Using a GPS tracking device as a “pen,” Nick Newcomen drove 12,328 miles around 30 states to draw the message “Read Ayn Rand” on America, in honor of the Objectivist writer made famous by Wonkette cartoonist Benjamin Frisch. According to the Wired science blog, you can only see the message if you use Google Earth. But that doesn’t make much sense, because we’re seeing it now, right?
Whatever. Why would anybody embark upon such a journey? Newcomen explains:
“The main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan,” he says. “In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place — freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future.
Newcomen’s many silent YouTube films prove that his trip was FOR REALZ. Many show him standing in front of state parks, post offices, and other government-funded places — funny, that! An example:
And another:
Very consistent plot choices! Newcomen paid for the trip himself, which means that he also built his own roads and highways to travel on and used GPS technology that had no relationship to that which the Department of Defense originally developed. Also, when eating at truck stop restaurants, he insisted on going back to the kitchen to cook for and serve himself.
Newcomen’s feat raises important questions:
- Was it worth it?
- Are Newcomen’s short films evidence of the growing “mutecore” film movement?
- Will we all read more Ayn Rand, now that Nick Newcomen has told us to?
Answers in the comments. [Wired/World's Biggest Writing]
{ 86 comments }
Our Wonkette is broken, because of Ayn Rand
Muy Grande!
Well, he had some free time on his hands since his life is completely devoid of dating.
How ’bout no, no, and no?
Mexico needs to get going writing “and get stupid”.
Whoa, Lauri, might want to shrink that image so that it’s less than ten times the size of a screen. (Yes, ten clicks to scroll through – probably a little better for people with decent monitors, but not much).
“if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better placed” – Uh, no, the country and world would be a dumber place, because only morons take Rand’s ideas seriously.
I’m sure whether of not I should laugh at or pity this guy.
Did he ever wonder why used book shops are filled with Ayn’s “rittings”?
I wonder how many horribly dirty rest stop bathroom breaks it took to create this fine piece of art?
[re=638129]mumblyjoe[/re] [re=638130]iburl[/re] and [re=638135]JMP[/re]: THIS WAS MY FAULT. I tried to fix a very minor problem and caused a much larger one. BUT I FIXED IT NOW! Please don’t blame Lauri for my semi-competence. She deserves only your love, not your scorn!
I bet a levelheaded discussion with this guy turns into a violent, rage-inducing argument in like 9 seconds.
I’m a big fan of the Butthole Surfers. Shall I go scrawl that on America?
We the purple? What the hell?
Living in Seattle, all I have to do is walk an odd pattern in the few blocks around my house to append “DON’T” to his word-art. Seems almost worth it.
He’d have had a lot more room to write if he’d done this in Communist China.
This might have been cool if it was Kurt Vonnegut instead of Ayn Rand but that would have taken a lot more time and gas.
As Wonkette pointed out earlier, those non-Ryndian socialists of Europa are faring considerably better then us frontiersmen-individualist Americans. Damn them their social safety nets!
Things are all about “waves” now, so it would have to be “mutewave” yall.
I would probs vibe out on it a li’l.
“Oh! Oh! Do Iran and North Korea next!”
Subsequently: a spike in twenty-something Venusian IT workers carrying Ron Paul signs.
Looking at his handwriting, he was obviously home-schooled.
“Read Ayn Rand”, eh? That’s a lot of work to go through to promote assisted suicide.
Some Canadian is already mapping out “I’m with stupid” with a down pointing arrow.
[re=638140]Josh Fruhlinger[/re]: Hey now: I absolutely didn’t blame Lauri, whom I adore and would never fault for terrible web design fail, even if it were her fault. I blamed Ayn Rand, who is easy to blame for things, because just about anything terrible can be linked to her atrocious philosophy.
Unless you’re saying that you also sometimes call Lauri by the name “Ayn Rand”, which, okay, kinda weird, but I’m not going to judge you too much for it, as long as you don’t create a hostile work environment or anything- we all don’t need to take Richard Cohen’s example for
everythinganything, at all. The only question I’m really left with in that case is:Who is John Galt? I mean, in this elaborate role-playing scenario that you have going on?
[re=638157]Chernobyl Soup[/re]: PLEASE let that be true!
GPS pen ? It looks like the gooey remains from the Same Sex Statistics Penis .
