"What did you say she's been reading...?"
Crowbar HQ Staff Report
Greetings all you Resistance Force types, from the early morning hours here at Crowbar HQ. I have just entered Crowbar's office and stumbled upon her, unconscious on the desk in front of the computer screen. She almost looks innocent when she sleeps, except for that somewhat-unflattering string of drool on her cheek and the hand reflexively curling and releasing the ever-present iron bar she holds, even while unconscious. Actually, it's taking your life in your hands to try to move her away from the keyboard in order to type - Crowbar has an unfortunate tendency to swing first and ask questions later if surprised while she's sleeping.
That said, I appear to have her suitably shifted over to one side now (she did swing kinda half-heartedly at my shins while I did it, but then muttered and rolled over) in order to send a few lines out to you.
I must say, we're all a bit surprised to discover how absent she's been from regular communication with you, her stalwart comrades in arms. We've been watching her prop herself up in front of the screen almost constantly for weeks when she's not out performing her double agent duties, so I was under the impression that she had written you a treatise by now. I see from her posting dates that this is not the case. So what has our hero been up to, if not giving you the dubious honour of watching her every move?
Well, before I answer this, it might be useful to remind you of a few little facts about the psychology of our fearless leader. You've heard of obsessive-compulsive behaviours, right? Well, Crowbar is the poster child for behavioural extremes and she demonstrates this no where so much as in her inability to leave something alone, once she's become interested in it. All these long hours we thought she was writing to you and mustering the Revolutionary vanguard? Turns out she'd gotten her brain hooked into all kinds of arbitrary things and has been burning holes in her head reading about them on the internet.
First it was Somalia. Why the hell did she decide she needed to understand everything about the US "humanitarian" mission and subsequent military action in Somalia, you ask? The answer is, there is no damn reason at all. It just occurred to her one day that she didn't feel she really understood the history of what happened there - next thing you know, she hasn't left the chair in two days, she's chainsmoked about 4 packs of cigarettes, consumed a few kilos of coffee and we're all walking past unobtrusively spraying her with Lavender Bath Mist, hoping she'll take the hint. The sun came up and went down a few times before she realized she hadn't moved more than 8 inches in as many hours and that her butt was so far past asleep that she was numb from the waist down. After satisfying herself that she now grasped all the socio-economic and political factors leading up to the uninvited "military intervention", she got so deeply engrossed by a reporters minute-by-minute re-telling of the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident that no one could speak to her for days. After spending something like ten hours just reading the discussion forum, she finally lifted a bleary head, smelled herself and stumbled off to the shower. No explanation was forthcoming. Like we said, we thought she was writing to you.
What was her excuse tonight? Because, oh-yes, she's been at it again, sitting in front of the screen for 15 hours or something close, devouring...what? Well, we're kind of embarrassed to tell you this part. Are you at all familiar with the novels of Ayn Rand or the philosophy of Objectivism? Well, long ago when Crowbar had adopted the cover-identity of a philosophy student for an entirely different mission, she made her first acquaintance with the collected essays, "The Virtue Of Selfishness". She had actually read "Atlas Shrugged" years prior to this, but was unaware in her youth that it had gone on to spawn a philosophical movement [well, I guess that depends on who you ask - philosophical movement to some, cult to others]. Crowbar easily gave Rand her due as one helluva storyteller, but wasn't so quick to think she was one helluva philosopher. We won't get into all the premises Crowbar felt were flawed, or the seemingly "logical" conclusions that certainly followed if you omitted or ignored some fundamental premises, but suffice to say these debates in so-called "Objectivism" continue heatedly to this day. However, that's not why many people end up fascinated with the rise and almost-total fall of the Objectivist Movement. That particular story has its roots in much more human stuff than Rand's philosophy ever espoused - namely malice, lies, moral pronouncements, excommunications and, of course, sex, sex, sex. The history of the Objectivist split, which began in 1968, reads better than "As The World Turns".
