Tag Archives: hippy

I’m apparently a hippy…

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As one of my furlough cost savings measures implemented last summer, I cancelled my trash collection contract, opting to spend about 1/8th as much money and take my trash to the dump myself. As I loaded the truck this morning in preperation for the monthly trash run, I couldn’t help but notice that it included two bags of actual “trash”, but four bags and a 45 gallon can of paper and plastic recyclables – no metals because I can cash those in separately at the scrap yard down the road from the dump. I have to admit I was surprised by how the volume of trash to the volume of recyclables has shifted. Ten bags of trash a month was the pre-furlough norm.

I didn’t start any of this because of any actual altruistic motive, rather I did it because separating trash from recycling saved half off the “regular” dump fee – more furlough savings. Now that it’s part of my regular routine, though, it seems to have become a self sustaining habit. Add that to the edibles/biodegradable items that get chunked out under the bushes in a makeshift compost pile, and apparently I’m a tree-hugging hippy… for all the wrong reasons, of course.

Hippies, sickness, and grad school…

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OK, so I’m not going to lie to you guys. I got a good laugh out of at least two of this morning’s archive posts. There’s something about hippies that always makes me want to bash heads together and grad school, well, that experience so very often has the same effect. Still, they make for good blogging so I should probably be thankful.

For those following along at home, over the last few Sunday mornings we have made the transition from my original MySpace blog to the far more “grown up” blog hosted for a while over at Blogger. That doesn’t really change much in terms of style or content, but it does help set the tone and atmosphere of where these old posts come from.

At any rate, go ahead and enjoy this morning’s update from the end of March 2007. Next week we’ll start into April and feature blogs from my last trip to Italy. I know you’re not going to want to miss that… because frankly there isn’t much that makes for better copy than an American in in a foreign country.

Making the switch…

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So I made the switch this weekend. The iPhone finally won me over completely (poor battery and all) and I embraced the dark side… or would that be the hippy side of the force. This is not officially an all Apple household. Getting all the files over has been something of your standard issue trauma, but now that most of what I need is set up and running (when I can find it), I’m very pleased with the setup overall. I’ve got a super-speedy laptop that when hooked up to the ridiculously beautiful 24-inch LED monitor produces some of the most amazing graphics I’ve seen in a long while.

The learning curve is a little steep and I’m doing my best to get by using wordpad until I can get a copy of Office and start accessing the vast bulk of my documents again, but otherwise I’m extremely pleased with how it’s working out.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve gone all zen crazy over the experience, but the longer I live with it, the more I suspect I’ll like it. I’ll need some time to really get into the nuts and bolts of the thing and start putting it through its paces, but for the time being, my satisfaction level is high… except, of course, for the ridiculous price tag they put on these things.

If I had a hammer…

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If you were thinking this post would include a link to some kind of damned dirty hippy music, you’re a moron. I actually learned an important lesson about self-restraint today. For the record, it’s best to avoid Home Depot on the Monday of three-day weekends. I knew better, but there were a few odds and ends I needed to pick up. One of those things was a 5-pound sledge so I can shape the stone that’s being delivered tomorrow. The other was a rubber mallet so I could level the stone and use it as lawn edging. The real danger here is the confluence of three factors: 1) Home Depot on a holiday weekend; 2) a rubber mallet in my left hand; and 3) a 5-pound sledge in my right hand.

I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some nascent desire to start swinging the above mentioned hand tools at some of my fellow customers. I don’t know why I continue to be surprised by the complete inability of people in general to perform more than one simple task at a time (i.e. walking and talking with the person who came with them). I thing just one soul-satisfying “thwack” of cold steel meeting noggin, would give me an indelible feeling of inner peace. Once again my heart-stopping fear of prison and sodomy have kept me on the straight and narrow. Damn you social contract! Damn you!

Goddamn hippies…

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While today has been mainly about catching up on class work, I’ll admit to occasionally checking in on the course of the filthy hippy protest in DC this afternoon. Listening to the so-called “leaders” of this movement was quite simply horrifying. The words “we support out troops,” was featured frequently in statements, but it seems that phrase has been picked up as a throw-away line, by those who neither understand nor appreciate the sacrifice the troops are making. That the protest was shown live on cable television, that these people would stand in front of the world, and call for the US to disengage from the war on terror, to retreat back behind the walls of a fortress America that can no longer exists, provides nothing short of aid and comfort to the enemy. Because those who truly do support the troops, those who undeniably know that they only way to win is to destroy the enemy where he lives, remain silent because to speak out is to be labeled a warmonger.

I don’t love war. And in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for America to garrison the world. The world isn’t perfect and that’s why we stand a watch while other countries cower in dark corners. Let’s not pretend that we started this conflict. Despite what the protesting mob thinks, we did not ask to be attacked. It wasn’t 90-year old grandmothers who attacked us. It wasn’t even the French whose main mission in life is to be collaborators. Each and every one of you reading this knows who attacked us and you know, even if you won’t admit it in public, why we are where we are in the world today and not in Europe or South America waging this war.

We’re not waging this war on the streets of America, either, but mark my words, if we throw up our hands and declare that defeating terror is too hard to do. If we cut and run. If we abandon this mission, then mark my words: In our lifetime, and sooner rather than later, we will face this enemy here. We will face him at home in our towns and cities. Because we were unwilling to take the fight to the enemy, the enemy will most certainly bring the battle to us.