Hip

Like Me
Hip
Like Me
Years in the Life
of a “Person of Hair”

Geoffrey D. Falk

Million Monkeys Press

Copyright © 2008 by Geoffrey D. Falk.

Published by Million Monkeys Press

P.O. Box 68586
360A Bloor St. W.
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 3C9
Web: www.hiplikeme.com

ISBN 978-0-9810682-0-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9810682-1-3 (eBook)

Cover background by Lori Martin, licensed from 123rf.com

There have been several documentaries made
about tie-dyed fans of the Grateful Dead, following
the band around on tour. The End of the Road was
one such film. At one point in that movie the
Deadheads stopped in Las Vegas before a show,
and in the process of innocently enjoying the local
sights wound up being brutalized by the police.
Speaking about that mistreatment, a bystander
objected:

Don’t treat these people like animals, [just]

‘cause their hair is long and they smell bad....
That’s [how they treated] black people
years ago. They’re taking away the most im-
portant right. The freedom of expression.

It was a black man who said that. And he’s abso-

lutely right.
 Prologue
I am an odd hybrid: Half intellectual, and half bar-fly.
Think Jeff Goldblum, but if instead of getting trapped in
that teleportation device with a common housefly, he had
gotten stuck in there with a pint of honey-brown ale and a
copy of one of Steven Pinker’s 600-page tomes on how the
mind works or the origins of human language.
I’m a best-in-class dropout from three different faculties
back in my university days—engineering, physics, and edu-
cation—but somewhere along the way I managed to com-
plete a computer programming diploma, and then worked
as a software developer off-and-on for a decade.
I finally wound up as the only person in the whole World
Wide Web who’s allowed to touch the customer relationship
management software for a global non-profit org headquar-
tered in New York City, after they couldn’t find anyone in all
of NYC who cared enough to do the work properly, even for
fifty bucks an hour.
Bill Gates is a major donor to their cause.
My younger brother was the real hippie in the family, tak-
ing time off from his job to see the Grateful Dead play live a
couple of times a year. I always had my nose stuck too far
into a textbook or an Eastern scripture to find the idea of just
1
2 Hip Like Me

hanging out and having fun to be as tempting as it should

have been. So, to my eternal regret, I never got to see the
Dead play back when Jerry Garcia was still with us.
If you can believe it, Jerry was actually in the U.S. Army
for nine months, way back when. But he kept going AWOL•,
so they finally realized he wasn’t right for them, and gave him
an honorable discharge. Then he lived for awhile in an old
broken-down car in East Palo Alto, and Robert Hunter lived
next to him in his own car, and they were both eating big tins
of Army-issue pineapple with plastic spoons from Jerry’s
glove compartment.
That’s how Hunter got to be the Dead’s lyricist: It was his
pineapple.
If the pre-diabetic Garcia had stuck to that kind of mo-
notonous but healthy diet in the years to follow, rather than
stuffing his face with junk food, he’d probably still be alive
today. When he passed away from a heart attack in 1995,
they did the autopsy and his arteries were like pinholes.
It wasn’t the drugs that killed him: it was the chili dogs.
“Just say no.”
So the closest I’ve been to actually hearing the Dead
play live was when I was working summers at a tourist lodge,
and one of the guys in a fishing party there one year was the
audiologist for the Grateful Dead.
The lodge owner was a stocky, Catholic Republican from
Minnesota, who still retained the brush-cut from his own Army
days—he looked like a damned hedgehog. You could easily
imagine him watching reruns of All in the Family ... and
cheering for Archie Bunker. So it made him very happy when
I cut my (pre-hippie days) hair almost as short as his, and
shaved off the beard I had kept since I was young enough to
grow one, for working in their dining room.
Probably gave him hope that they’d make a conserva-
tive out of me yet.
Well, good luck with that!

•
Bold text refers to entries in the References section, beginning on
page 199, and online at www.hiplikeme.com/references.php
Prologue 3

In my first summer there, I shared a room with a Pakistani

engineering student from Saskatchewan, named “Row-
hoss”—or at least that’s what the near-retirement-age hay-
seed from Kansas working there called him. Row-hoss was an
atheist who wouldn’t eat pork for religious reasons, i.e., “just
in case” his parents’ beliefs turned out to not be complete
nonsense.
At some point in our first month together in that hillbilly
heaven the subject of employee unions came up, and Row-
hoss mentioned a group of miners who had gone on strike
because workers at another company were getting salads
with their lunches, and now the first group wanted the same
perk. So he had started to re-evaluate his support for union-
ized labor after that.
I wasn’t so sure. After all, fair is fair, and if one group is
getting salads....
One of our regular casual guests was a former German
POW, who had been interned in the Lake of the Woods re-
gion during WWII, and liked it so much he bought a cabin
there after the war. The most unforgettable evening of all my
years at the lodge was when he and his wife, and another
German couple, were sitting around the table after dinner
with the hedgehog, talking about how the world needed
more people like Newt Gingrich to fix what was wrong with it.
Yeah, with the help of the ex-Nazis, they’ll figure it out....
And then there was the real-life “Roseanne Barr.”
Kyle’s mom (South Park) isn’t the biggest bitch in the
whole wide world. I’ve worked with the biggest, fattest bitch
in the whole wide world, and Kyle’s mom isn’t even close.
The fat-ass redneck in question had taught her daughters
so well to emulate her that the latter brood had to be
tricked, by reverse psychology, into doing their share of the
work in the dining room. They never actually figured out that
the tuna salad/cottage cheese plate “contest” was just a
way to get them to do their share of that unwanted task.
When I walked away from all that at the end of my last
summer in the fishing-sticks, I gave the owners a three-page
4 Hip Like Me

list of grievances, each one concerning that lard-assed

mother-hen and her hillbilly family.
The last thing the hedgehog said to me before I left for
good was, “It’s too bad we can’t just give you guns and you
shoot each other.”
I’m sure the ex-Nazi would have agreed. Probably Gin-
grich would, too.
So it turns out that being told that you should engage in
an O.K. Corral gunfight with an obese-ape co-worker just to
settle the fact that she’s an unspeakably manipulative, dog-
fucking bitch is valid grounds for leaving a seasonal job early,
i.e., you can still draw unemployment insurance over the win-
ter. But with having no job to go back to the next summer, I
was very happy to get on in October with a community-
owned organic food store in Winnipeg—where I started out
as a cashier, and ended up reprogramming the cash regis-
ters. Coming from a carrot-cake-and-granola upbringing, it
was a match made in ... well, Winnipeg.
The best part of that job was the slim, nineteen-year-old,
tattooed punker chick with translucent skin who was co-
coordinating the store. She would have graduated at the
top of her high-school class if she hadn’t been kicked out of
private school on some trumped-up charges which boiled
down to her pushing the envelope on their rules—skirt too
short, collar too spiked, etc. In spite of the fourteen-year age
difference between us, she told me numerous times over the
course of the year we worked together that she (i) loved me,
(ii) wanted to marry me, (iii) hadn’t met a decent guy until
she met me, my brother, and the soothingly relaxed, rapping
black produce-guy at the store, (iv) would throw her current
husband out of the house if I’d marry her, and (v) wanted to
dress me up in leather and take me to the monthly black-
and-blue fetish balls she frequented.
The latter subject actually came up at staff meetings. Se-
riously.
The rules of the workplace, you see, are different for boys
and girls, just as they’re different for Christians and pagans.
Prologue 5

For example, in the office at that store, where you could-

n’t swing a dead cat without hitting a witch, Easter was re-
ferred to as the “dead guy on a stick” holiday. Since I was
knee-deep in following an Eastern guru who emphasized the
supposed esoteric unity of yoga and Christianity at the time, I
actually found the remark quite offensive. But, of course, I
was much too polite to come out and say so.
Then there was the time that the entire staff (except for
Yours Truly) went out behind the store to smoke a joint—or
“kick the cooler,” as the produce-guy put it, in the vernacu-
lar from his days working at 7-11. Later the same afternoon, I
was helping the punker chick take some stuff into a nearby
house, as she deftly balanced her two-year-old tyke against
her waist while trying to get the house door open.
“God must be a woman,” she said. “Only a woman
would think of creating hips.”
“Well,” I chuckled, “it’s a good thing there’s someone
here who isn’t high, to provide some balance.”
She laughed. “I’d say that even if I wasn’t high.”
Because, you see, the rules are different for oppressed
minorities than they are for oppressive majorities. And while
God as a Man with a Penis would be sexist, God as a
Woman with Hips is liberating and empowering.
My Deadhead brother found that all out the hard way,
quite independently, in sympathetically attending several
feminist-environmentalist meetings on How To Save The Frag-
mented, Patriarchal World. He told me later that he’d been
made to feel almost like he should apologize just for being a
man, by the angry Feminista radicals there.
To be fair, there are real disadvantages to being a
young woman under a male manager who asks you, during
the course of the daily work, whether you can experience
multiple orgasms. Especially when the same manager’s re-
sponse to being told by an abrasive-but-smart and very
hard-working cashier-ess that he shouldn’t walk over the
dormant flower-bed in front of the store, was to blow off
steam with other employees (e.g., me) by saying, behind her
back, “I’m the manager here, you stupid cow.”
6 Hip Like Me

On the bright side, one of our regular customers was a

gay male couple, who would come in together holding
hands, and gaze longingly at the organic cotton tampons,
wishing they could use them too.
Like Steve Martin said in L.A. Story, “I could never be a
woman—I’d just stay home and play with my breasts all
day.”
So, on balance, I was proud to be a liberal, union-
supporting, meditating, gay-positive, organic-food-eating
vegetarian feminist. I donated what I could spare to Amnesty
International and Greenpeace, and continued in the family
tradition of voting for the social-democratic NDP. Most impor-
tantly, I wouldn’t even have considered referring to any fe-
male who had reached the age of majority as being a mere
“girl.” They were women, and they deserved my respect for
that.
Anyway, after nearly a year working in a high-stress envi-
ronment which didn’t bring out the best in any of us, the only
job I could imagine having any meaning for me was to do
volunteer work for the yoga organization I had gotten in-
volved with a decade earlier.
So I left the world of fetish balls (which I never actually at-
tended) and mid-afternoon reefers (which I never actually
smoked) for a males-only ashram in the mountains outside of
San Diego, thinking seriously of remaining there permanently.
It was, after all, what God and my (invisible) guru wanted
me to do.
To make a long story short, it turns out that all closed, hi-
erarchical communities are cults waiting to happen. But at
least I learned how to program in Visual Basic while down
there, as part of their utterly futile, Three Stooges-like attempt
at setting up a software shop at the tail end of the dot-com
boom.
It was also during those nine months of “Hidden Valley
Hell” that I started to grow my hair out, after years of wanting
to but never being able to get through the in-between stage
where it’s always falling down into your eyes.
Prologue 7

Following that gestation, I spent four and a half months

south of Winnipeg, waiting for promised work from Hidden
Valley that never arrived. Then, in late November, I packed
my guitar, computer, and the rest of my worldly belongings
into the back seat of my ’78 Dodge—with its wonky driver’s-
side door lock, temperamental hood latch, no parking
brake, balding tires, and a leaking gas tank.
I said my goodbyes, and got started on my own Neil
Young-like “drive of origination,” heading for the folk-music
scene in Toronto.
I had to get out to clean the headlights seven hours east
of civilization at two in the morning, and wound up locked
out of my car (grungy hide-a-key still under the hood,
whew!). Then I ran out of gas on my way into Sudbury, still
half a dozen hours from T.O. (extra gas container in the trunk
... and it’s not empty, whew!), but I made it.
On my first full day here, the Toronto cops took away my
car. Said it wasn’t road-worthy. Bastards!
Ah, but the Bright Lights, and the Big City....
The Star newspaper once did a piece about designer
martinis and the like in Toronto’s chic Little Italy district. They
interviewed a transplanted prairie guy in one of the night-
clubs, where he enthused: “Back in Winnipeg, the cool girls
wear thong underwear. But here, the cool girls don’t wear
any underwear at all!”
My first job here, over Christmas of 1999, was at the Gold-
en Griddle restaurant opposite Maple Leaf Gardens. The
place was a cash cow back when the Leafs were playing
there, but kept going belly-up and re-emerging under new
management since the hockey team moved to the Air Can-
ada Centre down by the lakeshore.
So I stopped by with a resumé, and interviewed with a
pleasant gentleman named Ali. After a ten-minute chat he
indicated that I’d gotten the job, and said he’d call me in a
few days. But when that call didn’t come, I went back in per-
son.
It turned out that in the interim he had hired someone
else—a young, dark-skinned woman with no previous hospi-
8 Hip Like Me

tality experience, who would panic if she was given a table

of more than four patrons to serve.
He liked inexperienced girls a lot more than he liked guys
with long hair, you see. Can’t say that I blame him for that.
But, he could still offer me a job without tips, as a dishwasher
and omelette-maker, where I could tuck my hair up under a
chef’s hat, to meet the “health regulations.”
Of course, if long hair on a server really was a health is-
sue, every Hooters from here to ... Hooterville, would have
been shut down long ago.
Between the joy of getting regularly splashed with dish-
water off of other people’s plates, and dealing with a kitch-
en full of Middle-Eastern cooks who couldn’t speak English
properly but who still kept hassling me for how I couldn’t un-
derstand what they were saying, I lasted all of two months
there.
While looking for a ship to jump to from the USS Pidgin, I
applied to a seasonal lodge in Algonquin Park, and got
called in for an interview.
First, they sat me down on my own to watch a video of
the lodge goings-on, from which it was clear that the profes-
sionalism of their servers was nothing to be impressed with.
Then we did the interview, and the woman doing that
explicitly mentioned her concern about my hair—it was a
very conservative lodge, our former (Liberal) prime minister
Pierre Trudeau had stayed there once, etc.
I told her that by the time the season started my hair
would be long enough for me to tie back, and that I’d basi-
cally be happy doing anything except washing dishes.
She tossed out something about how hard it is to keep
from getting bored out in the middle of nowhere.
No problem, I said. I’ve done it many summers before; I’ll
bring my computer, it’ll be fine.
Then she leaned forward, confidentially, and mentioned
something about staff doing drugs to keep themselves “en-
tertained.”
I should have realized that she was playing “good mai-
tre’d/bad maitre’d.” Instead, I related to her how, in walking
Prologue 9

to the interview site past the Toronto Hemp Company store

earlier that afternoon, I had actually gotten approached by
a dealer.
D’oh. Anyway, the point is that, even before that fatal
faux pas, it was clear that my hair was an issue.
So after an intermediate (night-shift) job at a press-
clippings place, I went to work for a small, home-delivery re-
tailer—like Grocery Gateway, but for organic food. Three
months into that, they merged with their main competitor,
and relocated their office and warehouse to the two-
stoplight rural town of Orangeville, an hour northwest of the
city.
Two occasions stand out in my mind during the addi-
tional three months I spent working out in the middle of butt-
fuck-there. (Motto: “Bend over, you miss it.”)
First, I was walking along the main street one evening,
having just arrived on the Greyhound bus and grabbed a
Veggie Delite sandwich from the nearest (and only) Subway
sandwich shop.
Two rednecks drove by in the same direction, and the
passenger-hick shouted out of his window at me: “Keep
walking!”
Yeah, because, you know, “Long-haired freaky people
need not apply.”
Second, I was walking down the same street from the
other direction a month later, and stopped to contemplate
a greystone building: The pavement slants significantly as the
road passes beside, making it look like the walls at the end of
the building aren’t vertical. So I was idly wondering where I
could get a spirit level to verify whether that was just an opti-
cal illusion.
While I’m standing there minding my own business, with
my beautiful long hair blowing majestically in the summer
evening breeze, the same two idiots cruise by in their car,
and the moron redneck in the passenger seat yells out: “You
are one sexy bitch!”
I’m not gay. But if I was, that go-nowhere rural pig-fucker
wouldn’t even have been in my league.
10 Hip Like Me

But what do you expect, when you’re dealing with peo-

ple who think a Maple Leafs hockey game is a “cultural
event,” and who proudly display their utter ignorance of
what beer should taste like by walking around wearing t-shirts
advertising their favorite brand of cold-filtered piss?
Anyway, I’d had my hair grown down past my shoulders
for nearly a decade when I spent the summer of 2007 de-
lightfully out of work, living on nachos and subs, and other-
wise just hanging out on the streets of downtown Toronto
with my acoustic guitar—looking for all the world like Jesus on
his way to a folk festival. Practicing six to eight hours a day,
spending the evenings playing open stages in bars, and hop-
ing to meet a girl or two before the touch of grey on my right
temple spreads too much further.
Growing older, and wanting to hook up with a woman
half my age, to make up for not catching that punker chick
(and her “instant family”) when she threw herself at me? I
wrote a song about it:

GLASS HALF FULL

Bar-hopping college girl, realpolitik

Nineteen years
Thin, photogenic
Mysterious, classically pretty
Mona Lisa far from Italy

I’m unshaved, middle-aged, low on tact

But don’t count me out, girl
Opposites attract
In my unnatural habitat
A glass half empty
A glimpse of satin

Hey cutie, I’ll walk you home

Down streets of gold
Photographed in monochrome
Prologue 11

If you’ll excuse the state I’m in

We could drink Manhattans
And sip sloe gin

With apologies, of course, to Leonard Cohen. “First we

drink Manhattans, then we sip sloe gin.”

We could sit on the beach and make out

‘Til the moon hits your eye
Like Chinese take-out
I’m feeling more than amiable
With my glass half empty
And yours half full

A good pizza will keep you feeling satisfied for half a day;
but with Chinese food, the joke has always been that two
hours later you’re hungry again. So, if a “big pizza pie” is
“amore” in the old Dean Martin song, then Chinese take-out
would be ... well, a much more transient commitment.

Never went for the rose-colored tint

Peer at the world
Through shot-glass fingerprints
Not a social charge, wipe that smirk
But I was happier last year
Full-time out of work

Some of my happiest memories are of my periods of ex-

tended unemployment, when I could work uninterrupted on
whatever labor-of-love project I was absorbed with at the
moment, from when I got up in the morning (or later) straight
through until bedtime. Breaking just for nachos and beer in
the early afternoon, with the July heat drifting in through a
half-open screen window. Watching all the “poor bastards
[who] gotta go to work” running their rat-race outside, while
I’m at my desk, blissfully reading and writing, without a dead-
line in sight.
12 Hip Like Me

Been saving up for a couch

Place is a mess, I was
Gonna clean last month
Dog died, the cupboards are bare
Bed’s not much
But I’ll buy you breakfast somewhere

I’ve never owned a couch, or any amount of furniture

beyond a few chairs and a desk; so it’s been easier for me to
rent places that are already furnished. And then to just move
rather than clean properly, when the place got too dirty.
Consequently, I’ve had a big chunk of my life packed in
bankers boxes since I started working seasonally at age
twenty: when you’re constantly wishing you were some-
where else, it pays to travel as lightly as possible.

Closing time, half past middle age

With a hungry stare
And four ounces of courage
Mesmerized how the brass light shines
On the butterfly tattoos
Writhing low on your spine

Make you bend like that

I’ll be your high-wire
You my acrobat
Seize the night, sex and the city
I’m looking for romance
But I’ll take pity

Hey cutie, I’ll walk you home....

So that was more or less my state of mind at the start of

my “Summer of Music”—the latest leg of a long, strange
trip....
 May 15

Moved into my dorm room on the seventh floor of Tartu Col-

lege this morning. Over the winter it’s eighteen floors of
sparse residence near Bloor and Spadina, for science and
engineering students at the U of Toronto, with six rooms to a
unit. In the summer, it’s a low-rent option with strong student
vibes overlooking Bloor Street and the northern edge of the
university campus—$600 for a rudimentary bed, desk and
Internet connection, and plenty of free time left over after
paying the rent to practice guitar.
No toilet paper in the bathrooms, but I assume that’s just
because the former residents timed it to run out exactly
when they moved out after exams—scientists will do that, just
as a point of pride. The kitchen garbage is overflowing too,
but again, they probably just left in a hurry. No big deal.
So I took out the garbage, and made a mental note to
pick up some toilet paper for my new roomies when I go out
shopping for bedsheets, a blanket, and a bath towel.
The building was named after the city of Tartu—the intel-
lectual and cultural hub of Estonia. Home to the University of
Tartu—the “Heidelberg of the North”—founded by King Gus-
tavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632. About half of all peer-
reviewed publications by Estonian scientists are written by
academics at Tartu University.
Impressed?
I keep thinking of an old Dilbert cartoon: There’s two
“Fourth World” Elbonian men, one of them with an upside-
down cardboard box over his head and a large, square-ish
hole cut in the front of the box for his face. The other guy is
working on one of the flaps as if it was a QWERTY keyboard.
And the man in the box says, “Tomorrow, you be the
computer.”
Tartu College has an equally tall, equally cement-
brutalist “sister building” more or less across the street: the
Senator David A. Croll apartments. It’s now mostly housing for
seniors, but back in 1968, as Rochdale College, it was the
13
14 Hip Like Me

largest co-op residence in North America, at the cutting

edge of alternative education.
“Alternative” meaning a free university at which there
were no profs, and students evaluated themselves for their
success in the informal discussion groups that were held in-
stead of structured classes—on topics from magic to revolu-
tion to flying saucers and the history of Atlantis.

The most visible of Rochdale’s fund-raising schemes

was the infamous Rochdale Degree.... You could order a
B.A. in “Life’s Tosses and Turns,” an M.A. in “Absentee-
ism,” and a Ph.D. in the venerable art and science of
“Mind-Fucking.”

The poet Dennis Lee was actually one of the “Resource

persons” employed at Rochdale College. He later won a
Governor General’s Award in 1972, composed the theme
song for Fraggle Rock in the ’80s, and collaborated on many
of the other songs for that Muppet-based television series. His
most famous work is the book of children’s poetry, Alligator
Pie.
Eastward down Bloor Street toward Yonge, in the 1960s,
the Yorkville area was the coffeehouse launching pad for the
careers of folk-music icons from Neil Young to Joni Mitchell to
Gordon Lightfoot to Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins.
City Hall deliberately turned Yorkville from a drug-laden
“Haight-Ashbury of the North” into a shopping mall, bou-
tiques, and other high-priced real estate in the late ’60s. So
most of the hippies, squatters and bikers from that neigh-
borhood wound up in ... yes, nearby Rochdale. Along with a
whole whack of American draft dodgers, and assorted Marx-
ists.
Not coincidentally, in the summer of 1970 the chartered
“Festival Express” train carried Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, The
Band, and a whole lot of drugs and alcohol across the Ca-
nadian prairies. The occasion? A traveling jam session inter-
rupted only for historic concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg and
Calgary—the first and only Trans Continental Pop Festival.
Hip Like Me 15

The booze ran out around northern Saskatchewan,

prompting Janis to stop the train and lead a classic “liquor
run,” with Jerry close behind, to the nearest government liq-
uor store ... coincidentally, just outside the Saskatoon home-
town of the archetypal California-blonde songstress. You
know, the one who “plays guitar and cries and sings”—Joni
Mitchell. (Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were very
sweet, for a time, on Joni and her prominent cheekbones.)
What the hell does that have to do with Rochdale Col-
lege? Quite simply, it was the M4M radicals at Rochdale who
organized a series of protests directed against the “capitalist
exploiters” funding the Festival Express tour. (“May 4th Move-
ment”—the date of the Kent State shootings.) Their de-
mands? Free admission to the shows, along with “free dope
and no cops.”
As one of the promoters of that tour remarked after
meeting with the leaders of the Rochdale-and-street-people
coalition: “These people have a loose grip on reality.”
So that’s our sister building.
The other thing about Rochdale is that it was a “clothing
optional” environment.
Well, if any of that groovy ’60s philosophy has rubbed off
on Tartu, and I happen to see a cute coed or two walking
down the residence halls as god and nature intended, I’ll be
sure to let ya know....

May 17

Went out walking south down Spadina today, getting to

know my new neighborhood.
Got about fifty yards down the street, and a twenty-ish
guy on a bike rides up slowly behind me, and then steers
alongside me:
“Hey, you know where I can get some good weed?”
“No, sorry.”
He cycles on past.
16 Hip Like Me

Well, that didn’t take long. Back when I was living at

Dundas and Sherbourne, just off the red-light district in To-
ronto, I used to get approached to buy or sell around once a
month. Could have made a very nice second income, had I
been so inclined.
The thing is, I know I look like a total stoner, but I’m really
not. And just because I’ve got long hair doesn’t make me a
drug dealer.
Why, what are you looking to score?
Kidding.

May 27

I have a friend who worked for a couple of years as a

teacher in Burkina Faso, so I realize that there are cultures in
this world whose members do not use toilet paper for its in-
tended purpose, instead fashioning a manual bidet from a
designated water container. More power to ‘em—I have no
doubt that the “anal waterfall” is nothing if not a “pause that
refreshes.”
The problem arises when such people, in dripping water
down their asses, fail to account for the existence of the toilet
seat below them. Meaning that the water serves its purpose
in cleaning the asshole in question to a fresh and fragrant
shine, then drips down onto the toilet seat in our shared bath-
room in Tartu ... and is just left there to evaporate. Or, left
there for the next person using the facilities to sit down in.
So I’m getting good at hovering.
Plenty of spilled juice on the kitchen table, too, which has
likewise just been left to drip down onto the chairs, and from
there onto the floor, to evaporate.
The kitchen garbage is full to overflowing again, too, with
mango peelings tumbling down onto the floor. And there’s
only been one other person living here since I moved in—a
skinny Kenyan-ish guy named ... well, let’s call him Mango.
Hip Like Me 17

Alright, I’ll take out the garbage again. But this is a team
effort, right? It’s somebody else’s turn next time? Because I
hardly even use the kitchen.
Or the toilet.

May 29

I got phoned today by an I.T. recruiter for a short-term MDX-

related position. Multi-Dimensional eXpressions—the lan-
guage you use for querying data cubes, which in turn are a
way of pre-computing the results of queries on humongous
databases so they run faster.
I’ve worked a lot with SQL Server 2005, and solved some
very difficult programming (T-SQL) problems in it. But I haven’t
used the multi-dimensional (cube/OLAP) database features
at all. And I was quite open about that: As soon as I asked
and found out that it was on the 2005 platform, I told the guy
that I probably wasn’t the right person for the job.
He persisted a little, so I ended up explaining to him, at a
high level, that significant changes have been made to the
way in which data cubes are built in SQL Server 2005 (where
it’s all drag-and-drop) vs. 2000 (where you had to actually
write T-SQL code in stored procedures, which is the only “fun”
part of building cubes, and which I had done a lot of).
And then he suddenly says, “Can I call you back in ten
minutes?” as if he’s just got a call on the other line or some-
thing ... and hangs up before I can even say goodbye!
Of course, he never did call back, which is fine. But what
I can’t believe is that this guy didn’t even have the decency
to end the call with an actual “goodbye.” He wastes my cell-
phone time by leaving such a non-detailed initial message
that I had to call him just to find out what the position en-
tailed, and then he can’t spare another five seconds for me.
It’s kinda like the time I was walking home from Second
City with my long, faux-promiscuous hair bouncing in the
ghostly moonlight half a dozen Halloweens ago, and got
propositioned by a cheap whore (as opposed to an I.T. re-
cruiter, heh).
18 Hip Like Me

Her: How’re you doing?

Me: I’m good.
Her: I’ll do you for twenty.

I silently weighed the financial, legal, moral, and viral

consequences.

Her: I’m not expensive. I won’t go below fifteen.

Fifteen bucks, geez that’s ... that’s less than the cost of
three beers. But then, you can imagine what a three-beer
hooker would look like.

Me: Thanks, but I’ll have to have to pass.

... and she’s off like a flash to the other side of the street,
where the business is hopefully brisker.
The last full-time job I had, I was hired to work in OLAP
and VB.NET. For a Microsoft Certified Partner located close
enough to Rexdale (“Rednecks-dale”) in northwestern To-
ronto that I received more advice than I could ever possibly
use, shouted out of passing pick-up truck windows, about
where I and my hair should or shouldn’t be walking.
The company owner was an orthodox Jewish man,
around my own age, who embodied nearly every positive
and negative stereotype of his people.
It was like working in Fiddler on the Roof, except his wife
had dyed her hair blond, to boost her shiks-appeal. (Shiksa,
from the Hebrew term sheketz, meaning “loathsome,”
“abomination,” “unclean,” “dirty,” “rodent,” or “lizard.” Noth-
ing in there about being a large-breasted blonde angling for
a doctor or lawyer husband, but you get the picture).
It’s the only place I’ve ever been employed where it was
written into your contract that you couldn’t discuss your sal-
ary with your co-workers, on penalty of dismissal.
So “Tevye” kinda knew, I think, that he was giving us the
short end of the dreidel. Call it “tradition.”
The only really good part about working there was that
we got Yom Kippur off—the owner’s day of atoning for his
Hip Like Me 19

sins ... most of which, ironically, were probably accrued by

him underpaying us during the rest of the year. And by re-
peatedly promising potential customers features in the soft-
ware which never quite materialized.
If there isn’t an Eleventh Commandment about not
promising someone the moon—and then delivering just a
piece of stale green cheese—just to make a sale, there
should be.

Of course, there was the time when he sold him a

horse and told him it was only six years old, when it
was really twelve. But now, it’s all over, and we live in
simple peace and harmony.
—Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof

In the entire history of that company, they’ve employed

exactly two real programmers: myself, and a world-class,
Coke-addicted cracker who, on the basis of a chutzpah-
filled sales pitch, quit a night-shift .NET job at a major corp to
work on a flagship application written in Access 97.
I learned at least two things from that malicious hacker.
One is that if you want to learn hacking, learn it from the Rus-
sians—they’re the best in the world at it. And the other was
that the particular Russian who was running our I.T. Depart-
ment in a manner not unlike a Bolshevik with its head cut off,
was the type of person you should try to learn as little from as
possible.
I had once remarked to Cracker-guy that I was worried
that, if I worked there for too long, I’d start picking up the
bad coding habits of the other programmers. Near the end
of my imprisonment in that gulag, I actually got that con-
firmed: the Muscovite in charge had decided that, when we
finally ported the app to .NET sometime near the end of the
twenty-first century, we wouldn’t use structured Try/Catch
blocks for error handling, instead sticking with the obsolete,
unstructured way of doing things. Why? Because Try/Catch
blocks apparently couldn’t do all the “fancy” things we’d
need to be doing.
20 Hip Like Me

Granted, the program generated a lot of errors. But still....

To get that job in the first place, Trotsky had worked for
several months at the company for free, in 2003.
Native-born Canadians can’t compete with that: You’d
have to be paying the company for the privilege of working
there, to be making less money. But that’s what immigrants
will do to get a job here. Even in the midst of our tech “labor
shortage.”
Not that my own situation was so much better: I had to
survive for six months on a federal job-creation partnership,
which paid me only $413 a week, to get to a $40K salary—
and that was still far less than I had been making at Shit-
vantex Disloyalty Marketing until mid-2003, doing the data
cubes and SalesLogix customizations for them.
Of course, according to the economic philosophy of
Richard Stallman, being paid so little should have made me
enjoy the work more, shouldn’t it? As he put it:

If we take away the possibility of great wealth, then

after a while, when the people have readjusted their
attitudes, they will once again be eager to work in the
field for the joy of accomplishment.

Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project and the free

software movement; his leadership of those has been de-
scribed as “democracy under a dictatorship.” He actually
squatted on the MIT campus for years. So apparently, be-
cause he was “happy but poor,” we should all be.
The final couple of months I worked under Ivan the Terri-
ble Manager were by far the closest I’ve ever been to clini-
cal depression—having to struggle so much to get the sim-
plest thing done in a morass of undocumented, often-redun-
dant code, and arcane, unexplained business rules which
apply nowhere in the world except on a manufacturing-shop
floor.
With people like him in Mother Russia, you can easily see
how the West won the Cold War.
Hip Like Me 21

Finally, one Tuesday afternoon, after Khrushchev had

copped an attitude on me in the midst of my quiet loathing
of his utterly deficient I.T. knowledge, I just got up and left.
Permanently.
If you’ve never just walked away from an awful situation
that was slowly killing you, know that with each step you take
in the February slush, it gets easier to take the next one away
from ... Anatevka.
“A pot, a pan, a Pentium, a hat.” Or: Sometimes the only
way to preserve your (literal) sanity is to do the “irresponsible
hippie” thing.
Well at least, being perpetually single, when I got home
unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon I didn’t have to
justify it to Golde. She probably wouldn’t have gone for get-
ting nicely plastered while watching The Rocky Horror Picture
Show, anyway.
Oh, and regarding the “technical skills shortage” you
hear about every now and then: It’s a lie, and there have
been studies done to prove that.
I graduated with a programming diploma in late 2001
from a private institute in Toronto, and had been working
part-time for Shitvantex while in school, so I got back on with
them full-time within a few months of graduation ... after be-
ing stuck with doing data-entry and filing for a month at
UNICEF during their Christmas rush, to pay the bills. Another
grad from that class was on contract with a bank for awhile,
but was unable to find related work beyond that. A third
worked for several months for free for an online gaming
company, to get himself in line for paying employment there.
A fourth ended up in the porn industry. Doing websites, I
mean—not films. Although there was a hot Italian girl with a
delicious butt who used to sit in the back row with me, who
certainly could’ve....
Anyway, the rest of the class of around fifteen graduates
just wrote off the tuition and time as a bad investment, and
went on with the search for a different career.
One of the guys I worked with at Shitvantex was a young
East-European with an amazing knack for storytelling, who
22 Hip Like Me

had both a bachelor’s degree in computer science and an

MBA. He dumbed-down his resumé to “qualify” for a position
which involved mostly just slicing up graphics for web pages
and maintaining the ugly company website—it was the only
work he could find. For $15 an hour, on a temporary con-
tract.
Any public posting of such an entry-level programming
position today will receive 500 resumés; that’s been the case
for at least half a decade by now. Even at the height of the
dot-com boom, less than half of the Comp Sci graduates at
the University of California at Davis were able to find pro-
gramming jobs.
Why then do you keep opening the newspaper and find-
ing articles about a non-existent “shortage” of I.T. profession-
als? Well, according to big business and the blessed gov-
ernments they’re in bed with like a bunch of fifteen-dollar
whores, the industry needs more bodies with different skills
than it already has.
But of course, it doesn’t really need more bodies, or we
wouldn’t already have immigrants (and newly graduated
Canadians) working for free. And any junk-food eating geek
worth his or her salt (and vinegar) wants to have to learn
new, cutting-edge technologies; if they can’t get paid to do
that on the job they’ll do it at home, in their spare time. Hell,
that’s half the reason why we got into this work in the first
place: For the joy of learning, and solving new problems that
no one else has ever solved before.
If we wanted a job that didn’t require us to think, we
would have just taken an MBA.
There is no “labor shortage” in the I.T. industry; not a
“desperate” one, not even a mild one. There never has
been. Not in Canada, and not in the States either. In fact,
given the nature of the average red-blooded North Ameri-
can male geek as a porn freak, there will be a porn shortage
before there’s a skills shortage in I.T.
In the meantime, though, the glut of H-1B visas and their
ilk serves very nicely to drive wages down to the point where
programmers with a hospitality background (like myself)
Hip Like Me 23

would be better off financially if we just went back to waiting

tables ... as opposed to starting at $30-$35K and working
sweatshop hours as a junior-level programmer.
“And would you like anything to drink with that?”
Ah, but then I’d have to cut my hair short, wouldn’t I?
You know, to meet the “health regulations.”
You can just as easily be a “starving programmer” these
days as a “starving artist.” The only difference is that artists
have cuter girlfriends, and get out more.
Well, back to practicing guitar, then....

June 5

When I was in my early twenties, I remember reading John

Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me—a nonfiction account of
how he passed himself off as a black man in the southern
States to document the oppression, humiliation and hope-
lessness of “niggers” in late-1950s America. I must have
been pretty moved by it, because one of the first songs I
ever wrote was based on the picture Griffin gave of that
despair-filled life:

BORN IN POVERTY

We were born in poverty

We struggled to survive
They stacked the decks
But the welfare checks
Kept us more or less alive

In a tenement shoebox
On the Lower East Side
We were man and a woman
Husband and wife
Maybe someday we’d have a child

And we dreamed of a better life

24 Hip Like Me

‘Cause it was okay to dream

And no one could deny
That it was okay to dream

We were born in poverty

We struggled to stay alive
The wind would blow
And the time stood still
‘Cause his hands were too tired

And not having enough to eat

It was hard to do what was right
When some have so little
And some have so much
When truth is all black and white

And the night coming tenderly

And the night coming tenderly
Thicker than the smog
And darker than the stars

In a tenement shoebox
On the Lower East Side
Lived a welfare woman
Her unemployed man
And their soon-to-be-born child

And they dreamed of a better life

‘Cause it was okay to dream
And no one could deny
It was still okay to dream

And the night coming tenderly

And the night coming tenderly
Darker than the stars
Darkest before the dawn
Hip Like Me 25

Courage to open your eyes

Courage to carry on
And the night coming tenderly

So anyway, I was at the intersection of Bloor and Spa-

dina half an hour before sunset today, waiting for the lights to
change. Looking for all the world like Jesus on his way home
after a long day of carpentry, wanting nothing more than a
hot shower and a soft bed. There were just a few other pe-
destrians around, including a nondescript, teenage black kid
in a football jersey standing behind me on the curb.
The “Walk” signal finally shows, and as I stride across
Spadina from the 7-11 on the northwest corner, the kid
comes right up behind me, and pushes me with his forearm
across my upper back, saying “This is what I’m gonna do to
you.”
It didn’t even put me off balance, and it actually tickled
more than it hurt, but still: What the hell is this idiot doing?
So I turned around and took a step backward:
“Get away from me!”
He takes another step toward me, waving his hands
around me, like he’s trying to provoke me into hitting him ...
so that he’s got an excuse to hit back, I guess.
He wants to start a fight? What the hell kind of street cred
could there possibly be for some little black shit going around
beating up middle-aged hippies? What was he gonna tell his
posse?
“Yo, this muthafuckin’ old hippie comes at me from outta
fuckin’ nowhere, bro. Musta been high on dope or sum-
thin’....”
Anyway, the budding criminal is only around fifteen, and
scrawny as hell—I’ve only been in one playground fight my
entire life, but I could’ve easily stood my own against him,
even being more than twice his age. So I’m sure he’s used to
being the one who gets picked on. And he’s got the
crookedest front teeth I’ve ever seen.
I step back again, away from him:
“Get away from me!”
26 Hip Like Me

The jerk finally turns away, showing the big #54 on the
back of his jersey—his favorite football player, and probably
also his IQ.
He walks twenty yards down the street, intermittently
looking back at me, suspiciously.
The little bastard finally stops and turns around again,
and I say to him:
“What is wrong with you?”
He cups his hand to his ear:
“Huh?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Fuck off.”
And he turns and walks away, yapping on his cell phone.
He has money enough for Nikes and a cell phone, but
not for braces. And with that kind of inability to prioritize, he’s
fit to do what with his life? Maybe manage a McDonald’s?
No, not even that. ‘Cause you have to be able to priori-
tize there, too.
So I wearily dragged my white hippie ass up into the
dorm, had that hot shower, put on some Pink Floyd, and lay
down on my bed under the last rays of a purple-red, kaleido-
scopic sunset. Still shaken by that utterly unprovoked black
tickle-attack, and pondering the life of a hippie in a short-
haired world.
Back when I had a real job, I used to take in some major
concerts at the Air Canada Center and in other venues
around the city—Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello and the like.
And there was always a dirty-blond girl who used to hang
around the entrances, offering little sheets with what looked
like colorful, circular Avery labels on them. Her face would
light right up when she saw me and my long, obviously drug-
taking hair coming—I must’ve looked to her like a sure sale.

Tripping to Dark Side...

On LSD...
The light, psychedelically
Hip like me.
Hip Like Me 27

Of course, I never actually purchased any of those funny

labels from Avery-Girl. In fact, although you wouldn’t know it
to look at me, I’ve never even done illicit drugs.
(“What, never?” “Well, hardly ever!”—Gilbert and Sulli-
van, H.M.S. Pinafore.)
Anyway, this whole experience tonight, in being pushed
around from behind by Kid Gangsta just because of my long
hair and sandals, got me thinking:
Maybe it wasn’t the Jews or the Romans that killed Jesus.
Maybe it was the blacks.
And maybe they didn’t crucify him, ‘cause even though
that’s what they really wanted to do to get that no-good
Savior off the streets, it would have been way too obvious.
Maybe instead they just had some bucktoothed teenage
cretin sneak up from behind when the Lord was minding his
own business, and push him around, trying to make the Son
of God lose his temper and take a swing at the little criminal.
But then I thought: Would they really kill one of their own
preachers?
Because in Revelation, Jesus shows up with brass- or
copper-colored feet, which some Afrocentrists take as proof
that he was black. And Malcolm X himself said Jesus wasn’t
white. So if Morgan Freeman could play God in Bruce Al-
mighty ... and if the Bible is on-side ... well then, good golly,
why couldn’t Christ have been black?
Nigger Jesus would take some getting used to, though.
Almost like if it turned out that Martin Luther King Jr. was really
just ... well, Martin Luther. In blackface, at a minstrel show.
Still, if the world could live for centuries with a blond,
blue-eyed King of the Jews, without batting a Caucasian
eye, there’s no reason why we couldn’t get used to a
Christmas Story in which three Wise Gangstas followed the
Bling of the East to the birthplace of baby Nigger Jesus ...
bringing him gifts of a do-rag, a basketball, and a gold-
plated 9 mm Glock.
I should maybe run that whole idea past my cousin
Roger.
28 Hip Like Me

Yes, he is black. Adopted by a “good Christian” family—

my Aunt Betty and Uncle Henry. They were the nearest
neighbors to my family’s homestead south of Winnipeg, so I
grew up playing shinny with Rog’ and his older (white)
brother, who was my best friend in elementary school—even
if he did look a little too much like Ken Dryden of the hated
Montreal Canadiens, against my hero, Gerry Cheevers.
It would never have occurred to me to judge Roger, or
anyone else, on the color of his skin ... or the length or the
wooliness of his hair. Much less would I have ever even
thought of hurling a racist epithet at such a fine and honest
young man—or by now, a fine middle-aged man.
That minimal human tolerance and decency, sadly, did
not stop other children in that monotonously white and liter-
ally retarded community from pushing Roger around and
into the brick walls of our local school simply for the color of
his skin, as I found out years later. (Thirty percent of the stu-
dents there today are “special” ones. It’s not a special
school; that’s just a product of the inbred gene pool.) Nor did
it stop the moron phys-ed instructor from witnessing that
abuse, and just laughing it off as if it was some kind of
“game.”
That was a long time ago, in the ’70s. Yet I know for a
fact, from speaking to big-band musicians in Toronto, that
there are, to this day, country clubs here where, if you want
the gig, you will have to find a white drummer to sit in for your
regular one, if the latter happens to be black.
With musicians being so consistently “color-blind” in favor
of their shared language and culture of music, that exclusion
in particular is inexcusable and tragic.
Because, whatever you may think of the intelligence of
the average drummer, it’s not as though those rich white
club members just wanted to have somewhere they could
go with their blond trophy wives, without having to worry
about being attacked from behind by some 54-IQ criminal
whenever they turned their backs.
Hip Like Me 29

Although, if that had been their motivation, I could sort

of understand where they were coming from. Because we all
deserve to have a place like that.
Roger deserved it, and I do too.

June 7

The kitchen garbage can is overflowing. Again.

The weekly cleaning staff, seeing that situation, tied up
the top of the garbage bag so that no more crap could be
forced into it. Easily remedied: My roommates tear a hole in
the top of the bag, to be able to cram more stuff in.
It’s like living with a pack of fucking raccoons.
Since I haven’t been using the kitchen for anything ex-
cept tap water and an occasional turn at the microwave,
there ain’t no effin’ way I’m taking out the garbage again for
people who are too lazy to do that themselves. Even if it sits
there for weeks like that, rotting and stinking.
More recently, the white plastic cup which Mango uses
as a headwater for his anal waterfall keeps finding its way up
onto the sink, by the hot water tap—right where you want it if
you’re trying to wash your hands, eh?
With his sense of sanitation, I just hope he never ends up
working anywhere near a hospital. They’ll end up naming a
bacterial epidemic after him: O. mangosis unsanitarius or
something.

June 8

I was walking back along Bloor after lunch a couple of days

ago in my favorite tie-dye, past a friendly young panhandler
east of the Dominion supermarket. And as I passed him, he
called out to me:
“Hey, that’s a great shirt, man. Smoke weed in that shirt!”
I laughed. “Thanks.”
I also laughed it off when I was out on the edge of the
greenspace at Bloor and Spadina practicing guitar tonight,
30 Hip Like Me

and a kind-of-cute blonde walked by with half a dozen of

her friends.
And as she struts past in high heels on the sidewalk she
points me out to her friends, and drops an H-bomb: “Look! A
hippie with a guitar!”
You can’t say, “Look! A nigger with a basketball!” ‘Cause
that would make you a racist.
You can’t say, “Look! A dumb blonde with a vagina!”
That would make you ... conservative.
But drop an H-word, and no one even bats an eye. Even
if it’s raging hairism.
‘Cause hippie is the nigger of the world. If I’m in a job in-
terview against two other men, they’ve both got shorter hair
than I do; and as soon as the people doing the hiring see
that, I’m not even in the running anymore.
Be honest: Would you employ an obvious “drug dealer”?
So if I hear that H-word coming out of your mouth, you
damned well better have hair down past your shoulders, and
at least one tie-dye in your closet.
We’ve never been kept as slaves, but that’s only be-
cause everyone knows you’ll never get an honest day’s work
out of a hippie. Right?
“Where are the slaves, Bentley?”
“They’re still pretty wasted from the acid test last night,
sir. Jerry’s tripping out about dissolving into a field of cotton.
And that hippie chick you’ve had as a concubine since last
winter? She’s pregnant and wants to keep the baby. She’s
naming it ‘Moonbeam.’”
The U.S. would be a Third World country. Because every-
one knows you’ll never get an honest day’s work out of a
hippie. That’s what makes it more than a stereotype: It’s just
common sense.
What have the hippies ever done for the world? You
know, aside from Woodstock, environmentalism, recycling,
organic foods, the sexual revolution, casual clothes in the
workplace, and some of the first multimedia shows as part of
the Acid Tests—which the Dead were the official in-house
Hip Like Me 31

band for. Not to mention a good part of the computer revo-

lution:

The latest generation of supercomputers, utilizing

massive parallel processing, was invented, developed
and manufactured by Danny Hillis, a genial longhair who
set out to build “a machine that could be proud of us.”
Public-key encryption, which can ensure unbreakable
privacy for anyone, is the brainchild of Whitfield Dif-
fie, a lifelong peacenik and privacy advocate....

Before Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers he was a

Beatle-haired hippie and college drop-out, who went to In-
dia looking for spiritual enlightenment and came back wear-
ing traditional Indian clothes with his head shaved.
He was also a hacker on the edge of the law, for the
“blue boxes” he and Steve Wozniak sold to let people make
free long-distance phone calls. Woz actually once used his
box to dial Vatican City—identifying himself as Henry Kiss-
inger, and asking to speak to the pope. Sadly, His Holiness
was asleep at the time.
Wozniak was also “one of us.” As he put it:

Everything I was reading about hippies and hippie be-

liefs in the late 1960s—the free love movement, things
like putting flowers in guns—I knew that was me and
what I wanted to be. I agreed with every bit of it. I
believed, like hippies did, that everybody should be
able to get along and help each other out and live out
whatever kind of existence they wanted....
I would wear this little Indian headband, and I
wore my hair really long and grew a beard. From the
neck up, I looked like Jesus Christ.

Woz wouldn’t do drugs, though, so the real hippies finally

made him stop hanging around with them. Seriously.
32 Hip Like Me

There’s actually an old programmer’s joke about how

both LSD and the BSD distribution of Unix came out of Berke-
ley ... and maybe that’s not just a coincidence.
Counterculture icon Ram Dass explains why it really isn’t
just a coincidence:

My friends from Silicon Valley all used acid, and they

took what they learned from psychedelics into tech-
nology. The creation of personal computers and the
Internet was inspired in part by psychedelics.

And that surprises you? Where did you think the “all-
knowing, talking paperclip” came from?
And an interpenetrating network where everything’s
connected to everything else, like in the Web of Indra, well
that’s just ... groovy, man.
Or consider the testimony of James Fadiman, a leading
transpersonal psychologist who “studied acid” under a
younger and less mystical Dass at Harvard, and later super-
vised the LSD experiments at Stanford University in the mid-
’60s:

[T]here are a number of rather distinguished, very

happy [!] scientists who were involved in our studies.
One became a vice president of Hewlett-Packard, an-
other has won every major scientific award that the
computer world offers....
If you were to go to a conference that featured
the “breakthrough” computer minds from the first
wave of computer companies, nearly all of them were
deeply affected by psychedelics.

Steve Jobs, for one, experimented with LSD, calling his

experiences with that drug “one of the two or three most im-
portant things” he had done in his life.
And then there were the psychedelic experiences of Bill
Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Hip Like Me 33

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Wilson volunteered

to become a research subject for Sidney Cohen, a phy-
sician on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine,
and one of the world’s leading medical psychedelic re-
searchers. After several profound and transformative
LSD experiences facilitated by Cohen and his research
psychologist, Betty Eisner, Wilson proposed to the
Board of Directors of Alcoholics Anonymous that the
psychedelic treatment model be incorporated into the
AA approach.... [H]e asserted that psychedelics of-
fered a safe and efficacious pathway to recovery
from alcohol addiction.

