Did You Say Hipster Bar or Hamster Bar?

You may recall that, during the build-up to the most recent Rusty Sessions held last summer in Phlipadelphia, my good friend and apostle Coco requested, some would say demanded, that we include in our itinerary a "hipster" bar. At the time, I did not give his suggestion much thought, as is my wont. I didn't know what the term "hipster" meant, but I knew that I'd regret putting in the effort to find out.

It reminds one of reading Shakespeare as a high school student. I remember my AP English teacher flipping out one day when nobody had the slightest fucking idea what a particular passage meant. My normal practice in high school was to read the Cliff's Notes as I drove in to school. This made more interesting both exploring the bard and dodging pedestrians. On this particular morning, my old nemesis the broken fuel gauge had delayed my arrival to school. My friend who rode in to school with me and I had to push the car a few blocks to a gas station and then to wait until we saw someone who would lend us a few bucks. I arrived slightly later and less literate than usual.

There was the teacher yelling at the class for failing to understand some segment of As You Like It. I'm not sure what everyone else's excuse was. Most of them had cars with working fuel gauges, so it is hard to guess why they hadn't read their Cliff's notes. Anyway, while the teacher was berating us, I had time to take out the actual book and read the passage he was screaming about. I still had no clue. (One didn't dare bring out the Cliff's notes in class). Supposedly the best author in the English language and I can't even guess at what he is trying to tell me. Why? Because it was obscure, and I didn't give a shit.

If something is obvious, then one doesn't need to give a shit. Kim Kardashian is a skanky whore. I understand that even though I don't care. If one gives a shit, then obscurity only causes mild delay in understanding. If you are interested in a measure of the global economy, check out the Baltic Dry Index. However, in situations with a high degree of non-shit-givedness, even the slightest amount of obscurity causes a complete failure of understanding. This is known as OneEar's Seventh Law of Shetyerass.

In the case of Coco and his longing for a hipster bar - I'd have to figure out what a hipster bar is, then I'd have to figure out why Coco was interested, then I'd have to predict whether I'd give a shit. Given the twice removed obscurity, I quickly concluded that it would be extremely unlikely that I would give enough of a counterbalancing shit. I think this may mean that I am a hipster.