[Mb-civic] The Demise Of Elegance

[Cheeseburger]

The Demise Of Elegance



CheeseNote:

This is so good, at least I like it, that I must reprint it here so I can
put the Cheese spin on it, or at least a couple of reflective thoughts.




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Michael Butler's Blog

http://www.michaelbutler.com/mbblog.html


The Demise of Elegance

I had luncheon recently with a great friend. We were in his club in NYC. The
club is an establishment of great tradition. It is very similar to the clubs
in London and few others in New York City. This one in particular is famous
for the quality of its food.

My friend suddenly mentioned that there is no longer elegance.
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I went to dictionary.com to look up the word "Elegance" and under a flashing
sign that said "Should Michael Jackson Go To Jail?  Answer Yes Or No Here To
Win $100" with 2 pictures of him beside it, one looking like an alien Peter
Pan and the other like Charlie Manson, I thought "Why should I investigate
further, all the answers are now so plain", but I found this anyway:

ELEGANCE:

Refinement, grace, and beauty in movement, appearance, or manners.
Tasteful opulence in form, decoration, or presentation.
Restraint and grace of style.


As a whole, yes, it appears it was phased out or something, lol, along with
beta-max video machines.  I do feel that elegance is still within us and
about here and there, it's just that it has become an "elegance is in the
eye of the beholder" kind of thing due to the infamous
a-tad-overzealousistic-machoism that has eaten the nooks and crannies of
American life that continues to sport "only hard tough ruthless fighting men
in rags and screaming are acceptable norms in true reality" as it has from
the cave man days and that such things as Elegance (by men in this
perspective) is only utilized by "pussies and fags".

Funny, I never really thought such things as Elegance would actually become
outlawed some day.

Elegance, in some ways, is almost one step short of Grace, albeit a sparkly
one sometimes, hehe, but it is as a scent of a flower to me rather than the
act of holding it in my hand sometimes that makes the longing for such a
sometimes rewarding virtue all that more cruel.  Too bad "G.I. Joe Football
World" ate it.

All in all, you don't see a lot of truly elegant beings, or rather
"actions", slitting people's throats, starting senseless wars, or stabbing
you in the back in a business deal.

They continue to do their best to turn anyone and everyone into political,
social, religious, etc zealouts who for a kiss and a promise will show you
what they can do with decades of indoctrination and a thorough "education"
in bloodthirstiness, war, violence and death.  I almost feel sorry for them,
almost, since they have been trained from birth like just so many dogs in
Pavlov's backyard and most continue to have no clue whatsoever.

They have turned people into a bunch of butt-kissing jump at our commands
yes sir yes ma'am technowarriors and then in just another of the final blows
and purposeful insults to Grace, termed it instead as Elegant, Fashionable,
and Normal.

I'm not saying that one has to be a fashion-conscious, mannered, pacifist,
etc to be "elegant", surely some of the most "crude people" and "crude
actions" sometimes have an innate center of Elegance within them and
emanating from them, but so many have lost sight that Elegance =is=
sometimes truly just one more extension of Grace itself, if during their
extensive indoctrinations ever even knew it.

That such Grace too "went out of style" so "long ago" remains a condemnation
of "values" for this Brave New World, or at least another golden feather in
the hat of ignorance.

Ok, I just looked at all that above I wrote and only part of it made sense
but I'm going to continue anyway, hehe......  :)




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Clothing is no longer attractive
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True.  They lost sight of that aspect of Earth Life and its contributions to
not only creativity but a sense of joy and freedom that sometimes comes from
being able to dress how one chooses.  Again, such things in this new order
or basically prohibited, frowned upon, and sometimes punishable by death in
certain circumstances.



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musical lyrics are difficult to understand
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The Top, among others, record companies who have engineered this to be
palatable and accepted by "the general public" get that award for their care
and delicacy in handling the shaping of that particular aspect of Society's
direction in both depth of musical taste and musical appreciation.

Even a gopher can be trained to love Schubert, or the visa versa.

"Later on we'll pop some cops, pick up some pussy, do some blow, and all get
filthy rich" kind of stuff goes right to the soul of the inexperienced and
young, especially those standing on a streetcorner in some area that the
tycoon ghetto-breeders designated them to be in for a while so long ago, yet
it remains the record companies etc themselves that have and will continue
to make a fortune off of people screaming, waving guns, doing blow, and
girls showing their tits and butts while the sirens are wailing in the
background.

Yes, I'll have to agree, with all that happening, it does become after a
while rather difficult to understand some of the lyrics.

Although, understandable enough on one hand, in some "Hoods" it has again
become "The Norm".  For some, it was the only thing hanging around left to
"grab on to", at least to them.

