What's up with hippies?

When I was younger, I aspired in secret to be a hippie, in the same way that one has a guilty craving for Limp Bizkit or N*Sync in the middle of the night. The hippies I'd met seemed like a slightly enhanced and more stylized version of myself. They were laid back, casually bobbed back and forth to Bob Marley, and had the reaction time and housekeeping skills of a slug.

Of course, I was looking to the college crowd hippies, a group that lived off parentally financed meal plans and ultimately had some sort of successful corporate future awaiting them. Little did I know the true definition of a hippie.

Back in August of 2004, when the Democratic Party was still an option, I took an overnight trip to New York City to cover a massive protest against Bush. I'm pretty unbiased when it comes to politics - everyone seems to be equally full of crap - but a free trip to Manhattan seemed like a good way to end the summer.

It was raining when Buffalo's dissidents gathered in the South Campus parking area. Reporter's notebook in hand, I targeted my first victim: a scraggly beatnik with only a bandana and a coat to his name.

"So why are you going on this trip?" I asked, pretending like we were having a casual conversation. He stared at me like I was a snake in the grass.

"To empower and be empowered, to invoke the spirit of the American Revolution," he finally replied, his eyes widening as he gazed off into the rain.

"Alright, sounds good," I said, "And what's your name?"

"Hiawatha."

"Is that your real name?" I asked.

"That's what's important," he replied sagely.

By the time I had gotten on the bus, someone was already wedged between the restroom and the window of the back seat, meditating in elevated lotus position.

I immediately noticed the woman seated in front of me. She looked like a poster child for Hot Topic, but with thirty years added to her face. She welcomed me into the conversation she was having with her bus-mate about her corrupt corporate job.

"I'm working for a psychopath," she said to me as she brusquely combed back her pink bouffant. "They're sucking up everything: Jobs, money, resources. I'm sending them viruses to bring them down. Sometimes I don't come back for hours after my lunch break. Of course, the media isn't going to tell you about them. They're the main supporters of these nasty little conglomerations."

I felt like William Miller from "Almost Famous."

"Well, I'm just going to try to stay unbiased as possible," I replied, not knowing that I would break this promise several months later in a column about hippies.

She took my hand and forced her brow into a look of concern.

"That's wonderful to hear. It's a rare news source you can trust now," she said to me. "You need to change the media's way of thinking."

She gave me her working artist title and showed me this cool talking skull key chain that she had.

While working the side streets during the protest, I lost my main group of acquaintances somewhere between the Communists and the anarchists, so I ended up with a traveling vegan street performer who played the same two songs on the fiddle for a living.

She also implored the same thing of everyone.

"Hello friend," she said to anyone with whom she could make eye contact. "Do you know of anyone who could offer me a couch for the night? Just a couch, where I can rest my head?"

The manner in which she emphasized "couch" was grating on the nerves; I wanted to tell her to get a job and pay her own damn rent. The same thing happened with water.

"Can I have just a sip?" she asked me, grabbing for my freshly purchased bottle before I had even unscrewed the cap. We had just walked for miles in the baking sun and she had pissed off the local delicatessen by demanding that her water bottle be refilled.

"Wait a minute," I said.

"I just need a sip," she repeated, grabbing for the bottle again.

Go weave some hemp leaves.

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that no one can escape a certain element of hypocrisy in their lives. We all use and are used in some form, be it corporations or friends, and everything we stand for can be easily compromised at any point in time. Hippies just express that idea more prominently.

It makes me want to go work for Wal-Mart.