The Fountainhead Filibuster: Tales from Objectivist Katanga

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Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

I have two questions:

One, would you mind at all if some point I wrote a tie in story? I'd be interested in doing something like that with my Edward Caldwell character, and I have been toying with the idea of Bioshock style audio diaries and recordings. I have already figured out a process for that, which involves a cassette tape played via a cheap dollar store speaker and recorded again via iPod to give a distorted, low quality, open space sound.

Two, would you mind if I made a thread about music and artists the people in Objectivist Katanga may listen to?

EDIT:

I discovered the artist who does the Ayn Rand book cover illustrations if it is of any use to you.

http://nickgaetano.com/index-Illustration_ayn_rand.html

EDIT EDIT:

I also found this article, which might be useful if you haven't read it before.
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/60120/index1.html
 
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Meerkat92

Banned
It's weird, I just saw a map in the Map Thread featuring--you guessed it--an Objectivist Katanga. It seems Linkwerk has created an alternate history cliche...;)
 

Neither-Monk

I just wanted to post that this is one of my favorite timelines here, and I hope it continues to your satisfaction and the continued praise of everyone here. I hope that you haven't run into some kind of problem; I would have posted earlier, but I was worried that the thread was dead, and it seems to be against etiquette for a noob to bump a thread, only to lament that there hasn't been an update in, like, a month, and is this thread dead? People don't seem to like that.

So, um, don't die or anything. People are counting on you for their entertainment and subscriptions and hopes and fears and everything. If you don't post, all the water in the world will turn brown. Frowns will turn upside down, leaving people horribly deformed. Trains will explode in midair. Babies will also explode. And that's terrible.

More seriously, about the railroad between Galtville and Angola - did the Objectivists have similar talks with the Portuguese government as they did the Belgian mining company to get the tariff-free railroad line, or is there some other agreement? It's a minor issue, but Portugal is still an interested party on the African continent, and I thought that when people were discussing that Biafra-Rhodesia-South Africa Axis, Portugal was also part of it.
 

Linkwerk

Captain Matt said:
More seriously, about the railroad between Galtville and Angola - did the Objectivists have similar talks with the Portuguese government as they did the Belgian mining company to get the tariff-free railroad line, or is there some other agreement? It's a minor issue, but Portugal is still an interested party on the African continent, and I thought that when people were discussing that Biafra-Rhodesia-South Africa Axis, Portugal was also part of it.
Click to expand...

Hey! So great to have somebody new to the board and the thread. To answer your question: No, not really. Remember, it's a pretty convoluted chain of arm-twisting that goes Rand->UMHK Board of directors->Katangan government (Tshombe)->Congolese government. They're building the Boma railway because it can be wrapped into the "special economic zone" deal (no taxes, at least after the central government gets a nominal cut of exports), because Ayn can't pass up a good insane Klaus-Kinski-in-Fitzcarraldo infrastructure, and because she wants a link with the outside world that's "under her control."

She built it also because she mobilized a lot of money from the Freehold Foundation to finance the thing, it was their first big "pony up" moment for membership (IMPROBABLE RAILROAD! just like in the books) and it was her big bargaining chip to get UMHK to lobby Tshombe for the zone - as you might recall, the UMHK thinks the railroad is fucking dumb because they already have rail links to Angola, but hey, free railroad.

Last, but not least, she really had no idea about Africa at ALL at the time and never bothered to cultivate links with the Portuguese government. The plan was basically:

1) find area with weak government (let's all face it: also non-white population) and lots of resources, take over.

2) ???

3) Utopia!


(no European or American has ever thought like this IRL, ever.)


Anyways, as for the thread;

It's not dead, never has been. It very much lives. I, however, am in my last term of grad school, have a thesis draft due in a week, and shortly after that am packing up and moving across the country.

However! All summer I will be unemployed, applying for jobs full time, and have a lot of time and spare nervous/mental energy, so I'll probably be frantically writing in escapist fictional universes I create to escape the terrifying reality that oh shit I am kind of grown up now and need to start a career.
 

Neither-Monk

They want to roll with the gangsters

Two things:

What do you guys think about Weird Al Yankovic's 'White and Nerdy' being the theme song for this timeline? Or just for the Objectivists, I guess. It seems to fit.

Also, what would Ayn Rand think of this?

EDIT: I should leave the assignment of 'theme songs' to people more in touch with reality. Or people who aren't up at three in the morning.
 
