The Gaming Den

I also mostly know of hipsters though internet memes, but my favourite encounter with the term was a high school teacher that didn't quite get it. He made a great speech about how the entire graduating class were hipsters and meant every single word as a compliment. He'd latched onto the literal definition without catching the highly negative connotation.
Other than that, he was one of the best teachers I ever had.

Yeah, Hipster used to mean something quite different a good thirty years ago, it basically meant "cool crowd."

shadzar wrote:

Red Archon wrote:The question is not exactly annoying, but for you Americans: do you make your own food? I mean actual cooking from scratch, not heating up some revolting junk from the frozen foods aisle. From what I'm gathering from media ranging from tv shows to news articles, actual food appears to be in decline in the US. You being a relatively normal sample group, how do you respond?

i buy products that allow me to make my meals. TV dinners and veggies for soups i buy frozen as well some "school-pizza" type things that have the little cubes of pepperoni and corndogs.

slabs of meat are the larger part of my diet and the sides for them are either raw veggies cooked or boxes of pasta.

not everyone if a fat stupid fuck that thinks McDonalds was always supposed to be healthy food that you could survive on. the media sensationalizes things in order to sell their product "story".

"believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see." ~ Mark Twain

But you explicitly list revolting junk from the frozen food aisle (pro-tip: those shitty school pizzas with chunks of 'pepperoni' are not healthy and barely food), and then 'slabs' of meat. So your answer to his question is 'fuck yes, I am a typical unhealthy american, but at least I think I am smarter than people who eat at McDonalds.'

Which is in no way similar to buying fresh food and assembling it into an actual meal, with real spices, sauces and flavours and not just powdered shit and salt and pepper on top of microwaved crap.

Koumei wrote: ---
Question: I've had to detox from my venlafaxine antidepressants before (money reasons) and it was not fun. But the worst happens 3-4 days in. First there's just weird dizziness and lightheadedness but not in a nice way. Several times I've forgotten to take it for one day, and basically had that effect. I've just started a fresh repeat script, and am experiencing those early signs. Is it possible that this is part of some we've-already-released-it-to-the-public placebo test or something? Like, can companies legally do that or is all placebo testing done before normal people can just go get prescriptions and I certainly do have the real thing and these symptoms are just caused by (unknown)?

No, they do not hand out placebos to the general public. Doing so is both unethical and illegal in addition to being pointless. For testing to actually provide useful data it needs to be controlled and monitored. Randomly handing out sugar pills is, instead, something that a villain might do for the lulz. It has no practical value. Prescription diversion is an actual thing, though, that criminal pharmacists sometimes do. It's usually for painkillers, though. You fill the prescription but then fill the bottle with fakes and pocket the real ones for yourself. It is not a good way to get narcotics, though, as it will be terribly obvious to the customer. Pharmacists who do this rarely keep their licenses long, and rarely stay out of prison. And they usually focus on the good shit, not anti-depressants.


However, it is possible that someone just made a mistake and gave you the wrong pills. You can check to be sure.

There should be an imprint on your pills, usually a letter and a series of numbers, but possibly just numbers. Look it up on this site.

http://www.drugs.com/imprints.php

Another possibility is that you're developing a tolerance to the medication.
I recommend contacting your doctor about it.

*I have no idea if this is in general better than buying pre-packaged. For all I know it could be healthier to get bags of tobacco and roll your own, but that's not why they do it.

Getting bags of tobacco and rolling your own is a good way to disguise marijuana use. Tobacco paraphernalia and marijuana paraphernalia are essentially the exact same things, yet one is legal while the other isn't.
I have sold pipes in the past. I was always quite clear with my customers that they're designated for tobacco use and any the illegal substances will void their warranties. I can only hope that they heeded my words, but I'm not an idiot.

However, handrolling with pipe tobacco is also a fuckton cheaper. Cigarettes are taxed. Pipe Tobacco is not. For this reason alone, bulk pipe tobacco is extremely economical compared to cigarettes.
You can buy a 5 pound bag of decent-quality tobacco for $70.
A cigarette weighs about 1 gram. There are 20 to a pack. A cheap pack of extremely crap quality cigarettes costs $3. Good cigarettes are around $4.5 per pack depending on where you buy them.
There are 2267.96 grams in 5 pounds, so that's about 2267 cigarettes or 114.4 packs. Even when yo take into account shipping, you're saving about $270 at least, probably closer to $440.
Of course, buying bulk pipe tobacco and then handrolling cigarettes with it is legally considered tax evasion and the feds can, hypothetically, arrest you for it. They won't though, too much of a hastle. Instead they've been going after manufacturer who market finely chopped cigarette-quality tobacco as pipe. Currently, they're marketing something called dual-purpose, which is too rough to be considered cigarette tobacco but finer than standard pipe tobacco, and hypothetically suitable for either use (though chopping it before rolling it would probably be wise).
All in all, I'd recommend a pipe, a good quality glass one. Unlike rolling papers they don't run out. If you're on a budget, nickle and brass plated metal pipes are inexpensive, but taste like nickle and brass.

hyzmarca wrote:All in all, I'd recommend a pipe, a good quality glass one.