[re=638140]Josh Fruhlinger[/re]: OK; apologies to Lauri for the blame for Josh’s fuckup.
According to the Wired article, the guy spent 30 days doing this. Should someone who apparently does not have a job be lecturing other people on personal responsibility?
It’s like he want bukkake all over America.
Why do the heads of so many Rand-fans look like penis?
God bless Ayn Rand who has made it possible for me to cull the morons quickly from internet dating sites by looking at their “Favorite Book” section.
If he’d had a little more gas money he could have written it out in full: “RE(T)A(R)D AYN RAND”. Either way, easier (and cheaper)than “I WISH SOME WOMAN WOULD HAVE SEX WITH ME”.
[re=638145]southern mark smith[/re]:
I’m more into Zevon. “My Shit’s Fucked Up” would work better.
Somebody punch this guy in his chart and graphs.
It is like Czech cuisine. A tremendous amount of effort for a really pathetic and misguided result.
Don’t know about you guys but I may check out this Reao Ayn Rano fella
Not too long ago, some jackass was suggesting that I read Atlas Shrugged and when I responded that I had and that I found that it a horribly written literary abortion that contained infantile ideas that served only to rationalize selfish behavior and avarice.
And he said that he believed that people should act purely out of self interest and that belief made him “honest.”
And I said, no, it makes you a dick.
Never heard from him again.
I see he’s been busy.
If he had driven up and down Commune-fornia a bit, his last “D” wouldn’t have been forced to stick it’s ass right up against the Atlantic like that.
12,000 miles! The Saudis and Hugo Chavez could not thank you enough for your freely given donation to their national economy. Saudi Arabia will use it to update the stones in their criminal justice system. And Hugo will use it to buy bullets for his policemen. Everybody wins!
Reading Ayn Rand books from library: $0
Driving all over U.S. to write a GPS message on the internet: $20,000
Writing “Ayn Rand sucks” in white out on a map: priceless
[re=638157]Chernobyl Soup[/re]: Fucking hilarious.
[re=638161]i dont trust the new guy[/re]: And let St Sarah write “Butt I am!” in Alaska.
Ancient Peruvians decorated the Plains of Nazca with elaborate animal totems that one can see only from the air, and they did it by scraping the top layer of earth to expose the whitish layer underneath. Now, using the latest in satellite technology, a Randian has managed to scrawl something that a mother might stick to the refrigerator door had it been created by a three-year-old. Technology isn’t making us smarter — it’s just making us more capable of doing stupid shit.
[re=638191]AnnieGetYourFun[/re]:
Fittingly, he stopped in Cape Fear.
It’s hard to believe that writing that last letter was really a day (or days) at the beach. I bet he went up the seaboard and never set a toe in the water.
“you can only see the message if you use Google Earth”
I demand a second confirmation by SETI.
[re=638156]Oblios Cap[/re]: win
Just wait ’till I finish compsing my “Ayn Rand Concerto” for Solo Vuvuzuela and Kazoo orchestra (in D major more or less).
This is totally something that a rational person would do. God bless Randroids (even though He is a vicious collectivist bastard).
Also, Lauri, his name is spelled Newcomen. Not that it matters. Real objectivists all shorten their names to one syllable.
So it took 12,000 miles of driving to do what Perez Hilton could do in fifteen seconds on his iPad? Plus Perez would have turned Florida into a dong. Yes, that fairly well sums up the Randian commitment to steadfast idiocy.
“READ AYn RAnD”
I remember in college (early 90′s) wondering why Rand wasn’t even discussed or mentioned in any philosophy or lit classes, when every little nerd was babbling about her incessantly. Then I actually read her.
They’re actually teaching her in college phil classes now, alongside The matrix.
“its” ass, not “it’s”. Christ.
No.
The barf drawings in Benjamin Frisch’s opus are enough Ayn Rand vomit for me.
But I totally respect the guy for his commitment, as long as he’s sixteen years old.
That guy is really … unappealing. I mean really, REALLY.
I can’t joke about it, it’d be like making fun of the handicapped.
Is that Nathaniel Branden’s schlong sticking down there under the “n”?
Read more Terry Pratchett!
I actually never thought I would say this, but…Turk 182 deserves better.
