It's Hip to Hate

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

This is an interesting piece, although I feel like I have had this conversation with many of my friends, whether they are hipsters (which, yeah, no one will admit to being a hipster, strange self loathing) or whatever superficial label they have applied to themselves, let someone else apply, or fought to rebel against.

I think this essay, it's author, it's readers, and all 2000+ people who commented on it, are really commenting subconsciously on everyone-- everyone's-- desire to be accepted. What I think most people want, though, is to feel accepted by just a few people; at least I think that's what they need. Or is that what I need? I don't know. I think most people cover up their longing to be accepted, loved, genuinely paid attention to, with preemptive bitterness against easily targeted subcultures. (Although I think this author makes a couple of really good points about the state of our supposed "sub" cultures, when everyone looks the goddamn same, and their whole look could be bought at target, sears or JC Penny.)

Anyway I'm sure many people would put me into this category of hipster, but I wear what I like. If someone can find something wrong with that... It seems to me the people who are most often lobbying against hipsters are those who have high ideals of being very independent and intellectual. I don;t find a high level of intellect in judging people who are doing what is right for them.

I guess everyone needs to feel superior, right?

*community community community*


read the whole essay
here

and check
this out as well

Never Turn Your Back on a Cat!

Anyone notice how MySpace spies on your interests and generates ads that are seemingly appropriate?

After proudly proclaiming on my page "This Kittens Got Claws!" I have been bombarded with kitten adverts.

1.Draw A Kitten!

2.Kitten Grooming School

3.Find the BEST Cat Food!

What I love is how they throw only one in the mix, to make it seem totally random. Wait, you have an interest in, or are somehow affiliated with, cats? Who knew!

But most importantly,

Can you seriously get a job grooming kittens!? Don't get me wrong, I love a full grown cat, but kittens? Holy. Shit.

I feel like my (totally made up, symbolic) guidance counselor should've clued me into this a long time ago, like 5th grade. Thanks a lot, standardized aptitude tests!

Pack your Parcels and Hit the Road

I love this. This is dreamland. And my dreamland is Europe. So, here are some instructions, in no specific order; pack your bags, buy a ticket, get a passport, buy earplugs, Dramamine, and something to read for 12 hours while we fly to Europe and live in a world where we can pluck bicycles from trees like fruit. I'd race you, but I'm embarrassing slow.

Chapter 1: Saying Goodbye

I have been experiencing the unspeakable terror of anticipating winter. I’ll be biking on my merry way, getting warm; a little sweaty even, from my body’s produced heat. Then suddenly—Stop biking, get to class or get home and you are cold. I can feel it in my fingers but especially in my feet—they just never seem to get warm, even on modestly warm days--, and I remember last winter. It dragged on and I feel like I lost a part of myself and replaced it with a much more sinister and pessimistic portion of Rosie.

Also, here are some characteristics I just cannot stand in people

1.(And this ones pretty all-encompassing): People who talk shit about the people they wish they were.

2.People who don's listen. People who talk to hear echoes.

3.How about I don't go down such a negative list-making route today. There will be all of winter for that, right?

"Hypocrisy is only bad when it is improperly used"

I wanted to rant about this Sarah "Barracuda" Palin veep pick, but I read this editorial in Newsweek and it summed up my feelings pretty accurately.

I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when the Republican presidential candidate would cite membership in the PTA as evidence of executive experience, when the far right would laud the full-time working mothers of newborns, when social conservatives would stare down teenage pregnancy and replace their pursed-lip accusations of promiscuity with hosannas about choosing life.

The Republican Party has undergone a surprising metamorphosis since Sarah Palin was chosen as its vice presidential candidate. In Palin I recognize a fellow traveler, a woman whose life would have been impossible just a few decades ago. If she had been born 30 years earlier, the PTA would likely have been her last stop, not her first. Her political ascendancy is a direct result of the women's movement, which has changed the world utterly for women of all persuasions. It is therefore notable that Palin has found her home in a party, and in a wing of that party, that for many years has reviled, repelled and sought to roll back the very changes that led her to the Alaska Statehouse.

But expediency is an astonishing thing, and conservative Republicans have suddenly embraced the assertion that women can do it all, even those conservative Republicans who have made careers out of trashing that notion. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once had staffers on his hot line saying, "Dr. Dobson recommends that mothers of young children stay at home as much as possible." He now applauds a woman who was back at work three days after her son, who has Down syndrome, was born.

Even to state that simple fact resulted in outrage among those at the convention, who screamed double standard. But the double standard was mainly theirs. The governor was aggressively marketed in terms of her maternity, yet questions about how she managed to mother five and lead the state were dismissed as sexist. The governor's two years leading Alaska, which in terms of citizens served is the equivalent of being mayor of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was said to be the linchpin of her appointment, but questions about her breadth of experience were dismissed as sexist. Her surrogates wanted the press to write about mooseburgers and ignore how the governor had once pursued the kind of earmarked federal funds she now insists are anathema to her. Conservatives have probably used the word "sexist" more in the past week than they have in the past 50 years.

This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so.

It's interesting how this election has been an election of firsts. The Republicans' answer is incredibly transparent, but it definitely keeps things spicy.

Begin at the End

I'm finding out I'm at my most ambitious and adventurous when I have obligations to run from.