The Hipster

I quite like eccentric people, particularly those who are genuinely intelligent and slightly odd. You know the kind of person I mean; somebody who is so intelligent that they don’t have time for things like fashion, style, mainstream hobbies and conventional culture.

My kind of genius

Sadly, there is a particular breed of pseudo-intellectual that tries to emulate these eccentric geniuses by being odd just for the sake of it. These people are known as hipsters. I’m sure you have heard of them.

During my life, I have encountered many flawed geniuses who simply don’t have the time or patience to worry about their dress sense, hairstyles and don’t feel the need to become a normal social animal, choosing instead to immerse themselves completely in the subjects that fascinate them.  

For example, a university professor with wild uncontrolled hair whose fashion sense was born (and remains) in the 1960’s or the computer nerd who spends every waking hour on his computer devising amazing software for fun and, when he’s not fully engrossed in that will plunge into hours of science fiction and become an absolute expert on everything relating to Doctor Who, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings.

I like these people.

My kind of genius

Over the years, people like this have started to get more respect and others are seeing the light, choosing to embrace them rather than mock them.

Hipsters are latching onto this and trying to portray themselves as – well – weird – but in a cool, fashionable and trendy way. I know for a fact that they are pseudo-intellectuals because, unlike flawed geniuses, the only things that come out of their mouths is a blend of philosophy and bullshit.

Hipsters go one step further – they purposely go out to make themselves stand out as eccentric. They actually fail miserably though because the genius will not spend a fortune on his weird attire and has no desire whatsoever to attract people to them because of their unconventional dress sense.

A hipster is the kind of person who will go to a pub and be positively thrilled that his fish and chips is served in a bucket or his full English breakfast comes on a shovel.

Hipster Breakfast

Hipster coffee

Hipsters look down on people like me who like conventional things like sport and rock music, although they will be interested in my travel exploits, particularly to the more exotic places I’ve had the good fortune to visit.

You see, the hipster tries to portray himself as a cool, open-minded intellectual who is fascinated by everything and anything, as long as it is avant-garde.

A hipster will dress in, frankly, weird clothes – the weirder the better.  

His musical taste is bizarre. Your typical hipster will buy a record full of Peruvian pop songs (even though he doesn’t understand Spanish). Note – it has to be a record that he can play on his 1970’s record player because a CD is too modern and mainstream.

The hipster will also like to portray himself as an intelligent creative genius who will try his hand at absolutely anything from writing bizarre poetry to playing weird instruments. He is the kind of person who will buy a penny farthing and voluntarily go to underground theatres to watch strange meaningless plays. His house will be full of bric-a-brac that he “found on his travels” but in reality cost a small fortune from Camden Market. He will also not understand anything he owns, says or creates, but will boast about it all using philosophical evidence to back his long descriptive words, which will make no sense to truly intelligent people, impressing only those who are trying to be hipsters themselves - pseudo-hipsters if you like.

The hipster will want to travel where his heart takes him, choosing to visit strange countries with nothing but four hipster T-shirts, a pair of sandals and a pair of garish crazy shorts. He will acquire strange tattoos that he claims came from local people who rarely see tourists because, of course, a hipster simply cannot go to a place where conventional people go! Oh no! That wouldn’t be cool.

Travel Hipster

You see, hipsters are a paradox. They like to portray themselves as outsiders and social pariahs but the only reason they do so is to be cool and popular socially. They love to bore you with tales of their exploits.

Here are some things you may hear a hipster say.

“You’ve never heard of Emilio Lugazi’s authentic Chilean classical jazz masterpiece “Soy la evolución del mono y la máquina”? It is exquisite!”

“Oh this tattoo? It means “I am eternal light!” in Thai. It is the work of a 92 year old elder in a remote village near to Chiang Mai. She did it for nothing because she liked a poem I wrote for her.”

“I’ll have the Messy Combo Vegetarian Burger with Melon Fries and Mustard Mayonnaise please. No, it’s fine if it comes on a roof slate. It’s more authentic that way.”