Looks like he stopped his R short of C’Addle. Smart that, then off to a lot of time in Spudsylvania, Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. In Calif, looks like he starting in Orange County and ran to the desert (Ken you shoulda got him while he was passin’ through). The rest of Ayn’s name runs across the South. Mmmmmm, little bluer than blue in that GPS message.
Seen in a different light, this could be an expression of triumph: he actually made it through the entire Galt speech.
[re=638185]BaconTime[/re]: The Brazilian poet-novelist!
A poor imitation of master pipe-bomb-smiley-face artist Luke Helder.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/09/helder.htm
Because driving all that distance is less tedious than reading one of her books.
I’m sure he met many nice people on his trip. To whom, when he explained to them what he was doing, immediately identified him as a complete douche bag.
[re=638156]Oblios Cap[/re]: His handwriting is about on par with your average teabagger’s sign printing ability.
This is one of the guys who will be slowly starving on his porch when all the smart people leave.
I’m sure this fine, young mind is living out true objectivist ideals in the basement of his parents’ house. Get a life.
Every dot represents a highway rest stop, I’m assuming.
I do too many crosswords. All I can think of when I read this is:
Clue: Book suggestion by traveling Objectivist?
Answer: ReadAynRandMcnallyAtlasShrugged
Scrolling downward and encountering that face on the video clip, my first thought was “Unfuckable.” Explains so much, doesn’t it?
The Mark of The Beast is a backwards “L” on the forehead, btw. Keep an eye out.
Wow…
If more people read Ayn Rand, then, like, maybe one day, like, we could get an Objectivist in charge of monetary policy! That would be so awesome!
We could get an Objectivist in charge of one of the big trading houses, or all of them, even, on Wall Street! That would be awesome, too!
Oh, when will this bright tomorrow ever dawn?
Isn’t this guy just being a socialist, by not being productive and spending his time trying to “help society” with this stunt?
If he were a truly dedicated fan, he would have written her birth name: Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum. Until he does that I refuse to watch his stupid videos.
Could’ve saved himself a lot of blood and tears if he’d made his mark in Rhode Island…
http://imgur.com/I0dJQ.png
Makes me want to turn the US upside down and shake it.
[re=638228]Dashboard_Buddha[/re]: I second this. Of course you have to have a sense of humor to appreciate Pratchett, so the Rand lovers wouldn’t gain much from it.
This inspires to take a couple circular trips around Alabama and Georgia (in that order) and give Florida some big ole bawlssss.
I’m surprised there’s a Ayn Rand fan who is old enough to drive, but I’m not surprised he’s whiter than marshmallow fluff.
Oh, you GUYS!
Don’t worry, Nick Newcomer, everyone here is just JEALOUS of your insanely AWESOME accomplishment! Well worth the effort my heterosexual friend, well worth the effort!
There’s an irony here in using the highways, that were built by the government, instead of photoshop, which was created by the private sector.
I love how he grimly turns the camera on himself in that second video, as if to say “Yes, I do look exactly like you’d expect.”
Oh, wait, he does it in the first one, too. I didn’t want to watch that one, but I did anyway.
Jesus, the ego on this guy.
Read Anais Nin
Meh, I’ll be impressed when does it on the moon.
I’m gonna act in my own self-interest and not click on that shit.
Would have been funnier if he’d run out of room to write the D in Rand and had had to drive into the Atlantic Ocean.
[re=638413]BarackMyWorld[/re]: [re=638197]SayItWithWookies[/re]: You raise an interesting point: It would have been infinitely easier for this guy and the ancient Peruvians to use Photoshop.
Putting people back to work will put an end to this silly bullshit.
Won’t it? Please tell me it will….
“I’m a retard” is much more straightforward.
Why is it that these self-styled individualists always worship Ayn Rand instead of writing their own tedious prose full of poorly realized stereotypical characters?
That he considers this platitude some grand and inspirational gesture makes it all the more, um, sad. If Rand were alive today she would no doubt respond with some grand invective rather than gratitude. Fucking tool.
[re=638926]Solanka[/re]: Maybe he and Penn Jillette could hook up and the bear could get a BJ.
Wonder if this is the same guy:
Ayn Rand for toddlers
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/8/12hague.html
Some enterprising, sympathetic Wonkanadian should fire up his/her GPS and go about spelling NEVER across the whole country.
Comments on this entry are closed.