Chakras, chai, and chi… CRAP!

People occasionally ask me why hippies bother me so much.

Well, fasten your seatbelts, cause here we go...


No comprehension of the importance of boundaries

It was a glorious spring day, and I was looking forward to getting home from work and throwing my front door open to the fresh air and rhythms of the human traffic passing by.

As I headed up my block, a screech rippled out of the place next to mine as a visual assault burst out onto the sidewalk: A prime example of the urban hippie -- skinny guy with an unkempt mop of rank hair; wearing a loud tie-dyed T-shirt paired to clashing disadvantage with too-short baggy indo-patterned pants and grotty bare feet -- all adding up to a major fashion felony with a misdemeanour in dubious personal hygiene.

As he looked wild-eyed and trembling at the doorway, the banshee appeared on the front steps... an equally protein-deprived female specimen in embroidered shift over blaaah pant-like baggery, and poxy dreads like dried, rolled out cow dung swept up in one of those dreary hemp rags that looks like its been pulled from flood wreckage.

The guy snaps his head in my direction and says: "Did you hear that? Did you hear her SCREAMING AT ME?"

I just walked past, smirking: "Forget it... I'm not taking sides in a domestic dispute."

Him: "I just want you to be witness to this!" (like what… in case this ends up going to sweat lodge arbitration?)

She says: "I just want you to witness that I'm dealing with a FREAK!" and stomps off inside.

I ducked into my apartment, thinking:

1) Hey patchouli doll… you're both freaks to me.

2) What could have burst their children-of-the-universe bliss? She's fed up with him leaving his chakra oils all over her yoga mat? He used a beef bouillon cube in the dahl again and now she’s going to have to do a two-week fast, ramped up with a steaming chicory and echinacea root colonic to cleanse her system? She caught him sprawled naked on her Cat Stevens records in a compromising tantric position with her bong? She asked him: 'Does this reusable moss-packed menstrual pad make my ass look fat in these ridiculously shapeless pants?', and he, guilelessly, said 'yes'?

I left my door open, presuming the tiff had blown over. But no… to my horror, up rose the slightly echoing sound of somebody WEEPING in sniveling frustration.

So???? I thought that all you need is love.

I poked my nose out the door, and there's Mr. Tofu, sitting cross-legged (how else?) in the middle of the sidewalk, blubbering away. You’d think he would have chosen to sit in the relative seclusion of his stoop; but no, why not be free and share, and sit over a metal drainage grate that acts as an amplifier so that half the block has to listen to it?

What kind of person doesn’t make any effort to find a private spot to bawl out their personal drama, with no consideration for the fact that they’re creating an offputting and noisy public spectacle? Answer: Two-year-olds… and rejected hippies.

Fashion

Hippies espouse being super individualistic, yet they all basically wear the same frumptastical uniform that’s as restrictive as a corporate dress code. Bottom options are confined to ratty peasant skirts, those abominable harem pants that fit with the elegance of a deflated air balloon, or shapeless trousers featuring some interlocking lizard pattern on something that looks like washed out burlap. Tops range from T-shirts featuring Che Guevara or some garish psychedelic pattern; to shapeless tunics; to wispy flute-sleeved inspirations from the Stevie Nicks BoHo Collection (for more formal occasions, such as moonlit solstice tofu BBQs and beachside commitment ceremonies).

The prevailing aesthetic is that everything looks like it was woven in a shabby village in India or Bolivia from corn husks that have passed through a goat’s digestive tract. Hippies, I ask you: What’s the upside to looking like an impoverished medieval peasant?


Dreadlocks

I saw this tv show in which they did a makeover on a woman who had dreads down to her knees. It looked like a horrible alien spider had attached itself to her head. A smelly cloud of 10-yr-old dirt rose up as the stylist hacked through the dreads with gardening shears.

Dreads are hair matted together with ancient scalp oil and filth.

Ugly and disgusting. No excuse.


Ecoconsciousness?