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cpip

Linkwerk said:
However! All summer I will be unemployed, applying for jobs full time, and have a lot of time and spare nervous/mental energy, so I'll probably be frantically writing in escapist fictional universes I create to escape the terrifying reality that oh shit I am kind of grown up now and need to start a career.
Click to expand...

It's a scary thing. Congrats, and enjoy the frightening impending adulthood.
 

Neither-Monk

Lord High Executioner said:
Why?
Because there are Objectivist nerds?
I'm afraid I don't see anything in the lyrics that makes the song fit either
as a theme song for the timeline or as that of its Objectivists.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean it literally, I meant it more as mockery of them than a real 'theme song'. I don't know, it just seemed funny to me last night. Hmm. Maybe sleep deprivation isn't the best way to come up with jokes.
 

Lord High Executioner

I realise that the sleep deprivation explanation should end this sidetrack, but anyway...

Captain Matt said:
I didn't mean it literally, I meant it more as mockery of them
Click to expand...
Yes, I understood that and thus the question why.
They are white and some of them may be nerdy, but that's pretty much
where the similarities to the subject of 'White and nerdy' ends.
They're not even the same kind of nerd.

Also, the theme song of the timeline is obviously the Hammershields TV show theme song. :)
 

DStecks

Just checking in to say that this is my favourite TL on the forum, and also to ask if anybody else reads Ayn Rand's dialogue with Mallory Archer's voice.
 

Neither-Monk

Lord High Executioner said:
They are white and some of them may be nerdy, but that's pretty much
where the similarities to the subject of 'White and nerdy' ends.
They're not even the same kind of nerd.
Click to expand...
I think someone (the Joker?) said something like, if the punchline needs to be explained, it's a terrible joke. Basically, I wasn't focusing on the 'white and nerdy' aspect at all; I was thinking more about the absurdity of all these people moving to the Congo, building their shiny new utopia, trying to show the world they're badass, while the leaders of more grounded, 'real' nations kind of stare and don't want anything to do with them. (They want to roll with the gangsters) Well, that reaction isn't happening quite yet in the story, but that's what I was thinking. That was the joke. It's allegory!

You know when you think up something, and you think it's the best idea, but then a couple days later when you think of it again it seems absurd, and you kind of wince and facepalm at your stupidity? I've facepalmed at least five times over this. This was obviously a terrible idea.

Lord High Executioner said:
Also, the theme song of the timeline is obviously the Hammershields TV show theme song. :)
Click to expand...
I didn't mean to disrespect the Hammershields. Maybe this will make up for it:

Faster than the speed of sound!
Just in time to save the day!
HAMMERSHIELDS.

Forcing baddies to the ground!
The world's evil kept at bay!
HAMMERSHIELDS.

Stopping tyranny in its tracks!
Justice is the only way!
HAMMERSHIELDS.

The world's heroes have their backs!
Never will the sky be gray!
HAMMERSHIELDS.

HAAAAMMMERRRRRSHIIEEELLDDSSSSSSS (YEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!)

Although it is past midnight, so this may also be a terrible idea.
 

katchen

Banned
And while the Randians and the LaVeyans have been doing their thing, what has the CO$ been up to?
"Clearing" the locals, no doubt.
To find out what that means, look up "The Road to Xemu" . Maybe get a copy of "L.Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman" by Bert Corydon & Ron de Wolf (L. Ron Hubbard Jr.) Try to get one of the first editions if you can afford it with LRHJR's parts left in. He gets into the stuff about Aleister Crowley and LRH. And it wasn't just a passing fancy either. Learn about the Ethical Conditions that dovetail with Ayn Rand's teachings.
Get hold of the Philadelphia Lectures afterwords that Hubbard gave. They're based on Crowley's teachings. Rand to my knowledge never had any use for a mystic like Crowley, but I suspect that Crowley and Rand both studied Nietzche when they were young.
Then once you've read a bit of that, you're ready to start lurking on the ex CO$ and FreeZone (Non-CO$ but still Scientologist) boards, but be careful. CO$ (also known as Rondroids or Hubborg) infiltrate those boards.
Then you'll have an idea what the Sea Org has been on about in Katanga all this time.
It'll be fun.
I'll bet CO$ is planning a takeover of Galt's Gulch. Or at least part of it. Maybe around Elizabethville.
 
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