Daily Batman: Bat tat, too

Daily Batman and Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Hipster Batmans with bonus friendly advice

Little known fact: Batman’s favorite band is The Postal Service because he feels like Neutral Milk Hotel is getting too mainstream.

via the sfist.

To say that there are no hipsters in Portland is like saying there were no hippies in San Francisco, no punks in New York. The problem with hipsters is their lack of purpose and ideas. They are not the angry young men and women of counter-culture past, they are leaches of culture. Being a hipster is the opposite of a movement; it’s a crawl toward death. Like an unconscious addict, of course no one admits to being one.

Jake Rose


(“Letters to the Editor.” Portland Mercury. January 8, 2009.)

Mr. Rose refers to the Mercury’s assertion that

First off, there is no such thing as a hipster. It’s a lazy stereotype. Blaming hipsters for ruining your favorite bar, your favorite band, and your favorite city is akin to blaming Santa Claus for ruining Christmas. Secondly, stop complaining, it makes you seem more out of touch than you really are.

(“Not Invited Back.” Portland Mercury. December 25, 2008.)

via sfeyes on the flickr.

I used to read it all the time, but hipsters have totally ruined the Mercury. Nyuck, nyuck.

For myself, I would rather be “out of touch” than wear a hanky turned like I have just robbed a train and jeans that cut off the circulation to my thighs and lovely ass. Also it has not quite been long enough since their initial time of ironic popularity to once more sport a trucker hat as a sneering referential fashion nod to an original sneering referential fashion nod. Only Judah Friedlander on 30 Rock gets a pass. And when a musician that I like begins to find wider success, I am happy for that individual, not full of embittered proclamations that he or she has “sold out.” Hipsters: it is okay to like something without it being ironic or edgy. Don’t front like you don’t like Jamba Juice and family reunions — you don’t have to make out like they are kitschy or retro to explain that you enjoy them, because it is okay to like Jamba Juice and family reunions and put the period right there.

“Robin Hoodie” via laughing squid.

Also, I know you love you some Pabst Blue Ribbon but I need to say that once, my husband and I bought an actual 12-pack in bottles of PBR, and when we unloaded them in to the fridge we noticed that despite being sealed each bottle was filled to a different level. Some sat at varying levels up the neck, one was only filled directly to the neck, and the weirdest one was literally all the way to the bottlecap. How is that even possible? Don’t machines in a factory do the bottling, and, if so, why would each be filled differently? Is the machine that poorly operated, or is it that old or sunk that deeply in to disrepair? What the what? There is probably lead shavings and rat shit and who else knows what all in Pabst if there is that bizzarely low level of quality control. Please do consider it and think about making Natty Ice or Keystone the new trendy and appropriately cheesey cheap beer? Probably safer bets.

P.S.: Cute hipster boys? Please eat a sandwich cause from behind I thought you were a woman, and I’m not sleeping with someone who could slip down the shower drain.


To be triple-dog clear: the hipster Batman graffiti photos are taken in San Francisco, California. The hipster debate comes from an independent weekly newspaper in Portland, Oregon.

Daily Batman — Take this phone and shove it

Oh, my stars and garters, yes. I hate the telephone. I had to spend all kinds of time on the phone yesterday wading through officious folklore and bureaucratic shenanigans, and, as a consequence, I’ve kept my phone off almost this whole day. I only turned it on when Miss D, knowing me too well, alerted me to the fact that she’d be calling in the late morning and I ought to turn my cell on at least until I heard from her. I did, and, once she called, I silenced it again.

I warned her that I think I am slowly transitioning toward abandoning phones as a method of communication altogether. It started with my hatred of texting and has steadily devolved since, to the point that I scowl any time I see someone with so much as a bluetooth earpiece strolling around. Ass, I think to myself, and actively begin to draw wide Borg comparisons. Go ahead, everyone else on Earth it seems, and do join the collective hive-mind of buzz and nothing-talk, but resistance is not so futile in my book. People will claim to hate their cell phones and act like it’s such a hassle to be tethered to everyone they know at all times, shrugging and alluding to the convenience of being able to instantly hear from colleagues or family, but the truth is mainly that you have just allowed the phone to become necessary, and to paraphrase Ms. Steinem, it is no more needed than a shrimp’s hipster fixie bicycle, even if he does have the coolest nalgene bottle evah, with a special attachment for him to hook it on the bike so he can take drinks at intersections and look like hot shit. (You know how shellfish care about appearances. Pfft. Sooo shallow. You’d never catch a catfish pulling that manner of chicanery.)

Look, I’m sure Alexander Graham Bell was a nice guy with nothing but good intentions who could not possibly have foreseen the midnight calls of drunk out-of-touch friends or robo-dialing mortgage adjusters who interrupt dinner, but when I run across him in Heaven, he’s getting a punch in the gut just the same.

Bonus Patricia Highsmith sketch because I can and she was the source of the quote that started this chain of luddite fit-pitchery. I do not have a Graham Greene sketch or I’d post one of him as well — The Destructors is a favorite short story from Way Back.

Daily Batman: Bat tat, too — Illustrated lady in a rear view edition

“peace, love, and batman” by liz373 on the deviantart.