[Ginto8]

I'm generally of the opinion that little bits of ugliness like that are necessary evils in programming. While I'd love it if everything could be simply and elegantly expressed, reality tends to disregard my desires. However, the example you gave was such that the only non-"ugly" solution was what you suggested, which isn't possible in Java. Depending on what you're trying to do (as opposed to how you're trying to make it look), there might actually be an elegant solution.