With the return of regular posting in this blog your faithful correspondent is also bringing back the "Men in Hats" feature.
The hat for this post is the trilby hat. Or, as we at Bloody Nib Manor refer to it, "the awful trilby."
The trilby hat was inspired by the by the first stage production of George du Maurier's 1890's novel "Trilby." The novel gave us the term Svengali and the play gave us the hat. In the play the character Trilby (who was a woman) wore a hat that became so popular among the British aristocracy that it it became a "thing" with the character's name attached to it.
So, what is a trilby hat? A trilby hat is a proper fedora that has been ruined by a pair of scissors. The brim has been snipped away to unusefulness and the crown has been shortened. It's the type of thing that may look good on jeune filles or gamines, but the fact of the matter that most of them are worn by men. And they just don't work. Some of the British aristocracy used to wear them back in the day when the aristos were considered silly, but the style soon was taken up by race course hacks, betting shop owners, mods, and rockers and the "cool" crowd. At the Manor the hat has always been regarded as slightly disreputable like the pork-pie hat.
It's a bad combination of a cap and a hat.
Few people can get away with wearing a trilby. The only man that this writer and recall having done so is Rex Harrison. Young women can get away with wearing one because they can be Trilby. Besides, yours truly gives young women a lot of leeway because they are silly and cute and this writer is an old bloke.
If you're a man and have finally gotten the sense to wear a hat or cap don't wear a baseball cap (those are for kids, ball players and machine gunners in B-17s) or a trilby. Be a man, a real grown up man, and wear a real hat or cap like a Stetson, a fedora or a beret.
Here's a picture of a trilby if you don't know what one is:
Awful Trilby Hat
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Better Minds....
While we here at Nib Manor often give the impression that we are all-wise (which is usually the case) there are occasionally men who have a better command of the distillation of ideas and the mother tongue than do we.
Such is Victor Davis Hanson, as evinced in the following:
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8154
Such is Victor Davis Hanson, as evinced in the following:
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8154
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Why From Alan to Abdul?
It's been a while since your faithful correspondent has been faithful. He apologizes for his inconstancy. The only excuse is that things have been troubled here at Bloody Nib Manor for several months and yours truly has neglected to buy a quart of ink from the local vendor.
One of the things that this writer has paid attention to is the conversion of formerly Americans and Europeans from secular or titular Christian families to Islam and the fact that a good number of them decide that it might be a good idea to run off to the Middle East and fight against the infidel or want to shoot up the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in order to help establish a Caliphate world-wide. In other words, this writer wonders why a man (or woman) who grew up as a little tyke riding a bike on the streets of suburbia, London or Paris, watching Go Rangers on television, listening to Metallica or Katy Perry, celebrating Christmas and Easter, and perhaps attending church twice a year, would want to hook up with a desert tribe that will cut one's lips off if one is found playing "Old Folks At Home" or "Whammer Jammer" on a harmonica, expect a young man to be satisfied looked at women wearing bags, and expect one to go ass up five times a day to worship a black rock located in a place that no same person would want to visit.
While there is no empirical evidence and this is all the result of internal thought and some study, yours has come to a conclusion: The interest of the investment that Christianity has given to the western world has run out. Christianity in the West. This is not to say that only the Christian faith has been on the decline, but that the Christian ethos has declined. There's an old saying that atheists want to behave like heathens and libertines while expecting everyone else to treat in a Christian manner. The chickens have come home to roost and the elites find that their shoes are covered with chicken shit as well as finding that the shoe on the other foot pinches.
For at least sixty years the intelligentsia have denigrated Christianity and the Christian ethos. It started as a game played in the halls of academia that, in the mainstream seminaries, spread to the public and the media. Before then the average steelworker in Pittsburgh, farmer in Missouri, coster-monger in London, sewer-cleaner in Paris or mosaic worker in Sicily attended church or synagogue at least several times a year and believed in the precepts of the Christian or Jewish faiths. If the faith was not bred in the bone, at least the ethos was. And with that ethos there were boundaries. There were laws and morals that went on beyond the national laws.There were religious customs that, even if a family wasn't religious, were honored in word, if not in fact. This writer can still remember blue laws when the only stores that were open on a Sunday were drugstores and the occasional gas station and when kosher butcher shops were shut down on Saturday.
But our betters, in other words, professors wanting to get tenure and make a name for themselves, decided that the Christian ethos (and Christianity itself was a lie or misunderstood) and spent an awful lot of time denigrating the faith and its results. Their thinking was, as far as you faithful correspondent can make it out, was that if Christianity is not true and Jesus was just a kind of weak Middle Eastern Buddha, then the whole Christian ethos is worth about a much as a bag of popcorn. In other words, not much.
Now, imagine yourself a young fellow. You grow up as a nominal Christian. Being a nominal Christian is a pretty easy gig, but you know that there are limits to what you can do. If nothing else, you remember a few of the Ten Commandments and that Jesus was a pretty good guy. Then you start hearing, reading, or watching articles and shows that say that being even a nominal Christian means that you're a sucker, Jesus was a huckster and Moses is a myth. Ergo, the whole Judeo/Christian ethos takes a dive because it's based on lies. And, super ergo, you can do any damn thing you want as long as it's not illegal. You can get drunk to the point of being super-stupid, you can screw any woman who will put up with you, you can tell your parents that they are a**holes because you didn't get the Hello Kitty Fender guitar that you wanted for Christmas (which means nothing because there is no Christ and therefore no Christmas). And you can do it all while getting the approval of your liberal Protestant pastor when he's not smoking boo ,or wondering if he or she should trade in his or her two year old Volvo for an Audi or a BMW with the money they make from Christians who they really think are awful dopes.
