Slipping Away

There have been a few times over the past couple of months when I have started thinking about something and wanted to write down my thoughts while I my interest was still piqued.  This is often the place I use for those instances, but I have grown a little lazy lately, and I regret that I cannot quite recall all the things that I have been wanting to write about.  Perhaps a good writer will bolt to the nearest computer (or typewriter if you’re pretentious or Cory) to record their thoughts rather than let things like work and distance prevent them from doing so.  I’m forced to admit, however, that I am quite a ways from being capable of casting off my responsibilities and appointments for the sake of a boon.  I only wrote boon because I heard Stephen Fry say it on Jeeves and Wooster the other day.  I have all four season of it, by the way, in case you are ever interested in watching it.  I haven’t found anyone besides my brother who really seems to enjoy it for the reason I do, but I have watched it with admittedly few people, so I think that there is still time for that particular group of people to expand.

That does bring to mind the term “hipster” that I heard someone use on Friday.  While I am familiar with the term, I haven’t really thought about it too much beyond what it connotes.  I realized, though, that I have known a lot of hipsters.  A lot of the people I spent time with in college were budding hipsters, and the term “Christian hipster” definitely describes an even more frightening majority of them.  While Stuff White People Like has provided me with a checklist that is almost eerily comprehensive when it comes to a lot of these people, the mere fact that these groups are so easy to categorize is more than enough for me to be able to reflect on those times with a smile.  After all, I remember being distinctly interested in some of of those things at various points over the last five years.  Here’s an extemporaneous list of the traits on one or both sites that I personally saw adopted by friends of mine:

*Note — I’m not saying these traits are necessarily disingenuous, just that they all seemed to be frequently adopted by people that I knew.  After all, who could say anything negative about someone who likes Wendell Berry?

• Pipes
• Moleskine Notebooks
• Hummus
• The Pope
• Bicycles
• Poetry Readings
• Flasks
• Vegan/Vegetarianism
• Tattoos
• Being Faux-Catholic
• Piercings
• Wendell Berry
• Coffee
• Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops
• Appearing to Enjoy Classical Music
• Sufjan Stevens
• The Idea of Soccer
• Girls with Bangs
• Vintage
• Wine
• Microbreweries
• Wes Anderson Movies  (I just finished The Darjeeling Limited no more than thirty minutes ago)
• Making You Feel Bad about Not Going Outside
• Snowboarding
• Marathons
• Despising Christian Music
• Not Having a TV
• The Daily Show/Colbert Report
• Sushi

The funniest thing about Hipsters, as Brett notes, is that they all hate labels.  This makes such a candid list that much more perfect, really.  SHRUG!