Too Late for the Caption Contest
…but while I was falling asleep last night, I thought of a caption for this picture on Unhappy Hipsters:
“He collected the implements of travel–suitcases, motorbikes, once a whole jet engine–only to disassemble them in his elaborate ritual. He wanted a world where nobody could ever leave him again.”
March 20th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Apropos of nothing:
Best guess, according the book about 1960s counterculture I just read, on the origins of “hip” and all its derivatives:
From a west African word “heppa” (spelling approximate), meaning “outsider” or “fake”, used by African Americans to describe white people who slummed with them; became widespread among African Americans during the 1920s, and was sort of ignorantly adopted by white people as a badge of honor, at least by the time of the Beats in the 1950s.
I don’t know of the accuracy of that etymology, but it gave me a great deal of pleasure thinking that it *must* be true.
March 20th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Huh! It seems maybe a little dubious that loan words from African languages were crossing over in the 1920s?
March 20th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I like that one better than the winner, and most of the runners-up.
March 20th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Glad you liked it!