Ayn Rand's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Cafe Society
21

Mickey Spillane’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie:

I was in my grimy oven-box of an office on the 15th floor of the Flatiron with the Anvil Chorus playing an encore in my head. I’d engaged their services at O’Grady’s the night before, with the friendly bartender happy to act as conductor. The sudden scratching noise of somebody trying and failing to sneak around the blurred edge of my awareness put the .45 in my hand. I liked its reassuring wrecking-ball weight and snapped back the hammer with the sharp click of an bank vault opening on foreclosure day.

“I don’t wan’no trouble!” squeaked the intruder. I narrowed my gaze on his beady eyes and pointy nose over a mess of unshaven whiskers.

“Well, everybody wants something,” I muttered, more gravel in my voice than an underworked quarry.

“I, uh, t’ought… maybe a cookie?”

I closed my eyes briefly as the anvils crashed. “There was a guy named Fritz who wanted a cookie from me in the Ardennes. He ended up dancing a Schuhplattler on the end of my bayonet. I got a medal for that, which I traded for a double bourbon the day I got back to the States.” I put the automatic down, letting it rest on my desk while still pointed at the intruder, its barrel yawning at him like every bored V-girl he’d tried to make in his entire miserable 4F life. I traded the wrecking ball for the reassuring cold curve of my reserve bottle and took a drink to quiet the chorus and send them on their way, positive review promised for tomorrow’s Herald Tribune.

22

It’s a great philosophy. It allows people of privilege to disregard the poor and needy who didn’t have the wherewithal to be born to parents with means.

We get it. Charity and welfare creates a moral hazard. The problem with Rand’s philosophy is that poor people don’t just disappear once they realize they can’t compete.

23

Somebody get tracer in here!

24

I remember that being one of the annoyances in the movie Divergent (which in retrospect, did not have me in mind as its target audience). There are five factions and anyone who doesn’t fit into one (and only one) of them becomes “factionless”, essentially homeless, jobless, barely subsisting on the food charity of the Abnegation faction (though as I recall, feeding Factionless was discouraged and had to be done surreptitiously). It just seemed to me that you were deliberately manufacturing a desperate underclass, some of whom had tried for membership in the Dauntless faction (i.e. the pseudo-military-sorta-police-ish faction responsible for all forms of judicial violence) but been kicked out for not meeting some arbitrary standard. Why the Factionless didn’t organize and stage a full-on insurrection was unclear to me.

Maybe this is clearer in the books. Since I am not a 15 year-old girl, I don’t expect edification anytime soon.

25

Kanye West’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

I’m in the very worst pantry, doing something mean to it,
Doin’ it better than any mouse, you’ve ever seen do it,
Screams from the ladies, got a nice ring to it,
I guess they never seen Quinoa with my thing through it.

But no one mouse could eat all this flour,
We’re bakin’ cookies, they’ll be ready in an hour,
The clock’s tickin’, oven’s trippin’ off the power,
(21 Century schizoid mouse)

Fuck pastry chefs and the whole cast,
Tell em Jerry said they can kiss my whole meal flour
More specifically they can kiss my meal hole,
Pucker up and kiss the chef, I let you lick the bowl.

How Ye doing? I’m surviving,
I saw your pussy earlier, where’s it hiding?
I know that pussy tryin’ kill me, how exciting,
Where those bad bitches at, come inside now.

At the end of the day, god damn it, I’m killin’ this shit
I don’t need your cookie bitch, I’ve got my own batch,
I’m a let you finish, yeah you finish up your snack.
I’m just going to the pantry and I’ll be right back.

I’m in the very worst pantry, doing something mean to it,

26

No, the world of the books does not make sense. I only read the first one, but the world-building was utter nonsense.

27

So it’s a win-win?