Fucking Hippies.

Some words were made to be married to each other. Like “fucking” and “hippie.” What is it about those two words that makes it so palatable to the ear to hear them linked together? Is it the phonetics of the words themselves? Or is it the meanings of the words especially modified as they sit adjacent to one another? Could either of those be extricated from the other, once the words are said? I’m not sure. Either way, fucking hippie just about seems to sum it up.

Fucking. Hippies.

What is fucking? Well, that could be answered in a number of ways and there are an innumerable amount of chain e-mails perpetually shooting their way around the internet about the very nature of the word. But I think it’s pretty clear that right here, in the hippie situation, we can equate the use of the word fucking to that of the word “goddamn.” Why not just say goddamn then? Well goddamn doesn’t really carry its own weight in the context of the hippie – to put it bluntly, goddamn doesn’t have enough goddamn in it to explain the goddamned goddamnness of those goddamn hippies. I mean, those fucking hippies.

Maybe kids growing up today won’t hold the word Fuck to higher standards the way recent generations have, coming from the prudish 50’s when saying “goddamn” was enough to get you suspended from school. But on the list of condemnations, fuck is clearly ranked higher then taking the lord’s name in vain or saying damn. So you’ve got to say Fucking hippies, rather than goddamn hippies.

Something about starting off with that fricative F rather than the gutteral G just brings the ferocity and wholeheartedness of the statement to a head. Fucking hippies!

Unfortunately the phrase also summons some images to mind that are of a most unsavory nature. After all, who really wants to conjure up the thought of two grizzly, greasy, grimy hippies going at it like a pair of crazed baboons while bluegrass blares from a tinny radio at the front of their filthy van, the scent of patchouli mixing with marijuana fumes in the air in a desperate attempt to suppress the far more powerful forces of two weeks worth of unshowered body odor?

Which reminds me to remind you that the term “dirty hippie” is absolutely acceptable as a replacement for “fucking hippie” but only if the context is such that emphasizing how dirty the hippies in questions are really is necessary. Otherwise, please use the blanket term “fucking hippies” and just assume that everyone already knows how dirty hippies are as a basic rule. And even though I extolled the frictative F at the beginning of Fucking as a modifier for hippies, please do not replace “dirty” hippies with “filthy” hippies unless they are truly stained in their own filth, which can sometimes be the case when dealing with this most fascinating race of American gypsy.

What is it about the hippie that commands such quick dismissal, such a quick rise in the anger spectrum from not modifying the word hippie at all to straight up Fucking it? Fucking hippies! Maybe if they weren’t so dirty. Maybe if they didn’t make a mess everywhere they went – and yeah, I agree that a lot about how society is run and the corporations, MAN, but you know, it doesn’t mean you have to live like swine. Have you ever been in a venue after a jamband show and seen the carnage left behind by a crowd of fucking hippies? It’s unbelievable the amount of refuse that goes hand in hand with peace and love. Maybe if hippies didn’t try to push their trip on everyone else, and if they realized they’re sometimes guilty of being just as closed-minded as the “systems” they “revolt” against by, ya know, rolling around in the mud outside the Spectrum in Philadelphia after a Widespread Panic show tripping balls on 8 grams of mushrooms and two hits of acid having a conversation with the mystical goddess Kali, naked and flailing, then maybe, MAYBE they wouldn’t be such Fucking Hippies.