Apparently, it was supposed to be some kind of anti-consumerist statement.
Hmmmm- your rant appears to be that some patchouli-stinkin’, dreadlocked hippie chick didn’t recognize your street cred. Pretty lame all around. Also, if they had signs that said “Buy more stuff” and she thanked you for buying more stuff- couldn’t she have been trying to include you in the joke? Even a curmudgeon has to roll with the improv from time to time. Low entertainment value on this one.
Sarah
The OP was about an anti-consumerist demonstration, populated by goatish smellling hippies. You understood immediately, having endured similar abuse at the hands of anti-war demonstrating hippies. Who are, of course, precisely the same people, i.e., “hippies”. Is it your impression that the anti-war moevement is populated primarily by hippies? If so, got some news for you.
You were abused because you didn’t “honk for peace”? Well, heck, why not honk for peace? What’s it gonna hurt? Surely you can’t really mean, as you say, that the difficulties of piloting an auto to work so absorbed your attention that you could not? I took that for a joke, perhaps I was wrong? Otherwise, your comment would appear to be a bit of self-righteous snark, included for no other reason but to heap scorn upon people whose views you regard with great sympathy. You see the contradiction there, I’m sure.
Did no one else not honk their horn? Surely there must have been others, were all of them subjected to the same abuse? My, he must have had a busy, busy day, or the route you chose to work is very lightly traveled. A goat trail, perhaps? Do they have many of those in Chicago?
And if, as you say, you have so many, many good friends amongst the hippies, how is it that you couldn’t spare a moment to defend these friends? You come into what is clearly labeled an anti-hippy rant, offer an anecdote of complete agreement, and yet not one word to suggest that these people might very well be your personal friends, people you hold in esteem? Am I wrong to find that rather odd? Your friends, do they smell like goats drenched in patchouli oil? When your friends are insulted, to you chuckle indulgently? “Yeah, you got that right, my BFF, Moonbat, Lord, how she stinks up the place!”
Any why in the world would you posit the perfectly silly notion that this laughable project at Alcatraz has even the remotest bearing on the problem of homelessness? What were you thinking? You want gross oversimplification? OK, the main cause of homelessness is that CitiGroup hasn’t found a way to make a bundle solving it. There is at least a grain of truth to that, whereas your suggestion is pure pixie dust. I had some dim hope you would come back and clarify that as a joke, but, alas, no. As a joke, it wasn’t very good, as a serious comment…sheesh!
You know, for someone who has lots of hippie friends, you sure don’t seem to know much about how they think. For someone who is, by your own admission, vastly more open minded than myself.
Where did this “hippie = smelly” meme come from? I’ve known a lot of hippies (grew up in Boulder, CO and went to the S.F. Bay area for college), and I can count on one hand the ones that didn’t bathe regularly. Most of the female hippies looked down on the society chicks who spent hours with blowdriers and “product” working on their hair, but the hippie chicks spent hours brushing theirs.
And personally, I think a little sweat smells a heckuva lot better than the perfumes and colognes so many people slather themselves with.
Obviously, I’m not Sarahfeena.
However, do you seriously not see why someone would choose not to “honk for peace”? You do understand why cars have horns, don’t you? They are for indicating danger–that’s it. Nothing else. If somebody near me honks their horn, I’m going to immediately look and see what the danger is; reacting to nonexistent danger can itself be dangerous. Not to mention that if everyone is “honking for peace”, when I honk at the guy who’s pulling out in front of me, he may very well ignore me because he thinks I’m “honking for peace” along with the rest of the idiots. Then there’s the fact that honking is fucking annoying, contributes to noise pollution, and is, in fact, illegal in many places (except to warn of danger).
To sum up, honking “for peace” is fucking stupid.
It’s not the sweat. It’s the pot, incense, patchouli AND sweat that gets trapped in their baja sweaters and noggin’ fuzz. I cannot believe with your Boulder and San Francisco experience you don’t know what smell people are referring to.
