Posted On: Saturday - June 6th 2026 7:30PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor Curmudgeonry
... could our lyrics be more cludged? ♫
Come on guys, it's all alliteration anymore, or actually already was when the trio Crosby, Stills, and Nash first sang Helplessly Hoping 57 years ago. It was 1969, not yet the Clown World era.
That's a poster in an elevator at some hotel. The breakfast is advertised as "creatively curated". Curation is a big thing now. Part of Clown World™ consists of the constant conflation of nouns with verbs, the kidnapping of engineering terms by software types, and strange new uses of old words out of the blue.
Having something curated is apparently something good. The dictionary tells me the verb "curate"* means to select and organize. That applies very well to museum "curators", the only use of that word I'd ever heard until about 5-10 years ago. (I'm pretty sure pundit Steve Sailer brought it up a few times from the things he's read.)
Yeah, but breakfast, creatively curated breakfast? It looks like some blackberries on top of grits or oatmeal, not exactly how I'd select or organize my breakfast. Could they have thoughtfully sourced some bacon, eggs, and toast (whole wheat for health reasons) instead? Hopefully this breakfast was not cooked by the museum curator, because who knows from what eon he thoughtfully sources his materiel for the breakfast exhibits?
Hey, and where's the rest of the alliteration, guys? It COULD fit in that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (sometimes) Young song anyway, I suppose... Thoughtfully sourcing some stuff for the skillet, she sautes, selecting pink sea salt...
Wiki editors noted not just the alliteration in a number of the lyric lines in Helplessly Hoping, but they also see some double meanings here in the chorus that I never thought of before. (I don't know about that 3rd one - that's sketchy.) Then the voices build from one to two to three, but I don't know about four. Who'd be the fourth voice?**
They are one person.
They are two (too) alone.
They are three (Free) together,
They are four (For) each other.
I wish I could tell which voice was whose here, but I can tell you that in the picture, from left to right, that's Graham Nash, Steven Stills, and David Crosby.
Anyway, commenter Adam Smith noted he really liked this one after I'd strangely mentioned it in this post last week. I like it too. I had a CSN&(sometimes)Y period about 1 1/2 decades after their time. I think what I had on cassette tape was this very debut album pictured in the still here.
We'll get to a comparison, more of a contrast, between that recent horrific police stupidity in the UK vs. the overdose of George Floyd, more about Chinese Communism, confirmation of the slow deflation of the university bubble, Orwellian stupidity in the UK (but, of course!) and then, yes, after a year and a half, our impressions of Uruguay. Have a nice evening and happy Sunday, Peakers! Thanks for reading and commenting.
* The noun is a totally separate word having to do with clergymen.
** Neil Young had already driven his touring hearse down from Toronto to LA by this time but he was in other bands until Summer of that same year, while the album was released earlier in 1969.
Comments:
Moderator
Tuesday - June 9th 2026 8:16AM MST
PS: "Carefully crafted", now, see, THAT's good too! I'm not sure if I had the breakfast or not, this particular time.
The Alarmist
Tuesday - June 9th 2026 7:02AM MST
PS
What would be nice would be if less money was put into carefully crafted advertising about their breakfast and more into the quality of the breakfast itself.
🕉
What would be nice would be if less money was put into carefully crafted advertising about their breakfast and more into the quality of the breakfast itself.
🕉
https://i.ibb.co/mrZgNh9N/Jumanji-Jackson.jpg
☮️