And what does that have to do with our slumbering hero? Well, Crowbar has a habit of picking up books she's already read - "easy reads", she calls them, before indulging in her main vice (after cigarettes, coffee and violence), that being the bathtub. Earlier today she picked up "Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand" by Nathaniel Branden. I know, I know, we didn't explain who he is, but this isn't a book review and we don't have all night here. Go back to the sex, sex, sex part and you'll have an inkling. This led, inevitably, to her wanting to check out some detail about Alan Greenspan, a core member of the Objectivist in-crowd and, later, head of the Federal Reserve Board. Well, that was it. Once she was on the 'net and reading, we lost her completely. As you know, 15 hours later this is where we found her.
Some of Crowbar's meanderings led her to an objectivist's blog where a debate raged about whether it was Branden or Rand or both who deserved "moral judgement" (an important concept in Objectivist ethics) with regard to their now well-known affair. The debate was justified under the banner of examining whether Objectivism represented a closed or open system, but upon reading, it becomes clear that this handful of followers more closely resemble tabloid readers than philosophers. The muck-racking about who slept with who, who lied more, who's lies were morally acceptable and who's were evil...the tone is identical to those used in discussing Hollywood breakups. Branden and his ex-wife both weighed in on their opinions of the matter, threaded amongst some commentators who made sense, and some who sound like raving, dogmatic idol-worshippers (one such individual claims that it is impossible to understand Objectivism and honestly disagree with it, as "Objectivism is TRUE" - all of us here at the Crowbar Resistance Force would have to vigorously oppose that reasoning). Regardless, any philosophy which appears to treat its fundamental ideological precepts as equally important to the unswerving worship of its founder is....well, creepy. When a school of thought demands, as part of its core, that you must worship one individual and adhere rigorously to the mantra that she is incapable of committing moral wrongs or being inconsistent, I start looking around for the KoolAid.
But this isn't about me, is it? It's about Crowbar and her seeming inability to walk away from knowing "everything there is to know" about something [HQ Staff sidebar: Crowbar most certainly doesn't know any subject in enough depth to claim 'everything there is to know about it'. But don't tell her we said that - she carries a length of pipe, after all]. After 15 long hours she can probably tell you one hell of a lot of information about Objectivism today, about debates around current 'schools', about denunciations of key players. But why? Why does she need to know? Further, as CB herself would admit, in a year she's not likely to remember most of it anyway. Crowbar is amusingly reminiscent of Homer Simpson in that respect - in order to add any new information to her brain, it is necessary that she first delete some old piece, in order to create space. Add to that her life-long training to fog over mission details in order to maintain their secrecy, even with herself, and what little retention she might have had left is polished off [others might argue that her participation in early LSD experiments might also contribute to this]. So why stay up for days, voraciously devouring information and consuming intricacies and nuances to the detriment of all other projects she's engaged in, when she has no current need to know it and is just going to forget it all anyway?
Because that's Crowbar, and we kinda love her for it. She's a "Go Big or Go Home" kind of girl, making her intensely engaging in short bursts, and unbearable to be around for any long span of time. It's hard to imagine it now, watching her snore gently while hugging her favourite crowbar - she almost looks calm. One has to peer a bit more closely to see the wispy rivulets of smoke curling gently up from her body (Crowbar perpetually lives at only a few internal degrees off of spontaneous combustion and consequently smokes faintly at all times - what, you thought that was just the cigarettes?). Despite it all, without her volatile nature we doubt she'd be nearly so effective at termination, smashing, and unflinching retribution - all actions we rely solely upon her to perform.
At the moment, however, we're wondering if we should try to nudge her into a horizontal position. It can't be good for her to always end up sleeping sitting up, and the physical pain it causes probably contributes to her general crankiness. On the other hand, at least she's not sleeping with her eyes open - it totally freaks us out when she does that.
That said, maybe we'll just leave her here. It'll be light in a few hours and no doubt she'll put on more coffee and get hooked into some other massive study of irrelevant material. We will, however, try to gently suggest that she remember to send more updates and communiques to you, the isolated individual freedom fighters of the Resistance Force. She's surprisingly approachable on that score - she probably won't even break anything.