Could anything be more outta sight? It’s like, Psychedel-

ics Anonymous, man.
Stoners and hippies in I.T. and AA are one thing. But, pot-
heads and Deadheads in politics? Christ—is there any group
you’d want less to have a say in running a country?
Well, tell that to Tony Blair, who played in a Dead-
inspired band in his student days (as did musician Bruce
Hornsby—different band, though). Tell it to Senator Patrick
Leahy, Al and Tipper Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Al Franken, John
Kerry, or fellatio expert Bill Clinton himself—Deadheads,
every one of ‘em. And on the other side of the political spec-
trum, there’s Ann Coulter, the pundit Tucker Carlson, and
Clinton’s Monica-gate nemesis, Kenneth Starr.
“I did not ‘rock and roll’ with that woman.”
Even if us hippies meddle occasionally in politics, though,
we thankfully tend to steer clear of the business world. Well,
except for maybe Jerry Greenfield—of Ben & Jerry’s fame;
hence the world’s all-time best flavor of ice cream, Cherry
Garcia. And Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Plus Mitch
Kapor, of Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet fame—and a former Tran-
scendental Meditation® teacher to boot. Maybe he’s not
even a full-blown Deadhead, but he still co-founded the
Electronic Frontier Foundation with the other Grateful Dead
lyricist, John Perry Barlow. (Barlow was also on the Board of
34 Hip Like Me

Directors of the WELL—the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, an

early [1985] online discussion board co-founded by Wired
magazine father and Acid Test-organizer Stewart Brand, and
home to the original Craigslist. He was also—if you can be-
lieve this—a campaign manager in Dick Cheney’s run for
Congress in 1978.)
There’s also a guy Coulter mentions who made candles
to sell at Grateful Dead shows, whose “daily routine consisted
of waking up, smoking a bowl, and turning on the Rush Lim-
baugh radio show while he made his candles.”
But hey, that could be exactly how Greenfield and Page
got started!

June 13

Fat Einsteins is the oldest open (music) stage in Canada. It’s

been going since around the time the Leafs last won the
Stanley Cup. That’s a long time.
It used to be held in the basement of a church some-
where up on Bloor, but now it’s in the Stonecutters’ Union
building, south of the U of T. There’s a lot of predictably pro-
union stuff on the walls which I can half-sympathize with, and
the best coffee and cookies this side of Yonge Street, pro-
vided by the longtime host, Martha.
I’ve played there on Wednesday nights for the past four
or five weeks, doing the standard two songs. I’m always the
youngest person there, but age notwithstanding there’s al-
ways at least a handful of phenomenally talented artists
playing who should be getting paid for their skills. They just
never had the luck or the breaks, and also never set them-
selves up with a “safety net” in case the one-in-a-million
chance at being the next Dylan or James Taylor or Cat Ste-
vens didn’t work out. So they wind up working as night-
watchmen at museums, even when they could have
breezed through university if they had ever tried.
The open stage is normally held in the basement of the
building, but we got displaced tonight by some Important
Union Meetings or the like, so it’s up on the third floor instead.
Hip Like Me 35

I sat and listened to the other acts for the first forty-five
minutes, and then felt the coffee coming through. So, just to
lighten my load before getting up on stage myself, I went in
search of the familiar washroom in the basement.
I got down the stairs alright, but then, as I turned toward
the facilities off the hallway, a black man in drab green
clothes, who had been blending in with the darkness in the
recesses of an unlit side room, rose from his chair and came
out to confront me.
“You thought you could just walk right by me?”
I stopped walking. “Huh?”
“Get out of the building.”
If the value of a human being can be measured by the
sheer quantity of keys he carries around with him, this man
was a king.
Yet with one glance at him, you could guess there’s no
way in hell he ever even made it out of high school, not even
as a shops-class graduate.
More puzzled than anything, I responded politely:
“May I ask what your name is, and who your employer
is.”
“No.”
“What is your name, and who is your employer?”
“Get out of the building.”
Increasingly shaken, I figured explaining myself might
help:
“All I want is to use the washroom before I play at Fat Ein-
steins.” My throat was getting dry.
“You can use the bathroom on the third floor,” he said
coldly.
“Fine. I didn’t know there was one up there.”
I turned away, and as I walked back up the stairs, in-
creasingly seething at this decrepit asshole’s refusal to treat
me with even basic human decency, I talked back at him:
“You’re a waste of space.”
He started to chuckle. “I don’t know about that.”
“You’re a waste of space! Little bigot!”
36 Hip Like Me

So I found the washroom at the end of the hall three

floors up, and tried to calm myself down. You can’t finger-
pick guitar while your hands are shaking.
Then, back in the room, I got up on stage, played my
song—there were enough latecomers that they cut it back
to one song each by the end—and left as they were stack-
ing the chairs.
“God’s Gift to Security” was back to lurking in his dark
room by the exit. And getting paid for it.
I hissed back at him as I went out the glass front doors:
“Zero!”
Because that, in my estimation, is all the chance which
that dismal mass of protoplasm has of doing anything that
will ever matter in the world. But then, advertising his name
doesn’t seem to be a high priority for that unionized vegeta-
ble anyway.
It was his job to protect that property from “probable
drug dealers” such as myself? Maybe so. But then it was also
his job to identify himself when I twice asked him politely to
do so.
Unless, you know, there’s some cowardly, hide-behind
union rule that says he doesn’t have to. Like I’ve seen Toronto
Transit ticket-takers at Spadina Station cop out on, and read
about Air Canada security ninnies doing, too.
Pack of overpaid, gutless pretenders, tripping over all the
regal power of their laughable keys and uniforms.
Anyway, I suppose tonight was no worse, objectively,
than my bathroom experiences with a couple of uptight
Chinese girls in the first place I rented in Toronto, nearly a
decade ago—another basement, but one that I ended up
being effectively confined to, rather than barred from.
The landlord there had grown up in the house, and his fa-
ther still lived on the main floor, assisted on a daily basis by
several nurses. Being literally senile, the old man truly needed
the help.
I went up to the second-floor bathroom one afternoon to
shower in around ten pounds of water pressure. Then, com-
ing back down without my glasses, I had to step around a
Hip Like Me 37

puddle of yellow liquid on the kitchen floor. With the old man
grinning stupidly over it, by the sink.
Yellow liquid ... hmm, that wasn’t there when I....
Omigod.
Hence the smell of urine which hung in the air twenty-
four hours a day.
Hence also the dried feces I found one evening while
moving furniture around in the corner of my room.
There was actually a university-age guy with long hair liv-
ing on the second floor, along with a pasta-for-brains Italian
doofus, and the four petite Chinese breasts. Nevertheless,
that proximity to long hair apparently didn’t desensitize the
girls to it all that much: After I had used the bathroom one
afternoon and said “Hi” to them for the first time, those same
two Asian chicks went to the landlord, hysterically complain-
ing about the “long-haired man” (i.e., me) who was using
their bathroom.
So, as soon as his plumber-friend could complete it, I
ended up showering in an exposed bathtub in the middle of
an unfinished (and barely heated) basement. In the middle
of winter. Shivering my Occidental ass off.
And then just to be sure there was no confusion, the little
chopsticks put up a sign on the second-floor bathroom door:
“This is the girls bathroom, boys should use the one down-
stairs,” etc. Except, of course, that the other guys in the
house were still welcome to use “their” bathroom: It was only
me that wasn’t allowed to “squat in their paddy field.”
There is a lesson in all that:

Importing the people means importing their prejudices

as well. This is a problem that modern liberals find dif-
ficult to understand. They say “Let’s overcome our
prejudices and let in all these people from China”....
Then the people from China turn out to have preju-
dices of their own.

If you ever check out an online dating site like match

.com that encourages its users to state their preferences,
38 Hip Like Me

you’ll find that a noticeably disproportionate number of the

Asian women posting there list long hair as a “turn-off.” Of
course, they’re entitled to be turned on, off, or sideways by
whatever their spit-polished vaginas prefer. Even if, you
know, they’re just blindly reflecting the conformity and intol-
erance of “outsiders” which is sadly typical of Far-Eastern cul-
tures. (It’s actually all very predictable, since neither totalistic
communism nor the feudalism and infallible Divine Emperor
[i.e., national cult-leader] which the loyal Japanese lived un-
der until slightly more than half a century ago have any tol-
erance for individuality or the questioning of authority.)
But, studies have been done showing that persons who
are rated as attractive tend to make more money than
those who are seen as unattractive. And some of the guys
and dolls (Asian and otherwise) who are prejudiced against
long hair on men—thus rating us as inherently unattractive,
for being all-turned-off by that attribute—find their way into
hiring and decision-making positions in the business world.
What happens then? Obviously, that’s going to result in lower
wages being paid to persons like myself, even aside from any
other accepted biases against us hippies.
That is, the “little yellow prejudices” (as Inspector Clou-
seau would have said) of these people are not only costing
me any chance at living out an Asian fetish, and preventing
me from using the bathroom in a house where I’m paying my
full share of the rent, they’re costing me money and career
opportunities, too.
We have laws against that, right? No? Oh.
When I think back on how, a couple of decades ago,
the Chinese people in general were being mocked by North
American comedians as being “a billion people, all of them
with the same haircut,” it fills me with many different emo-
tions.
Sympathy is not one of them.
Hip Like Me 39

June 20

Played the open stage at new-ton’s for the first time tonight,
on College just south of the U of T.
It’s the pub for the student crowd, but predictably empty
over the summer.
There was an amazing father-and-son duo onstage just
before me—Richard and Paul. A couple of fantastic guitarists
and songwriters, in the style of early Bruce Cockburn.
So we hit it off quite nicely, complimenting each other’s
music and having a few beers together.
This must be what networking feels like.

June 22

Kitchen garbage overflowing again. Again.

The cleaners underlined the relevant rules in the sheet on
the wall. No effect. The next week, they left a separate note
on the wall. Nothing. The week after, they underlined each
word in the note they had written. And circled the points on
the rules sheet. Again. And again. (By now, those two sheets
have black, red and green marker ink on them from three
different weeks.) Nada.
I happened to come out of my room when the cleaning
staff was around, and they gently asked me whether I knew
that it wasn’t their job to take the kitchen garbage out!
The raccoons know how to deal with all that, though,
without actually stooping to the level of cleaning up their
own filth in our shared area: The lazy fools start chucking their
orange peels into the bathroom garbage can.
The cleaning staff instructs us, writing in large letters on
that bathroom garbage can, that we are not to put kitchen
garbage into it.
What do the raccoons do then? They start their own per-
sonal trash heap in the kitchen, right next to the garbage
can there, for all of their bulky stuff—juice cartons, cereal/
40 Hip Like Me

pizza boxes, etc. At one time, that garbage heap was nearly
as high as the garbage can itself.
And I know that the pizza boxes are from Mango the Un-
sanitary Wonder Raccoon—I’ve seen him bringing them in
from the elevator.
The garbage chute is at most fifteen steps down the hall.
But O. mangosis ain’t usin’ it, no way, no how. ‘Cause no
one, not even the cleaning staff whose job it is to keep the
place sanitary, is gonna tell that (psychologically) pre-
rational, inconsiderate, door-slamming (starting at 6:30 a.m.
nearly every morning) boor how to behave. His mommy ob-
viously never taught him properly in the first place; and she’s
not around here to wipe his ass (and toilet seat) for him any-
way.
And I always thought I was a slob.
I have to move out by August 25th anyway, so I might as
well start looking.

June 27

I was happily practicing guitar today near midnight on my

favorite streetcorner.
A young black guy sat down on a bench ten yards
away, and started laughing out loud, continuously, while
looking at me. So I figured he was either high on crack or
had mental problems; therefore, I just kept on playing, at a
safe distance.
That goes on for five or more minutes, until he stops
laughing and instead starts talking continuously—loud
enough so I can tell he’s saying something, but not so loud
that I could what it was. All while looking straight at me.
His message being what, exactly?
Well, whatever it was, I had done nothing to provoke it: A
few innocent glances at a nut who’s behaving oddly are not
provocation.
Oddly, he stopped that bizarre harassment only when a
group of four guys (one black, one Rasta, and two others)
Hip Like Me 41

came up to me, addressed me as “Music Guy,” shook my

hand ... and asked me if I knew where they could get some
ganja.
Because, as everyone knows, anyone with hair this
long....
Like they say: What Would Jesus Smoke?

July 2

Walking back along Bloor after a sub-sandwich lunch today,

I passed a piece of cardboard on the sidewalk. With some
felt-pen writing on it.
Ever the curious little observer, I stopped, circled back,
and bent over to read what it said.
“Will fuck for a ride.” In what was obviously a girl’s hand-
writing.
Well, I hope she got a good “ride” out of that. “Paradise
by the dashboard light,” and all. Makes me wish I still had a
car. Public transit just doesn’t have the same effect on
women.
I’ve never hitchhiked. Ever. The closest I’ve come is re-
reading Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
every few years.
So it’s not surprising that I’ve never been picked up by,
say, even one redneck who had a morbid curiosity about
the sexual life of the hippie, or had a stereotyped image of
the hippie as an inexhaustible sex-machine with oversized
genitals and a vast store of experiences, immensely varied.
Specifically, no hick or Bay Street MBA has ever ended
up wanting me to expose myself to him, saying he had never
seen a hippie naked.
For that, I am extremely grateful.
Still, it does bring up the whole issue of male genital size
and its purposes.
Ejaculated sperm can live for from two to seven days in
the vaginal tract—they are not ones to “go gentle into that
dark night.” Unless, of course, they were released as a prod-
42 Hip Like Me

uct of tender lovemaking. In the dark night. In which case

they might well have gone there gently enough.
So, if there’s jizz in a given Happy Place from more than
one lucky “donor” at any given time, the more spunk that
came from Guy #1, the more likely he’ll be the father, pass-
ing his genes onto the offspring.
Hence the development of larger male genitalia among
groups of animals where there are higher degrees of “paren-
tal uncertainty.”
Chimpanzees, for example, are extreme sluts—far worse
than hippie chicks in the ’60s. While human females average
1.1 male sex partners per birth, chimp females average thir-
teen. Conversely, the male chimps’ ratio of testicle size to
body weight is more than three times that of human males.
That’s what happens when you’re a society of chimp-
pimps and monkey-whores.
It works the same way for us “naked apes,” though. So
basically, the only way you could ever get notably larger-
than-average male genitalia in any relatively isolated group
of human mammals is if both the men and the women there
had been sexually promiscuous (and too dumb to invent or
use contraception) for many generations.
Which is why it really surprised me to read, in Dan Sav-
age’s syndicated “Savage Love” column a few years after I
moved to Toronto, of a young black woman who was la-
menting how she was “used to ‘brothas’ who have larger,
longer-lasting ‘equipment’” than her current, small-dicked
white boyfriend. (Dan’s response: “Break up with this boy and
go find yourself a long-lasting, big-dicked, freaked-out
brotha.”)
Racist stereotypes never die easily, do they? Least of all
when it comes to black people. Especially, well-hung blacks
like Jesse Jackson (affair with a staffer, resulting in a child,
Ashley) and Al Sharpton. In their attitudes toward white peo-
ple, I mean.
Sharpton, for example, was quoted as saying to an au-
dience at Kean College in 1994 that “White folks was [sic] in
caves while we was [sic] building empires ... We taught phi-
Hip Like Me 43

losophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates

and them [sic] Greek homos ever got around to it.”
The irony there is that one of the major “black history”
claims of contemporary Afrocentrists is that Socrates himself
was black. Which would presumably mean that blacks not
only invented philosophy, mathematics, and bad grammar,
but homosexuality too.
Reverend Jackson, for his own part, apparently channel-
ing his inner “eighth dwarf,” led students around Stanford
University in 1988 chanting, “Hey hey, ho, ho, Western Civ [as
a required liberal-arts course] has got to go”—an event
“considered by some critics to mark the coming-of-age of
academic political correctness.”
Jackson is also a “friend and ally” of Louis Farrakhan,
leader of the Nation of Islam. That Nation teaches that black
people were the original humans, and that whites are only
“potential humans.” Plus some even more out-of-this-world
ideas, from a Meet the Press interview with Farrakhan in 1997:

[Tim Russert:] Henry Louis Gates ... asked you whether

you still subscribe to the teachings of Elijah Muham-
mad on Yakub, a black scientist who 6,600 years ago
created the white man, and that by the end of the
twentieth century, a spaceship will come and rain down
upon white people and people who don’t embrace Islam.
Do you subscribe to the teachings of Yakub, that Ya-
kub, the black scientist, created the white man?

[Farrakhan:] I subscribe to every word that the Hon-

orable Elijah Muhammad taught us.

Until Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in 1964, knowing

his life was in danger for doing that—he was assassinated in
1965—he promoted the same science-fiction teachings. And
more:
44 Hip Like Me

White people are born devils by nature....

Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to
black people.... Anyone who has studied the genetic
phase of biology knows that white is considered reces-
sive and black is considered dominant. When you want
strong coffee, you ask for black coffee.

And when you’re eating fish, you ask for white wine. So?
This is genetic science? Like, Gregor Mendel meets Juan Val-
dez?
Elsewhere, Farrakhan labeled the Jews, Palestinian Ar-
abs, Koreans and Vietnamese as “bloodsuckers,” for alleg-
edly taking from the black community but giving nothing
back in return.
Farrakhan later confirmed that he is neither a racist nor
anti-Semitic.
Enlarging on that same theme in a speech in 1994, the
Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam claimed: “Murder
and lying comes easy for white people.”
Enlarging even further on that theme, in 1992 filmmaker
Spike Lee stated:

A lot of people will have to do a lot of explaining on

AIDS one day. All of a sudden, a disease appears out
of nowhere that nobody has a cure for, and it’s spe-
cifically targeted at gays and minorities (i.e., Hispanics
and blacks). The mystery disease, yeah, about as mys-
terious as genocide.
I’m convinced AIDS is a government-engineered
disease. They got one thing wrong, they never realized
it couldn’t just be contained to the groups it was in-
tended to wipe out.

A year earlier, comedian Bill Cosby had reportedly

claimed that the same illness was “started by human beings
to get after certain people they don’t like”—you know, like
formerly cutting-edge comics starring in lame, 1980s, father-
Hip Like Me 45

knows-best sitcoms. And, in the July 1999 issue of Vanity Fair,

Will Smith floated the idea that “possibly AIDS was created as
a result of biological-warfare testing.”
All of which makes Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s
probable plagiarizing of his own doctoral thesis, and his “no-
torious fondness for booze and for women a good deal
younger than his wife,” look pretty mild by comparison, does-
n’t it?
On the other hand, Farrakhan’s former chief spokesper-
son, Khallid Muhammad, may have had a point when he al-
legedly said: “The old no-good Pope—you know that cracker
[i.e., honky, not a malicious hacker], somebody needs to
raise that dress up and see what’s really under there.”
Not to be outdone, in January of 1984 Jesse Jackson re-
portedly referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City
as “Hymietown.”
We all remember Hymie the robot from the classic Get
Smart TV series, along with agents 86 and 99. Yes, Hymie was
based on now-obsolete analog technology, with that ¼-inch
reel-to-reel tape in his chest. But somehow, that made him all
the more loveable than anything Asus or Intel have put out
since then.
But if, as Reverend Jackson has indicated, Hymie-like ro-
bots already control the political process and the media in
Gotham City, what’s next? Hollywood?
What will our culture look like in ten or twenty years, if the
“Hymies” of the world are allowed to surreptitiously foist their
special-interest robot politics on us, via movie screens across
North America?
A chilling thought. Yet it’s already happening.
Star Wars’ R2-D2 and C-3PO. RoboCop. Terminator. Bi-
centennial Man. Star Trek’s Mr. Data. Robby the Robot from
Forbidden Planet. All of them, clear evidence of the “Hymie”
bias in Hollywood. All of them, clear attempts at generating
sympathy for the “Hymie” agenda.
So, in that context, Jackson doesn’t seem half so para-
noid as you might otherwise have thought, does he? No mo-
reso, at least, than the average B-movie “town-crazy,” who
46 Hip Like Me

tried his best to warn the people around him about the latest
alien danger.
Um, but regarding “them Greek homos” ... the phrase
“Emergency Cancellation Archimedes” comes to mind.

July 11

Spent the hot ‘n’ sticky, heat-wave afternoon practicing gui-

tar in the greenspace at Bloor and Spadina, sneaking peeks
at a gorgeous blonde sitting on the grass in a wonderfully
short skirt. A girl in the midst of an hour-long, highly distraught
cellphone call, no doubt trying to control the latest emo-
tional roller-coaster in her very active, sugar-baby love-life.
After awhile a bearded, congenial, fifty-something pan-
handling white guy stopped by and asked me to play some
Gordon Lightfoot. So he sang along with “Christian Island,”
and then mentioned that he didn’t get much sleep last
night.
It turns out that the other guys in the boarding house
kept waking him by sneaking into his room and sitting in his
chair, to enjoy the cool temperatures. He has air condition-
ing, you see.
I’m sweating through the sheets in student housing seven
nights a week, and a guy who spends his days begging for
loose change—he’s a fixture outside the local Dominion su-
permarket—is sleeping in air-conditioned comfort.
Obviously, life on the streets isn’t quite as tough as I might
have imagined.
It’s like a snippet of conversation I overheard back in the
summer of 2001, walking up Yonge just north of Dundas in
that sweltering heat.
A bum dressed better than I was on the sidewalk says, to
any pedestrians in earshot: “Can anyone spare two bucks for
an ice-cold beer?”
Well, a passing guy in a business suit had the right an-
swer: “Fuck off.”
Hip Like Me 47

I’ve only asked for money from a stranger once in my

life—when I was down in L.A. the first time for that yoga-cult’s
annual convocation. Just from my own country-mouse na-
ïvete I got taken in by a garden-variety confidence trickster I
met at the airport, and wound up without even money for
bus fare. So after asking a businessman for help and getting
brushed off, I spent a night sleeping on the padded bar-
benches inside the Bonaventure Hotel, after enjoying a din-
ner of pretzels somebody had left behind on an adjacent
table.
The begging part was humiliating enough that I wouldn’t
do it again.
My second time in L.A. was the only time I’ve ever gotten
mugged. In broad daylight. Again from my own naïvete and
excessively trusting nature. And yes, the mugger was black,
and a liar to boot: he actually tried to tell the local security
men that I had tried to steal his money (and the traveler’s
checks he had in his hands ... with, you know, my name on
them).
Anyway, the present “homeless” guy with the A/C kept
bugging me to borrow my guitar, and actually told me he
was “pissed off” with me when I politely refused. According
to him, he could play better than me, but his own guitar was
in a pawn shop so he could buy a present for his daughter’s
birthday.
Well, I can tell you what I’d do if I ever found myself in his
situation: Get ahold of a cheap, used guitar, and then busk
my ass off.
There’s a guy named Memphis who regularly plays at
Bloor and Bathurst with an axe and amp. I bumped into him
at the Fox and Ferret and Fiddle and Firkin bar on Spadina
over the summer, he saw my guitar, and we got to talking a
little about open stages and the like.
He pays his rent just by playing blues licks on a streetcor-
ner, four nights a week. (He used to only have to do two, but
“times got tough.”) No way is he living in luxury, but still, he’s
getting by.
48 Hip Like Me

I asked him how it works over the brass-monkey winter

months. You know what he told me? That there was only one
night in the previous winter when he couldn’t do his gig—it
was so cold that his guitar kept going out of tune. Aside from
that, he buys cheap woolen gloves for his hands, and just
does what it takes to get by—giving something valuable
back to the distinct culture of the city in the process, rather
than just being a burden on others.
That’s why I personally don’t give money to panhandlers.
Ever. Well, except that I once gave $20 to a disabled guy
outside the Dominion by Ryerson University around Christmas-
time. And a couple of years ago I was out in Scarborough,
and a frazzled guy approached me on the street, saying he
was in town from Oshawa, his transmission had broken down,
and he had no money. So, since I didn’t have any change
on me, I gave him a subway token. From the grit on his hands
when he shook mine, there was no doubt he wasn’t just mak-
ing the story up. There was no mistaking his genuine grati-
tude, either: He said he had previously asked “three hundred
people” for help, and they had all just told him to fuck off.
But those were the exceptions in a decade of “hard-
heartedness.” Because there’s always a better way to find
food and shelter than outright begging, if you just keep look-
ing and can muster even just a thimbleful of pride and ambi-
tion.

July 18

Played at new-ton’s again, with Paul and Richard.

Not only are they two of the most talented musicians I’ve
met, they’re fantastically generous people—to the point of
offering to record a demo of my songs with me in their home
studio.
Cool.
Hip Like Me 49

July 20

Various grubby people keep trying to borrow my guitar over

in the greenspace at Bloor-Spadina, and I don’t even want
them to touch it ‘cause I don’t know when they last washed
their hands. So I’ve had to find a new practice space.
Turns out there’s a courtyard hidden behind the Woods-
worth student residence—just past “Rochdale” on Bloor, at
the east-west center of the university campus. The high-rise
catches all the breeze from the north and funnels it down to
behind the building, so it’s like practicing in a wind tunnel. But
it’s also sheltered from traffic noise, which is a welcome
change.
It also turns out to be a very good place to meet girls: A
cute blond Russian and a sweet Asian (named Miho) who
plays the clarinet have already come over to my bench to
ask if they could listen, and of course I would never be so im-
polite as to refuse that pleasure to them. (Like a lot of the
people in the U of T residences over the summer, they’re here
on a sort of “cultural exchange/learning English” trip.) There’s
also an amazingly friendly Japanese guy with shoulder-
length hair, who flatteringly doesn’t miss a chance to come
down, say hi, and smoke a cigarette or two while I play.
All I can say is he must really love music. And nicotine.
A few nights ago I was playing at 2:30 a.m. on the street
outside that building. And a very fetching, brunette Irish lass,
with whiskey on her breath, stopped by with her friends to ask
me whether I was high.
My songs, you see, were so mellow, and my hair so very
long, that she had difficulty believing I had both my feet on
the ground.
So, stumbling back to Innis College most nights of the
week since then—delightfully befitting their Irish heritage—
they’ve been stopping by my practicing-spot, for us to all
sing “Patio Lanterns” together. It was actually their specific
song request, which I hadn’t played before.
50 Hip Like Me

The chords are easy enough, but I was surprised that

they had even heard of Kim Mitchell: He had a couple of hits
back when I was in university half a lifetime ago, but now
he’s mostly just working as a local FM deejay.
“They play ‘Patio Lanterns’ in Ireland?” I asked.
“No, we’ve just heard it on the radio since we got here.”
Ah yes, Canadian content. The path to provincial/na-
tional stardom for many a north-of-the-49th act. Affirmative
action for music.
Back in the ’60s, there were real prejudices against play-
ing homegrown acts on Canadian radio—you had to make
it in the States before they’d spin your stuff here. So, our
groundbreaking artists did what they had to do: They toured
their beaver asses off, across America the Beautiful. That’s
how Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, The
Guess Who, Neil Young (with Buffalo Springfield) and many
other pre-Cancon stars built an international following just on
the basis of the quality of their work, without any government
handouts or meddling regulations.
In the early ’70s, however, thanks to lobbying and testi-
mony from, among others, Lighthouse bandleader Skip Pro-
kop, the federal government got involved—via the Cana-
dian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
Ultimately, they mandated a minimum percentage of “Ca-
nadian content” on our airwaves and TV—around 30%, plus-
or-minus, depending on the context.
What happens when you create a setup like that? The
same thing as happens with any quota system: It drives the
overall quality down, forcing DJs to play wanna-be, border-
line Canadian acts instead of worthy international ones.
Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night.” You’ve never heard
of it? That’s because you didn’t grow up in Canada in the
1980s. Just a typical, one-hit “Cancon rock star,” whose
“success” is (rightly) cheapened by the fact that he needed
quotas to do it.
What else happens? Artists like Bryan Adams, Avril, Sha-
nia, Alanis “Analingis” Morissette and Furry Neltado (sic), who
have already made it big internationally, are still treated as if
Hip Like Me 51

they were “persecuted minorities” in the music business. So,

they still get the extra exposure, even though they’re long
past the point of needing it. After all, as a twenty-first century
Wolfman Jack, why would you spin a platter from a risky, de-
veloping act when, on the flip side, you could have a “safe”
one in your rotation instead? The answer, of course, is that
you wouldn’t.
That’s why, just a few years ago, Arcade Fire couldn’t
get airplay on Canadian radio stations until after they were
touted as rising stars by the American music media. It’s why
Daniel Powter was a cheesy persona non gratin (sic) in Great
White Radioland, until after he topped-of-the-pop charts in
Europe.
And it’s all part of Pierre Trudeau’s legacy:

Among the cheering crowd that day [in May of 1971,

for a Crowbar show in Perth, Ontario] was Pierre Tru-
deau and his wife, Margaret. After the show, Crowbar
presented the prime minister with a plaque that read,
“Thank you for making it possible through the CRTC
for Canadians to be heard in their own country.” Ac-
cording to [Crowbar vocalist Kelly] Jay, two of the
band members also handed the buckskin-jacketed Tru-
deau—an admitted Crowbar fan—something extra.
“Roly and Rheal slipped him an envelope with five primo
joints of home-grown,” chuckles Jay, “telling him,
‘there’s a little Canadian treat for you and Margaret to
enjoy.’ Thank God the Mounties didn’t intercept it.”

It was even funnier—depending on what you’ve been

smoking—when the born-in-Ontario Bryan “Summer of ’69”
Adams collaborated with the white British-Zimbabwean pro-
ducer Robert “Mutt” Lange (now Shania’s ex) on Waking Up
the Neighbors in 1984 ... and the finished album wasn’t “Ca-
nadian enough” to qualify as Cancon. So the government
had to change the rules: You now only have to be “half-
Canadian” to qualify for preferential treatment.
52 Hip Like Me

At that rate, some day just having “one drop” of Cana-

dian talent will be enough.
Even Sirius Canada has to offer additional Canadian-
produced channels, with near-exclusive Cancon on each of
those, to broadcast the rest of their channel lineup in Ca-
nuckistan.
If you want Howard Stern, you’ve gotta put up with
Howard Hampton (provincial NDP leader), and the nearly-
dead (well, he’s in his mid-eighties), squeaky-voiced former
hockey-analyst Howie Meeker, too.
Kidding.
Plus, TV shows which are shot in Canada even while be-
ing intended for the American market (e.g., Stargate SG-1,
and the old X-Files) qualify as Cancon for Canadian stations.
Not that we’re alone in setting government quotas for ar-
tistic content: the Philippines, Ireland, South Africa, Jamaica,
the United Kingdom and New Zealand all do it. So does Aus-
tralia. And what do you want to bet they have exactly the
same problems with their quotas as we do? How could they
not?
On the bright side, at least we don’t have “musical af-
firmative action” for jazz or reggae. Not yet, anyway....

July 23

Played a couple of songs at the Free-Love Café open stage

on College Street tonight. Been there before, many times.
Put my guitar back in its case in the corner after the de-
served applause, and found an empty chair near the back
of the room. Ho-hum.
And then the Sugar Magnolia in the seat in front of me—
who must have just come in during my set, ‘cause I hadn’t
seen her before, and I definitely would have noticed—turned
around, leaned into my ear, and asked me where I got my
guitar.
Well, this is a nice surprise.
Hip Like Me 53

Turns out she used to sell ‘em, and had stopped in at the
café on her way home from working in an office somewhere.
“In what capacity?” I asked.
“Uh ... to pay the rent?”
That’s okay; I don’t need to use “capacity” ever again in
casual conversation. Mental note.
We were both thirsty, so I followed her brown eyes, white
stretch pants, Puma sneakers and minimal chest out to the
bar in the front room.
It’s okay: What she lacks in “lovely lady lumps” she makes
up for in luxurious, cascading dark-brown hair, and curves
everywhere else they should be. I can deal with that. Plus, if it
wasn’t for the worry-lines in her forehead, she could easily
have passed for being in her late twenties. So from the angle
of my forty-one years there’s enough of a “robbing the cra-
dle” angle there to already make me smile.
She sampled the Amsterdam Nut Brown at the bar, and
quickly turned up her nose: “Ugh, no. Something lighter.”
“Hey, don’t dis my favorite beer in the whole world!”
“I wasn’t dissing it,” she smiled. “I just want a different
one.”
So then I with my Nut Brown, and she with her Natural
Blonde, sat back down together against the wall in the cor-
ner of the back room.
“This is cute.” She touched the left breast of my egg-
plant-colored Loreena McKennitt shirt—from the “Mummer’s
Dance” single, with the name of my favorite harpist stenciled
on the front.
“Actually, Loreena grew up in southern Manitoba, which
is also where I grew up, and when she was in high school and
my uncle was teaching band class, he claims to have taught
her to play the flute.”
“Hmm,” she said. “That’s sure something to claim.”
Okay, I can’t read that at all. You’re not calling Uncle
Pete a liar, are you? He’s a hog farmer and a conservative
politician, for god’s sake—and a damned fine Christian in
both jobs. He wouldn’t have lied about that.
54 Hip Like Me

Well, like any guy over thirty-five, I’m fighting the “battle
of the bulge,” and not entirely winning. But I’ve still got a low
enough body mass index that I’m only good for two pints be-
fore I start saying and doing things I wouldn’t do when I’m
sober. And this was my third. And this girl kept leaning over
into my ear to talk, and there’s just something about a
woman’s hot breath, even beer-breath—hell, especially
beer-breath—in a guy’s ear....
So I casually slid over against her, my thigh against hers,
and put my left arm around her waist.
She didn’t resist.
“Mmm. That’s better, isn’t it?” I murmured.
And she started playing with my hair. Running her fingers
in circles around the back of my head, down my neck, and
onto my spine.
Maybe it’s just part of being a vertebrate—I’m sure jelly-
fish wouldn’t react the same way. But there’s nothing that
drives me crazy—in a James Brown, “I feel good!” kind of
crazy, Troggs wild-thing way—like a woman’s agile fingers
dancing up and down my spine.
“Your name’s Geoff?”
“Yeah. What’s yours?”
“Jennifer.” She took her hand out of my hair and shifted
uncomfortably away from me on the seat. “If you don’t
know my name, you shouldn’t have your arm around me.”
Ah, yes. Shit.
“I know it now,” I said, putting on my best Muppet face.
I have a theory—admittedly a flawed one—that you can
always do worse things when hoping to fix a mistake and
score with a cute girl than put on an innocent, hopeful Mup-
pet face. I’m not the only one, either: Apparently they have
really wild Christmas parties on the set of Sesame Street. The
puppeteers spend the rest of the year at work pretending to
be asexual, and after a few drinks it just all boils over. Not
surprising: Tickle Me Elmo was always foreplay waiting to
happen; and then you’ve got Cookie Monster singing “C is
for condom/That’s good enough for me,” and Snuffleupagus
givin’ the long, phallic trunk to Big Bird....
Hip Like Me 55

Anyway, Jennifer got up and put her jacket on, while I

finished my beer, with all the nonchalance I could muster,
wondering how to pull this thing back out of the frying pan
and into the fire.
“You live up on Bloor?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s on my way home. I’ll walk with you.”
Yes!
So I grabbed my guitar, and we headed outside togeth-
er. And as we turned north along Spadina she asked me
what kind of music I liked.
“Well, I grew up listening to Genesis and Jethro Tull in
high school. Boston’s still my all-time favorite band: Tom
Scholz is a freakin’ genius. Enya. Gordon Lightfoot, Paul
Simon.”
“You know what Lightfoot song I like?” she said. “‘The
Circle is Small.’ I think it’s neat how he tells the story of a
woman who’s cheating on him, without coming right out
and accusing her.”
She took my hand and intertwined her fingers with mine,
and we walked along silently, enjoying the heavy night air
and the hormonal companionship.
And as we crossed Harbord a few minutes later, halfway
up to Bloor, she said:
“Let go.”
I was trying to, but it was such a hot and humid night that
our fingers stuck together, and the knuckles held them in
place, so she seemed kind of frantic about that until we got
untangled.
“I just wanted to see how it felt,” she explained.
We turned east on Bloor, and walked further along. A lot
further.
“Haven’t we already passed your place?” she asked.
“That’s okay, I’m not ready to go to sleep anyway.”
So we somehow got onto the topic of my cult experi-
ence, i.e., the decade of my life, including the time at Hid-
den Valley, that I wasted believing in fairy tales purveyed by
56 Hip Like Me

a yogi who also managed to fool George Harrison, Van Mor-

rison, Peter Gabriel, Jon Anderson (of Yes) and Madonna.
“How did you fall for all that?” she wondered. “You seem
like a pretty smart guy.”
Yeah. I am.
So at the end of a half-hour walk we got to her building.
She showed me the view from the roof, and we ended up
back in the lobby, sitting and talking. And then one thing led
to another, and before long we were kissing, caressing, and
writing JavaScript code. Variable declarations, simple func-
tions ... all the things you never get to talk about with a girl,
but which Jennifer was actually interested in.
Most of all, she wanted to know how to get the width of
a browser window in client-side script.
Geez, I haven’t done that in ages. “It’s something like a
width property off the window object, or the screen object. If
you have Internet access in your apartment, I could look it
up.”
Hint, hint.
“I’ve got a dog.”
I shrugged. “I’m good with animals.”
“The last guest I had up there got bitten.”
“Couldn’t you just lock it in the closet?”
“He barks at strangers. All the neighbors would com-
plain.”
Damn that dog!
“You must be getting tired anyway,” she said.
“No, I’m trying to get my body used to a musician’s
schedule—getting up after noon, and staying up ‘til four or
five in the morning.”
“It seems to be working.”
So we talked, and kissed—she’s a very good kisser—and
cuddled, and she called me her “Code Man,” and I wrote
some more JavaScript until she had to go to bed for work the
next morning. So I got her email address, and leaned in to
kiss her goodnight—hardly an excessively forward move,
considering how we had spent the last couple of hours. But
Hip Like Me 57

she turned away at the last moment, so we just hugged in-

stead. And I did the long, slow walk home at 3 a.m. in the
mandolin rain, falling into bed alone.
The ancient Greek philosopher-beggar Diogenes once
masturbated in the Athenian agora—their “place of assem-
bly.” When other people there rebuked him for jerking off in
public, he replied: “If only it was as easy to soothe my hunger
by rubbing my belly.”
Great, now I’m hungry, too....

July 24

Emailed Jennifer the window-width code snippets. Grabbed

a sub sandwich for lunch. And then kicked pensively around
the cobblestones, trying to figure out the “cold feet” I’m al-
ready feeling.
“The morning-after blues,” as Gord sang in “Carefree
Highway.” Except, of course, that it’s not really a “morning
after.” It just feels like one.
I was reading a bunch of biographies of Albert Einstein
last month, and this came up in one of them:

In one unguarded moment, [Einstein] confessed to me

that each personal tie was a form of torture for him,
that each bond was often intolerable. As he put it,
“every handcuff bothers me.” When he said this, I
asked him, “Suppose that you had an intelligent wife
who would stay in the background and have an under-
standing for everything that you feel and who would
leave you alone and would not restrict you or put limi-
tations on you in any way. Would you then have been
happy?” Einstein smiled broadly at my utopian sugges-
tion and said, “Of course I would!”

Aside from that angel meekly staying in the background,

which is the precise opposite of what I’d want, that’s exactly
it: The handcuffs, the personal ties. Having to give up even
58 Hip Like Me

the smallest part of your independence, and your precious

physical and mental space.
When Einstein was just a teenager but already thinking
about the ideas which later produced his theory of relativity,
he fell head-over-heels in puppy love with a very sweet girl
named Marie. One of the last letters she wrote to him, after
he had already met and fallen for a much smarter and more
extraordinary woman who went on to become his first wife,
detailed how much she was looking forward to cleaning up
his messy desk when she came to visit him.
She might as well have informed him that she was going
to rearrange his thoughts to suit her liking. Even if the ro-
mance between them hadn’t already died from his end by
that point, that “threat” alone from her would have sent him
running.
Like the saying goes: “I love you, you’re perfect. Now
change.”
Handcuffs. Hour-long phone calls talking about nothing,
or evenings spent watching television together, when you’ve
got reading you really need to do.
Remember: I am “half intellectual.”
You can’t be implicitly telling the most important person
in your life, every day of the year, that she’s less important
and interesting to you than a pile of dusty reference books
and papers. But how else are you going to get any work
done?
Handcuffs. Having to drop the argument just to keep the
peace, even when you know you’re right. Compromising not
just on trivial things like where to go on vacation together,
but even on your most basic principles ... without even realiz-
ing you’ve done it.
When I was working at that shithole fishing lodge, the
Catholic-schooled wife of the hedgehog-in-chief once
openly lamented the commercialization of their local “Christ-
mas in July” festivities. And the Mass-on-Saturdays hedgehog
responded that it was a perfectly good way for the mer-
chants in town to make some extra money.
Hip Like Me 59

A few weeks later, I overheard someone else lamenting

the same commercialization of the same tourist festival by
the same merchants, to Mrs. Hedgehog.
You know what she said?
“It’s a perfectly good way for them to make some extra
money.” Without even realizing she had sold her Savior out
for a few extra dollars.
Judas would have been proud.
From the other side of the fence, Charles Darwin may
have delayed publishing his Origin of Species simply because
he didn’t want to risk offending his very religious wife, Emma,
with the ideas in it. (At the very least, she worried that his
lapses of faith might endanger their meeting in the afterlife.
Charles finally ended up as an agnostic, going for walks on
Sunday mornings while the rest of the family was in church.)
And so do we all trade truth for love, sex, and the tender
mercy of having even one other person in this cold world
who cares about what we’re feeling, and whether we’re
happy and comfortable.
Back in the early spring of last year, at the end of an oth-
erwise perfectly awful Saturday, I bumped into a woman I
had worked with for a few months half a decade earlier. She
was recovering from a bad date earlier in the evening, and
we wound up spending the night at my apartment, and then
the morning-after at hers.
I saw some books by the Tibetan guru-fraud Chögyam
Trungpa on her shelves, and one way or another I must have
mentioned that the president of the publishing company
that put out my first book, back when I still believed in every-
thing New Agey, thought that leprechauns were real.
And do you know what she said in response to that?
She said, and I quote: “Leprechauns aren’t real?”
I took a deep breath. “Ah ... well, I suppose we don’t
have to talk about that right now.”
Because there ain’t no way a bunch of non-existent little
green Irishmen were going to get in the way of me having
“morning-after sex” on a Sunday morning.
60 Hip Like Me

Darwin’s own list of the advantages to being married in-

cluded having a “constant companion and a friend in old
age ... better than a dog anyhow.” The disadvantages in-
cluded “less money for books” and “terrible loss of time.”
And a terrible loss of solitude, in having a constant com-
panion. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “Hell is other people at
breakfast.” Or before breakfast. And since I don’t normally
eat a recognizable meal until after noon, that can wind up
being the better part of the day.
And then there’s the inevitable “cantaloupe argument”:
“Why did you buy two cantaloupes?” she asks, testily.
“We only needed one.”
“I bought two cantaloupes because, like testicles and
breasts, they work best in pairs. Any other questions, dear?”
I really don’t take orders or petty corrections well. And
my feeling from spending the evening with Jennifer is that
she seems to give them quite well. And if you’re already hav-
ing to laugh off minor annoyances after just a few hours to-
gether, how long will it be until you just want to get out, at
any cost?
Plus, there’s that thing about me seeming like just a
“pretty smart guy” to her. I’m sure it was meant as a (luke-
warm) compliment, but still: only “pretty smart”? Talk about
damning with faint praise.
I was walking home after dark from an open stage along
Parliament Street a week ago, and two kids came up from
the opposite direction. First, one of them mumbles something
unintelligible, where I can only pick out one word:
“Blah, blah ... hippie ... blah, blah.”
But as they pass me, Kid #2 says:
“No, he’s a genius. You can see it in his eyes.”
Well, it’s a fair cop. And if a kid walking down the street
can pick up on that, why can’t a girl who’s already looked
into my eyes up close?
Maybe I should email her a scan of my transcript....
So overall, I don’t even know how much I want to follow
through on this. I mean, my body definitely knows what it
wants, it’s just that my mind can’t decide.
Hip Like Me 61

Think. Too. Much.

August 10

Went into the kitchen at Tartu this afternoon to fill a container

with tap water. The garbage was stinking to such high heav-
en that I couldn’t even inhale through my nose for the two
minutes which that took.
If I needed a reminder that human beings, aside from
being literal animals (i.e., mammals), share more than 90% of
their non-junk DNA with chimpanzees.... Except that chimps
and even poodles would surely learn faster than these pre-
rational ass-dribblers—inconsiderate jerks who will not be
told, even by the cleaning staff, how to behave like rational,
thinking human beings.
As Einstein once lamented, “Is it any wonder little by little
one becomes a misanthrope?”
I was telling a bartender at the Regal Beagle pub—over
at the east end of “Rochdale”—about some of this back in
late June, and she disclosed her own shared-living travails:
The construction workers she was stuck with in a nearby
house had messed the kitchen up to the point where they
needed to have ant traps set up all over the place, and
were also leaving their smelly boots in the halls. (‘Cause they
obviously didn’t want to have to inhale their own redneck
foot odors, preferring to let others suffer that.) So, she made
up some posters, with a scanned copy of the official man-
agement logo, instructing them to not leave their boots in
the hall anymore.
It worked like a charm: She even overheard them dis-
cussing how “management” had left the instruction!
You really have to admire that kind of initiative.

August 11

I was out practicing guitar this afternoon, midway down St.

George Street on the U of Toronto campus.
62 Hip Like Me

Dressed, as always, in “Garcia-wear,” i.e., a t-shirt, jeans

and sandals, with my long hair flowing in the breeze.
Looking, that is, like a fine hippie.
Two teenage boys, out of high school for the summer,
came riding up the sidewalk on their bikes, screwing around
about ten yards in front of me. (The street has explicit bike
paths adjacent to the curb in both directions, but they still
needed to use the sidewalk. Illegally.)
And as the “alpha biker” rides past me, just for fun he
says:
“Get a job.”
Because, obviously, a long-haired guy out playing guitar
on a beautiful Saturday afternoon must be some sort of drain
on society, eh?
Of course, being just a high-school kid, his idea of a “real
job” is probably just stocking shelves at The Gap, or some
other McWay of earning money for a new iPod.
I wasn’t even busking—which itself is uncontracted enter-
tainment, i.e., a legitimate “job,” not to be confused with
begging. (That difference is well understood in Europe, even
if often missed in North America.) Rather, I was simply prac-
ticing for an upcoming gig ... for which I will indeed be paid.
Besides, since when is “rising folk/rock star” not a job? For
that matter, so is “drug dealer.”
As a Comp Sci Ph.D. candidate who’s doing his research
in robotics at the U of T said to me afterwards, when such “in-
sights” come from high-schoolers, they’re likely either based
in a blind rebellion against authority, or on something deeper
(and more sinister).
My guess is the latter—‘cause, since when am I an au-
thority figure?—and also that the overgrown rugrat in ques-
tion (i) learned that bigoted (i.e., “hairist”) attitude from his
parents (esp. his father), and that (ii) he’ll carry the same
prejudices into adulthood and his career in middle-manage-
ment or the like. And there, his bigotry will actually be “good
for the company,” in easily weeding out undesirable/unrelia-
ble employees who cannot in any case ever be presented
to the public as appropriate representatives of the corpora-
Hip Like Me 63

tion. (Ask me why I have no wish to ever again “have a job”

in that kind of intolerant, prejudiced short-hair environment.)
In between now and embarking on that “valuable con-
tribution to society” career, though, he’ll surely make a fine
misogynistic, conformist-mentality frat boy. Because hippie-
phobia, homophobia, misogyny and racism are not at all so
far apart as you might like to imagine.
With the absence of “hippie rights” groups, you can still
be a hairist in today’s polite society and (wrongly) consider
yourself to be better than the explicit racists in the world. But
at its basis it’s all just in-groups and negatively stereotyped
out-groups, i.e., there’s no meaningful psychological differ-
ence between racism and hairism.
Yes, I realize that I choose to look this way, whereas
blacks (etc.) have no choice in the color of their skin. But,
when you try to marginalize or otherwise crush the spirit of
someone simply because he’s creatively expressing his indi-
viduality, that’s actually worse than mere racism.
Like the black man in Vegas said, “They’re taking away
the most important right. The freedom of expression.”
What separates us from the animals isn’t the color of our
skin—there are plenty of black, white, and even black-and-
white animals, after all. There have also been plenty of white-
skinned slaves in the history of the world, e.g., in ancient
Rome, where Greeks were kept as forced labor.
Rather, what makes us uniquely human is our individual-
ity—the ability to go consciously against the “herd”—and our
intelligence and degree of creativity (even just in tool usage,
never mind in art and science). If you’re just using your fac-
ulty of reason to rationalize going along with the in-group
crowd rather than living as a creative individual ... you might
as well be a dumb animal, useful at least for your meat, if not
for your brains.
That creativity and independent reasoning and freedom
of expression is exactly what is being embodied by non-
conformist individuals such as myself ... and that’s also what is
then being discriminated against by others who can only see
64 Hip Like Me

a one-dimensional, negative stereotype where a real person

exists.
A person, too, who has already contributed more to the
betterment of the world than some snot-nosed, bigoted,
might-as-well-be-racist teenage rugrat on a bicycle ever will,
if I do say so myself.
Thankfully, the hippie community knows better than to
judge people for how they look. Unless, of course, you’re a
punk sporting a mohawk, as one such mohawk-punker guy
observed on tour with the Dead:

It seems to me like most of what I’ve heard about [the

friendliness of the Deadhead community] is not true
because we’ve gotten a lot of nasty comments, nasty
looks, because of the way we look.
It’s like people will be open-minded towards you if
you look like you belong at a Grateful Dead show, but if
you don’t look like you belong, then you get treated
just like people treat you anywhere else where you
don’t belong.
Apparently it’s, you know, how you look, you know,
if your dreadlocks are the right length, if your skirt’s
baggy enough.
This is the last place I expected to be shunned
because of the way I look.

‘Cause even with “peace, love and grooviness” hippies,

you’ve still gotta “dress to fit in.”
In-groups and out-groups, my friend. In-groups and out-
groups. That will never change.

August 14

I played a “best of the open stage” feature at the Free-Love

tonight, as one of four acts.
Hip Like Me 65

The room seats around fifty people, and was absolutely

packed. A trio of girls from Woodsworth who came there
specifically to (platonically) hear me were lucky to get the
last table.
Those monthly “best of” nights don’t typically draw such
an impressive crowd, but half of the audience was there just
to hear their relative sing, in Spanish.
Since we wanted to keep them all around for as long as
possible (for upping the venue’s food and drink sales), the
host and I decided it would be best to put the Hispanic guy
on last.
What that meant was that his numerous, obviously fertile
relatives, of all shapes, sizes, and ages—including one baby,
and a couple of teenage hotties—had around an hour and
a half in which to eat, drink, and be merry, before their “na-
tive son” came on.
There are, in hindsight, predictable differences between
the respectful folk-music audiences one typically encounters
in whitebread North America, versus a roomful of cheerful,
boisterous Hispanics (and their remarkably vocal baby) who
are really only there to sing along with one of their compa-
dres. In Spanish.
I went on as the third act, and basically, I could hardly
hear myself play.
The host tried to compensate, but if he turned the house
volume up too loud, it started screeching feedback. So then
he cut the high frequencies down, which prevented our ears
from exploding, but also kept the muddy sound from being
audible above the roar of a room half-full of fertile immi-
grants/tourists Spanishing (and crying) at the top of their
lungs.
As Basil Fawlty once said, “God only knows how they
ever got an Armada together.”
So I just did seven songs, and then went to have a cou-
ple of beers and dinner—in that specific order—in the front
room.
But hey, that’s Hispanic culture; and in a multicultural so-
ciety, what can you do but admire and respect it?
66 Hip Like Me

Even if they don’t return the favor.

