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.

The Earth Is Flat

I love weird stuff and I also love people who believe in it.

Whilst stumbling around cyberspace the other week, I stumbled across a particular favourite of mine, a bunch of conspiracy theorists who share an absurd belief.

I am talking about the Flat Earth Society, a group of seemingly eloquent people who truly believe that we all live on a planet that is similar to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

To them, our beloved planet is not a sphere; it is a disk.

To them the Earth is flat.

Given all of the evidence to the contrary, they still maintain in this modern day and age, with all of the advances in space travel, physics and astronomy that the governments of the world are uniting against the population of the world to hide the truth that we live on a giant frisbee.

Here’s what they believe:

The Earth is a disk with the North Pole at its centre.

Antarctica is in fact a wall of ice that surrounds the edge of the disk, keeping the oceans in.

Space travel is fake. The USSR and USA were so obsessed with winning the space race during the cold that they faked their accomplishments to deceive the other into believing that they were ahead.

Photographic evidence of a globular Earth is also fake. NASA is an institute whose sole purpose is to prolong the myth of a Round Earth.

Circumnavigation of the Earth is performed by going around the North Pole in big circles.

The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When the sun is over your head, it is daytime. When it is not over your head, it is night time.

You cannot see the curvature of the Earth from an aircraft. Your perception of a curved Earth is due to your perception through heavily curved aircraft windows.

Gravity as we know it does not exist.

The sun and the moon are simply rotating spheres, each 32 miles across that can be found 3000 miles above the surface of the flat Earth.

The concept of a Full Moon is impossible in the Round Earth theory.

Earth is not a planet and the other planets are small.

The stars also rotate above the Earth.

The moon landing was a hoax.  Astronauts shown moving on the moon in slow motion were on wire supports.

Here is a picture of what they believe the Earth looks like:

This is amazing and if you take a look at any of the Flat Earth Society websites, they have supposedly scientific evidence to back all of their claims. However, what I find even more amazing is that people actually believe this utter nonsense.

I simply cannot comprehend how, or even why, people choose to ignore reality and shift their belief system to an incredible wild idea that took hold of humanity before the great scientists in our history proved it wrong.

I can understand people in the past believing that the Earth was flat, because they didn’t know any better. However, nowadays, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support their outrageous claims. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to support the Round Earth theory.

Why are these people so delusional?

Why choose to champion a ridiculous lie?

Their theories are totally ridiculous, even laughable. It seems to be that when anybody tries to debunk their weird theory, they simply invent something that explains why you are wrong. An example of this is that if the Earth were indeed flat then at the edges of the disk, gravity would be totally different and approaching the edge would make gravity more pronounced. In fact, the Earth is so big that gravity would pull the Earth into a ball shape. Their answer to this is amazing, as we have seen; gravity simply does not exist or more accurately, it doesn't exist in the way that we have been led to believe.

Really?

So all of those science experiments I performed in A-Level Physics to determine the acceleration due to gravity are totally false and pointless?

It's worse, when you consider that Flat Earth conspiracy theorists claim that we are all being kept in the dark about this. What they are saying is that every government in the world is lying to us all in an attempt to cover up this preposterous notion. I know that politicians are all liars but this concept is absurd. As well as that, anybody who is involved in the airline industry must be in on it.

Imagine for a second training to become a pilot. You are taken into a room and forced to sign the equivalent of the official secrets act before a man stands in front of you and says:

“Before you start training, we must inform you that the Earth is not a globe. It is a giant spinning pancake. You mustn’t tell anybody as we are trying to keep it secret. If you do, we will fly you past the Antarctic wall and kick you out into oblivion.”

Imagine your first day in the Oval Office after being sworn in as President of the USA:

PRESIDENT:  Right – now I’m President, I want to know all about Roswell. Do aliens actually exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Sir, aliens do not exist. In fact, the Earth is not even a planet; it is a giant frisbee surrounded by a huge wall of ice. The sun and moon are disks rotating 3000 miles above us.

PRESIDENT: No – really. Do aliens exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: : No sir! And the Earth really IS flat. We’ve been conning the public for years. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin won honorary and secret Oscars for their parts in the greatest work of fiction known to man; The Moon Landing.

-- PHONE RINGS --

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Hello? Sir, it’s President Putin wishing to congratulate you.

PRESIDENT: Hello Vladimir.

PRESIDENT PUTIN: Zdravstvujtye, Mr President and congratulations. By the way, have you been told that the Earth is really flat yet? We need to keep this quiet.

PRESIDENT: WHAT????????

It makes no sense to me whatsoever, that supposedly intelligent people continue to defy all the scientific evidence and embarrass themselves by relating this bunkum to anybody who is willing to listen.

Why would you anybody do that?

Even if it’s a question of pride and being scared to admit that they are wrong, surely that’s better than being a laughing stock.

Anyway, here is a fun video about it:

I’m sure when Terry Pratchett came up with the concept of Discworld, he did so after reading, and presumably laughing at, a book about the Flat Earth Society.

Of course, writing a post mocking the concept of a Flat Earth might prove to be a stupid thing to do if Flat Earth conspiracy theorists are right. I may end up with a lot of egg on my face and might have to write another post of apology.

These are the risks that a blogger has to wrestle with.