All in all, if you are a living human being, I recommend not smoking tobacco.

I would almost be tempted to roll my own, or just smoke a pipe, but, well, let me put it this way. I smoke seldom enough that going from $4 and change camels/marlboros to the more expensive American Spirits barely affected me, because it's literally "$2-3 more a month." I can bare paying ~$6 a month for cigarettes. I can't, currently, afford $70 for bulk tobacco, plus the cost of a pipe. Nor do I particularly wish to look like a stoner (with a high quality glass pipe) or a hipster (with a wood/metal/plastic/whatever pipe). Though I do like the metal and wood pipes used in feudal japan, again, cost.

It's like telling someone one who buys a mocha at Starbucks every week (~$16/mo) that they could save money buy investing in a home espresso machine. It's true, but the initial investment is ludicrously high for their occasional habit.

Well I don't smoke at all - I was just curious (and also admitting my ignorance, that there could be practical non-hipster reasons I'm not aware of). That said, now that I'm in the High Tea Society I might get a pipe - I won't smoke anything, it'll just be so people know I'm classy.

And because you can't give directions or greet a friend without a pipe.

Hard to get classier than this:


Might be difficult to give directions with, though...

Koumei wrote:

Question: I've had to detox from my venlafaxine antidepressants before (money reasons) and it was not fun. But the worst happens 3-4 days in. First there's just weird dizziness and lightheadedness but not in a nice way. Several times I've forgotten to take it for one day, and basically had that effect. I've just started a fresh repeat script, and am experiencing those early signs. Is it possible that this is part of some we've-already-released-it-to-the-public placebo test or something? Like, can companies legally do that or is all placebo testing done before normal people can just go get prescriptions and I certainly do have the real thing and these symptoms are just caused by (unknown)?

*I have no idea if this is in general better than buying pre-packaged. For all I know it could be healthier to get bags of tobacco and roll your own, but that's not why they do it.

When I was on venlafaxine, I never stopped feeling dizzy and light-headed the whole time I was on them. So the doc doubled my dose. And again. And again. Pretty soon I was on nearly 300 mg of the crap and had a mini psychotic episode. I went off the crap cold turkey, and the detox was among the worst experiences of my life. So I feel for you.

Also, cigars are awesome because they piss off everyone around you. It sucks that I moved to a state that doesn't allow smoking in bars, I used to get the foulest cigars I could find when I went to the bar...

Prak_Anima wrote:Yeah, Hipster used to mean something quite different a good thirty years ago, it basically meant "cool crowd."

That might be part of it, but he specifically called it out as a word he'd heard of recently.

Just because you hear a word recently doesn't mean you know what it means. See: Conservatives and Climate Change.

Prak_Anima wrote: Nor do I particularly wish to look like a stoner (with a high quality glass pipe) or a hipster (with a wood/metal/plastic/whatever pipe).

Stone is pretty good, too. I used to buy Onxy and Granite pipes wholesale for $2, supposedly handcarved by underpaid Mexicans. Certainly, they weren't remotely uniform. Bowl depth and shape were relatively consistent and obviously machined, but everything else, including the diameter of the air-hole, varied wildly, sold them for $5. At least until all of my customers had pipes, at which point I was left with a huge inventory and a saturated market.

Kaelik wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:All in all, I'd recommend a pipe, a good quality glass one.

All in all, if you are a living human being, I recommend not smoking tobacco.

Well, people who buy high-quality glass pipes generally never buy tobacco to go in it. They may be more interested in the artistic value.

Koumei wrote:Well I don't smoke at all - I was just curious (and also admitting my ignorance, that there could be practical non-hipster reasons I'm not aware of). That said, now that I'm in the High Tea Society I might get a pipe - I won't smoke anything, it'll just be so people know I'm classy.

And because you can't give directions or greet a friend without a pipe.

Shrapnel wrote: On another note: What the fuck is, exactly, a hipster? What does it mean to be one? I know the style of dress it refers to, but what about the ideals? I've been wondering this for several years.

