Slave Dwellings

There’s a soulless, stone-glass-and-steel, black-and-white corporate hotel sitting next to our hotel (the Villa Gaia) here in Cefula. I suspect that you need to be a kind of soulless, stone-glass-and-steel corporate asshole (or the wife or girlfriend of one) to want to stay in one of these chilly Dante-esque abodes. Every attractive European town has one, and the people walking in and out are always Masters-of-the-Universe types driving shiny black cars and wearing slick dark suits.

In an era of diminishing natural resources and encroaching corporate cancer, old-world elegance (i.e., aged wooden floors, organic plaster or brick exteriors, organic clay-tile roofs, Oriental throw rugs, grandfather clocks, 19th Century paintings) is the only way to go for anyone with a smidgen of taste. Try telling that to the Hugo Boss hotshots who swear by those corporate hell palaces. They don’t get it, and they probably never will. Or at least not until they’ve kicked around for a couple of decades and learned a few things.

The general theory is that people who prefer splendorous hard-stone dwellings are looking to make a statement (to themselves or to others) about where they want to be or how they’d like to project themselves, as opposed to who they really are or where they’ve come from (genetically, culturally, economically). They’re looking to dwell in a nouveau-riche atmosphere of faux-Roman splendor, and figuring that if they don’t buy into this Blaupunkt life-of-Nero lifestyle their competitors (or women they’d like to attract) will suspect they’re wood-floor losers at heart, and will write them off. Or something like that.

In short, the more your lodgings reflect this ancient-Rome-meets-Gordon-Gekko style, the more socially insecure and desperate-for-approval you’re likely to be. Just saying.

32 thoughts on “Slave Dwellings

  1. The general theory is that people who prefer splendorous hard-stone dwellings are looking to make a statement (to themselves or to others) about where they want to be or how they’d like to project themselves

    none of that going on here

  2. Yeah they are tumors for the soul. And the clients tend to the smug, loud and dumb. Guys who think testosterone = labels.

  3. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between the spammers and the real commenters.

    And I think you (Jeff) are being too hard on people. Fuck it, some people just like to stay in nice hotels and not have to deal with a shower over the toilet and sheets that never get clean no matter how many times you wash them.

    I am not that person, but I don’t think they do it to look hotter to chicks. That could be your own projection.

  4. “That could be your own projection” ought to be Phreaker’s official entry in the “Understatement of the Sesquicentennial” contest.

  5. “old-world elegance (i.e., aged wooden floors, organic plaster or brick exteriors, organic clay-tile roofs, Oriental throw rugs, grandfather clocks, 19th Century paintings) is the only way to go for anyone with a smidgen of taste”

    But if that “old-world elegance” doesn’t include Wi-Fi, may God have mercy on your soul.

  6. Color me confused, but the pictures on the website to your hotel look like a shitty Sheraton or Ramada with a nice view. I don’t see the slightest hint of “taste” you opined for in your description.

    I would take a modern, spartan black and white stone-glass-and -steel hotel over what is pictured any day.

  7. “Try telling that to the Hugo Boss hotshots who swear by those corporate hell palaces.”

    Try telling them that without making a statement! An interesting linguistic conundrum.

  8. CUT TO:

    2 minutes after a 7.8 quake hits and the residents of said modern, flexible framed building stagger out looking dazed but none the worse for wear. The look next door where a heap of stone marks where the quaint, old world hotel used to sit. An obviously dead hand sticks out from the rubble, crushed to death by entryway capstone.

    MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE TYPE

    (in Italian)

    Poor bastards.

    He and Mrs. Master of the Universe begin helping people.

    Just saying…

  9. Some people make statements with money, others by never shutting the fuck up about why their choices and tastes and ideas are superior. And what about guys who rail against commercialism but post sneak peaks of smartphone operating systems in Italian? What statement are they trying to make?

    I wouldn’t sweat it too much, though,you’re only human…. there had to be guys just like you 2500 years ago to inspire Aesop, right?

  10. The same company probably runs both hotels. Every good business understands market segmentation.

    I think we should all heed the wisdom of Arthur Jensen in Network. It’s not satire, but a truly moving tribute to our way of life. If only Charles Ferguson had understood this before he made that humorless little screed of a film.

    “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

    You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

    It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

    Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

    You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

    What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

    We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”

  11. 50 Cent settles for chump change.

    Digital Bits has info on upcoming BD releases of Pirahna and Humanoids From the Deep.

    Sorcerer featurette.

    Knight & Day clip and Japanese trailer.

    Toy Story 3 spots.

    Inception spots.

    Airbender spot.

    A-Team spot.

    John C. Reilly must really not want me to see Cyrus. [New clip.]

    Greek red-band clip and spots.

    Expendables spot.

    Bay goes from Transformers to turtles.

    Hobbit still being held up by MGM problems after all.

    Kane and Lynch being handled by Wayne Kramer?

    Professor X turns emo.

    I like how Ahnie takes credit for jobs he didn’t create.

    Sudeikis is vying to be a horrible boss.

    Kingsley Q+A.

    More shit Sherlock official.

    Alias 2.0?

    Elwes in Reitman rom(?)-com.

    Anyone want another Caesar movie?

    Carrell=Dennis Lambert?

    Your movie must really suck if the star of Glitter drops out.

    Anyone want a Fallen Idol remake?

    Willis ready for prison thriller from Fuqua.

    Predators pics.

    Airbenders pics.

    Killers clips.

    Elton John considered “controversial” in Morocco

    Jesse James goes for the Menendez defense.

  12. How about we keep the spammer in comment #24 in exchange for the spammer in comment #23? We really need to ship him out of here before the trade deadline this year!

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