It is kind of ironic, though, that someone like say Mick Jagger can now say
"Hey, Nigger", and the guy will shake his hand and smile (Don't try that at
home, kids, it only works for =some= people who are either rich or famous).
A culture gap or "time" gap, like you kind of mentioned, that has sprouted
all kinds of hybrids of both language, taste, actions, and lifestyles, among
other things, music, and non-understandable lyrics just being a couple of
bastions of such a "thing".




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Manners are gone.
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Ouch.  That's starting to hurt now.  LOL.....

How so very true.

We're still dragging black men to their deaths with a rope behind our
pickups in Texas.  And they seem to be having a great time doing it.  This
is "America" that is Not So Elegant anymore.  Again, a great product of
Pavlov Ltd International.

With actual Manners, there would be no wars, or anything else like that,
which makes me laugh my ass off everytime I see someone at "The Top"
pretending they are actual elegant, civilized, mannered nice people while I
can easily look at their actions and see nothing but another cave man/woman
with blood on his axe smiling for the cameras telling everyone why he should
be in charge while pushing his wife and kids to the front for the reporters.

Oh, yeah, to hell with people like Bill 0'Reilly while I'm at it.

Wow, see....  It's contagious.

:|





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People putting one another down. Celebrity is ruling the day.
========


Andy Warhol was right about that "15 minutes of fame" thing.  I guess he
just never figured there were that many ruthless people out there waiting
for their cameos.

It has, again, become The Norm for such things.  Acceptable.  It's actually
a curse.  A very well engineered and perpetuated one, but a curse
nevertheless.

Somewhere inside some of us still burns the light of the truth, happiness,
peace, freedom, and manners and respect, waiting for its chance.  In a world
full of pitbull vipers that have been trained from birth that it is dog eat
dog, when the going gets tough the tough get going, and blowing the brains
off of someone overseas because some Elegant people at The Top tell you it's
OK to do so as the respectable Norm, such Light should surely make its
re-entrance back into this world sooner than later.

One can only hope.

Meanwhile somewhere there are people making billions off of all the darkness
they can create.

They might be a problem.  I haven't quite made up my mind yet though.

<knock knock>
Yeah, who is it...
It's me, Harry, the stage manager.
Come in...
Light Of The World...?
Yeah, that's me...
Ok, you're up in 10 minutes on stage.
Ok, sure, no prob, let me just finish this doob.
If the boss catches you doing that, you'll be in for it...
Yeah, yeah, sure, I know... There, I'm done...  How do I look...?
Great, great, great...  Ok, straighten up a little, and for God's sake, try
to act a little macho...





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Films are getting worse, more violence, increased special effects. Story
telling in no longer important. Good taste is rarely found. Accomplishment
is only important when it pertains to money.
===========



This again comes back to Pavlov.

The television advertisment industry? or Madison Avenue or someone alone has
spent millions on just researching where the human eye will be drawn to on a
screen and by what.

It became an infectious disease, including everything we see, hear, taste,
feel or smell almost.

They know how to pull the strings, therefore they do, and, yes, it makes
them rich beyond their wildest dreams.

What was that line in "ScarFace"..?  Oh yeah, something like "First you get
the money, then when you got the money, you get the power, then when you
have the power, you get all the chicks you want..."

I'm glad we're basically a "Football G.I. Joe" bunch of clones.  It would be
too boring if all that money and energy were thrown into actually making the
world a better place to live rather than learning how to search and destroy.
If world peace, stability, and good will between nations began to breed an
actual healthy society and world, there would be a few people at The Top who
would be looking for jobs rather than calling the shots and making out like
bandits with the slop they shovel out, and that would be a real shame.
Wouldn't it..?  :|

Not just picking on "movies", I like movies, dammit, hehe, but geez they
sure know how to make one cry, laugh, orgasm, or scare the crap out of us,
and now we have our actual Government though making actual Propaganda
"Infomercials", lol, and shopping them around to News networks like they
were candy.

It's all "Hollywood", kid, try to cheer up and be a team player.  LOL.....

:|

I'll have to cite one instance that I didn't quite understand other than a
relatively fabulous little movie that I like, although I consider the actual
Propaganda behind it as so ludicrous it makes me want to vomit.  That movie
"Armageddon" with Bruce Willis.  Ok, let's look at the plot, beside all the
great characters and the neat outer space shots.  The movie opens up with
Bruce Willis shooting golf balls from an oil drilling rig at a Green Peace
ship or something, and as he's hitting them now and then he states something
like "Don't they know that ship they're protesting on runs on oil..?", and
then of course he and a group of really likeable funny and cute oil workers
go on to become astronauts and save the world by splitting a giant
metereorite in two pieces with a nuclear device they put down in a hole they
drilled in it as it was hurtling doomsday-like toward earth.

What a story line.  Thank God people from Exxon, Chevron, Etc are hanging
around to save our butts.  Try to remember people like Green Peace are just
clowns that don't even know the ships they protest on run on Oil, and pass
the popcorn.