I was in Tofino on Vancouver Island during the great Clayoquot Sound logging blockade of 92, a hapless tourist suckered into going on a bone-chilling bust of a whale-watching excursion. No majestic tail flukes rising over our boat, no sir; all we saw, from a distance, was a gray blob of a mini whale that was taking a nap… and our guide, being a bleeding heart ecofascist, refused my suggestion that we go over and poke it with a stick until it jumped. Also disappointing was when, in absolute desperation, I had to be let off on a tiny rocky outcrop to take a pee, and as I squatted with my arse exposed to the chill winds, a boatful of smarter tourists who’d opted for a nice big cruiser with full amenities passed by, hooting at my shame.

Seeking refreshments back in town, I stumbled into the unwashed epicentre of tree-hugging hypocrisy.

I’m sitting in this granola café, and its swarming with earnest granolians stocking up on organic millet-and-kelp muffins before heading back out to throw themselves in front of logging trucks and chant and yell and weep about saving the trees… and none of them seems perturbed by the fact that this supposedly ecorighteous hub is built almost entirely from giant murdered trees. Massive beams spanned the ceiling; a big staircase with wide steps made from single planks spiraled up past the cedar-paneled walls… clearly a number of super-old big ass trees died to put this place up.

But hey… as long as that’s fair-trade coffee going out in the styrofoam cups, I guess its ok.

Dudes... I could SERIOUSLY use some organic trail mix right now.

p.s. To experience a full-blown tree-lovin' hippie freak out, you MUST see this:
http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyEam9NXOnE

Music

a) Reggae. Hippies, contrary to your scriptures, Bob Marley was not a demi-God. I can understand why his Rastafarian politics made him a hero to poor Black Jamaicans; but for North American kids from the suburbs to appropriate him as a revered icon feels a lot like post-Colonial white-guilt bollocks.

Reggae in general drives me nuts, with its relentless wucka-CHUCKa, wucka-CHUCKa, wucka-CHUCKA clanky jangling. Want to write a reggae song? Set your beat machine to ‘reggae’; freestyle with incomprehensible gibberish like ‘Go deh yaka, go deh yaka, go deh in-a rocker’; toss in repeated references to ‘natty dreads’, ‘Jah warrior’, and ‘rub-a-dub stylin’; add a little bit of ‘lyin in dee sun smokin ganga, mon’ and you’re done, you big ol’ buffalo soulja, you.

Bottom line is, I find the rhythmic chugging of a washing machine more pleasant and engaging than the tired tropes of reggae, and Marley’s been done to death, if you’ll pardon the expression. You want to see me go all Incredible Hulk raging mental? Just put on “Jammin” and take cover.

Wow man. Like this HAWK just flew into my head.

That's the power of ONE LOVE, man. Marley lives!!! Wow.

b) Granola Rock. To fans of the Grateful Dead, Phish et al: If I were to synthesize the THC from a bushel of prime BC buds into an injectable form that I then mainlined into my jugular vein, I still don’t think I could get stoned enough to get through one of their guitar-noodling epics without wanting to strangle myself with some love beads. The 60s were half a century ago, guys. Let’s move on.

c) Femi-Folk, Bluegrass, Aboriginal Folk Rock, and Other Horrors. Sorry people… basic musical ability and a surfeit of earnestness doesn’t entitle you be vapidly cliche in public. (see Exhibit A ) Do it if you must, but for pity’s sake, keep it behind closed doors.

d) Music featuring zamfirs, pan pipes, and/or insipid acoustic guitar set against the sounds of the rainforest is the Musak of Hades.

e) Drumming. You are not hunter-gatherers living on the African savanna. Stop it. Your neighbours are fed up.

The cuisine of despair

My first bout with vegetarianism taught me this: if a recipe sounds like its going to taste like a bland amalgam of reconstituted particle board on soggy paper towels, that’s how it’ll play out in your mouth.

Ancient archaeological artifact? Or lunch?

Vegetarians, the bald fact of it is that animals are deelicious. If you want people to stop eating them, you’d better suggest alternatives that aren’t a huge, joyless disappointment when compared to the juicy delights of grilled flesh.

