chunks of flommus
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the emotional support snail

I know perfectly well that Ayn Rand was a fascist —

but cannot stop myself from cheering on the architect Howard Roark, stubborn hero of her novel, The Fountainhead, when he says,

“I don’t intend to build in order to have clients; I intend to have clients in order to build.”

My feelings, exactly.

Why can we not admit that self-interest is human? I don’t live for others. But unlike Rand, I sure hope that others do.

Rand felt that society had been poisoned by the naïve principles of altruism, fairness and sharing. It was no accident that she abhorred communism. She came from Russia.

It’s beyond politics.

Greedy people who flaunt their own avarice, who hate, who hurt others, are bad.

But people who publicly admit to their own vanity,
who are ashamed of their own lazy,
selfish behavior,
their hateful,
mean feelings … these are my people.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling proud, no matter how repulsive you are.

But Rainbow Pride Listerine? Shame on you, Procter & Gamble!

Or the new LGBT sandwich? That’s Lettuce, Guacamole, Bacon and Tomato.

SHAME.

… That’s an idea I can get behind. We need a SHAME parade. That would really bring us together!

We’re all ashamed of something. My placards say, “I EAT LEFTOVERS FOR BREAKFAST” or “I’ve been paying 600 dollars a month to store some stuff I haven’t seen for 22 years.”

This one is a terrific actress, but stay in your lane, girl.

How about Julianne Moore as an ugly misfit? Poor, poor Freckleface Strawberry!

That’s Moore’s children’s book about a little girl who was bullied because she had red hair and freckles, and she tried to hide them, but then she realizes that’s what makes her so very special!

The moral? Be yourself and you will win!

In an ironic twist, that’s the ubiquitous cookie cutter formula to every single children’s book or movie since 1989.

The thing is – what if there were a little girl to who it had never occurred to be ashamed of her freckles. But then she comes across this idiotic book.

Exactly.

Read Astrid Lindgren instead:

Scene: Outside a Department Store
“What does it say on the sign?” asked Pippi.
She could not read that well, she did not go to school like other children.
“It says: “Do you suffer from freckles?” said Annika.
“Oh, indeed,” said Pippi thoughtfully.
“Well, a polite question requires a polite answer, let’s go in!”
She pushed open the door and went inside, closely followed by Tommy and Annika. There was an older lady behind the counter. Pippi went straight up to her.
“No,” she said firmly.
“What is it you want?” said the lady.
“No,” said Pippi again.
“I do not understand what you mean,” said the lady
“No, I do not suffer from freckles,” said Pippi.
“But, dear child, you have a whole face full of freckles.”
“Sure,” said Pippi. “But I don’t suffer from them, I enjoy them! Good morning!”

Never mind misogynist Picasso,
for whose work my admiration is limitless,
unapologetic, and
extremely obvious to anyone who has seen even one of my paintings … can it be a coincidence that nearly all of my favorite artists and authors were evil, despicable monsters?

The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of my top ten books, whose female author believed menstruating women should not be allowed in libraries.

This is no longer a problem for me, in spite of the fact that I divide nearly all my time between The New York Society Library,
The London Library, and
Stadsbiblioteket Göteborg.

On the other hand, the fact that Patricia Highsmith was an Olympic level racist,
anti-Semite and
world-class homophobe
(despite being a lesbian herself) really ought to be.

And then, there are … the snails.

Eccentricity is no crime. I dress like a bumblebee pirate clown myself, and encourage it in others. But thought you should know: Highsmith kept hundreds of snails as pets, her preferred companions at any cocktail party.

She’d go out on the town with few under each breast, tucked inside her bra, with lettuce leaves to snack on, or walk around with these things in her handbag.

And if you must bring your gastropods through French customs, thanks to Pat, we now know that this is the way to do it. I’m convinced that soon Generation Snowflake will adopt the Emotional Support Snail as their panacea of choice.

After all, nothing says mental health like a coterie of gooey molluscs cohabiting in one’s unmentionables.

Finally, meet My Favorite Monster,
The Fantastic Mr. Roald Dahl whose estate beat out both Michael Jackson and Prince in 2021, at an estimated annual income of 513M.

Recently his longtime publisher hired sensitivity readers which resulted in anodyne, PC revisions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
Matilda,
James and the Giant Peach, and
Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Writing in Lilith, Michele Landsberg pointed out that

“evil, domineering, smelly, fat, ugly women are Roald Dahl’s favorite villains.”

I’ve been told that I smell rather delightful, but as a domineering, fat, and ugly woman myself, and also as, technically a Jew, I’d like to defend this top-earning dead celebrity.

No more unattractive, mean villains!

Children, henceforward, will be denied the chance of discovering racism and sexism for themselves, and understanding their ubiquitous history.

Cleansing the revolting, despicable witches of their vicious misanthropy serves who, exactly?

Dahl was quoted as saying,

“There’s a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity … even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

Wowsers!

People, even people who are children, need to hear that kind of crap, and feel their own reaction to it. They need to read the real thing to understand the flawed complexity of a brilliant man, and our messy and tragic world that is violent, hateful and, for all of human history … the norm. All the cancel culture on earth will never erase the reality of hate, prejudice and war, going on right now, as it always has and always will.

Dahl’s Oompa-Loompas were African Pygmies that Wonka shipped to England in packing cases to slave in his factory forever. They were black. By turning them into vaguely white creatures, (or worse – Hugh Grant painted orange in the Wonka movie) we learn that slavery never happened.

And now we have people in power who never learned history, and excel at repeating it.

And tell me why this quote is so funny. Well, I think it is:

“ … Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, husband of Frida Kahlo, used encaustic painting in his large-scale murals .…”

Frida’s husband — ?

Rivera was ten times the artist she was, in spite of his unfashionable XY chromosome.

Why her fussy, overproduced, and self-pitying imagery resulted in a multi-billion dollar tchotchke industry and lawsuit against Ulta Beauty, because the brow palettes packaging downplays her unibrow and mustache, I will never understand.

Creepy sex tourist Gaugin,
Jew hating Degas, and
overexposed neurodivergent feminist darling Yayoi Kusama
all get a free pass, as they’re not among my favorite artists.

However, I cannot resist this chance to quote the dotty Asian racist verbatim.

In her autobiography Infinity Net,
published in 2002,
Kusama characterizes Black people as “primitive, hyper-sexualized beings,” and in the original Japanese edition of the book, Kusama also called her New York neighborhood a “slum” where real estate prices were “falling by $5 a day” because of “black people shooting each other out front, and homeless people sleeping there.”

These lines were removed from an English translation of the autobiography published in 2011.