“Here’s a novel I wrote last week. It’s about a woman on a journey of self-discovery in the caves of Izca. I wrote it on a typewriter in Cossack’s Coffee shop. It’s called “The Imagination Cube”. I don’t want to sell it; I needed to write it for my own self-discovery.”

Finally, if you still don’t recognise a hipster – here are a few photos I have found on the web.

Finally, if you want to annoy a hipster, all you have to do is imply that they are now mainstream. For example, if you ever see a hipster typing poems on a 1960's typewriter in Starbucks while drinking his latte out of an avocado skin, just say, within his earshot:

"Wow! Writing your own poetry in Starbucks. That's so mainstream. There's a guy in an independent coffee shop on the High Street, who's just parked his penny farthing outside and is tattooing his arse with original poetry while singing traditional Uruguayan opera. And what a beard he has - five feet long, and dyed in the colours of the Brazilian flag. What a cool guy!"

He will freak out, I promise you.

I'm Pink Therefore I'm Spam

A while ago, somebody asked:

“What on earth are you doing, you stupid arse?”

That question made me start thinking, which is always a dangerous thing.

I didn’t ponder the question directly because I knew why it had been asked – I had spilled a cup of tea on my desk at work and it had flooded onto somebody else’s desk (his reaction was quite good, really).

Instead it made me consider the point of existence. I can almost hear you thinking “What the hell are you talking about?” Allow me to elaborate, dear reader.

I started to consider whether my mistake would make any difference in the global scheme of things.. Thousands of years into the future, my faux pas would be long forgotten. Both my work colleague and me would eventually both fade into oblivion and be lost in the mists of time. So why was he kicking up such a fuss?

Would anybody be even remotely interested in my antics in three thousand years’ time? Would anybody living in the year 5010 be even vaguely aware that a guy in Manchester had once pissed off a work colleague by soaking his desk in hot tea?

Can you imagine a future historian saying:

The man who calls himself The Plastic Mancunian wrote, what can be best described as drivel and exposed it the world for a good few years. However, the turning point came when he spilled hot tea over a colleague’s desk at work, resulting in a chain of events that ultimately led to World War Three. Thankfully, the hogwash he published has been lost.

The only reason that somebody like me might be remembered would be if I really had triggered World War Three eventually causing the violent destruction of humanity, all animal and plant life and possibly the Earth itself.

In the grand scheme of things, I am an insignificant moment in a vast infinite universe of time and space and my existence will not be remembered.

But I digress.

The original angry question rattled around my brain for a good few hours, teasing me, trying to stimulate my imagination and thought processes; in effect it tried to kick start the philosopher within. And it succeeded – to some extent.

In the past, I have had a bit of a problem with deep thinkers. I didn’t particularly mind them cogitating and filling their minds with nonsense – just as long as I didn’t have to listen to the bollocks that poured out of their mouths.

Also, I didn’t want them to think any less of me because I refused to engage with them about reason, conclusion and speculation. I’m sure that most philosophers are in fact very intelligent people; however, there are some that I have read about and some I have met who pour scorn on those refusing to enter their world, considering them to be idiots of the highest order. And that annoys me.

“I think therefore I am; you don’t think therefore you are a moron”.

I have questioned their intelligence because, quite simply, their minds tend to wander into crazy realms and, to me at least, the nonsense they talked about was just idiotic. For example, at university, I was once rummaging through some past mathematics papers in the library so that I could practice them for my forthcoming final exams. As I searched through the folders of old papers, I stumbled upon an old philosophy exam. I was curious about the subject and began to read the questions. There was a lot of stuff about famous philosophers, hidden meaning, thinking and other stuff that probably needed a level of understanding about various concepts in order to pass. To be honest, I would have been prepared to sit down and take a stab at the some of the questions. I wouldn’t have answered them in the way the examiners expected; my answers would have been facetious. I would have failed spectacularly and made an example of.

