Hippies Discussing The Money Wrench Gang

Hippie 1: “Dude, that’s so cool! They just totally trashed that bulldozer! I wish I could do something like that!”

Hippie 2: “Yeah, and they burned down all those billboards! Man, those cats really love nature…”

Hippie 1: “Yeah, I heard it was based on a true story…I’d like to shake that dude’s hand...”

Hippie 2: “What, that one dude, Hayduke? The one who’s always throwing his beer cans out the window and stuff?”

Hippie 1: “Huh? Umm…that’s not cool…”

Hippie 2: “Yeah, but it was a STATEMENT, dude…”

Hippie 1: “Oh…cool.”

Punch-a-Hippie Day

BREAKING NEWS: WASHINGTON - Today President Obama declared June 30 to be “National Punch-a-Hippie Day” in honor of his administration’s moratorium on offshore drilling following the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

“As many Presidents have said before, the buck stops here,” Mr. Obama said, in taking full responsibility for the moratorium, which will put thousands out of work in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

“While I cannot erase the harm that has been done, I can provide this one small gesture: On June 30, frustrated - and unemployed - citizens of the Gulf states may take out their anger on the nearest hippie-dippy environmentalist they come across. Go ahead, give ‘em a whack! We will not prosecute you!”

Naturally, national environmental groups criticized the president for his comments, arguing that it wasn’t their fault and that singling hippies out for retribution amounted to discrimination.

“While stopping offshore drilling has long been a goal of our organization, the President’s moratorium policy was developed and implemented without any consultation with us,” said James Buttercup, executive director of Hippies Against Oil.

“To condone violence upon our kind is not only irresponsible, but may well be the political death knell for this President,” Buttercup added.

David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief political advisor, said much of the Gulf oil disaster could rightly be laid at the feet of organizations such as Buttercup’s, which have lobbied long and hard against drilling on land and in shallower waters, where emergency response capabilities would have made it much easier to contain a spill of this magnitude.

“I think, clearly, if the hippies had simply let the oil companies drill in ANWR, we wouldn’t be facing this situation today,” said Axelrod.

“Literally everyone else involved in this - BP, the White House, the MMS - has acknowledged their culpability and accepted responsibility for their roles in this fiasco,” Axelrod said. “It’s now time for the environmental lobby to do the same.”

Barefoot in the Park

Hippies love to go barefoot, especially in public places that would otherwise demand footwear. They enjoy donning nothing but their bare soles while toodling about downtown, on trains and buses, in the grocery store, and in other public spaces of Portland and other Northwest hippie enclaves. They proudly display their dirty, graying feet and toes while sitting on tye-dye blankets and strumming cheap guitars while singing Joni Mitchell songs and cooking tabouli on a camp stove in the park. They speak excitedly about the calluses that build up on the bottoms of their hardened feet, picking at them like war wounds that have yet to heal completely. Yet, the reasons behind this lifestyle choice escape me. Do they think shoes are bad for the environment? Is it another one of those “natural is better” things? Are they simply preparing themselves for a fast-approaching world in which footwear is in short supply? If so, where do they come by this knowledge? These are the questions that keep me awake at night…

Saving the Whales

Hippies are animal-loving folks and, as such, support wildlife preservation and conservation efforts. They get especially excited about efforts to “save” certain species facing extinction. Sometimes, the situation for these threatened creatures is so dire that the normally pacifist hippies take up arms in defense of them, such as the crazy fat bearded dude on that Whale Wars TV program on Animal Planet. That guy – I think his name is Paul Watson, but it might as well be Walrus – thinks it’s OK to send his young hippie crew out in tiny inflatable dinghies to try and stop massive Japanese whalers from harpooning their target. The thing is, they fail. Even if they every now and again are successful in delaying the Japanese fleet’s catch, the fleet nonetheless fills its quota, year after year. Why does that young hippie crew stay on, knowing full well that their efforts are futile? Bragging rights, that’s all. They get the right, in perpetuity, to tell yarns about how they “took on the whale killers” back in the day. Their friends will all be impressed, at least the first dozen times they hear the tales. Their children will have cause to be proud of their mothers and fathers. But in the end, the only whales those kids will see will be the ones at SeaWorld.

Road Rules

Hippies hate logging roads, and were a vocal support contingent when President Clinton implemented the Roadless Rule that banned new logging road construction in the nation’s wilderness areas. Yet, hippies are some of the heaviest users of the nation’s logging roads. They love to go camping and backpacking and snowshoeing and all that, and the best spots to go are often accessible only because of roads that were initially developed for logging. Just think how many new and exciting camping spots would be accessible if more roads were constructed! Damn hippies…

Organic Farming

Hippies like to eat organic food, because organic farming doesn’t use pesticides, herbicides or any other cides, all of which, they claim, are bad for the environment and bad for humans. But, if it weren’t for those very same herbicides, the world would be overpopulated with bugs, and whatever feeds on bugs, like mice and bats. Who needs more freakin’ bats? Not I…

Public Parks

Hippies love public parks. Parks give hippies a place to congregate, hang out, smoke dope and do tai chi. They also provide “green space” which hippies claim is very important to have in urban areas, for reasons I don’t quite understand. The thing is, the vast majority of public park land is covered in grass. And that grass must be mowed. And the mowers are almost universally gas-powered mowers. Which means that public parks are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, which lead to global warming, which leads to rising sea levels, which means, again, the deaths of millions in Bangladesh. Why won’t the hippies just lay off Bangladesh?!

Wildlife Conservation

Hippies love wildlife conservation and recovery efforts for endangered or threatened wildlife species. They championed government efforts to re-introduce wolves in Yellowstone and other mountainous areas of the Intermountain Northwest. They have long supported the special protections allotted to alligators in the Florida Everglades. But what about the countless dogs and cats that are killed each year by Florida gators? What about the hundreds or even thousands of cute little forest critters that are eaten each year by the wolves? I guess hippies don’t care about them much…

Saving the Trees

Hippies like to save trees. They even have a profession known as tree-sitting, wherein said hippies climb trees and hang out, doing nothing for a few weeks (which isn’t really a stretch, considering their daily routines). The point is to stop, or at least slow down, logging of the nation’s forests. But if you’ve ever been in a hippie’s home, you’ll notice they have the softest, plushest toilet paper money can buy, instead of, say, the cheapo single ply stuff that does the same thing using half the resources. I guess they don’t mind logging the toilet paper trees…

Beef is Good

People say that raising cattle is harmful to the environment, especially in places like Brazil, which keeps mowing down rainforest to expand agriculturally. Well guess what? Beef tastes good. If Jesus was here, he’d eat at McDonalds and be Lovin’ It. Why are the hippies always hating on Jesus?