My Sick Mind

Hipsters (also scenesters ) are a subculture of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with musical interests that appeared in the 1990s.  Hipster culture has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behaviors." The term itself was coined during the jazz age, when "hip" emerged as an adjective to describe aficionados of the growing scene.   Although the adjective's exact origins are disputed, some say it was a derivative of "hop," a slang term for opium, while others believe it comes from the West African word "hipi," meaning "to open one's eyes."   Nevertheless, "hip" eventually acquired the common English suffix -ster (as in spinster and gangster), and "hipster" entered the language. I have opened my eyes.  If hipster means that I embrace long-ago lifestyles, then no, I am not a hipster.  If it means, as I think it does, that...

When I come to someone with an announcement of a new technology or practice that I have adopted, I often get the "You'd be better off ..." response.  You know the type.  "I just got a new Droid phone," you announce. To which they reply, "Oh ... you should have gotten an iPhone." As if that was an option or something you would have considered. The proper response would have been, "Oh, that's nice. Great!" Or something in that vein.  We do not announce our life's decisions with the idea that they will be greeted with anything but approval.  We want our decisions to be confirmed by our peers. It's one of the things that separates us from the spiders and lizards.  We have politics. Which brings me to my television viewing habits and the reasons I turn the television off sometimes. I was aimlessly tuning around the thing after Wednesday's usual awesome episode of "Modern Family," which included the line "Th...

I don't understand the slot machines.  They are all different, take different amounts of money and use different symbols on the wheels.  Instead of cherries, sevens and cigars they should just say "win" or "lose."  I think that would make it easier for us to understand. I went to the Golden Nugget  in Atlantic City tonight to see Kathleen Madigan .  She's very funny, even though she is very tiny and from St. Louis and a Cardinals fan. I'm not a gambler and I only go to Atlantic City when I'm going to a show. Otherwise, the whole thing could slip into the ocean and I'd hardly notice.  Because I was going, I stopped at the ATM and pulled out $120, thinking that I couldn't possibly drink and gamble that much money.  Well, at least I couldn't gamble that much. I sat at the bar and had a few beers before the show.  I waddled into the casino and threw $40 into a slot machine.  I'm not sure what it was all about, other tha...