· Meat ‘substitutes’ can be palatable, but stop insisting that they in any way come close to replicating the real thing. There is no alchemy that will make fried coconut, provolone cheese, or soy jerky equal the crispy, fatty wonder of bacon… If you think that real duck is squeamishly fleshy, wait until you experience the unholy texture of mock duck… and online reviews of Tofurky liken it to eating wet wheat bread, and say its only tasty if you inject with cajun sauce -- in which case, its just not really Thanksgivingy in the least, is it?

· Carob DOES NOT mimic the smooth, rich decadence of chocolate. It’s a chalky, bitter, and pointless lie.

· Cookies made without white flour, butter, and/or sugar aren’t worth eating. They tend to be dense, dry slabs with all the joy of compressed sawdust.

· Tofu can be fine, as long as its infused with external flavours and does not have the texture of whale blubber. Adding it to otherwise perfectly good dishes such as veggie chili or lasagna is misguided; trying to pass tofutti off as ice cream is just perverse.

"Our goat just pooped these out. Try one!

They taste, literally, like shit... but they're organic!"

· Vegans are insane; I’m not convinced that a life without cheese, butter, or cream would be worth living. Besides, vegans, with their obsessive disdain towards 99.99% of what is served at your average restaurant or dinner party, are a royal pain in the ass.

I recently sat next to a vegan at a dinner seminar. At first I saluted his shining ethical resolve, and felt a smidge sheepish, if you will, about ordering a succulent slab of beef. But by the time he’d tutted grumpily over the fact that they didn’t have whole grain buns, and had repeatedly pestered the harried waiter (who was a BIT overextended, since he had to run up and down a set of stairs to deliver food to 24 people) to confirm the exact composition of the balsamic dressing on his salad and to determine whether they’d used organic, free-range arugula, he’d proven himself to be a completely neurotic pill who expected the entire restaurant to bend over doubly backwards to accommodate his dietary choices. The only excuse for being THAT paranoid about a few molecules of animal essence getting into your meal is because it’ll send you into anaphylactic shock, not because you can’t bear the thought of a bit of chicken stock smudging your karma.

Plus, his name was Leif, which he made a big deal about insisting is pronounced “Life”. That may indeed be how they say it in Norway, but it was nonetheless just the lactose-free icing on the eggless, gluten-free cake of pointless fussiness.

He was like this perfect storm of self-centered nit-pickery.

Plus, he was wearing leather shoes.

Knock it off with the sprouts already!
They just make everything taste like tin cans

And what the hell are THESE?!?!? Vagina buns??

A fondness for massing in numbers to do a whole lot of not much besides be really icky

Some years ago, I was working late at a small business owned by a guy who’d recently been showing disturbing signs of creeping neo-hippie-ism. Just little things, like wearing a single cowrie shell on a leather string and listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder.

When the phone rang, I answered it with the usual businessly greeting, to be met with:

“Yeah. Uh… Wow. Uh…. Um… yeah. Is, like, David there?”

“No”, I replied, and offered to take a message.

“Ok. Uh. Well. Wow. Ok, so this is Thumper?”

Me (suspecting a prank): “Thumper. Like the cartoon bunny.”

Him: “Huh? Wow, yeah. Ha! No… Wow. So, like, I’m calling about the Rainbow Gathering?”

That’s when I realized , to my horror, that my boss had crossed over to the dark side.

Oh. But I suppose acid is ok?

Unlike what you might logically assume, the Rainbow Gathering is not a massive rave for the LBGT set. Rather, it is a week-long hippie convergence describes in its website as “A free, non-commercial sharing of our hearts in the cathedral of nature […] in a community of tribal anarchy.”

Basically, it’s an annual camping retreat for hippies who call themselves “the Family” (whoa… did anybody else just see a mental image of Charles Manson wearing a beaded macrame headband?). Ostensibly, the goal is to try to achieve peace and love on Earth. But given that the only “organized” activity is the evening councils… which are described as “ad hoc discussion circles, NOT elected legislative bodies that can decide anything for anyone”… it doesn’t seem likely that they’re ever going to accomplish anything aside from seriously inconveniencing a bunch of disgruntled woodland creatures.

