Yerba Mate

Hippies love yerba mate, a tea-like beverage originating from South America that contains caffeine and some other stuff that its proponents say make it better for you than regular coffee. Whatever. It tastes terrible, smells awful and really should be avoided at all costs. Sucking on bark from a tree in Portland’s Laurelhurst Park would be infinitely more pleasant. But it is a popular local drink in such countries as Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil and thus, with such a diverse and “ethnic” background, Northwest hippies of course embrace it fully.

Religion and Nature

Hippies generally decry organized religion, believing instead that spirituality needs no structure or dogma to be relevant and helpful to those who practice it. They prefer to develop their own relationship with a higher power, which for hippies generally means nature, or Gaia, the mother of all things natural. Nature worship, for what it’s worth, doesn’t place any restrictions on humans insofar as morals go. The only precept in nature worship is to treat the earth and its inhabitants well, with respect and all that. Yet, as we have discussed on previous posts, hippies do all kinds of terrible things to nature, such as: freaking out animals with their dope smoking and their drum circles, pillaging the rainforest in search of patchouli, polluting the air with Subarus, utilizing roads cut through pristine forests, withholding vital nutrients from landfills, eating threatened or endangered species, allowing the slaughter of vast crops of plantlife in order to make fuel, allowing the senseless deaths of critters great and small through protection of dangerous carnivorous animals, chopping down perfectly good trees to make plush, three-ply toilet paper, and discharging dangerous chemicals through their urine that eventually cause genetic mutations in fish and other aquatic life. I don’t know what the nature worshiping version of hell is, but clearly hippies are going there, lickity split…

Southeast Asia

Hippies love Southeast Asia, and frequently travel to places like Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia to get their kicks. Ostensibly, hippies enjoy the culture and natural beauty of such areas…the beaches of Bali, the jungles of Malaysia, the Buddhist temples of Thailand. Of course, when traveling to these places, hippies can’t help but notice the party scene, which typically involves copious amounts of marijuana, occasionally mushrooms, and definitely cheap alcohol. As well as a rather astounding lack of law enforcement when it comes to public intoxication and recreational drug use. Oh, and a rather sexually-charged environment where other traveling hippies meet up and have relations with each other without the usual social norms kicking in that would necessitate, for example, getting to know a person before copulating with them. Nope, hippies’ love for Southeast Asia has nothing to do with these things…they really just go there for the Buddhist temples. Really.

Woody Harrelson

Hippies love Woody Harrelson, presumably because he’s a pothead that hates on Christmas. You might remember, Woody made a comment many years ago on some late night TV show where he disparaged the idea of buying Christmas trees. Something like, “Why do we need to kill living things to celebrate the birth of Jesus?” Well, I’ll tell you why, Woody: Christ WANTS us to kill things. It’s in the Bible, look it up, man. Oh, and by the way, that doobie you’re smoking? It too was once a “living thing.” So the real question is, Woody, why do YOU have to kill living things just to relax and look at banana trees while listening to Native African bongos playing gently in the background? Huh???? Why!!!

Groovin' to the Tunes

Hippies love music and listen to it almost everywhere they go. With their I-Pods and/or I-Phones plugged into their ears, they navigate urban environments, taking buses, riding bikes, or simply walking to their destinations with the latest groovy tunes blaring down their ear canals. While at home, they have their I-Macs plugged in, tuned to the coolest online music provider, ready to go at a moment’s notice. In their cars (if they have one) they have their favorite CD playing, or their I-Pod/I-Phone plugged in to the MP3 portal, laying down their favorite tracks. In fact, if one were to come across a hippie in the Costa Rican rainforest, it is almost assured that said hippie will have a musical device ready to whip out and entertain the natives they hope to encounter. Of course, all of these devices – the I-Phone, I-Pod, I-Mac and whatever else they use to pipe in the tunes – all are powered by fossil-fuel spewing, nonrenewable energy sources, which as we all should know contributes to global warming, which the hippies claim they will do anything to combat. Anything, it seems, except giving up their near-24 hour music fest they apparently can’t live without. What hypocrites!

Patchouli and the Rainforest

Hippies love water conservation. So much so, that they intentionally skip showers, trying to wash themselves only every few days or so. To counteract the natural odor that accompanies poor personal hygiene, hippies wear lots of patchouli-scented perfume. But few hippies realize that patchouli is derived from a rare Amazonian wildflower, and that vast armies of Brazilians are employed to rape the rainforest in search of this flower. In fact, according to reliable sources, more rainforest acreage is destroyed each year from patchouli harvesting than road building and agricultural land clearing. Hmmm…if only hippies would shower!