As for this Alcatraz mess, I agree that it couldn’t be more useless. They were baiting people with California Voting Registration forms which I actually needed. When I found out what I had to sign though I said forget it. That island has a proud history of tourism, mythbusting, abuse of power, mobsters, and hard core MURDER. I don’t think most people need a BILLION dollars of (still theoretical) money to celebrate and enjoy people. I’m a cheap date, I just sit on my fire escape, breathe in fresh air, and close my eyes to relax and reflect.
I just scanned the wikipedia alcatraz page and saw this little project didn’t make the cut (that I saw from a really quick scan I could be wrong). Don’t even get me started on the serious ass homelessness problem someone mentioned above. Thats a pit of a different color. On multiple occasions I’ve been asked for “a few dollars” by panhandlers. I digress…
I presume you would have exactly the same take on “Honk if you love Jesus” or anything else not related to an auto horn’s primary function as a warning-signal?
Yup.
Thanks. 
“Buy more stuff” = anti-consumerist? My irony meter must be clogged up along with my sinuses.
Of course it isn’t, but where I live, it’s more likely to be true that any given person on the street is a hippie than not. Even more so if they are holding a sign that says “honk for (peace sign).”
I never said I was abused…I think that’s a rather strong word for having a hippie shout something at me on the street. As far as why I didn’t honk at him, I believe I said in an earlier post that the only reason I honk on the street is for driving emergencies (and yes, BrainGlutton, that means I don’t honk for Jesus, either, or for any other worthy cause that someone might dream up). As fachverwirrt so eloquently put it, honking for peace is fucking stupid.
People were honking their horns right and left. My town is full of self-righteous idiots. (This was about 3 blocks from my house.)
Many of my friends are hippies. Many of them have opinions I don’t necessarily agree with. (Amazing how I can disagree and still hold them in esteem…I know that kind of thing is difficult for you.) However, I am quite certain that my hippie friends were not out on street corners castigating people for doing holiday shopping. My hippie friends have better things to do than that. My problem isn’t with people being hippies, it’s with people who can’t tolerate anyone who doesn’t agree with them, which isn’t necessarily a hippie trait, incidentally.
It was more of an observation…a lot of people spend a lot of quality time, energy, and money on stupid and pointless projects.
I know plenty about how hippies think, and certainly, you have said nothing to enlighten me further.
Oh, and FYI, if you go back to read my first post in this thread, I never used the word “hippie,” but in fact referenced “protesters.” I find whatever the protest happens to be, people who care enough about an issue to stand out on the street corner and wave a sign tend to be a little bit myopic about allowing others to have a different point of view.
That, and to alert the guy in front of you who’s reading a book during the green left turn arrow so that he will proceed instead of realizing it at the last instant and dashing through the yellow dooming everyone else to sit through another cycle while filling up the left turn lane so that it backs out into a through lane so that all the poor slobs who want to go straight are playing dominance games with their automobiles trying to fit two lanes of through traffic into one lane of bottleneck all because one shit-for-brains couldn’t pay attention to his driving.
Not that I’m bitter.
I was with you all the way, IW, until that sweaty last bit.
koeeoaddi,
clean, deodorized and fresh smelling since 1955
So that’s where they all went! I hadn’t heard that Chicago was such a haven of quiet and demure politesse, but I’ve not been. I’ll simply have to check it out, I’ve not seen a neighborhood populated primarily by hippies since…well, quite a while. Is it that all those who went there in '68 found it so warmly welcoming, they stayed?
No. Silence in a time of evil is “fucking stupid”. More to the point, it is complicit. If I must be rude to be heard, more’s the pity. But I will not be complicit. YMMV.
Oh, dear. But these are not the same people, surely? Not the same hippies that so crowd your neighborhood, but have, as you say, “better things to do”. These are “self righteous idiots” from…somewhere else?
I’ve no doubt. Which of their opinions do you agree with?
