Well now, it’s been a long long time since I sat down to write something here. I suppose it would be de rigeur to fill in the blanks - though not too much obviously as this is less a letter to Granny, and more the specious cognitive meanderings of someone who would be a simpleton if only he were a little dimmer – ‘tis my curse to always be clever and talented enough that I can’t be content with “normality”, whatever that may be, yet still not clever or talented enough to be exceptional – at least not without some kind of application on my part and that just seems like a lot of effort.

Actually, I’m not going to write anything about me – whilst I strike myself as being fantastically interesting, I’ve met many people who share said delusion (only substituting themselves for me) and they have invariably been very very boring people (…probably because they made the silly mistake of substituting themselves for me).

A recurring itch my mind has been suffering from recently is this: How does one claim a new word for themselves?

How does one say that my meaning of this word is the true one? An example – a while ago a friend and I were working hard at doing very little when one of us coined a term of such magnificence that we both immediately latched upon it as that most wonderful of things – an original word that summed up a concept that had never really been done justice before. After bandying the little bugger around for a week or two (though never gratuitously) I thought I might Google it, just to be on the safe side. Lo and behold, if some bastard hadn’t got there first and applied a meaning that just didn’t do it justice, but which yielded sufficient hits on various sites that I realized we’d missed our window of opportunity and our word would never live to see the light of day. I was so disheartened by this that I guess I’ve tried to blank it out because I can’t for the life of me remember what the word was anymore.

Anyways, the reason why this has been praying on my mind of late is the fact that I did it again recently. I was trying to describe my philosophy of business to a client. Essentially it is a combination of elements of hippy doctrine (by which I mean an aversion to mainstream thinking/beliefs/values) and capitalism (private ownership, free market). I termed myself a “hipitalist” – one who operates in a capitalist world, yet holds an alternative value system. This musn’t be confused with the great many good people working in “Third Sector” companies – I, myself, have been involved with not-for-profit companies, charities and worker’s co-operatives of various descriptions, but that’s not quite the same. A hipitalist is still a private owner. They operate without subsidy or public/private donation. They make a profit. They simply run their company in a cool way – making money nicely. Having concern for their fellow man and the environment. They actually contribute to society rather than leech off it (one day I really will get round to writing about ecological economics as an alternative global model).

I could go on but I won’t. Suffice it to say that I only found 1 result on Google and that was from 1992. It was also quite long and (apologies to the authors) quite boring so whilst I tried faithfully to read it all through to see if they had a definition there, I must admit to glazing over so I may have missed it.

Therefore – if Google be law (which it kind of is – Wikipedia had nothing), so far Hipitalist has one entry dating from an obscure academic exchange in 1992. I have now brought it back into living language and provided an approximate definition. By publishing this, that should bring the Google score up to 1:1. If I do that a few more times, can I claim this word…?

np: Daria from the album “Fashion Nugget” by Cake