“The Hipster Handbook” might be a bit too tongue-in-cheek for its own good. Although, that doesn’t stop The Encyclopedia Of Hip from being deck. What?

This 170-page deconstruction of the “cultured” culture succeeds in lampooning the same group that so cleverly tends to avoid categorization.

Some listed hipster character types include the shaggy-haired, suit-donning Polit (whose name is a combination literary and politic), who I’ve occasionally seen in Reavis Hall. My favorite hipster is the “Metal as F***” character who claims “that The Beatles ‘suck sh**’ to be provocative.”

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Aside from classifying the Hipsters, “The Hipster Handbook” teaches the reader to become a hipster by laying out in list form the definitive hipster movies, CDs, books, haircuts, drinks and sexual lifestyles. One of the key elements to being a hipster is being as ironic as possible. That said, this book is as hip as sitting in a bar drinking absinthe.

“The Ivy League’s” is a grading of colleges across the United States in terms of hipster activity. The University of Chicago scores a C+; it gains cool points for its impressive alumni, but loses major points for being founded by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller.

The final questionnaire is a “Are You a Hipster?” self prognosis. Questions like “Which of the following most closely describes your temperament in social situations? A) Complacent B) Ready To Kick Some Ass C) Perky D) Paranoid E) Self-Deprecating” tell whether you are “Irredeemably fin, milquetoast, poseur, on the perspective or deck.”

If you say “f*** your lame test,” you are “punk,” which just so happens to be ironically hip off-the-charts.

“The Hipster Handbook” is written in code lingo, like any other handbook. Luckily, a hipster glossary is included in the first chapter of the handbook. But wouldn’t it be funnier if the handbook wasn’t written in lingo, but instead written in extremely scientific terms?

Not only that, but it would be more ironic than this book already is