At least they bought lots of food and drinks to support
the venue, tipped well, and put a lot of money into the Pay
What You Can jar, though.
Kidding! The recommended donation was $5; each of
the four acts went home with around $10 in change. My
guess is that if the crew of the Santa Maria paid out at all,
they just did it privately afterwards.
But hey, that’s “their culture.” And we’re multicultural.
Multiculturalism has actually been an official policy of
the Canadian government since the early 1970s.
Have you ever wondered why?
The bill which brought that policy into law was really just
a ploy by our fox-in-the-henhouse prime minister, Pierre Tru-
deau (when his flower-girl wife wasn’t busy partying with the
Rolling Stones), to diminish the “distinct society” claims of the
French-speakers in Quebec, by enshrining the distinctiveness
of all cultures. Trudeau actually thought so little of the “ac-
complishment” that he didn’t even mention it in his memoirs.
If you want to know why multiculturalism, even in princi-
ple, creates conflict rather than tolerance and acceptance
among its culturally distinct groups, just read up on Sherif’s
Robbers Cave experiment.
Robbers Cave? Wuzzat?
In 1954, Muzafer Sherif performed a classic social-psych
study called the Robbers Cave Experiment, in a Boy Scout
camp in Oklahoma.
With Sherif and his associates posing as the camp coun-
selors, they brought two buses up, with eleven boys on each,
and placed the youths in cabins far enough apart that each
group didn’t even know the other existed until the evening of
the sixth day at the camp. The two groups of randomly as-
signed, middle-class white Protestant boys spontaneously
and independently decided to name themselves, choosing
the names “Rattlers” and “Eagles” for their groups.
Even prior to having met their “enemies” face-to-face,
the tribes each developed their own status-hierarchies, and
their own cultures and traditions, with conformist pressures
Hip Like Me 67

being exerted on their members to uphold those. The Rattler

group further “speculat[ed] with resentment that ‘outsiders’
had been” using their hideout, i.e., were encroaching on
“their” territory.
In the second week, Sherif deliberately brought those
two tribes together in a “friction phase,” of team sports and
other competitive activities. Additional intergroup conflicts
quickly emerged in that competitive environment—ranging
from simple name-calling to vandalism and fisticuffs ... and
up to the request for “separate but equal fireworks for the
Fourth of July.” As Sherif and his colleagues observed:

When the groups competed for goals which could be

attained by only one group, to the dismay and disap-
pointment of the other, hostile deeds and unflattering
labels developed in relation to one another. In time,
derogatory stereotypes and negative attitudes toward
the out-group were crystallized.

As David Berreby further notes, in Us and Them:

Even though they had never heard of Rattlers and Ea-

gles until they invented the names, the boys attached
a full array of moral feelings to the human kinds they’d
made. At the height of their war, campers in each
group saw their enemies as cheaters and cowards—not
as kids from another team but as kids from a differ-
ent morality....
Robbers Cave was a microcosmic version of twen-
tieth-century political life, its two cabins arranged like
the two races of America’s color line or the two sides
of the Cold War.

All you have to do is replace the “Rattlers” and “Eagles”

groups with “Red and Yellow, Black and White” ones, to see
how little sense it makes to encourage the members of those
classes to retain their group-identities (i.e., their differences)
68 Hip Like Me

as points of pride. For, that will only create conflict, even

without any explicit competition, and even when the groups
have plenty of opportunity for “communication” and good-
will contact. That has nothing to do with race or ethnicity or
culture as such; it’s just inherent in-group/out-group dynam-
ics. (Any racial, ethnic or cultural tensions will certainly make
the situation worse, but it was already more than bad
enough in Sherif’s experiment even with just a couple of
groups of monochromatic white youths.) All of that has been
known since the mid-1950s!
How did they get the two groups of boys back on good
terms with each other? In the same way that the British La-
bour party was formed, in 1906: By having them work to-
gether in cooperation to achieve a common goal that they
couldn’t accomplish on their own. The Scouts had to work
together to unblock the water supply, pull a broken-down
truck back to camp, and pool their money for a movie they
all wanted to watch. Comparably, in the case of British La-
bour, “representatives of its warring factions spent an hour
moving their conference table into a larger room.” And thus,
the Labour Party was born.
If it hadn’t been for that table....
Yet, those British politicians a century ago still had it easy:
they were just a bunch of white males cooperating, so they
didn’t have to face any additional big hurdles in racial or
sexual (or religious) diversity, in the momentous task of mov-
ing a table from one room to another. It’s not so easy to
avoid letting stereotypes and prejudices get in the way when
you throw blacks, Asians, women, Jews and gays—with each
group being fiercely proud of its origin and orientation—into
the mix. So how do you do it?

More successful than telling children not to be preju-

diced against, say, the Christian kids, is persuading
them not to see Christian kids [or “Eagles,” or “Rat-
tlers”], because another set of human kinds [i.e., a dif-
ferent set of criteria for establishing in-group/out-
group membership] is more relevant. In the 1970s, the
Hip Like Me 69

American social psychologist Elliot Aronson devised

the “Jigsaw classroom.” His approach places students
in small groups and forces them to work together on
tasks, for example, learning about twentieth-century
history. Racial, ethnic, gender, and school-clique
boundaries don’t count for the task: The kids must
work together to master their subject. The idea is
that these preclass human kinds fade in importance
and the kids’ shared work comes to the fore.

One of the few places in this world where you naturally

get an approximately Jigsaw-classroom approach is on the
sports field. There, no one on any given team can win unless
everyone on that team does well, and people are seen
foremost not for their race or ethnic background but rather
as the human-kind of “football players,” etc. That sort of thing
is the only way to reliably build cooperation rather than mere
in-group/out-group competition, regardless of the criteria be-
ing used to separate the groups.
If you want to find the landmarks for racial integral in
North America, look for when the color bar was broken in
each of the major sports, starting with baseball in 1946. That
may even have begun as just a rich white, constipated
team-owner figuring out that he could win more games with
the best (e.g.) second-baseman from the Negro Leagues this
season than with the old, marginally skilled white guy at the
same position. As the Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher put it,
speaking against resistance to the inclusion of Jackie Robin-
son on his team:

I don’t care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has

stripes like a fuckin’ zebra. I’m the manager of this
team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can
make us all rich. And if any of you can’t use the money,
I’ll see that you are all traded.
70 Hip Like Me

Those free-market pressures of competition made it too

costly for baseball’s owners and managers to keep discrim-
inating against skilled ballplayers on the basis of their race.
More importantly, though, the same racial integration
brought the sports fans—and what male in North America
isn’t a fan of some major sport?—into a position where, if their
team was to win, the “black guy at second base” had to do
his job well. So, to cheer against him, or spitefully hope for
him to fail, would have meant “cutting off their noses to spite
their face.” Even if the black guy wasn’t a “hero” for them to
identify with—and generally speaking, he wouldn’t have
been, especially for white adults half a century ago—they
had to hope that he did well, if their team was going to win.
The nation-wide effects of that cooperation, and of “our
team” in-grouping on the sports field, cannot be overesti-
mated.
In contrast to the Jigsaw classroom and the sports field,
and far from teaching us not to see Christians, Jews, blacks,
Chinese and Muslim people (etc.) in the world around us,
one of the essential points of multiculturalism is that we
should see each of those groups ... and then simply respect
and tolerate them all equally. Well, good luck with that
dream! Obviously, it’s not going to work!
Equally obviously, one could draw the in-group/out-
group boundary based on any shared/excluded characteris-
tic. But the very first impressions we get about others typically
come through our sense of vision—we see them on the street
or across the room before we hear, smell, touch or (after a
few dates, if all goes well) taste them. (Hmm, I wonder how
Jennifer’s doing....) Those initially noted characteristics there-
fore include their skin color, ethnic group, sex, and body
type.
When your country has an official policy which actually
encourages you to see others in terms of any of those shal-
low attributes, it is basically a policy of “first impressions.” And
that immediately gets in the way of looking beyond those
external characteristics to see an individual rather than a
stereotypical member of a group:
Hip Like Me 71

Depending on stereotype, ensuring that ethnic groups

will preserve their distinctiveness in a gentle and in-
sidious form of cultural apartheid, multiculturalism has
done little more than lead an already divided country
down the path to further social divisiveness.... [It has]
heightened our differences rather than diminished
them ... and it is leading us into a divisiveness so en-
trenched that we face a future of multiple solitudes
with no central notion [e.g., of a common nationality] to
bind us.

Because, you see, you’re not “Canadian,” you’re rather

“Chinese-Canadian” or “Caribbean-Canadian” or “Irish-
Canadian.” That is, whether you like it or not, you’re pigeon-
holed into a group based merely on your race or ethnicity—
which you can’t do anything about, even if you wanted to—
rather than your shared national identity, or your value as an
individual.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, we’re now being encour-
aged to divide ourselves by religion too. At least, that’s what
the term “Muslim-Canadian” seems to indicate.
By parity of argument, then, we must also have Catholic-
Canadians, Jewish-Canadians, Baha’i-Canadians, etc. Or,
more accurately, Irish-Catholic-Canadians, Italian-Catholic-
Canadians, and the like. Each of them a “distinct culture,”
worth preserving.
I’m an Agnostic-Canadian myself, some days even tend-
ing toward Atheist-Canadian.
I used to be a Yogi-Canadian, but that was back when I
was following an East-Indian-West-American guru, who ironi-
cally believed in uniting Kipling’s East and West—albeit on
the basis of a wholly fraudulent, woo-woo spirituality—rather
than splitting them farther apart.
And what follows, completely predictably, from such a
divisive multicultural policy, coupled with excessive levels of
immigration (and hence, cultural dis-integration)?
72 Hip Like Me

Canada, long considered a model of integration, won’t

be forever immune from the kind of social disruption
that has plagued Europe, where marginalized immigrant
communities have erupted in discontent, with riots [by
black Muslim “youths”] in the Paris suburbs in the fall
of 2005.

To which one can only wonder out loud: “What Would

Ann Coulter Do?”
Honestly, when new minority immigrants are being en-
couraged to retain their traditional “Rattler” cultural identities
in the midst of a majority “Eagle” group at our national
“summer camp,” rather than to identify as all being “Camp
Wobegoners,” how much knowledge of half-century-old,
freshman social psychology does it take to predict that
they’ll end up feeling excluded and marginalized, and ulti-
mately react violently? Out-group exclusion and marginaliza-
tion are significant enough problems with human beings in
any context. But when your country’s official policy can only
act to support those same dynamics, you really are asking for
trouble.

Official multiculturalism, the automatic classification

of citizens according to race and ancestry, was a bad
idea in the beginning ... and in time will probably be
seen as one of the gigantic mistakes of recent public
policy in Canada.

The American “melting pot” idea was always a better

way of doing things, even if it only “really worked” for WASPs
immigrating to the U.S., and even then for much lower an-
nual percentages of immigration than the United States and
Canada currently have. At least it forced people to assimi-
late and learn English rather than taking easy refuge in their
transplanted “traditional” communities. But neither approach
can work to produce an integrated society if the country’s
level of immigration is too high, as Canada’s is.
Hip Like Me 73

Vancouver right now has Chinese enclaves where the

parents commute to work in other parts of the city, being
very well integrated into the existing society. But their children
still all go to the local school, where they talk to each other
only in Chinese. So, we have second-generation Canadians
growing up today who aren’t learning English in school. What
kind of future do they have in this country ... unless they want
to try and grow that Chinese-only enclave even larger?
Our Liberal Party supports high levels of immigration be-
cause they think it ups their voter base. The Conservatives
support high levels because it drives wages down. And the
feel-good, social democratic, union-backing NDP likes it be-
cause they’re so economically incompetent they (i) don’t
understand that it’s transferring income from poor workers to
rich employers, and (ii) don’t even realize that companies
will contract-out to cheap labor rather than deal with unions
full of people who are too stupid and too lazy to work real
jobs for a competitive wage.
Picture a bunch of sleepy teddy bears getting together
on a lazy Saturday morning for a tea party ... and deciding
to start a political party instead. That, right there, is the level
of intellectual rigor you should expect from the NDP.
So it’s not just the I.T. industry in Canada that’s gotten
fucked by our politicians; it’s happening right across the
board. In fact, less than 25% of new immigrants to Canada
today are skilled workers; the rest are unskilled relatives. It’s
called “family reunification,” and it’s killing Canada just as
surely as it’s killing America. (The U.S. has the same foolish
policy.)
The Liberals and the NDP believe we should be accept-
ing new immigrants corresponding to 1% of the country’s
population, annually—i.e., a whopping 23% over 25 years, or
roughly one generation. Those sheer numbers, as with the in-
flux of legal and illegal Mexicans into the southwestern states
of the USA, are a guaranteed way to end up with a very
conflicted and non-integrated society, even outside of offi-
cial multiculturalism. That would be true even if the bulk of
74 Hip Like Me

our (and the Americans’) new immigrants were the cream

rather than the lowbrow dregs of other countries.
Worse, most of those new Canadian immigrants move to
only one of three major cities—Vancouver, Montreal or To-
ronto—with 43% of new immigrants moving to the Greater
Toronto Area. Thus, three-quarters of T.O.’s population growth
comes from (mostly unskilled) immigration. And, although it
would surely surprise the loveable teddy bears running the
NDP—their heads all full of stuffing—that has the rather pre-
dictable effect of simultaneously driving housing prices
sharply up, and wages down, for both skilled and unskilled
workers in the GTA.
Of course, the influx of young immigrants keeps our ag-
ing population young. Except that younger immigrants make
up only a small proportion of the total population, so they
don’t actually have much of an effect on the average age.
Still, immigrants create jobs, and just by being here they
increase the demand for goods and services, and for people
to make and deliver those goods and services.
But, um, they also occupy many of the jobs they create.
So the claim that “immigrants create jobs” is actually pretty
meaningless. And if they’re working for minimum wage,
they’re not gonna have a whole lotta discretionary moolah
to blow on non-essential goods and services. Plus, the fund-
ing for their free health care has to come from somewhere,
and it’s not coming from their welfare checks....
Nevertheless, the real value of unskilled immigrants is that
they do the jobs which no one else will do.
No, wait—they don’t do that either. They just work menial
jobs for less than our native-born dropouts would do them
for. And by doing that, they not only put our own low-IQ pig-
fuckers out of work from their slaughterhouse and construc-
tion jobs, they also hinder the introduction of machines which
could automate the same category of work (e.g., picking
oranges, taking tickets in parking garages, etc.). Which, of
course, also retards the creation of the medium-skill jobs that
would exist for manufacturing and maintaining those ma-
chines, and the high-skilled work of designing the tech toys in
Hip Like Me 75

the first place. That is, cheap imported labor decreases the
pressure on us to become more productive.
Overall, if immigration created jobs and wealth, wouldn’t
Toronto be the wealthiest city in the world, with the lowest
unemployment rate anywhere on the face of the planet?
Well, it isn’t.
But at least we’re only screwing up our own country with
hopelessly naïve ideologies and politically correct policies
that can’t possibly work, right? Ah, unfortunately, ‘tis not so:
Australia’s multiculturalism policy (instituted in 1973) was in-
spired by Canada’s (1971).
You know you’re in bad shape, Oz, when you can’t even
come up with your own foolish ideas, and you instead have
to go around borrowing dismally wrong notions from others.
We will also, as of 2009, have a “black-focused alterna-
tive school” in Toronto, teaching subjects from an Afrocentric
perspective rather than the traditional “Eurocentric” one.
(The plan is for it to not be technically segregated along ra-
cial lines ... except that who but a black kid who was flunking
out of the regular school system would want to go to a
school with an explicit Afrocentric bias?)
No word yet on whether the curriculum will include the
established “fact” that Jesus was black; but with an “Afro-
centric” slant to their history, it wouldn’t be the least bit sur-
prising if it did.
Of course, if the “separate but equal” Afrocentric
schools for black kids in Toronto work out, the next step really
should be “separate but equal” Afrocentric seats for them in
the back of the city buses. Where, you know, they’ll be free
to cultivate their self-esteem, and feel pride in their heritage,
without interference by hegemonic, successful whites, Asians
or Jews, etc. You know, the ones who didn’t need to go to a
“special school” to make it through grade twelve.
The thing is, where I went to school in the ’70s it was only
the coolest kids who got to sit in the back of the bus. In fact,
if you could manage to sit in the rear couple of rows, behind
the tire hump, that’s pretty much how you knew you were
cool.
76 Hip Like Me

So I personally don’t see what was so bad about making

Negros sit in back in Mississippi, etc. On the contrary, if some-
one had forced even the cool whites to sit at the front with
the rest of the dorks and geeks, I can see how that would be
humiliating.
But that’s just the white, Christian culture I grew up in.
And thankfully, because we live in a multicultural society, its
values are widely recognized today as being as good as
those of any other culture.
Aren’t they?
Regardless, with any luck future segregated high-school
sports meets in Toronto will prepare our city’s disadvantaged
black youths, if not to function in a mixed-race society, then
at least for baseball’s Negro Leagues, where they may look
forward to long and fruitful careers, barnstorming through the
South. Satchel Paige would be proud.
Outside of the sports field, there’s actually at least one
other situation where you can get an approximately Jigsaw
environment: In the military, during times of war. There we’re
all on the same team, and we need each other to do well
and to discover and share information competently and
freely, regardless of our respective races or ethnic ancestries.
It’s the only way our team can win against a real foe.
As usual, though, multiculturalism throws a wrinkle into
the game. Because, should Canada ever find itself in a
global war, many of our Chinese-Canadians would go home
to China, our Russian-Canadians would go back to Russia,
and our Iranian-Canadians would return to Iran.
And with that predictable outcome of an irretrievably
stupid federal policy which encourages our visible minorities
to keep one foot in Canada and the other back in their na-
tive culture and homeland—or at least in their ancestors’
homeland—a significant chunk of our population would end
up fighting against us.
How’s that for gratitude? Not exactly what the people
who founded this country and defended it in two world wars
had in mind, is it?
Hip Like Me 77

August 17

I moved out of Tartu and into a house-hotel in Chinatown,

west of Dundas and Spadina, a couple of days ago.
I took the liberty of relocating Mango’s butt-watering
cup from the bathroom sink onto the kitchen table just be-
fore I walked out of there for the last time. Just in case he
needs it for drinking water.
I had never properly appreciated how great it is to come
from a culture that knows what toilet paper is for, and which
applies that basic knowledge to civilized life.
So, as befits the Chinese—“they only come up to your
knees,” as Monty Python used to sing in much less “correct”
times—the new and very temporary place is the tiniest room
I’ve ever been stuck in. Only eight feet by ten, which by itself
wouldn’t be so bad, except that there’s a double bed, a full-
size shower, a sink, and a toilet packed into the same space.
Plus the TV tray for my computer monitor, and another for my
toiletries. (High-speed Internet is included in the rent. I’m sur-
prised they found room for the LAN socket.)
I’m being very careful when I shower and towel-off, to
not splash any water onto my computer, two feet away.
I actually dropped two of my external hard drives onto
the sidewalk while moving in, but fortunately the first one
cushioned the fall for the second one, and I was just using
the first one for backup. So I only lost money, not data.
Whew!
Oh, and I saw a rat in the kitchen here. When I tried to
tell the very pregnant Chinese manager about it, though, we
hit a bit of a language barrier. I guess they don’t have rats in
China? She understood “mouse” and “really big,” though, so
I think the message eventually got through.
For a couple of days I thought I had lost my birth certifi-
cate and passport. Finally found them right where I had left
them, but in the last place I thought to look—tossed in with all
of my installation CDs. I was so relieved I almost cried.
But you know, if I really had permanently lost all my ID,
there’s an easy way out. All you have to do is apply for refu-
78 Hip Like Me

gee status, which you obviously don’t need any papers for—
all you need is a good story to tell the interviewing officers,
which you can make up and memorize beforehand. And
Canada’s the only place in the world where you can even
claim to be fleeing from persecution in the United States!
With an Immigration and Refugee Board approval rate of 60
to 90% (versus the global average of 15%), next thing you
know they’ve set you up with a new passport, and you’re liv-
ing on welfare.
Not only are the vast majority of the “refugees” who
wind up in Canada not running for their lives from oppression,
many are actually just using Canada as an easy way to en-
ter the United States. If you wonder why Canada is indeed a
“safe haven for terrorists,” that’s the reason. Hell, if Osama
bin Laden himself ever needed a place to crash (metaphori-
cally), he couldn’t do better than Canada. We probably
couldn’t even extradite him to the States ... because, you
know, those Nasty Americans have capital punishment. And
our national conscience just wouldn’t let us send someone to
his death in another country. It would be so ... un-Canadian.
So sit down, Osama. Be our guest. Take a load off. Any-
thing we can get you to make you more comfortable?
Donuts and coffee, perhaps? A copy of the Infidel Times?

August 19

I was walking through Kensington Market early this evening,

and a sort-of Gothic kid with his girlfriend came up to me:

Him: Hey dude, you look like you’re pretty old school.
What do you know about datura?
Me: Sorry?
Him: Datura.
Me: Nothing at all, whatever it may be.

So I went right home and Wikipedia’d it.

Ah, datura—jimson weed, thorn-apple, devil’s-trumpet.
Hallucinogen.
Hip Like Me 79

Did I mention I was wearing my Green Sunflower tie-dye

shirt at the time?
I’ve really gotta move to Amsterdam, where at least
some of the stuff I’m constantly suspected of doing/selling is
legal. ‘Cause really, the most exciting thing I “did” today was
the laundry.

August 20

I was sitting in the Free-Love tonight, waiting for my spot on

the open stage to come up. And I happened to turn my
head to see a cute brunette standing against the wall at the
back of the room.
Well, staring over your shoulder is a good way to get
caught looking—which I think they can arrest you for by
now—so I just allowed myself a quick glance in the dim light,
and then went back to watching the stage.
Half a song later Jennifer sat down beside me out of the
blue, and immediately started playing in my hair again.
“Hey, I didn’t even know you were here,” I said, smiling at
her.
“Of course not. I was in back.”
Ah. I stand corrected.
Regardless, she looked as good as always. And I would
have happily sat there all evening slowly turning into jelly
while waiting for my two-song slot to come up, but the house
PA kept screeching feedback in our ears. So after the fourth
or fifth time I suggested to Jennifer that we go outside in-
stead.
I grabbed my guitar, and took her dainty hand as I led
her out into the front room.
She quickly un-clasped us.
Hmm, hard-to-get, eh? Alright, I can play that game.
So we walked a short way up Spadina, found a patch of
grass, and sat down across from each other in the streetlight
and the moonlight. And, as promised, I played her some of
my stuff, starting with “Alas, Poor Yorick”—a lovesong from
80 Hip Like Me

Hamlet to the already-doomed Ophelia—and “Josephine,”

which has lyrics taken from Napoleon’s love-letters.
“So you’re a romantic,” she said, and smiled.
I grinned—“Yeah”—and played her the first “keeper”
song I ever wrote, back in my early twenties:

RED-HAIRED GIRL

In my eyes, red-haired girl

You are surrounded by adjectives
Words like cute, breathtaking, beautiful
Radiant, unapproachable
Words that you find in a big dictionary
When you’re checking the spelling
Of “contemporary”
Words that reflect what I see in your eyes
That can damn with faint praise
But can never describe

And your life, red-haired girl

Is a page, of thirty-one lines
Filled with poetry, big words that rhyme
And are spoke to the wind
With a penny and wish
And my life, red-haired girl
Is a noun, and it stands all alone
Near the margin of doubt
Lacking the power of action

I stopped playing.
“Damn,” I said. “I forgot to pay my bill.”
“They probably won’t even notice it.”
“No, it’ll come out of the receipts for the waitress—she’d
have to pay for it. I’ll go back later and take care of it.”
Which means I can’t segue into walking her home again.
Damn.
Hip Like Me 81

I resumed playing:

Oh, red-haired girl

Emerald eyes to die for
Flowing like a river
To the place it wants to be
My heart goes out to you
Like a cookie to the sea

“A cookie? Like, crumbling?” she asked, curious.

I laughed. “No. It’s from an old Peanuts cartoon. Charlie
Brown and Snoopy are hanging out together on their wall,
and Charlie Brown says, ‘How do you tell a girl that you think
she’s really pretty, and you’d like to spend time with her and
get to know her better?’ And Snoopy, in his wisdom, says
‘Give her a cookie.’”

And your life, red-haired girl

Is a page, empty page in a notebook
That I, that I would delight just to write on
In pencil, I think
‘Cause then it would work to erase
All the stumbling words, the mistakes
Reminders that you are the grace that you are
And I am just what I am

Oh, red-haired girl

Emerald eyes to die for
Running ‘cross the flowered fields
To the Emerald City
Is where you hold my heart
And there you hold the key
Is where you hold my heart

She clapped softly and rapidly. “That’s a thousand pairs

of hands in a concert hall.”
“Thanks.”
82 Hip Like Me

“Can I see your guitar?”

“Sure.”
I handed it over to her, and she began noodling around
on the fretboard.
“What kind of strings do you have?”
“Martin Silk & Steel. Paul and Richard recommended
them. So I can play for hours now without my fingers bleed-
ing.”
“It feels almost like an electric,” she said, bending the
strings. “I like to use a lot of suspended ... jazz chords.”
And she ran her nimble fingers down the fretboard, over
those six strings, just like she had run them through my long
hair less than half an hour before, leaving a beautifully disso-
nant trail of sus2’s and sus4’s I could barely keep track of.
“What is that song called?” I asked, my jaw hanging
down on the grass.
“I just made it up.”
Alright, she’s going to annoy the hell out of me in the
long run, with the “Let go’s” and the “Of course’s” and the
cantaloupes, but ... there’s nothing sexier than girlz with gui-
tarz. Gord Almighty.
She handed the instrument back to me, and then
dropped a bomb Phil Lesh would have been proud of:
“I had a big fight with the guy I’ve been seeing since
June....”
June. Seeing since June. Wait, it was less than a month
ago that we were making out in her lobby, and if she’s been
seeing someone else since June ... what’s August minus June
... two months? Two months, that means....
“He’s taking his boat back down to California for the win-
ter. I don’t want him to go. We had a huge fight about it a
couple of days ago, and I haven’t been able to sleep since.”
Argh!!! So that’s why she’s such a big fan of “The Circle is
Small”: It’s about her!
Freud would have picked up on that. Damn it!
Well, that all sort of spoiled the mood, so she got up to
walk home, we hugged a lukewarm goodbye, and I crawled
Hip Like Me 83

back to the café to pay my forgotten bill and try to figure out
how something that looked like clear sailing all the way to
Christian Island turned into the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzger-
ald.
At least I’ll get a song out of this though, right? Like when
Gordon Lightfoot was worried that Cathy Evelyn Smith was
sneaking around on him behind his back (stairs)—while he
was already married to someone else—and he wrote his
biggest hit, “Sundown.”
Of course, that was years before she injected John Be-
lushi with those fatal speedballs....

August 27

The Free-Love has this big bowl of fortune cookies out on the
bar. Which is kind of odd, seeing as the owner is Jewish. So
I’ve been dipping into the Baileys and coffee tonight after
an afternoon of rum-and-Cokes, and improvising an Asian
dessert.
First cookie: “You are demonstrative with those you love.”
Well yes. No doubt. Eight days a week. But, as Queen
once sang, “Find me somebody to love.”
Second cookie: “You have yearning for perfection.”
Truer words were never spoken. Damn, these cookies
really know what they’re talking about.
Third: “Your luck has been completely changed tobay
[sic].”
Well, I certainly hope so. If I had as much luck in real life
as I’ve had on eBay—sold my Scholz Rockman rackmount
there last autumn for more than I had paid for it, and put the
full amount into ... well, rent—“tobay” would be enough, I
wouldn’t even need to worry about “toborrow.”
Fortune cookie: “You lead a useful life no matter what
riches are coming to you.”
Ain’t it the truth. “Rags to riches,” that’s my story. Well,
except for the “riches” part.
84 Hip Like Me

Cookie: “Watch your relations with other people care-

fully, be reserved.”
What, even more reserved than I already am? That ain’t
gonna be easy.
“Find release from your cares, have a good time.”
Now that’s the kind of Confucian wisdom I could stand
to hear a lot more ounces of.
“An angry man opens his mouth and shuts up his eyes.”
Alright, I suppose. Your point being...?
Eighth cookie: “You will enjoy good health.”
Well yeah. Hey, you may have lost everything else, had
everything you’ve ever hoped for fall to pieces, but as long
as you’ve still got your health....
Stupid, patronizing cookies.
Anyway, the café owner eventually came by out of her
basement office and sat down next to me, and we wound
up chatting.
Turns out that her brother was the first Jewish program-
mer ever hired by HAL Canada, in the 1960s. Prior to that, it
was obviously a very WASPy environment.
And yet, I’ve been told by a reliable, world-class cracker
source (same one as before), who worked for HAL several
years ago, that their I.T. department today is majority Chi-
nese.
How did this happen? How did the red, white and blue-
chip American tech company end up being “yellow on the
inside” in its Canadian headquarters?
It’s not for the Asian technical or communication skills, I
can assure you. I’ve worked with two Chinese database
administrators, neither of whom could speak English well
enough to relay technical information competently in a real-
world I.T. environment. (One of them had already been in
Canada for seven years at that point. If you can’t learn a
language in seven years of immersion....) Truly good people,
both of them; but that didn’t stop the nose-picking, grunting
one from trying to install Oracle 7 on top of version 8 of the
same database, fully expecting that to work rather than to
irretrievably hose the server.
Hip Like Me 85

How do you fix a mistake like that? Can you say “Format
C:”?
And no, he hadn’t first made backups of any of the
stored procedures he had spent the previous three days
creating. Why would he have?
So, if you had been under the impression that work visas
exist to let in the “best and the brightest” from overseas, you
were sadly mistaken.
Anyway, how I.T. at HAL Canada ended up being in the
control of our Asian friends is basically this:
A person of Chinese ancestry works his (or her) way up
into a management position with the company, or is even
hired externally as a project manager or programming team
lead, say.
They can’t communicate properly with the English-
speaking developers there. But, they can communicate with
other Chinglish-speakers. So they hire more of the latter. Plus,
if a programming job is advertised for $20/hr., you’ll always
be able to find a recent immigrant who will do it for $15. So
you’re saving money for the company by hiring the Chinese/
ESL software engineer over the Canadian one, and probably
even being lauded and given extra bonus dollars at salary-
review time for that fiscal restraint ... even though, in I.T. as
everywhere else, you get the quality of work that you pay
for—a principle which managers typically lack the gene to
understand.
If you play that dynamic out over several decades, you
will find yourself with a very diverse workplace indeed. Or
“diverse” at least until it becomes monolithically Chinese.
Mao would have wanted it that way. Probably the NDP
would, too.

August 28

Went walking up Spadina today to the Kinko’s on Bloor, to

print off some guitar tablature.
86 Hip Like Me

As I passed the greenspace where I used to practice gui-

tar, a disheveled First Nations (i.e., Indian) guy on the park
bench by the U of T Sociology building called out a hello, in
my general direction.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Native Americans.
Even the Iroquois, who “took captives home to torture them
before death” after their battles. Because, like the East Indi-
ans, they have a rich history of respect for sages and warriors
with long hair.
Conversely, I’ve never been hassled by anyone from ei-
ther culture just for looking like Jesus during his hypothesized
lost years in India. (By contrast, Chinese/Zen sages are typi-
cally bald as a cucumber. So it’s just as well if Jesus never
wandered that far East: you can only imagine the prejudice
he would have faced, there ... not to mention the difficulty
he would surely have had in finding a washroom or a paddy
field which longhairs were allowed to use.)
So I half-waved back—a lot of go-nowhere Indians hang
out around that corner, and I figured this might be one of the
ones I had bumped into over the summer.
He yells back: “Not you! Faggot!”
So I mimed a “Diogenes handshake” back at him, and
kept on walking. After all, his people were here first. That’s
why they’re called the First Nations.
Of course, since the first white man (and woman) got
here, we’ve been “a nation of immigrants.” But then, so is
every other country in the world, with the exception of that
stretch of land somewhere in northeastern Africa where our
species first came down from the trees—at a time when the
entire human race was black. The idea that being the first,
aboriginal group of Homo sapiens to reach a piece of land
gives you some special claim on it is so ... well, species-ist.
Because you know who was here, in North America, be-
fore the Indians? The woolly mammoths, horses, and camels
(yes, camels!), that’s who. And you know what happened to
them? In brief, the early Native Americans slaughtered them.
All of them. And it’s not as though they were eating or using
every part of their prey, either. On the contrary, “Clovis mam-
Hip Like Me 87

moth kills prove to have been only partly butchered, suggest-

ing very wasteful and selective utilization of meat by people
living amidst an abundance of game. Some hunting proba-
bly wasn’t for meat at all but for ivory, hides, or just ma-
chismo.”
The advantage of having exterminated every member
of a species or race, of course, is that there are no descen-
dents left to point out how you shouldn’t have done that. So,
a tip of the hat to those thorough, homo-aboriginal hunters:
even the later white settlers with rifles didn’t manage to
completely kill off the buffalo, though it certainly wasn’t for
lack of trying.
Still, should we ever manage to clone any of those lost
animals, and if they could talk, it would be interesting to see
what sort of apologies they might demand for being on the
receiving end of the reckless extermination—almost a geno-
cide, really—wrought by Homo aboriginalis on all continents
where the large game hadn’t seen human beings before.
Anyway, when I was working at the fishing lodge, one of
my mini-jobs was to drive the Native guides back to their
homes on the reservation five miles away, when the fishing
day was done. I’ve seen beautiful, two-year-old houses with
the windows busted out and then covered with plastic film,
never to be fixed, where the man of the house was working
as a carpenter at the lodge, and doing very good work
there. I’ve also seen enough of their tribal chiefs to know that
they’re every bit as honest and competent as our own politi-
cal leaders are, if you follow what I’m saying. All of which has
left me agreeing with John Ibbitson and Roger Sandall, that
for any young adult on a reservation, leaving that environ-
ment now, getting a job in the city, and going back to
school is indeed “the only chance you have to rescue what
is about to become your wasted life.”

August 29

Played new-ton’s again, with Paul and Richard doing the

open stage before me.
88 Hip Like Me

Only Richard was actually listening to my stuff, but he

applauded sincerely, and told me afterward that it was fun
for him to see me improve from one time to the next.
I thought I had sucked, but I guess you know you’re get-
ting better when even a bad day impresses people who are
far better musicians than you can even imagine being.
So we all hung around for a few beers. Paul mentioned
that his next album is going to be produced by one of the
top folk-music producer names in the country, and he gave
me some advice about choosing songs for the demo.
Four songs, with him and Richard doing the fancy-orna-
mentation guitar parts on top of my main part. Very cool.
And just before Richard poked me playfully in the stom-
ach and told me to call them to set up studio time, he said:
“People are assholes. When you meet someone decent,
you want to try and help him out.”
Ah, a misanthrope after my own fractured heart.

September 5

Did a half-hour feature at Fat Einsteins tonight to open their

new season, after the summer hiatus.
Back when Jackson Browne was hot musical shit, he saw
a barely-legal Daryl Hannah in the audience at one of his
shows, had his roadies bring her backstage, and they ended
up in a fourteen-year relationship together.
Tonight didn’t go quite that well for me, but still, no com-
plaints—other than that the bigoted security guard from
back in May was hanging around before the show started.
(Yes, he was checking on the bathroom again when I want-
ed to use it. So I decided to just “hold it” ‘til after the show.)
The best part was that I got a bunch of compliments on
my songwriting from a woman who used to write songs for
the Canadian version of Sesame Street. She was especially
impressed by the last song I played—“Pockets”—which she
said “had a lot of great lines.”
Well, judge for yourself:
Hip Like Me 89

POCKETS

Saw you in Central Park

Feeding ducks and drakes, and I was lost
In the dying rays of Indian Summer
The forecast of a killing frost

I wandered evenings through the woods

To your door and prayers unlocked it
And while I had my hand upon your breast
You stuffed my heart into your pocket

Deep in the pocket of your tight blue jeans

I was tumbling
With your lotto picks and car keys

I starved an August fever

Swallowed medicine and hailstones
Felt the brace of your cold shoulder
The hoarfrost on your collarbone

Felt the blood drain from my cheeks

Saw my face turn ashen grey
And from the way you shook your head
It’s obvious it was my fault anyway

Deep in the pocket of a clean white coat

I’m a stethoscope
I can hear what you don’t say

I see you’re bored again

High heels and craving spontaneity
And I’m so predictable
Seems I’ll always love you so predictably
90 Hip Like Me

And bend whichever way you please

Just toss me on the coffee table
With your ticket stubs and car keys

There was something in my chest

The way it used to beat reminded me of you
And there was something in my head
Craziness all tangled up in blue

Felt you stir in the morning light

Pulled my tired eyes from their sockets
Grabbed my overcoat and keys
Stuffed some memories in my pocket

Words are treacherous and deep

And I have promises I will not keep
The silent flight of ducks and drakes
And I have miles to go before you wake
Oh, before you wake

Sadly, no good deed goes unpunished.

Après the show I was walking down College Street, just
enjoying the warm late-summer air. Stopping (literally) to
smell the roses (metaphorically) on the near-deserted side-
walk.
And some little piss-proud eighteen-year-old jerk walks
up briskly from behind me and says, right out of nowhere,
clearly annoyed with me:
“What is your problem? Don’t you know where you’re
going?” With just a trace of a Middle-Eastern accent—mean-
ing that he probably wasn’t even born here.
To which the appropriate response is, I believe, to para-
phrase South Park: “Fuck Mohammed. Fuck Mohammed and
his seventy-two virgins right up the ass.”
Great, now I’m going to wind up on the wrong end of a
fatwa, too. If anyone needs me, I’ll be hiding out with Salman
Rushdie.
Hip Like Me 91

The worst part is, “fatwa” just sounds so offensive and un-
necessarily hurtful. It’s like something you’d put out on Rosie
O’Donnell, if you wanted to see her lose weight.
And really, who wouldn’t like to see that?
Because, painful as it may be to admit, we live in a cul-
ture that values thinwa over fatwa. And you can’t blame
Ayatollah Khomeini or even Cat Stevens for that. You can’t
blame them for our immigration policies, either—it’s not their
fault that we can’t give away our freedoms and Western
standard of living fast enough, to immigrant cab drivers and
their bullying, shithead kids.
A couple of years ago every native-born Canadian in To-
ronto—I assume I’m not the only one left—was forced to en-
dure the “hire an immigrant” campaign. There were annoy-
ing-as-hell posters plastered all over the subway and in bus
shelters, pointing out how “unfair” it was that recent immi-
grants with Ph.D.’s were working McJobs.
Their slogan was simply “Hire an Immigrant,” but it really
should have been: “Hire an Immigrant—Put a Canadian out
of Work.”
If immigrants with doctoral degrees end up driving taxi-
cabs in the most famously multicultural city in the world, the
problem is not that they’re not being given a fair chance by
the “white hegemonic power structure” in this supposed
“land of opportunity.” On the contrary, assuming they can
speak English fluently—which is no small or safe assumption,
as the USS Pidgin proved—the simple fact that they can’t
find work in their fields of expertise shows that those fields are
already saturated with workers. Which means that the new
immigrants in question, however much they may have been
the “Persian cat’s ass” back in the seventh-century Land of
Allah, should never have been allowed into this country to
work in the first place: Ph.D. or no Ph.D., the jobs for their pro-
fessional skillsets simply don’t exist here.
Is that too obvious?
No corporation would be so generous as to give a desk
and a paycheck to any old schmoe who wants a job ... even
if he happens to be the secretary’s mother’s brother-in-law.
92 Hip Like Me

Rather, unless you really want to run a business into the

ground—and I’ve worked for a few where that did indeed
seem to be the managerial philosophy—you only hire people
if they can be reasonably expected to add value to the
company, while also fitting into the existing corporate cul-
ture.
Suppose, for example, that you were confronted with an
interviewee, of a random race, color and creed, who spoke
openly about taking over your company, and who intended
to substitute the moral code of his religion for your existing
employee handbook: to ban alcohol at office parties, take
away your secretaries’ high-heeled shoes, and cover them
all in shapeless fabric from head-to-foot lest they provoke the
uncontrollable lust of the nearest virgin-coveting, lustful male
virgin. Would you hire that man? Or would you politely thank
him for his time, and then have security escort him out of the
building? Permanently.
If you care enough to do the right thing for the good of a
corporation which has done nothing more to deserve your
loyalty than provide you with a paycheck in return for whor-
ing your life away for The Man, man ... well, your civilized
country deserves at least as much respect and consideration
for its future. It’s not even about patriotism, or membership in
a nationwide in-group; it’s rather just about maintaining a
relatively safe island of freedom, with secure borders, in a
world of violent insanity.
Culture aside, what’s a good, quick way of gauging
whether any given person is likely to be an asset to the bot-
tom line of Canada, Ltd., or America, Inc.?

[A 1997 report by the U.S. National Research Council]

found that the average immigrant high-school dropout
would cost American taxpayers a total of $89,000
over his lifetime, and that an immigrant with only a
high-school degree would still cost taxpayers $31,000.
An immigrant with education beyond high school,
though, was estimated to create a fiscal benefit of
$105,000 over his lifetime....
Hip Like Me 93

“It takes the entire net tax payments (taxes paid

minus benefits received) of one college-educated fam-
ily to pay for the net benefits received by one low
skill immigrant family.”

What that suggests is that low-wage rednecks—even

those who were born here—are for the most part an eco-
nomic drain on society: they consistently take more, in social
services and the like, than they’re capable of giving back in
taxes. Happily for them, though, they’re too pig-fucking stu-
pid to realize that simple fact, instead imagining themselves
to be doing the “real work” in the world, when in reality
they’re being subsidized by people with brains.
But ain’t that always how it goes with the proles....
Of course, there are plenty of people walking around
with easy, meaningless university degrees that don’t even
require an average white IQ to complete. So, a real degree is
actually worth way more than a mere six figures to a country
where the relevant skills are genuinely needed, i.e., when hir-
ing the new immigrant doesn’t just mean putting a native
Canuck or Yankee or Limey or Frog out of work and into re-
training.
Actually, if it was up to me, anyone who is 80th percentile
or higher in global standing in his/her profession would have
free movement throughout the world, to work wherever they
wanted to. Given the well-established fact that the top
twenty percent of the people in any field do from fifty to
eighty percent of the work, these are workers that any coun-
try would be lucky to have—as long as they’re not blood-
thirsty terrorists or piss-proud eighteen-year-old sons of cab
drivers, I mean.
If that means putting incompetent Canadians out of
work, fine: If you’re in the bottom 20% of your field, you’re
basically by definition working outside of your region of com-
petence to begin with. (Fortunately, the Pig-Fucking Plant in
Orangeville is hiring. Pace yourself: You don’t want to wear
yourself out on the first day.) But how many of the foreign-
born Ph.D.’s who end up driving taxicabs in the Western
94 Hip Like Me

world do you think are in the top twenty percent, globally, of

their doctoral professions? Or even in the top half?
The best part is that the whole cab-driving Muslim notion
of “seventy-two virgins” in Paradise is actually just a mistrans-
lation: What they’ve really been promised is six dozen sweet
white raisins.
So there’s a whole lot of cabbies in Toronto who are in for
one hell of a disappointment when they pull up at the pearly
gates, in their “white wedding” suits, to pick up that Great
Fare in the Sky.

September 9

I was out in Scarborough for a medical appointment early

this morning, so I decided to grab a tea and muffin on the
way back, at the Tim Hortons at College and Yonge.
Tim Hortons is like Starbucks, except with the emphasis on
donuts and donut holes (“Timbits”) instead of exotic coffees.
We have Starbucks in Canada too, of course. But no de-
signer-coffee place could ever satisfy the raw, early-morning
hunger of Timbit Nation.
The chain was actually founded by a former Maple Leafs
All-Star defenseman in the mid-’60s; it’s now bigger than
McDonald’s in Canada ... and in Afghanistan, where they’ve
got a franchise located conveniently near the airstrip for the
Canadian Forces Base in Kandahar.
You can’t fight terrorism and rebuild a country on an
empty stomach.
The plus-sized Canadian singer Rita MacNeil once told a
story on her TV variety show, about asking her uncle what
Christmas meant to him.
The grizzled old gent thought for awhile, rubbed his chin,
and then gave his sagely answer:
“Tim Hortons is closed.”
Well, it wasn’t closed today. Rather, it was packed with
at least one person too many: a greasy, unshaved white
Hip Like Me 95

teenager who had obviously just rolled out of bed without a

hairbrush, and who was panhandling in the store itself.
It’s not as though it was cold outside—on the contrary,
this was just a young, able-bodied man with no sense of
shame at all.
I avoided him, and took my tea and muffin down to the
food court in the basement of the building, being coinciden-
tally followed there by a well-dressed European man carrying
a newspaper, laptop, and his own Horton-esque breakfast.
And as I’m unwrapping my muffin, the same shiftless
teenage greaseball starts drifting toward the array of tables,
still annoying anyone who would listen.
I saw him coming, and groaned: “Not again!”
He mumbled past, asking for spare change, as I looked
over at the businessman, dumbfounded:
“He was just up there!”
The gentleman smiled and nodded, we got to talking a
little, and he mentioned about how immigrants tended to
work harder than native Canadians—apparently he was a
recent immigrant himself.
In that context, I couldn’t really argue with him. Panhan-
dling is one thing. Aggressive panhandling is another, where
you’re fully justified, in my opinion—as I’ve concluded only
after being hassled by more than one such mouthy bum—
telling the person to get a job. But whoring a donut-shop
line....
And there were actually people giving money to him!

September 12

I headed out from the 8-by-10 around noon with my guitar,

to practice in front of the Fields Institute on the south edge of
the U of Toronto campus. Just a hint of autumn in the air, the
leaves changing color, and beautiful coeds walking to and
fro as far as the eye can see—perfect for writing a lovesong.
The Fields Medal is the mathematicians’ version of the
Nobel Prize; the Institute a few yards away from where I’m
96 Hip Like Me

sitting is one of the world’s more noteworthy places where

cutting-edge mathematics is created ... or discovered, if you
prefer.
I’ve been strenuously resisting the urge to add the word
“Strawberry” to their plastic sign, in red lipstick or something
else that would wash off easily and not do any permanent
damage.
My mama didn’t raise me to be no vandal.
After hearing me practice there on Wednesday evenings
for more than a month over the summer, always in prepara-
tion for the open stage at new-ton’s across the street, the
building’s elderly cleaning lady approached me. Turns out
that her late grandfather used to play some sort of stringed
instrument—she didn’t even remember what kind, but hear-
ing me play always reminded her of him.
How sweet of her to say so—to feel moved by the music,
even though her feelings had nothing to do with what I was
playing.
The building is also home to many cute secretaries who
give one, as they walk past over the noon hour, a new ap-
preciation for the beauty of “symmetry groups.”
As a measure of the poverty which borders that world-
class institute of learning, however, the homeless and their kin
regularly paw through the trashcan by the front doors of the
Institute, hoping to find discarded books. Not to read them,
of course: to sell them, for whatever few cents or dollars a
discarded math text might fetch.
Less-literate bums find the adjacent columnar ashtray,
and the sidewalk below it, to be a good source of cigarette
butts.
A well-kempt man and woman on their lunch hour
walked over and sat down next to me on the low stone wall,
smiling in the balmy sunshine.
“Looks like we’ve got live music.”
I grinned back—“I guess so”—and started picking away
at my song-to-be, starting with something about “If we can
put a man on the moon/How hard could it be” to figure out
what a woman is thinking.
Hip Like Me 97

Hmm, I wonder how Jennifer’s doing....