Some of the questions were absolutely ridiculous. Like this one:

There is a planet in existence that is identical to Earth, but populated only by unicorns. Discuss.

I read the question and within three minutes I was ejected from library, howling with laughter and struggling to maintain control of my bladder. Passers-by saw a demented science student, rolling around on the floor with tears in his eyes, clutching his groin, laughing maniacally and babbling “Unicorns! UNICORNS!”

These days, however, I have changed my opinion and I might even be tempted to have a go at answering the unicorn question, simply because I find it intriguing that somebody dreamt it up in the first place. And it also makes me wonder what other questions there are out there rattling around the minds of deep thinkers worldwide, like:

How do you know that you are not dreaming at the moment?

While you are pondering that, I have had a quick peek on the internet, looking for a few philosophical quotes some of which might make you chuckle but also might make you think.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

A chocolate bar is better than nothing. Nothing is better than eternal happiness. Therefore a chocolate bar is better than eternal happiness.

Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

To err is human. To forgive is unusual.

Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.

Believe those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Even a clock that doesn’t work is right twice a day.

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. [PM addendum: Unless of course you LIVE in Australia in which case you're screwed!]

I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

The philosophy exam was a piece of cake -- which was a bit of a surprise, actually, because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

My favourite is a story I heard about a philosophy exam question that simply said:

Why?

A candidate simply answered:

Why not?

I love that!

Impossible Questions

As a child, I was a real pain in the arse (no change there then), particularly to my granddad. As an inquisitive, five year old, I used to ask him questions like “What’s the biggest number?” and “Why is the sky blue?”

Being an intelligent bloke, he did his best to satisfy my curiosity by answering such questions as best he could. Sadly, for certain particularly stupid questions he was unable to give me a satisfactory reply. For my sixth birthday he bought me a book called something like “Every Child’s Answer Book” which contained very simple answers to the crazy questions I asked. I loved it and read it from cover to cover. It even had the answer to “What is the biggest number?” – though when I discovered that there wasn’t one I was very disappointed - perhaps that’s why I studied Maths and Computer Science at university.

Unfortunately, as I have grown older, I am still curious about things. With the birth of the internet I can satisfy this crazed curiosity with my mate, Mr Google. However, there are some questions where the answer still eludes me. And what great questions they are. Feast your eyes on these:

What happens when an immoveable object meets an unstoppable force?

What is the exact value of pi?

What happens when you die?

What happened before the Big Bang?

Is time travel possible and if so, how can I travel through time?

Is humanity alone?

If space is constantly expanding, what is it expanding into?

Have we been visited by time travellers from the future?

Who was the first human being?

How many stars are there?

How many planets are there?

Now I realise that with some of the questions above, I am heading dangerously towards the subject of philosophy, a subject that is in the realm of the pseudo-intellectual and something I have previously spent time laughing at for its absurdity. However, in my defence, I believe that the answers to the questions above are scientific only and not a complete loads of conjectural clap-trap from the minds of people who talk pure piffle. My theory is that if you ask an impossible question to a philosopher today and ask the same question to the same philosopher in a year’s time, you will get two different answers.

Perhaps I am being a bit harsh – judge for yourself. Here are some impossible philosophical questions:

What is it like to be a rock?

What is the opposite of a duck?

What is the answer to this question?

For how long is “now” here?

Would this question still say anything if nobody could read?

Do Martians like ice cream?

Is there a planet exactly the same as Earth but populated only by unicorns?

What colour is the number six?

What does purple smell like?

Is this a trick question?

Is an apple alive when you eat it?

If I am wrong then I apologise to all philosophers for my views on their subject. I don’t think I am wrong. What kind of question is "Do Martians like ice cream?" and what kind of person asks such a bizarre question? I’d be interested for any philosophers to answer that or any of the philosophy questions above – and then answer them again in a year’s time.

Me? I think I’ll stick with the scientific questions and ponder what would happen if I were to meet my future self – or is that too philosophical?