Doctor Who-The-Hell-Wrote-This-Garbage

We’ve always been close right? You sometimes read blog posts I write. Occasionally you laugh at a line. From time to time, you even share them on Facebook because your soul is full to the brim with kindness today. That said, I think we need to step it up a bit with some serious sharing and caring. I’ll start. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. Five rough weeks to be exact. I want to believe that it is going to get better but I know deep in my gut that it won’t. I need to tell someone why.

Doctor Who has gotten so bad.

At first I thought, like everyone in denial, that they are just having an off episode. It’ll get better. Oh, what a naïve fool I am! The viewing figures have even been going down by millions – that’s loads! Yes, I care about this topic so much I even did what journalists might call ‘research’ but I call ‘googling’. The first episode (The Bells of Saint John) got viewing figures of 6.18 million and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS had 4.9 million (more info here). Soon it will just be me and a handful of British geeks, listlessly playing with their toy sonic screwdrivers, half watching and half sobbing. Then crywanking during the end credits. I describe dystopias better than Orwell.

Rose would know what to do.
(image: fanpop.com)

Anyway. Here are the main thoughts that have been niggling away at my subconscious for some time now. They refuse to leave my brain until they are typed up, read and set up a brand new home in your brain. Oh and if you don’t watch Doctor Who, this probably won’t make a whole lotta sense – I’ll continue to write about periods and chick stuff next week. Enjoy. 

1. I keep figuring out the ending half way through the episode.

Indeed, I’m intellectually brilliant as well as beautiful but that’s not important right now. I’m not figuring them out because of my awesome brain power; they are just fuckin’ obvious. The leaf of her dead mum? Bitch please. That dead-mum-leaf might as well have had a big neon sign next to it saying ‘I AM THE RESOLUTION TO THIS CRISIS’. PFFT.

*slow clap*
(image: hypable.com)

Also – a dead mum AND a child singing? Both of those things have to be done well not to be saccharine as hell but TOGETHER DONE BADLY?

What an annoying cunt.
(image: geeksmash.com)

2. There doesn’t seem to be any plot.

Common sense tells me that there must be quite a few people who work on making a TV show. Accordingly, the odds are that someone would have noticed. Needn’t be a writer. Has someone’s PA not happened to be listening to a read through and remarked: ‘This is weird. I don’t feel emotionally invested in these characters at all,’ before Steven Moffat promptly slaps her around the face and beats her whilst shouting ‘SAY I’M BETTER THAN RUSSELL T. DAVIES! SAY IT!’

He probably doesn’t do that.  It would be awful if we all started a rumour that he does that at writers’ meetings when anyone criticises his scripts.

I liked Donna because she never tried to have sex with the Doctor.
(image: fanpop.com)

You don’t have to be a professional script writer to see that the plot just isn’t there. The public isn’t stupid; they stop watching stuff that isn’t good. Sure, there’s a big ‘reveal’ coming up but the other episodes are supposed to have mini arcs with little hints that build up the series to a woah-dude-crescendo. Clara is currently less endearing than Amy which is quite an achievement. She’s not a doormat; Clara is tough and likes adventure… but they have stopped character development at those two qualities. The traits that every companion has.

3. Why does Clara’s hair bounce so much?

It wasn’t obvious until I read this; the author noted that every time Clara moves, her hair moves. This sounds unimportant until you notice it. Then you can’t see anything else. Every assorted alien, creature and demon could be surrounding a completely naked Clara and you would still be watching her hair with fascination as it bounced for side to side.

On the upside. If she’s dead, her hair definitely won’t move.
(image: screenrant.com)

In the last episode they had her hair up. Have people been writing in to the BBC complaining about how utterly offensive it is to have her roaming locks all over their television screens? A noble cause if e’er I saw it.

4. Yahoo answers speculations about Clara Oswald’s origin are funny.

Here are the best explanations posted by anonymous users:

‘Maybe it is something to do with Amy and Rory and River! And children!’

‘Clara has nothing to do with freaking Rose Tyler,’

‘Even the Doctor would probably be able to tell that he was related to someone before snogging them.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about!’

‘My theory is that she is hot’

You are welcome.

