HugoChesshire.com

I have complained about this film before. I shall not repeat myself, but I am most glad to see that the film is doing incredibly poorly at the box office and will be pulled at the end of the week. It made $5,600 per screen in its first week, on three hundred screens. For comparison, Fred Claus made $5,138 per screen. Then it was expanded to 465 theaters and plummeted to $1,890 per screen. Plans to expand it to a thousand screens have been scrapped. The King's Speech did $6,406 per screen over Christmas weekend and $11,107 per screen the week after that (when it opened in four theaters a month earlier, it made over $88,000 per screen). It had been playing for almost four months before its per-screen take dipped below that of Atlas's second week.

So, yes, as I predicted, this movie was terrible, was universally panned by critics, fell somewhere between Battlefield Earth and Transformers 2 on the Tomatometer, and was a commercial flop.

Now, the producer is threatening to Go Galt by himself and refuse to make parts 2 and 3 since the critics were "lemmings" and the public wasn't ready for his genius or some crap: basically, "No fair, I'm taking my ball and going home." Good. Get lost. Nobody cares if film producers, especially those helming such god-awful projects, go on strike. Nor do I care if the manager of Best Buy Store 4327 "goes Galt," or even if the CEO of GM goes on strike. Go on, you parasites. You contribute nothing anyway and certainly nothing worth even a fraction of your 7-8 figure salaries. If you want to see Atlas shrugging for real, go see a garbage strike. Then you'll find out who really makes the world turn. It's not the people at the top who mismanage their companies into the ground and leech off the public. It's the little people who grow your food, process your sewage, dispose of your trash, pour your coffee and connect your calls. And don't tell me that entrepreneurs are necessary to make successful enterprises and that initiative and development depend on profit and private ownership of the means of production. There are at least three hundred worker cooperatives in the U.S.A. employing thirty-five hundred workers. If business cannot succeed without the Randian entrepreneurial class, there should be zero.

Picture credit: Angry Flower

I cannot think of a better candidate.

I cannot think of someone better suited to being the face of the U.S. state than an ultra-privileged, inconceivably rich white man completely out of touch with the lived experiences of the average citizen.

I cannot think of someone who would be a better head of the executive branch than this loud-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, bigoted bully.

I cannot think of someone who would better represent the United States to the rest of the world than such a supremely arrogant, conceited, self-righteous, small-minded, power-crazed fool.

Trump represents the worst of everything in American politics, and since the worst has become so, so dominant in all aspects of the U.S. state, why not let him be President? Let's call a spade a spade. A disgusting government should be led by a disgusting figurehead.

I'm not celebrating this nonsense. I'm not eating chocolate rabbits to celebrate the torture to death of some mythical character. I'm especially not celebrating something which is pivotal to the worship of "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." It's ridiculous. I would feel happier celebrating Hitler's birthday. Well, maybe not. Hitler actually existed.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain [!!!!!!!!!!!] in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

Link to further insanity

(H/T: Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing)