A Modest Proposal

I came to the City too late to join the ranks of the irony-loving, fixie-bike-riding, Midwestern-transplanted hoards who who are known collectively as "hipsters." Maybe if I had arrived five or even ten years ago, I could have shed my suburban infatuation with the true and beautiful, but now, those ideals are so deeply wired into my soul that I couldn't excise them even if I wanted to. I am too attached to my grand-narratives, my Jesus and my corduroy to ever be able to join their ranks. So Dutch and I propose an alternative, The Post-ster (pronounced "poster").

The name is an elision of "post" and the "ster" from "meister" a post-post hipster ster. We haven't quite figured out how it should be put, the fad, er, the movement, is still in its infancy. We were also toying with "Poster" and "Po-ster."

A Gentle Dogma

To be a Post-ster, a person should embrace post-postmodernism-- a return to actually believing in stuff. We aren't saying what the "stuff" should be. I could tell you what my stuff is, but that would be redundant, as this entire blog is devoted to my stuff.

A Return to The Cool

Knee socks are unmitigatedly cool legwear. So I wear them. It helps that the hipster girls made them okay. I also like them when I was 8 (a very good year). When I get tired of them, I'll wear something else.

Thoughts on Kitsch

I have a friend who had a really ugly picture of a little big-headed boy and girl wandering through a hideous green field of daisies. You know what I mean. Maybe your mother had it hanging in her laundry room. She probably picked it up at the Five and Dime to cover up some nasty stain on the wall. She also thought it was cute. My friend hangs it on her wall because it reminds her of her childhood, so it has a nostalgic meaning. It seems that she is putting it up not because she likes it, but as a proxy, as a reminder of a time when things had meaning. When "nap time" actually meant you had to go to sleep. This is not about taste, its about motivation.

[insert screaming violins as the writer goes into fits as she feels the drop in temperature as shadow of Immanuel Kant passes over her.]

More on this topic when she gets a hold of herself. --ed.