Here's the deal in a nutshell. Young men need limits. They need boundaries. They won't admit that they need them, but they need them and want them. Once they know the boundaries they are comfortable and adapt to them. They'll kick against the goads, but after a while they'll realize why there are goads. And that's the reason why some boys (and a few girls) in the West convert to the Religion of Perpetual Bitching. In Islam there are clearly drawn boundaries. The boundaries are wrong and not true. But consider the Hare Krishna movement; same deal, but without the guns.
The constant denigration of Christianity in the West has resulted in the rise of Islam in the West because the West has forgotten itself and that Christianity is the reason for the modern West. When you little tow-head boy runs off to become a jihadi or your little blond surfer girl runs off to marry a savage living in a mud hut in the Middle East you should look at yourself. Not so much because you're a bad parent, but because you didn't place the limits that traditional Christianity places on a person.
One of the things that this writer has paid attention to is the conversion of formerly Americans and Europeans from secular or titular Christian families to Islam and the fact that a good number of them decide that it might be a good idea to run off to the Middle East and fight against the infidel or want to shoot up the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in order to help establish a Caliphate world-wide. In other words, this writer wonders why a man (or woman) who grew up as a little tyke riding a bike on the streets of suburbia, London or Paris, watching Go Rangers on television, listening to Metallica or Katy Perry, celebrating Christmas and Easter, and perhaps attending church twice a year, would want to hook up with a desert tribe that will cut one's lips off if one is found playing "Old Folks At Home" or "Whammer Jammer" on a harmonica, expect a young man to be satisfied looked at women wearing bags, and expect one to go ass up five times a day to worship a black rock located in a place that no same person would want to visit.
While there is no empirical evidence and this is all the result of internal thought and some study, yours has come to a conclusion: The interest of the investment that Christianity has given to the western world has run out. Christianity in the West. This is not to say that only the Christian faith has been on the decline, but that the Christian ethos has declined. There's an old saying that atheists want to behave like heathens and libertines while expecting everyone else to treat in a Christian manner. The chickens have come home to roost and the elites find that their shoes are covered with chicken shit as well as finding that the shoe on the other foot pinches.
For at least sixty years the intelligentsia have denigrated Christianity and the Christian ethos. It started as a game played in the halls of academia that, in the mainstream seminaries, spread to the public and the media. Before then the average steelworker in Pittsburgh, farmer in Missouri, coster-monger in London, sewer-cleaner in Paris or mosaic worker in Sicily attended church or synagogue at least several times a year and believed in the precepts of the Christian or Jewish faiths. If the faith was not bred in the bone, at least the ethos was. And with that ethos there were boundaries. There were laws and morals that went on beyond the national laws.There were religious customs that, even if a family wasn't religious, were honored in word, if not in fact. This writer can still remember blue laws when the only stores that were open on a Sunday were drugstores and the occasional gas station and when kosher butcher shops were shut down on Saturday.
But our betters, in other words, professors wanting to get tenure and make a name for themselves, decided that the Christian ethos (and Christianity itself was a lie or misunderstood) and spent an awful lot of time denigrating the faith and its results. Their thinking was, as far as you faithful correspondent can make it out, was that if Christianity is not true and Jesus was just a kind of weak Middle Eastern Buddha, then the whole Christian ethos is worth about a much as a bag of popcorn. In other words, not much.
Now, imagine yourself a young fellow. You grow up as a nominal Christian. Being a nominal Christian is a pretty easy gig, but you know that there are limits to what you can do. If nothing else, you remember a few of the Ten Commandments and that Jesus was a pretty good guy. Then you start hearing, reading, or watching articles and shows that say that being even a nominal Christian means that you're a sucker, Jesus was a huckster and Moses is a myth. Ergo, the whole Judeo/Christian ethos takes a dive because it's based on lies. And, super ergo, you can do any damn thing you want as long as it's not illegal. You can get drunk to the point of being super-stupid, you can screw any woman who will put up with you, you can tell your parents that they are a**holes because you didn't get the Hello Kitty Fender guitar that you wanted for Christmas (which means nothing because there is no Christ and therefore no Christmas). And you can do it all while getting the approval of your liberal Protestant pastor when he's not smoking boo ,or wondering if he or she should trade in his or her two year old Volvo for an Audi or a BMW with the money they make from Christians who they really think are awful dopes.
Here's the deal in a nutshell. Young men need limits. They need boundaries. They won't admit that they need them, but they need them and want them. Once they know the boundaries they are comfortable and adapt to them. They'll kick against the goads, but after a while they'll realize why there are goads. And that's the reason why some boys (and a few girls) in the West convert to the Religion of Perpetual Bitching. In Islam there are clearly drawn boundaries. The boundaries are wrong and not true. But consider the Hare Krishna movement; same deal, but without the guns.
The constant denigration of Christianity in the West has resulted in the rise of Islam in the West because the West has forgotten itself and that Christianity is the reason for the modern West. When you little tow-head boy runs off to become a jihadi or your little blond surfer girl runs off to marry a savage living in a mud hut in the Middle East you should look at yourself. Not so much because you're a bad parent, but because you didn't place the limits that traditional Christianity places on a person.
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