It got up to about 70º this afternoon, so I spent some time in my garden in the Fenway. It's hard to believe—especially with the weather as balmy as it is—that for all intents and purposes the season's over.

Things have begun to fade, and many gardens are a little barren now, but you can still see flowers in bloom. You just have to look a little harder for them, is all. I snapped the photos above strolling around the Boylston section of the gardens.

I also dropped into the Boston Public Garden on my way to my gym in Chinatown. The squirrels are squirrelier this time of year, aren't they? It's like, do you guys ever just chill? I mean, for real. You never see them just hanging out, enjoying the scene, do you? They're so tightly wound. But as a consequence, I guess, they're fun to watch.

They don't hibernate in the winter, by the way. But they do hang out in their nests more to conserve their heat. That would get kind of boring, don't you think? Someday they'll have to invent culture or sport or fashion or something just to keep themselves from going absolutely, er, nuts.

As I walked through the BPG I was reflecting on New York again, and that episode of Sex in the City where Carrie meets this hunky sailor from the South somewhere, and decides not to sleep with him because he slags off New York to her. (People say this show is actually about gay men, but this would never happen with gay men, I can assure you.)

Anyway, as she walks away she waxes all poetic about New York. How it's her first big love, her only true love. I was thinking, is it possible to feel that way about Boston? I don't think Boston's the kind of city you would forego sex with a sailor for just because he said it sucks. More likely, you'd be like, "yeah, me too."

I just don't think Boston's the kind of city you fall passionately in love with. Boston's the kind of city you marry for the money. Resigning yourself to a long, frigid affair.

Hmm.

Hey, I wanted to ask my peeps out there about something I saw yesterday over by Berklee. A guy drove by in a minivan, I think it was, and one of the back windows had been smashed out, and he'd covered it with a big piece of cardboard. On the cardboard he—or someone—had spray-painted the following:
I think it said "please." So I was wondering what that meant.

I made a new little friend a few weeks ago, who wants to be the world's foremost Taoist scholar someday, or failing that...a lawyer. I mention him now because he uses "mad" all the time to mean "very," or "great," or "big." I think "wicked" has fallen from favor, finally. I mean, he's all of twenty-four. Has the torch been passed from "wicked" to "mad," then? I'm just wondering what I should say to sound cool when the need arises.

As for the phrase in question. I don't even want to get into the various meanings of "chuff" I uncovered over at urbandictionary.com. But since the entire phrase suggests that "chuff" is a verb in the imperative, maybe it means "smoke" or some variant thereof? There seems to be broad consensus on "dong."

I think I see where this is going.

After the gym, I popped into Brattle Books. I scored some mad chuff books on the dollar rack (see, I can talk all-slanglike, too, yo!), chief among them Stephen Potter's One-Upmanship, the classic guide to the topic, which will have a place of honor on my shelf next to James Abbott McNeill Whistler's The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (you can start by having three first names—or is it three last names?—well, whatever). I've been enormously successful with Mr. Whistler's method, let me tell you.

I also found a book on anamorphic art from the Renaissance that came with a sheet of "reflective plastic," that when fashioned into a cylinder "corrects" the distortions in the works to reveal the images hidden in them, some of them mad chuffy, if you know what I mean, yo. Here's how it works:


Told you it was mad chuffy.

I have mentioned in the past that, while I have enjoyed browsing Brattle Books pretty regularly for almost fifteen years now, I have noticed that lately the clerks there have gotten a little too cool for school.

There's been a "hipster" invasion, in case you hadn't noticed. A new crop of college-age art-fag alternajerks has arrived! Yipee!

And they need jobs just like the rest of us, especially if they want to be able to afford their ironic retro fashions at The Garment District, buy their alternative comic books at Newbury Comics, and get Shibuya-kei downloads for their ipod nanos online. Being a hipster ain't cheap, people. And it's a full-time job in itself.

The New Hipsters are to the old hipsters what genetically engineered superviruses are to the common cold. Be extra cautious if ever you come into contact with them. It's not that they're contagious. They won't contaminate you, per se, but even the most cursory contact with them will snuff out a little part of your soul—that secret tenuous hope you don't dare to tell anyone you're harboring in the tenderest, most hidden part of your achy little heart: kiss goodbye any vestige of that ridiculous hope in the future of the the world, the species, of art and culture you've got stashed in there back behind your secret porn collection, those old Wham! albums, and your "binkie." That faint, ever-fading faith you once held so dear that people can change, that things can change for the better, and that the youth of the nation embody those possibilities? It's toast.

I mean, so not hip. Der.

So, as I was saying, Hipsters don't like having to work any more than the rest of us, but they have the extra burden of having to try to hang onto their hipsterishness—hipsterocity?—while blowing leaves in the Wal-Mart parking lot, or whatever indignities their low-wage jobs heap upon them. I feel for them. I do. The answer is really just not to employ them where they can be seen. It's better for them, and better for the rest of us, too. Because the Hipster's whole identity is predicated on the belief that everyone else is square. And so what if we are?

My point. The Hipster Invasion of Brattle Books has definitely put a slight damper on my pleasure in browsing the buck-a-book section there.

I mean, the hipster clerks there have this thing they do when you come up to the counter to make your purchase. After reading a couple chapters of One-Upmanship (and combining it with my continuing study of kabbalah, Hipsterism, and the Tao Te Ching) I think I understand the strategy. Here's how it works:

1) You've got two registers, side by side, and a clerk at both.

2) One clerk (usually the one on the left) is the decoy, or the Homunculus Clerk—or Golem, if you prefer. The Golem Clerk's job is mainly to lurk and glare. Should you have the unmitigated gall to approach his register, he may also sneer and indicate with a gesture—a tick or a spasm of some sort—never speaking (golems are, after all, incapable of speech)—that you are to pay at the other register.

3) Whereupon he will busy himself reaching into the goody drawer for a piece of hard candy, which he will commence to sucking while he glares at you, as you...

4) ...wait for the other clerk to finish whatever it is she is doing (talking on the phone, painting her toenails, chatting with a third clerk who's busy not stocking books, &c.).

The first time I noticed they had employed a golem I was a little chuffed, I must say. Not mad chuffed, but a little—let's say annoyed chuffed—oychuffed, as they say in the hood. It was not at all clear which register was open, since there were clerks behind both doing nothing. The way they were both glaring at the customers—one gabbing on the phone, the other gnawing on a hard candy—it was impossible to tell which was the golem, and which the garden-variety hipster-clerk. Yes, they're tricky, all right.

Something in their evil eyes seemed to dare me: go ahead—you think you know which register is open—just try it and see.

I looked from one to the other.

The atmosphere in the shop was oppressive. Somewhere a baby cried.

I broke out in a cold sweat.

I looked from one to the other again.

I knew I would pick the wrong one, and sure enough I did. When I put my books down on the counter in front of the golem-clerk, he didn't say anything (sure sign you're dealing with the golem there). He just looked past me with his soulless expression and gnawed on his hard candy some more.

I looked to the other clerk for some clue as to what to do now, but she was not onlysucking on a lollypop herself, but had the phone to her ear and was doing her toenails. And she's the one who rang me up in the end!

It may be time the Brattle considered a hipsterectomy.