Greetings all you Resistance Force types, from the early morning hours here at Crowbar HQ. I have just entered Crowbar's office and stumbled upon her, unconscious on the desk in front of the computer screen. She almost looks innocent when she sleeps, except for that somewhat-unflattering string of drool on her cheek and the hand reflexively curling and releasing the ever-present iron bar she holds, even while unconscious. Actually, it's taking your life in your hands to try to move her away from the keyboard in order to type - Crowbar has an unfortunate tendency to swing first and ask questions later if surprised while she's sleeping.
That said, I appear to have her suitably shifted over to one side now (she did swing kinda half-heartedly at my shins while I did it, but then muttered and rolled over) in order to send a few lines out to you.
I must say, we're all a bit surprised to discover how absent she's been from regular communication with you, her stalwart comrades in arms. We've been watching her prop herself up in front of the screen almost constantly for weeks when she's not out performing her double agent duties, so I was under the impression that she had written you a treatise by now. I see from her posting dates that this is not the case. So what has our hero been up to, if not giving you the dubious honour of watching her every move?
Well, before I answer this, it might be useful to remind you of a few little facts about the psychology of our fearless leader. You've heard of obsessive-compulsive behaviours, right? Well, Crowbar is the poster child for behavioural extremes and she demonstrates this no where so much as in her inability to leave something alone, once she's become interested in it. All these long hours we thought she was writing to you and mustering the Revolutionary vanguard? Turns out she'd gotten her brain hooked into all kinds of arbitrary things and has been burning holes in her head reading about them on the internet.
First it was Somalia. Why the hell did she decide she needed to understand everything about the US "humanitarian" mission and subsequent military action in Somalia, you ask? The answer is, there is no damn reason at all. It just occurred to her one day that she didn't feel she really understood the history of what happened there - next thing you know, she hasn't left the chair in two days, she's chainsmoked about 4 packs of cigarettes, consumed a few kilos of coffee and we're all walking past unobtrusively spraying her with Lavender Bath Mist, hoping she'll take the hint. The sun came up and went down a few times before she realized she hadn't moved more than 8 inches in as many hours and that her butt was so far past asleep that she was numb from the waist down. After satisfying herself that she now grasped all the socio-economic and political factors leading up to the uninvited "military intervention", she got so deeply engrossed by a reporters minute-by-minute re-telling of the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident that no one could speak to her for days. After spending something like ten hours just reading the discussion forum, she finally lifted a bleary head, smelled herself and stumbled off to the shower. No explanation was forthcoming. Like we said, we thought she was writing to you.
What was her excuse tonight? Because, oh-yes, she's been at it again, sitting in front of the screen for 15 hours or something close, devouring...what? Well, we're kind of embarrassed to tell you this part. Are you at all familiar with the novels of Ayn Rand or the philosophy of Objectivism? Well, long ago when Crowbar had adopted the cover-identity of a philosophy student for an entirely different mission, she made her first acquaintance with the collected essays, "The Virtue Of Selfishness". She had actually read "Atlas Shrugged" years prior to this, but was unaware in her youth that it had gone on to spawn a philosophical movement [well, I guess that depends on who you ask - philosophical movement to some, cult to others]. Crowbar easily gave Rand her due as one helluva storyteller, but wasn't so quick to think she was one helluva philosopher. We won't get into all the premises Crowbar felt were flawed, or the seemingly "logical" conclusions that certainly followed if you omitted or ignored some fundamental premises, but suffice to say these debates in so-called "Objectivism" continue heatedly to this day. However, that's not why many people end up fascinated with the rise and almost-total fall of the Objectivist Movement. That particular story has its roots in much more human stuff than Rand's philosophy ever espoused - namely malice, lies, moral pronouncements, excommunications and, of course, sex, sex, sex. The history of the Objectivist split, which began in 1968, reads better than "As The World Turns".
And what does that have to do with our slumbering hero? Well, Crowbar has a habit of picking up books she's already read - "easy reads", she calls them, before indulging in her main vice (after cigarettes, coffee and violence), that being the bathtub. Earlier today she picked up "Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand" by Nathaniel Branden. I know, I know, we didn't explain who he is, but this isn't a book review and we don't have all night here. Go back to the sex, sex, sex part and you'll have an inkling. This led, inevitably, to her wanting to check out some detail about Alan Greenspan, a core member of the Objectivist in-crowd and, later, head of the Federal Reserve Board. Well, that was it. Once she was on the 'net and reading, we lost her completely. As you know, 15 hours later this is where we found her.