I don’t care; I’ll take my chances.

That said, as I wrote at the start of this post, I love this kind of weirdness, so if on the off chance you believe that the Earth is flat, please let me know.

Train of Thought

It’s happened again, dear reader. There I was, innocently walking downstairs from work, on the way home and I found myself singing a song that I would never ever sing  but, worse, that I don’t even like.

I am not even going to tell you what it is: that’s how ashamed I am.

Nevertheless, it has got me thinking. What train of thought caused this dreadful song to pop into my head in the first place?

With that in mind, I have decided to conduct an experiment. Here are the details:

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate my train of thought and try to make sense of it.

METHOD

I am going to clear my mind and just write a blog post and let my path through my imagination guide me.

RESULTS

Okay – here goes. As I write these words, I have no music on to distract me or to influence the course of my thinking. What leaps to mind as I drift into my imagination? Well the first thing is that I am writing something new and posting it in cyberspace so that people can read it. And that is quite a scary thing.

Some people who read this will have struggled through my work before and are probably rolling their eyes thinking, “Oh my God! Another crap post.”

Others might be amused. Yet more might think “Why doesn’t Dave talk to me about his odd mind? I’ve known him for years.”

It strikes me that when I write, I bare a little bit of my soul, mostly to people I have never met. What kind of person does that? Am I an attention seeker? To be honest, I don’t think so; I am merely practising for that elusive novel/book that I aim to write. By posting this nonsense into cyberspace I am seeking some form of approval.

So in a way, maybe I am seeking attention. Is that a revelation of some kind?

I am writing these words because I want the feedback of total strangers who may say “Yes, PM. It’s garbage. Don’t give up your day job.”

The problem is there is a part of me that really does want to give up my day job. When I analyse my career, I acquire approval on a regular basis because I am reasonably good at what I do. The problem is I am bored of it. I am bored of trying to teach computers how to behave themselves. I see myself  as a combination of a teacher and doctor, where my pupils/patients are computers. When I teach, I educate these electronic gadgets, instructing them how to operate and how to perform the job that is required of them. And when they get it wrong, I operate on them, to cure them – commonly known in IT as fixing bugs.

Now that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? I see myself as a mentor to computers. It’s like something out of a science fiction novel. The difference is that these computers are generally stupid and I curse their stupidity on a daily basis – actually more like an hourly basis. I find myself swearing at them – and myself.

My work colleagues probably think I’m nuts.

Hang on, I remember something I saw on YouTube – here it is:

Now, rest assured, I am not that bad. I cuss and swear under my breath but I do not destroy company equipment in a fit of rage. I may give the impression that I am a man who likes to stand up and rant on his soapbox about all and sundry but the truth is, I am quite laid back.

I have learned how to step back and take a deep breath when I find myself overcome with negative emotion. Sometimes it’s difficult to control a red mist moment but I find these days that taking a step back and trying to look at the situation from a different perspective does help. Work can be deeply frustrating sometimes, and this doesn’t just apply to my chosen vocation; I can imagine that exasperation can manifest itself in many walks of life.

For example, in my extended family we have a couple who are both police officers, both of whom have to wrestle the stresses of their jobs with bringing up a young child.

And, believe me, I have heard some stories that I wouldn’t want to share.

Yet they are both in control and reasonably happy with the chosen career. One of them even finds time to be a musician.

He is a big fan of Bob Dylan and has produced his own a CD of folk songs.

Click here for an example.

He is also in a band in Blackpool called the X Rays, who play what they call skiffle punk, covering old punk songs from the late 1970’s in a skiffle style.

Here they are performing live:

I’ve seen them play in local pubs in Blackpool and they are entertaining.

And that in itself fills me with a modicum of regret because if I could go back in time to the moment my music teacher asked me at the age of 11 what instrument I wanted to play, I would have begged and pleaded with him to let me play the guitar so that I could write my own songs.

Imagine that –  the Plastic Mancunian a rock God, writing and releasing his own songs?

I may actually have achieved that goal unwittingly. Way back in 2009, I wrote a fun Christmas post with alternative words to Jingle Bells. It was just a bit of fun to cause a mild amount of amusement. I was surprised, however, when a local band from West Yorkshire asked me if they could use my alternative version in a Christmas pub gig in Bradford.

You can read the post (and the comment) by clicking here.

I told them that they could (what do I care?). Whether they did or not I’ll never know but if they did, my alternative lyrics were probably belted out by a folk band to a pub full of people.

And the thought of that makes me smile.

That would never have happened had I not initiated the blog (it may not have happened but I like to think it did).

So not only could I be a writer (subject to approving comments from readers) I could also be a comedy lyric writer for bands willing to embrace alternative versions of traditional tunes and perform them at a Christmas gig in a Yorkshire pub.

Who would have thought that?

SO AFTER WRITING THAT DRIVEL, WHAT SONG POPPED INTO YOUR HEAD?

Unsurprisingly, the song that is in my head right now is this one:

So I managed to conjure up a song from Undertones simply by writing drivel.

CONCLUSION

I think this post proves something that I think I have always known:

I am one weird individual!


If you disagree, I have a confession to make. This was the song that I was singing out loud on Friday - and I hate it:

Weird, huh?