Well, you have demonstrated to your complete satisfaction that it is we who are the intolerant ones. With a callous disregard for the guideliness promulgated by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Tow trucks and ambulances must have quite the busy day on that corner, I am pleased to hear you escaped unharmed. Goodness gracious, honking their horns! Savages!
Well, not* necessarily*, of course. Speaking on their behalf, we are grateful for your generous assessment.
Ah, well, was there ever any real chance that I might? But if failure and futility were enough to stop us, we would have given up long, long ago. But we will raise our children well, and keep on truckin’. For what is faith, without hope?
I don’t live in Chicago.
Honking a car horn is not exactly what I would call effective protest speech. If everyone in the US honked their horn at the same time…boy oh boy would THAT ever send a message to the White House! The President would cower in fear!
You think you are being archly amusing here, but you really aren’t, I’m sorry to say. Let me see if I can explain this to you. Despite your tendency to lump people into little boxes, they don’t all fit one mold. Not even hippies. My friends, both hippies and otherwise, tend to try to accomplish things through more effective means than yelling at people in passing cars.
That peace and love is the way to go, man.
What the fuck difference does it make? I’m a conservative, they are liberals. I’ve been around enough to know that this doesn’t mean we don’t have basically the same values. We all, you know, love our familes and communities, and try to help people less fortunate, and all that great stuff. If we disagree about the best way to do that, that’s ok, there’s no reason to demonize each other over that.
Well, maybe some people think there’s a reason to do so, but the people I’m friends with tend not to be that sort.
Whatever. If you think that honking one’s horn is the appropriate way to express an opinion, then have at it, honey.
Why are you speaking on their behalf?
Sure, whatever.
Well, not this one, apparently. Any reasonable man would have realized, by now, that he was no longer leading but obstructing. And the purpose is not to demonstrate to him, but to each other, to offer a sense of solidarity. And hope.
But OK, what would you do? Suppose we elected Sarahfeena to be Maximum Leader, our own bodacious Bodicea. Point us the way, how do we effectively make our will manifest? You are all about what we are doing wrong, so, what *should * we do? Surely you’re not one of those who sneer from the sidelines and do nothing to help?
What do they do that is so much an improvement? You allude to these things, but don’t clarify. Well, now’s your chance. You’ve got my undivided attention, go for it! Tell us how to proceed, so that this horror shall pass, soonest. Your minions gather in their thousands. Well, just one minion, so far. But I’m a sincere sumbitch, gotta count for something! Can probably get Doggyknees on board, if your plan is good enough. Red and Der…well, probably not. Trotskyists, you know. We should be more selective, like a revolutionary gated community.
Preach it, sistah! * Now* we’re getting somewhere! How do we do it? Nonviolent resistance? Violent resistance? Just say “Fuck it!” and go bowling? Here’s your chance, lead, follow, or get out of the way. Tell us how to change what so desperately needs changing by being quiet, conservative, and polite. We had an election, sent the message, might as well have tossed a penny in a wishing well, all the good it did. So what next? I’ll listen to any suggestion you may offer, no kidding. Except for “Give up!”. That’s right out.
You were apparently comfortable with the OP’s descriptions. I didn’t notice any rebuke to him, on your part, only to me and mine. Is this the sort of tolerance and mutual respect you had in mind? We get shit on, we’re supposed to smile and say “Thank you, sir, can I have another?” Not my style. Not yours either, I daresay.
Have they a pulse?
Don’t have a car, darlin’. Borrow yours?
Well, somebody’s got to, and you damn sure ain’t gonna. But to the main point: what do we do? How do we manifest change when change is so very necessary, without making anyone uncomfortable?
AND so he’ll turn right on red after making a stop, as God intended it.
Actually, that one I don’t honk on. I don’t know what he can or can’t see in the oncoming traffic area, or his turning into area, so I sit peacefully fuming.
ETA: I’ll admit I don’t know what roads are like in Thailand!
Well, admittedly turning right on red here in this left-side-drive country would create chaos – or more thereof, that is – so I guess we’re all Satanists. 
You know what looks good on a hippie?
Fire.