A few minutes later a “downtown redneck” walks up and
sits down on a short bench by the ashtray, talking loudly to
no one in particular in between agitated puffs from his ciga-
rette:
“I used to have a job. A good job.”
Yeah? Sorry to hear about that, buddy. You’ve still got
your cigarettes, though—that’s more than some people
have.
“And then they move me along,” he carps.
Uh-huh.
You don’t live in this city for long without realizing that the
streets are filled with crazy people, angry about one thing or
another. Or sometimes they’re not even pissed off about
anything, just plain crazy: Earlier in the summer, I had a guy
come up to me in the same spot and inform me, out of the
blue, that he was a patient at the nearby Centre for Addic-
tion and Mental Health.
That spooked me a little at first, but then he explained
that he was just receiving treatment because he was bipolar.
I’ve worked with manic depressives before—programming
can (seriously) do that to people, as I discovered under Ivan
the Terrible, where it gets to the point where you wish you
had just been a lumberjack instead. As long as they take
their medication, they’re not psychotic at all.
So at his request, I sang Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could
Read My Mind” for him. And then he asked if he could sing
one for me.
“Sure.”
So he belted out a pretty good a cappella version of
“My Way.” And then, after cheerfully complimenting my
country-full-moon-themed t-shirt, he walked off across the
grass toward the university bookstore ... all the while doing an
encore performance of Sinatra’s signature tune, for anyone
who cared to listen.
“Crazy” ones (on medication) like that are okay—it’s the
crazy and angry ones without medication that you have to
worry about.
98 Hip Like Me

Like, for example, this guy with the cigarette, who’s been
muttering unhappily in a continuous, barely audible stream,
still to no obvious person in particular, for a good five or ten
minutes by now. While I’m trying to work up metaphors for
space travel and Neil Armstrong and Marilu Henner losing her
virginity in the shower on the night of the first moon landing.
“One small step for man.”
When I finally stopped playing, he stopped talking.
I played a little more, and then looked up to find him
staring straight at me.
Oh, now I get it. That’s the message.
I picked up my guitar and case, and walked over toward
the bookstore, to be allowed to practice in peace, without
being hassled by the truly pathetic scum of society in ways
which you would have thought had been left behind in junior
high school.
When I looked back, he too had moved on. His only pur-
pose in sitting down there in the first place, after all, had
been to intimidate me into moving.
The thing is, I’m 98% sure that this was the same Neander-
thal who was furious with me back in spring at Osgoode Sta-
tion, simply for my re-trying a subway token after a turnstile
had already rejected it once.
After I got through there—yes, on the second try at the
same gate with the same token—I heard some commotion,
several yards behind me.
“You don’t keep trying it!” the Smoking Homeless Man
sputtered, as he clawed angrily at the rejected-token slot,
hoping to get lucky.
He wasn’t waiting impatiently behind me to get through
the same turnstile or anything—the station was empty. It’s just
that he’s an angry, unstable failure who gets told to move
along when he loiters, and I’m a longhair who’s the real drain
on society.
And somebody needs to point that out to me, right?
Somebody like him, or the bag lady on College just
around the corner from the Scott Mission back in July—same
week I met Jennifer.
Hip Like Me 99

I was stealing a few minutes of practice on a streetcorner

by a paint store, prior to taking in Paul’s solo show at the
Free-Love. And while I’m happily fretting away, a disheveled,
sixty-ish woman pushes a shopping cart past me on the
sidewalk, scowling at me as she passes.
Then she stops, barely still in sight around the corner, glar-
ing straight back at me, and says:
“They move me along.”
Yeah, I can imagine. And therefore, because you’re
treated like garbage by the world—not altogether without
reason, mind—you can’t pass up the opportunity to treat
someone else in the same way.
To coin a phrase, “As ye are shat upon, so shall ye shit.”
It got me thinking about my first weekend in Toronto, driv-
ing past a homeless man seated on the front steps of a
church, eating a piece of white bread. Nothing so shocking
there, except that he was meticulously picking up any small
crumbs that had fallen onto the dirty concrete steps below,
and eating them too, while pigeons fluttered around in be-
tween his feet, competing for the bounty.
So a few weeks later, while living in the basement at Se-
nile Excrement Hills, I wrote this song:

SPARROWS

Crouched at the top of dirty church steps

Bowed, his aging head
A homeless man
Savors a crust of white bread
Meal fit for a prince or pauper

Then gath’ring every dropped crumb and smidgeon

In greed he swallows those
No charity
No charity for the
Sparrows and pigeons
100 Hip Like Me

God sees every sparrow fall

And lets them fall
He sees every vulture rise
And lets them fly

Sleeping cold outside the Scott Mission

Devoid of pride, hope and ambition
Failure eats at her hungry heart
Everything she’s begged
Borrowed or stolen
Stuffed in a shopping cart

She stirs and bumps her head on the brick wall

A Who without a home
In a world
World with a heart
Two sizes too small

God sees every sparrow fall

And lets them fall
He sees every vulture rise
And lets them fly

But if you can believe the love of Jesus

Is more than fiction
There’s a toast, hot coffee and eggs benediction
Set out by the Sisters of Mercy
For their downtrodden brothers
Of endless misery

You can join them for commiseration

In the smell of urine and stale salvation
The flotsam and jetsam lost in the storm
The dregs of Christmas Day
When Christ was stillborn
Hip Like Me 101

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?

Are not two hot dogs hocked for three bucks?
There but for the fading grace of God
In whom we trust
In whom we trust

Anyway, fast-forward to eight years later, and if you’ve

never had a homeless shopping-cart lady try to stare you
down and put you in your place ... it’s actually kinda funny.
Except that I’m betting she doesn’t do that to every busker
she passes on the street. Maybe just the long-haired ones.
And the really unfunny thing is that, when she had a roof
over her head, she had exactly the same prejudices as she
does now. And depending on how much power and money
she had “back in the day” when she may have even been
something to look at, it was far less of a joke when she tried
to enforce them.
Because if her current behavior had anything at all to do
with my appearance, she might well have previously gotten
away with that to the detriment of ... oh, I don’t know, may-
be some hippie who lost out on a job because of her ... and
wound up living on the street because of that.
Everyone has a history. Who knows—maybe the ciga-
rette-smoking jerk out in front of Fields is her son.
If he isn’t, he certainly should be. As should the redneck
moron I encountered a year ago in an otherwise-empty sub-
way car, coming down Yonge early on a Sunday morning.
I got on at Yorkville; he was already at the end of the
car, messing around un-self-consciously with a backpack.
And as the train starts moving, he gets up, takes off his outer
shirt, and snaps it like a towel, presumably to get all the coo-
ties off it.
Understandably, I turned to look at the source of that
sharp sound, raising my eyebrows.
Unfortunately, among some of the higher primates, turn-
ing to look at a loud, sharp noise with raised eyebrows is re-
garded as a form of aggression. As his glare let me know.
102 Hip Like Me

Needless to say, I spent the rest of that trip minding my

own business—“knowing my place,” as it were. Except that I
briefly made the mistake of again glancing in his general di-
rection, doubtless in response to more of his continual muck-
ing-about.
That was evidently his cue to start carping at me, sub-
audibly—as such cowards are wont to do, safely immune
from any reprisal—with his narrowed, impotent, pig-fucking
yokel eyes rooted firmly on me.
Among some of the lower primates, an unblinking stare
coupled with quiet muttering is regarded as an expression of
homoerotic arousal.
Not that he was even in my league.
And so, right down to when I got off at Eglinton, he kept
his “hate stare” fixed on me, yapping primitive redneck jun-
gle sounds all the way.
Nothing can describe the withering horror of this.

September 18

Got back from viewing an apartment-hotel room up near

the intersection of Desolation Road and Rock Bottom Drive
today. Being guided on that tour by the sour-perfume smell
of an unattractive, barely competent woman who’s thirty
pounds overweight even in her early twenties, and is sure to
end up as somebody’s spinster aunt.
The building is actually slated for demolition in a year or
two, to put up condos instead. But in the meantime, there’s
only one other person currently living on the eighth floor, so it
should be blissfully quiet—my very own ghost town, looking
down over a Catholic-school football field.
The other room they showed me was on the ninth floor—
opposite a suite whose occupant seems to have made him-
self at home in the building, with a wreath on the door and
all—but with much less of a view, and no proper table.
Half of the nearby major intersection has been revital-
ized, with a shiny-new supermarket, pizza place, drugstore,
Hip Like Me 103

luxury rentals, more condos already under construction, and

a couple of gated communities. The other half is decrepit:
An old goodwill store, a soup kitchen, a Harvey’s that’s gone
out of business, and more underclass black people than I’ve
ever seen in one place before. The miscegenating border of
spanking-newness, poverty, and functional illiteracy.
Worse, there’s not a pub for miles around—even the Hei-
neken signs hovering in the mist above the storefronts are just
for licensed restaurants. (“Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!
She has been setting a light to our beacon, which, I just re-
membered, is Heineken-shaped.”)
And the rent? A mere $1000 plus change per month, with
no long-term commitment.
Reasonable enough, for Toronto. And having a proper
space of my own should at least get me back into practicing
guitar again, which I’ve hardly done for the past month. With
the Chinatown hole-in-the-wall being so cramped, and after
a summer of being “moved along” by the city’s rabble, and
with the weather turning colder, I’ve inadvertently slipped
back into doing too much of the “easy” thing.
By which I mean, staying inside and reading. Pinker,
cognitive science, deep history. Fascinating stuff, all of it ...
but none of which will get me one step closer to having my
picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

September 25

Moved into Desolation Towers yesterday.

I only finished that cab-assisted relocation near midnight,
and didn’t bother looking through my new closets before
that. Turns out they hadn’t given me any linens, towels or
soap at all. So I ended up sleeping on the couch.
Good thing I had my bath towel—Douglas Adams would
have been proud.
It’s a decent-sized suite, especially when the bed is
folded up into the couch—a 400% increase in square feet
from the Chinatown shoebox, with a kitchen, bathroom, and
a make-up room suitable for a young Farrah Fawcett.
104 Hip Like Me

There’s a chest of drawers and a trio of half-size glass cof-

fee tables to match the glass dinner table by the eighteen
feet of sliding windows looking out over my new balcony.
As always, the table will be reserved for my computer—I
need a comfortable workspace more than I need to throw
dinner parties for my imaginary friends. As long as I can see
my flat-screen monitor while I eat, I’ll be fine.
For ornamentation, they’ve given me a ten-inch high
statue of a black stallion, and a six-inch tall fake-ivory ele-
phant on the corner shelves. And opposite the plush green
fold-out couch set against the wall, an old 24-inch Electro-
home color TV with a Zenith cable box. All sitting on a retro
Mack-Tacked wooden trolley with coasters on a light-brown,
short-pile rug.
It’s like living on the set of That ’70s Show. Right down to
the hall carpet being patterned with orange and black rec-
tangles—all of the lines are at 45 or 90 degrees to one an-
other. With suite doors alternating between orange and dark
pea-green as you walk toward the elevator past water-
stained cream walls.
Behind and above the TV, there’s a framed photo—
“Cape Light”—by the world-renowned artist Joel Meyerowitz.
The picture is taken from one room on the main floor of a
house, through a hallway with a throw-rug on the floor, to an
open screen door on the far wall of the house foyer. And
there’s a bedroom just visible on the right-hand side of the
photograph.
I suppose it’s meant to make my room look bigger, hav-
ing that screen door just “across the hall.”
A few other technical difficulties: The toaster dial is stuck
on “very light,” so bread comes out just about the same
color and texture as it went in. For the stove, only the upper-
left element actually works, and only settings 3, 4 and 5 out
of 10 on that give any heat. So I can make banana pan-
cakes with the thin skillet they’ve given me, but there’s a high
carbon content in the finished product. And while the A/C
unit in the wall blows plenty of air, none of it’s cold.
“Be it ever so crumbled”....
Hip Like Me 105

Oh, and there’s silverfish in the bathroom. But just a few.

So after leaving a message with the office about the
linen situation, I walked down to the supermarket to pick up
some dishtowels and detergent.
And standing in line with my basket at the checkout, I’ve
gotta say: I’ve never seen so many brutally unattractive and
obviously uneducated people in one place before. One af-
ter another, the cashiers and customers look like escapees
from an ugly carnival—people who fell down off the high-
wire of life face-first once too often, without a net. No light in
their eyes at all.
If I needed proof of the correlation between attractive-
ness and income, and between intelligence and income,
there’s a whole study-waiting-to-happen right here.
All of which would have to be related to the “Jefferson
effect.”
Because when George and Weezy “moved on up” out
of Queens to their deluxe apartment in Manhattan, they
weren’t just taking their money and knowledge of dry-
cleaning out of the working-class neighborhood. They were
also taking the genes which gave rise to their success, out of
that region.
And then what was left in the ghetto gene pool in TV-
land? Jimmie “J.J.” Walker, Willis and Arnold from Diff’rent
Strokes, the guys on What’s Happening!!—who were all either
too smart, too shy, or too fat (Rerun) to be getting any action
with the girls—and maybe some of the dumber Sweathogs
who didn’t even have lines on Welcome Back, Kotter.
When even the best of Gabe’s inner-city kids were con-
sistently “so confuuused” by the simplest ideas, you knew
that there was no hope for the likes of Rerun—the highlight of
his life was always going to be getting caught trying to boot-
leg that Doobie Brothers show.
To put it bluntly, when the smart and successful people
leave a poor community, the genes which gave rise to their
expressions of intelligence and success leave with them. So
the average intelligence of the people in Manhattan goes
up, while that in Queens goes down.
106 Hip Like Me

Obviously, smart hard-working people deserve to make

more money than dumb, lazy ones. But the reality is that their
very success, and the hard-earned good fortune of many
others like them, coupled with the unavoidable desirability of
living in a better neighborhood, creates a genetically based
difference in intelligence between the rich and the poor
classes, and their corresponding neighborhoods.
That “Jefferson effect” will happen anywhere members
of the lower socioeconomic classes can claw their way up in
the world by a combination of hard work and intelligence.
(That’s even truer if you want to broaden “intelligence” to
include “bodily-kinesthetic” talents, e.g., the ability to play
basketball or hacky sack.) It happens for people migrating
“Out of Queens.” It happens with every sustained “brain
drain” across a provincial or national border. It even hap-
pened in the English aristocracy, where peerages were cre-
ated for the most successful commoners, thus depleting the
peasant gene pool. (Needless to say, no 85-IQ “Elizabethan
redneck” peasant, for whom the Friday-afternoon pillorying
was a much-anticipated “cultural event,” was ever in dan-
ger of occupying such a peerage, much less of having a say
in how the Bard’s country was run. And that, of course, is why
we should be thankful to live today in a democracy, where
university-educated, cultured individuals are allowed no
more say in how things are done than the average pig-
fucker and/or Leafs fan.)
The same genetic drain of course also happens when
the smartest country mice move to the city, taking the ge-
netic basis for their success out of the country and into town,
thus simultaneously raising the level of intelligence in the city,
while lowering it in the country. And when those now-cosmo-
politan mice reproduce with other smart ‘n’ sexy city mice—
even the coolest ones with “no underwear at all!”—their
genes for intelligence get passed onto the next generation
of city rodents, perpetuating the average difference in intel-
ligence between urban mice and their rustic counterparts.
So if you’ve ever wondered why rural rednecks are so
stupid, that’s part of the reason: on average, the smart, am-
bitious people from the country keep moving to the city to
Hip Like Me 107

seek fame, fortune, challenges, and reproductive opportuni-

ties that just don’t exist out in the middle of butt-fuck no-
where. They relocate, that is, to escape “the idiocy of rural
life.”
The only way the “Jefferson effect” wouldn’t create a
genetic difference in intelligence between economic classes
(and geographic regions) is if intelligence was 100% cultural,
with no genetic component at all. Which, as every cognitive
scientist from Steven Pinker on down by now knows, isn’t the
case: If there was no genetic component to intelligence,
there’d also be no correlation between the IQs of identical
twins raised apart.
Don’t blame me: Blame George and Weezy.
Of course, my own formerly country-mouse IQ, general-
or-multiple intelligences, and ability to play hacky sack, are
still stuck in a pretty damned low socioeconomic class here
in the Big City. But hey, sometimes you have to take one step
back, to take two steps forward.
Sadly, that’s the closest I ever get to dancing.

October 27

Played at the Free-Love open stage tonight for the first time
since late August. Meaning that I put in just enough practice
over the past week to not embarrass myself, not enough to
get into a studio for doing a demo or anything.
One of the songs I did was a new one I just wrote in the
past month:

A TALL SHIP

I must go down to the seas again

To the lonely sea and sky
And hear the west wind’s song
The wheel’s kick, white sails shaking
Pale grey dawn is breaking
On spirits high and strong
108 Hip Like Me

All I ask is a tall ship

And a star to steer her by

All I ask is a tall ship

For a Mariner in rhyme
Spray and wind-blown spume
A running tide to chase away
The ladies of the harbor
For a halo draped around the moon

All I ask is a tall ship

And a star to steer her by
All I ask is a tall ship
A sextant’s grip
And a star to steer her by

All I ask is a tall ship

The gust in unfurled sails
A vagrant gypsy life
I must go down to the seas again
For my lover calls my name
And she cannot, she will not be denied

All I ask is a tall ship

And a star to steer her by
All I ask is a tall ship
And a star to steer her by
All I ask is a tall ship....

I’m not nearly up enough on classic poetry to have

known about John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever” poem from any
original sources or compilations. I just initially cribbed the “All I
ask is a tall ship” line from Star Trek and Captain Kirk.
Anyway, it pretty much suits my present state of mind: Af-
ter that whole “circle is small” debacle, I’ve decided to stop
writing lovesongs about women altogether, and switch to
Hip Like Me 109

writing them about inanimate objects and natural phenome-

na instead.
“I’ve already got a woman to worry about; her name’s
the Enterprise.”
Relationships would be much easier if they were treated
more like jobs—if it was understood from the beginning that
you’re just “filling a slot” in someone else’s life, without ex-
pecting to be there until you either retire or the stress kills you.
And as long as you gave two weeks’ notice that you had
found someone better, you could leave on good terms—
with a reference, even.
Not that I got anywhere close to that with Jennifer. It was
more like I showed up bright and early for the first day of
work ... only to find that she had decided to “merge with the
competition” instead.
Well, there are things in life you can only be philosophical
about. By which I mean: What Would Diogenes Do?

October 28

We are the champions! We are the champions ... of the

World! The World Series, that is.
I’m a die-hard Red Sox fan.
I’m not even remotely Irish, and I’ve never been to Mas-
sachusetts, but my favorite uncle when I was just a kid had a
Boston Bruins sweater, so that got me into cheering for all the
New England teams. Which in turn led me into decades of
consistently shattered, “Wait ‘til next year” hopes.
I started following baseball in 1978—the Bucky Dent year.
I suffered through the Calvin Schiraldi vs. Keith Hernandez at-
bat in 1986, sitting on the edge of an old lime-green couch
and indulging in every superstition I could think of, praying for
just one more strike. In 2003, I saw manager Grady Little leave
a wilting Pedro Martinez on the mound to blow a three-run
lead in the seventh game of the ALCS against the Evil Em-
pire, and I cried out to the baseball gods: “Why?!!”
110 Hip Like Me

So when Steven Pinker talks about how the Greatest

Comeback Ever in 2004—in the ALCS against the hated Yan-
kees, after we were down three games to none—nearly
made him believe in God, I know exactly how he feels. Even
though I’ve never met him or that other famous philosopher
and member of Red Sox Nation, Daniel Dennett, I think we
understand each other in a way that only people who have
been through years of heart-breaking tragedy together, and
risen triumphant from the ashes to stand gloriously on top of
the world, can ever do.
Someday I’ll scrape together enough money to make a
pilgrimage to Fenway Park, and bow down there on the
pitching mound where Curt Schilling’s ankle bled—not unlike
how Jesus bled on the cross, redeeming our sins and renew-
ing our faith that miracles are possible. Then, I’ll kiss the infield
grass where Jonathan Papelbon has danced, and the dirt
behind the scoreboard where Manny Ramirez has peed.
And then, when I’ve completed my “sacred duty” and
perambulated seven times around the ballpark, counter-
clockwise, maybe I’ll take a walk around the Ivy-league Har-
vard campus, just to ogle the Celtic cuties.

IVY

There was a Cambridge girl

Ivy college world
Spunky Harvard coed
Held her close and I
Love the way
Her curls fell down
Brush them from her forehead

Lively Harvard lass

Sugar, spice and upper-class
Ravishing and naughty
Hip Like Me 111

Flashing Celtic eyes

Storm-filled as crimson skies
Or a harborfront Tea Party

If I kissed her once

The apple of my eye
If I kissed her twice
No word of it a lie
If I kissed her long enough
Ravished ‘til the sun is up

There is a Harvard girl

And all her Irish curls
Fall on a cashmere sweater
When she is good
She is ... very good indeed
And when she is bad
She’s even better

If I kissed her once

The apple of my eye
If I kissed her twice
No word of it a lie
If I kissed her long enough
Ravished ‘til the sun is up

There is a Harvard girl

When she walks by a church
Well, God cannot stop praising
When she is good
She is very, very good indeed
And when she is bad
She is amazing

If I kissed her once

The apple of my eye
112 Hip Like Me

If I kissed her twice

No word of it a lie
If I kissed her long enough
Ravished ‘til the sun is up

And the sun is up....

Oddly enough, in the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants

to America weren’t viewed as being white—they were sup-
posed to be a different and lesser race altogether. Same
thing for Italians.
As if the ancestors of Sophia Loren (38C-24-38) or Loree-
na McKennitt (celtic harp, B-flat) could ever be viewed as
inferior to anyone!
The Red Sox were actually the last of the major-league
teams to racially integrate—they didn’t field their first black
player until they brought up Pumpsie Green from the minors
in July of 1959. They had a chance to sign Jackie Robinson in
’45, but passed. They could’ve had Willie Mays as a teen-
ager, but decided he wasn’t their “kind of player.” They had
George “Boomer” Scott, Reggie Smith, future five-time All-
Star first-baseman Cecil Cooper, and slugger Ben Oglivie in
the late ’60s and the ’70s, but traded them all. If it hadn’t
been for Jim Rice, their 1983 roster—which gave us their first
losing season since 1967—wouldn’t have had a single black
player on it.
They actually fired their minor-league instructor, Tommy
Harper, for protesting the invitations given by the Elks club,
just to white members of the team, at the Sox’ spring-training
location in Florida. In the mid-’80s. (Harper later sued, and
won.)
So maybe it wasn’t so much the “Curse of the Bambino”
that caused the BoSox to go from 1918 to 2004 without a
World Series win in between. Maybe it was more the curse of
their own racism. Because Mays, Robinson and Ted Williams
on the same team would’ve been tough to beat.
Hip Like Me 113

November 19

The maid service here in Desolation Towers leaves much to

be desired.
Three weeks ago I saw the new cleaning woman taking
my personal bath towel out of the apartment, as part of the
rest of the laundry. I stopped her from doing that, and ex-
plained that that was my own property.
The next week I was out again when she did her clean-
ing, and when I got back home the towel was gone. Along
with a couple of dishrags I had bought the day after I moved
in.
Last week, I got back from running errands to find that
the detachable cord on my top-of-the-line noise-canceling
Bose headphones had been vacuumed right out of the ear-
piece at one end, and torn out of my computer sound card
at the other end.
According to the rental office, the girl responsible for that
damage felt absolutely terrible about it.
So I just got back from Bay-Bloor Audio—on maid-service
day, again—buying a replacement for that cord.
While I was out, the other set of studio-quality earphones
I had been using since the first pair got busted also got man-
gled: the new-again maid (her first day) had knocked a
glued-on piece off of the phones, put a small gash in the left
earpad, and put a kink in the cord. Obviously, again by be-
ing too stupid to run a vacuum cleaner competently.
At least the first one had the decency to tell the man-
ager and leave a note about her destruction. This one just
walked away from it.
So I stomped down to the rental office, but there was no
one there ... at 3 in the afternoon.
I stomped back up to my suite.
I stomped back down to the office with the receipt for
the damage done to the first pair of headphones, and the
second pair in my hands. There was still no one in the office,
but I found the manager, Cheryl, gabbing airily in the hall-
way.
114 Hip Like Me

I pushed the receipt and the headphones in her face.

“The maid just vacuumed these. Again. They’re $160
headphones.”
Well, at least they were when I bought them a dozen
years ago.
“Oh,” she said.
“If there’s a thousand-dollar computer on the floor, any-
one knows you don’t vacuum right up against it.”
“They don’t know that,” she countered. “And you never
told us to be careful around it.”
“You’re going to reimburse me for this, correct?”
“Well, yes,” she said reluctantly. “But this is getting to be
expensive. I guess if we didn’t send her up ... but I’m obliged
to offer you maid service.”
Yes, she was actually thinking that the solution to the
problem might be just to stop cleaning the suite. No mention
of any reduction in rent, of course; just give me less than I’m
paying for, so it doesn’t cut into her bottom line.
Toronto is full of Rent Nazis—women who think they’re
landowners and part of some privileged class just because
they manage a building, yet who have no comprehension of
what responsibility means. When I lived at Yonge and Eglin-
ton it was a dour Russian bitch who would have fit in better
behind the Iron Curtain than anywhere in the free world.
At least this one doesn’t have a KGB accent.
“If the maids you hire are too stupid to run a vacuum
cleaner, they’re too stupid to be employed,” I ranted. “And if
you hired them, and they break stuff, it becomes your prob-
lem.”
“We’re happy to support your lifestyle, but you’ve got
your equipment spread out all over the suite. You’re renting
an apartment-hotel. It’s not your office. You’re supposed to
go out to work, and your room is just where you go after work
to eat, sleep and relax.”
Well, my jaw dropped at that. In Communist Russia they
probably told you what you could do in your own space, but
here? With business travelers?
Hip Like Me 115

I lived for five and a half months last winter in a similar

apartment-hotel downtown in the Village by the Grange, by
Osgoode Station, with exactly the same set of “equipment”
distributed around a much smaller suite. Never had a single
problem with the weekly (Filipino) maid service or the man-
agement there.
“This is unbelievable,” I said.
“No, what’s unbelievable is how you’re using your room!”
All I had left was sarcasm: “Have a good afternoon,
Cheryl.”
From what I could tell as I turned and stomped out of
there, she was a bit taken aback.
“Yes, have a good afternoon.”
“Fucking idiot” I growled, as I got out the door.
So I stomped back up to my apartment ... and tried to
figure out where I should run to next.

CAN’T RUN FAST ENOUGH

You don’t know me, but I’ve been here before

Quaking primal fears, locked behind a sterile door
Just huddled quiet, not emotionless as such
But I’ll run, I’ll run....

No dishonest words or tangled web to weave

No weaknesses and nothing up my sleeve
But I’ll be on my marks when you call my bluff
‘Cause I can run, hey I’ll run
But I can’t run fast enough

I’ll run, hey I’ll run

But I can’t run fast enough

Nothing’s stuck in my throat if I swallow hard

Pull the splinters out, extract the broken shard
Tear these sutures out from where I bit my tongue
‘Cause I can run, I’ll run
116 Hip Like Me

I’ll run, hey I’ll run

But I can’t run fast enough

I’ll run but I can’t hide

I will see you on the other side
I’ll face the Mariner, I won’t back down from him
I’ll run, but I can’t swim

I can’t see you though my eyes are wide

I cannot touch you, for my hands and arms are tied
I cannot feel you, for my heart is cold and rough
But I can run, I’ll run

I’ll run, hey I’ll run

I’ll run, I’ll run
But I can’t run fast enough

By 4 p.m. I had left a message for a rental office on Bay

Street. By 11 p.m. I was out of ice and the supermarket was
closed. So I dragged my long hair and sandals across the in-
tersection of Indecision and Despair to a convenience store I
hadn’t been in before.
An elderly Chinese man stood behind the counter, mind-
ing the cash register.
I looked down into the first freezer I could find.
Lots of ice cream, but no ice. If it’s possible for hopes to
literally sag, that’s what I could feel mine doing.
“There’s another freezer over here,” the old man said
helpfully.
“I’m just looking for ice,” I said, as I moved toward the
other one, closer to the checkout. “And here it is!”
I greedily snatched a bag out, and eagerly paid the
gentlemen for it.
“Thank you,” I said, with more sincerity than I’d ever felt
before for such a small mercy.
“You’re welcome,” he smiled.
Hip Like Me 117

And as I walked the quarter-mile home with my plastic

bag containing just another plastic bag filled with nothing
more extraordinary than frozen tapwater, I was astonished at
the depth of gratitude I felt for the simple kindness of that
gentle man, in treating his newest loyal customer with basic
human decency. Even if that customer is just a tired, forty-
something hippie dragging his ass down the street, looking
for all the world like Jesus lugging a heavy cross up to Cal-
vary, and wanting nothing more than one last round of rum-
and-Cokes before it’s all over, and he can finally rest his
head, in peace.

November 23

Went down to the rental office today, reluctantly, to pay my

next month’s rent.
Cheryl was there, and she apologized, saying that she
was just stressed on Monday from a bunch of other stuff, in-
cluding having to keep training new maids. Though of course
she also couldn’t help mentioning that when she spoke to
the agency that provided the girls, the people there brought
up the point that “they had never been told that there was
expensive equipment in the suite.”
One of my many other mini-jobs back at the fishing
lodge a decade ago involved helping out with housekeep-
ing when the resort was busy—including performing the
“rocket science” of running a vacuum cleaner over a rug.
No one ever had to tell me not to break the guests’ stuff just
in case it turned out to be expensive. Even the dumbfuck
hillbillies I worked with knew that much.
So I could have responded to Cheryl, but I know where
that would have led: I would have just wound up “on the
run” again, looking for somewhere else to live; and the first-
choice place I phoned on Monday never called me back
anyway.
The normal (Hispanic) rent-a-maid is coming back soon,
after being off for a month for personal reasons. Thank god.
She’s been in Canada for eleven years and still can barely
118 Hip Like Me

speak English, and I’ve never seen anyone who takes less
pride in a job well done than she does—dusting apparently
isn’t part of her responsibilities, nor is cleaning the bathroom
mirror or sink, or replacing the burned-out lightbulbs. But if it’s
a choice between high-school-dropout black women who
clean my suite so well that they cause hundreds of dollars in
damage, and someone who doesn’t give a shit but at least
doesn’t break stuff, I’ll take the latter.
I never did get my bath towel back, either. But I can eas-
ily “even that up” when I finally move out....

November 29

It had been nearly a week since I and my long hair had got-
ten hassled just for walking down the street, minding my own
business. So I was finally starting to relax and enjoy life again.
All I wanted to do over noon hour on this particular day
was to get downtown to pick up a package of books from
my rented post office box, and spend the rest of a brisk and
windy November day blissfully sipping tea, and reading.
As I stepped out of the subway car at Bloor and Spadina,
however, and turned to walk toward the Walmer exit ... I was
surprised to see some student-age redneck in a powder-blue
hoodie, thirty yards ahead of me, from a completely differ-
ent car, giving me the finger as he turned to walk toward the
same exit.
It took me a while to piece together a plausible narrative
as to what I might have done to provoke that antagonistic
gesture. (There was only one other person walking behind
me—an attractive brunette—so it had to be directed at me.)
The Spadina line of the Toronto subway system runs all
the way up north to Downsview station. And I worked long
enough in that neighborhood (for Tevye) to know that the
further you go northwest in this city, the more likely it is that a
hippie such as myself will get barked at just for existing.
So here’s what I think happened:
As I stood on the platform, waiting patiently for the arriv-
ing train to come to a halt, Redneck Finger saw me there in
Hip Like Me 119

my long hair and sandals. Looking, let’s face it, far too much
like Jesus on his way to the post office.
And if there’s one thing which our world’s rednecks can’t
stand, it’s Jesus on his way to the post office.
Disgusted, then, by the mere fact of my living and
breathing in this city, and given the opportunity to do some-
thing about it, the pig-fucker decided to make it clear that
the world would be a better place if I simply didn’t exist.
It was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it
broke something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Sud-
denly I could stomach no more of this degradation—not of
myself but of all men who were hip like me.

December 12

I remained in my apartment more and more each day. The

situation in Toronto was so strange I decided to try passing
back into short-haired society. I went out only at night for
food. My heart sickened at the thought of any more hairism.
In my past forays into the business world, in giving techni-
cal advice on near-six-figure software purchases I have had
to listen to sociopathic, bumbling, yet silver-tongued senior
VPs—people who otherwise failed to even schedule a simple
meeting competently—ask their vendors whether they em-
ployed any long-haired guys. Not whether they employed
any blacks or Jews or gays—obviously you can’t ask those
sort of stupid questions and still have a job to come into the
next morning. But you apparently can ask whether they em-
ploy any hippies.
I have had middle-aged, Teletubby-body-type, deer-gut
businessmen cut in front of me in line while boarding a flight
in Winnipeg, and then dis me when they waddle-disem-
barked in Toronto, just to make it clear to me how little I am
worth in their world—just to show me “who’s boss.”
Heading down to the Arizona desert in the middle of
summer for software training, I have had border officials re-
fuse to believe that I have never been in police custody. Af-
ter all, the criminal’s profile they called up with their clumsy
120 Hip Like Me

fingers, from typing in a passport number at least distantly

related to mine, matched so perfectly with what they ex-
pected mine to be, given my appearance—how could I not
have been arrested in the recent past?
I have had dumb blacks and dumber Chinese men in
Chinatown yap at me in foreign gibberish, while I was doing
nothing more provocative than walking down the sidewalk
with my long hair flowing in the autumn breeze. Their goal
undoubtedly being to make me feel that the most notably
multicultural city in the world would be better off without my
type.
Standing on a street corner in Mississauga, waiting for
transit which in no way deserves to be called “rapid,” I have
been catcalled by school-busloads full of horny teenage
boys—presumably the big-city cousins of the “sexy bitch”
Orangeville idiots.
I have been told to “get a job” by overgrown, unimagi-
native rugrats who will surely grow up to be just as prejudiced
as their parents, after college days as misogynistic, date-
raping frat animals who’ve bought their way to a degree via
essays written by others for $19.95 per page.
Merely wanting to use the washroom before getting up
on stage, and looking for all the world like Jesus in desperate
need of a urinal, I have been harassed by dropout-stupid N-
people—certain in their bigoted paranoia that I had been
trying to sneak past them as they lurked in the recesses of an
unlit side room, chocolate-vegetating and getting paid for it.
I have had BMW-driving morons in the business district of
Toronto gun their engines from a standstill when turning onto
sidestreets I was crossing—with no oncoming traffic to even
remotely justify that—forcing me to break into a sprint to
avoid being run down.
I have had enough.
Some people grow their hair long with the explicit plan of
cutting it short again, and donating it to make wigs for can-
cer patients.
I donated mine to MagiCuts.
Hip Like Me 121

The blatantly gay stylist there was a little too happy

about that. Not surprising—just about every time I had previ-
ously come in to have the ends trimmed, he had “joked”
about cutting it all off.
It’s not often that you can literally see the last ten years
of your life falling in pieces around you onto the floor. I closed
my eyes.
Snip, snip.
Adam in the Bible was a longhair, you know. He had to
be, unless God created scissors and hair salons and gay bar-
bers at the same time as he created the Garden of Eden.
Snip, snip.
Samson too. That’s where he got his strength from, until
they cut it short and poked his eyes out, after Delilah be-
trayed him.
That girl, she sure knew how to hurt a man. I’ll bet she
really could kiss, though....
Snip, snip.
You know where the whole Western prejudice against
long hair comes from? World War I. Cutting hair short in the
military was just a way to control lice and the diseases they
carry.
So when all those short-haired soldiers came back from
fighting overseas, of course the women all swooned, and
next thing you know it was “masculine” and “patriotic” to
have short hair. And World War II and the Korean War just re-
inforced those attitudes.
It’s a pretty sad behavioral-psychology, stimulus-response
way to live—Pavlov and Skinner would be proud. But that’s
typical for our species.
You think men grow their hair long as a product of low
testosterone, or to express their feminine side? Tell that to
every long-haired man who fought in the Civil War, in a time
when soldiers had “more or less complete latitude to groom
their hair any way they liked.” Tell it to every feared warrior in
a pre-Scissors Age culture where the fighters wore their hair
down past their shoulders. Tell it to the long-haired Ben Frank-
122 Hip Like Me

lin, member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Decla-

ration of Independence.
Tell it to the litany of composers, judges, barristers and
Founding Fathers who walked around wearing wigs. Tell it to
the trigger-happy conservative rocker, Ted “Wang Dang
Sweet Poontang” Nugent. Tell it to every lion-maned lead
singer, guitarist or rock-star drummer who wound up marrying
a Playboy Playmate, after years of enviable debauchery
and consensual statutory rape: Even Ozzy Osbourne, who
was never more than a B-grade joke, spent nights on the
road working his way through half a dozen groupies, each
one “more beautiful than god.” Tell it, even, to Albert Ein-
stein, whose own hair in his later years was long enough that
a young boy passing him on the sidewalk in Princeton one
afternoon turned to his mother and asked her: “Was that Mrs.
Einstein?”
Prior to WWI, no one would have even thought of asso-
ciating long hair on men with any negative traits, much less
would it have been taken as indicating a lack of masculinity
or patriotism. Or as a sign of drug usage. But then the ’60s
came, and guys started growing their hair long to dis “Leave
It to Beaver” America, and to not go along with what their
middle-class fathers thought they should be. And then Viet-
nam happened, and long hair became “a symbol of opposi-
tion to the war,” so short hair versus long hair was “us” (in the
establishment) versus “them.”
And then Telly “Kojak” Savalas broke the “no-hair bar”
with his “Who loves ya, baby?” And before you knew it Pat-
rick Stewart was bald but incredibly sexy, keeping the Fed-
eration safe from dangerous aliens on the bridge of the next-
generation Enterprise; and then black rappers were shaving
their heads....
Snip, snip, snip.
“Okay, how does that look?”
I forced myself to open my eyes.
In the flood of incandescent light against barbicide and
that little whisk they use to brush stray hairs off the back of
your neck, the face and narrow shoulders of a stranger—a
Hip Like Me 123

very short-haired, gainfully employable, non-drug-dealing

stranger—moped at me from the glass. He in no way resem-
bled me.
All traces of the Geoffrey Falk I had been were wiped
from this world. The reflections led me back to Bay Street,
back to the financial district, back to the final admission of
defeat against mindless business-world conformity and hairist
prejudice.
I got up, paid the bill, and put on my winter jacket, ha-
bitually reaching around behind my neck to pull out the luxu-
rious mane that always got trapped inside my parka.
Reaching around to pull out something that no longer
existed, grasping at air.

December 17

What a tremendous relief, to be able to walk the streets of

Toronto again without being the target of hairist bigotry.
To celebrate my newfound freedom, I went out to the
Free-Love open stage in the evening. Not to perform—just to
listen and relax.
I ordered a veggie burger and was served, and it was a
miracle. I went to the restroom and was not hassled by
prejudiced Chinese chicks, dropout blacks, dumbfuck MBAs,
or homophobic rednecks with brains the size of a walnut. No
one paid me the slightest attention. No one said, “What’re
you doing in here, hippie? Where’s your guitar? Do you know
where I can get some really good weed?”
What a tremendous relief.

December 19

Woke up, got out of bed, showered, dragged a comb—no

need for a brush anymore, sigh—across my short-haired
head, and grabbed an armful of books to return to the local
branch of the public library.
124 Hip Like Me

We just had another major blizzard yesterday, so the

drifts are again as high as a pedophilic clergyman’s eye, but
they’re already starting to melt in the glorious morning sun.
I turned the corner to the library, and strode ahead, ten
yards from the front door.
I was halfway down that path when an airhorn-like sound
blasted several times, quickly approaching me from behind.
I turned slightly to find out what was creating the 80-
decibal noise ... to see a black man on a bicycle, the melted
snow on his brake pads acting like a buzzer against the rim.
And then I just kept walking.
The middle-class, fifty-something guy stopped beside the
front door, leaned his bike against the snowbank, and start-
ed muttering unhappily to himself about ... something.
About me? For what?
I reached the door and stopped, listening to this fully
grown, supposedly adult black man and his grumbling mon-
ologue, unable to believe that it was actually directed at
me.
He walked right up behind me, still griping:
“And then he doesn’t even go through the door.”
I took my hand off the door handle, slack-jawed, immo-
bilized.
The black man-child pulled it open, and walked in gruffly
past me.
What the...? What THE...? You lousy sonofa....
I may well have cursed at him, for being such a com-
pletely unprovoked asshole.
I may have even taken the Lord Nigger Jesus’s name in
vain—or part of it, anyway. (Hey, he started it.)
I just hope Roger didn’t hear me, because it wasn’t di-
rected at him. And it’s not his fault that some of the most in-
secure, worthless, hate-filled assholes in this world just happen
to have the same color of skin as he does, and go around
dumping on others in the same shitty way as they (or at least
their dead-or-dying ancestors) used to be treated. In the
Deep South. Fifty or more years ago. With me nowhere in
sight.
Hip Like Me 125

In pre-emancipation days, black slaves who tried to

learn to read used to be punished by having their right hands
mutilated. Even just before the civil rights movement in the
’60s, it was an unspoken rule that they weren’t allowed to
enter libraries in the southern States. That’s where the old say-
ing comes from, that “A black needs a library like a fish
needs a bicycle.”
Or maybe it was, “A black needs a bicycle like a fish
needs a library.” Or maybe it was a school of fish. Or a school
of blacks. You know, during segregation. Anyway, there was
something about wheels—which is ironic, given that no tribal,
kinship-based African culture ever managed to discover
that basic piece of technology before their contact with
White European Men. Which probably accounts for their re-
cent fascination with shiny, spinning rims on their pimped-up
sportscars. You know: overcompensation.
Either way, the world has certainly come a long way
since then, for blacks and bicycles alike—to the point where
a middle-aged white man who’s just minding his own busi-
ness and trying to return a few books on a Wednesday morn-
ing had best step aside, if there’s a nappy hose-head on a
bike heading, hell-bent, for the same library doors.
The thing about “persecuted minorities” is that they rarely
even try to understand how much ill-will they bring upon
themselves by their own utterly unprovoked, adversarial be-
haviors. You can actually take a person such as myself, who
would never have believed any of the negative stereotypes
about a race or a sex or any other group, and turn him into
someone who expects the worst from you, simply by ... well,
simply by repeatedly behaving exactly like one of those
stereotypes.
Way to go, “brothas.”

December 31

New Year’s Eve. Blah. Good thing I’ve got a head start on
the drinking.
126 Hip Like Me

New Years comes but once a year

And always comes in the same old way
No midnight kiss, no reason to remember this
No point to celebrate the day

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

I’m young, I am single, by Darwin I should mingle

Grab my coat, go out tonight
But gravity’s winning until the room stops spinning
Captain Morgan proved that that Newton guy was right

I actually met a very decent direct descendent of the

real Captain Morgan during my time at Hidden Valley. It’s
been my favorite brand of rum since I started drinking heavily
to recover from my experiences in that unholy “sanctuary.”

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

Could bounce down the stairwell to Filmore’s fine hotel

Where Tiffany dances the night away
The sweetest, the slimmest, she used to be a gymnast
She’ll pommel your horse if you let her have her way

And oh, what heights she’ll reach

A perfect ten, your Nadia Comaneci

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

My first apartment in Toronto, after the basement room in

urine-soaked Senile Hills, was a legendary hellhole near the
corner of Dundas and Sherbourne. Just down the street from
Filmore’s hotel ... and strip club.
They did actually once advertise a former gymnast
named Tiffany for a week or two on their marquee.
Hip Like Me 127

When I moved into my own 225 square feet of cock-

roach-racing heaven, the superintendent warned me not to
look any of the neighborhood hookers in the eye—they’d
take it as a sign of interest, and follow you up to your room.
No big sacrifice: It’s not their eyes that draw your atten-
tion anyway.
I miss that neighborhood more than I can say. In two and
a half years of living there the only time I got hassled about
anything was from a shriveled Chinese prune of a man
who’d stand outside his little grocery store—a corner store
that couldn’t even afford a corner, and so ended up mid-
way between two side-streets on Dundas—and glare Asian
daggers at me as I walked past.
I finally got driven out of “Cockroach Downs” by an Afri-
can-student neighbor whose academic major seemed to
involve waking me regularly in the middle of the night by
screeching a monster chair across the floor on the other side
of a paper-thin wall. Or maybe it was a throne he was wres-
tling with. Either way, it was closer to Eddie Murphy in Coming
to America than I ever wanted to be.
I moved on up from there, Jefferson-style, to a building at
Yonge and Eglinton (“Young and Eligible”), meshing as well
as I could with a neighborhood of young, attractive urban
professionals, just a fifteen-minute walk away from work.
I got laid off from Shitvantex six months later in favor of
an immigrant from England—white as Her Majesty’s deli-
cates, he was. The ownership figured he’d be able to “do
everything I can do, and more.” By which they meant that
he could interface with clients, for having shorter hair and
nicer clothes. Never mind that he had never worked with
SalesLogix or OLAP before—he could learn on the job, right?
Also never mind that, in two and a half years there, not once
had I been required to meet with potential clients; it simply
wasn’t a client-facing position.
The blonde who made that micro-managing decision,
with no input from the very competent but utterly self-
centered I.T. Director, had started in sales, and worked her
way up to president ... by marrying the CEO. “Bungler and
128 Hip Like Me

the Ho,” our shareholders used to call them, while watching

the company’s share price drop near-monotonically from a
dot-com high of four dollars, down to around five cents.
I would have thought that the fact that “Alice” clearly
liked me—to the point of grabbing my love handles as she
walked past at the company Christmas party, six months ear-
lier—might have afforded me some job security. But alas,
while there may be honor among thieves, there is none
among executives. Or at least, not among dumb blondes
with more bedroom skills than boardroom ones.
As an unemployed programmer and then aspiring writer,
I’d go for walks at weird hours of the night, wandering
through the attached 24/7 mini-Dominion without a cart at 2
a.m., trying to decide what I was hungry for. Of course, that
tended to attract the attention of the (black) security guards
who’d then follow me around. But they were just doing their
(vegetating) jobs with no hint of paranoia, and probably
would have even had the basic human decency to identify
themselves if I had asked.
The only time I got anything close to being harassed out-
of-the-blue during four years in that beautiful and unspeaka-
bly convenient neighborhood was my first time in the local
library, walking out with a handful of CDs and a headful of
shoulder-length hair. One of the middle-aged “book cash-
iers”—they’re hardly trained librarians—came chugging after
me:
“Did you check those out?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have the receipt?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
So I pulled the paper out of my jeans-pocket, and she
looked it over.
“Oh, they’re all ... checked out.”
Yeah, they’re all checkout out. Just because I have long
hair doesn’t make me a music thief. And I’m making more
money than you ever will.
Hip Like Me 129

Well, at the time, I was. Six months later, I wasn’t. Life is

like that.
I got along fine with them beyond that initial misunder-
standing, though. (The bitchy, sallow, middle-aged rancid
cunt at the Spadina branch is another story altogether. Don’t
even get me started: I hate people when they’re not polite.)
One of the other bookworms was actually a huge fan of the
work of the New Age quasi-guru, Ken Wilber—she told me
that his writings were the biggest spiritual influence in her life.
I never had the heart to tell her that I’m the world’s #1
debunker of Wilber’s fatally flawed, utterly dishonest and/or
incompetent work. She didn’t seem to have much in life be-
yond books and her cat—I bumped into them together on
the subway once, on their way to the vet—and I didn’t want
to take either one of those away from her.
By contrast, I today have so much: my books, my com-
puter, my guitar, my short hair ... and the furnished cup-
boards here on Desolation Row in an apartment which, to
judge by the inadequate size of the drinking glasses, was for-
merly rented by hobbits.

A toast to an end with my little eggnog friend

A single bed with room to spare
When it’s twelve o’clock
And the Times Square ball drops
It’s just as good as being there

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

New Year’s, New Year’s blahs

And all’s good and well at Filmore’s fine hotel

Where Tiffany’s name is up in lights
A Happy Nude Year one and all
And to all, and to all a good night
130 Hip Like Me

January 11, 2008

It was an early morning, yes, today; I was up before the

dawn. Took the first subway train north, for a medical ap-
pointment.
So there I was, standing in a door bay of the near-empty
car, humming happily to myself, trying to work out a new
song in my head.
As we pulled into Wilson Station, a black, Zimbabwe-
esque teenager, dressed-messy like he’s heading to a man-
ual-labor job on a construction site, stepped from behind
me, unseen, into the same bay.
And while he’s standing in front of me waiting for the
doors to open, he starts yapping away, in Afrikangibberish.
The subway car was all but empty; had he wished to
avoid me rather than deliberately provoke or dis me, he eas-
ily could have. So, I can only assume that he was perturbed
by the (short) length of my hair ... and the color of my skin.
His look said: “You short-haired white bastard, you ofay
sonofabitch, what are you doing walking these streets?” just
as the short-haired whites’ looks had said a month before:
“You hippie bastard, you long-haired sonofabitch, what are
you doing walking these streets?”
Because if I was a shiftless, jobless drain on society be-
fore, what could I be now but a white, colonial, imperialist
oppressor?
Or perhaps humming in the morning is taboo in tradi-
tional Zimbabwean (or whatever) society, for the effect it has
on the souls of the ancestors, or the misfortune it will surely
bring to the tribe, perhaps in attracting killer bees or some
other sympathetic-magical plague.
Either way, when you’re a short-haired white male, why
should you be allowed to ride the subway on a Friday morn-
ing, when there are illiterate hunter-gatherers in the Third
World who have no subways at all?
Hip Like Me 131

What would the corrupt, Muggerbe-supporting racist

friends of South Africa’s President Mbongo do?
Probably steal more land from competent whites to give
to “real,” black Zimbabweans, “many of whom do not have
much experience in commercial farming,” to put it mildly.
Well, that’s one efficient way to cause a famine. Just
don’t ask for my dime: This whitey is “all dimed out”....

February 3

We are not the champions. Giants 17, Patriots 14. Blech.

Just when you thought our quarterback, Tom Brady, was
a mythical creature made real, descended from Mount
Olympus, who didn’t know how to lose....
Brady recently did a 60 Minutes interview where he won-
dered out loud, after three Super Bowl rings, about whether
“there’s something greater out there for me.... There’s gotta
be more than this.”
Sorry to break it to you, Tommy-Boy, but when you’re
making millions of dollars a year for being arguably the best
to have ever played the game at your position, and you’re
shacked up with a supermodel who’s making millions of dol-
lars more than you are just for being gorgeous, and you’re
coming off a 16-0 season, it’s not gonna get any better than
that. Not unless the heavens open, revealing a choir of an-
gels in thong bikinis, and Morgan Freeman personally anoints
you Tom Almighty.
In heaven, even the cool angels still have underwear—a
gossamer gown against the light of God doesn’t leave much
to the saintly imagination. But it sure could inspire some
amazing lovesongs. If you’ve been practicing guitar. Which I
haven’t been.
I wouldn’t blame Paul and Richard at all if they’re not
even interested in recording together anymore—it must look
pathetically ungrateful of me to not have properly followed
up on their offer of studio time, and to just have “disap-
peared” from the open stages over the winter. But Christ, just
132 Hip Like Me

keeping my head above water for the past six months has
been all I could do.

March 19

I just read an excellent short essay by Julian Baggini (via a

link from Ophelia Benson’s fantastic www.butterfliesand
wheels.com site). From the New Humanist magazine, on
“Spongers.”
I can’t stand our former Conservative premier of Ontario
from a few years back, Mike Harris. But full props to the man
for bringing in workfare, i.e., for demanding that able-bodied
welfare recipients participate in either training or job place-
ments.
Of course, Baggini’s stereotypical “sponger” has hair
down to his shoulders. ‘Cause, you know, if it was anyone
other than an unemployed longhair, the stereotyped group
whose members were being singled out for “not pulling their
weight” would be screaming bloody murder. Indeed, if the
figure used in the illustration was anything but Caucasian, the
magazine would be defending itself against cries of “racism”
(or sexism, if they showed a woman).
So you can see why it has to be a white male who’s the
designated “drain on society.” But why not at least portray
him with, say, just medium-length hair? Why not stop at
“shaggy”? Why does it have to be down to his shoulders, im-
plying (in context) that he hasn’t had a job and has been
living off welfare for two or three years?
Why, indeed. Well, I think I know why. Because for all of
the stereotypes which you can’t publicly express without be-
ing either an Awful Racist or a Despicable Sexist, the regard
for long hair on men as an indication of many other socially
undesirable qualities is the one stereotype which anyone can
still indulge in, even quite openly, and not be seen (or even
privately feel, himself) as being a Very Bad Person.
In my own experience, poor and uneducated people of
all races and ethnic backgrounds are the worst for missing no
opportunity to shit on anyone who, they think, is contributing
Hip Like Me 133

even less to society than they themselves are. And per cap-
ita, for every redneck/white bigot there is one black bigot,
one brown bigot, one yellow bigot, and one red bigot, etc.
It’s just basic human psychology: “Persecuted minorities”
have a fully comparable percentage of racists (and sexists)
in their ranks as the “oppressive white male majority” does.
But everyone already knows that, right?

