🚀 go-pugleaf

sticks wrote:
> Leif Erikson wrote:
> > Jag_Pop@Hotmail.com wrote:
> >
> >> Leif Erikson wrote:
> >>
> >>> Elmo wrote:
> >>>
> >>
> >> .
> >> (snip)
> >> .
> >>
> >>
> >>> We're talking 3500 square foot (and larger) McMansions,
> >>> for people with two children at most, and who
> >>> themselves grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as one of
> >>> three to five children in a 1400 square foot house, and
> >>> consider their youths to have been idyllic.  Multiple
> >>> big-screen TVs (HD cable, of course) scattered
> >>> throughout the McMansion, when they may have had a 17"
> >>> black-and-white with rabbit ears antenna and perhaps
> >>> six broadcast channels available.
> >>>
> >>
> >> .
> >> "six broadcast channels" ! ? !
> >>
> >> We only had three. And had to frequently bang the top
> >> or sides of the tv to improve reception.
> >> .
> >> My wife and I sat in a movie theater lobby recently and
> >> did some people watching. We love to people watch.
> >> .
> >> Have things changed radically overnight? Or do parks
> >> and outdoor cafes, bookstores, garden shops, hiking paths
> >> live theaters and museums have a different breed to watch?
> >> The movie theater lobby
> >> (a large one for a fourteen theater multiplex) was obese-city.
> >> The trim were few, very very few. The kids were mirror images
> >> of the parents. I saw kids with soda containers the size of
> >> Oktoberfest Bier steins - NO, BIGGER! (Oktoberfest! now there
> >> is people watching!). Disgusting and shameful display.
> >
> > Well, "fourteen screen multiplex" tells you all you need to know.  What
> > kind of movies were they showing? I can tell you that it wasn't whatever
> > today's equivalent of "My Dinner with Andre" or "Tampopo" might be (I
> > don't go to the movies any more; can you tell?) No, they were showing
> > Hollywood grind-em-out lowbrow fare, in most of which the star was
> > Special Effects.
> >
> > I know just what you're talking about.  Movie theaters have for decades
> > been among the most unholy temples of Americans' tendency to excess.  I
> > remember seeing popcorn buckets that were big enough to bathe an infant,
> > and I can only guess they've gotten bigger.
> >
> >
> >> .
> >> My theory is: SUV and Minivans. People that ride hogs
> >> are effected in appearance by it, why not SUV?
> >> Big fat, guzzling, selfish, view obstructing SUV. The family
> >> dog and the master look alike over time, why not SUV
> >> and rider?
> >
> > But SUVs and minivans are symptoms, not causes.  They do go together in
> > lockstep with all the other grossly excessive forms of consumption.
> >
> > There's a restaurant chain out here in California called Claim Jumper;
> > don't know where else they might be.  This place is infamous for
> > obscenely large portions.  Nothing is worse than some
> > heart-attack-on-a-plate dessert they serve called the Chocolate
> > Motherlode Cake, described on their website as "A 'Giant' Slice of our
> > Six-Layer Chocolate Cake." The word "giant" in the description doesn't
> > do it justice - it is Gargantuan.  One slice of this crap is more than
> > enough to serve four adults generously, but I've seen some blowpig
> > devour one by herself.
> >
> > This kind of restaurant is almost entirely a suburban phenomenon.  You
> > don't see them out in small towns, and you don't see them in the trendy,
> > too-hip parts of big cities.  The really sad thing is, it exemplifies
> > what far too many people think is The Good Life, but it's simply
> > grotesque.  And it all comes down to what I earlier described as the
> > American philosophy, summed up as a motto:  if a little of something is
> > good, a lot must be great.  That belief simply is wrong, to the point of
> > being immoral.
> 
> Immoral?

Yes.  Gluttony is immoral.