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In This Issue

• Students Wrestle for Squid God
• Summer Job Pays to Choke Chickens
• Dolphins: Not Just for Sex Anymore
• Letters to the Feditrix
• The Confessions of a Burgeoning, Fecund Fury
• Suicides Are Fun for Those Who Don't Participate
• Military + Animals = Hours of Deadly Fun
• When Will Columbia Girls Go Not Ugly?
• You Wouldn't Know Hot Ass Even If You Bit Mine
• Necrophilia: Hey, It's Not Like They Mind
• Columbia Hipsters Leave Brooklyn to Strut Stuff
• Want Me!!!!
• I'm Still Drunk After All These Years
• He's Like Larry Flint, but Super Gay
• At Least the Fed Thinks I'm Cool...
• An End to the Planet
• Steve and Cornelius Are Now Chicks, Like to Play with Own Va-Jay-Jays
• Building a Bomb to Put in the Fed's Open Arms
• Oedipus Family Circus
• The Staff of 18.9
• THEY WATCH

Ian Cofre

Uber-hipsters The Strokes pose in Vietnam's hippest rice paddy, reports Time Out Saigon.

When I got wind of Robert Lanham's recently released anthropological study entitled The Hipster Handbook, I wanted to write a tribute. However, my bookshelves were already swollen with more handbooks than could possibly constitute a healthy interest in self-improvement (damn the Renaissance), so I decided instead to write a tribute to the Time Out book review of Lanham's study. The obvious had already been stated: adversity to shampoo, bisexuality out of convenience, and vintage concert t-shirts are universally hip. But New York is a hotbed for hipster innovation, and universities are a cesspool for hipster cultivation. Shouldn't that qualify Columbia as a virtual hipster empyrean? No. After all, we're no NYU. Or Parsons. Or even Fordham for that matter. Nevertheless, Columbia does sport its own quirky brand of unmitigated hipness. Perhaps you've seen it sulking around campus:

The Hipster Major. Not surprisingly, hipster majors of the past tended to be of an artistic inclination, traditionally Film and Visual Arts. Art History was for the slightly more practical hipster. However, the major of choice for the hippest kids is rapidly sliding to EALAC. Asia is really fucking hip. Go there. Hong Kong is not that hip. Tokyo is pretty hip, But the villages are crazy hip. Especially if there are rice paddies and no toilets.

The Hipster Budget. Blame the deficit on the hipsters, they're no good at balancing. And they hate money. That's why they have to roll their own cigarettes. Seven dollars for a pack of American Spirits is a small fortune. $250 for an eightball, however, is mere mucus in the spittoon of hipness. Did someone say opportunity costs? It wasn't a hipster. They hate economical jargon.

The Hipster Backpack. Backpacks have presented a special problem for hipsters ever since they stepped foot onto their first tragically minimalist school bus. Ordinarily, chain stores are the anti-hip. Unfortunately, even the hippest kid needs a place to purchase coffee mugs, caps, and tote bags. Only a very special chain store can be embraced by the world of hipdom. In days gone by, the Strand served as a sort of retail Rosetta stone, linking the hip and the mortal, but alas their golden age has become iron pyrite thanks to a virile coup d'etat launched by none other than one Pearl Art. Hipsters were quick to embrace this newer, hipper chain store that inadvertently managed to soothe their backpack woes. Enormous white shopping bags from Pearl Art dot the Columbia campus more heavily than anti-war flyers. Hipsters, notorious for having few worldly possessions, can fit their lives into even the medium sized Pearl shopper.

Note: Art portfolios are flattering to every figure and are also very hip. Carry one. You can pick it up while obtaining your free shopping bag at one of the many Pearl Art locations across the continental US. I think you'll find its well worth the forty dollars. Not an artist? Squeeze half of it into your Pearl plastic shopper, and carry them around together. Cast subtlety to the birds and beware of sensory overload as you become the proverbial hipster peacock.

The Hipster Unnatural Resource. Hipsters love plastic on their heads. Hair clips, headphones, glasses, mesh caps, bubblewrap, anything really. As always the bigger the better, and quite often, the brighter the better. The best way to listen to bootleg Bjork is with your head at least 71% covered in plastic. Need to be offensively hip in a jiffy? Plastics make it possible.

The Hipster Sneaker. Chuck Tayors. Or One Stars. Or EV Pros. Most people don't know the difference. Hipsters do. Oh yes. If Jesus were a little more hip, the hipsters would be thanking him for Chuck Tayors. Or One Stars. Or EV Pros.

The Hipster Facial hair. Did you know you can gel a goatee, or that there is a thin blurred line between side burns and the traditional Jewish side-curl?

The Hipster Hangout. I bet you think you're hip if you go to 1020. Maybe you are. But if you were truly hip, you would never leave Brooklyn. Ever. Except to go to Asia.

The Hipster Campus Dining Experience. When hipsters grace campus dining facilities, it is generally to obtain their big tough cup of black coffee in 212 or, much more likely, the lobby of Dodge. However, lackluster hipsters can occasionally be heard lamenting the inadequate array of vegan selections in the ever-carnivorous JJ's Place. Meat makes them sad. Milk makes them sad. Fur hats do not make them sad. I have news for these hipsters: if you think the wide array of vegophilic masochism is hip, you might as well pull out your flannel shirts and Pearl Jam CDs. The truly hip never eat. If they were to have grocery lists, only the following items would be included: imported beer, popsicles, tobacco, and salsa. Those are very hip foods that don't really require eating.

The Hipster Ending. Hipsters like to end things like this: fuck off. Like the red of a member of the White Stripes, it is both easy and terrifically poignant.