Ain'ta bubblegummer but I ai'nt a fan of the "old hippies" as a rule. They became yuppies who bought into "Greed is Good", and helped roll the ball of economic ruin for my entire socioeconomic class of Americans. And corporate America caters to their supposed voting power, economic power, etc., Which got us what? They can keep their "free love" and their "drop out, drug up" or whatever they called it then, and pretended to be "hip" to.

Wow, I don't have a raw nerve on the subject. Me? Nope, not at all. Exucse me while I apply copious lidocaine patches to my inner child, she's got a few issues when the words "hippie" or "boomer" come up. Victim of their cultural tropes and sh*tshows. All I know is, I had to fear hunger along with nukes, and all hippies did for me was sneer b/c they seemed to all be born from the asme socioeconmic class as "boomers' and "yuppies".

And that is, apparently a massive trigger. Write that down for next psych appointment. He won't get it, but ... I'll go sit on the but for a bit?

Much love and respect, Arfie. LIving where I do, the modern standoffs between "right" and "left" (right and wrong? Wrong and wronger?) left serious scars in 2017, nearly lost a friend to the tiki torch brigade, did lose one to them in the political sense, and for what? Skin changes color right quick. Ask my bruises. They're a whole spectrum.

Give peace a chance. Coexist. Yeah, nice bumper stickers. Nicer by far than "let God sort 'em out" with nasty images, but do I need to be told to be decent whenever in traffic? Never heard of a bumper sticker changing the world, just causing road rage.

WOw, I am meandering. I do apologize.

Puma shoulder still here. I'm standing confused in the maelstrom of "culture" myself these days.

it be a wandering psycho fissure, leo. wander freely. . .

the young hippie who called me, "bubblegummer" is nicknamed, "pimp sis" in my therapy journal. i didn't bother to note, but i suspect she called me bubblegummer in our last meetup in 1999. in my mind's eye, i am still slapping her hand away from the bra she was attempting to stuff with tissue to get 12 year old me ready for some free lovin'

i get lost in metaphor all too easily.

wish i felt safe to rest my head on that puma shoulder. getting poked in my proverbial eye with a proverbial red pen is more painful than i can handle during a psychotic break.

sigh. . .
onward through the psychic fog.
^it^ is what ^it^ is, whether i understand ^it^ or not. not even when i have politically correct verbage for ^it^.

We called them "jipis" in South America, arfie. There was even a pop song that went "Qué voy a hacer/si soy así/con una jipi/yo me metí"
("what can I do/about this?/I got mixed up/with a hippie"). Basically it's a guy complaining about women's liberation, saying she leaves him at home when she goes to the bar.

For us at the time, though, South America was ruled by dictators who had hippies in their sights. In the dictatorship I lived in then, having long hair got you arrested and possibly killed. By long they meant if your hair touched the top of your ears or touched your shirt collar.

I was arrested 3 times then, as you know, and I'm here because the third time I was tortured by soldiers. An attempt to shoot me failed twice as the gun jammed, as you also know. It didn't for 3,000 people still missing to this day.

Now retired in democracy in Mexico I wear my hair hippie long as a result. I don't get why guys who are free to wear their hair any lengtha all want to shave their heads nowadays. But hey, I'm from another generation. I finally get to be an old hippie.

my spanish teachers taught me that "j" is pronounced "h" in spanish, and i didn't spellcheck the folks who called me, "jippi vieja" for my environmental efforts in bolivia, peru and ecuador, perro, perro, perro. . . misspelling intended-- colonial spanish sure has allot of dialects. i am inexpertly certain uruguay has its own dialect.

speaking of which, it was a dominican housekeeper who stepped up to the plate to keep our little ship of fools from capsizing during the covidic years. the first time we walked the kiddos to the bus in the morning, she told me a bus was a guagua in her country. i think i might have hurt her feelings a bit when i told her guagua is the andean word for, "baby." i never heard a baby called anything else for my entire tour of the andean portion of the la espina dorsal. (geophysically speaking). we didn't share that walk to take the guaguas to the guagua too many times. it's pretty much a one person job and walking the guaguas to the guagua is a cherished part of my day.

Yeah, "gua-gua" I heard from Cubans I met in the USA, arfie. Uruguayans where I come from don't say that. Plus, up north the word "coger" means to take, whereas in Uruguay it's the "f-bomb."

So I nearly had a cow when I heard a Cuban in the USA say "vamos a coger la gua-gua." He just meant he and his friends were going to take the bus. I had heard it as something else entirely.

After English, Spanish is the language spoken by the greatest variety of countries in 4 hemispheres. So the language evolved separately in lots of places. Now retired in Mexico, for example, I've learned a simple banana (not a plantain) is a "guinéo." That was a new one on me. Still learning...

perhaps the cuban fellow was saying, "joder?" word usage is hard to predict in spain's colonial dialects with the random mixings of the pre colombian languages.

i know for certain the ecuadorian guagua is quechuan, one of the languages of the andes mountains. my dominican associate didn't know the etymology of her island's guagua, but my first guess is one or a thousand of the andino illegals in her country work on a bus line and started his morning work day coaxing buses to start. "c'mon, baby, you can do it. make papa smile." en espanol, por supuesto. . .

my neural net isn't steady enough for the great banana debate en espanol. the pathways are scrambling hideously today and "banana" is one of the controversial words in colonial spanish. it is all too easy to slip on the proverbial banana peels.

Oh, hey, arfie, tangent here, but it's suggested by your mention of Ecuador. I thought of you and your time there when I saw in the South American news the coverage of the armed narcoterrorist gang that took control of a tv station there live on the air. I always knew Ecuador to be a peaceful place, way more peaceful than it's neighbor Peru where my parents settled later in life in time for the Shining Path war. But I guess it's not so much now. Sorry to hear that.

an odd thing i've noted in my wandering ways is that some things look much bigger from a distance. when the media blitz goes off over whatever yaddah is viral on the news nets this week, i get calls from all over asking if i am okay. "thank you for caring, my friend, but i live 500 miles from the coast. that hurricane left my roof quite intact."

yea, el sendero lunimoso is still rocking that part of the world. one of many reasons the ecuadorians don't like peruvians. bolivians, as well. viva la revolucion.

to quote from another moody blues album

Revolution never won, it's just another form of gun
To do again what they have done (So many people)
With all our brothers' youngest sons (So many people)