5. Russell T. Davies was better. I see that now.

When Steven Moffat took over, I praised him like every other schmuck. I kept saying things like ‘Well Girl in the Fireplace is one of my favourite episodes.’ Wasn’t the fez line funny? Oh how I laughed! Oh how we all laughed, thigh-slapped and updated our Facebook statuses with such glee! ‘Fezzes are cool,’ happily chuckled past me. Past me is, was and always will be an idiot.

I recently read the original scripts from David Tennant’s (and Russell T. Davies’)  final episodes The End of Time. I love those episodes. The Doctor isn’t calm or collected or in control. It’s totally frickin’ epic; it goes way beyond a kids show about space aliens. He dies alone in the TARDIS. Isn’t that kind of heart breaking and wonderfully poignant at the same time? No? Just me? I’ll show myself out.

The most difficult thing about seeing the past,present and future is that you know when TV shows are going to have an off-season.
(image: vickywong.org)

Okay, I’ll try to negotiate my way around the territory of incoherent rambles. Davies attracted an audience beyond Sci Fi fans. Getting nerds to watch Doctor Who is like shooting fish in a barrel. Fish that can’t find their contact lenses. Achieving a loyal audience consisting of those who do not own any special edition Battlestar Galactica box sets requires making a good TV show. Actually I own that box set, so lets say… Star Trek: The Next Generation?

NERD ALERT
(image: contramundum.tumblr.com)

I’m not a nerd at heart. I don’t want to sit around for hours discussing technical slip ups and plot inconsistencies. I enjoy the approach of Red Dwarf which accumulated a staggering number of plot holes and loose ends at the end of Series 2. What they did was show a very quick Star Wars style introduction at the beginning of Series 3 that described the stuff that had occurred. The writing goes by so fast that you would have to record it then regularly pause it to read every word. I like that. Incidentally, having been revived after a ten year hiatus, the new series of Red Dwarf that aired this year was totally awesome. So it’s not all doom and gloom for fans of Sci Fi!

(image: wikipedia.org)

So why do I care about Doctor Who being bad? Well… I suppose… Mainly due to fact that… It used to be brilliant. It should still be brilliant. You’ve got this fantastic back story of the Time War; you have the Doctor with all the clever in the universe but all of this loneliness, isolation and assumed responsibility; and finally, the changing companions immediately facilitate exploration of someone’s life in depth. Jesus, I sound like I’m doing an undergraduate dissertation on it. What I’m saying is… With all it’s got going for it…

WHY CAN’T THEY MAKE IT GOOD?

Has the entire writing team suddenly suffered a traumatic breakup? Are they all in bed eating ice cream and watching Friends repeats? Or have they been infiltrated by a terrorist organisation that wants to undermine the quality of Doctor Who in order to bring Western civilization to its knees? They’re making what anyone can see is bad TV in the knowledge that there is a guaranteed audience that will watch Doctor Who no matter how rubbish it gets. It’s a waste of a series. I for one would rather have no Doctor than this badly scripted buffoon guy appearing every week.

Everything might turn around this Saturday. Clara’s hair could remain stationary; no tiny chanteuse may perform; the Doctor won’t ride some kind of space bike for no apparent reason. Given what has happened thus far it doesn’t seem likely. So this one is a bit of a write off (lol), there’s always next series. Also – Rose is in the finale. I love Rose.

And we’ll always have something no-one can take away from us: the fez joke.

Here is a cat in a fez:

(image: cheezburger.com)

MSN: A Requiem.

by Colin Surname.

Today, well-known computering firm Microsoft are starting the retirement process of their once-popular instant messaging program MSN Messenger (The ‘MSN’ stands for ‘MesSeNger’). This news is particularly wounding to those of us who were teenagers within the first decade of this millennium (‘the ooies’), or at least pretended to be.

Messenger was generally used by smiling women with an interest in movie. image: MSN.com

We grew up with it, you see. We were on the computer all the time before it was cool. Whilst you were out having physical contact and getting sufficient sleep, we made friends all over the world. They might not be able to lend us sugar, but they can be there for us when we need to talk at 5am.

