hippie

People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience_ but we__ be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives_ because we didn__ like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution?

I__ a Texas girl, with a California soul.

Alecto Sydney Steele, an entity of few words whom society managed to overlook as it rapidly dove into the 21st century. Everything about him, his interests, his friends, his own life, was constantly in danger of becoming an anachronism. And caught up in that mess was Mearth, not exactly evil in nature but just misunderstood. A very long time ago Alecto__ life had been all incandescent sparkles and Kodachrome, but that was before the environmental movement changed Mearth from a perfectly nice and kind guardian, to a deranged and malevolent monster.

I__e seen a lot of stuff_ maybe I__e seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I__e seen what they can do, how evil they can be_ I__e seen the Holocaust and I__e seen Jonestown, I__e seen the Vietnam War and I__e seen Hiroshima_ I__e seen the Chernobyl disaster_ I__e seen the World Trade Center attack_ I__e been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive,_ Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding.

With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature,_ Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. __ didn__ create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren__ many of them left these days but they__e still very dangerous! They__e here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don__ understand the world of Representations.

Kodachrome... it gives us those nice, bright colors,gives us the greens of summers,makes ya think all the world's a sunny day,Oh yeah!I've got a Nikon camera, I'd love to take a photograph,so mama don't take...my Kodachrome away...

Oh, I__ Chrissy Mackenzie, I__ from Vancouver but I came here to study environmental journalism,_ the girl exclaimed with way too much enthusiasm. __ou got any advice?___earch me,_ Mandy muttered, spooning another ice cube from the empty glass on the table in front of her. __ like pollution, I write in favor of it, and environmental journalism most often implies that it__ in favor of all that __o green_ hippie crap._ __h, well_._ Chrissy seemed taken aback, offended, and Mandy sighed a fourth time. __amn it, I__ really sorry,_ she apologized, smiling dismally at the aspiring writer. __t__ just been a really lousy day for me and I wasn__ really thinking. My advice? Find your own cause to represent, not one thrown out into society by a ton of environmentalist dopes. Find something new, something you think could be improved, and work from there._ Chrissy smiled with a look of total ecstasy as if the words of some nobody woman were important. Mandy momentarily noticed the groups of laughing, drunk, giggling people, all acting childish_ and for a moment she wished she could be them.

Cell phones are certainly not necessary, and "but I'm from the digital age, this is what everyone in my generation is doing!" isn't a very good excuse for being hooked on a glowing screen 24/7. In the 1960's every teen of the times was tripping on acid and running off to find themselves in communes and love buses. It was a fad, there was no excuse for it and it passed, just like I think that this generation's "cell phones are necessary for socialization" fad will eventually pass. What will it bring afterwards? I don't even want to know, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that it isn't anything else digital.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."-Jimi Hendrix

Just love everybody!? Do you love everybody, Karma? Could you love Hitler? Answer me that! Could you love Hitler, huh?""I wonder what would have happened if somebody did, Blue?

My point is this _ you don't know. When I was first here, people looked at my hair, noticed apples on my tray, and thought 'hippie.' Then, from 'hippie' they thought 'druggie.' From there it went to 'will get me in trouble' and 'not worth my time,' and then they stopped thinking at all. No one bothered to find out if what they thought about me was true. No one wanted to hear what I thought. No one cared what I believed in. No one cared about talking to me or asking what my plans were for the day or night. And then came you. Don't let what you think you know make him into what I could have been. Don't become someone who doesn't think, just because you don't like him for some reason. Because, quite frankly, I like how you think. Except for now, of course.

I fell over twice. It was loud. The garden was black outside our circle of light. The endless night stretched all around us, so we told each other that we had to be close together, together in the dark.

Science is not a democracy. Therefore to try to pass of global warming as real just because "98% of scientists say they agree" makes no sense at all. If 98% of psychiatrists said that all mentally ill people needed lobotomized, does that make it true? If 98% of your friends jumped off a building, would you jump, too?

I was raised vegan. My mom would always make quinoa with squash and kale, hippie stuff like that. Now I eat meat, but I try to be conscious about where it's coming from.

Never trust a hippie. That's definitely my motto.

There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.

The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and faded jeans, looked very shocked when he saw the headline text. __ydney Tar Ponds, Is It As Dangerous As People Say? Well,_ he exclaimed, glancing at the front photo, which featured the Sydney Steel Corporation, along with its plumes of orange smog. __ou know, most people your age are really against that mill, as if it__ a disease. We have university students protesting every few weeks or so_ strangely enough, the ones who have parents who rely on that steel mill to pay the bills.___hat about the pollution?_ Wendy questioned, almost accusingly, as if it was his fault. __hat if dangerous chemicals are in the environment?___ey kid, I don__ even work at the mill, never have, but my father, my uncle, their father, cousins, all worked there,_ the prints shop man argued, placing the newspapers in a cardboard box and taping it shut. __hen it comes down to all that __o green_ crap, you have to ask yourself, is it worth risking a person__ income, their job, their family_ their life? I__ not saying you__e wrong, but these newspapers might have a point.

Try as you might, you'll never be able to please an environmentalist. You can stop using coal to heat your house, you can stop throwing out bottles and cans, you can have every factory in Canada shut down and you can buy only organic gluten-free non-GMO food, you can give up your favorite station wagon for a weird electric hybrid, you can stop developing film and buy a never-ending cycle of digital cameras, you can give up your job at a refinery or mill, and they'll still get after you for not enjoying yourself while doing so.