Given that the Family can’t even get somebody with rudimentary spelling skills to edit their website, its probably safe to assume that the councils, rather than being a mechanism for achieving quorum on solid peace-and-love initiatives, are just a forum for insipid propagandists to preach to the converted. And since they’re all about inclusion and tolerance and non-confrontation and not hurting anyone’s feeeeelings, presumably any old windbag who gets ahold of the talking stick can drone on all night about their peyote vision quests and nobody can stop them. Kind of like the UN, but with a lot more pot and nudity.

"...and I was staring into this void filled with rings of pulsing colour, kind of like my shirt only in six dimensions, and slowly this face started to emerge...at first it was my old dog Sparky, and his eyes were made of lava, and he barked out "renounce all forms of animal tastiness! Eat veggie dogs!"... then he started to grow ropes out of his head and I realized it was Bob Marley and he said "You've got to lively up yourself, mon," and then my ears turned into donuts and my penis grew into a giant redwood that cracked the sky open so that granola rained from the heavens, and i was weeping, weeping, sobbing like a little girl..."

Anywho, here are a few nuggets gleaned from the Rainbow website:

· Minors showing up without having the presence of mind to attend to details such as packing adequate provisions or telling their parents that they’re about to disappear for a few weeks, is apparently a common enough problem that they’ve posted advise for youth on how to make sure they don’t end up reported as runaways, and emphasizing that a person can’t survive for a week on a pack of organic Skittles and a big bag of Sunchips.

They also advise parents who are worried about their innocent progeny falling in with a bunch of unwashed tripped-out commies somewhere way out of cell phone range, to … well… basically, just chillax, because your kids will be safe with their Rainbow sisters and brothers!

Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to anybody that if a 16-yr-old is so ditzy and naïve that they can’t figure out what to pack for a week in the woods, their parents might have just cause to worry that they’ll be prime targets for whatever sexual predators or other dangerous whackos that they may run into while hitchhiking their way to Nirvana.

I'd say you have a more pressing need for a shirt, but....

· In contrast to the supposed devotion to peace, love and understanding, there is a tone of majorly hostile effrontery to the screen concerning how to get around the “coercive tactics and encroachments of rights” at the police roadblock that tribe members will inevitably face upon arrival.

The general attitude seems to be: “God-damned pigs! So what if you’ve got 500 hits of acid hidden in your dreads, and this is a federal park that has to take at least a few cursory measures to ensure that no deranged maniacs with weapons or explosives have decided to check out the freak show and self-proclaimed anarchist event! Why can’t the friggin’ MAN just BE COOL, MAAAAN!!”

· The list of things to bring include: love and hugs (ick), frisbees (naturally), hair ties (but not hairbrushes), Magic Hat (??), incense holder (duh!), dental floss (but not, notably, deodorant), and the weirdly enigmatic entry: “Homemade campers out-house (grey hair and gimps only)*”.

*So… do the young and non-gimpy just shit where they stand like cattle? Or is that what the Magic Hat is for?

So let’s review: it’s a situation where you’ve got a pile of self-righteous dreamers crammed together, approximately zero privacy, drums going all the time, rampant hacky-sacking, summer heat combined with no proper toilets or bathing facilities, non-stop new-agey/feminist grandstanding, biting bugs, a cloud of b.o. hanging over everything, and the expectation that you must graciously accept the lingering embrace of any nude stranger that comes along, dangly bits all a-dangle against your person.

Add an evening showcase of Celine Dion impersonators, and that’s pretty much my definition of Hell.

My worst-case scenario.

New agey nonsense

To people with a rational grip on reality, believing in karma and healing energy and astrology and all the rest is as preposterous as accepting that there’s a big old bearded guy in the sky pulling strings and hanging out with angels.

SERIOUSLY:

- Tea tree oil does not cure everything from acne to lice to fascism. It just makes you really oily and stink like Vicks Vap-o-rub.

