Atlas Chugged

Yesteday I promised, "Enough seriousness. Time for some fun tomorrow." Time to follow through.

For your Saturday amusement, I give you Atlas Chugged: The Ayn Rand Drinking Game, which was originally posted (not by me) on Daily Kos.

There are certain habits in Rand’s writing; repeated phrases, archetypical characters and recurring situations. Habits which beg to be immortalized in their very own drinking game.

A game I call Atlas Chugged.


The rules:

1.Every time someone asks, "Who is John Galt?", drink. It's not only the "immortal query" at the heart of the book, it’s also the opening line. So it gets you off to a quick start.

2.Every time Rand describes physical fatigue or the need for sleep as a weakness and a betrayal, drink. She uses this characterization frequently in the early parts of the book, always applied to one of her heroes. It may have been her way to show the force of their will and the power of their luminous minds over their weak flesh. Or maybe she was just cranked up on amphetamines most of the time and she was projecting.

3.Speaking of her heroes, Hank Reardon, Francisco d'Anconia, Dagny Taggart and her other heroes are handsome, beautiful people. Every time she describes one as the very embodiment of beauty and nobility, drink. Nothing says paragon of virtue like physical perfection.

4.If her heroes are beautiful, her villains have to be ugly. Every time she describes a villain as a mass of flesh, with a "shapeless" mouth or "gelatinous" eyes, drink.

5.There’s another difference between Rand’s heroes and villains. They both talk a lot, but the heroes get to talk a lot more. Every time a villain disgorges a 2 page long speech, drink. Every time a hero gets 5 or more uninterrupted pages, drink.

6.For good measure, every time one paragraph goes on for more than a page, drink.

7.Every time someone mentions the Pirate, drink. Seriously, there's a pirate. His name is Ragnar and he’s a Viking god with golden hair and a face so handsome it can never be scared. Is he a hero or villain? You get one guess.

8.Rand’s male heroes are steely men of unbending strength. Even when overwhelmed by tides of emotion, they never show it. Every time one of them is paralyzed by his feelings, but no one can tell except for the single pulsing vein in his throat, the stretched skin over a temple or how his hands cling to the edge of a table, drink.
Dagny, OTOH, gets to feel, and show, lots and lots of emotions. Every time Dagny collapses into a little feminine heap, drink.

9.There is one thing that can get under her heroes' skin: the stupidity of the people around them. Every time a character is introduced just to earn a hero's (or the reader’s) contempt, drink.

Keep an eye out for Reardon's mother and brother, Mayor Bascom, Kip Chalmers, Balph Eubank, Tinky Holloway, Lee Hunsacker, Gilbert Keith-Worthing, Paul Larkin, Eugene Lawson, Mort Liddy, Horace Mowen, Betty Pope, Drs. Potter and Pritchett, Bertram Scudder, Claude Slagenhop, the Starnes siblings, Clem Weatherby and many, many others.

Drink twice for Balph and Tinky, because their names are Balph and Tinky.

10.In Rand’s world, there is only one person in the world who still does any given job well. Hank Reardon is the only man who can still make steel. Dagny Taggart is the only woman who can still run a railroad. Ken Danagger is the only man who can still mine coal. Lawrence Hammond is the only man who can still build a car. Every time one of these last-of-their-kind characters shows up, drink.

Drink twice for Hugh Akston. He’s the only philosopher in the whole world who can still think and he’s the only short-order cook who can still fry a decent hamburger.

11.I’d never even heard of a shoulder fetish, but there's one here. Rand is obsessed with Dagny Taggart’s shoulders; Her sensual, naked shoulders. Every time Rand writes of Dagny’s naked shoulders, bare shoulders or shoulders framed in fallen hair and transparent fabric so they look naked, drink.

12.Throughout the book, people are constantly doing physically impossible and self-contradictory things. Every time someone leans on a wall, totally relaxed and motionless, but with a fierce energy, springs from a chair like shot from a bow but without motion or gives a glance that has all the characteristics of a wink (yes, that’s really in there, too), drink.

13.To be fair to Rand, there is some good stuff buried in Atlas Shrugged. Her description of life in the collectivized 20th Century Motor Co. is a dead-on description of life in a totalitarian state and I liked Dagny's encounter with Owen Kellogg after the Comet was abandoned. At least once per chapter, find something for which Rand deserves credit and drink.

14.Every time someone smokes, drink


Atlas Shrugged was written in the '50s so it's not surprising that Rand glamorizes cigarettes. Characters smoke incessantly. They smoke to clear their heads, celebrate victories and mask defeats. Cigarettes represent the fire of the human mind. A cigarette even serves as Dagny's first concrete clue that a conspiracy exists.

Still, I have to wonder how heroic Francisco will look in 30 years dragging a green bottle of Reardon Gas-brand oxygen everywhere he goes.

15.Rand's descriptions of love making are truly screwed up; vicious acts of near-sadism. Reardon essentially masturbates using Dagny's body as a tissue and she likes it. Even when Dagny experiences the perfect physical bliss of sex with John Galt (and yes, that's in there too), it's pretty creepy.

Every time you throw up a little during a sex scene, drink. Or at least rinse your mouth out.

16.Finally 920 odd pages in, you've made to Galt's famous 56 page long climactic speech. Call your doctor and put yourself on the wait list for a liver transplant. If you’ve followed the rules so far, you’re going to need one.

17.Galt strikes his death blow by taking over the nation's radio networks and reading a really long, really boring philosophy paper. It's a crazy plan, but it may be just crazy enough to work.
Every time Galt says something you recognize for PHIL 101, drink.

18.Every time Galt says something that would have gotten you flunked out of PHIL 101, drink.

19.Every time Galt says something that would have made your PHIL 101 professor suggest you change majors, drink.

20."This is John Galt speaking"...
...
"The key to what you so recklessly call 'human nature', the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness."...
...
"Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two - existence and consciousness - are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end."...
...
"...the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A."...
...
blah, blah, blah...
...
"A is A."
...
"Whosoever is now within reach of my voice, whosoever is man the victim, not man the killer, I am speaking at the deathbed of your mind, at the brink of that darkness in which you are drowning..."
...
...
flip, flip, flip...
...
...
"A is A."
...
...
"a sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values. If you wish to achieve full virtue, you must seek no gratitude in return for your sacrifice, no praise, no love..."
...
"A is A."
...
"Discard the unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect..."
...
My god, this just goes on and on.
...
...
"A is A".
...
...
"Some of you might plead the excuse of your ignorance, of a limited mind, a limited range..."
...
...
"A is A."
...
...
and on, and on...

Drink.

And that's it for this week. With any luck, I'll return to my regular, non-pre-programmed posting on Sunday.