March 31

I discovered back in early January that the private school

where I did my programming diploma in 2001—the now-
closed 2 Bloor St. West campus of the Institute for Computer
Studies—has lost the database containing my grades.
In the exact words of Mildred Galloway at Everest Col-
lege:

Further to your request for a Transcript of Marks re-

lating to your studies at Institute for Computer Stud-
ies in 2001, I write to advise that Corinthian Colleges
Inc. was not the owner of Institute for Computer
Studies at the time that you attended. CDI Colleges
are a division of Corinthian Colleges Inc. CDI Education
Corporation was acquired by Corinthian Colleges Inc. on
August 18, 2003.
During the acquision [sic] transition period (2003
to present), we have discovered that not all records
have been kept or that records were not properly
maintained and stored by the various campus locations.
We have conducted a search of all available stu-
dent information, however, to date we have been un-
able to locate your student file. As a result, we are
presently unable to assist you in obtaining a Transcript
of Marks relating to your studies at Institute for
Computer studies in 2001.
134 Hip Like Me

Isn’t that nice? And the tuition was only, what, $17.5K?
In all seriousness, I will still be paying off that student loan
until the autumn of 2011.
And I’ll sleep so much better knowing that “in the event
that information becomes available,” Mildred & Co. will be
sure to “prepare and deliver a Transcript of Marks to [me] as
soon as possible.”
So I guess won’t be sending scans of that out to potential
girlfriends anytime soon. And it’s now definite that I can’t
work in the U.S. under NAFTA—it would have been iffy with
the accelerated diploma anyway, which packed two years
of courses into five and a half months, when the free-trade
rules say that a two-year diploma plus three years of experi-
ence are the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree. So it’s just
as well that I didn’t get too excited about being repeatedly
approached by an (ethnically East Indian) preferred recruiter
for Microsoft back in November, about building the data
warehousing and cubes for Microsoft Office Live.
I finally got in touch with a couple of lawyers this week,
but only one of them even bothered to respond, and he said
that the case wasn’t “big enough” for his firm to bother with.
To be “big enough,” hundreds or thousands of former stu-
dents would have to be in the same boat, for a class-action
suit.
Of course, ICS won’t have had a separate database set
aside just for little old moi. And since in their heyday they
were pushing through four or five classes of around thirty stu-
dents each per year at the Bloor campus alone, there’s
every possibility that I’m not the only person in the whole
wide world they’ve screwed over. But either way, my di-
ploma has apparently vanished as if it had never existed at
all.
I’d been thinking of enrolling in the distance-education
program at Athabasca University—Canada’s version of the
University of Phoenix, which is fine if all you want is a piece of
paper to satisfy the people at the border that you’ve com-
pleted a degree. I could have gotten two years worth of
transfer credits for that previous work, saved myself two years
Hip Like Me 135

of tuition in the four-year bachelor’s program, and gone to

work in the States a mere two years from now instead of four.
Yet, even though this brutal and inexcusable fuck-up is thus
costing me around $125K and two years of my life, I’m still not
getting screwed over badly enough for it to be worth any-
one else’s time and effort to lend a hand. Fantastic.
And from what I’ve read online, the Ministry of Education
doesn’t even care about complaints against private schools
like CDI—they’re far too Big Business to risk offending.
Fucking whores.
Ironically, when I had applied to the U of T back in 2001,
they required a high-school transcript. And when I emailed
my old school for that, I never even received a response. So
on top of the missing ICS records, there’s every possibility that
there’s no direct record left of me attending high school, ei-
ther.
Hell, if my grade twelve marks weren’t listed on my U of
Manitoba transcript, I’d have no record of having graduated
from anywhere.
Sigh. If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at
all.
But then, there’s plenty of that to go around, isn’t there?
For instance, you may not have had good science
teachers at your high school. I deeply sympathize. Personally,
I didn’t have any physics teacher at all: The school I went to
was so far out in the sticks that I had to take the course by
correspondence. But I still scored 100% (literally) on the prov-
ince-set exams in grade twelve, and walked straight from
that into finishing third out of 325 first-year engineering stu-
dents at the University of Manitoba, and then first out of
eighty second-year electricals.
You didn’t go to a good preschool? Hell, when I arrived
in class for my first day of kindergarten, and we had to write
our names down on slips of paper, I didn’t know how to print
my own name—no one had ever showed me how, and it
didn’t come up at family gatherings with the cousins. It didn’t
stop me from acing nearly every course I’ve ever taken since
then, though, including Milk and Cookies 101.
136 Hip Like Me

Your parents don’t have walls lined with books to pique

your interest in a wide spectrum of ideas? How sad. Where’s
your nearest university library or public branch? Growing up,
mine was fifteen miles away, and I didn’t have a car ‘til I was
eighteen.
Your school can’t afford field trips to the local museum
because the PTA funnels all the money to the better schools
in your division? Aww, poow widdle diddums....
The nearest museum where I grew up was even farther
away than the library. And the few field trips we ever took
there were just excuses to take a day off school running
around a reconstruction of an old sailing ship and flirting with
the girls, without having to learn anything.
Well, except learning how to flirt, that is.
If I had done as well in that as I did in Intro Milk and
Cookies....
Your school doesn’t have the latest-and-greatest sci-
ence equipment or computers? You realize you’re talking to
someone who did his first programming at a school which
had approximately three TRS-80s for a student body of be-
tween 100 and 150 people. Anyway, things don’t change
that fast in science at a high-school level that you would
ever need to have fully up-to-date equipment or textbooks—
in grade twelve, the math text we used had actually been
published before I was born.
You didn’t get into the Ivy League university of your
choice? Or the guidance counselors at your high school
gave you bad advice about what schools or career to pur-
sue?
We didn’t have guidance counselors where I grew up.
They were hardly needed for a graduating class of eight (8)
people—four good Christian girls, and four very horny boys,
only one of whom ever even dreamed of shaking the world.
Consequently, I had no idea that full scholarships to places
like MIT or CalTech even existed. Had I known that they did, I
would have at least applied to those world-class institutions,
rather than settling for the one university close to home that
offered an engineering program.
Hip Like Me 137

Still, that didn’t stop me from receiving a best-in-the-

province four-year scholarship to that local university, which
covered my tuition each year. Of course, a few years later
scholarships started to show up explicitly for women in engi-
neering—of which there had been a mere half dozen in first-
year, only one of whom made the Dean’s Honor List. I, how-
ever, got my scholarships for what’s between my ears, not for
what’s between my legs. (Not that I haven’t received com-
pliments—if not province-wide awards—for the latter, too.)
Just like Madame Curie got her world-class successes in life
for her brains, not for her breasts. And because the awards I
received were merit-based rather than genital-based, they
meant more than any “booby prize” given on the basis of
“vaginal affirmative action” or minority status ever could: It’s
something I earned simply by being smarter and working
harder than anyone else in the province in my graduating
year.
You can’t find a good job right out of high school, and
you’re too proud to work for minimum wage at McDonald’s?
Cry me a river: One of my other mini-jobs at the fishing lodge
over the summers was driving the sewer truck. Not unlike the
“untouchables” in India, I spent up to forty hours a week
sucking raw human sewage out of holding tanks, a thousand
gallons at a time. For that, I made just slightly above mini-
mum wage, while regularly getting splashed, even in the
face, with other people’s diluted excrement. Just for the privi-
lege of working that job, I had to relocate to a different prov-
ince—a three-hour drive from where I grew up and spent the
winters. Yet I was happy to have that means of supporting
myself.
But you try and tell the young people of today that ...
and they won’t believe you.
The one thing to note, though, is that the small, utterly in-
bred community of farmers and housewives in which I grew
up knew a thing or two about the Protestant work ethic ...
even while the older generation there explicitly viewed “too
much learning” (esp. in university) as an impediment to one’s
Christian faith—which of course it is, heh.
138 Hip Like Me

But the point is that people who indiscriminately take up

not merely the good but also the detrimental aspects of
whatever culture they grew up in, and are proud of that,
pretty much deserve what they get. Because, since when is
the world so kind and generous as to spoon-feed you only
what’s in your own best interests?
To put it bluntly, it’s all in what you make of it. And what-
ever shitty situation you may find yourself in—metaphorically
or, in my case, literally—if you won’t bust your ass to claw
yourself out of it and build a better life for yourself, who will?

April 11

I finally got started with recording the demo. Not with Paul
and Richard, unfortunately; just guitar-and-voice recordings
of me in my apartment.
When Eddie Van Halen was in high school, he used to sit
on the edge of his bed with a six-pack of Schlitz, practicing
from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Inspired by that, me and my six-pack of
honey brown managed to put down most of the basic guitar
and vocal tracks for four songs: “A Tall Ship,” “Josephine,”
“Red-Haired Girl,” and “Just a Night or Two”:

Rose petals are red, girl

Violets are blue
Wouldn’t take me long at all
To fall in love with you

Violets are blue, girl

Tulips soft and pink
I could grow so fond of you
In a night or two, I think

Just a night or two, girl

Just a night or two
Wouldn’t take me long at all
Just a night or two
Hip Like Me 139

Your lips are red as roses, girl

Your eyes are like the moon
The planets are aligned for you
To fall in love real soon

Fall in love real soon, girl

Fall in love real soon
The stars above all shine for you
Fall in love real soon

Life is just uncertainties

A race against the moon
Crescent shines and then it’s gone
In just a night or two

Yet roses still are red now, girl

Lilies soft and white
Could you fall head over heels
In love for just one night

Love for just one night, girl

Love you just one night
Before the moon all disappears
Love you for one night

I know, it breaks my vow to only write lovesongs about

inanimate objects. But time heals all wounds. And I think I’m
ready to lust again.

April 18

Since I first moved into this apartment last September, there’s

been a tenant who insists on occasionally blasting his music
way too loud for my liking. With the most awful, thumping,
repetitive taste in structured noise, too, seeping in through
my windows.
140 Hip Like Me

I figured out pretty early in the game that it was the guy
on the floor above, in room #908—the one whose Christmas
wreath was, in hindsight, obviously a “territory” marker. But it
was only happening a couple of times a week for five or so
minutes at a stretch—though sometimes as late as 11 p.m.—
so I had been able to put up with it without screaming too
many obscenities out the window in return.
I know, I’m bad for needing peace and quiet when I
work—especially to not have doors slamming, scaring me out
of my skin. But I’ve actually met people who are even worse,
including a Random House-published author who didn’t do
her own writing until after midnight, when the city has qui-
eted down.
I was practicing guitar on the street below the Woods-
worth residence around midnight one day back in July—
finger-picked, with no amplification, so I wasn’t exactly “wak-
ing up the neighbors.” Out of nowhere, a bunch of water
splashed down from above onto the sidewalk, ten feet away
from me. I looked up, and a window slammed shut on the
fifteenth floor.
Some people just have no appreciation for music. Never
mind that during those same weeks some other guy was
busking with his saxophone ‘til 2 a.m. just down the street
from Tartu, and still not being subjected to a “rez shower.”
Anyway, a week ago the guy upstairs started disturbing
my peace for hours on end—knowing (I can assure you) that
it was driving me crazy, but simply not caring. Today, he had
his windows open and the volume cranked to such extremes
that you could clearly hear the music and words down on
street level, fifty yards away from the building.
So I programmed the superintendent’s number into the
Contacts on my cellphone, but I haven’t used it yet. Basically
because I have reason to believe, based on the past behav-
iors of the idiot upstairs, that if I do make that call, I can look
forward to something like being woken up at a quarter to
eight every weekday morning by him slamming his door in
retaliation.
Hip Like Me 141

It’s getting too late for me to move into the U of T resi-

dences for the summer, even if I were to abandon all stan-
dards of cleanliness and throw my ass to the wind. And it
doesn’t matter anyway since, by Murphy’s Law, exactly on
the day before the jerk stopped even trying to be consider-
ate, I committed in writing to stay here until at least the end
of June.
It will be interesting to see how this ends.
Sigh.
Like the Hidden Valley monk used to say, “Life sucks, and
then you die.”

April 29 – May 4

Well, it’s certainly been a week to end all weeks.

It was the best of weeks, it was the worst of weeks.
It was, above all, the most Hispanic of weeks.
First, I finally got those four songs finished and posted on
my MySpace page (www.myspace.com/geoffreyfalk). It’s a
start—call it a milestone, even.
Second, it had been awfully quiet from #908 recently.
Too quiet. So I took a walk down the hall on the floor above.
The wreath is gone.
I broke out an ice-cold honey-brown beer from the
fridge to celebrate ... and got started with unpacking my
bankers boxes.
That was the “best” part.
Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there.
I was out for a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday morn-
ing on College Street, hustling across an intersection to the
north side of the street. And as I got to the curb and turned
onto the sidewalk, some old fart with a cane caught my eye
and then looked away, grumbling to himself in some foreign-
language gibberish.
I was moving too fast for him ... or not giving him the eld-
erly respect he deserves ... or what? I dunno. I couldn’t even
guess.
142 Hip Like Me

Had a blood draw after that at the doctor’s office, dur-

ing which the Hispanic technician barely managed to get a
quarter of a test tube of blood out of my arm. Typical bum-
bling, barely grazed the vein with the needle, even though
you can see the eighth-inch wide blue streak right through
the skin.
At least she didn’t hit a nerve.
After that appointment, I grabbed a Veggie Delite sub
sandwich, then extemporaneously stopped in for a haircut in
a dingy salon I hadn’t noticed before, where the only stylist in
the place kept a Spanish radio station playing all the time.
She used her clippers instead of scissors around my ears.
I’ve never seen that done before. For good reason: One side
is now cut higher than the other. And she didn’t even touch
the uneven bangs which are already down to my eyebrows.
It’s by far the worst haircut I’ve ever received, all thanks
to the imported “skills” of Señorita Taco.
Then, on Wednesday morning, 7 a.m., I was getting in
line with an assigned number, for an appointment. I was #16,
waiting behind some Pakistani-Spanglish guy who was #15,
to get seated in numerical order on a line of chairs.
He sat down in the first (i.e., highest-numbered) one, then
started getting clumsily back up, and I decided to just avoid
the commotion, and walked around him to a different chair.
That simple act seems to have greatly annoyed him.

Him: I was getting up so you could get past. Didn’t you

understand that?

I just sat down, and shook my head ever-so-slightly, in de-

spair.

Him: I know you didn’t understand it.

Me: Have you done this before?
Him: Yeah, hundreds of times!

(Later in the day, he was likewise claiming to have told a

certain piece of information to one of the staff, “hundreds of
Hip Like Me 143

times.” When you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing in

your life, you have to exaggerate by several orders of magni-
tude in order to make it sound like something, right?)

Me: Fifteen ... sixteen.

Him: That’s why I was getting up, so you could get past
me. You’re number sixteen. Don’t you understand that?
Me: Fifteen ... sixteen.
Him: I know, that’s why I was getting up! You still don’t
understand that?!

His implication being, of course, that I must be a Very

Stupid White Person to fail to comprehend such a simple
idea, and to be so unappreciative of all that he had done
for me. Yet, what he took for lack of understanding on my
part was, of course, merely my speechlessness and slack-
jawed amazement at how he could be such an abrasive,
confrontational asshole. In a country where he’s functioning
as little more than an oxygen sink.
Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote that “[m]ediocrity knows
nothing higher than itself,” and that was certainly true of this
mediocre bugger.

Me: Do not bother me.

Now, contrary to popular belief, I don’t go out in daily life

looking for people to insult. But this guacamole-for-brains mo-
ron not only aggressively started the conflict from out of no-
where, he crossed a line at least twice after that when he
should have known enough to just shut his cock-sucking
mouth, and let go of it.
It’s as if the gene that makes rednecks simultaneously
loudmouthed and completely unaware of how stupid they
are, has crossed a racial or cultural barrier. Like the bird flu,
but for visible minorities instead.
But then, why should that be surprising? In any objective
view of our dismal species, it has ever been thus.
144 Hip Like Me

And if you just walk away and let such lowbrow bullies-
who-think-they-own-the-world get away with crapping on
other people for no good reason, when will they ever stop?
So, having later overheard that this total jerk—let’s call
him C. C. Goat-fucker—was originally from Mexico, and that
his god was Allah, we had the following exchange:

Me: Fuck Allah. Fuck Mohammed...

Him: Shut up you bitch!
Me: ...Sodomize Mohammed!

All of which puts me in mind of the poem Perfumed Gar-

den, by the great Islamic poet Abu Nuwas:

O the joy of sodomy! So now be sodomites, you Arabs.

Turn not away from it—therein is wondrous pleasure.
Take some coy lad with kiss-curls twisting on his tem-
ples and ride him as he stands like some gazelle stand-
ing to her mate—A lad whom all can see girt with
sword and belt not like your whore who has to go
veiled. Make for smooth-faced boys and do your very
best to mount them, for women are the mounts of the
devils!

“Sodomize Mohammed,” indeed!

Ironically, a female “Savage Love” reader once wrote in
to that column, to suggest that we’re probably all half-gay.
Dan agreed with her, and remarked that it was odd that only
women seemed to recognize that.
Of course, that would go double for involuntarily
aroused, bitchy goat-fuckers, and their Orangeville-redneck
counterparts. Pack of 85-IQ fairies! Because, as much as
homophobia can simply be the product of a “yuck factor,”
when you’re looking at a non-gay man, involuntarily seeing a
“bitch” there, and then shitting on him for what you can’t
help feeling inside even though you really, really don’t want
to feel it, that’s homophobia in the classic projecting, Freu-
dian sense.
Hip Like Me 145

Or, the “Redneck Muslim sense,” if you prefer.

You know what rock group is really big in Iran in the
twenty-first century? Queen. For using the word “Bismillah”
(i.e., “In the name of Allah”) in their “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
‘Cause it’s also the first word in the first verse of every chapter
in the hate-filled, flush-worthy, toilet-paper-thin Koran.
Never mind that the Parsi guy belting out that song—
Freddie Mercury—was openly, flamboyantly, irretrievably
gay, to the point of dying of AIDS in 1991. As long as you’re
quotin’ the Koran, it’s a cut above Western culture in gen-
eral. Especially if you’re a homo-aroused terrorist stuck in the
Dark Ages.
No wonder they’re sexually confused: With the chadors
and the hijabs and the sweet white raisins and the gays and
the Parsis and the bohemians and the rhapsodies and the
niqabs and the jilbabs and the burqas and the Bismillahs, it’s
a wonder they don’t all go mental and turn to manic, homi-
cidal violence. Plowing a long, hard, sleek 747 into a phallic-
shaped skyscraper could almost be therapeutic, from that
point of view.

In 2004, a fourteen-year-old would-be Palestinian sui-

cide bomber told the Israeli troops who disarmed him:
“Blowing myself up is the only chance I’ve got to have
sex with seventy-two virgins in the Garden of Eden.”

Yeah, no shit. A chance like that doesn’t come around

every day.
The “Garden of Eden” is a cheap hotel outside Mecca,
right? Down the street from the Holy Meteorite strip club? Say
no more.
Admittedly, the above “Fuck Mohammed” exchange
occurred after I had asked the butch little Mexican-Muslim
bastard, “What are you even doing in this country, you fuck-
ing immigrant?” (I am still waiting for an answer to that rea-
sonable question. And why not?)
He started it. And you shouldn’t start a fight if you’re not
prepared to finish it. Especially if you’re taking up space in a
146 Hip Like Me

country you weren’t even born in. Because even if you’re an

obnoxious, tortilla-munching, borderline-retarded falafel-
monkey in your own shit-eating shanty, you should know
enough to behave like a polite, civilized human being when
you’re a guest in someone else’s house, right?
As Newt and the hedgehog would say, it’s too bad they
couldn’t just give us guns, and we shoot each other. Be-
cause, having grown up on a farm, I’m a pretty good shot.
A Pakistani database administrator I once worked with
had a great way of dealing with the frustration engendered
by the ever-bumbling management there: He’d say, “Geoff,
I need a gun. And if this keeps up, I’m going to need bullets,
too!”
Yes, he was a Muslim, from Karachi—observing Rama-
dan, eating halal foods, the whole nine yards. But he was
also the sweetest and most gentle man you could ever hope
to meet. Someday, a woman is going to fall deeply in love
with him for his cauliflower ears alone.
By contrast, I happened to catch a glimpse of the above
“bitchy” immigrant moron’s girlfriend later. And all I can say
is: What a dog. Not only did her lopsided, misshapen puss
veritably cried out for a niqab—a “face made for Islamic ra-
dio”—but if those two ever choose to procreate, they won’t
have children ... they’ll have puppies.
Ugly Muslim puppies.
We can tangentially thank the Islamic religion in particu-
lar for at least one good thing in this world, though: Blues for
Allah—the 1975 Grateful Dead album. According to Robert
Hunter, the title track is “a requiem for King Faisal of Saudi
Arabia, a progressive and democratically inclined ruler ...
whose assassination in 1975 shocked us personally.”
Faisal was a fan of the Dead. A very anti-Semitic one,
believing among other things that Jews “mix the blood of
non-Jews into their bread and eat it,” but a fan nonetheless.
We can likewise thank the Hispanics for at least one
good thing in this world: Jerry Garcia. Spanish on his father’s
side; Irish and Swedish on his mother’s.
Hip Like Me 147

In the spring of 1966, while tripping (of course), Garcia

was confronted by the ghost of a Tamal Indian medicine
man, who blamed Jerry for the cruelties perpetrated by his
paternal ancestors against the aboriginals.
That’s what “white liberal guilt” will do to you. Even when
you’re half-Hispanic! It’s that toxic and reality-bending, even
just on “half a hit”!
Aside from fifty percent of Captain Trips’ DNA, though,
what has Latin America ever done for us? Beyond Alvarez’s
asteroid-collision theory of dinosaur extinction, a handful of
good writers, a few hot-but-not-too-bright actresses and
singers, and Manny “Piss-Break” Ramirez, it’s historically been
“the least creative outpost of the West.”
Not surprising, when you consider that in Mexico, for ex-
ample, less than one percent of the men have completed
high school. Yet, like homophobic rednecks everywhere,
they’re “macho” nonetheless; being too blissfully ignorant to
realize how pathetically little they have to offer any woman
—or man—who’s even worth having. If you ever need proof
that even the lowest dregs of humanity still consider them-
selves to be above-average....
But it’s like they say: “To a manual-laboring dropout who
only knows how to hammer, every girl looks like she wants to
be nailed.”
So anyway, after all that I was coming home on the sub-
way Thursday evening, switching trains at St. George Station
by the U of Toronto, and got up the stairs to the north-south
line just as a train was speeding out of the station.
A congenial, bearded, mid-twenties guy was on the plat-
form reading a book, and asked me: “Did that train just go
by without stopping?”
I didn’t know, but after a couple of fairly reasonable
suggestions which didn’t wash, I said jokingly:
“Maybe it’s a new form of strike.”
See, our blessed Toronto Transit Commission just got legis-
lated back to work last weekend, after turning down a con-
tract—a three percent raise each year, with a guarantee
that they’d always be the highest-paid of city transit employ-
148 Hip Like Me

ees, or whatever—which their union leadership had already

recommended.
So then the shaggy, Henson-esque guy says, gently
enough: “Well, I’m sure that if you were fighting for what you
believe in, you’d hope that people would support you too.”
Well, good luck with that!
So I did my best to “muster a smile for his nostalgic tale,”
as the Doobie Brothers used to say, and then walked off qui-
etly to be alone with my thoughts.
I know I was just about as mixed-up as that wanna-be
hippie when I was in my mid-twenties, always giving the
benefit of the doubt to the “little guy” in any (wage, etc.)
dispute. But Christ, there’s just no excuse for it.
By contrast, a congenial black guy I happened to be
talking to a few days earlier brought up the very good point
that what Ontario needs as a premier is someone who will
deal with the TTC the way Ronald Reagan handled the air
traffic controllers back in the ’80s: You come back to work
Right Fucking Now or you find a new job, and we’ll be happy
to replace you with someone who will do your $25/hour job
for $15.
I couldn’t agree more. And you only have to do that
kind of thing once, and they’ll never mess with you again.
If we don’t stand up to the world’s unionized bullies,
when will they ever stop?
The TTC also has a “Request Stop” program, where
women traveling alone on the bus between 9 p.m. and 5
a.m. can get off the bus between regular stops.
Not men. Just women. So if you’re a gay guy who hap-
pens to live, say, across from a park where someone you
knew and loved has recently had his head smashed in for no
better reason than that he’s Muslim ... I mean, gay ... you’re
shit out of luck.
Transvestites and transgenders? Fortunately, they’re in no
danger of being beaten up and left to die in the middle of
the night. Right?
And “sexy bitches” like myself, who get the pig-fuckers
and the goat-fuckers into such a homoerotic tizzy?
Hip Like Me 149

Shit. Out. Of. Luck.

I’ve never actually seen anyone use that Request Stop
feature—as far as I can tell, it’s just there as a “moral victory”
for a few hate-filled, hideously unattractive hags, for them to
get a taste of how sweet it feels to be able to discriminate
against the awful men who are to blame for all of their prob-
lems.
Well, if you ask me, those totalitarian, brainwashing,
overgrown Girl Scouts have sold their heterophobic victim
cookies to society for too long. If we men and women of
conscience don’t stand up to those sexist bullies....
Worse, when these supposedly oppressed people gain a
comparable (or greater) amount of power as their former
oppressors, what makes you think they’re suddenly going to
drop the methods that got them there, when those means
have clearly worked so well? And if those methods happen
to involve minority racism or female sexism....

Minority rights doctrine has produced a moral inver-

sion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they
belong to a “victim” group, while those at the receiving
end of their behavior are blamed simply because they
belong to the “oppressive” majority.

It’s funny: When I was eighteen, I was proud to consider

myself a feminist, without really knowing what that meant—I
really thought it was just about equality and justice. Dopey
moi! And then, just a few months ago, having re-read a cou-
ple of Gloria Steinem’s books, I was to the point of being very
proud to not be a feminist. But then I discovered Ophelia
Benson’s writings. And I’ve never encountered anyone who
thinks so clearly, chooses her words so carefully, and who I
agree so consistently with.
Yet like the fantastic Daphne Patai and the refreshingly
non-Afrocentric Mary Lefkowitz, Benson and the phenome-
nally courageous “infidel” Ayaan Hirsi Ali are both explicitly
feminists, as is Steven Pinker. So if they’re all (equity) feminists
whose professional work positively brims with self-honesty,
150 Hip Like Me

truthfulness and excellence, and since I agree with 99%+ of

what they say, I guess I must still be one, too.
Does that mean I’ll ever get fooled again by Steinem’s
one-sided touting of the feminist sensitivity to “images of
darkness or blackness as negative,” while she blithely ignores
the comparably unfair images of white elephants, white
flags, and whitewashing ... not to mention red flags to the
Native Americans, and yellow-bellied cowardice to the Chi-
nese? Or that I would be impressed by her “insightful” obser-
vation that men would not likely feel equal to women in
academia if universities offered “spinster” and “mistress” de-
grees (rather than bachelors and masters) ... while she makes
no mention of the fact that all of that learning occurs, of
course, at one’s alma mater (Latin for “nourishing mother”),
or of the fact that the “master” title derives from the Latin
word for “teacher” (magister), not from any power differen-
tial? Or that I would agree with Ms Steinem that “We need to
raise boys like we raise girls”? Or with her notion that “[p]atri-
archy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in
order to maintain itself.... The most dangerous situation for a
woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the en-
emy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of
their own home”? Or that “Romance itself serves a larger po-
litical purpose by offering at least a temporary reward for
gender roles and threatening rebels with loneliness and re-
jection.... [I]t privatizes our hopes and distracts us from mak-
ing societal changes”? Or that I would I ever again be such
a stupid twat as to swallow G-L-O-R-I-A’s despicably sexist
quoting, with implicit approval, of the claim that there are
only a “few good men” on the face of the Earth?
Not fucking likely. I believe in truly equal rights and op-
portunities for all, not because of but rather in spite of the
vacuous “work” done by daffy, sexist, paranoid, whining,
dangerously warped airheads like the esteamed (sic) Ms
Steinem. Seriously, these are woefully deluded human beings
who (i) have spent the bulk of their adult lives bravely fighting
their own psychological projections, (ii) would make fine cult
leaders, for the way in which they will not tolerate even the
gentlest questioning of their totalistic ideology, and (iii)
Hip Like Me 151

couldn’t think their collective way out of a wet sanitary nap-

kin wrapper if you gave them all bloody month to do it.
In contrast, as a much more rational and reasonable
woman said:

By “feminism,” I mean the belief that women should

not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be
recognized as having human dignity equally with men,
and the opportunity to live as fulfilling and as freely
chosen lives as men can.

In that case, count me in. Um, but there’s no “small print”

beyond that, right? Nothing about extra-special rights for self-
identified “persecuted victims,” and nothing about all men
being “potential rapists,” right? Nothing about “history” being
bad and “hermeneutics” being good, no “seminars” being
replaced by “ovulars,” and no attempt to exclude men from
marching in solidarity with women on “Take Back the Night”
night, right? No rewritings of John Steinbeck for an all-female
cast, Of Mice and Women, right? Nothing about Eve Ensler’s
The Vagina Monologues empowering women and their right-
ly celebrated, jaw-droppingly fantastic genitalia, while to
even joke about The Penis Dialogues would be sexist, right?
(“If my penis got dressed, what would it wear? Probably
just a sock. Or maybe a size 1 ¾ bowler hat.”)
You realize also that “persecuted victims” is an in-group
too, right? That is, a group to which a man or woman can
proudly belong, if only he (or she) can meet the criteria for
membership, and then adopt enough of the prevailing cul-
ture and belief-system of the group to “fit in” there ... settling
comfortably into the inherent conflict with the “persecuting”
out-group which that selective psychological boundary-
drawing entails.
Note especially that it is entirely typical for in-groups to
rate themselves higher in morality and achievement than
their denigrated out-group(s). In short, you realize that in-
groups (incl. of “persecuted victims”) are inherently biased
152 Hip Like Me

and unfair in their evaluations of, and behaviors toward, their

excluded, Evil Other out-group(s), right?

Experimental assessment of intergroup attitudes [at

Robbers Cave] showed unmistakable attribution of de-
rogatory stereotypes to the villainous out-group and of
favorable qualities to the in-group. Laboratory-type
judgments of performance showed the tendency to
overestimate the performance attributed to fellow
group members and to minimize the performance of
members of the out-group.

Whether it’s a bunch of pre-pubescent white boys at

summer camp dissing another (randomly assigned) group of
equally white, middle-class boys, or a group of “professional
victims” in Manhattan or in Queens or at your local university
or at “clit lit” readings dissing Dead and Living White Euro-
pean Men, you can’t have an in-group without an out-group
to define yourself against, and to rail and rage against. No
surprise, then, that the members of that “villainous out-group”
are so regularly tarred as being inferior (in both morality and
skills) to the “victimized in-group.”
The blaming—with suitable name-calling—of the villain-
ized out-group for all of the in-group’s problems, even for bla-
tantly self-inflicted or entirely imagined ones, is equally com-
mon:

In an early morning swim ... the Eagles had discovered

their flag in the water, burned the previous evening by
the Rattlers. Upon making this discovery, they de-
nounced the Rattlers as “dirty bums,” and accused
them of having put ice in the water (because it ap-
peared to one of them as colder than usual), and of
throwing rocks in their creek (because one of them
stubbed his toes a number of times during the swim).
Hip Like Me 153

Such simple dynamics as these, in a nutshell, are what all

minority activism—whatever its other justifications and merits
or demerits may be—is ultimately and unavoidably tangled
up with. Not only can such activism not be separated from
in-group/out-group dynamics, its general classes of behavior
can actually be very easily and accurately predicted from
the very same well-established dynamics.
But you try and tell the feminists, gays and blacks of to-
day that ... and they won’t believe you.
I’ve also been thinking about the subject of immigrants-
who-think-they-own-the-world a fair bit since I cut my hair
short, and this is my tentative hypothesis:
Canada lets in a lot of brutally unskilled immigrants. That
is, uneducated visible minorities who have grown up in for-
eign cultures where the West (via the history of European
colonization, etc.) is viewed as being the source of all their
problems, and of the marginalizing of their own societies’
comparatively meager “accomplishments.” And yet, that
same “source of all their problems” is also seen as being a
Promised Land, where everyone has milk and honey to
spare.
They’re low-IQ, uneducated and unskilled, and they’re
getting into the civilized part of the world for no better rea-
son than that they’re related to somebody who had enough
education or money to legitimately be welcomed here—all
thanks to our feel-good “family reunification” immigration
policy. (The U.S. again has exactly the same foolish way of
doing things, and it’s dragging their economy down and kill-
ing their culture just as it does for ours.) So now they’ve made
it to the Promised Land ... but all they’re fit to do here, just like
back in the old country, is minimum-wage jobs that no one
else wants. Yet, successful people, many of them madden-
ingly white, walk around the city with money to burn.
So, all they see is a continuing unfairness where the
whiteys who “ruined their country” have all the money and
power here. And, having not gone through any higher edu-
cation themselves—that’s what makes them unskilled, after
all—they also have no idea at all about how much hard work
154 Hip Like Me

and intelligence is involved even just in getting yourself to be

minimally qualified to do the high-paying jobs in our society.
This is the Promised Land, after all; it was all supposed to
be fair (according to some rather dimwitted and uninformed
notions of fairness) and easy. But the damned whites still
have all the milk ... and most of the honeys.
“Dimwitted” is no exaggeration: The IQ of the average
new immigrant to the United States is a mere 95. That is, the
typical immigrant has below-average intelligence, and
speaks English only as a second language. Such individuals
don’t even have the potential to work at white-collar jobs;
and as such, they can be relied on to cost the treasury of
their new country much more than they contribute, over the
course of their lives here.
The traditional cutoff for expectations of success at a
university level? A 110 IQ—a full standard deviation above
the immigrant mean. Mensa cutoff is 130, or 98th percentile,
which might initially sound impressive. But hey, if even a
“dumb hippie” like me can score 157 on the Mensa home-IQ
test—which is like a home-pregnancy test, except you lose
points for peeing on it—I’m not gonna try and tell you it’s any
great accomplishment.
Einstein’s estimated at 160+.
People tend to immigrate to the countries that used to
oppress them? Of course they do: It’s their Promised Land,
the land of power and money! And they, quite understand-
ably, want to get “their share” of that sweet deal. But if you
imagine they’re coming here with a clean slate about that
past, open your eyes and get real: They’re immigrating to the
new land with a love-hate chip on their shoulders the size of
Wyoming. How could they not?
Obviously, there are plenty of smart, hard-working first-
generation immigrants in this country—and plenty of lazy,
stupid people who were born here, who do nothing with their
lives but annoy others (including skilled immigrants!) by pan-
handling while others are trying to eat, and who have no
idea at all of how lucky they are to live in a country with a
donut shop on every corner. (As they say, “When you’re tired
Hip Like Me 155

of Canada, you’re tired of donuts and hockey.”) But those

native dregs clearly aren’t going to have the same bitchy
attitude toward how our country isn’t living up to its billing as
the homoerotically-aroused wetback goat-fuckers and the
bullying Zimbabwean construction-farmers do, either. Unless,
you know, those native dregs are Leftards or something.
And then, when the bigoted chinks and the dropout
blacks and the piss-proud terrorists happen upon a 98-pound
white “imperialist oppressor” weakling like myself, it’s their
rare chance to exact revenge and act like the alpha males
they’ve always wished they could be, and get away with it.
So the pathetic cowards yap out in some foreign gibberish,
from Ukrainian to Swahili, safe in the knowledge that I don’t
have a hope of deciphering what they’ve just said, but leav-
ing no doubt that it’s meant to dis me, just for the fact that I
exist in “their” country: Canada.
Incidentally, my late grandmother on my father’s side
was from the Ukraine. And even if she never learned more
than a few words of English, and probably never even com-
pleted high school anywhere, Canada was better off for her
kindness, and for her homemade pastries—the chokecherry
perischke, especially. But then, the duties of a frontier house-
wife three-quarters of a century ago don’t have much in
common with what you need to bring to the table to con-
tribute to an information-based economy in the twenty-first
century.
Both the paternal and maternal lines of my family tree
are actually Mennonite for many generations: all that my
ancestors ever wanted from the world was to be left alone to
practice their Amish-like religion, and quietly farm land which
no one else wanted (e.g., in the Russian steppes, the Nether-
lands and Germany). That makes them—and me—simultane-
ously (i) as white as a human being can be, (ii) a member of
a brutally persecuted (esp. in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries) ethnic/religious minority, and (iii) the descendent
of penniless refugees (from the Russian Revolution), who left
the old country literally running for their lives (as former land-
owners). Plus, the Mennonite Doopsgezinde Kerk was the first
church in the Netherlands to have a female pastor. In 1911.
156 Hip Like Me

And an early group of Pennsylvania Mennonites and Men-

nonite-Quakers actually wrote the first formal protest against
slavery in America, in 1688.
It almost makes a person feel less than completely
ashamed of being a white male who grew up in a Christian
community, doesn’t it? Though it would help if other Men-
nonites hadn’t also supported Hitler in his early years of
power (as Gandhi did too, until at least 1940), and weren’t
currently sitting down for dinner with Iran’s president, Mah-
moud Ahmadinejad.
The Australian anthropologist and filmmaker Roger San-
dall once made the sharp observation that the Western
middle-classes today are “driven by a masochistic contempt
for their Western heritage, and almost as often for the lands
of their birth as well.” I think that’s profoundly (and patheti-
cally) true, but there’s also a corollary to that same issue,
which is the aforementioned love-hate relationship that non-
whites have with their past oppressors—both sides’ current
attitudes derive from the same co-dependent past. And that
love-hate feeling isn’t going to suddenly vanish just because
they’ve finally gotten here after years of wandering in the
Third-World wilderness—especially for the natural-born ass-
holes, who exist at least as much if not more there, per cap-
ita, as they do here.
Maybe we can arrange a trade: Idiots from here, for
smart, cultured, polite professionals from there. Start with the
pig-fucking rednecks cruising Main Street Orangeville. (Sug-
gested exchange rate: Three homophobic yokels for one
skilled immigrant, of any color.)
Add in the morons who put the S’s in backwards on plas-
tic roadside signs, and who use inverted M’s for W’s. Send
them somewhere that reads from right to left ... or upside-
down.
And top it off with every racist and hairist immigrant bully
who won’t let a white man walk down the street or unobtru-
sively go about his business in the country where he was
born, or use a bathroom in the house where he lives, without
harassing him.
Hip Like Me 157

If that trade suggestion doesn’t fly, Steve Sailer had an

excellent idea: Pay the immigrants who don’t want to assimi-
late into Western culture to go back to the seventh-cen-
tury/tribal countries they came from. Leave us in the civilized
world with the freedoms we’ve taken for granted for far too
long.
You don’t see the need for such an extreme measure?
That’s only because your freedom to exist unmolested in the
country where you were born hasn’t been threatened by
prejudiced immigrants and their ass-backward, hopelessly
intolerant cultures to the same extent as mine has.
So, enjoy that freedom while it lasts. Or were you not
aware, for example, that “up to 40 per cent of Muslims [in the
U.K.] would rather be subject to religious Sharia law than Brit-
ish law.” In fact, both Canada and the U.K. have already
stupidly, stupidly flirted with incorporating elements of that
brutally unfair and hysterically oppressive-to-women canon
into their legal systems, in the name of our blessed, pig-
ignorant ideology of multiculturalism.

In northern Nigeria, some areas have instituted the

extreme Islamist Sharia law. Sharia is not supposed to
affect Christians, but there have been deadly skir-
mishes over beer: Muslims have burned down liquor
stores, while beer drinkers have stoutly defended for
their right to live as infidels.

Closer to home, Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis have

refused transport to passengers carrying alcohol—currently,
around a hundred refusals of service, for various “holy” rea-
sons, are being logged per month.

Now some Muslim cashiers at Twin Cities Target

stores have begun refusing to scan pork products, like
bacon and pepperoni pizza, and insisting that other
cashiers or the customers themselves do it.
158 Hip Like Me

It won’t stop with beer, wine and edible pork, either:

They’ve already censored Piglet. That is, the loveable car-
toon character has been banned from the Dudley (West
Midlands, England) Metropolitan Borough Council offices,
after “a complaint from a Muslim employee.” And in Qatar,
one bookstore blacked him (or her?) out from hundreds of
pictures in a Winnie the Pooh book.

As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet

and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney
character and, if I was, I’m more of an Eeyore.

Other children’s fables have suffered a similar fate:

A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has

been turned down by a government agency’s awards
panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.

They came for Piglet, and censored him. They came for
the Three Little Pigs, and censored them, with our shameful
compliance.
But that, of course, is what happens when the energy of
a country is bundled into parents and children who never
had to fight or risk anything for the freedoms they were born
into. Such people predictably take those same freedoms en-
tirely for granted, and will even willingly barter them away,
piece by piece. In return for what? Just for a little bit of per-
ceived safety, and to protect their feelings and the feelings
of other “persecuted group” members from being hurt by
someone else exercising his simple freedom of speech,
thought and expression.
Or, to frame it in terms of how the “hate speech” laws
and human-rights commissions in Canada currently work:
“They came for the neo-Nazis, and I did not speak out be-
cause I was not a neo-Nazi. They came for the Catholics,
and I did not speak out because I was not a Catholic ... plus,
I was still pissed about how some of them tried to ban Monty
Python’s Life Of Brian back in the ’70s, when they still had the
Hip Like Me 159

power to get away with overtly suppressing the free speech

of the Unbelievers.”
Religions and cults of course offer a comparable feeling
of (soul-) safety as do “hate speech” laws, in equal return for
the regulation of the thoughts and behaviors of their follow-
ers. Conversely, nothing will sharpen your sensitivity toward
the “thought police” like getting yourself into a spiritual, psy-
chological or political cult, and having to think your way out
of that. For there, you will invariably realize that you had
been lied to and manipulated by your leaders and sheep-
like peers at every step of the way. You will also find yourself
ostracized by your former friends simply for not going along
with the received wisdom of the “minority in power.” Wheth-
er one gets called a “sinner” or a “witch,” or a communist in
the McCarthy era, or a “blasphemer” in the days of Brian of
Nazareth, or a “racist” today, the psychology and intoler-
ance of those doing the witch-hunting and the damning and
the Inquisition-ing is exactly the same; only the names have
changed.
A good test for how much of any culture is worth preserv-
ing is simply: What is left after you remove from it all of the
beliefs which conflict with the best evidence of science, and
all of the traditions which trample on basic human rights?
There are many primitive and brutally uncivilized cultures in
our world which would survive that test with only their music,
art, language, cuisine and clothing intact. Hell, some would-
n’t even make it past that point with the horrendously repres-
sive clothing for their women still in one piece.

British people could, in [the view of Muhammad Abdul

Bari, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain], bene-
fit from arranged marriages. “I prefer to call them as-
sisted marriages,” he says....
“Alcohol is the worst drug long-term,” he says, and
adds that the Government should consider banning
drinking in public places, as it has done with smoking....
There should be more modesty too. “You shouldn’t
be revealing your body so much that it can be tempting
160 Hip Like Me

to other people. I hope my daughter wouldn’t wear a

bikini....”

“They came for cigarettes, and I didn’t speak out be-

cause I’m a non-smoker—plus, if I ever develop lung cancer,
it’s for sure from inhaling second-hand smoke in the dining
room of that fishing lodge for ten summers; and your libertar-
ian right to blow smoke rings ends where my nose begins.
They came for pork, and I didn’t speak out because I’m
vegetarian ... although I’ve discovered, in a moment of
weakness, that the sweet-and-sour wings at the Regal Bea-
gle are to die for. They came for bikinis and alcohol....”
No! They’re not taking away bikinis and alcohol!! Here I
stand firm with the brave and eloquent Muslim apostate, Ibn
Warraq:

I don’t want to live in a society where I get stoned for

committing adultery. I want to live in a society where I
get stoned. And then commit adultery.

If you’re not willing to fight for your beer and pizza and
bikinis, you don’t deserve to be living in any part of the free
and civilized (a.k.a. “Western”) world.
How then to respond to the cultural traitors and their en-
ablers—people of Very Little Brain—who would try to take
even Piglet away from us? The American Revolutionary hero
and brewmeister Sam Adams predictably got it right:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility

of servitude than the animated contest of freedom—
go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or
arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity
forget that you were our countrymen!

If we don’t stand up to the religious bullies in this world,

when will they ever stop?
Hip Like Me 161

Australia—of all the countries!—actually has exactly the

right attitude:

Anyone who believes Islamic Sharia law can co-exist

with Australian law should move to a country where
they feel more comfortable, Treasurer Peter Costello
says.

A country like, for example, the once-green-and-pleas-

ant Britain:

In late 2004, polygamy had become so common among

Muslims in Britain that the British were considering
recognizing it for tax purposes.

The Bishop of Rochester is under police protection af-

ter receiving death threats following his claims that
parts of Britain are “no-go areas” for non-Muslims....
Dr. Nazir-Ali’s staff took a number of calls at his
Rochester home threatening both him and his family,
warning that the bishop would not “live long” if he con-
tinued to criticize Islam, according to The Times.

Just over a year ago [Labour politician John] Reid was

heckled by the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen in Ley-
tonstone, east London, during a speech on extremism,
appropriately. “How dare you come to a Muslim area,”
Izzadeen screamed.
That picture is mirrored outside London.

Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis ...

said Labour’s support for multiculturalism risked cre-
ating a situation of “voluntary apartheid.”

And now, as of autumn, 2008:

162 Hip Like Me

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with

Sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil
cases.
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers
for Sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from di-
vorce and financial disputes to those involving domes-
tic violence.
Rulings issued by a network of five Sharia courts
are enforceable with the full power of the judicial sys-
tem, through the county courts or High Court.

Or, as a British Muslim evangelist put it immediately after

the 7/7 (2005) terrorist bombings:

“We are taking over!” he said. “We are here to bring

civilization to the West. England does not belong to
the English people, it belongs to God [i.e., Allah].”

Anjem Choudary, a thirty-nine-year-old British Muslim

leader, hailed September 11 as “magnificent” and its
perpetrators “heroes”; he mocked the victims of the
London Tube bombings, calls on Muslims to refuse to
cooperate with the British police, and advocates
Sharia for the United Kingdom. He and his wife are
welfare recipients.... On the BBC, he was asked why he
didn’t simply move to a state that already has Sharia.
“Who says you own Britain, anyway?” he replied. “Brit-
ain belongs to Allah. The whole world belongs to Al-
lah.”

In 2001, a BBC poll had found that 15 percent of Brit-

ish Muslims supported the 9/11 attacks on America. In
2004, a Guardian poll recorded that 13 percent of
British Muslims thought that further terrorist attacks
on the USA would be justified.
Hip Like Me 163

An alarming 26%—or roughly 100,000—of younger [i.e.,

18–29 years old] U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings
against non-Muslim “civilian targets” are cool. That’s
really not any more comforting than the 35% of young
Muslim Brits who told Pew the same thing after some
of them bombed the London subway, killing 52 civilians
and wounding another 700 or so.

When a quarter to a third of the young adults in a com-

munity admit to savagely supporting such cold-blooded and
random murder—in which case the real percentage of sup-
port must be even higher—that is no mere “extremist wing”
of a (falsely presented) “religion of peace.”

[Ayaan] Hirsi Ali is an avowed atheist whose criticisms

can be seen as attacks not only on radical Islamism but
on the religion of Islam over all. George W. Bush was
wrong, she says, when he announced that Islam was be-
ing held hostage by a terrorist minority: “Islam is be-
ing held hostage by itself.” About the 9/11 attacks,
she declared: “This is Islam,” and “not just Islam, this
was the core of Islam.”

So it’s not just a few isolated bad apples, or a case of the

(real, Western) victims “crying wolf”: the danger is real.
Unless, of course, you think wolves aren’t really dangerous,
and “crying wolf” merely embodies an insensitive stereotyp-
ing of the lupine community—a “lupineophobia,” wherein
wolves are singled out as allegedly being a group of violent,
bloodthirsty predators.
Indeed, if we were to put ourselves in their shoes ... or
their paws ... surely we would see that all they really want is
to be understood and accepted for the distinct contribution
which they make to the ecological mosaic—a tiling in which
wolves and their sharp, pointy canine teeth, and their reli-
gious laws, should no more be feared, on a per capita basis,
than are rabbits, say, or budgies.
164 Hip Like Me

Or, if it should turn out that there is a real difference in

behaviors between wolves and other, more domesticated
animals ... well, you can’t make a woolly cultural mosaic or a
national quilt without disemboweling a few sheep, right?

[H]istorian Bernard Lewis ... told the German newspa-

per Die Welt: “Europe will be Islamic by the end of
the [twenty-first] century.”

Shaker Assem and the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb

ut-Tahrir) in Germany work to reestablish the caliph-
ate and institute Sharia. Declares Assem, “People who
say there is a conflict between Sharia and Western
democracy are right.”

