I remember as a child my dad taking me out to the barn where he set up a scarecrow, but it had a weird colorful shirts and long hair. “I’m going to teach you how to punch hippies, son,” my father told me. “When they talk, you punch them really, really hard in the face — really put your body into it.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
My father slapped me. “That was a stupid question. So what did you just learn?”
I rubbed my sore cheek. “Not to ask it again.”
“Exactly. Hippies say stupid things, but if someone doesn’t punch them in the face after they say it, they might get the idea it isn’t stupid. And then hippie idiocy could spread. That’s why we all have to be diligent and punch every hippie we see. To keep that from spreading.”
“Okay! That sounds like fun!”
My father slapped me again.
“What was that for?” I asked, rubbing my cheek again.
“There’s just something about you I don’t like. But anyway, let’s get to practicing.” He put a tape recorder behind the scarecrow and turned it on. The tape recorded said, “We can’t hug our children with nuclear arms!” and then in response I punched the hippie scarecrow as hard as I could, knocking some of the straw loose. It felt good, and I knew I was learning a valuable skill.
Back in the day, we were all diligent about punching hippies. But at some point — I assume some time after Reagan left office — people got lazy. And then one day somewhere in our country, a hippie said something stupid and wasn’t punched in his face. And then he kept saying and others did too and now you can see where the country is. I will have to train Buttercup from an even earlier age to recognize and punch hippies, for she has much punching ahead of her if one is ever to turn this country around.
Back in my day we didn’t punch hippies, we held them down, dry shaved their heads and shipped them to Vietnaaam.
“hippie idiocy” LOL
Buttercup: In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone shall stand against the hippies, commies, and forces of darkness. She is the Hippy Puncher.
My parents were hippies and so they were abandoned by pirates and left to die on an uncharted island while my mother was about to give birth to me. A tribe of apes came along and my father refused their offering of meat because he was a vegan. So they killed and ate him. Once I was born I was raised by the apes and learned how to hunt and what it is like to be free. My mother traveled to Kenya and married some dude.
Buttercup needs to learn to be immediately repulsed by the smell of patchouli…I am loathe to suggest aversion therapy techniques…but this immediate, emesis-inducing, reflexive violence of action must be inculcated at the soonest possible moment. This, and an equal disgust at anything connected with Phish or The Grateful Dead. Teach.Her.Now.
I remember being able to tell the difference between a Hippy, a Yippy, a Yuppy, a Preppie, and Zippy the Pinhead. I think Yippies have been punched to extinction as I haven’t seen one since the seventies.
For the Post-Nixon Moon Nukers, “yippies” were (if you can imagine this) less-serious hippies, who fancied themselves members of the “Youth International Party” and frequently indulged in obnoxious street-theater-type pointless protests.
Think of them as Occupy’s Neanderthal ancestors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party
Please reinforce: A hippie-punching app is not the same as a true knuckle-to-nose punch.
If this Ike-born baby-boomer should happen to, theoretically, possess the vinyl album “American Beauty”, would that be a punchable problem?
@tomg51: Is this LP played while dreadlocked women with hairy pits twirl dance in a grand-mal seizure-like manner?
Is said LP in a collection containing releases from The Chocolate Watchband, Deep Purple, Grand Funk, Ted Nugent, The Ramones or White Zombie? (Early Johnny Cash or Jerry Lee Lewis may also secure a dispensation from the risk of punchage.)
BH – When you say “Ted Nugent”, does Damn Yankees count, or no?
Bunkerhillbilly: – Said hypothetical album would be closely watched by “Machine Head”, only allowed out to perform “Sugar Magnolia” and have “Truckin” scratched out in it’s entirely (this was accomplished late one night by it’s nemesis “Highway Star”.
Harvey – Band, yes; Musical, no.
No not the Band Yes.
@tomg51
No, not The Band, yes?
Woah, woah, woah. Punching hippies is immoral and wrong – without something covering your hand. Who KNOWS what kinds of diseases they carry?
Hey now, I am a Deadhead from WAY back, went to a ton of shows. I do not recall THEM ever being ‘political’…..mostly they were wasted, and jamming. Plus, they carried with them a true market economy. Brown rice, recreationals, peasant skirts etc…made many a nascent capitalist. God knows I made enough cash along the way.
Same thing with their free taping policy. Made tons of cash selling ‘bootlegs’ to the ticketless……
Jerry made me a conservative!!!!!!
Harvey, anything sonically Nuge-ified lends itself to dispensation being proffered to the listener.
Tomg, a fortunate response…were such a hypothetical bit of vynil to be in proximity to like offerings inclusive of “Terrapin Station” along with fetish icons such as posters featuring cartoon bears, skulls, monochrome bespectacled, bearded faces and stacks of bootleg tapes…the resultant vortex of inertia would be catastrophic, with casualties numbering in…whatever the capacity is for one of their execrable country-fair gigs.
Oh..and never punch a hippie without wearing welding gloves.
NJ Mike… dealing “recreationals” (ie criminal activities) and fostering a culture of unkempt, malodorous, smug, parasitic sloth are not, in my humble, knuckle-dragging opinion, hallmarks of righteous capitalism.
Odds are, attendees of Dead gigs, when not comtemplating navel or fingerprint whorl, would be more likely to attempt meandering discussions of Chomsky and Eldridge Cleaver than Buckley or Reagan. (Once attempted a discussion with a group of Deadheads back in college…I will never willingly fling myself into a similar intellectual La Brea Tar Pit again.)
@DamnCat
It just keeps getting worse. Well done.