I always thought the broadest definition had to do with them liking or hating things almost exclusively on the basis of how "mainstream" they are.

Also, I went to Portland last summer and I did see a lot of V-neck T-shirts and weird mustaches. I even had a conversation with a bartender about fixed-gear bicycles, which I will never understand.

I now consider myself learned in the ways of hipster from reading all these "different" posts. If I had gone to, say, Google, it would've been to "mainstream".

I think I'll become a hipster. I'll start by driving off of a cliff 1958 Edsel Citation and into the Red Sea, where I will then survive by breathing sharks.

Because no one has done it before.

Koumei wrote:
Question: I've had to detox from my venlafaxine antidepressants before (money reasons) and it was not fun. But the worst happens 3-4 days in. First there's just weird dizziness and lightheadedness but not in a nice way. Several times I've forgotten to take it for one day, and basically had that effect. I've just started a fresh repeat script, and am experiencing those early signs. Is it possible that this is part of some we've-already-released-it-to-the-public placebo test or something? Like, can companies legally do that or is all placebo testing done before normal people can just go get prescriptions and I certainly do have the real thing and these symptoms are just caused by (unknown)?

It's almost certainly what it says on the package. Drug tests are required to be volunteer-only, so unless you explicitly signed up for a test they wouldn't be allowed to give you a placebo.

My psychiatrist tells me antidepressants take about a month to build up to full effectiveness, so I guess that you're getting withdrawal symptoms because you have some in your system but not as much as you should. Probably you have as much of it in your system as you do on the days you forget to take it. Keep taking it and it'll probably go away. If it doesn't or gets worse, call up the person who prescribed it and ask.

You might want to switch to another antidepressant if you're getting those symptoms if you forget to take it for a day. It takes about a week for withdrawal to kick in on mine. Then again, it might be a physiological difference or your type might work better.

Shrapnel wrote:I think I'll become a hipster. I'll start by driving off of a cliff 1958 Edsel Citation and into the Red Sea, where I will then survive by breathing sharks.

Because no one has done it before.

But you'll pitch a big fit when everyone else starts doing it. Just be sure to let them all know you were into cliff-dive-shark-breathing before it was cool; back when it was still underground.

Fucking corporate sell-outs.

I've been doing strange shit solely because it hadn't been done before well before these hipster posers came along.

Since 1013, I've lived a non-mainstream life. Since then I've been branded a daemon, a witch, a heretic, insane, and there was this one time I was accused of "false prophetry".

Yup, I've totally lost it now.


This all begs the question: If all hipsters are doing the same thing differently, doen't that make them mainstream?

That would be why people make fun of them so much.

Back in the day, hipster meant the same thing as wigger does now.

A kid I work with accused me of being a hipster because she hadnt heard of any of my favorite bands.

You people are insane. Hipster. And they are a very, very good thing.

According to every woman I've been with, there's only one type of underwear that women actually wear: big. Only whores and porn stars wear anything different, because anything that isn't big grandma panties cause excruciating, indescribable agony that no man would ever ask a woman to endure.

I want to believe that's wrong, but I have yet to see it in real life. I have lots of people taunting me how their girlfriends wear more interesting types of underwear, or that they're women and love to dress sexually in private with their lover/s, but that just angers and confuses me.

I consider a woman wanting to look good for me to be more believable than the sun goddess is a winged unicorn as well as a troll, but less believable that I'll win the powerball some day (after all, there is a defined probability that I'll win if I buy a ticket, whereas I'm not sure what kind of feat I'd have to commit to get a woman to look at me for five seconds. Life would be so much easier if there were mind flayers or hobgoblins I could fight...)

Many of my own problems could be solved by punching a mind-flayer in it's tentacly mouth.

Shrapnel wrote:Many of my own problems could be solved by punching a mind-flayer in it's tentacly mouth.

There's got to be some sort of symbolism there...

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:According to every woman I've been with, there's only one type of underwear that women actually wear: big.

Because everyone needs to hear about my knickers: typically I do wear "hipster briefs" or "bikini briefs". So not "granny panties", but not tiny things either, and I don't have anything see-through. I'm probably quite boring in that regard, actually, and not a reprentative of women as a whole.

I have asked women I have been with if there was something I could wear that they'd like. It seems that the stench of failure makes it so nothing I could wear or do would help, and if I didn't have it then I wouldn't actually need to do anything. Even in the case of women I've dated and only told them positive things about my life pick up on that real quick, which I find infuriating. As Kaelik once said, me being positive sounds like I'm trying to talk myself out of suicide...