CAIR [i.e., Council on American-Islamic Relations]

board chairman Omar Ahmad [reportedly] said this to
a Muslim audience in 1998: “Islam isn’t in America to
be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.
The Koran should be the highest authority in America,
and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

What to do, then, when the same dimwits and their gulli-
ble defenders in the media scream “Islamophobia” and “ra-
cism,” against no greater crime than being quoted accu-
rately as to their real agenda?
First, as much as we may live in a Humpty Dumpty-esque
world in which “words means whatever an oppressed minor-
ity wants them to mean,” Islam is not a race. George Carlin
got many a good laugh out of the observation that we drive
on a parkway, and park in a driveway; but the idea that
criticizing a religion and its followers could qualify as “racism”
in any context is something which even our city planners
could never have anticipated. So long as we have not
stepped completely through the politically correct looking
glass to redefine “up” as meaning “down”—so as to not
harm the self-esteem of the “uptrodden,” for example—and
stopped short of redefining “driving” to mean “parking,” re-
Hip Like Me 165

ligions are not races, and opposition to any religion is, by

definition, not “racism.” (Nationalism and ethnocentrism, too,
are not “racism”—nor are “fear” or “phobia” equivalent to
“hatred”—for anyone with both feet on the real-world side of
things.)
Another good point to remember, in the face of such
manipulative hysteria and hysterical manipulation, is that
there are things in this world that one should be frightened
of—or should even hate—and where, indeed, to not be
deeply concerned would be the height of foolishness. Chris-
tianity during the Inquisition and the witch-hunts was one
such thing; can you think of another, perhaps more recent
example? (The Crusades don’t count, regardless: they were
embarked on in response to four hundred years of Islamic
persecution of Christians.)
As the ex-Muslim Abul Kasem recently explained:

Islam ... does not consider non-Muslims as human be-

ings. Therefore, it is useless to talk with Islam about
human rights, equality in the eye of law, religious free-
dom, and freedom of expression, democratic rights,
people’s government, universal suffrage, and any uni-
versal declaration of human rights.
That is why it is impossible to negotiate or com-
promise with Islam.... Anyone having the slightest hu-
manism, conscience, and compassion should be appalled
at the Islamic theology....
[T]he world is permanently divided into two war-
ring camps: the world of humans (Islam) and the world
of “animals” (non-Islam). Without wasting time in end-
less dialogues, let us accept this reality and do what
we must do to defend our freedom and civilization.

Or, as Winston Churchill put it, in a fight just as noble as

just as necessary:
166 Hip Like Me

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France [and

in Canada, and in America, and in Britain, and in Austra-
lia, and in every country that knows from experience
what “civilization” means], we shall fight on the seas
and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and
growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island
[of Freedom and Sanity], whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never sur-
render....

I grew up as a granola-eating, woolly-headed pacifist,

foolishly convinced of the inherent goodness of human na-
ture. I would actually have fit in quite nicely with the people
from Rochdale, especially when they got together to buy a
350-acre farm in rural Ontario in 1972, after the government
had already foreclosed on their failed Bloor Street experi-
ment.
The thing about country living, however, as the Rochdale
back-to-the-landers soon discovered, is that it brings you
face to face with many different types of “culture” that
won’t go away, or even allow you the use of your own prop-
erty, regardless of how much “respect” you may unilaterally
extend to them:

“Nobody wanted to hurt the beavers,” laughs Howard

Brenner, “so they wouldn’t allow trapping. So the bea-
ver pond grew and grew. They were still into the
Greenpeace-hippie-brown-rice mentality and the bea-
ver was, after all, Canada’s national symbol. I guess
they forget you’ve got to control the beavers or they’ll
flood you out.”

Speaking from experience back on the farm in southern

Manitoba, you don’t have to live through too many beaver
or gopher infestations to develop an appreciation for the at-
Hip Like Me 167

titude of Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack, fighting the

“Varmint Cong”: “Sure, I can kill all the gophers. I don’t even
need a reason.”
Not that I’d ever encourage anyone to “kill all the go-
phers,” or all of the beavers. On the contrary, I just want them
to STOP FUCKING UP MY YARD.
And yet ... and yet ... isn’t life too short and too precious
to get so angry about all the slings, arrows, and violent sup-
pressions of free speech and individuality that the world
keeps throwing at us? Wouldn’t it be better to just let it all
pass “like water off a duck’s back,” as my mother used to
say?
Maybe Alfred E. Newman was right not to worry. And
maybe the Beatles were onto something when they sang
that “All you need is love.” And if an idea like that only
makes sense when you’re high ... well, maybe that’s a big
part of the reason why people get high.
And as the ganja starts to kick in, it’s already hard to re-
member what I was so pissed about ... man. Like the Dead
once sang, “May be going to hell in a bucket, babe/But at
least I’m enjoyin’ the ride.”
If we’ve learned one thing from Jesse Jackson, it’s how
to forgive, and respect others.
So, right here and now, I fully forgive any and all hurt that
has been inflicted on me by every homophobic redneck,
every lickety-split Chinese girl, every 54-IQ black criminal
without a future, and every latent Perfumed-Garden Sodo-
mite, out of touch with his own violently repressed sexuality,
who has ever made me feel unwelcome in my own home
and native land.
I forgive them, each and every single one. With full heart,
I sincerely mean that.
After all, that’s what Jesus would do.
He was a Hymie, you know—that’s the other thing I
learned from Reverend Jackson.
 Epilogue

The members of the hippie movement in the sixties

were seen by traditional professionals as emotionally
unstable, mentally ill, and possibly brain-damaged by
drug use, while the New Age psychiatrists and psy-
chologists considered them to be the emotionally lib-
erated avant-garde of humanity.
—Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain

We are odd hybrids, us hippies and ex-hippies. Half high-

cultured and hi-tech, and half noble savage. Half emotion-
ally liberated, and half mentally ill. Half avant-garde, and
half brain-damaged by drug use.
But the one thing you can count on when you pass us on
the street is that we’re harmless. We may look like we’re not
pulling our weight in society, you may catch a whiff of
patchouli as you pass by, and one or two of us may even try
to panhandle from you. But we believe far too much in “live
and let live” to ever push you around from behind, or tell you
that you’re not allowed to use “our” washrooms, or hassle

169
170 Hip Like Me

you for not “walking the right way” down the street on a
beautiful autumn evening.
More than that, we understand that the prejudices
against long hair which give rise to those discriminatory be-
haviors against us are simply part of your culture. And if
there’s one thing we leftists (and former leftists) hold to be
self-evident, it’s cultural relativism: the idea that all cultures
are created equal, and can only be judged from within their
own milieus.
That’s why we’d love to be invited out to dinner by the
Wari of the Amazon rainforest, whose language, coinciden-
tally enough, “has a term for edible beings, which includes
anyone who isn’t a Wari.”
That’s also why we’d feel perfectly safe hanging out with
the !Kung San (formerly “Bushmen”) of the Kalahari Desert—a
peaceful, idyllic people whose murder rate is no higher than
Detroit’s.
That’s why we deeply admire the Gebusi of Papua New
Guinea, who make their living from hunting, foraging, grow-
ing bananas in unfenced gardens, and raising a few semi-
domesticated pigs. Imagine: They have no land shortage,
little competition for natural resources, and live in a society in
which the people do their best to display mutual deference
and be self-effacing.
A Garden of Eden, indeed. Is it any wonder that their
homicide rate is less than 150 times that of the aggressive,
competitive, confrontational United States?
Or consider the Fore of New Guinea—a group of fine
young cannibals if ever there was one. Until at least the
1960s—ah, there’s that historic decade of liberation and lib-
eral-ation, again—their hunters used a specialized attack
called tukabu against sorcerers: “they ruptured their kidneys,
crushed their genitals and broke their thigh bones with stone
axes, bit into their necks and tore out their tracheas, jammed
bamboo splinters into their veins to bleed them.”
And then there are the peaceful Samoans, so beloved
of Margaret Mead. A people who manage to combine a
virginity cult, and tutoring in techniques of rape, in a single
Epilogue 171

culture. Can we ever praise them enough for their skill at in-
tegrating opposites? If only we in the fragmented West could
do the same!
Cultural relativism. That’s why we celebrate the lifestyle
of the central African Bemba, whose late nineteenth-century
villages were thick with “men and women whose eyes have
been gouged out; the removal of one eye and one hand is
hardly worthy of remark. Men and women are seen whose
ears, nose and lips have been sliced off and both hands
amputated. The cutting off of breasts of women has been
extensively practiced as a punishment for adultery but ...
some of the victims ... are mere children ... Indeed these mu-
tilations were inflicted with the utmost callousness; every
chief for instance has a retinue of good singers and drum-
mers who invariably have their eyes gouged out to prevent
them running away.”
That’s why we equally can’t get enough of the Benin,
whose African altars were “covered with streams of dried
human blood, the stench of which was awful ... huge pits,
forty to fifty feet deep, were found filled with human bodies,
dead and dying, and a few wretched captives were res-
cued alive ... everywhere sacrificial trees on which were the
corpses of the latest victims—everywhere, on each path,
were newly sacrificed corpses. On the principal sacrificial
tree, facing the main gate of the King’s Compound, there
were two crucified bodies, at the foot of the tree seventeen
newly decapitated bodies and forty-three more in various
stages of decomposition. On another tree a wretched
woman was found crucified, whilst at its foot were four more
decapitated bodies. To the westward of the King’s house
was a large open space, about three hundred yards in
length, simply covered with the remains of some hundreds of
human sacrifices in all stages of decomposition. The same
sights were met with all over the city.”
Cultural relativism. That’s why we go all weak-in-the-
knees over the Tupinamba people of Brazil, who “loved hu-
man flesh. Prestige and power centered on the ritual slaugh-
tering of prisoners.... [T]he killing and eating of these prisoners
(who were fattened for the purpose) ‘were joyful events
172 Hip Like Me

which provided these Indians with the opportunity for merry-

making, aesthetic displays, and other emotional outlets.’”
The most inspiring part, though, was right after the vic-
tim’s skull was shattered: “Old women rushed to drink the
warm blood, and children were invited to dip their hands in
it. Mothers would smear their nipples with blood so that even
babies could have a taste of it. The body, cut into quarters,
was roasted on a barbecue, and the old women, who were
the most eager for human flesh, licked the grease running
along the sticks. Some portions, reputed to be delicacies or
sacred, such as the fingers of the grease around the liver or
heart, were allotted to distinguished guests.”
Cultural relativism. That’s why we love the Mesoamerican
Maya, whose captives “were tortured in unpleasant ways
depicted clearly on the monuments and murals (such as
yanking fingers out of sockets, pulling out teeth, cutting off
the lower jaw, trimming of the lips and fingertips, pulling out
the fingernails, and driving a pin through the lips), culminat-
ing (sometimes years later) in the sacrifice of the captive in
other equally unpleasant ways (such as tying the captive up
into a ball by binding the arms and legs together, then rolling
the balled-up captive down the steep stone staircase of a
temple).”
That’s why, when we admire the nature-attuned ways
and dream-catchers of the Native American Indians, we
should equally celebrate their blood-drenched massacres.
Carnage such as “the site of Crow Creek in South Dakota, in
what seems to be the year 1325 according to archaeologi-
cal dating, [where] more than 500 men, women, and chil-
dren were slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated.”
Cultural relativism. That’s why the “nose tombs” in Japan,
containing the noses cut off of 20,000 Koreans and brought
back to Japan as trophies of a 16th-century Japanese inva-
sion of that country, are nothing to sneeze at.
Cultural relativism. That’s why all of these cultures are just
as valid as our own “Western, civilized” (sic) one is. And so
are the African and Muslim cultures today who enforce fe-
male genital mutilation: just a “snip of the clit,” and you’ll
Epilogue 173

never have to worry about feeling intense sexual pleasure

again. Likewise for the East Indians who practiced suttee
burials prior to the oppressive British rule—a brutal colonialism
which left India with little more than democracy, roads, rail-
ways, scientific medicine, a smattering of urban sanitation,
and many other undesirable vestiges of white hegemonic
value-structures, and out-of-tune-with-nature inventions.
Because, if you missed it the first time, all of those non-
European cultures can only be evaluated from within their
own boundaries. So anyone who places Western value-
judgments on them without actually being part of the culture
is, to put it bluntly, obviously at least ethnocentric, probably
an outright racist, and very likely a pickpocket as well. The
caste system, child labor, pedophilia, rape, fatwas, thinwas,
infanticide, genocide, cold-blooded dowry murders—they’re
all good and worthy of respect, as long as they’re part of
your culture.
That’s why when sages and untouchables alike, in India,
find scriptural backing for their belief that even a dog born in
their country is more holy than anyone born outside the sa-
cred Land of Shiva, all that a culturally sensitive soul like my-
self can do is nod in silent agreement ... and shame, at being
so inherently impure in my own country of birth.
That’s why when I see baseball great Pedro Martinez of-
ficiating as the guest of honor at a cockfight in the Domini-
can Republic, or the former NFL quarterback Michael Vick
hanging and drowning a dog or two in his celebration of
black culture in the rural Deep South, I have to put aside my
oppressive male vegetarian prejudices and my Eurocentric
concern for animal rights, and simply say: Good for you!
Cultural relativism. That’s why when I hear about gangs
of Lebanese (i.e., black Muslim) “youths” raping targeted
white girls in Australia, or about North African boys pack-
raping French females in Paris, or about women being sen-
tenced to be gang-banged, by tribal councils in Afghani-
stan, I can only marvel at the efficiency by which these
wonderfully diverse cultures have managed to bypass the
whole “dinner and a movie” obligation, and get straight to
174 Hip Like Me

the good stuff. They could certainly teach our frat-boys a

thing or two! even if it means putting the manufacturers of
date-rape drugs out of business. Well, good for them!
Cultural relativism. That’s why when the Dine (i.e., Na-
vajo), the Inuit, the Huron, the Cherokee, the Chippewa and
the Papago (among others) call themselves “the people,”
and when the Zhu/Twasi call themselves “Real people,” and
the !Kung San call themselves “the Real People,” and when
the South American Yanomamö designate themselves the
“True human beings,” I can only declare: Yes! whatever the
other six and a half billion of us may be, you are indeed “The
People.”
The masculine, warring, occasionally gang-raping Peo-
ple, that is:

Capture of women is seldom the prime reason for a

[Yanomamö] raid but is an expected side benefit. A
captured woman is raped by all members of the raiding
party, then by everyone back home who wishes to do
so, and is then given to one of the men as a wife....
The goal in all warfare among [the Eskimos of
northwest Alaska] was annihilation.

Cultural relativism. That’s why when I read that more than

one and a quarter million Europeans were captured by Mus-
lims from the passengers and crew of American ships in the
Strait of Gibraltar between 1530 and 1780, and sold as slaves,
with the full support of the Laws of the Prophet ... and when I
see that “there is no country in the world today where slavery
is still practiced where the justification of it is not derived from
the Koran” ... I can only apologetically take back my previ-
ously harsh, sodomizing words, and say:
Peace be upon Allah. Peace be upon Mohammed.
Cultural relativism. It’s why Christopher Columbus (who
was half-black, if you believe Malcolm X, and why wouldn’t
you?) should have just stayed home more than a century
and a half after the Indian-on-Indian bloodbath at Crow
Creek, and left the fragmenting, oppressive, patriarchal, lin-
Epilogue 175

ear-thinking, Newtonian-Cartesian, imperialist, hegemonic,

democratic ideals of the Enlightenment back in Europe
where they belong! The world would be a better place.
Wouldn’t it?

[C]annibalized human remains [have been found] at 25

sites in the American southwest. [Christy G.] Turner
believes these are the work of Anasazi Indians who
dominated the area between AD 900 and 1700 and
used cannibalism as an instrument of social control....
The Aztecs made a state practice of sacrificing cap-
tives and their civilization has furnished a recipe for
human stew.

When the Reverend Thomas Baker arrived in a Fijian

village in 1867 he was received with the greatest hos-
pitality, and so far as we know the night he spent
there was comfortable. Next morning, when seated on
the floor of the chief’s house with his host, he pro-
duced a comb, attended to his hair, and without giving
the matter a moment’s thought laid the comb on the
mat before him. The chief then picked up the comb
and stuck it in his own hair....
Rudely snatching back the comb from the chief’s
hair, the Reverend Baker sealed his own fate. For this
outrage he was promptly knocked on the head, and
dragged away, reappearing some time later as Mission-
ary Pie. “We ate everything but his boots” a villager
said.

Or, as the onetime hippie, poet laureate and Fraggle-

rocker Dennis Lee might have put it:

Missionary pie, missionary pie,

One of us is chief here, bet you wonder why.
176 Hip Like Me

Preacher on the floor mat, heaven in the sky,

Cook me up a batch of missionary pie.

Missionary stew, missionary stew,

One of us is hungry, bet you wonder who.
Bop him on the noggin ‘til he’s black and blue,
Cook me up a batch of missionary stew.

Missionary soup, missionary soup,

Boil him with potatoes and papaya root.
Pretty pretty hair comb, pretty pretty boots,
Cook me up a batch of missionary soup!

***
Unlike the average Fijian chief from a century and a half
ago, there are things we can do to improve our once-could-
have-been-great country that don’t involve simply eating all
the foreigners and backyard-barbequing the homophobic
rednecks.
First, let’s rework the “family reunification” immigration
concept to be a “friends reunification” instead.
After all, who doesn’t like their friends more than they like
their family? The latter drive us crazy even if we only see
them a few times a year over the holidays. The former, by
contrast, are at their best after a long day of work and a few
brews in the local pub. They have similar interests as we do,
and they’re about the same age, intelligence, and degree
of formal education. In short, and quite unlike the average
family member, they’re people which any country would be
lucky to have.
Be honest: If you could choose to leave just one of those
groups—family, or friends—behind in the old country ... which
would it be?
From a more practical perspective, suppose our “reuni-
fied friends” were to just come here, lie around, and do noth-
ing but draw welfare and drink imported beer?
Epilogue 177

Well, even then, they’re still not doing any worse than the
average unskilled son of a brother-in-law of a once-
minimally-skilled-and-now-cab-driving immigrant would do
under the present family-reunification policy.
In conjunction with that new and sensible form of reunifi-
cation, let’s tighten up the immigration rules so that (i) you
don’t even think of coming to this country to work unless you
can already speak English fluently before you cross the bor-
der, even if that means putting a few ESL teachers (and their
big-business employers) out of work; and (ii) only skilled pro-
fessionals in the top twenty percent of their fields worldwide
(or above 80th percentile in IQ) are even eligible to immi-
grate, with bonus points for being single.
Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and your
wretched refuse? They can stay right where they are, thank
you very much; we’ve already got more than enough of our
own picking through the garbage cans outside the Fields In-
stitute. (Of course, fewer immigrants means less work for im-
migration lawyers, which may force some of them into alter-
native lines of work with higher standards of morality than
they are used to meeting—prostitution, for example; or per-
haps driving ambulances rather than merely chasing them.)
But any time we can get an upper-echelon geek, a world-
class scholar, or a well-endowed nineteen-year-old stripper
who’s just working The Pole to pay her way through college,
to replace a Canadian who’s too lazy or too stupid or simply
too flat-chested (hmm, I wonder how Jennifer’s doing....) to
be employed in the same field and yet still somehow man-
ages to draw a paycheck, I say go for it!
Third, we stop accepting fake refugees from the U.S.,
Jamaica, and the like; we equally shut the door on suppos-
edly oppressed Falun Gong members from China who come
here peddling a transparently made-up story; and we go
back to accepting real refugees. You know, like we used to
do before the mid-’80s and the patronage appointments of
well-meaning baboons to the IRB.
It’s easy enough to find real refugees: They’re the type of
people who wind up in refugee camps, and who want des-
178 Hip Like Me

perately to go back to the countries they’ve fled from, ex-

cept that doing so would get them killed.
People, that is, like my own ancestors.
Next: Diversity is a great thing, particularly when it’s not
based merely in genetically-determined ethnic or racial dif-
ferences but rather in the creative diversity which flows from
the freedom of expression and individuality. Either way, more
power to it. It’s the spice in the curry of life, the lime slice in
your Corona, the bronze babes at Caribana and the mäd-
chens at Oktoberfest. In short, it’s the tops, especially when
the “diverse” people in question are university-educated—
with real degrees, as opposed to anything that requires or
encourages respect for postmodernist “thought.” It also helps
a lot if those guests in our country are here to celebrate and
enjoy Western freedoms rather than to just transplant their
own tribal, ethnic prejudices into the First World. And it’s even
better if our nation actually needs their skills (i.e., Ph.D. cab
drivers need not apply).
In contrast to racial, ethic, sexual and creative diversity,
however, official multiculturalism was an irretrievably stupid
idea from the very beginning, as anyone who’s ever taken so
much as an Intro Psych course should have been able to
see. All it’s ever done is to get us to detrimentally focus on
our ethnic “Rattler” and “Eagle” identities, rather than on our
common bond as “Lake Wobegoners.” Multiculturalism is in-
herently a recipe for conflict. Dump it now.

Canada’s urban population is one of the most diverse in

the world, true; but diversity and multiculturalism are
very different things. Diversity refers to superficial
differences, such as skin color or dress.... But culture
goes deeper, and cultural practices profoundly differ-
ent from those of the majority culture—polygamy, for
example—are not tolerated in Canada.... Multicultural-
ism is divisive because different cultures have irrec-
oncilable values. Diversity is not divisive because Can-
ada is built not around an ethnicity or a religion but
Epilogue 179

rather around a shared belief in the values of democ-

racy and individual freedom.

Unfortunately, however, not everyone who’s “stepped

off the boat” to start a new life here shares a “belief in de-
mocracy and individual freedom”:

Contemporary Canadian, British, Dutch, and Swedish

nationality is to a large extent self-mocking. Alleged
“conservatives” like the former prime minister Joe
Clark spoke favorably of Canada being a “nation of na-
tions,” meaning Indian nations, Inuit nations, the Que-
bec nation, the Ukranian-Canadian nation, etc., with
nary a thought for what other forces might set up
shop in such a wasteland of a concept. The jihad is a
functioning version of everything the multicultists
have promoted for years.

As I said: Dump multiculturalism now. It’s truly “one of the

gigantic mistakes” of our time, both as an official federal pol-
icy and as a hopelessly misled ideology of unmerited respect
for backward, human-rights-violating contemporary cultures.
Unless, of course, you want to turn a civilized First World coun-
try founded on Enlightenment ideals back into a tribalistic
Third World nation, in which case it’s exactly the right way to
go: respectful multiculturalism coupled with high rates of un-
skilled immigration from kinship-mentality regions of the world
will ensure that consequence, along with a future of unimag-
ined violence within our own borders. (Ask France. Ask the
Netherlands. Ask Theo van Gogh.)
Significantly, on average, smart, educated adults have
fewer prejudices than do our world’s unskilled pig-fuckers. But
that can’t simply be from them being exposed to racial and
sexual diversity during their college years: Long-extant social-
psych research has again showed that simple “goodwill con-
tact” between people does little to break down stereotypes.
(Plus, affirmative action, for one, actually creates resentment
from people who deserve to be in college or the workplace,
180 Hip Like Me

against the “persecuted minorities” who got there only for

their skin color or ethnicity or labia, not for their brains or even
for good character. It’s also the dismal end of “one law for
all.”) On the contrary, there’s good reason to believe that
reasonably high levels of psychological/cognitive develop-
ment produce a lessening of prejudice in their hosts ... in ad-
dition to being necessary for a competent understanding of
the world around us:

Only one-third of adults can reason formally [i.e., use

abstract reasoning/logic, and understand how concep-
tual classes, contingencies, probabilities and combina-
tions/permutations work]. That means that two-thirds
of the citizens in a democracy cannot understand the
more complex issues facing them both in life and in
elections.

Those are the same people, generally speaking, who

think that their lucky numbers are “due” to come up in the
lottery, for example, and who will never understand even the
basics of the “genetic lottery.” Further, that dearth of under-
standing comes not from a simple lack of information on
which to make intelligent decisions, but rather from their low
(i.e., concrete-thought, or even just sensorimotor) stages of
cognitive development. Yet even in Western democracies,
such uncomprehending populi form a two-thirds majority.
When you import the wanna-be-alpha dregs from low-IQ
countries, those people again typically lack the ability, even
in principle, to pull their own weight in the First World. Much
worse, the same uneducated, low-psychological-stage-of-
development rednecks-by-any-other-name also have, per
capita, way more than their fair share of prejudices, and are
too often not at all shy about advertising that fact in their in-
tolerant, bullying, violence-prone, homophobic-macho life-
styles.
Put another way, if you’re looking for an efficient way to
roll back gay rights, women’s rights, and the like ... you’ll love
Epilogue 181

the current immigration policies of Canada, the United

States, Britain and Australia.
Beyond that, and on a much more deadly serious note, it
is high time that we addressed the painful reality of discrimi-
nation in the Canadian workplace. Not in terms of the con-
tinuing grievances of the all-and-sundry minority groups
which are already treated with kid gloves—demonstrating
yet another use for the hide and hindquarters of our pastoral
friend, the goat. No, I am thinking rather of real discrimina-
tion, where fully qualified people of hair like myself are
passed over like ... well, like Jews at Passover ... in favor of
less-qualified but shorter-haired candidates.
I’m not saying that a hippie should be hired for a position
if he can’t do the work. But if several guys are up for a job,
and they all have about-equal abilities, and if one of them
has longer hair than the others, the longer-haired dude
should get the gig.
How else are we ever going to provide a level playing
field for all? How else are can we undo the systematic dis-
crimination which has plagued Haight-Ashburians since the
1960s?
Gloria Steinem, quoting Flo Kennedy, once observed
that there are only a few jobs which require a penis or a va-
gina—with de facto leader of the feminist movement being,
ironically, one of the few which does indeed require the lat-
ter “love canal.” Similarly, there are very few jobs that require
short hair. Yet every day hiring decisions are made which ex-
clude hippies from their rightful place in the business world.
Like the black man said, half a century ago: “They make
it impossible for us to earn, to pay much in taxes because we
haven’t much in income, and then they say that because
they pay most of the taxes, they have the right to have
things like they want.... They put us low, and then blame us
for being down there and say that since we are low, we
can’t deserve our rights.”
Today, people of color are rightfully welcomed and en-
couraged at all levels of the corporate world. But not so for
persons of hair. And because of that, to put it bluntly: Hair-
182 Hip Like Me

conscious affirmative action is necessary to address hair-

based obstacles that block the path to success of countless
people of hair of all economic classes.
Yet, that is only the tip of the ponytail.
As oppressed hairy people, we have all heard the pain-
ful, derogatory shouts of “hippie” coming from short-haired
white and black men, not to mention from blond hotties and
sweet-looking, disease-free Asian babes. But what’s worse is
when we turn on each other, pushing a fellow “long-haired
brother from another mother” down for not being “hip
enough,” with the most hurtful of names:
A hash-brownie. Too embarrassed to show your true tie-
dyed colors on the outside, so you go through life pretending
to be a “normal cookie,” fitting in with the rest of the run-of-
the-mill Mrs. Fields. And it’s only after someone’s eaten three
or four of ‘em that he realizes there’s weed inside, and by
then it’s too late to do anything except “ride it out.”
Or worse, an Uncle Steve. Someone who thinks he’s too
good to just lie around smoking pot all day. Someone who’s
embarrassed to wear his tie-dye and ponytail, so he struts
around pretending to be a businessman. Trying so hard to be
a shorthair that he forgets who he is, ‘til eventually he be-
comes The Man.
But that’s what happens to hippies who try to make it in
this society, just as it used to happen to blacks: in order to
succeed, we’ve had to become imitation shorthairs—dress
short-haired, talk short-haired, think short-haired, and express
the values of middle-class short-haired culture (at least when
we are in the presence of short-haired men). Implied in all
this is the hiding, the denial, of our selfhood, our hippietude,
our culture, as though they are somehow shameful.
When “Negroes” became “blacks” and then (briefly, but
no longer) “Afro-Americans,” and then “African Americans”
in the United States, it was part of a long, strange trip from
the humiliation of slavery to a pride of heritage. In the same
way, if we “freaks” and “hippies” (and “hash brownies,” and
future “Uncle Steves”) can become “longhairs” and then
“hairy people” and then “people of hair” and then “Haight-
Epilogue 183

Ashbury Americans,” we too will be able to turn our past hu-

miliation into a source of pride.
Of course, in connection with that trip we must also rec-
ognize that, for example, a word like “niggardly” is much too
close to “nigger” to be viewed as anything other than “a
way of slipping the epithet in the back door.” By parity of ar-
gument, however, the same must then be true of “hipster”
versus the undeniably hairist term, “hippie.” And then also of
“hippo,” “hippocampus,” the Hippocratic oath, “hep,” “hep-
cat,” “hepatitis,” “heptagon,” and Audrey Hepburn: All of
those too-close-to-hippie terms must be verboten, as politi-
cally incorrect, hairist slurs that no one should ever use.
And then, just when it has become clear that “hippie”
(and any words which sound even remotely like it, regardless
of their etymology) is off-limits ... we Hirsute Haight-Ashburians
(HHAs) need to reclaim the word for ourselves as a term of
social endearment—just as blacks have reappropriated
“nigger” for their own in-group use, while feminists like Gloria
Steinem and Eve Ensler have repossessed “cunt,” and
women (and male rappers) have begun to reclaim “bitch”
and “ho.”
There is also the matter of reform in our legal system. Na-
tionally, longhairs are imprisoned on average more than
seven times as often for drug-related offenses as are short-
hairs. Yet, who but a raging hairist would even think of sug-
gesting that hippies smoke seven times as much dope as the
rest of the population? Three or four times, maybe; but seven
times? No way, man.
There could hardly be a clearer indication of hairist bias,
and of “hairacial profiling” by our police and in our shorthair-
controlled courts. Such “institutionalized hairism” must stop;
and the only way we’ll know it has stopped is when the pro-
portion of hippies in jail is the same as for short-haired whites
and Chinese, regardless of how many drug-related, victim-
less crimes we may have committed in the possession of acid
and pot. Maaan.
Further, if hippies today are treated like blacks used to
be treated—and we are—a formal apology for the wrongs
184 Hip Like Me

done to us by the short-haired whites, blacks, Asians, women

and other minorities in power would simply be expected.
And along with that, of course, we need to begin discussing
the R-word:
Reparations.
Now, I’m not saying each of us should just be given, say,
$5000 straight up, to blow on a new VW van or to watch it all
go “up in smoke,” as Cheech and Chong used to say. To get
us back on our feet and integrated into the business world,
the assistance could be given in the form of tailored clothing
and specialty-coffee vouchers, BlackBerry phone plans, or
even packets of genetically modified, Roundup Ready
seeds, to wean us off the tastier organic stuff.
As they say, “Give a hippie a pound of tofu, and he will
eat for a day. But teach a hippie to start a tofu-manufactur-
ing plant, providing gainful employment for other members
of his otherwise-shiftless community, and buying ingredients
locally whenever possible, and one day he may be able to
sell it for mega-millions to Disney or A&P, and retire with his
water-bong to the Bahamas.”
Reparations could also mean putting the money we’ve
earned by our untold agonies into scholarships and training,
for the careers that have traditionally been closed to long-
hairs—banking, for example. When was the last time you ap-
plied for a loan from someone who had longer hair than you
do?
Mick Jagger attended the London School of Economics.
He could have been the one to break the “hair bar” for all of
us—the “Jackie Robinson of Fleet Street.” But he had to drop
out: There was no future for the likes of him, there. Early morn-
ing classes and sobriety almost seem designed to exclude
those of us who would rather stay up ‘til four in the morning
than get up at six.
But, of course, it would hardly be fair for us hippies to be
receiving money for our suffering, before other groups histori-
cally more deserving than us have been compensated for
the even-greater hardships of their long-forgotten, distant
ancestors.
Epilogue 185

I am thinking, of course, of the descendents of the slaves.

Particularly, of the Grecian slaves kept by Roman masters in
ancient times.
If we people of hair have been living for decades with
the shame and scorn of our past—and present—the Greeks
have been carrying an even greater burden for centuries.
They, after all, were regarded as sub-human by their owners
even while being just as white as their masters were!
I am thinking also of the people of the Orkney Islands,
north of Scotland. Raped, pillaged, and kept as forced labor
by the plundering ninth-century Vikings—if anyone has
earned their share of the R-word reward, it is they.
And after our world’s governments have given fair com-
pensation to the descendents of the ancient Greeks, the
Orkney Islanders, and the white Europeans captured by Mus-
lims in the Strait of Gibraltar, then—and only then—should we
sit down and negotiate reparations for my own persecuted
group, the Haight-Ashburians ... as well as, perhaps, for any
other groups that may have been inadvertently overlooked.
The difficulty with compensating the living Orkney-ites for
their historic pain and suffering, of course, is that in the inter-
vening centuries, and in the absence of any governmental
programs to help get them back on their feet after being
raped, pillaged, and enslaved, most of them have, it seems,
already fully integrated themselves into Scottish society. And
so they live even as our neighbors—or as someone’s neigh-
bors—with little or no awareness of their tragic and unfair
past.
Still, thanks to the miracle of modern genetic technology
we can determine, for anyone claiming Orkney-ian ancestry,
just what percentage of their genes have suffered from Vi-
king oppression (and rape) in the past. The details are com-
plex, but they involve tracing mitochondrial DNA back to a
very active and fertile woman known today (via several ex-
tant but extremely crude limericks) only as “Orkney Island
Betty”:
186 Hip Like Me

There once was a rough wench named Betty

A tough Orkney Island sex-kitty
Us Vikings would pillage
And rape half her village
But she got us all hot and sweaty

Poetry was never a strong suit for the Vikings; if it had

been, they might never have discovered Newfoundland,
eh?
The bottom line is that anyone today who’s genetically
1/256th Orkney-ian, say, deserves a 1/256th share of the boun-
ty/booty.
Where is that money going to come from? In the case of
the Orkney-ites, it could only come from the ancestors of the
ninth-century Vikings. Or, failing that, possibly from players on
the Minnesota Vikings football team, as they have probably
done more than anyone in recent times to glorify the rape-
and-pillage lifestyle, even off the field.
For other ethnic ancestries and persecuted groups the
science is much simpler, though the math gets a little tan-
gled.
First, it’s a given that all Europeans (except those who
were captured by devout Muslims—peace be upon them—
in the Strait of Gibraltar) will have to pay for the suffering of
all blacks; because even if my own ancestors, for one, never
held slaves, we’ve all benefited from that forced labor and
inhumane treatment of others. More specifically, whites in
North America will have to pay out to all non-whites—
including the descendents of the nineteenth-century Italians,
and the Irish. (For the latter, this money could be put into,
say, a “Papelbon Fund,” to be used for re-signing the top
sports stars of the Boston-area teams.)
Of course, in the early twentieth century the Irish police-
men in New York and Boston themselves treated Italian im-
migrants with scorn, and so will be required to compensate
the latter’s heirs appropriately.
The near-genocide of the Native American people is a
tougher call, since anyone who immigrates to North America
Epilogue 187

today, even just to attend university, is benefiting from that

injustice just as much as a “white oppressor” like myself who
was born here does. So everyone living or attending school in
North America whose ancestors weren’t here five hundred
years ago has to chip in for the welfare and ecology of our
Native brothers.
To be fair, if you’re just half Native blood, you only re-
ceive a half-share ... and you also pay out half a share, for
being a half-oppressor of those with full blood. So your net
suffering is zero.
All men will need to pay for the historic domination of all
women. White women in turn will have to open their fash-
ionably small purses to mitigate their own part in perpetuat-
ing the misery of black women: If you’ve been buying Aunt
Jemima pancake syrup or Oreo cookies—black on the out-
side and white on the inside, like that wasn’t supposed to
send a message—you’re part of the problem, sistah, not part
of the solution.
The reparations for long-standing discrimination against
lesbians and gays has to come from everyone who’s hetero-
sexual. Bisexuals pay and receive a half share, so again, like
half-breed Indians, they won’t come out on top (as it were).
Feminists will be expected to pay white Eurocentric
males for their (feminist) use of oppressive phrases like “white
man’s [sic] burden” and “The Man [sic],” while insisting on
“human” everywhere else. There will be an additional surtax
for their collective support of the ideas of leading feminist
“thinkers” (sic) like Andrea Dworkin (“Men especially love
murder” and “Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, vio-
lent,” and romance is merely “rape embellished with mean-
ingful looks”) and Catharine MacKinnon (“[S]exual inter-
course under conditions of gender inequality ... [is] an issue
of forced sex”).
Those two wouldn’t have lasted long in Viking society,
that’s for sure! Nor would Gloria Steinem have lasted even
two minutes in anything resembling science, given her confi-
dently bumbling dismissal of sociobiology.
188 Hip Like Me

In fairness, though, when feminists blame men for all of

the world’s problems, they are half right. That is, we are re-
sponsible for just about exactly half of the unfairness and
pain in the world. Who do you think is to blame for the other
half?
Procrustean compensation for prejudices against short
people will be exacted from everyone taller than the individ-
ual in question. So, if like Paul Simon you’re around a petite
five-foot-five, anyone over five-five-and-a-half, especially a
“sponger” like Art Garfunkel, owes you money.
Attractive people will have to pay out to ugly ones,
‘cause the latter not only get less sex but also make less
money (and thus get even less sex) on average. This is where
the hot Asian girls on match.com start to pay for their little
yellow prejudices.
Bald people, excluding those with criminally bad comb-
overs, get reparations from everyone with a good head of
hair, even Haight-Ashburians. Because, let’s face it, we’ve
been guilty of insensitively flaunting our best feature, and so
of harming the self-esteem of those who live their lives with-
out such gorgeously flowing locks.
And finally, where will the reparations for my own peo-
ple—my homeboys, my higgaz, my fellow aboriginals of the
First Woodstock Nation—where will those $ come from? Ob-
viously, from the other groups who have been most guilty of
oppressing us with their narrow-minded prejudices and ster-
eotypes, and of taking their frustrations and failures out on us
in the first place. That is, from uneducated, pig-fucking red-
necks; pidgin-speaking immigrants of all races, creeds, and
degrees of wet-backness and repressed homosexuality; and
most of all, from poverty-stricken, violent, low-IQ, niggardly
blacks. Plus, from anyone with an MBA and no other “real”
degree or equivalent life-experience to prove that he can
actually think. (As a counter-example of someone with an
MBA who can think, in spades, see Steve Sailer’s writings at
www.isteve.com and www.isteve.blogspot.com.)
How would all of that bookkeeping sort itself out?
Epilogue 189

A quick, back-of-the-sanitary-napkin calculation shows

that it would be ... well, pretty much a bloody wash, as they
say. So, if you were a filthy-rich white man with a bad haircut
and a supermodel wife before the redistribution, you’ll still be
a filthy-rich white man with a bad haircut and a supermodel
wife after. If you were happy-but-poor with long hair and a
VW van (with a leaking radiator) before, you’ll be happy-but-
poor with long hair and a VW van (with a still-leaking radia-
tor) after.
It’s actually pretty much like the old saw about how if
you were to take all of the world’s wealth, pool it, and then
divide it up equally, within a decade or so the same people
who were rich before would be rich again, and likewise for
the terminally poor. (Lottery winners who end up broke just a
few years after winning millions provide a pretty good test of
that idea.) Compare the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns
finds himself bankrupt and homeless, is reduced to collecting
recyclables from the beach and turning them in for cash ...
and quickly works himself back up to multi-millionaire status.
We can learn so much from cartoons ... even non-Danish
ones.
Sure, in terms of reparations, we’ll all have the temporary
thrill and satisfaction of receiving a check for five grand in
the mail, and the pleasure of pissing and/or smoking and/or
radiating it away ... but it’ll be offset by the agony of seeing
our taxes go up by exactly the same amount next April,
when the Damned Government tries to take away more of
our hard-earned money, for god-only-knows what stupid, in-
efficient bureaucratic scheme.
That’s the beauty of political solutions, though: They
don’t need to really be making a difference, as long as they
seem like they’re having an effect, and making everyone
feel just a little bit better, for just a little while, about this sorry
place we call the universe.
Yet, even with that $5K check in hand, money and op-
portunities “only go so far” without self-esteem—a quality
generated these days not merely by being praised even for
work done incompetently (esp. if you’re part of a minority
190 Hip Like Me

group), but also by taking pride in what others of your skin

color, ethnic ancestry, gender or sexual orientation have ac-
complished, as if you had something to do with it. And you
did—simply by having the same skin color, ethnic ancestry,
gender or sexual orientation, you’re part of their in-group.
And it’s exactly because of that shared pigmentation, cui-
sine, genitalia and/or use of lubricants/strap-ons that you
can understand them (and vice versa) as no one outside of
your in-group can.
The importance of such support, understanding, and
penetration, cannot be overstated.
Who, then, can us “inversely uptrodden” people of hair
look to as self-esteem-generating role models, to show us
that “we can do it too”?
This question requires a thoughtful analysis as, Writ Very
Large, it affects all of us—black and white (and mulatto/
greyscale), gay and straight (and transgenders), man and
woman (and Python-esque hermaphrodites, and hermaph-
roditic pythons).
First, suppose you were a gay-curious high-school student
with an interest in the physics of friction, ropes and pulleys,
and inclined planes. Sort of like an “S&M Physics Lab” with
some “Galileos” and “Bismillahs” thrown in. How do you know
you’ll even like it, much less be good at it?
Well, you’re in luck. Because it’s been known for over five
centuries that gays can do engineering, architecture, sculp-
ture, painting, botany, and can design helicopters and para-
chutes, every bit as well as straight men can, if not better.
Amazingly, we owe all that knowledge to a single per-
son: the ass-banging genius, Leonardo (“Leo”) da Vinci—the
man who led the way for gays into engineering.
Of course, da Vinci was a faggy Italian doing science,
which might not be much inspiration to, say, a gay German
considering going into the field. And being a man, he
couldn’t be a guide to female “persons of science,” not
even if they were lesbian. (Maybe he could be half a guide,
if they were bi or transgendered, or just really, really ugly.) So
if you were a German, a woman, or a dyke—or all three,
Epilogue 191

even—you’d need to search elsewhere for a role model to

show you that you can do it too.
Richard Feynman’s sister had a Ph.D. in physics, but she
was Jewish and liked boys, so she couldn’t help you out ei-
ther.
And obviously, if you add hair length onto all of that as
yet another independent variable, it gets even more com-
plex.
But the bottom line is that if you can find someone ex-
actly like yourself who’s already accomplished everything
you dream of doing, there’s no reason to think you can’t do
it too! That’s what role models are for!
And if you can’t find a doppelgänger role-model, well,
then maybe you should be considering a different profession.
Or sexual orientation.
Leaving that aside, what would a truly equitable future
look like, for our world’s hippies?
I see a world of longhair-only schools, providing the edu-
cational opportunities which are denied to us in mixed-hair
environments. Hippie schools speaking hippie language (“Hi-
phonics”), teaching our unique “hippie ways of knowing”—
the Omniscient Paperclip is just the beginning! Bell-bottoms
as far as the eye can see, love-beads in every doorway, and
an incense holder on every desk, teaching a hippie culture
which every marginalized person of hair can be proud of!
I see a Haight-Ashbury Studies (HAS) faculty in every uni-
versity, where students can learn about the very first stoner-
philosophers, from Hippiecles to Jerrystotle. They can read
the much-misunderstood Book of the Dead—a tome which,
far from giving guidance for the afterlife, actually contains
helpful hints for Deadheads on how to pass through obsta-
cles in this life, while on tour.
They will study the carefree life of Diogenes who, when
he wasn’t busying himself in the agora, lived in a tub—a phi-
losophy dear to the heart of every longhair who’s ever need-
ed a place to crash for the night and been able to find only
a couch, a floor or, yes, a bathtub.
192 Hip Like Me

HAS students will also be taught, quite validly, that the

Grateful Dead invented hip-hop, via drummer Mickey Hart’s
rapping of his own song, “Fire on the Mountain,” circa 1973.
Seriously: There’s an unreleased studio recording from 1974.
Of course, the recognized sound of hip-hop originated in
the Beastie Boys’ sampling of John Bonham’s drum work from
Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks,” with that being done
under the direction of producer Rick Rubin—“the most impor-
tant white boy in hip-hop.” But before those whites and Jews
perfected today’s black beats, the equally pasty Dead de-
serve credit for inventing the concept.
The hippie origin of contemporary nigga music was even
made explicit in the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”—the
first rap single to go gold, from the summer of 1979:

I said a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie,

To the hip-hip hop, ah you don’t stop

And we haven’t stopped. On the contrary, when blacks

accuse white rappers like Eminem of “stealing our music and
giving it back to us” ... well, they’ve got it exactly backwards.
Because they stole it from us first! Fucking thieves!
Our long-haired children will further learn about the most
recent, cutting-edge research by Hippiecentric scholars. For
example, we now know that long hair behaves like a super-
conductor, that it absorbs all frequencies of the electromag-
netic spectrum—well, except red, blond, brunette and (a
touch of) grey, obviously—that it can convert sound energy
to light energy reversibly, and that it can function as a mini-
computer to process information.
Previously, the only other substance believed by Afro-
centric scholars—erroneously, it turns out—to possess those
amazing properties was the skin pigment, melanin.
And, our kids can finally be taught the truth about Jesus:
That, like Steve Wozniak, he was one of us—a long-haired,
sandal-wearing Galilean Hippie without a real job, who was
tragically born two thousand years ahead of his time, and
Epilogue 193

suffered persecutions for that which today’s minorities can

only dream of.
You won’t read that in your biased history books, of
course—books written by shorthairs, for a shorthair-centric
society—any more than they would tell you that Cleopatra,
Josephine, Beethoven, Haydn, Solomon, Hannibal, Odysseus
and Socrates were all people of hair. (Well, maybe Socrates
not so much.) Same for Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln.
And the Moors.
Not that I’d want to come off as a “reverse hairist” my-
self. After all, some of my best friends are shorthairs....
But if the victors write the history books, then it’s up to the
victims to rewrite them! And there are few groups more vic-
timized today than my own: unhyphenated white European
males—especially eldest children, who have always carried
the added burden of responsibility and stress in being the first
of the family to “go where no sibling has gone before”—with
long hair. Indeed, us Haight-Ashburians are the newest “per-
secuted minority”—“the new black,” as the Fashionistas like
to say.
It’s not that you, as a member of some other oppressed,
non-hippie minority group, haven’t suffered or been margin-
alized or disenfranchised. You have been marginalized and
disenfranchised. You have suffered. And no one can ever
take that precious badge away from you: It’s your truth.
But in being treated today like blacks in America used to
be treated, it’s a simple fact that, since the late ’60s, our feel-
ings have been hurt more. African-Americans had a civil
rights movement to free them from oppression and bad
vibes, but where is the comparable hippie rights movement?
Where have short-haired whites, blacks, Native Americans
and Asians, female straights and strapped-on lesbians and
transsexuals and transvestites, and the cast of The Rocky Hor-
ror Picture Show, all marched in support of the rights of their
marginalized, long-haired brothers?
Nowhere, that’s where. Indeed, given how many un-
shaven, white members of the counterculture put their necks
on the line in support of civil rights back in the ’60s, the ab-
194 Hip Like Me

sence of black support for us now when we need it most is

especially painful, and shameful.
Society has failed us, and because of that failure, if
blacks and women have little power in the world today, we
have even less. And for exactly that reason, if the Marx-
inspired definition of racism stipulates that only members of
an oppressive, privileged majority can be racists, it follows
that no hippie—including Yours Truly—can ever be a racist.
Or, by the same line of argument, a sexist, either.
It’s obvious if you think about it. Because, you may be as
white as the snow on Christmas morning, and as stereotypi-
cally male as Richard the Lionheart. But all you’d have to do
is grow your hair a little too long, and walk around in clothes
that signal to the real bigots in the world that you’re not pull-
ing your weight in society, and you’ll find yourself excluded
from all the power and privilege that even feminists and
blacks take for granted. That, sadly, is what it means to be a
“person of hair” in the world today.
Through no fault of our own, we’ve been relegated to
the lowest rung of the Western power hierarchy: even short-
haired, panhandling bums get more respect from passers-by
than guitar-playing hippies do. And so we live as a powerless,
victimized out-group, feebly hoping for mercy from the op-
pressive, hegemonic in-group of feminists, gays, lesbians,
blacks, other assorted minorities, and short-haired white men
who control the reigns of power. All of that grief and institu-
tionalized discrimination has long been documented in
groundbreaking first- and second-wave hippieist texts like The
Dialectic of Hair, Are Hippies Human?, Toward a Long-Haired
Theory of the State, and The Hippie Mystique.
It’s not a “suffering contest,” of course—though if it was,
we’d be winning. But the point I’m trying to make is that only
in the complete absence of responsibility can any of us ever
find true freedom. Anything less than that would simply be
“blaming the victim.” And since we’re all helpless victims in
one way or another, we must all be equally blameless; there
is no middle ground.
Epilogue 195

In agitating for hippie rights, we should of course be pre-

pared for a “backlash” from the most intolerant members of
the shorthair community—specifically, lesbians (“persons of
L”) and blacks (“persons of N”). They are the people, after
all, who are the most likely to feel their own “follicular orienta-
tion” to be threatened by a hippie celebration of “alterna-
tive hair-ality.”
By contrast, in having worn our hair “both ways”—from
brush-cut short to Steven Pinker, rock-star long, through the
full “rainbow” spectrum in between—we’re in a position to
know from experience which lifestyle we prefer, and to
“speak truth to short-haired power” for that way of life. How
many “clit lit” lesbians, or janitorial “il lit” black males, can say
the same?
Like Hippie Jesus, Gene Roddenberry too was ahead of
his time—a true visionary, not least for giving us one of televi-
sion’s first interracial kisses, even if it was forced onto Kirk and
Uhuru by telekinesis. But contra Roddenberry’s vision, the
bridges of our starships in the twenty-fourth century won’t
have interracial crews, for the simple reason that distinct
white, black, yellow and red races won’t exist on Earth any-
more, a dozen generations from now. Rather, the whole
species will end up as a pleasing shade of light brown. That is,
over the next few hundred years intermarriage will rightfully
dissolve the whole idea of distinct cultures and races; thus
ironically producing, in its own way, the precise opposite of
multiculturalism, while simultaneously removing the overt trig-
gers of racism and ethnocentrism in a global genetic and
cultural “melting pot.”
Consider the gorgeous actress Vanessa Hudgens, whose
father is an American of Irish and Native American descent;
and whose Manila-raised mother has Filipino, Spanish and
Chinese ancestry. What “distinct culture” could Hudgens
possibly identify with? And what traditional culture or race or
even cuisine could her children possibly identify with?
Likewise, the prototypical “Aryan blonde” Heather Lock-
lear is European (Scottish), Indian (Lumbee) and black; while
Vanessa Marcil’s father is Mexican and her mother is an
196 Hip Like Me

American of French, Italian and Portuguese ancestry. Über-

hottie Megan Fox, for her own wet-dreams-inducing part, has
Irish, French and Native American blood.
These are among the most wildly desirable women on
the planet, and they’re absolute mongrels! (For that matter,
Tiger Woods is black, Thai, Chinese, white and American In-
dian. Somewhere in all that he must qualify for affirmative
action ... even if, tragically for those who would have liked to
help, he never actually needed it, simply for being the best in
the world at what he does, independent of his racial ances-
try.)
So you see, once again, “Love will conquer all.” You can
see that on any warm summer evening on the streets around
the University of Toronto campus, where testosterone and es-
trogen rightfully matter far more than do skin color or ethnic
background.
(Of course, there is still one weapon in the political arse-
nal which could be used in the misled liberal goal of preserv-
ing our world’s distinct cultures: segregation, and its associ-
ated prohibitions against intermarriage. Short of that oppres-
sive, liberal-racist agenda, however, multiculturalism will eat
itself in the long run.)
How, then, can each one of us do our part in ridding the
world of racism and ethnocentrism? The answer is obvious:
Sex. And lots of it.
If you’re a poor black kid with stereotypically large testi-
cles who’s too stupid to use a condom, try getting a white girl
pregnant for a change. Or, if you’re a black chick, take a
chance on a white boy: his dick may be larger than you’ve
been led to believe.
If you’re a geeky white guy with an Asian fetish
(“Weezer-itis”), seduce a Muslim woman once in awhile: Be-
neath that formless, life-denying burqa runs the hot Persian
blood of a real-life Scheherazade. And you don’t need to
spend all of your thousand-and-one nights with her just read-
ing about Aladdin’s “magic lamp,” either.
If you’re an eligible Jewish woman who wants to see
peace in the Middle East, elope with a handsome Arab man.
Epilogue 197

Whose side could your children possibly fight on? Plus, a

good Jewish girl must be worth at least seven camels these
days; and those versatile animals don’t grow on date trees!
Even if no pregnancies were to result from that ex-
change of bodily fluids, the integrative effects of seeing
each other naked will do more to create peace and har-
mony between the races than any political solution ever
could. Like the old saying goes: We don’t kill our enemies, we
marry them. (What you may wish you had done in the first
place, in hindsight after twenty years of marriage, is a differ-
ent issue.)
Intermarriage is what turned the Anglos and the Saxons
into the Anglo-Saxons. It’s what’s turning the poorer, less
photogenic Anglo Californians and some of their smarter ille-
gal aliens into the Anglo-Mexifornians. It would have turned
the Montagues and the Capulets into the Montague-
Capulets if their parents had only let it, ‘cause those kids
were really in love, god bless ‘em. And it can turn the Jamai-
can-Canadians and the Irish-Italian-Americans and the Pol-
ished-Asian-Cunnilingists and the Goatworthy-PBOH-Cabdriv-
ers into ... well, into simple Canadians and Americans and
Brits and Australians, if we just get our stupid politics and stu-
pid prejudices and stupid divisive stupid multiculturalism out
of the way, and let the raw hormones do the work that Na-
ture intended.
That would really be “Da Bomb.” And you don’t have to
wait for Paradise and seventy-two imaginary sweet white
monologues to get it, either: It’s all here for the taking in the
here and now, in the only world that we’ve got any reason
to believe exists in the first place—the only world that’s worth
fighting for.
It’s such a simple solution to an otherwise intractable
problem, and we could all have such a whole damned lot of
fun doing it—by which I mean, making the world a better
place, one orgasm at a time. (There are advantages, you
see, to being perpetually single and terrified of commit-
ment.) It won’t all happen overnight; but together, two by
two—or occasionally three—in just a few centuries we can
198 Hip Like Me

create a world without racism, ethnocentrism, or the most

pernicious of human bigotries: hairism.
Because I have a dream.
I have a dream, that one day in the financial district of
Toronto the sons of former hippies and the sons of former
bankers will be able to sit down together at a conference
table of brotherhood in the boardroom of peace.
I have a dream, that the longhairs and the shorthairs can
work together, in a world where hippies will be given the
same opportunities as the blacks, the yellow-skinned, and
the rednecks.
I have a dream that the illegitimate kids of groovy hippie
chicks will one day live in a world where they will not be
judged by the length of their hair but by the uniformly light-
brown color of their skin.
Let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we let
freedom ring from every BMW and every flower-power
painted Volkswagen van, we will be able to speed up that
day when the longhairs and the shorthairs will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Grateful Dead top-
twenty hit: “I will get by! I will get by! Thank Jerry Garcia, I will
survive!”
 References

[B]efore we can have justice, we must first have

truth....
—John Howard Griffin,
paraphrasing P. D. East, in
Black Like Me

See www.hiplikeme.com/references.php for live links, where

applicable.

he kept going AWOL. Sandy Troy, Captain Trips: A Biography

of Jerry Garcia (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1995), p.
17.