I don’t think of MSN as a close friend per se – more of a chatty client. Though its low self-esteem caused it to constantly try to ‘update’ itself and fit in with the social networking crowd, it provided us with many formative experiences along the way:

• Our intellectual growth: from textspeak, through proper English, to ALL CAPS OMG
• Our first long-distance relationship
• Our first online nudity
• Our first long-distance breakup
• Seeing our very own parents come to discover Messenger
• Blocking our very own parents
• Minesweeper Flags

MSN, or “Windows Live Messenger” as it was known to morons, had a famous cry, “Dooty-doo!”. Despite limp imitations such as Skype’s “Bwouwup” and Facebook’s “Buwoo!”, “Dooty-doo!” remains unassailable and will always resound in our (L) of (L)s.

Jen asks about her own hair. Sally laughs in the face of “Loading”. They both go 2 movie. Image: Softmaximum.com

Messenger had a lot of innovation – for example, it was the first IM client to introduce the ‘Nudge’. This feature brought online communication one step closer to real life by emulating that point in a conversation where they look away from you for a second, so you jump on their foot and do a primal scream.

The Group Conversation feature, meanwhile, gave us the opportunity to form vast committees of friends and have a big, focussed discussion. Sure, most of the people dropped out within the first minute, but that Malaysian guy you ended up with knew a lot about chemtrails.

MSN’s later years were not moments of pride: it would often be found in the company of cheap young pleasuredroids with algorithmically-unlikely female names. Some of us were driven away by late-added features, such as Winks, display pictures being on the left, and fewer people signing in. Still, MSN recognised the different fonts and colours in our voices, and could always express whatever little yellow face, animal impression or lewd, poorly-animated custom gesture we wanted to make.

“That which we cannot say through an Emoticon, we must pass over in words.” – wiggy_wittgenstein2004@hotmail.com Image: miranda-im.org

MSN Messenger will actually be continuing its service in mainland China, where it still enjoys widespread use, though only two unique messages are allowed: “I love our country” and “I agree”. For the rest of us, though, our beloved interface will soon be no more, whenever Microsoft empties their Recycle Bin.

Goodbye, MSN. I know you’re off to that big instant messaging server in the Skype.

The Top 10 Worst Sex Scenes (that I can think of at the moment)

by Ben Browne, author of The Popcorn Bucket.

If you’re offended by movie shagging, don’t click the links.

Movie sex is very different from actual sex. You don’t need me to tell you that – you have brains. Most of it seems to take place in a parallel universe where bed sheets are L-shaped and there’s no such thing as cellulite or beer bellies. Where are the scenes where one of the lovers has to grovel and bargain for the act to even take place? Where’s the bit where one of them swears the other to secrecy and informs me that if I tell people about this, they’ll deny it? Guess that’s why they call it “Hollyweird”, eh?

Compiling this list, I realised there are very few films that actually contain decent sex. In your bog-standard film, they’re usually eye-rolling affairs that you have to endure in order for the film to move on. Sort of like unskippable YouTube adverts. At worst, they grind everything to a halt and ensnare you in a web of awkward hilarity. This isn’t a definitive, all-time, chiselled-into-concrete top ten, just ones that came to mind when posed this question. This isn’t in any particular order either, so don’t tell me number 6 should be higher or whatever.

1) Daredevil (2003):

Daredevil was a lacklustre superhero outing about a blind lawyer imbued with superhuman abilities who deals with court cases by day and deals out vigilante justice by night. Today it’s only really known as one of the lowest points in Ben Affleck’s career and for introducing the Goth warblings of the aptly-named Evanescence to the world.

Fucks funny: Future husband and wife, Affleck and Jennifer Garner, get their slow motion writhe on in front of a roaring log fire. They touch up each other’s battlescars in a big old heap of cliché. This isn’t the worst offender ever, it just neatly encapsulates most of the laughable tropes associated with love scenes. Last year’s The Dark Knight Rises has a similar scene, but is thankfully handled slightly better. If you could make it through the attached intellectually offensive Entertainment Tonight snippet, you’ll have picked up that we have studio interference to thank for this shite scene. Mercifully, when it came to the director’s cut, this scene is missing- just one of the many reasons the director’s cut is the superior version.

2) The Sweeney (2012):

(image: thefancarpet.com)

The Sweeney is a terrible film based on the gritty ’70s cop drama of the same name. It starred Ray “Cock-er-ney” Winstone and Ben “Plan B” Drew. Having been tasked to review it, I resented every minute of its runtime and couldn’t wait for its laughable finale (an underwhelming car chase through a dreary caravan park) to be over. You know you’re in trouble when even an appearance by Damian Lewis can’t save your film.

