what is a hippy?

A person who opposes and rejects many of the conventional standards and customs of society, especially one who advocates extreme liberalism in sociopolitical attitudes and lifestyles.

this is from dictionary.com. my flatmates have put this definition on our loungeroom wall because they think i am a hippy. and according to this definition i am. but its a fuckin dumb definition. hippies smoke copious amounts of weed and wear flares and burn incense and go to raves and have long hair and believe in free love and i do none of those things. thank you very much.

You forgot the lentils.

"Socks aren't vegetables, man. They should be wiped out!"

Wow, Tracer. I guess I wasn't kidding. I too am a hippy after all, according to dictionary.com.

To di's real definition, though, you could add "are really stupid generally and think they're doing the world a favor by their very existence and are surprisingly elitist and listen to terrible music". But that's the hippies of the past 30 years. They were great in the Sixties, most of them. I really wanted to be one as a little kid.

What are your parents like, Tracer?

hippies go to raves?!

they do in new zealand - although not everyone who goes to raves is a hippy. but check "the gathering" i mean its a rave on takaka hill therefore hippies go to raves.

Hm - this brings up something else - can you be a hippie(sp) and be less than 40 years old?

yes. go to Arc Cafe in dunedin and have a look at some of the clientele. ick.

Waaaait a minute are you talking about crusties?

is there a difference other than the time frame?

their taste in music. and piercings.

oh no, the people i'm referring too like the grateful dead as well as dance music.

That's half the ravers I knew here about a decade ago.

Di, the *real* hippies are those people's PARENTS.

shuttup hippy

don't call me that, punk!

don't make me come over ther and whoop yo ass, cumrag.

The above exchange is one reason why I'm looking forward to September.

why, what's hap. in sept.?

ned's coming to dunedin, retard.

oh yeah i'd seen that by now. i don't know, i don't really want that fuckin' guy coming over here & buying all our records.

I'm sure it'll be a boon for the local music industry

seriuosly tho, wow that would be cool. re: records - bring stuff to trade, wd be a real good idea. what sort of stuff? i dunno, i'll get back to you.

well we could give him the address of some loser junkie ex- rockstar to buy records off, that'll keep him away from the record stores.

you know lots of people like that, i guess.

its a sad old world ain't it?

where YOU live

Now I have another reason! ;-)

Actually, I was thinking of spreading the Good Word of Tape Mountain, which my friend Jake Anderson runs. He is enamoured of things New Zealand, musically and otherwise -- you can thank him for introducing me to the perverse joy that is Meet the Feebles -- and I suspect a lot of you fine folk down there would like the music he creates and the other bands he has released stuff by. I'll talk to him, maybe I'll bring down some goods for y'all. :-)

where YOU live

same town last time i checked, anusface

phish. that's all i can contribute.

Question:

- Have you ever taken illegal drugs for the purposes of "enlightenment" rather than fun?

- Do you believe that tribal cultures possess greater wisdom than anything we have yet to achieve in the West?

- Do you own any Grateful Dead albums (other than the two country-rock ones that Hopkins has now decreed acceptable)?

- Have you ever read Carlos Castaneda?

- Do believe that everything would be all right if we could only learn to get along?

- Do you find tie-dye aesthetically acceptable?

- Do you believe that most songs could do with being longer?

- Do you find that the best way to enjoy music is while sitting in mud?

- Or sitting cross-legged on the floor?

- Have you ever tried the Dark Side Of The Moon/Wizard Of Oz thing?

- Do you own one of those Indian throws with little mirrors?

If you've answered 'yes' more than once, you're clearly hippy scum. Of course, if you've answered 'no' each time, there's still a chance you're hippy scum.

hopkins *so* = hippy scum

What I wonder is why such an antiquated term as "hippy" still has some kind of currency in invective? Isn't it like trying to insult someone by calling them a Pre-Raphaelite or a Transcendentalist? I guess the subtext of hippy name-calling is that the name-caller is him/herself posturing as a punk (or possibly something more right- wing: hippy-baiting was one of the subtexts of the beginnings of Thatcherism), itself a fairly antiquated pose (as antiquated as, say, posing as a Vorticist).

edna welthorpe mrs *so* = pre-raphaelite scum

shut up, you hippy.