It was his pineapple. Ibid., p. 24: “Hunter had also just gotten
out of the Army, and they both ended up living in their
broken-down cars in an empty lot in East Palo Alto. Garcia
reminisced, ‘Hunter had these big tins of crushed pineapple
that he’d gotten from the Army, like five or six big tins, and I
had this glove compartment full of plastic spoons, and we

199
200 Hip Like Me

had this little cooperative scene, eating this crushed

pineapple day after day and sleeping in the cars.’”

stuffing his face with junk food. Chris Willman, “Last Rites of
the Dead: A Tie-Dyed Nation Mourns the Loss of Jerry
Garcia,” on EW.com, 1994
(http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,298552,00.html):
“Particularly in the years since his near-fatal diabetic coma of
1986, Garcia had yo-yoed between health-and-nutrition
kicks and milkshake-and-cheeseburger binges.”

arteries were like pinholes. Office of the Coroner, County of

Marin, “Coroner’s Report in the Matter of the Death of
Jerome John Garcia” (San Rafael, CA, 1995), p. 1: “[T]he
right coronary artery shows focal areas of approximately 30%
occlusion by eccentric atherosclerotic plaques. The anterior
descending coronary artery in its mid portion shows an area
with hemorrhage into an eccentric plaque with over 85-90%
occlusion of the lumen, and distal to this are areas of over
85% occlusion by atheromatous material.”

apologize just for being a man. Cf. Christina Hoff Sommers,

The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming
Our Young Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Cf. also
Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How Women
Have Betrayed Women (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
See also Robert Sheaffer, “Combatting Feminist Ms-
Information: Refuting the Most Common Feminist Lies and
Pseudo-Scholarship”
(http://www.debunker.com/patriarchy.html), for a valuable
list of similar resources, both online and offline.

cults waiting to happen. See Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the

Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment (Toronto:
Million Monkeys Press, 2007 [2005])
(http://www.strippingthegurus.com).

need not apply. Five Man Electrical Band, “Signs,” Good-

byes and Butterflies (Lionel Records, 1971).
References 201

Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen, “First We Take Manhattan,”

I’m Your Man (Sony, 1990 [1988]).

gotta go to work.” Sarah Harmer, “Everytime,” You Were Here

(Zoe Records, 2000).

long, strange trip. Grateful Dead, “Truckin’,” American

Beauty (Rhino/WEA, 1970).

May 15

history of Atlantis. Henry Mietkiewicz and Bob Mackowycz,

Dream Tower: The Life and Legacy of Rochdale College
(Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1988), p. 43.

science of “Mind-Fucking.” Ibid., p. 155.

nearby Rochdale. Nicholas Jennings, Before the Gold Rush:

Flashbacks to the Dawn of the Canadian Sound (Toronto:
Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1997), p. 195: “Yorkville was
controlled by big-league [real-estate] players now, and the
few hippies who hadn’t moved, mostly over to nearby
Rochdale College, were powerless to stop them.”

draft dodgers. Mietkiewicz and Mackowycz, op. cit., p. 100.

“Festival Express.” Janis Joplin, et al., Festival Express (New

Line Home Video, 2004).

“plays guitar and cries and sings.” Led Zeppelin, “Going to

California,” Led Zeppelin IV (Atlantic/WEA, 1971).

“capitalist exploiters.” Jennings, op. cit., p. 223: “[Promoter

Ken] Walker and the Eaton brothers had to contend with
protests from the May 4th Movement (M4M), a radical
coalition of students and street people based at Toronto’s
Rochdale College. Targeting the promoters as capitalist
exploiters, M4M tried to discredit the festival with the slogan
‘Stop the Rip-Off Express’ and a propaganda campaign that
202 Hip Like Me

demanded free admission along with ‘free dope and no

cops.’ After a meeting with the coalition, Thor Eaton
concluded, ‘These people have a loose grip on reality.’”

“clothing optional.” Mietkiewicz and Mackowycz, op. cit., p.

202, 204-5.

May 27

“pause that refreshes.” A Coke marketing slogan in the late

1920s.

May 29

shiks-appeal. From an episode of Seinfeld (“The Serenity

Now,” first aired October 9, 1997) where Elaine is concerned
about how she attracts Jewish men.

joy of accomplishment.” Richard Stallman, “Why Software

Should Be Free”
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html).

“democracy under a dictatorship.” John Carroll, “Stallman

Leads the GPL off a Cliff,” 2006
(http://blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1534).

squatted on the MIT campus. Reuven M. Lerner, “Stallman

wins $240,000 in MacArthur award,” in The Tech, July 18, 1990
(http://www-tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html).

“A pot, a pan, a Pentium, a hat.” Cf. Sheldon Harnick, Joseph

Stein and Jerry Bock, “Anatevka,” Fiddler on the Roof.

“technical skills shortage.” Norman Matloff, “Debunking the

Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage: Testimony to
the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on
Immigration,” 2002 (1998)
(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc6.4):
References 203

“It’s hard to open the business section of any newspaper

these days without running across an article bemoaning the
‘skilled-labor shortage’ that is supposedly threatening the
heart of American business.”

Comp Sci graduates. Ibid.

(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc6.2.2):
“[M]y own surveys of graduating seniors at UC Davis reveal
that fewer than half of the graduating seniors in computer
science get jobs in programming, and are instead shunted
into semitechnical (albeit well-paid) jobs like customer
support. Informal comments by colleagues at other
universities have confirmed that this is the case nationally.”

new, cutting-edge technologies. Ibid.

(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc8.1):
“[A]ny competent programmer can pick up a new software
skill on his/her own, on the job, without formal instruction.”

starting at $30-$35K. Ibid.

(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc4.2.1):
“[I]n spite of wild newspaper stories in 1998 about new
computer science or engineering Bachelor’s graduates
getting salaries approaching six figures, the going rate was in
the mid-$40,000 range, even in high-cost-of-living regions.”

June 5

but not for braces. Cf. Bill Cosby, in Felicia R. Lee, “Cosby
Defends His Remarks About Poor Blacks’ Values,” in New York
Times, May 22, 2004
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E5D71E
3FF931A15756C0A9629C8B63&fta=y): “These people are not
parenting. They are buying things for their kids—$500
sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 for ‘Hooked on
Phonics.’”

copper-colored feet. Revelation 1:15: “And his feet like unto

fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace.” See also
204 Hip Like Me

Theprophetess, “Black Jesus of the Bible,” 2004

(http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/5051/10
27.html).

Malcolm X. Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ. (Maryknoll,

NY: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 1: “In a 1963 interview, Malcolm X
stridently proclaimed, Christ wasn’t white. Some thirty years
later, especially with the emergence of the Afrocentric
movement in the black community, many black scholars
and church leaders are vociferously repeating Malcolm’s
proclamation.” See also Alex Haley, “The Playboy Interview:
Malcolm X,” in Playboy magazine, May 1963
(http://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/int_playb.htm).

Nigger Jesus. Cf. William Mosley, What Color Was Jesus? A

Mad Economist Takes a Stroll (Chicago Heights, IL: African
American Images, 1997), p. 7: “Ontologically speaking, then,
Jesus is Black, for ‘Black’ blood ran in His human veins.” See
also John G. Jackson, “Was Jesus Christ a Negro? A
Rationalistic Review,” 1933
(http://www.africawithin.com/jgjackson/jgjackson_was_jesus
_christ_a_negro.htm).

some 54-IQ criminal. Cf. La Griffe du Lion, “Analysis of Hate

Crime,” Volume 2, Number 5, May 2000
(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hatecrime.htm): “Blacks,
representing thirteen percent of the [U.S.] nation [in 1994],
committed more than 90 percent of the violent interracial
crime. Fifty-seven percent of the violent crime committed by
blacks had white victims. Less than 3 percent of violence
committed by whites had black victims. In 1994, a black was
64 times more likely to attack a white than vice versa.”

I do too. So did shock-jock Howard Stern: “I grew up the only

white man in a black neighborhood.... By the time I hit
seventh grade there were only a handful of white kids left in
my school. That’s when the beatings began to get regular....
Half of the kids in my school were in a gang called the Five
Percenters. [They] hated the white man with a vengeance.
References 205

These guys would choke me and say, ‘You’ll never live to see
your fifteenth birthday’—nice stuff like that.” See Howard
Stern, Private Parts (New York: Pocket Books, 1996 [1993]), p.
63-8.

June 8

hippie is the nigger of the world. Cf. John Lennon and Yoko
Ono, “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” Some Time in New
York City (Capitol, 1972).

June 10

multimedia. See Fred Turner, From Counterculture to

Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and
the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago, IL: The University of
Chicago Press, 2006), p. 49-51, 65-6.

peacenik and privacy advocate.” Stewart Brand, “We Owe

It All to the Hippies,” in Time magazine, Volume 145, No. 12,
Spring 1995
(http://technohippie.com/archives/stewartbrand.html).

Beatle-haired hippie. Brand, loc. cit.

“blue boxes.” Brand, loc. cit.

dial Vatican City. Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, iWoz: From
Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal
Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (W. W.
Norton & Company, 2006), p. 115.

I looked like Jesus Christ.” Ibid., p. 81.

hanging around with them. Ibid., p. 83.

part by psychedelics.” Ram Dass, in Roger Walsh and

Charles S. Grob, ed., Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore
206 Hip Like Me

the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics (Albany, NY: State

University of New York Press, 2005), p. 220.

talking paperclip’ came from. Cf. John Markoff, What the

Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the
Personal Computer Industry (New York: The Penguin Group,
2005), p. 250: “Today [Dan Ingalls’ method of moving blocks
of information in computer memory] remains at the heart of
both the Macintosh and Windows computing worlds. In the
early 1970s, however, it was a radically new idea. Called
BitBlt, it enabled graphical menu systems to ‘pop-up’
instantly on an Alto screen in response to a mouse click. As
much as any single software innovation, BitBlt made the
modern graphical computer interface possible.... Ingalls had
dabbled in psychedelics and smoked pot to put himself in a
more creative, introspective mood.... Years later ... when
people would ask about the inventive ideas in Smalltalk
[computer language], Ingalls would joke, ‘Well, where do
you think these ideas came from?!’”

studied acid. Walsh and Grob, op. cit., p. 25: “James

Fadiman graduated from Harvard and Stanford universities
where he met and worked with Richard Alpert, who later
became known as Ram Dass. It was Alpert who introduced
Fadiman to psychedelics....”

affected by psychedelics.” James Fadiman, in Ibid., p. 33, 37.

most important things.” Markoff, op. cit., p. xix. Markoff’s book

unfortunately “almost totally overlooks the MIT techno-
Deadhead community of leftist hackers”—Edward
Hasbrouck, “Life Outside the Mainframe,” in Peacework
Magazine, August 2005
(http://web.archive.org/web/20070310220609/www.peacew
orkmagazine.org/pwork/0508/050814.htm).

recovery from alcohol addiction.” Charles S. Grob and Gary

Bravo, in Walsh and Grob, op. cit., p. 9-10.
References 207

Tony Blair. Jake Woodward, et al., ed., Grateful Dead: The

Illustrated Trip (New York: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2003), p.
375.

Bruce Hornsby. David Shenk and Steve Silberman, Skeleton

Key, A Dictionary for Deadheads (New York: Main Street
Books, 1994). See also “The Octane Kids!”
(http://www.realhornsby.com/octanekids.htm).

Patrick Leahy, Al and Tipper Gore. Woodward, loc. cit.

Nancy Pelosi. CBS News Staff, “The Skinny: Follow The

Money? Nah,” in CBS News, January 4, 2007
(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/04/the_skinny/mai
n2329383.shtml).

Al Franken. Ann Coulter, in Taylor Hill, “‘Deadheads Are What

Liberals Claim to Be But Aren’t’: An Interview with Ann
Coulter,” 2006
(http://www.jambands.com/Features/content_2006_06_23.0
6.phtml).

John Kerry. Brian Doherty, “John Perry Barlow 2.0: The Thomas
Jefferson of cyberspace reinvents his body—and his politics,”
in Reason magazine, August/September 2004
(http://www.reason.com/news/show/29236.html): “Kerry’s a
Deadhead.”

Bill Clinton. Woodward, loc. cit.

Ann Coulter. Hill, loc. cit.

Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, “SUVs, Canadians and the

Grateful Dead,” October 14, 2005
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8063563).

Kenneth Starr. Hill, loc. cit.

Jerry Greenfield. “Company News; Ben & Jerry’s,” in New

York Times, July 30, 1987
208 Hip Like Me

(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6D91
73EF933A05754C0A961948260&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes
%20Topics%2fPeople%2fG%2fGarcia%2c%20Jerry).

Larry Page. David Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story:
Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success
of Our Time (New York: Delta, 2006), p. 22.

Mitch Kapor. Brand, loc. cit.

Board of Directors of the WELL. Richard Holeton, Composing

Cyberspace: Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the
Electronic Age (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997)
(http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/holeton/chap4/
barlow.mhtml), Chapter 4.

Acid Test-organizer. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said:

How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer
Industry (New York: The Penguin Group, 2005), p. 153
(http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/06.01.05/dorm
ouse-0522.html): “Brand was also close to Ken Kesey and the
Merry Pranksters, and in 1966 he had helped organize the last
of the Acid Tests, which served to launch the Grateful Dead.”

Dick Cheney. Doherty, loc. cit.

made his candles.” Hill, loc. cit.

June 13

security ninnies. Cf. Christie Blatchford, “The truth in a

nutshell, or what I won’t read on vacation,” in Globe and
Mail, June 27, 2008
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.200
80627.blatch28/BNStory/specialComment/home): “When we
boarded a little later, I asked for the ninny’s name. He
refused and hissed, ‘If you make a scene, I’ll call the pilot
and you won’t be flying tonight.’”
References 209

prejudices of their own.” James Fulford, “Return of the

Nativist?” on VDare.com, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/fulford/return_nativist.htm).

typical of Far-Eastern cultures. See Dave Barry, Dave Barry

Does Japan (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), p. 146:
“Cheering is very much a designated group activity at
Japanese sporting events.... [Y]ou virtually never hear a lone
voice yell or heckle. Such a display of individualism would be
highly embarrassing in Japan.... [T]he cheering is done by
specific groups standing in specific areas and performing
precise, unvarying cheer routines, which are repeated over
and over and over.” See also Karel van Wolferen, The
Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless
Nation (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1989]), p. 23: “I believe that
the Japanese are individuals, all 120 million of them. Not all
may want to assert their individuality; most, having been so
conditioned, do not. But I have met quite a few who want to
be taken for distinct persons, rather than as indistinct
members of a group. These independent thinkers are
disturbed [by the conformist society around them]. In many
cases they have withdrawn into the private world of their
own mind.”

make more money. Jet Staff, “Job Study Shows That Pretty
People Make More Money; Ugly Men Make the Least,” in Jet,
April 11, 1994
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_n23_v85/ai_1
5133411).

July 2

“Paradise by the dashboard light.” Meat Loaf, “Paradise by

the Dashboard Light,” Bat out of Hell (Sony, 1977).

experiences, immensely varied. Cf. John Howard Griffin,

Black Like Me (New York: Signet, 1996 [1960]), p. 87: “All
showed morbid curiosity about the sexual life of the Negro,
and all had, at base, the same stereotyped image of the
210 Hip Like Me

Negro as an inexhaustible sex-machine with oversized

genitals and a vast store of experiences, immensely varied.”

“parental uncertainty.” Jared Diamond, “Ethnic differences:

Variation in Human Testis Size,” in Nature, 320(6062):488-489:
“In [man and apes] large testis size correlates with, and was
probably selected [via natural selection in evolution] by, two
factors: high copulatory frequency; and high probability that
a female will mate with several males during one ovulatory
cycle.” See also David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The
New Science of the Mind (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon,
1999), p. 166: “Large testes typically evolve as a
consequence of intense sperm competition—when the
sperm from two or more males occupy the reproductive
tract of one female at the same time because she has
copulated with two or more males.... Sperm competition
exerts a selection pressure on males to produce large
ejaculates containing numerous sperm. In the race to the
valuable egg, the large, sperm-laden ejaculate has an
advantage in displacing the ejaculate of other men inside
the woman’s reproductive tract.... [H]uman male testes
account for ... 60 percent more [weight] than that of
orangutans and more than four times that of gorillas,
corrected for body size.... This size of testes would have been
unlikely to have evolved unless there was sperm competition.
And it suggests that both sexes pursued short-term mating
some of the time.”

male sex partners per birth. Buss, loc. cit. See also Nicholas
Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our
Ancestors (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 158, 168: “The
uniquely human blend of sociality ... evolved [in Homo
sapiens] over many years. The most fundamental [element],
a major shift from the ape brand of sociality, was the human
nuclear family, which gave all males a chance at
procreating along with incentives to cooperate with others in
foraging and defense.... Much of human nature consists of
the behaviors necessary to support the male-female bond
References 211

and a man’s willingness to protect his family in return for a

woman’s willingness to bear only his children.”

for many generations. Cf. Steve Sailer, “Tom Sowell’s ‘Black

Redneck’ Theory—Ingenious, But Insufficient,” on VDare.com,
2003 (http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050515_redneck.htm):
“[I]n systems of tropical agriculture where land was
traditionally cheap and most of the work is weeding, which
women can do as well as men—as opposed to manhandling
draft animals for plowing—you sometimes see handsome
men with 50 or more wives.... [M]any of the children born to
the Big Man’s wives might not be his genetic offspring. But
their mothers can support them—which means that some
cuckoo’s eggs [i.e., those fertilized by a different father]
aren’t that big of a loss to him.”

big-dicked, freaked-out brotha.” Dan Savage, “Dan Loves

Paul,” in Savage Love, July 11, 2002
(http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1129
1).

never die easily, do they. Cf. J. Philippe Rushton, Race,

Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, 2nd spec.
ab. ed. (Port Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute,
2000)
(http://www.harbornet.com/folks/theedrich/JP_Rushton/Rac
e.htm), p. 18-9: “In one study of college students,
testosterone levels were 10 to 20% higher in blacks than in
whites.... The average frequency of intercourse per week for
married couples in their twenties is 2.5 for the Japanese and
Chinese in Asia. It is 4 for American whites. For American
blacks it is 5.... Around the world, public health agencies now
give out free condoms to help slow the spread of AIDS and
help save lives. Condom size can affect whether one is used,
so these agencies take note of penis size when they give out
condoms. The World Health Organization Guidelines specify
a 49-mm-width condom for Asia, a 52-mm-width for North
America and Europe, and a 53-mm-width for Africa.”
212 Hip Like Me

Ashley. CNN.com Staff, “Operation PUSH documents

financial ties with Jackson lover,” on CNN.com, February 1,
2001
(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/02/01/jackson.money/index
.html).

Greek homos.” Al Sharpton, quoted in Laura Ward, Foolish

Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken (London: The
Promotional Reprint Company Limited, 2003), p. 192.

Socrates himself was black. Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of

Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth
as History (New York: Basic Books, 1997 [1996]), p. xi, xii, 9, 26.

academic political correctness.” John Zmirak, “Learning To

Love The West,” on VDare.com, 2004
(http://www.vdare.com/zmirak/041106_west.htm).

“friend and ally.” NOI.org Staff, “Farrakhan and the Jewish

Rift; An Historic Reference,” on NOI.org, 2007
(http://www.noi.org/statements/rift/recent_history.htm).

“potential humans.” Louis Farrakhan, quoted in Derek Brown,

“Quotes from Louis Farrakhan,” in The Guardian, July 31, 2001
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/jul/31/race.world1).

Farrakhan in 1997. “Farrakhan Meets The Press,” from NBC

television’s Meet the Press, April 13, 1997; transcribed in The
Final Call (http://www.finalcall.com/national/mlf-mtp5-13-
97.html).

you ask for black coffee.” Louis Farrakhan, quoted in Alex

Haley, “The Playboy Interview: Malcolm X,” in Playboy
magazine, May 1963 (http://www.malcolm-
x.org/docs/int_playb.htm).
References 213

“bloodsuckers.” Louis Farrakhan, quoted in Charles

Bierbauer, “Million Man March: Its Goal More Widely
Accepted Than Its Leader,” on CNN, October 17, 1995
(http://www-cgi.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-
17/notebook/).

neither a racist nor anti-Semitic. Ibid.

easy for white people.” Ibid.

intended to wipe out.” Spike Lee, “United Colors of

Benetton,” in Rolling Stone, November 12, 1992, p. 6.

Bill Cosby. See Marc Sheppard, “Come on Cosby: It’s Time to

Come Clean about AIDS,” in American Thinker, November 1,
2007
(http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/come_on_cosby
_its_time_to_come.html).

father-knows-best sitcoms. Cf. Karen Ritchie, Marketing to

Generation X (New York: Free Press, 2002 [1995]), p. 59:
“Julianne Malveaux points out that, because of the civil
rights movement, Boomers of African-American descent
bonded more closely with their own parents. ‘...there is not as
sharp a generational divide between black boomers and
our brothers and sisters from the so-called silent generation.’
As a result, black Boomers continue to share power, more or
less comfortably, with older black leaders. Black Boomers
rebelled less against their own parents and family traditions
(as white Boomers did) and more against the repressive
[white majority] system.” If the rest of the world is against you,
you need your parents on your side. Conversely, if while
growing up the world is your oyster, you can afford to dis
Mum and Dad (as opposed to “whitey” in general) for all of
their faults and misuses of power. Either way, you need to
find something to rebel against, as a rite of passage from
youth into adulthood. As a generalization, then, white Baby
Boomers rebelled against the idea that “father knows best,”
214 Hip Like Me

while blacks embraced it, and rebelled instead against

whitey.

of biological-warfare testing.” Ned Zeman, “Will Smith Rides

High,” in Vanity Fair, July 1999, p. 136.

younger than his wife.” Christopher Hitchens, God is Not

Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve
Books, 2007), p. 176. See also Samuel Francis, “The King
Holiday and Its Meaning: The origins of our national
celebration of multiracialism and political correctness,” in
American Renaissance, February 1998
(http://www.vdare.com/francis/050226_king_holiday.htm):
“In the course of the Senate debate on the King holiday, the
East office received a letter from a retired FBI official, Charles
D. Brennan. Mr. Brennan, who had served as Assistant
Director of the FBI, stated that he had personally been
involved in the FBI surveillance of King and knew from first-
hand observation the truth about King’s sexual conduct—
conduct that Mr. Brennan characterized as ‘orgiastic and
adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King
could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women.’ He also
stated that ‘King frequently drank to excess and at times
exhibited extreme emotional instability as when he once
threatened to jump from his hotel room window.’”

what’s really under there.” Francis, loc. cit.

“Hymietown.” Larry J. Sabato, “Jesse Jackson’s ‘Hymietown’

Remark—1984,” in Washington Post, 1998
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm).

“Emergency Cancellation Archimedes.” The code to shut

down Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet. Or, in the case
of the mother of Reverend Jackson’s love-child, perhaps:
Earth Girls Are Easy.
References 215

July 20

real prejudices. Nicholas Jennings, Before the Gold Rush:

Flashbacks to the Dawn of the Canadian Sound (Toronto:
Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1997), p. 230-1, quoting music
critic Ritchie Yorke: “Almost every country in the world has a
local music industry. Canada has the talent but no music
industry. There are two reasons for this, I believe: the extreme
reluctance of Canadian radio stations to program anything
by local artists as if there was somehow something wrong
with them. The second reason is that most Canadian record
companies are foreign owned and they cannot be bothered
sinking valuable profits into making records that few stations
will play.”

Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot. Ibid., p. 202-3: Lightfoot

signed his million-dollar deal with Warner Bros. in 1969; “Joni
Mitchell was herself hugely successful by the end of the [’60s]
decade.”

Leonard Cohen, Neil Young. Loc. cit.

The Guess Who. Ibid., p. 215, 217: “It was the late sixties and
The Guess Who had just returned to Canada from a grueling
tour of the United States.... The Guess Who were invited to
perform at Tricia [Nixon]’s birthday party at the White House
in July [of 1970]....”

drives the overall quality down. Cf. Ibid., p. 232: “In making
the [Cancon] announcement, CRTC chairman Pierre Juneau
told RPM that the opponents of the regulations would soon
be silenced. ‘The prophets of doom, the messengers of
mediocrity,’ he predicted, ‘will be overwhelmed by the new
generation of competent, creative, confident artisans....’”
Contrast that wishful thinking with Frederick R. Lynch, Invisible
Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1989), which documents the
widespread hiring of incompetent and illiterate minorities
216 Hip Like Me

over competent and literate majority-group members in the

American corporate world.

“persecuted minorities” in the music business. Cf. John

McWhorter, “The Demise of Affirmative Action at UC
Berkeley: Dissecting the Stalemate”
(http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mcwhorter/mcwhorter_p
2.html): “Affirmative action had come to operate in an
environment in which its initial goal had come such a long
way towards realization that a policy once intended to bring
blacks to the socioeconomic level of whites was now being
applied to blacks who had long done so.” Cf. also Peter
Brimelow, “‘Immigration Is The Viagra Of The State’—A
Libertarian Case Against Immigration,” on VDare.com, June
4, 2008
(http://www.vdare.com/pb/080604_immigration.htm): “The
original rationale for quotas was that they compensated
American blacks for the lingering effects of slavery and
segregation. But all immigrants who belong to the so-called
‘protected classes’—basically non-whites—are eligible for
affirmative action preferences, even though they by
definition were not in the country to suffer any wrongs.” Cf.
also James Fulford, “Libertarians and Immigration,” on
VDare.com, June 6, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/fulford/libertarian_immigration.htm):
“Giving affirmative action preferences to the American
descendants of freed slaves might have some historic
validity, but the Beninese immigrant from Africa is the
descendant of slave merchants, and the Sudanese
immigrant may be a slave owner himself.” Cf. also Steve
Sailer, “Obama Hands McCain The Quota Issue. Will He Use
It?” on VDare.com, July 27, 2008
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080727_obama.htm).

Mounties didn’t intercept it.” Jennings, op. cit., p. 234-5.

“half-Canadian.” “The MAPL System,” 2001

(http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/R1.htm): “To qualify
as ‘Canadian content’ a musical selection must generally
References 217

fulfill at least two of the following conditions: M (music) — the

music is composed entirely by a Canadian. A (artist) — the
music is, or the lyrics are, performed principally by a
Canadian. P (production) — the musical selection consists of
a live performance that is (i) recorded wholly in Canada, or
(ii) performed wholly in Canada and broadcast live in
Canada. L (lyrics) — the lyrics are written entirely by a
Canadian.”

“one drop.” Cf. Steve Sailer, “Census follies,” on VDare.com,

April 4, 2000
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/census_follies.htm).

July 23

mandolin rain. Bruce Hornsby and the Range, “Mandolin

Rain,” The Way It Is (RCA, 1986).

July 24

“Of course I would.” Peter A. Bucky with Allen G. Weakland,

The Private Albert Einstein (Kansas City: Andrews and
McMeel, 1992), p. 104.

get any work done. Cf. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 28: “Never, never
marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you
can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable
of.... Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all
that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted
on trifles.... [T]ie yourself up with a woman, and like a chained
convict you lose all freedom!” Cf. also Christopher Orlet,
“Bachelorhood And Its Discontents,” in New English Review,
July 2008
(http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/22098/
sec_id/22098): “Some years ago a noted Japanese
researcher analyzed the biographical data of some 280
famous mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and biologists
218 Hip Like Me

and discovered that all peaked professionally in their

twenties, at which point their careers spiraled downward.
Married scientists suffered the worst decline in productivity.
However, those who never married remained highly
productive well into their fifties. ‘Scientists tend to ‘desist’
from scientific research upon marriage,’ the researcher told
an interviewer.... One theory suggests married men lack an
evolutionary reason to continue working hard (i.e., to attract
females). Though it [is] likely they similarly lack the
prerequisite time and solitude.”

may have delayed publishing. BBC Staff, “Darwin ‘was

committed to publish,’” in BBC News, March 28, 2007
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6500887.stm).

meeting in the afterlife. Adrian Desmond and James Moore,

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1994), p. 269-71.

agnostic. Charles Darwin with Nora Barlow, ed., The

Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882 (New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 1993), p. 94.

“terrible loss of time.” Ibid., p. 233.

August 11

“Get a job.” Cf. Bruce Hornsby and the Range, “The Way It
Is,” The Way It Is (RCA, 1986).

freedom of expression.” In The Grateful Dead: The End of the

Road—The Final Tour ’95 (Venice, CA: Slow Loris Films, 2005
[2000]), 11:00 – 12:11 (http://www.endoftheroad.com).

kept as forced labor. David Berreby, Us and Them:

Understanding Your Tribal Mind (New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 2005), p. 152, 222, 224.
References 219

because of the way I look.” In Tie-Dyed: Rock ‘n Roll’s Most

Deadicated Fans (1995), 58:58 – 59:30.

August 14

Hispanic culture. Cf. Murray Weiss, “Booby-Prize Bid:

Foxwoods Casino Sued Over ‘Busty’ Barbs,” in New York Post,
July 22, 2008
(http://www.nypost.com/seven/07222008/news/regionalnew
s/booby_prize_bid_120933.htm).

distinctiveness of all cultures. Cf. Neil Bissoondath, Selling

Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (New York:
Penguin, 2002 [1994]), p. 37: “Former Quebec premier René
Levesque was frankly dismissive of the multicultural game.
‘Multiculturalism, really, is folklore,’ he once said. ‘It is a ‘red
herring.’ The notion was devised to obscure ‘the Quebec
business,’ to give an impression that we are all ethnics and
do not have to worry about special status for Quebec.”

resentment that ‘outsiders’ had been.” Muzafer Sherif, O. J.

Harvey, et. al., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The
Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman, OK: The University of
Oklahoma, 1961 [1954])
(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Sherif), p. 78.

Fourth of July.” David Berreby, Us and Them: Understanding

Your Tribal Mind (New York: Little, Brown and Company,
2005), p. 173.

out-group were crystallized. Sherif, op. cit., p. 208.

two sides of the Cold War.” Berreby, op. cit., p. 200, 209.

goodwill contact. Sherif, op. cit., p. 209: “[C]ontact situations

did not prove effective in reducing friction. Instead contact
situations not conducive to interdependence were used by
our groups for overt acts of hostility and further exchanges of
unflattering invectives.”
220 Hip Like Me

achieve a common goal. Sherif actually observed different

endings in two similar experiments, performed earlier: “In the
first, the boys ganged up on a common enemy and in the
second they ganged up on the experimenters themselves.”
Those earlier results corresponded to the two groups uniting
against a common enemy—i.e., against another group of
boys who just happened to be in the area—and, in the
second case, to them turning on the group (of
experimenters) in power over them. See PsyBlog, “War,
Peace and the Role of Power in Sherif’s Robbers Cave
Experiment” (http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/09/war-peace-
and-role-of-power-in-sherifs.php).

into a larger room.” Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and

Everyday Rebellions (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1995
[1983]), p. 197.

shared work comes to the fore.” Berreby, op. cit., p. 191. See
also Elliot Aronson, Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching
Compassion After Columbine (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2001).

on the sports field. Cf. Steve Sailer, “How to Instill a Love of

America,” on VDare.com, 2000
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/patriotism.htm): “You can get
people to bond across racial and class lines, but seldom by
preaching at them. For example, UC Berkeley students are
constantly exhorted about equality and interracial solidarity.
But the only place on campus where black and white
students can be seen making sacrifices for each other is on
the football field. Black and white college football players
are far more likely to eat lunch together or listen to each
other’s music than are their more articulate and politically
correct fellow students simply because they have to play
together as a team in order to win.”

you are all traded.” Quoted in Steve Sailer, “How Jackie

Robinson Desegregated America,” in National Review, April
References 221

8, 1996 (http://www.isteve.com/JackieRobinson.htm). Italics

added.

to bind us.” Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of

Multiculturalism in Canada (New York: Penguin, 2002 [1994]),
p. 82, 197-8.

“Muslim-Canadian.” Christie Blatchford, “We’re so polite that

we can’t see a danger hiding in plain sight,” in Globe and
Mail, June 21, 2008
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.200806
21.BLATCHFORD21/TPStory/?query=Christie).

cultural dis-integration. Cf. Steve Sailer, “Diversity Is Strength!

It’s Also…Oh, Wait, Make That ‘Weakness,’” on VDare.com,
July 1, 2007
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070701_diversity.htm).

black Muslim “youths.” See Donald A. Collins, “Camp Of The

Saints Comes True In France. Let’s Stop It Happening Here,”
on VDare.com, November 8, 2005
(http://www.vdare.com/collins/051108_camp.htm). See also
Steve Sailer, “The Sailer [Immigrant Buyout] Scheme: Well—
Why Not?” on VDare.com, November 27, 2005
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/051127_buyout.htm).

in the fall of 2005. Marina Jiménez, “How Canadian are

you?” in Globe and Mail, January 12, 2007
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.200
70112.wximmigrant12/BNStory/National/).

recent public policy in Canada.” Robert Fulford, in Globe

and Mail, February 19, 1997. Quoted in Martin Loney, The
Pursuit of Division: Race, Gender, and Preferential Hiring in
Canada (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1998), p. 152.

“melting pot.” Yet, see Jeffrey G. Reitz and Raymond Breton,

The Illusion of Difference: Realities of Ethnicity in Canada and
the United States (Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1994), p. 8:
222 Hip Like Me

“[C]ontrary to the comfortable assumptions of many

Canadians, Americans are, in fact, more likely to favor
cultural retention—at least in intent. When examining actual
cultural retention, however, as indicated both by subjective
measures of ethnic identification and by behavioral
measures such as ethnic intermarriages, Reitz and Breton find
no systematic differences: assimilation rates and economic
opportunities for minorities in the two countries are similar....
[I]n those U.S. cities with the greatest ethnic diversity and the
largest experience of recent immigration, many observers of
demographic trends have questioned the continued
relevance of the metaphor of the melting pot, a
development that has paralleled the rise of the
multiculturalism ideology in Canada.”

taking easy refuge. George J. Borjas, Heaven’s Door:

Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 33: “[I]mmigrants who
live in an area where they can find many compatriots who
share their culture and language are much less likely to learn
English.”

aren’t learning English in school. Daniel Stoffman, Who Gets

In: What’s Wrong with Canada’s Immigration Program, and
How to Fix It (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002), p.
138-9.

ups their voter base. Ibid., p. 24, 79.

union-backing NDP. Ibid., p. 111: “The NDP wants higher

immigration levels and less selectivity even though that
policy, if implemented, would further depress wages,
weaken labor unions, and undermine social programs.”

poor workers to rich employers. Ibid., p. 109-10. See also

Borjas, op. cit., p. 90-2, 184-5. See also Martin Collacott, “Time
to debunk immigration myths: Greater thought should be
given to how many people Canada can absorb,” in
National Post, January 15, 2000
References 223

(http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~gborjas/HeavensDoor/Nation
al_Post.htm): “Exhaustive studies in the three major receiving
countries, the U.S., Canada and Australia, have found that
immigration does contribute to the aggregate growth of the
economy but that, apart from the transfer of billions of dollars
from workers to employers ... it has very little impact on the
incomes of current residents.”

contract-out to cheap labor. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 114.

less than 25% of new immigrants. Ibid., p. 30.

“family reunification.” Ibid., p. 27-8, 88.

killing America. Steve Sailer, “What Feminist Celebrity

Eugenics Teaches Us about Immigration Policy,” on
VDare.com, 2000
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/feminist_eugenics.htm): “The
1965 Immigration Act ‘family reunification’ policy gives
priority not to immigrants who would most benefit the
American public as a whole, but to recent immigrants’
siblings, parents, and adult children. Plus those relatives’
spouses and kids. This is flooding the country with mediocrities
admitted only because they are previous immigrants’
brothers-in-law.... Of the 660,000 foreigners the U.S. accepted
as permanent residents in 1998 ... only about 14,000 came in
exclusively because they were skilled or educated.”

1% of the country’s population. James Bissett, “Immigration

must be an election issue” (Ottawa, ON: Canadian Centre
for Policy Studies, 2008)
(http://policystudies.ca/index.php?option=com_content&tas
k=view&id=191&Itemid=27).

whopping 23% over 25 years. “Annual Immigration by

Category, Citizenship and Immigration Canada” (Ottawa,
ON: Citizenship and Immigration Canada)
(http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/menu-
fact.asp).
224 Hip Like Me

43% of new immigrants. Daniel Stoffman, “When immigration

goes awry,” in Toronto Star, July 14, 2006
(http://www.thestar.com/Canada2020/article/106702).

three-quarters of T.O.’s population growth. Daniel Stoffman,

Who Gets In: What’s Wrong with Canada’s Immigration
Program, and How to Fix It (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter &
Ross, 2002), p. 186.

housing prices sharply up, and wages down. Ibid., p. 184:

“Because almost half the immigrants come to Toronto, wage
compression is felt most keenly in that city. Rapid population
growth, fuelled by immigration, has driven up the price of
housing.” See also George J. Borjas, Heaven’s Door:
Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 96: “[T]here is no
immigration surplus if the native wage is not reduced by
immigration. In other words, if some workers are not harmed
by immigration, many of the benefits that are typically
attributed to immigration—higher profits for firms, lower prices
for consumers—cease to exist.”

proportion of the total population. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 106.

jobs they create. Ibid., p. 107-8.

work menial jobs for less. Ibid., p. 117. See also Borjas, op. cit.,
p. 79: “[I]mmigrants take jobs that natives do not want at the
going wage.... This does not say, however, that natives would
refuse to work in those jobs if the immigrants had never
arrived and employers were forced to raise wages to fill the
positions.”

slaughterhouse and construction jobs. See James Fulford,

“USA Today—Gone Tomorrow?” on VDare.com, July 25, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/fulford/usa_today.htm):
“Meatpacking plants employing native-born workers have
closed all over the country, and new ones opened
employing immigrant labor.” See also Joe Guzzardi, “View
From Lodi, CA: Rolling Stone vs. American Workers,” on
References 225

VDare.com, March 17, 2002

(http://vdare.com/guzzardi/rolling_stones.htm): “By working
for $11 an hour, a third of the going union rate, and through
their willingness to endure conditions no American would
tolerate, [Hispanic construction crews] have shut American
construction workers out of jobs....”

tickets in parking garages. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 114-5.

medium-skill jobs. Loc. cit.

become more productive. Cf. Fulford, op. cit.: “China’s

average standard of living is much lower than the U.S.’s in
part because they have all this cheap labor, and thus don’t
feel the pressure to mechanize industry.” See also Sam
Francis, “Economic Man Turning Against Mass Immigration,”
April 1, 2004 (http://vdare.com/francis/economic_logic.htm):
“[T]he cheap labor that mass immigration provides has
helped keep American farm technology in the Dark Ages
and caused American agriculture to wither in the face of
global competition....”

wealthiest city in the world. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 184. See also
Martin Collacott, “Time to debunk immigration myths:
Greater thought should be given to how many people
Canada can absorb,” in National Post, January 15, 2000
(http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~gborjas/HeavensDoor/Nation
al_Post.htm).

“black-focused alternative school.” Kristin Rushowy, “More

black-focused schools?” in Toronto Star, January 31, 2008
(http://www.thestar.com/News/article/299106). Cf. Michelle
Malkin, “Liberal Bigotry And The New School Segregation,”
on VDare.com, July 29, 2003
(http://www.vdare.com/malkin/libs.htm).

How’s that for gratitude. Cf. Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions:

The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (New York: Penguin,
2002 [1994]), p. 113-4: When approximately 250 sons of
Croatian immigrants left Canada to fight in defense of
226 Hip Like Me

Croatia, “I wondered which country they would choose if

one day obliged to: the land of their parents, for which they
had chosen to fight, or the land of their birth, from which they
had chosen to depart?” See also Thomas Leung, quoted in
Stoffman, op. cit., p. 146: “I am a Canadian citizen today but
I am also a Chinese. If there is a war, no matter what, I would
go back to China and fight for China.”

founded this country. Cf. Richard Gwyn, quoted in Stoffman,

op. cit., p. 127: “It was English-Canadians who explored the
greater part of the country, cleared it, and settled it. It was
they who contributed the overwhelming majority of men
who died fighting in wars for democracy and freedom. It was
they who created almost all of the country’s political and
legal infrastructure.”

August 17

come up to your knees.” Monty Python, “I Like Chinese,”

Monty Python Sings (Virgin Records, 1989).

persecution in the United States. Daniel Stoffman, Who Gets

In: What’s Wrong with Canada’s Immigration Program, and
How to Fix It (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002), p.
160.

approval rate of 60 to 90%. Ibid., p. 85-6, 157.

a new passport. Cf. Kevin Michael Grace, “Breakthrough In

Canada!” on VDare.com, November 26, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/misc/grace_breakthrough.htm):
“[D]estroying or falsifying your documents is the best and
fastest way to become a new Canadian.”

Osama bin Laden. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 173.

References 227

August 20

Phil Lesh. Grateful Dead bassist, renowned for the low

frequency range of his instrument.

“Sundown.” Robert Everett-Green, “Gordon Lightfoot: The

way he felt,” in Globe and Mail, June 26, 1999
(http://www.corfid.com/gl/press/press04.htm).

injected John Belushi. Associated Press, “Cathy Smith Ends

Prison Term for Belushi Death,” in Daily News of Los Angeles,
March 17, 1988. See also Jean Sonmor, “Canada’s most
famous folk singer still an intense artist,” in Toronto Sun,
November 10, 1996
(http://www.corfid.com/gl/press/press14.htm).

August 27

“Find me somebody to love.” Queen, “Somebody To Love,”

Greatest Hits (Hollywood Records, 1992).

seven years of immersion. Cf. George J. Borjas, Heaven’s

Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 33: “In
1990, for example, 37 percent of the immigrants who had
been living in the United States for at least ten years did not
speak English ‘very well.’”

“best and the brightest.” Norman Matloff, “Debunking the

Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage: Testimony to
the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on
Immigration,” 2002 (1998)
(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc9.6):
“Quite contrary to industry’s claim that the H-1Bs are ‘the
best and the brightest,’ in an article in the September 1999
issue of the American Society for Engineering Education’s
magazine Prism, an engineering professor in China warns his
nation that the engineers being produced by Chinese
228 Hip Like Me

universities are not good enough for China to compete in the

global high-tech market. The U.S. industry also claims that the
imported professionals are better trained than the
Americans. Yet again to the contrary, Professor Chen Lixun
complains in the article about China’s ‘obsolete teaching
content and materials.’ Professor Chen says the educational
system in China produces students who cannot think
independently or creatively, and cannot solve practical
problems. He writes that the system ‘results in the
phenomenon of high scores and low ability.’” See also Steve
Sailer, “Brookings Does Diversity, Sort Of,” on VDare.com,
January 23, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/brookings.htm): “Our
immigration system isn’t set up to bring in the best and
brightest even from nerd-fertile regions like southern India. In
1998, only 11.7% of legal immigrants were admitted for
‘employment-based’ reasons. [And that includes the
workers’ spouses and children!] In contrast, 72.0% got in
because they were related to somebody, typically a recent
immigrant.”

hire more of the latter. Cf. Matloff, op. cit.

(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#faq23): “A
manager who is, say, from India and came to the U.S. as a
student will often hire others in his own image.... [I]mmigrant
entrepreneurs tend to hire from their own immigrant ethnic
groups; those jobs are largely not open to natives.... It is very
common to see a company department, or even an entire
firm, in which the technical staff is all Indian or all Chinese.”

lack the gene to understand. Contrast Nathan Myhrvold,

former CTO of Microsoft, quoted in Stephen R. Covey, The
8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (New York: Free
Press, 2005 [2004]), p. 14: “The top software developers are
more productive than average software developers not by a
factor of 10X or 100X or even 1000X but by 10,000X.” Contrast
also Joel Spolsky, “Hitting the High Notes,” July 25, 2005
(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html):
“The real trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers
References 229

instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long

they work, they never produce something as good as what
the great programmers can produce.... Five Antonio Salieris
won’t produce Mozart’s Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for
100 years.... The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes
that the top talent hits all the time.”

August 28

torture them before death.” Nicholas Wade, Before the

Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New
York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 151.

woolly mammoths, horses, and camels. Jared Diamond, The

Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human
Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), p. 339: “When
Indian hunters arrived, they found the Americas teeming with
big mammals that are now extinct: elephantlike mammoths
and mastodonts [sic], ground sloths weighing up to three
tons, armadillolike glyptodonts weighing up to one ton, bear-
sized beavers, and sabertooth cats, plus American lions,
cheetahs, camels, horses, and many others.”

or just machismo. Ibid., p. 340, 347: “According to the

interpretation that seems most plausible to me, the outcome
was a [hunting] “blitzkrieg” in which the beasts were quickly
exterminated—possibly within a mere ten years at any given
site.... Clovis mammoth kills prove to have been only partly
butchered, suggesting very wasteful and selective utilization
of meat by people living amidst an abundance of game.
Some hunting probably wasn’t for meat at all but for ivory,
hides, or just machismo.... We are all too familiar with the
blitzkriegs by which modern European hunters nearly
exterminated bison, whales, seals, and many other large
animals. Recent archaeological discoveries on many
oceanic islands have shown that such blitzkriegs were an
outcome whenever hunters reached a land with animals
naïve to humans.”
230 Hip Like Me

become your wasted life.” Roger Sandall, “In Bluebeard’s

Castles: Life and death on the reservation,” 2006
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_In-Bluebeard's-
Castles.php). See also Roger Sandall, “What Native Peoples
Deserve,” 2005 (http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_What-
Native-Peoples-Deserve.php).