Fucks funny: This one is based on the participants, rather than the actual sex, so call me shallow if you want. I had to look away when Ray Winstone and the lovely Hayley Atwell nip off for some celebratory thrustings in a pub toilet. I’ve been a bit in love with Ms. Atwell since she played Peggy Carter in the underrated Captain America film. She’s bloody brilliant. So you can imagine the last thing I want to see is Gravelly Ray jamming his tongue down her throat and mindlessly humping her like a dirty old bulldog. Reading that back, I sound oddly possessive of Ms. Atwell. I’m not. It’s just some day she will be my wife. She WILL. I carved it into my arm and everything.

3) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012):

(image: nextmovie.com)

I don’t actually mind the Twilight franchise. Most of the films are godawful, but then I’m not in the target demographic. I wouldn’t call myself a fan by any stretch, but I certainly don’t possess the searing hatred for it people on the Internet seem to be consumed by. Yes, it is terribly written and yes, there are some insidious moral undercurrents about love and sex due to author Stephenie Meyer’s religious background, but it’s mostly pretty harmless. Breaking Dawn Part 1 also featured a terribrilliant sex scene where the couple destroy a four-poster bed in an Austin Powers-esque bit, but Part 2 takes the cake.

Fucks funny: Drippy newlyweds Bella and Edward (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson) do the maritals in a quaint little cottage. Annoyingly, the film skimps on the details on how two undead beings with no blood running around their bodies can even have sex. It’d be like trying to poke a sock into a bucket of sand. Being rated a 12A, the filmmakers are severely limited in what they can actually show. Usually to get round this, they have the hackneyed close-up of a hand clenching the bedsheets to imply orgasm. Breaking Dawn Part 2 thinks it knows better than that by CGI-ing a golden sparkly mist around Bella’s head when she reaches O-Town. When this happened, I hooted with laughter. It’d be a genius bit of parody if it wasn’t so earnest.

4) The Rock (1996):

It’s the cool thing to hate Michael Bay and most of it is with good reason. However, the only reason I sometimes feel the urge to defend him is because he’s responsible for The Rock, one of my favourite films. If you haven’t seen this thick slab of fun starring Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris, I urge you to do so. It’s your typical “Bayhem” atypically coupled with a strong script, genuinely great performances from the lead actors and a surprisingly complex and sympathetic villain.

Fucks funny: Any Nic Cage sex scene is a bad thing. I just don’t want to see or think of the guy on the job, quite frankly. Stanley Goodspeed’s rooftop love scene with his fiancée makes me cringe every time I see it. His oily commentary coupled with his infamous unhinged expressions cause me to smile and grimace at the same time. This is probably the least offensive entry on the list because the scene is predominantly played for laughs. Also, no-one in their right mind would get down to business to the strains of Elton John’s “Rocket Man”.

5) Monster’s Ball (2001):

Monster’s Ball made some ripples back in 2001 but is now only really remembered for nabbing Halle Berry the Best Actress Oscar for her role as a Leticia, a woman whose husband is on death row. It’s one of those films that seems important at the time, gets nominated for a buttload of awards but fades away from the public consciousness like, well, Evanescence.

Fucks funny: In what should be a touching union of two lost souls finding comfort, Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton go at it hammer and tongs. I have two problems with this. One, Berry’s constant refrain of “make me feel good’ at the start which she strains out with like a toddler having a tantrum in a crowded shopping centre. Two- ol’ William Robert Thornton Esq. who goes through the motions grunting like a winded pensioner and with an unwavering look of boredom on his face.

6) Gigli (2003):

Widely known as the other other low point in Ben Affleck’s career (Jersey Girl represent!) Gigli (pronounced jeel-yee, not “giggly” although the latter is more fitting) is a turgid romantic “comedy” that deals with some slapped together mobster shit. It starred Bennifer Mark I (J-Lo instead of Garner) and was rightfully a box-office bomb.

Fucks funny: After a millennia of leaden dialogue and zero chemistry between Larry (Da Fleck) and Ricki (Lopez), Ricki and Larry return to his apartment and after some painful exchanges and some kissing, J-Lo leans back on the bed and says one of the worst lines in the history of cinema (probably): “It’s turkey time…Gobble gobble!” which has got to be the least attractive cunnilingus come-on ever, apart from something like “Fancy frenching the clam?”. The resulting sex is yawnsome too, but you won’t notice it because you’ll still be reeling from les mots diabolique.