Well, precisely. Let me say, I have no particular truck with hippidom (although I have no idea what it particularly defines: Thomas Pynchon is probably a hippy author, and I wuv him). My point, to put it in a different way is: why has the punkah episteme - hem hem - proved so durable, when the cultural conditions of 2002 are vastly different to those of 77? (one theory = it allows people to appear hardboiled and clearsighted without the effort of actually having to be so)

1. Suspect Welthorpe overrates the invective power and currency of accusations of hippydom (notwithstanding this suspicion SinXOr = DEAD MAN next time I see him).

2. Suspect "hippy" has become multi-purpose low-content insult relating back to youth culture's first truly *great* aesthetic disaster. Calling someone a hippy now rarely (never?) really references the 60s / 70s hippies. This does not let the DEAD MAN off the hook.

3. Episteme of action / continual change necessarily more adaptable, so durable.

4. Self-identifying mods as likely to hate hippies now as self- identifying punks.

5. Consider the crusty of the field.

Pre-Raphaelite has always been an insult round these parts. And are you calling me a Thatcherite, Welthorpe? (May have to withhold Bottle Rocket vid) All my questions were based round the fact that hippies are with us always, representing various of strains of rotten thinking - consider Deep Ecology. It can spring up at anytime, like the whole hidden image fad (whatever it was called) of the early/mid-90s: there was a hippy con if ever I saw one, people staring pointlessly at a piece of paper waiting to see a fish...

Sorry, no I weren't callin no-one round these parts a Thatcherite - more picking up on the Peter York/Jon Savage idea that hippy-baiting became a popular sport in the mid-70s as postwar political consensus disintegrated, and could go two ways: indictment of what late 60s culture/politics had devolved into (smugness, prog, Rolling Stone mag) = the punXoR point of view; OR indictment of the whole 60s as moral dereliction = Thatchite POV.

Now I come to think of it "hippy" as abuse, for those of us of a - hem hem - certain age, comes from Rik Mayall.

(Re: Bottle Rocket, Mark are you likely to be out and about in the next few weeks and likely to see myself or Tim H.?)

Modern day hippies fill that void of following Phish around with their parents credit card to following G8 leaders around with their parents credit card. There is a high correlation in both directions to patcholi oil. Normaly a good source of low quality weed and tips on making your lifestyle as sustanble as theirs.
Arguebly a source of positive vibrations and high frequency cycles depending on how far gone they are.

Mark M., those stupid drawings were called "Magic Eye."

why has the punkah episteme - hem hem - proved so durable, when the cultural conditions of 2002 are vastly different to those of 77?

Because undifferentiated contempt and juvenile nihilism are surprisingly effective at selling cars?

phil masstransfer *so* = trancendentalist scum... oh wait, that sounds quite cool

i'm not sure about selling CARS, but PMT (!) = korret abt link ov year-zero attitude with selling other stuff. mediatypes are terrified of being stuck wiv last year's pseudo-rad fashion: punk wrote the book on conjoining consumer novelty with dissenting politics (actually no, hippy wrote this book, come to think of it, but punk's anti-hippy thing = deflected self-loathing so there you go)

ps the YOUNG ONES has dated far more seriously than the GRATEFUL DEADxOr.

Did anyone catch those award winning 'Cyderdelic' boys on the box the other week? With hardcore West country accents and a crusty get-up, they spent a summer travelling round the country in an anarchy ambulance attending all the 'right on' marches, protests and meetings, basically taking the piss out of all the hippies in an extremely subtle manner but in hindsight, effective manner. And they filmed it all. Classic entertainment! I'm with Cartman on hippies. Sorry.

I still think it sounds better to be a hippie than a punk.