Hey Peter, I was moaning just yesterday to Col about how the public seem to view me, shop assistants that direct me to the bargains and look me up and down and decide I’m usually not worth the effort of their attendance.

I guess I am the equivalent of the female in a cheap suit. No one’s thrown up on me yet, thank goodness (correction: no adult has thrown up on me yet).

Now and again someone will ask if I am some kind of playcentre out for a walk. If I mention fostering I get the “oh I would have done that but it would be too heartbreaking” then they look me up and down like I must be inhuman and doing it for money.

As for men in suits, well they are working and they are probably tired. I don’t think I ever had an opinion about them but I had a friend once similar in attitude to Houel. That movie “seven” ewww… yucky. That was the psycho that said it?

Houellebecq, I know where you're coming from. I have little respect for the people who have so little respect for themselves that they allow themselves to be cogs in someone else's machine. Bureaucrats and functionaries with any desire to "make a difference" beaten out of them by life's vicissitudes.

It's sad, but the way our workplaces are being remade, those grey people are the perfect employees - perfectly able to fit into a world in which no human decisions are ever made and one's only role is to feed the machines with data for purposes unknown.

Little wonder that some of those grey people are here; those who have nothing to contribute and whose sole pleasures seem to come from trying to sneer at those who do. Second- and third-raters desperate to show off to an audience of their betters, yet managing no more than the leg-humping, arse-licking cavorting of a Pomeranian that has somehow escaped spaying.

Think "comic book guy" from the Simpsons dressed in his Star Trek uniform for a perfect image of Pericles, for example.

Otokonoko:"how do these ambitious, wealthy, successful people turn into cheap suit wearing, ugly shoe buying angry middle-aged men?"

Read "Death of a Salesman" or watch any Jackie Gleason, especially "The Honeymooners". Have a look at "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam or "The Man Who Wasn't There" by the Coen Brothers

The sad faceless fellows in cheap suits are no different to there wives, usually equipped with extraordinarily large bums and breasts all a wobbling around in Kmart or possibly Target (for the more up-market) utility wear with either a screaming toddler or offensive 9 year old picking its nose and glaring at everyone.

I never bought into the security-for-life-while-we-suck-the-life-blood-out-of-you style career path.

I prefer the helter-skelter (Charles Manson excluded) style of life.

Peter the Believer “Do you prefer a show pony.”

As far as females are concerned, give me the show pony every time… Ultimately it is cheaper to buy the services of an ironing lady, cleaner and laundress. A lady on ones arm who turns heads is priceless.

As for the ties, half Windsor or full Windsor… try tying a bow tie from scratch… it is a hell of a task but worth the effect at dinner and even after… when oneself or some new conquest unties the bow and it drapes, casually, around the neck in its own “lop-sided” style… actually me and the bling-bling show pony have a ball at the Hilton coming up.. she will be done up to the nines in her diamonds (no Austrian crystals or cubic zirconia) and my black tie will not be on elastic.

And “Is this a symptom of the superficiality that is infesting our society.”

To superficial.. we are all free to be as “superficial” as we want (some of us use superficiality as a shield to protect the delicate sincerity we really feel inside) … so long as it makes us happy…

That’s the problem with freedom of choice,

other peoples choices might not gel with ones own but that small disappointment sure beats the disappointments which come with the alternative.

To dating agencies... try RSVP... it is online and alot cheaper than the those supposed places (where they "match-you" but when it is to some bland opposite ... maybe the guy in the cheap suit should question his "presentation"). But also remember, with all dating.... you have to dig through some dirt to find the diamond..

Wonderful stuff Houelly. I feel so much better after reading that.

I can go off to work happy now, dressed in shorts and singlet. Might get changed into somewhat more respectable clothes some time during the morning.

Then I’ll go for a barefoot run, then shopping barefoot with sweaty singlet.

Haven’t worn a tie since the day I was married 21 years ago. Been single now for 20 years!!

Yep, middle-aged morons in suits, be they good cuts or cheapies, don’t get no sympathy from this non-conformist.

People look at me with disdain for daring to go around everywhere barefoot (I get many more sideways looks for this than for wearing a singlet and shorts). I look at suit-clad drongoes with disdain, not to mention those who smoke with impunity in public and those that carry pot bellies that immediately tell the world that they can’t look after themselves.

Tailor-made battledress for the continuing class war

October 3 2006
Bill Bottomley

IF WE were to go back to the drawing board and address the question, "What are good ways to clothe the human body?", I doubt that anyone would come up with the suit as a solution.

Of all the ways to cover our nakedness, the suit would have to be one of the least satisfactory.

The suit is a testament to the persistence of unexamined assumptions and institutionalised habits. Its most obvious shortcomings are its uncomfortableness and its price, plus the fact that it is nearly always worn with a collar and tie, the other really dumb sartorial habit that seems to have survived in the face of common sense.

And think of all the unnecessary stuff that a suit brings with it, such as the padded shoulders, the little buttons on the bottom of the sleeves, coat pockets that don't get used and lapels (not to mention double-breastedness, when it's in fashion). And a suit is so complex it has to be made by an expert.

But the really significant thing about the suit is that it is the uniform of those who run the show. Suits are symbolic of power and money. A Zegna suit is the same sort of status symbol to a power merchant as Nike sneakers are to gangsta rappers.

Pollies love suits so much that they even wear them on the beach. The corporate world loves suits, too; and it doesn't matter what nationality you are, if you want to fit in with your international brethren, you'd better wear a suit.

Suits are today's uniform of the oppressors in the class war that has been going on for centuries but which has become particularly savage since the economic rationalists got their greedy grasp on the helm of most countries.

If you were to draw up an organisational chart of the army of exploiters who wear suits, it would match pretty closely a similar chart of the army that wears camouflage: petty bureaucrats and privates at the bottom, and corporate executives and senior brass at the top.

The social rules governing suit-wearing have relaxed considerably since I was a kid. I haven't owned a suit for more than 40 years, but it hasn't stopped me going to weddings, funerals or other formal occasions. Yet people still wear them, despite the lack of comfort and the symbolic significance of the suit in the continuing class war.

I suspect this is because most people don't realise how comprehensively they are being shafted by the dedicated suit-wearers, despite the evidence in the headlines every day. When you wear a suit you are publicly declaring whose side you are on - and it ain't the side of the workers.
You wear a suit
You are the enemy!