- Acupuncture maybe; but LASER acupuncture? I once knew a woman named Mindy (surprised?) who insisted she could rejuvenate a mildly droopy ficus plant with her magic laser beams. Guess what? Within a week, the tree had dropped all its leaves and died -- probably from embarrassment.
- If someone’s life has been an unrelenting endurance test of completely unfair shit for quite some time, its not only unrealistic, but bordering on insulting to suggest that all they need to do is just close their eyes, burn some incense and “let it go”.

One fall I started getting massages to treat a shoulder injury that had been crumpling me with pain for months. I’d put off dealing with it, because I’d been fighting a steamroller of other crap, including dealing with a highly egregious and possibly mentally unstable co-worker. My masseur was my neighbour, so when he inquired as to why I was a completely stressed out wreck, I felt ok with giving him a small glimpse into the crushing psychological, emotional and financial hell I’d been burdened with for several years, thanks to various factors outside my control.

Suddenly, I felt something smooth being placed on the small of my back; then I heard humming punctuated by three gonging strikes. “Uh… what was that?” I asked. He explained that he’d been bonging a brass bowl so the vibrations would release bad energy from my body. My response was: “Thanks, but I think the most effective way to release my bad energy would be to take a baseball bat to a few deserving people’s heads.” He tut-tutted about how negativity would eat me up. I thought: “Listen pal, I’m paying you $75 an hour for a massage, so drop the dopey platitudes, lose the ridiculous props and get rubbing.”

If only wearing a crystal around my neck and just deciding to give out positive energy could have made it all better. But when your circumstances are genuinely miserable, you can’t just fix everything by deciding to put on a happy face.

Just take a Tylenol, fer chrissakes

- If getting what you want through positive visualization actually WORKED as a life plan, right now I’d be lounging around on a pile of money stroking my pet tiger while debating whether I’ll spend some time with Clive Owen for a change, so that James Franco could have a bit of a rest and finish his PhD in astrophysics. Most people figure out by about the age of 5 that fervent wishing isn’t enough to make your dreams come true. Hippies, they just keep believin’ in fairies and pixie dust in spite of the damning evidence. That’s called delusion.

- Eating breakfast in my local diner one day, I couldn’t help but pick up on an incredible spiel of drivel being shoveled by a young women sitting at the next table, talking about how she’d just had the most AWESOME spiritual experience at some holistic-ass retreat:

“Like, so, Jade? She’s like the leader and she was just SOOOO, like… she just, like, radiated this BEAUTIFUL energy? She was A-MAAAAZING!!! So, like the first night she said I could sleep in her bed, and we all ended up just sharing the bed and … like, it was sooooo AWESOME!! And we got up at, like, 3am to go out and pick these, like, leaves of this plant? Because, like, the moon was in the perfect phase for the best energy for this particular plant? Anyway, so as soon as I picked a leaf, it was, like, I felt like this A-MAZING feeling, like I could tell it just had all this, like, AWESOME energy rush!!”

As she went on, I started to wonder if she was the victim of emotionally dysfunctional parenting; it was disturbing that she seemed so grateful to have gained acceptance from a bunch of loopy strangers who think that life oughta be just one big mystical Hogwarts sleepover. Any young adult with that level of gullibility and rank, naked neediness really ought to be getting professional counseling so they can get a grip on their lives, not be wandering around picking moonflowers in la-la land with a bunch of co-sleeping, herb-worshipping zombies for role models. Also, a bit of help from the Toastmasters on how to form a sentence without using “like” and “awesome” as punctuation would also be good.

Like, wow... I just pulled these out of myself... want one?

I suppose that people are entitled to believe whatever ludicrous dogma they want, but its putting on self-righteousness airs about being more pure and evolved than the rest of us that puts me on the offensive.

Because that’s what hippies do. They’ll go on and on about their epiphany in yoga class, or their pilgrimage to Maccu Picchu, or the plight of some political dissident in Nicaragua, or the doula’s rights movement, as if everyone will naturally care with the same misty eyed reverence that they do.

Its just so tedious and self-involved.

Begone, hippies.

Begone.

Animal cruelty