It’s deck to a be a juicer, but ishtar to be a frado. Having lots of kale may polish some of the tassels, and being a wally can too. Phish are definitely jerry, and as for being Goth or a Slipknot fan – forget it.

If you did not understand one word I just typed, than Robert Lanham’s “The Hipster Handbook” may be just for you. Who doesn’t want to be considered hip? Who wants to be thought of as uncool? “The Hipster Handbook” is a book about all things hip and so totally now. By the way, an almost literal translation of the first paragraph would read something like this: it’s cool to be a guy with sex appeal, but bad to be a deluded, ugly guy. Having lots of money may impress the ladies, but being handsome can too. And Phish are for hippies. (No letters please; that’s what the book says, not me.)

“The Hipster Handbook” covers everything that needs to be known on how to be a hipster, from vocabulary to style to even what kind of hipster you are. It gives you the do’s and do nots for almost every social aspect of life: the kind of music a hipster listens to, the clothes they wear, the bars they attend, the people they date and so on.

“The Hipster Handbook” opens with a brief introduction that highlights the 11 clues that you are (and are not a hipster). If you attend a liberal arts school with a crappy football team, have kissed someone of the same gender and have one Republican friend referred to as “your one Republican friend,” you may be a hipster. If you teach Sunday school, watch college football and listen to the Dave Matthews Band, you are definitely not hip.

A glossary of common hipster words and attitudes follow. Deck means cool; fin is the complete opposite of deck. A boy is a cronkite, a girl a tassel and a slutty girl a chipper. Juicers and wallys are guys with sex appeal, fradoes aren’t. To be drunk on beer is to be “shellacked” because of a bronson. Understanding yet? Hipsters hate corporations (and the mainstream in general), are serious about music, love irony, are politically liberal and never admit to being a hipster.

There are ten kinds of hipsters in existence. A UTF (Unemployed Trust Funder) is a rich kid who pretends to be poor, and rarely works a job. The WASH (Waitstaff and Service Hipsters) are the hipsters you see working as bartenders and music store clerks (i.e. the main characters in “High Fidelity”). Loners tend to be nerdy, antisocial hipsters. The Schmooze is all about networking. Homosexual hipsters are either A) Maxwells (gay men, further divided into straight-laced formfitting Maxwells and flamboyant Glam Rockers) or B) Carpets (lesbians subdivided into butch Metal Carpets and feminine Plush Carpets); bisexuals are referred to as CK-1s. The Teeter is a skate-punk hipster, and a Clubber is a usually teenaged rave-loving hipster. The Neo-Crunch is a modern day hippie hipster. Polits are those sensitive, smarty-pants hipsters who usually become professors. And finally, there’s the Bipster, which can be glibly described as a country-bumpkin version of a hipster.

Goth, hippie and rockabilly styles are to be avoided. Same thing with the white man dreadlocks, Catholic school outfits, pimps, white homeboys, grunge, traditional Mohawks and suburban casual. Any one of these styles make you automatically uncool. Also making the crap list: “Girls Gone Wild,” plastic surgery, playing sports, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers and joining fraternities/ sororities.

Of course, “The Hipster Handbook” is meant to all be a big joke. It’s classified as humor, but the read is not exceptionally funny. Lanham’s writing style is caught somewhere between sly joking and serious exploration of the hipster lifestyle. “The Hipster Handbook” has a winking tone throughout it; a subtly satirical bent that says this is just one big HAHA. But the satire may be too subtle. There are precious few times when “The Hipster Handbook” made me laugh, guffaw or even chuckle. It’s a cute, fast read, moderately amusing, but unnecessary and unmemorable. It’s the kind of humor book you pick up, read and toss away, forever forgetting what you just read. It doesn’t invite a second read through, because there is nothing here to savor.

Won’t “The Hipster Handbook” become instantly dated in a few months anyway? The lingo will become pass