, in fact for a little more than two decades, there were always stacks of of a certain book, brand-new and still covered in plastic, the autobiography of Genevieve Ferrari, or whatever her name was, who ran for the vice presidency along with Walter Mundane.

In 2006, twenty-two years after the 1984 presidential election, they were still around, in stacks of 20 or 50.  Even in the "12 for dollar" bins, they wouldn't sell.

I dunno why this phenomenon is now extinct; for a while there, I thought it was going to outlast me.  Ominously, I'm begining to see more and more stacks of another book, brand-new and still shrinked-wrapped, about being hopefully audacious.

That phenomenon might outlast me.

[delilahmused]

Are_grits_groceries  (1000+ posts)        Fri Jul-31-09 07:13 AM
Response to Original message
 
13. Those pictures have been up in all stores ever since BN decided to use them. I have no idea why they picked them. It isn't some sudden idea to take advantage of the uptick in interest. You are also likely to get a reserved response from a clerk because they don't want to get in some discussion that goes wrong. You never know who you are talking to, and what the motive is. I worked in a store where fundies would try to trip people and get them to say something they didn't like.

Now what the heck is that about? A store that "fundies" frequent? Did it work in a Christian bookstore (without turning to stone, evidently)? Because I never tried to trip up a sales clerk in any store, just ask where an item is, had they heard anything about it, etc. Perhaps being asked about merchandise is a problem for some DUmmies.

I worked in bookstores for years. People would accuse us of putting Ann Coulter in the back and hidden away. Oh how I longed to say we held a burning of them behind the store and had burned certain herbs to ward off the evil.

Yeah, cuz next thing you know those fundies will be in trying to trip you up by asking whether you've got any in the back, or when you're getting more in. Besides, that pesky free speech stuff keeps people from following the liberal statist's latest panic-stricken trend.

Cindie

[Texacon]

Don't guess it dawned on the DUmmie that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is celebrating its 50 year anniversary.

I just got my copy .... my 15 year old daughter has started it.

KC

[Chris_]

Don't guess it dawned on the DUmmie that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is celebrating its 50 year anniversary.

I just got my copy .... my 15 year old daughter has started it.

KC

Or that - thanks to Lord Ø and the feckless wonders in Congress - sales of that one book in the past year or so have trebled the sales of that book in any other 12 month period since it's original printing.

But of course it has nothing to do with the fact that the times we're living in now closely resemble - courtesy of Lord Ø and the feckless wonders in Congress - the more rediculous and comical parts of Rand's book, just before the story got really scary.  Nope.  Nothing at all to do with that.  It's just a coincidence.

[BlueStateSaint]

While travelling to and coming from a town in SE NYS yesterday, I managed to read 120 or so pages of Atlas Shrugged.  I found the attitudes that Ayn Rand gave to the academics of the novel to be eerily similar to those seemingly espoused by today's academics.  Of over 1000 pages, I'm only to page 186 or so.

[JohnnyReb]

Damn, I've never been in a Barnes & Noble. The DUmmie was in there looking at tons of classic's???? Why haven't ya'll informed me about the classic comic books at Barnes & Noble.....reckon that got any 1950's Superman and Batman comics left?

[Chris_]

Damn, I've never been in a Barnes & Noble. The DUmmie was in there looking at tons of classic's???? Why haven't ya'll informed me about the classic comic books at Barnes & Noble.....reckon that got any 1950's Superman and Batman comics left?

Naw.  They were referring to the stacks and stacks of Archie and Jughead Digest they were perusing.

[The Village Idiot]

Naw.  They were referring to the stacks and stacks of Archie and Jughead Digest they were perusing.

yea, ever since Archie proposed to the brunette girl sales picked up

[Chris_]

So I picked up my copy of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" and walked out.

Value bin by the front doors, $3.59

[Duke Nukum]

One of our B&N's also has the audacity to have portraits of Beethoven in the music Dept.!  I thought about saying something to the clerk but then I found a DVD of Fidelio and handed it to her so I could pay for it and left.

I know it doesn't make sense but neither does the DUmmie's OP.  Why is he buying a book that was irrelevant 6 years ago while complaining about a book that is still relevant more than 50 years later?

And if books can't be considered classics within their own century where would that have left Hemingway or Steinbeck?  Or what about The Great Gatsby?  Or The Accidental Tourist?  To Kill a Mockingbird?  Catch-22?  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?  Or the greatly revered left-wing classic On the Road?

And then what about a book published in 1999 or 2000 that is really really good, does it get to be a "classic" as soon as the calendar read 2001?  What if an even better book is published January 2, 2001, it can't be a classic until January 1, 2101?

[thundley4]

I'll bet the DUmmies had no problem with display.

[Chris_]

Value bin by the front doors, $3.59

It's by the front door, because they WANTED the damned thing stolen.  The $3.59 price tag is just to soak some cash outa the extra-stupid DUmmies.

[AllosaursRus]

I worked in bookstores for years. People would accuse us of putting Ann Coulter in the back and hidden away. Oh how I longed to say we held a burning of them behind the store and had burned certain herbs to ward off the evil.

Aren't these the same asshats who were bragging about hiding Ann's books behind some libwral trash a few months ago?

No hypocrisy there, eh, DUmbass?