Elsewhere (292)

You take that back. You take that back right now.
(whines timidly) It wasn’t here! Please don’t sic the henchlesbians on me!

The henchlesbians are nothing to fear. They just give you a bit of a talking-to and send you home till you sober up. (You are deemed sufficiently sober when you are no longer prone to say something outrageous like “I’m not going to believe it just because I read it in a blog.”) It’s when he sics the pickled “eggs” on someone that strong men pale and weak men faint.
I wonder what the new improved version of that latter phrase is? “When strong persons pale and weak persons faint” just doesn’t scan right to my admittedly antiquated ear.

. . “chavs” . . .
Consider patricians, Or, peons.
One Or the other, never both . . .
Now, keeping them in mind, noting . . .

“chavs”
From “Council House And Violent”.
A radically different social category than “preppy” or “yuppie”

—Yes, Sue Sims, noted.
Aaaaand, No.
—-Yes, I do understand a claim that one particular label would mean middle or upper class, and a different label would mean working class, However . . . the preppy/chav/hipster/yuppy is indeed the radically same social category because—Wait For It . . .

Guardian columnists get terribly upset if you use the word ‘chav’. Apparently, it’s “offensive to a largely voiceless group.” Though it seems to have escaped their attention that the word is most often used by working-class people to describe the kind of creatures they wouldn’t want living next door, or next door to their elderly parents. Which is to say, feckless and ill-mannered wasters, thugs and low-level sociopaths, and what might euphemistically be called “problem families.” The kinds of people who steal from their neighbours, play loud music at 3am, are often known by the police, and who, for entertainment, throw pets from upstairs windows.
And very much also. . . .
Jemima, Tom and Zoe seem to assume a usage exclusive to their own middle-class peers, when in fact it’s much more common to hear the term in less Guardian-friendly circles. I suspect the usage by working-class people also offends our fretful columnists because it draws a distinction between the respectable working class and the antisocial vermin that roam among them and make their lives a misery. A distinction that jars somewhat with leftist conceits about how poverty comes about.
Bingo.
And to emphasize . . . used by working-class people to describe the kind of creatures they wouldn’t want living next door, or next door to their elderly parents. Which is to say, feckless and ill-mannered wasters, thugs and low-level sociopaths, . . . . draws a distinction between the respectable working class and the antisocial vermin that roam among them and make their lives a misery.
And remember, there is the patrician Or the peon.
A number of years back I and everyone else around me watched the fiasco of the preppy first congeal. As noted,

Early on in the nineteen-empties, a very minor bit of social satire was published, called “The Preppy Handbook” The powerful uniformly noted the satire as being satire, where a redundant indicator is that it always was, still is, and always will be filed under humor. On an other hand, the weak and deluded rather uniformly delineated themselves as the weak and deluded by totally missing the point, subsequently fantasizing that the book is an actual guide, and as the weak and deluded do, they also additionally fantasized that if they called themselves preppy, that any of the powerful might someday thus mistake them for any form of capable adults.

In a general group I was in where we did Stuff, we got plagued with one person who latched onto the fantasy involved in being called preppy, and utterly insisted that everyone existed in the parameters of her new faith—and very particularly, she was the only one of the rest of us to stage such a fiasco. She also then demanded that she be considered competent and capable in what we were all doing—of what we were doing, we had an instructor and leader who was first rate. we were extremely good, where related and larger groups doing the same Stuff would invite us to events, conferences, Etc. because we were that good.
Over time I wandered out of that particular group to do other Stuff, but was still in the general area and in touch. The instructor and leader also wandered out of that same group about the same time—at which point the preppy vehemently insisted that she was to be in charge and take over what the leader and instructor had been doing.
At that time, As I Recall, the group had been in existence for a steady fifteen plus years. Once the preppy demanded control, everything disintegrated over about three years, even as many of us were doing the same original quality of work and innovation elsewhere, even as others elsewhere also continued to do the same work and innovation. At no point did the preppy ever figure out how to develop anything of her own, she resorted to openly recycling the previous work while quite loudly claiming original authorship.
Thus, in a quite middle class area and environment, we very much experienced the definitely middle class edition of say, feckless and ill-mannered wasters, thugs and low-level sociopaths, we experienced the middle class version of . . . a distinction between the respectable working class and the antisocial vermin that roam among them and make their lives a misery.
Noting patrician Or peon, there was the large group of us whose interest was individually and generally getting Stuff done and doing it well. Quite by contrast, we then had among us the middle class chav, the working class preppy, openly demonstrating the two labels thus being the same mindset. When the peon, the preppy, the chav, came in, all the patricians metaphorically and almost literally packed up and moved elsewhere—further innovation and good practice did occur elsewhere, after all, so yeah, we moved out, moved on . . .
On the larger scale, there was the same occurrence and reaction to the congealing fiasco.
In my case, I noted the hipsters of the time attempting to claim that because they had acquired Stuff and were Being Seen With Stuff—Remember those sapeurs?—therefore the fantasized demand was that such a term of “preppy” should be considered upper class and leadership . . . . . and of course the reaction by all adults to that posing being Oh. Hell. No. . . . and I knew I’d also read somewhere several instances that quite underlined the ongoing reality of actual practicing patrician OR peon and preppy . . . if I could remember where I’d been reading such . . .
After awhile, I did run across Paul Fussell’s Class, where in that he extensively cited Jilly Cooper’s Class. And with Cooper, there are two bits that rather delineate the patrician Or the peon, where she notes the division in passing, and then sails on to a next topic—or rather in Cooper’s case, she rides on to a next topic.
What Cooper notes is:

“While writing this book I found that there were very much two strands in the character of the aristocrat: first the wild, delinquent, arrogant, capricious, rather more glamorous strand; and second the stuffy, `county’, public-spirited, but publicity-shy strand, epitomized by the old baronet whose family were described `as old as the hills and infinitely more respectable’.
Or, as a small boy writing in my son’s school magazine pointed out: `Gentleman are of two types: the nose-uppish and the secluded.’
The working classes divide themselves firmly into the Rough and the Respectable. The Rough get drunk fairly often, make a lot of noise at night, often engage-in prostitution, have public fights, sometimes neglect their children, swear in front of women and children, and don’t give a stuff about anything—just like the upper classes, in fact. The Respectables chunter over such behaviour, and in Wales sing in Male Voice Choirs; . . . They also look down on people on the dole, the criminal classes . . .

In simple terms, there is the patrician, the . . .the stuffy, `county’, public-spirited, but publicity-shy strand, epitomized by the old baronet whose family were described `as old as the hills and infinitely more respectable’. . . . . The Respectables . . . in Wales sing in Male Voice Choirs; . . . . They also look down on people on the dole, the criminal classes . . . .
And then there is the Hipster, chav, preppy, [insert latest term here], sloane, yuppy, yob, . . . where by demonstration, . . . get drunk fairly often, make a lot of noise at night, often engage-in prostitution, have public fights, sometimes neglect their children, swear in front of women and children, and don’t give a stuff about anything . . . the wild, delinquent, arrogant, capricious, rather more glamorous strand . . . . . . where in this case, of course, rather than “glamorous”, a more comprehensive description would be of being layered in and festooned with “designer” labels and brand names, and then demanding to be called “elegant” and “stylish”.
And also of course, the preppy/yuppy/hipster is the middle class debacle that fits between the upper class and working class versions of peons that Cooper has noted.
Quite in turn, Edward VIII was utterly an upper class Hipster, chav, preppy, [insert latest term here], sloane, yuppy, yob, . . . . . . where by contrast, the king before him, George V, Eddie’s father, and the king after him, George VI, Eddie’s younger brother, are remembered as being patricians.
There is a rather widespread documenting joke that reminds one of working class patricians and middle class peons.

GENERAL . . . Lunches with God, but must pick up the tab.
. . . . ..
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL . . . May be granted audience with God if special request is approved at least three working days in advance. .
. . . ..
LIEUTENANT . . . Talks to walls. .
.
Sergeant Major Is God.

Thus, Yes indeed there are those who are the upper classes, the middle classes, the working classes, all doing assorted versions of What They Do.
And at the same time, there are definitely the patricians that keep getting Stuff done and doing that well, and are definitely looking out for more patricians to share the load and get more Stuff done and done well . . . .
And then below the patrician is the Hipster, chav, preppy, [insert latest term here], sloane, yuppy, yob, . . . . . . . The peon.

I want to publish a lengthy treatise on how male and female power fantasies reflect society’s expectations of men and women and prove that feminists critique of said fantasies are exactly backwards. Daniel Ream is to write the forward.
Thank you Hal for giving me the confidence to post it here instead. Saves me a FORTUNE in publishing costs and will get far more readership.
David – which table can I use for the book signings?

David, if you want to discourage bad behavior you could threaten to re-post Hal’s more incoherent exercises in logorrhea.

Code 9000 boys
I had to look that one up. Heh.

…more incoherent exercises in logorrhea…
That would imply there are less incoherent episodes, something for which evidence is lacking.

I had to look that one up
Yes. That too. Kinda serendipitously synonymous…and yet not…to what was originally meant to be a more specific isotope of DFtT.

Daniel Ream is to write the forward.

“George Orwell allegedly said that in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. What Sam has written here may seem to be unremarkable, even obvious, because it is the truth. But in telling this truth, Sam has begun a revolution against a zeitgeist that insists that heroes are villains, men are women, and women are simultaneously stunning and brave yet helpless and neurotic.
Speaking of neuroses, let me talk for a moment about the Cluster B personality disorders…”

“What I love too is growing plants that are culturally familiar to the community. It’s so important,” the freshman congresswoman said in an Instagram video while exploring a Bronx community garden.
Two things she loves: making sure the plant life is culturally familiar to the existing community, and inviting five hundred million foreigners into the country.

Two things she loves: making sure the plant life is culturally familiar to the existing community…
If the plant life were all indigenous, she would be demanding the importation of “diverse” species. The most courteous response that people like her deserve is FOAD.