7) The Matrix Reloaded (2003):

Resulting in Phantom Menace levels of disappointment, the hugely anticipated sequel to game-changer The Matrix was released in 2003. The film had a strange preoccupation with the tedious “real world”, meaning audiences were forced to sit through long stretches of boring people talking about their boring problems instead of watching leather-clad badasses flipping off walls ‘n shit killing people multiple times over before they hit the ground. Revolutions is the stinkier turd though.

Fucks funny: Famous anti-actor Keanu Reeves gets hot and heavy with the none too thespianally gifted Carrie-Anne Moss whilst a city-wide underground rave goes on. Swirling dreadlocks, bare feet, nipply tanktops and sweaty slow-motion make this one a killer. The monotonous pulsing music doesn’t help either.

8) The Terminator (1984):

Now, I love me some Terminator. The first film is a stonking classic and Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the best sequels ever made. One of the things that separates The Terminator from its sequels is that at its heart, it’s a love story spanning time itself between Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor (Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton). It’s actually quite touching, but will hurt your head if you think too hard about all the timey-wimey stuff.

Fucks funny: Reese and Connor get funky because they fancy each other and also because of the small matter of saving humanity blah blah blah. It’s the early ’80s so some things can be excused, but by gum, is this bad. The whole act is accompanied by a tender piano rendition of the kick-ass Terminator theme which doesn’t work at all. Also, Reese grips on to Connor’s tits like he’s holding a ladder steady for a builder. Coupled with the fact that they both make faces like the Shepherd’s Pie they had for dinner is repeating on them and you’ve got a fabulously bad love scene. Rest of the film still rocks the shit though.

9) Showgirls (1995):

Showgirls is a legendary capsule of cringe. Fresh from not being able to act in Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley transfers her unacting skills to play Nomi Malone, a drifter who just wants to make it big as a showgirl in Las Vegas. It’s an exploitative, entertainingly crappy film with plenty of nudity on display. You get the feeling it was always destined for a late night Channel 5 slot. It’s also worth checking out if you haven’t, if only for the scene I’m about to describe.

Fucks funny: Nomi seduces Zack (Kyle MacLachlan) and revenge-fucks him in a pool, tastefully surrounded by neon palm tree lights. It all starts fine enough, a little champagne drizzle here, an underwater suck there, but soon the pair unite and Nomi starts thrashing and flailing around like a dolphin having electroshock therapy. As with most of the scenes on this list, the soundtrack takes it to the next echelon of awful.

10) The Room (2003):

Source: theman-cave.com

Man, 2003 was a bad year for sex wasn’t it? I wonder what went wrong. Anyway, Showgirls may be bad, but The Room makes it look like Citizen Kane. This low-budget pet project of weirdo Tommy Wiseau is awful. Everything is off about this film. The dialogue, the acting, the story, the music- everything. It’s pretty much a comprehensive list of how not to make a film. Having said that, it’s funnier than 90% of the comedies out there. It has gained cult status as “the worst film of all time”, but I disrespectfully disagree. The Room, whilst apocalyptically terrible, manages to be incredibly enjoyable. I would say the worst films out there are the ones that aren’t even entertainingly bad. There are often special screenings of The Room around the country and you owe it to yourself to go to one. You’ll never forget it.

Fucks funny: Take your pick. Like the rest of the film, the sex scenes are fantastically shite. Everything is so unremittingly dreadful from the atrocious music to the painful acting. Even the humping is off, at times it looks like he’s thrusting into her thigh or just past her altogether. How bad do you have to be if you can’t figure out what goes where? My personal vote is for any time we see Wiseau’s arse. I could have quite happily lived without knowing what it looked like.

