#excess

[escuerzoresucitado]

[vesperalia]

"JOIN US / ACÉPHALE" [Digital Collage; 2026] --- {Prints Available} Find me also on: Instagram - YouTube

[antirelation]

The languages of extravagance and excess by which the idea of black life is segregated takes on a new emotional power in postbellum America. The idea of profligacy—whether social or subjective—makes of thriftiness a moral duty, in which the very notion of self-restraint is racially determined: the act of reining in, or better still, the act of self-repression, encodes a social hygiene whose sources are racial and, therefore, not natural. Hence, the failure of blacks to acquire the skills necessary for the accumulation of capital or money is the result of a specific kind of civic failure, according to which the bestowal of liberty in postbellum America vanishes beneath another desire that precedes it, and that establishes blackness as the point where “a general looseness of the passions” matches a “propensity to gratify and satiate every thirst.” Where does this discourse of bling bling come from? From various sources, each of which institutes race as a moral value, as ideology: for the white bourgeois and worker, from the nineteenth century to the present, blackness is a degraded form of being that cannot as such conserve itself; or, it is seen as an impoverished way of being that can only be put to work as a supplementary labor (for of course work is niggerdom), which means that it cannot profit from itself as capital. In all these readings, blackness is seen as both exorbitant and impoverished, both decadent and deliriously perverse. Its lack of restraint suggests both the collapse of capitalist values and a threat that puts an end to civic duty: the substitution of private consumption for collective duty is here linked to a more general anxiety about an entity driven to negate the very idea of accumulation—hence the extravagant excess of a being that is seen to come from a nihilistic, menacing, undeserving need to consume everything. So when [Alexis de] Tocqueville spoke of the virtues of thrift as “interest rightly understood,” the word “rightly” denotes the racial recognition of both a frugality that liberates and a black consumption that can only enslave. Desires and passions are “masters which it is necessary to contend with,” he continues, but the slave has “learned only to submit and obey.” Or again: if freedom is “the end [telos] of all just restraint,” excess can never be free, for whatever the cost to ethics and the state, freedom can, paradoxically, only be just when it freely constrains or inhibits itself. In the history of race in America, decadence is not only the effect of bourgeois notions of excess but also the effect of the perceived unconstraints of black being and desire. It is therefore not surprising perhaps that a black counterdiscourse emerges in which blacks are urged to “cultivate honesty, punctuality, propriety of conduct.” If to be rightfully bourgeois means that one must cultivate signs of righteous self-government, which are taken as a natural fact, the belief seems to be that blacks can only earn their rightful place in society by turning en masse to a market-led devotion of thrift: in these counterdiscourses, blackness is thus identified as an active, rather than docile, labor, whose gratification is derived from the subjugation to market values. What is new here is the idea of black utilitarianism, which [Booker T.] Washington and other writers introduced and described. In the field of such rhetorical labor, masculinity, conceived as the productive form, is contrasted to the feminine space of thrift, which is the duty of the one who consumes. Here in the spending of thrifts real black men work; they are not castrated sojourners in the marketplace of capital.

David S. Marriott, from On Decadence: Bling Bling

[existentialistbookworm]

Black Metal Barbie.

🖤💘🖤

[prettypersuasion]

Izzy shares his thoughts on Motley Crue:

"Talkin' of sick," he seemingly free-associates. "Y'now Motley Crue? Sick fuckin' guys, man! Real sick fucks, those guys! In '87 we were supposed to come... here... to Europe, man... with fuckin' Motley Crue, and they burnt out on us and had to go into detox. You wouldn't have believed these guys.”

“Like they're doin' an ounce of cocaine each fuckin' day. These guys are walkin' into fuckin' walls, man. And they're doing this shit... Y'know, havin' this chick tied to the bed and stuff. And they tried to get us into that shit too, just to fuck us up, right. Which is what happened."

And here he straightens up. "I mean, can you believe... These guys gave fuckin' Stevie fuckin' Ajax to snort all fuckin' night. Fucked him up. You don't pull that kinda shit on another musician!"

-Izzy talking about Motley Crue and the messed up stuff they did, involving Stevie Adler.

Interview conducted in 1989 and published in UK mag ‘The Face’ in 1990

link to whole article here https://www.oocities.org/rattlesnake_suitcase/face90.htm

[coloursteelsexappeal]

1000SEL

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Emperor Caligula’s Legendary Nemi Ships

In 1932, the world witnessed a remarkable achievement in archaeology with the recovery of 2000 year-old Emperor Caligula’s legendary Nemi ships, which had rested beneath the waters of Lake Nemi for nearly two thousand years.

Between 1928-1932, engineers and divers undertook the extraordinary task of salvaging these immense wooden vessels, the larger of which was more like a floating palace than a ship.

Equipped with marble, mosaic floors, heating systems, and even plumbing with baths, the ships revealed an astonishing level of engineering and luxury, showcasing technologies that many had thought to be modern inventions.

The two vessels, later named Prima Nave and Seconda Nave, measured an impressive 70m x 20m (230ft x 66ft) and 73m x 24m (240ft x 79ft), making them marvels of Roman craftsmanship.

Their sheer size and lavish construction reflected the extravagance of Emperor Caligula, whose reign was infamous for indulgence and excess.

These ships, built at immense expense, were not merely functional but grand statements of power, wealth and technical mastery, reinforcing Rome’s ability to rival the opulence of other ancient cultures, including Syracuse and Egypt.

Historians have long debated the true purpose of the Nemi ships.

Some argue that they were intended as floating palaces for Caligula and his court, places where his notorious excesses could unfold far from the public eye.

Others believe that at least one vessel was designed as a floating temple dedicated to Diana, the goddess associated with Lake Nemi.

Whether symbols of power, stages for imperial debauchery, or sacred sanctuaries, the ships remain one of history’s most fascinating relics of Roman ambition — an extraordinary blend of art, architecture, and engineering pulled from the depths after nearly two millennia.

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Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (31 August 12 – 24 January 41), also called Gaius and Caligula, was Roman emperor from AD 37 until his assassination in 41.

He was the son of the Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter, Agrippina the Elder, members of the first ruling family of the Roman Empire.

—

The ships were destroyed by fire during World War II on the night of 31 May 1944.