Some of Crowbar's meanderings led her to an objectivist's blog where a debate raged about whether it was Branden or Rand or both who deserved "moral judgement" (an important concept in Objectivist ethics) with regard to their now well-known affair. The debate was justified under the banner of examining whether Objectivism represented a closed or open system, but upon reading, it becomes clear that this handful of followers more closely resemble tabloid readers than philosophers. The muck-racking about who slept with who, who lied more, who's lies were morally acceptable and who's were evil...the tone is identical to those used in discussing Hollywood breakups. Branden and his ex-wife both weighed in on their opinions of the matter, threaded amongst some commentators who made sense, and some who sound like raving, dogmatic idol-worshippers (one such individual claims that it is impossible to understand Objectivism and honestly disagree with it, as "Objectivism is TRUE" - all of us here at the Crowbar Resistance Force would have to vigorously oppose that reasoning). Regardless, any philosophy which appears to treat its fundamental ideological precepts as equally important to the unswerving worship of its founder is....well, creepy. When a school of thought demands, as part of its core, that you must worship one individual and adhere rigorously to the mantra that she is incapable of committing moral wrongs or being inconsistent, I start looking around for the KoolAid.
But this isn't about me, is it? It's about Crowbar and her seeming inability to walk away from knowing "everything there is to know" about something [HQ Staff sidebar: Crowbar most certainly doesn't know any subject in enough depth to claim 'everything there is to know about it'. But don't tell her we said that - she carries a length of pipe, after all]. After 15 long hours she can probably tell you one hell of a lot of information about Objectivism today, about debates around current 'schools', about denunciations of key players. But why? Why does she need to know? Further, as CB herself would admit, in a year she's not likely to remember most of it anyway. Crowbar is amusingly reminiscent of Homer Simpson in that respect - in order to add any new information to her brain, it is necessary that she first delete some old piece, in order to create space. Add to that her life-long training to fog over mission details in order to maintain their secrecy, even with herself, and what little retention she might have had left is polished off [others might argue that her participation in early LSD experiments might also contribute to this]. So why stay up for days, voraciously devouring information and consuming intricacies and nuances to the detriment of all other projects she's engaged in, when she has no current need to know it and is just going to forget it all anyway?
Because that's Crowbar, and we kinda love her for it. She's a "Go Big or Go Home" kind of girl, making her intensely engaging in short bursts, and unbearable to be around for any long span of time. It's hard to imagine it now, watching her snore gently while hugging her favourite crowbar - she almost looks calm. One has to peer a bit more closely to see the wispy rivulets of smoke curling gently up from her body (Crowbar perpetually lives at only a few internal degrees off of spontaneous combustion and consequently smokes faintly at all times - what, you thought that was just the cigarettes?). Despite it all, without her volatile nature we doubt she'd be nearly so effective at termination, smashing, and unflinching retribution - all actions we rely solely upon her to perform.
At the moment, however, we're wondering if we should try to nudge her into a horizontal position. It can't be good for her to always end up sleeping sitting up, and the physical pain it causes probably contributes to her general crankiness. On the other hand, at least she's not sleeping with her eyes open - it totally freaks us out when she does that.
That said, maybe we'll just leave her here. It'll be light in a few hours and no doubt she'll put on more coffee and get hooked into some other massive study of irrelevant material. We will, however, try to gently suggest that she remember to send more updates and communiques to you, the isolated individual freedom fighters of the Resistance Force. She's surprisingly approachable on that score - she probably won't even break anything.
posted by Crowbar at 4:30 a.m.
1 Comments:
GO BIG OR GO HOME!!!
lol!
Did I say that about myself today?! I can't remember the context now...that detail has been shoved out of my brain...and I'm not sure anything else was even put in to replace it.
Long live CB!
xo J
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