Bad Salad’s Favourite Women – Part 1:

So today is about women, yeah? WRONG. Everyday is about women! We make up over half of the population and deserve maybe, I don’t know… A year? Or just all the time that men get, perhaps? We should probably think about sexual violence and forced marriages for a lot more than a day or a week because those seem like important issues. And are we the only ones who think it is odd that on Radio 4 there is still a programme called ‘Woman’s Hour’ as if the rest of Radio 4 has been reserved for tits, wounds and car explosions? Anyway, if nothing else, today can be an excuse to talk about the women we like who did good things. Here is Part 1 of Bad Salad’s favourite women:

Emina Sabic:

Patti Smith

(image: thelineofbestfit.com)

I love a strong woman. A woman who doesn’t take crap from anybody, a woman who is determined, passionate and full of character. A woman who looks just as good in skinny jeans at the age of 66 as she did when she was 20. I love Patti Smith, the undisputed queen of punk. Her writing, her music, her political stance and her integrity knock my socks off. With consistent fearlessness, she merges poetry and rock n roll into an indestructible partnership of beauty and grit.

These are the reasons why she continues to stand as a magnificent source of inspiration to me and thousands of others across the globe. So enjoy this very important International Women’s Day in the spirit of Patti, and get out there and contribute something fantastic to the world!

Create! Conquer! (Image: rebelfrequencies.net)

Lydia Snodin:

Geordie Shore‘s Charlotte Crosby

I do not watch MTV’s Geordie Shore ironically. Why would I spend time doing something that I don’t actually enjoy? Doing stuff ‘ironically’ is stupid. I either like things or I don’t. The life these guys lead could not be more different from the one I have. I don’t like clubs. I don’t like drinking. And I don’t like cock. But I LOVE Geordie Shore and Charlotte is my favourite. I tried to write something about why I loved it for Bad Salad but I honestly adore it too much to put into words. 

(image: newsrt.co.uk)

Charlotte Crosby is like Karl Pilkington in the sense that she has great comic timing, is naturally very funny and is essentially good natured. The key difference is that all the stuff she says is about pissing the bed or getting cum in her eye. I’m not exaggerating for comic effect when I tell you that I want her to be happy more than I want me to be happy. If we were in a hot air balloon and one of us had to get out in order for the other one to survive, I honestly think she has more to offer the world. She’s about a billion times better than a Radio 4 Woman’s Hour special on the gender pay gap; that sucks balls. Let me demonstrate. She has said this:

(image: jiakkantang.com)

This:

(image: jiakkantang.com)

And finally, the now classic phrase that has been absorbed into the English language like so many Shakespearean idioms:

That’s all. Happy International Women’s Day! Get some cum in your eye to celebrate! Only joking, a woman’s right to choose whether or not she has cum in her eyes was of course legally guaranteed in 1965; we owe our clear vision to those noble women. Ha. Bet you won’t hear THAT on Radio 4! Goodbye!

Top Five Reasons to Love Ayn Rand: Because I couldn’t think of ten!

image: theprovocation.net

Ayn Rand is everyone’s wealth-obsessed, scary grandma. Parents put their children to bed threatening that if they don’t behave and go to sleep, Ayn Rand will pop out of the cupboard and scream about the virtue of selfishness.

People like to poke fun at Ayn Rand for many (justified) reasons. She wrote two of the world’s most “difficult” books, and god knows we don’t like things that are difficult. She tried to do the Louise Brooks haircut and sadly it just made her look like a Slytherin student. She was nasty and mean about pretty much everyone and there was a slightly rapey bit in The Fountainhead. She hated Christmas. She was, all things considered, a batshit insane megalomaniac with weird ideas on right and wrong.

Despite this, I kind of love her. Kind of. And before you search me on Pipl to see where I work and try and get me fired, I DON’T EVEN HAVE A JOB, SO HA HA HA. In your face, overreacting students!

Anyway.

1. She was a batshit insane megalomaniac

image: nndb.com

I don’t think that, in order to be a feminist icon, you have to be nice. You don’t have to have written books on feminism, or even be up to your knees in gender politics – in fact I think it helps if you don’t. Any suggestion that Ayn Rand could be a feminist icon will be forever obliterated by the fact that there was a rapey bit in the Fountainhead, because women can’t really do what they want and get away with it.

And, truth be told, Ayn Rand didn’t give much of a shit about feminism – she believed you were only as good as your ideas, which I can get  behind – although the world she grew up in was one dominated by powerful men (I don’t think you saw a whole lot of female leadership in Soviet Russia). Her main concerns were fetishising the wealthy and convincing everyone that selfishness was a good thing. She did write a series of essays attacking feminism (although she was a staunch pro-choice advocate which is alright by me), arguing that “an ideal woman is a man-worshipper, and an ideal man is the highest symbol of mankind“. She even went so far as to say that, should a female candidate ever run for president, “I vouldn’t vote for her.” Not a shining beacon of sisterhood.