Back to film in general though, hehe, it is again, as if Pavlov, or his
ardent disciples, simply took over the world, and all the qualities that
were so vibrantly over-apparent is some of the actors, directors,
scriptwriters, producers, etc's of movie-making, were simply bred out.

You're right, though, I always thought Quality, not just in moviemaking, was
irreplaceable.  I obviously stand corrected, to the dismal detriment of life
on earth as we know it, but corrected nevertheless.

A quick trip to the trash pile, then to the box office, and then the bank,
pushing a few trained pavlovian seals in and out of the movie houses has
become fashionable, elegant, and, again, the accepted Norm.  Money became
God.  The "Devil" was sure to figure out how to use Technology to make Life
as miserable as he could here on this Earth, while accruing vast wealth,
influence, and power, it was only a matter of time.

Or maybe I'm just an overzealous appreciator of the old movies, actors,
producers, scriptwriters, set designers, producers, etc's that I have seen
rolling Quality work before my eyes for all these many years, although I
doubt it.

I'll have to stick with "Pavlov" for the most part.  They actually bred
Quality out of Humanity.

A stunning accomplishment.

Try not to pass this information to any right wing radical theocrats trying
to get a leg up, though, we already have enough problems...




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What a litany of woe and doom per the area of culture. I had to agree.
Things are not the same. Many rapid changes in this era of short term and
high speed have created these concerns.
=========


I can't elaborate too much on that one.  That's right on the money.  All the
promises of "Modernity" I used to watch on television in the 1950's etc,
certainly didn't turn out like the pretty pictures on the screen or match up
all the pretty people using all the pretty words to promote them.

Actually, I could elaborate on all that, but it's much too complex.  "Short
Term" and "High Speed" basically describes what all those pretty pictures
and words and promises actually became more than adequately.




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I did reflect on the not so distant past. What accomplishment and fun we had
in the 50's and 60's. Unless you were there it is almost impossible to
describe that period. A time of great hope that we were going to have a
world at peace. Love was in the air. After a period of cultural dryness
creativity was on the move. Those who castigated hippie dress were ignoring
the prevalence of great costumes. Men had rarely been dressed in such
plumage, giving the ladies a run for their money.
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I like how you said that one.  It was truly a moment one had to taste rather
than hear about it or read books about it.  Grace and Light were in the air,
begging for their brothers and sisters to join them.  "Those who castigated
hippie dress" are basically the ones in charge of almost every aspect of
American Life as we speak today.

A bunch of real turds for the most part who did it on purpose for the most
part because they realized such things as Enlightenment, Grace, Creativity,
Elegance, Manners, Etc, would basically breed a bastion of Americans who
would eventually doing horribly wicked things such as make peace with the
world and turn it into an actual better place to live.

There simply is no room for Light and its follies in the darkness of Hell.

And they made damn sure they could get rid of it, and are still doing one of
the best bang-up jobs at accomplishing it that I have ever witnessed.

Pavlov, oh Pavlov, you stupid little twit.  Next time stay away from the
test tubes.




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Forever changes and we can see the swing back in culture. It is always that
way from one extreme to another. Now we have the Roundheads. Remember they
were succeeded by the Cavaliers.
============



2 years after Cromwell died while still Lord Protector or something, while
fighting for the side that was able to finally able to at least suggest
intolerable things such as a vote for every man and freedom of religion,
Charles II was welcomed back with open arms by The People.

Irony.

Ah well, ok, I'm lost now, lack of education, sitting here staring at my
computer screen, hearing talk of Quality, and Manners, and Elegance, and
Etc, makes me weepy almost in the face of what I see surrounding me on all
sides sometimes in this New Age.

Where is Howard Hawks when I need him...?  Spit shining shoes in the men's
room in D.C. somewhere probably while a politician mutters "Hurry up, boy,
the world is waiting for my glory...".

Grapes of wrath indeed.

I remember rolling in the grass in a tent with a dutch ballerina on acid in
Holland as the sun went down and some little band called Pink Floyd struck
the first note of their concert.

I remember sitting on the scaffolding in the Biltmore watching a bunch of
strange happy people singing about hair, and war, and peace, and love, and
light, and on and on and on.

I remember kisses soft and sweet, the gentle hand of a touch on my cheek,
bodies coming home from Vietnam, Peter Max, smoking doobs with The Living
Theater, laughing with Joe Papp, people waking up marching in the street,
Beatles albums being burned, girls with no bras, and some dashing man named
Michael Butler saying "Hey, how would you kids like to be on Broadway..?",
and dancing like a madman with some gypsy girl in Aux Puces while The Who
sat with mirrored sunglasses tripping their brains out watching me......

True, you had to be there.

A lot of people "Today" simply have no idea whatsoever.

Pavlov and Freud are sitting in Purgatory snorting coke laughing and waiting
for more company from the darkness.

Sometimes it appears the only Light left that I can see is when you smile.







Cheeseburger

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