We’ve covered that she was a pretty nasty woman. The fact is, she was – and is – a female individual who will never be forgotten. There is no other woman I can think of who had such outlandish ideas, who so thoroughly believed in her own philosophy, and who jumped headfirst into a man’s world without a backward glance. And one thing is very much certain: she influenced a lot of men. And didn’t have to be even remotely sexy to do it. That’s why she’s one of my favourite women, even though I fully accept that she was a wrong ‘un.

2. I like art and freedom

image: wordpress.com

Art and freedom are undervalued and endangered. When you live in a society where a thousand angry keyboard warriors are calling for a woman to be punished for expressing an opinion, however mean-spirited, freedom is endangered. That’s not freedom of speech: it’s selective freedom from opinions you don’t like.

Now, you have to agree with something in order to like it, and if the majority don’t like it then the Prime Minister gets involved for some reason and I’m going off topic.

I also like art. Not when it’s diluted and easy and nice and everyone likes it and agrees with it like FUCKING MUMFORD AND FUCKING SONS. I don’t know why it is that I like nasty art that people hate – perhaps because it’s a more interesting response. Which is why I fucking love Atlas Shrugged, ridiculous tome of silly that it is – because it’s good, and partly because lots of people hate it (or haven’t read it).

3. She was a big fan of Disney.

image: wikimedia.org

I also love Disney. Had Ayn Rand lived long enough to take a trip to Disneyland, she would have soiled her weird old pants with glee. I love Mickey Mouse ears and Space Mountain and the Tower of Terror and even It’s A Small World. There’s a soft spot in my heart for the awful overpriced European fast food. The quote on the right, taken from The Fountainhead, is on a plaque at Disney’s Epcot Centre.

Ayn Rand wanted Walt Disney to turn her book Anthem (which is probably the best one tbqh) into a film. It would have been a bit grim.

4. She was an INDEPENDENT WOMAN (except for the whole Medicare thing).

image: slate.com

It seems that women are only allowed to be champions of their sex if they claim to represent womankind as a whole. Anyone with a differing opinion is vilified, no matter how brave or intelligent they are. Margaret Thatcher, perhaps the most hated figure in British political history, was exactly that. She didn’t spend her time wibbling over whether or not people would agree with her politics – she went out and lived them. She studied ultra-hard, exploded into politics, and changed the country forever.

Today it seems you’re only allowed to be feminist if you’re a self-loathing liberal and write articles – case in point! – and the heroines of feminism today seem to consist of a handful of Oxbridge graduates and any daft individual bleating about “trigger warnings”, “sitting the fuck down” and “bullshit” on their Twitter accounts. But what’s more impressive to me is saying “bollocks to this self-perpetuating argument” and getting on with more exciting things, like running a country or writing two books which will go on to heavily influence crazy Republican politicians. The women who really change things are the ones who get on with stuff, are belligerent, pushy, and who fight to get their own way.

I’m fairly certain that, difficult or not, Atlas Shrugged will live far longer than the thousands of articles bemoaning the fact that someone has disagreed with you on the internet.

5. She rightly identified that feelings are boring

“Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.”

Feelings are boring. There is nothing more dull than talking about your feelings. Like a Vulcan, Ayn Rand claimed that she didn’t really do feelings or belief – such things weren’t rational. Moreover, she was a fierce and proud atheist, intensely critical of any idea that put faith above reason. She was notorious for the

She bloody loved teddies though. image: blogspot.com

arguments she picked, and for never backing down until she had won – either by strangling her opponent with her enormous brain, or by staring at them until they cried. “An emotion”, she says,  ”tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something.”

Meanwhile, someone somewhere is “having feels” at a TV show.

Considering the hundreds of years women spent being told that they were hysterical creatures whose emotions overwhelmed them to the point of fainting into the coffee table, Ayn Rand’s no-nonsense belief system is a breath of fresh air whether you agree with it or not. God knows there are enough women writing earnestly about how things affect them. Ayn Rand, crusty old professional troll that she was, didn’t have time for that crap. And more power to her.

So there you go – Ayn Rand was not nice, but I like her anyway.