September 5

one low skill immigrant family.” Mark Krikorian, The New Case
Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal (New York:
Penguin, 2008), p. 179-80. See also Steve Sailer, “Americans
First: What’s best for the citizens we already have?” in The
American Conservative, February 13, 2006
(http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_02_13/article.html).
See also Paul Nachman, “A Patriotic Immigration Reformer’s
Thoughts On The New Case Against Immigration,” on
VDare.com, July 29, 2008
(http://www.vdare.com/nachman/080729_immigration.htm).

proles. George Orwell’s name for the uneducated, lower-

class laborers (proletariat), in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

average white IQ to complete. La Griffe du Lion, “Educating

a Black Elite,” 2000
(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackelite.htm): “Degrees
are being granted to students possessing IQs from 98 to 103,
as upper bounds.”

free movement throughout the world. Cf. Norman Matloff

“Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor
Shortage: Testimony to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Immigration,” 2002 (1998)
(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc9.6.1):
“[I]n the case of foreign nationals of extraordinary talent, our
immigration law should indeed facilitate the ability of
employers to hire such workers.”
References 231

fifty to eighty percent of the work. This is basically the “80/20

rule,” which has been verified across a wide range of
disciplines, including software development. The corollary is
that there’s around a 20:1 ratio in productivity between the
best and the worst workers, and that the bottom 20% do only
around 4% of the total work in the field—they are the
incompetents who could and should be fired, and you
wouldn’t even notice they were gone. See Steve McConnell,
Code Complete (Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 2004), p.
681: “Talent and effort among individual programmers vary
tremendously, as they do in all fields. One study found that in
a variety of professions—writing, football, invention, police
work and aircraft piloting—the top 20 percent of the people
produced about 50 percent of the output.... The results of the
study are based on an analysis of productivity data, such as
touchdowns, patents, solved cases, and so on. Since some
people make no tangible contribution whatsoever and
weren’t considered in the study (quarterbacks who make no
touchdowns, inventors who own no patents, detectives who
don’t close cases, and so on), the data probably understates
the actual variation in productivity.” See also Matloff, op. cit.
(http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html#tth_sEc10.1):
“Studies show a dramatic 10-to-1 variation in programmer
productivity, by virtually any criterion—time to finish a
product, number of errors, and so on. (See for example, in
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, by Tom
DeMarco and Timothy Lister, Dorset House Publishing Co.,
1987, p. 44ff.) In other words, the best programmers work 10
times faster, produce 10 times fewer errors, and so on, than
the worst ones.... Some studies have shown an even more
dramatic range. Time to complete the writing of a program
varied in a range of 20-to-1 in one recent study. (P. Lutz,
‘Comparing Java vs. C/C++ Efficiency Differences to
Interpersonal Differences,’ Communications of the ACM, 42
(10), 1999, cited in Building a Workforce for the Information
Economy, National Research Council, 2000.).... In other
words, raw analytical talent, not paper credentials, is what
really counts.”
232 Hip Like Me

sweet white raisins. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great:

How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books,
2007), p. 137: “Luxenburg[’s] most celebrated example
concerns the rewards of a ‘martyr’ in paradise: when
retranslated and redacted the heavenly offering consists of
sweet white raisins rather than virgins.”

“white wedding” suits. Robert Spencer, The Politically

Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Washington,
DC: Regency Publishing, Inc., 2005), p. 106: “September 11
hijacker Muhammad Atta packed a ‘paradise wedding suit’
into his luggage on that fateful day, although he was unable
to change into it because the airline required him to check
all but one carry-on item. A letter found in Atta’s bags spoke
of ‘marriage’ with the ‘women of paradise ... dressed in their
most beautiful clothing.’”

September 9

in Kandahar. Tim Hortons, “Tim Hortons brings a taste of home

to troops in Kandahar,” 2006
(http://www.timhortons.com/en/about/news_archive_2006h.
html).

September 12

withering horror of this. Cf. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

(New York: Signet, 1996 [1960]), p. 54.

September 18

Heineken-shaped.” Cf. Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

References 233

September 25

Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (New

York: Harmony Books, 1979), p. 28: “[A]ny man who can hitch
the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it,
struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know
where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

between intelligence and income. La Griffe du Lion, “2048,”

Volume 2, Number 4, April 2000
(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/2048.htm): “IQ is the
biggest single correlate of income.”

“Jefferson effect.” Cf. La Griffe du Lion, “The Effect of Urban

Flight on IQ Distribution,” 2002
(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/city.htm): “[E]scape from
the inner city is a highly selective enterprise. It is an option
open mostly to the right half of the bell curve [i.e., to people
with above-average IQs]. Consequently, urban flight creates
a cognitive discontinuity where the city meets the suburbs.
Left behind in the city is a human residue wanting in human
capital. Unemployment, welfare dependency, drug
addiction, coarseness and incivility are its hall-marks, low IQ
its nub.” (Italics added.) Cf. also Barack Obama, quoted in
Hank De Zutter, “What Makes Obama Run?” in Chicago
Reader, December 8, 1995
(http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/b
arackobama/): “[G]et a job, get rich, and get out. Instead of
investing in our neighborhoods, that’s what has always
happened.” See also Bruce G. Charlton, “Social class
differences in IQ: implications for the government’s ‘fair
access’ political agenda,” in Times Higher Education, May
23, 2008
(http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/05/social-class-
iq-differences-and.html): “[H]igher social classes have a
significantly higher average IQ than lower social [i.e., socio-
economic] classes.... In general, the more precise the
234 Hip Like Me

definition of social class, the larger will be the measured

social class differences in IQ and other biological variables.”

broaden “intelligence.” See Dan Schneider, “The Dan

Schneider Interview 4: Steven Pinker,” 2007
(http://www.cosmoetica.com/DSI4.htm). See also Linda S.
Gottfredson, “The General Intelligence Factor,” in Scientific
American Presents, Winter 1998
(http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligenc
e/cache/1198gottfred.html).

Friday-afternoon pillorying. Cf. Christopher Hitchens, God is

Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York:
Twelve Books, 2007), p. 219: “In an era where there was little
enough by way of public entertainment, a good public
burning or disembowelment or breaking on the wheel was
often as much recreation as the saintly dared to allow.”

lowering it in the country. Steve Sailer, “Flynn Flips: IQ Tests Do

Matter,” on VDare.com, September 3, 2007
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070903_flynn.htm): “[T]he
urban-rural IQ gap has narrowed from six points to merely
two in recent decades as the countryside has come to enjoy
most of the stimulations of the city.” Of course, a narrowing
of that gap could equally come from a downturn in, or
increased mechanization of, the rural economy, driving the
displaced, low-IQ manual laborers into the city some years
after their smarter cousins had made the same trip. Cf. Fred
Siegel, The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C.,
L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities (New York: The Free
Press, 1997), p. 47: “In the years between 1945 and 1960, the
mechanization of Southern agriculture marginalized unskilled
farm labor. Sometimes lured by the promise of a better future
and sometimes driven off the land, a vast number of at time
cruelly displaced black and white sharecroppers migrated to
the Northern cities.” New immigrants also flock
disproportionately to our cities, so if those same immigrants
have low IQs, that too will narrow the gap between the city
and the country averages.
References 235

“the idiocy of rural life.” Loc. cit.: “Thomas suffers from what
Marx would later call, unkindly, ‘the idiocy of rural life.’”

Steven Pinker on down. See Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate:

The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin,
2003 [2002]). See also Steve Sailer, “Pinker’s Progress,” on
VDare.com, November 24, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/pinker_progress.htm).

genetic component to intelligence. Cf. David Brooks, quoted

by Alex B., “The Progression of IQ—a response to David
Brooks,” September 14, 2007
(http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/09/progression-of-iq.php):
“A meta-analysis by Bernie Devlin of the University of
Pittsburgh found that genes account for about 48 percent of
the differences in IQ scores.”

IQs of identical twins raised apart. See Steve Sailer, “Pioneer

Fundophobia,” on VDare.com, December 12, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/pioneer.htm): “The Minnesota
Twins study ... found that, on quantitative tests of IQ and
personality, identical twins reared apart were systematically
much more similar than fraternal twins raised apart.
Remarkably, separated identical twins were more similar
than fraternal twins raised in the same home.” See also Steve
Sailer, “Why Do We Keep Writing About Intelligence? An IQ
FAQ,” on VDare.com, December 3, 2007
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/071203_iq.htm).

October 27

“Sea-Fever.” John Masefield, “Sea-Fever”

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sea-fever/).

October 28

believe in God. Steven Pinker, “The Evolutionary Psychology

of Religion”
236 Hip Like Me

(http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_10_29_rel
igion.htm).

Daniel Dennett. Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion

as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin, 2007), p. 291.

viewed as being white. David Berreby, Us and Them:

Understanding Your Tribal Mind (New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 2005), p. 90: “[C]ategories can be redefined, as
‘white person’ has been in the United States to include the
once-rejected children of Irish and Italian immigrants....”

teams to racially integrate. See Howard Bryant, Shut Out: A

Story of Race and Baseball in Boston (New York: Routledge,
2002).

Tommy Harper. Ibid., p. 125, 147-53, 170-1.

November 19

gratitude. Cf. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (New York:

Signet, 1996 [1960]), p. 120.

November 29

broke something in me. Cf. Griffin, Black Like Me, p. 130: “It
was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it broke
something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I
could stomach no more of this degradation—not of myself
but of all men who were black like me.”

December 12

thought of any more hairism. Cf. Griffin, Black Like Me, p. 120:
“I remained in my room more and more each day. The
situation in Montgomery was so strange I decided to try
References 237

passing back into white society. I went out only at night for
food. My heart sickened at the thought of any more hate.”

N-people. Cf. The Mayor of Mitchieville, “Guy Earle, activist,”

July 19, 2008 (http://mitchieville.blogspot.com/2008/07/guy-
earle-activist.html).

way to control lice. Steven Dutch, “Military Technology—

Selected Themes,” 2001 (1998)
(http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/WestTech/xmilitar.htm).

any way they liked. Loc. cit.

opposition to the war.” Loc. cit.

wiped from this world. Cf. Griffin, op. cit., p. 15: “All traces of
the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence.... I
looked into the mirror and saw reflected nothing of the white
John Griffin’s past. No, the reflections led back to Africa,
back to the shanty and the ghetto, back to the fruitless
struggles against the mark of blackness.”

December 17

some really good weed.” Cf. Griffin, Black Like Me, p. 121: “I
ordered food and was served, and it was a miracle. I went to
the rest room and was not molested. No one paid me the
slightest attention. No one said, ‘What’re you doing in here,
nigger?’”

December 19

part of it, anyway. Cf. Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The

Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (New York: Penguin, 2002
[1994]), p. 180: “The word ‘racism’ is a discomforting one: it is
so easily vulnerable to manipulation.... During the heat of
altercation, we seize, as terms of abuse, on whatever is most
obvious about the other person.”
238 Hip Like Me

right hands mutilated. Griffin, Black Like Me, p. 138.

fish needs a bicycle.” Cf. Irina Dunn: “A woman needs a

man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

kinship-based African culture. Cf. Roger Sandall, “Dereliction

Express: Care and maintenance in Africa and beyond,”
August 2006
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_Dereliction-
Express.php).

for the same library doors: Cf. Griffin, op. cit., p. 163.

one of those stereotypes. See Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate:

The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin,
2003 [2002]), p. 204: “With some important exceptions,
stereotypes are in fact not inaccurate when assessed against
objective benchmarks such as census figures or the reports of
the stereotyped people themselves. People who believe that
African Americans are more likely to be on welfare than
whites, that Jews have higher average income than WASPs,
that business students are more conservative than students in
the arts, that women are more likely than men to want to
lose weight, and that men are more likely than women to
swat a fly with their bare hands, are not being irrational or
bigoted. Those beliefs are correct. People’s stereotypes are
generally consistent with the statistics, and in many cases
their bias is to underestimate the real differences between
sexes or ethnic groups.... Stereotypes can be downright
inaccurate when a person has few or no firsthand
encounters with the stereotyped group, or belongs to a
group that is overtly hostile to the one being judged.” See
also Steven Dutch, “Dutch’s Laws of Just About Everything,”
2003 (2001)
(http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/dutchrules.htm):
“All stereotypes have at least some basis in fact.... All
stereotypes have a basis in fact? Maybe not, but if I said
‘almost all’ or ‘most,’ people would have wiggle room to
References 239

rationalize that their particular problem stereotype was

entirely due to somebody else’s prejudice.”

December 31

when they’re not polite. Talking Heads, “Psycho Killer,” Talking

Heads: 77 (Sire Records, 1977).

Wilber’s fatally flawed. See Geoffrey D. Falk, “Norman

Einstein”: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber
(http://www.normaneinsteinbook.com).

January 11, 2008

walking these streets. Cf. John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

(New York: Signet, 1996 [1960]), p. 123: “Their looks said: ‘You
white bastard, you ofay sonofabitch, what are you doing
walking these streets?’ just as the whites’ looks had said a
few days before: ‘You black bastard, you nigger
sonofabitch, what are you doing walking these streets?’”

competent whites. Cf. La Griffe du Lion, “Smart Fraction

Theory II: Why Asians Lag,” Volume 6, Number 2, May 2004
(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm): “[B]lack Africa is
utterly hopeless with less than two percent qualifying for
smart-fraction jobs [i.e., bookkeepers, credit clerks, lab techs,
salesmen, secretaries, and higher-IQ work]. The demise of
colonialism sealed its economic doom.” (Italics added.)

experience in commercial farming.” Basildon Peta, “Harare

may force banks to fund black farmers,” in IOL, January 10,
2006
(http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id
=vn20060110061257518C122253).

cause a famine. Cf. Steve Sailer, “Darfur v. Zimbabwe: Is U.S.

Foreign Policy Just An Elite Plaything?” on VDare.com, May
18, 2008 (http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080518_darfur.htm).
240 Hip Like Me

Cf. also Sam Francis, “Why Not Admit Some Real Refugees?”
on VDare.com, July 1, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/francis/zimbabwe_famine.htm). See
also Sam Francis, “Neoconservative Applauds White
Despoliation In South Africa,” on VDare.com, April 8, 2004
(http://www.vdare.com/francis/white_genocide.htm).

February 3

be more than this.” Tom Brady, interviewed by Steve Kroft, 60

Minutes, December 23, 2007.

March 19

essay by Julian Baggini. Julian Baggini, “Spongers,” in New

Humanist, Volume 123, Issue 2, March/April 2008
(http://newhumanist.org.uk/1738).

bringing in workfare. See Maeve Quaid, Workfare: Why

Good Social Policy Ideas Go Bad (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2002), p. 172: “The history of workfare in Ontario
is the story of trade unions and special interest groups that
were resolved to never permit the proposed ‘community
service’ aspect of workfare to be implemented, regardless of
how well or badly workfare was designed (and it could have
been better designed). Thanks to government bureaucrats
who never bought into the idea of workfare in the first place,
the ‘work placement’ (as opposed to job search or training)
dimension of workfare never really materialized. The social-
worker culture in Ontario, supported heavily by activists and
lobby groups, favor classroom training over work
experience.”

not pulling their weight.” See Nicholas Wade, Before the

Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New
York: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 160, 163: “A tit-for-tat
behavioral strategy [could] evolve, providing that a
mechanism to detect and punish freeloaders evolves in
References 241

parallel.... Freeloaders seize the benefits of social living

without contributing to the costs. They are immensely
threatening to a social group because they diminish the
benefits of sociality for others and, if their behavior goes
unpunished, they may bring about the society’s dissolution.”

March 31

“booby prize.” Cf. Frederick R. Lynch, Invisible Victims: White

Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 171: “Black novelist Toni Morrison
was ultimately convinced she had won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize
on merit. Yet Morrison admitted that lobbying for the Pulitzer
on her behalf by forty-eight prominent black writers was a
source of stress. ‘It was too upsetting to have my work
considered as an affirmative action award.’”

“vaginal affirmative action.” Cf. John Tierney, “A New Frontier

for Title IX: Science,” in New York Times, July 15, 2008
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15tier.html?_r
=1&8dpc=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin): “The members
of Congress and women’s groups who have pushed for
science to be ‘Title Nined’ say there is evidence that women
face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that
evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research
showing that on average, women’s interest in some fields
isn’t the same as men’s.” Cf. also Nicholas Stix, “Is Science
Sexist?” July 22, 2008
(http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2008/07/is-
science-sexist.html). Cf. also Wendy McElroy, “Dumbing
Down Education,” January 22, 2000
(http://www.wendymcelroy.com/partisan/012200.htm).

being smarter and working harder. Cf. Scott Adams, “Hard

Work” (http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/hard_work/).
242 Hip Like Me

April 12

Eddie Van Halen. Interviewed by Billy Corgan, “Corgan and

Van Halen: Billy Interviews Eddie,” in Guitar World, April 1996
(http://web.archive.org/web/20061109122105/www.guitarw
orld.com/allaccess/interviews/1996-04-corganvh.html).

April 29 – May 4

nothing higher than itself.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Valley of

Fear,” 1915: “Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but
talent instantly recognizes genius.”

mounts of the devils.” Quoted by Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a

Muslim (New York: Prometheus, 1995), p. 342-3. Cf. Mark
Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
(Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008 [2006]), p.
121: “‘[Homosexuality is] against Islam,’ said another [French
Muslim]. ‘Muslim fags don’t exist.’” Au contraire!

85-IQ fairies. See J. Philippe Rushton, “Indians Aren’t That

Intelligent (On Average),” on VDare.com, September 26,
2007 (http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm):
“In this article, I summarize the evidence for an average IQ of
85 in the group designated South Asian/North African. The
people of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf
States, the Near East, Turkey and North Africa have an IQ just
below the world average of 90.” (Italics added.)

“Bismillah.” BBC Staff, “Queen album brings rock to Iran,” on

BBC News, August 24, 2004
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3593532.stm).

flush-worthy. Cf. Ayesha Ahmed, “Poisoning the Infidels with

Feces in UK and US,” on Islam Watch, February 14, 2008
(http://www.islam-watch.org/ayeshaahmed/Poisoning-
Infidels-with-Feces.htm).
References 243

turn to manic, homicidal violence. Cf. Christopher Hitchens,

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York:
Twelve Books, 2007), p. 227: “Having met some of the
products of this [Islamic] ‘education’ system, in Afghanistan
and elsewhere, I can only reiterate that their problem is not
so much that they desire virgins as that they are virgins: their
emotional and psychic growth irremediably stunted in the
name of god....”

virgins in the Garden of Eden.” Robert Spencer, The Politically

Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Washington,
DC: Regency Publishing, Inc., 2005), p. 104.

shocked us personally.” Robert Hunter, A Box of Rain: Lyrics:

1965–1993 (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 20.

bread and eat it.” Faisal, quoted in Gane S. Gerber, “Anti-

Semitism and the Muslim World.” In David Berger, ed., History
and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia, PA:
Jewish Publication Society, 1986), p. 88.

Tamal Indian medicine man. Rock Scully and David Dalton,

Living with the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus with Garcia
and the Grateful Dead (New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 1996), p. 55.

outpost of the West.” Steve Sailer, “Latin American

Immigration Unlikely to Spark a New Renaissance,” on
VDare.com, 2004
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/latin_american.htm).

have completed high school. Cf. George J. Borjas, Heaven’s

Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 59: “Less
than 1 percent of Mexico’s adult male population has
completed a secondary [i.e., high-school] education.”

homophobic rednecks. Cf. Joe Guzzardi, “Will Hispanic

Honor Killings, Homophobia Be Our New ‘Community
Standard’?” on VDare.com, September 24, 2005
244 Hip Like Me

(http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/050924_hispanic.htm):
“[F]or a Hispanic to actually have homosexual sex with a gay
man, even when blatantly deceived, can only be redeemed
by murder.... According to a March 2002 U.S. Department of
State report, violence against homosexuals remains common
in Mexico.”

they’re “macho” nonetheless. See Athena Kerry, “Diversity Is

Strength! It’s Also…Ethnic Come-ons,” on VDare.com,
February 8, 2006
(http://www.vdare.com/misc/060208_kerry.htm): “Mexican
men are widely despised among young (white) women for
whistling out car windows, yelling crude and offensive
remarks, or simply leering obnoxiously at anything that walks
past with a hint of estrogen.” See also Brenda Walker, “Top
Ten Reasons Why the US Should Not Marry Mexico,” on
VDare.com, January 17, 2007
(http://www.vdare.com/walker/070117_top_ten.htm): “In
some Mexican states, men may freely kidnap women for sex,
a custom known as ‘rapto,’ which is regarded as a harmless
amusement by men despite the unsuccessful attempts of
women’s groups to criminalize it.” See also Brenda Walker,
“Mothers Against Drunk Driving: Successful Reformers—Or
Hypocrites from Hell?” on VDare.com, June 19, 2008
(http://www.vdare.com/walker/080619_madd.htm).

legislated back to work. Rob Ferguson, Paola Loriggio and

Francine Kopun, “TTC moving again,” in Toronto Star, April 27,
2008
(http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Transportation/article/418964)
.

for his nostalgic tale.” Doobie Brothers, “What a Fool

Believes,” Minute By Minute (Warner Bros/WEA, 1978).

handled the air traffic controllers. Stacy Hirsch, “Reagan

presidency pivotal for unions,” in The Baltimore Sun, June 8,
2004. (http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-
References 245

bz.unions08jun08,0,1761456.story?coll=bal-business-
headlines).

“Request Stop” program. Toronto Transit Commission, “Your

Safety Partner” (http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/safety.htm).

homoerotic tizzy. Cf. Bruce Bawer, “The Times, It Ain’t a-

Changin’,” in Pajamas Media, June 25, 2008
(http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-times-it-
ain%E2%80%99t-a-changin%E2%80%99/): “[New York Times
Magazine contributing writer Noah] Feldman insisted that ‘a
hallmark of liberal, secular societies is supposed to be respect
for different cultures, including traditional, religious cultures—
even intolerant ones’.... [T]ell this to gay people in
Amsterdam, where ten years ago they felt safer than
anyplace else on earth and where Muslim youths now beat
them up in broad daylight in the middle of town.”

hideously unattractive hags. See Daphne Patai,

Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of
Feminism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc,
1998), p. 29: “[W]omen have always been able to use their
sexuality as a means to upward mobility. Is closing this
avenue down (assuming that this were even possible) what
women necessarily want? All women? Obviously the answer
depends on whether one is on the receiving end of such
perks or is left out, an angry ‘third party.’” (Italics added.)

totalitarian, brainwashing. Cf. Alan Charles Kors, “Thought

Reform 101: The Orwellian implications of today’s college
orientation,” March 2000
(http://www.reason.com/news/show/27632.html): “The [PC]
people devoted to remolding the inner lives of
undergraduates ... share views that place us directly on the
path of thought reform.” See also Alan Charles Kors and
Harvey A. Silverglate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of
Liberty on America’s Campuses (New York: HarperPerennial,
1999 [1998]). See also Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge,
Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in
246 Hip Like Me

Women’s Studies (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), p. 22,

38, 59, 81: “[Margaret:] I really hate some of the thought-
police stuff that’s going on now in universities, and it was
going on earlier in Women’s studies than elsewhere.... I think
there was silencing of people, there was exclusion, and
certainly there was shunning.... [Silvia:] My experience has
been that feminism has been just as conformist and stifling of
creative thought as the most right-wing religious groups....
Questioning the authority of feminism or the heavyweights
within the movement is akin to heresy, and is basically
treated as such.... [Patai and Koertge:] Women’s Studies
teachers [engage in] standard proselytizing tactics such as
providing comfort and support for neophytes, denouncing
the enemy, rejecting opinions that contradict or complicate
the party line, and engaging in rituals of confession and
celebration to keep the faithful pure and committed.” And
finally, from p. 191, 196: “‘[M]ortification’ practices such as
mutual criticism, surveillance, denunciation of deviants,
confession, and so on [as practiced in Women’s Studies] ...
serve to strip away much of a person’s previous identity. They
transmit the message ... ‘that the self is adequate, whole,
and fulfilled only when it lives up to the model offered by the
community’.... Women’s Studies programs, in their bunker
mentality and tendency to cut themselves off from the rest of
the university in the name of feminist commitment, do
function in some respects like cults and communes.” See also
Tammy Bruce, The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s
Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds (Rocklin, CA: Prima
Lifestyles, 2001).

heterophobic victim cookies. See Patai, Heterophobia.

sexist bullies. Cf. Joanna Glass, quoted in Neil Bissoondath,

Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (New
York: Penguin, 2002 [1994]), p. 175: “I believe it is important to
point out that the rabble-rousers [in the white-male-excluding
‘debates’ on voice appropriation and Writing Thru Race] are
not unlike the wife-beaters of the gender they so despise.
References 247

They are bullies. Their behavior should not be condoned by

anyone, of any political or sexual persuasion.”

have clearly worked so well? Cf. Myron Magnet, The Dream

and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass
(New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993), p. 197:
“[W]hen you are done discriminating, it is hard to reassert the
principle of nondiscrimination. That’s if you ever are done, of
course: no affirmative action program in the world has ever
been declared successful and ended as no longer
necessary.”

belong to the ‘oppressive’ majority.” Melanie Phillips,

Londonistan (New York: Encounter Books, 2006). Extract at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest
_contributors/article671959.ece .

Mary Lefkowitz. See Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole

Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 132: “As a veteran equity feminist,
Lefkowitz fought long and hard against the old boy network
that once discriminated against women scholars. She
believes it is being replaced by a new network, an old girl
network of feminist preferment. ‘Just like many revolutions,’
she points out, ‘It becomes as bad as what it replaced.’”

Steven Pinker. See Steven Pinker and Elizabeth S. Spelke,

“Pinker Vs. Spelke: A Debate”
(http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_ind
ex.html).

blackness as negative.” Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts

and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Henry Holt & Company,
1995 [1983]), p. 170.

magister. James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed: How

Galileo’s Telescope Changed The Truth and Other Events in
History That Dramatically Altered Our Understanding of the
World (Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 1995 [1985]), p. 48.
248 Hip Like Me

like we raise girls.” Gloria Steinem, in “Men, Women and the

Sex Difference,” ABC News Special, February 1, 1995.

isolation of their own home.” Gloria Steinem, Revolution from

Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 1993 [1992]), p. 259-61.

making societal changes.” Steinem, op. cit., p. 260.

“few good men.” Ibid., p. 340.

totalistic ideology. See Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge,

Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in
Women’s Studies (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), p.
183: “Feminism ... bids to be a totalizing scheme resting on a
grand theory....”

lives as men can.” Susan Moller Okin, “Is Multiculturalism Bad

for Women?” in Boston Review, October/November 1997
(http://bostonreview.net/BR22.5/okin.html).

“potential rapists.” Addressed by Patai and Koertge, op. cit.,

p. 126-31.

“hermeneutics.” Ibid., p. 122.

“ovulars.” Ibid., p. 121.

Evil Other. Cf. Ibid., p. 36: “[Margaret:] The tendency... to

always take an either/or, an us/them, and all-good/all-bad
approach, this tendency very much characterized Women’s
Studies.... There was a certain process of Othering....”

members of the out-group. Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, et.

al., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave
Experiment (Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma, 1961
[1954]) (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Sherif), p. 208.
References 249

“professional victims.” Cf. Robert Carroll, quoted in Geoffrey

D. Falk, “PVs,” January 12, 2008
(http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/January2008.asp#12).

Dead and Living White European Men. For a data-filled,

statistical evaluation of the contributions of Dead White Men
to the rise of civilization, see Charles Murray, Human
Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and
Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003).
See also Steve Sailer, “Q&A with Charles Murray on Human
Accomplishment,” UPI, October 16, 2003
(http://www.isteve.com/2003_QA_with_Charles_Murray_on_
Human_Accomplishment.htm). See also Steve Sailer,
“Culture’s Bell Curve,” in The American Conservative,
November 17, 2003
(http://www.amconmag.com/11_17_03/review.html): “Dead
white European males dominate his inventories, despite
Murray reserving eight of his 21 categories (including Arabic
literature, Indian philosophy, and Chinese visual art) for non-
Western arts.... In the sciences, 97 percent of the significant
figures and events turned out to be Western.” See also Peter
Watson, “Lost in the swamp of modernity,” in New
Statesman, October 29, 2001
(http://www.newstatesman.com/200110290021): “In the 20th
century, in the modern world, there were no non-Western
ideas of note.”

inferior (in both morality and skills).” Cf. Patai and Koertge,
Professing Feminism, p. 51: “[F]eminists often claim that the
morality and value systems of oppressed groups are
inherently superior to those of the oppressors, whose long
history of exploitative behavior has demonstrated their moral
bankruptcy.”

number of times during the swim.” Sherif, et. al., op. cit., p.
154.

dragging their economy down. See James Bissett,

“Immigration must be an election issue” (Ottawa, ON:
250 Hip Like Me

Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, 2008)

(http://policystudies.ca/index.php?option=com_content&tas
k=view&id=191&Itemid=27): “51% of those immigrants who
have landed [in Canada] since the early 1990s are living
below the poverty line.” See also Martin Collacott, “Time to
debunk immigration myths: Greater thought should be given
to how many people Canada can absorb,” in National Post,
January 15, 2000
(http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~gborjas/HeavensDoor/Nation
al_Post.htm). Contrary to the optimistic analysis of George
Borjas in Heaven’s Door (p. 58-60), Canada too has
“followed the trend in accepting a greater proportion of
unskilled migrants. By 1995, recent immigrants were earning
40% less than other Canadians and we were experiencing
many of the problems he has identified in the U.S. While we
continue to receive many immigrants with impressive
qualifications, the larger numbers and declining skill levels of
the lesser qualified have caused an overall decline in
immigrants’ ability to contribute to the economy.” Borjas
based his calculations on old data, from 1980, well prior to
our mid-’80s immigration reforms (i.e., increases), resulting in
an unfounded optimism on his part. See also Kevin Michael
Grace, “Breakthrough In Canada!” on VDare.com,
November 26, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/misc/grace_breakthrough.htm),
quoting Daniel Stoffman: “[Borjas] was disappointed when I
informed him … that the skilled portion of Canada’s
immigration intake was down to 23%. ‘Why did it shrink way
down?’ he asked from his Harvard office. ‘Why did the
Canadians allow this to occur?’ Because the Canadian
program had been taken over by its clientele, I said, who
insisted that the family class be expanded.”

a mere 95. Steve Sailer, “America and the Left Half of the Bell
Curve,” on VDare.com, 2000
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/iq.htm): “According to two
separate methodologies employed by Herrnstein and
Murray, the average IQ of recent immigrants and their
children is somewhere around a mediocre 95.”
References 251

110 IQ. La Griffe du Lion, “Educating a Black Elite,” 2000

(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackelite.htm): “An IQ of
110 is frequently cited as a minimum requirement for a bona
fide bachelor’s degree.... 120 is low for an Ivy Leaguer....”
See also Bruce G. Charlton, “Social class differences in IQ:
implications for the government’s ‘fair access’ political
agenda,” in Times Higher Education, May 23, 2008
(http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/05/social-class-
iq-differences-and.html): “The ‘ex-poly’ university has a
threshold minimum IQ of 100 for admissions (i.e. the top half
of the age cohort of 18 year olds in the population—given
that about half the UK population now attend a higher
education institution), the ‘Redbrick’ university has a
minimum IQ of 115 (i.e. the top 16 percent of the age
cohort); while ‘Oxbridge’ is assumed to have a minimum IQ
of about 130 (i.e. the top 2 percent of the age cohort).”

love-hate. Cf. Sam Francis, “Mass Immigration Creates

Terrorist Haven in Europe,” on VDare.com, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/francis/terrorist_haven.htm): “In
Holland ... Muslim immigrants have invented what reporter
Adriana Stuijt calls ‘a new form of terrorism against the
civilian population at large.’ ‘“Muslim cultural organizations”
have turned the streets of Antwerp and Rotterdam into main
battle grounds for Muslim-fundamentalist male criminal youth
gangs who deliberately attack, rob and invade ethno-
European cultural events and throngs of shoppers in the
large shopping districts’.... In Belgium last summer, gangs of
Algerian and Moroccan youths attacked Flemish citizens
holding an annual fair.”

Leftards or something. Cf. Steve Sailer, “What’s Wrong With

the Democrats? The identity-politics party doesn’t know how
to appeal to middle Americans,” in The American
Conservative, July 31, 2006
(http://www.amconmag.com/article/2006/jul/31/00007/):
“While Democrats esteem themselves as more socially
prestigious than Republicans, their electoral prospects are
undermined by the faint whiff of failure that many
252 Hip Like Me

Democratic voters exude, the impression that they resent

their country and compatriots because they haven’t quite
fulfilled their own potential.”

bring to the table. See George J. Borjas, Heaven’s Door:

Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 102: “[T]he historical
experience of a century ago probably has little relevance for
the contemporary experience. The United States has
changed radically, and what was beneficial then need not
be beneficial now.”

to have a female pastor. “Mankes-Zernike, Anna (1887–

1972),” in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
(http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M3685.html
).

slavery in America. “A Minute Against Slavery, Addressed to

Germantown Monthly Meeting, 1688”
(http://www.qhpress.org/texts/oldqwhp/as-1688.htm). See
also Joseph Walton, ed., Incidents Illustrating the Doctrines
and History of the Society of Friends (Philadelphia, PA:
Friends’ Book Store, 1897). See also J. S. Hartzler and Daniel
Kauffman, eds., Mennonite Church History (Scottdale, PA:
Mennonite Book and Tract Society, 1905).

their birth as well.” Roger Sandall, “When I Hear the Word

‘Culture’: From Arnold to Anthropology,” 1980
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Archive_Literature-and-
Politics_When-I-Hear-the-Word-Culture.php).

Steve Sailer. Steve Sailer, “A Buyout Option For Europe’s

Muslims?” on VDare.com, 2005
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/051106_buyout.htm): “A push-
pull policy could be very effective in getting Muslims to go
away. European countries should combine the push of a
crackdown on welfare and crime with the pull of a buy-out
offer. Returning to the old country with a sizable nest egg
would be alluring to many who haven’t assimilated into the
References 253

European middle class.” See also Steve Sailer, “The One

Word Grand Strategy for Westerners and Muslims:
‘Disconnect,’” on VDare.com, August 13, 2006
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/060813_disconnect.htm).

Sharia law than British law. Daily Mail Staff, “No tolerance for
no-go areas,” in The Daily Mail, January 8, 2008
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506497/No-
tolerance-areas.html).

flirted with incorporating elements. Michael Nazir-Ali,

“Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity,” in The Telegraph,
January 11, 2008
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574695/Extremis
m-flourished-as-UK-lost-Christianity.html): “There is pressure
already to relate aspects of the Sharia to civil law in Britain.”
See also Laura Trevelyan, “Will Canada introduce Sharia
law?” in BBC News, August 26, 2004
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_cor
respondent/3599264.stm).

to live as infidels.” Brenda Walker, “Time To Dump The

Diversity Visa,” on VDare.com, June 1, 2004
(http://www.vdare.com/walker/diversity_visa.htm).

customers themselves do it.” Katherine Kersten, “Shariah in

Minnesota? Radical Muslim activists go fishing in troubled
waters,” in The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2007
(http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110009832).

from a Muslim employee. Mark Steyn, “Making a pig’s ear of

defending democracy,” in The Telegraph, October 4, 2005
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opini
on/2005/10/04/do0402.xml).

Qatar. Camper, “Disney’s Piglet banned in Middle East!”

January 28, 2007
(http://www.qatarliving.com/blog/camper/disneys-piglet-
banned-in-middle-east).
254 Hip Like Me

I’m more of an Eeyore.” Steyn, loc. cit.

matter could offend Muslims.” Sean Coughlan, “Three Little

Pigs ‘too offensive,’” in BBC News, January 23, 2008
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.st
m).

perceived safety. Cf. Daphne Patai, Heterophobia: Sexual

Harassment and the Future of Feminism (New York: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 1998), p. 204-5: “On one of the
stalls in the bathroom right outside the classroom in which I
was teaching, I read that one out of every two women will
be raped in her lifetime. Such statistics did not seem
questionable to the young women in my course, who
claimed to be willing to give away much in exchange for the
security they felt they lacked. Far from appreciating freedom
(academic or other), they acted as if they were living in a
society in which others’ words and actions were a constant
threat. Having no personal experience with societies where
speech is regulated, where speech codes are the norm,
where personal behavior is highly regimented and there is no
freedom of association, these students have no trouble
thinking they might like such a society if only it made them
feel safe. An atmosphere of panic, bolstered by atrocity
tales, is clearly a prerequisite if zealous solutions are to win
support. And in my experience, a great deal of the feminist
teaching that goes on, particularly in lower-level women’s
studies courses, is designed to induce precisely such feelings
of panic.”

human-rights commissions. See Mark Steyn, “Please send

more complaints,” in Maclean’s, April 23, 2008
(http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?cont
ent=20080423_31672_31672&page=1). See also Mark Steyn,
“But we were getting along so well!” in Maclean’s, June 4,
2008
(http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?cont
ent=20080604_84794_84794&page=1). See also Kathy
Shaidle, “The Kafkaesque Show Trial of Mark Steyn,” in
References 255

Pajamas Media, June 11, 2008

(http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-kafkaesque-show-trial-
of-mark-steyn/). See also Kathy Shaidle, “First They Came
For… Canadian ‘Hate Speech’ Totalitarianism Is Not New,”
on VDare.com, May 6, 2008
(http://www.vdare.com/misc/080506_shaidle.htm). See also
Kathy Shaidle, “Free Speech vs. Muslim Sensibilities,” in
FrontPage Magazine, February 26, 2008
(http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=95F305
57-369D-47BA-AC6E-99C0CB173C43).

wouldn’t wear a bikini.” Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson,

“Dr Bari: Government stoking Muslim tension,” in Daily
Telegraph, November 10, 2006
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568881/Dr-Bari-
Government-stoking-Muslim-tension.html).

And then commit adultery.” Ibn Warraq, in Norman Geras, “A

lively debate about values,” October 11, 2007
(http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/10/a-lively-
debate.html). See also Ophelia Benson, “Can we talk?”
October 11, 2007
(http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/notesarchive.php?id
=2070).

you were our countrymen.” Samuel Adams, Speech in the

State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776.

Treasurer Peter Costello says.” SMH Staff, “If you want sharia
law, move: Costello,” in The Sydney Morning Herald, February
23, 2006 (http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/If-you-
want-sharia-law-move-
Costello/2006/02/23/1140670199148.html).

recognizing it for tax purposes.” Robert Spencer, The

Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
(Washington, DC: Regency Publishing, Inc., 2005), p. 73.

according to The Times.” Evening Standard Staff, “Bishop of

Rochester under police protection after receiving ‘death
256 Hip Like Me

threats’ for saying Britain has no-go areas for non-Muslims,” in

Evening Standard, February 3, 2008
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23435402-
details/Bishop%20of%20Rochester%20under%20police%20pro
tection%20after%20receiving%20'death%20threats'%20for%20
criticising%20Islam/article.do).

mirrored outside London.” Shiraz Maher, “Muslim Britain is

becoming one big no-go area,” in The Sunday Times,
January 13, 2008
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article317
6455.ece).

situation of ‘voluntary apartheid.’” BBC Staff, “Bishop warns of

‘Islamic areas,’” in BBC News, January 6
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7173599.stm).

county courts or High Court.” Abul Taher, “Revealed: UK’s first

official sharia courts,” in Times Online, September 14, 2008
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4749
183.ece).

it belongs to God.” In James Brandon, “A defiant Islam rises

among young Britons,” in The Christian Science Monitor, July
11, 2005 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0711/p01s04-
woeu.html?s=hns).

world belongs to Allah.” Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End

of the World as We Know It (Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, Inc., 2008 [2006]), p. 90.

USA would be justified.” Melanie Phillips, Londonistan (New

York: Encounter Books, 2007 [2006]), p. 82-3.

wounding another 700 or so.” Investors.com Staff, “What

Muslims Really Think,” in Investors.com
(http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?sec
id=1501&status=article&id=264727636679817). See also
Brenda Walker, “Muslim Fifth Column Polled,” on VDare.com
Blog, May 23, 2007
References 257

(http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2007/05/23/muslim-fifth-
column-polled/). Mark Steyn gives lower numbers, in op. cit.,
p. 76: “On the first anniversary of the July 7, 2005, Tube
bombings, the Times of London commissioned a poll of British
Muslims. Among the findings: ... 7 percent agree that suicide
attacks on civilians in the United Kingdom can be justified in
some circumstances, rising to 16 percent for a military
target.” See also Phillips, op. cit., p. 83: “Following the London
bombings, a poll found that ... one in ten [British Muslims]
supported the attacks on July 7, and 5 percent said that
more attacks in the UK would be justified, with 4 percent
supporting the use of violence for political ends.”

“religion of peace.” Spencer, op. cit, p. 41-2: “Sayyid Qutb,

one of the twentieth century’s foremost advocates of violent
jihad, taught (without a trace of irony) that Islam is a religion
of peace. However, he had a very specific kind of peace in
mind: ‘When Islam strives for peace, its objective is not that
superficial peace which requires that only that part of the
earth where the followers of Islam are residing remain secure.
The peace which Islam desires is that the religion (i.e. the law
of the society) be purified for God, that the obedience of all
people be for God alone, and that some people [i.e., us
beer-drinking and pork-eating infidels] should not be lords
over others. After the period of the Prophet—peace be on
him—only the final stages of the movement of Jihaad [sic]
are to be followed; the initial or middle stages are not
applicable.’ In other words, Islam is a religion of peace that
will come when everyone is Muslim or at least subject to the
Islamic state. And to establish that peace, Muslims must
wage war.”

this was the core of Islam.” Barry Gewen, “Muslim Rebel

Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other,” in The New York
Times, April 27, 2008
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/weekinreview/27gewe
n.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin).
258 Hip Like Me

disemboweling a few sheep. Cf. “You can’t make an omelet

without breaking eggs.” The famous phrase was coined by
the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Walter
Duranty, in defending the crimes of Joseph Stalin. See Bruce
Bawer, “The Times, It Ain’t a-Changin’,” in Pajamas Media,
June 25, 2008 (http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-times-it-
ain%E2%80%99t-a-changin%E2%80%99/).

end of the [twenty-first] century.” Robert Spencer, The

Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
(Washington, DC: Regency Publishing, Inc., 2005), p. 221-2.

Western democracy are right.” Ibid., p. 189.

accepted religion on earth.” Ibid., p. 190: “Ahmad has since

then claimed that he was misquoted, but the reporter who
heard him stands by her story.”

scream “Islamophobia.” Cf. Mark Steyn, America Alone: The

End of the World as We Know It (Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, Inc., 2008 [2006]), p. 85: “‘Islamophobia’ is not
phony or even psychological but very literal—if you’re a
Dutch member of parliament or British novelist or Danish
cartoonist in hiding under threat of death or a French
schoolgirl in certain suburbs getting jeered at as an infidel
whore, your Islamophobia is highly justified.”

years of Islamic persecution. Spencer, op. cit., p. 129-45. See

also Roger Sandall, “Religion and Violence,” February 2008
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_Religion-and-
Violence.php).

defend our freedom and civilization.” Abul Kasem,

interviewed by Jamie Glazov, “Non-Muslims: Worse than
Animals,” in FrontPage Magazine
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=
CBA566EA-A36C-470D-9DD6-88D752FA5A4B).

we shall never surrender.” Winston Churchill, Speech in the

House of Commons, June 4, 1940.
References 259

they’ll flood you out.” Henry Mietkiewicz and Bob

Mackowycz, Dream Tower: The Life and Legacy of Rochdale
College (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1988), p. 208.

STOP FUCKING UP MY YARD. SFUMY.

enjoyin’ the ride.” Grateful Dead, “Hell In A Bucket,” In The

Dark (Arista, 1990). Lyrics by Dick Cheney’s old friend, John
Perry Barlow.

I sincerely mean that. Cf. Ken Wilber, “On the Nature of

Shadow Projections in Forums. Follow-Up #2,” June 13, 2006
(http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/50).

Epilogue

anyone who isn’t a Wari.” Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999 [1997]), p.
51.

!Kung San. Loc. cit.

homicide rate. Adam Kuper, The Chosen Primate: Human

Nature and Cultural Diversity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1994), p. 142.

veins to bleed them.” Richard Rhodes, Deadly Feasts: The

“Prion” Controversy and the Public’s Health (New York:
Touchstone, 1998 [1997]), p. 78. Quoted in Sam Harris, The
End of Faith (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004),
p. 89.

virginity cult. Pinker, op. cit., p. 368: “Derek Freeman and

other anthropologists found that Samoan society in fact had
widespread adolescent resentment and delinquency, a cult
of virginity, frequent rape, reprisals by the rape victim’s
family, frigidity, harsh punishment of children, sexual jealousy,
and strong religious feeling.”
260 Hip Like Me

prevent them running away.” H. Ling Roth, in Roger Sandall,

“Out of Africa: Always the Same Thing,” 2004
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_Out-of-Africa.php).

all over the city.” H. Ling Roth, in Sandall, op. cit.

and other emotional outlets.’” Roger Sandall, “What Native

Peoples Deserve,” 2005
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_What-Native-Peoples-
Deserve.php).

allotted to distinguished guests.” Alfred Métraux, in Sandall,

loc. cit.

staircase of a temple.” Jared Diamond, Collapse: How

Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2004),
p. 172.

slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated.” Roger Sandall, “10,000

Years of Nostalgia,” 2005
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_10,000-Years-of-
Nostalgia.php).

“nose tombs.” Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The

Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2005 [1997]), p. 429: “‘Nose tombs’ in Japan still
contain the noses cut off of 20,000 Koreans and brought to
Japan as trophies of a 16th-century Japanese invasion of that
country. Not surprisingly, loathing of the Japanese is
widespread in Korea, and contempt for Koreans is
widespread in Japan.”

smattering of urban sanitation. See Cezar Tigno, “Country

Water Action: India Toilet Technology for Human Dignity,” in
Asian Development Bank
(http://www.adb.org/Water/Actions/IND/Toilet-
Technology.asp): “In the late 19th century, India’s British
colonizers attempted to build the first modern sewerage
system in the country. But after 138 years of colonial rule, only
about 232 out of 5,161 towns or cities had partially
References 261

functioning sewers.... About 70 percent of India’s entire

population still lacks improved sanitation facilities [i.e., flush
toilets].” Things are thankfully changing for the country’s
“untouchables,” however: “Sushila can now hold her head
high and look at people in the eye. She no longer carries a
bucket of human feces on her head.” It’ll do wonders for a
girl’s self-esteem; somebody tell Gloria Steinem....

a pickpocket as well. If not a scoundwel, a wobber and a

wapist. Cf. also Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of
Multiculturalism in Canada (New York: Penguin, 2002 [1994]),
p. x: “[M]ulticulturalism [is] a cult whose defenders responded
to criticism by vilifying the critic.”

Pedro Martinez. AP Staff, “Video Shows Pedro Martinez at

Cockfight,” Associated Press, February 7, 2008.

cockfight. Like the saying goes, “Don’t bring a vagina to a

cockfight.” Or a knife to a gunfight, either.

Michael Vick. United States of America v. Michael Vick,

“Summary of the Facts,” 2007
(http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/vick-summary-
of-facts-070824.pdf): “32. In or about April 2007, PEACE,
PHILLIPS, VICK, and two others ‘rolled’ or ‘tested’ additional
‘Bad News Kennels’ dogs by putting the dogs through
fighting sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road to determine which
animals were good fighters. PEACE, PHILLIPS, and VICK
agreed to the killing of approximately 6-8 dogs that did not
perform well in ‘testing’ sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road and
all of those dogs were killed by various methods, including
hanging and drowning. VICK agrees and stipulates that
these dogs all died as a result of the collective efforts of
PEACE, PHILLIPS, and VICK.”

black Muslim.” See Paul Sheehan, “Tolerant, multicultural

Sydney can face this difficult truth,” in The Sydney Morning
Herald, August 29, 2001
262 Hip Like Me

(http://web.archive.org/web/20031013193104/http://old.smh
.com.au/news/0108/29/opinion/opinion5.html).

white girls in Australia. James Fulford, “Racial Gang-Rape:

The Sequel,” on VDare.com, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/fulford/racial_rape.htm). See also
Sam Francis, “Racial Gangrape: Another Diversity Disaster,”
on VDare.com, 2001
(http://vdare.com/francis/gang_rape.htm).

Dine, Inuit, Huron, Chippewa, Papago, Zhu/Twasi,

Yanomamö. Bernard Ortiz De Montellano, “Evolution and
Multiculturalism,” Annual Meeting of the American
Association of Science, February 20, 1994
(http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&fi
le=article&sid=89).

Cherokee. James Fulford, “How To Write About Immigration,

Abortion Etc. (If You’re Differently Brained),” on VDare.com,
April 10, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/fulford/how_to_write.htm).

!Kung San call themselves. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn:

Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York:
Penguin Books, 2006), p. 60: “[A]nthropologists have recently
started to refer to the !Kung San by their name for
themselves, the Ju|’hoansi, which means ‘the Real People.’
The Real People’s name for both Europeans and non-San
Africans is !ohm, a category that includes predators and
other inedible beasts.”

was annihilation.” Ibid., p. 149, 153.

Strait of Gibraltar. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great:

How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books,
2007), p. 181.

Columbus. In Alex Haley, “The Playboy Interview: Malcolm X,”

in Playboy magazine, May 1963 (http://www.malcolm-
References 263

x.org/docs/int_playb.htm): “Columbus, the discoverer of

America, was a half-black man.”

Indian-on-Indian bloodbath. Note, however, that while

Native Americans were massacring each other 150 years
before Columbus, some Afrocentric “scholars” believe that
America was actually discovered before 1492 ... by black
explorers. If so, cultural diffusion from those earlier contacts
would of course be one possible origin for the hitherto-
peaceful Indians’ increasingly savage behaviors toward one
another. They had to learn it from someone, eh? See Gabriel
Haslip-Viera, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano and Warren
Barbour, “Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima’s
Afrocentricity and the Olmecs,” in Current Anthropology,
Volume 38, Number 3, June 1997
(http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&fi
le=article&sid=73), p. 419-41: “According to Van Sertima’s
hypothesis, the Nubian rulers of ancient Egypt (25th dynasty,
712-664 B.C.) organized an expedition with the help of the
Phoenicians to obtain various commodities, including iron,
from sources on the Atlantic coast of North Africa, Europe,
and the British Isles during the late 8th or early 7th century B.C.
This expedition allegedly sailed from the Nile Delta or the
Levant across the Mediterranean, through the Pillars of
Hercules, and down the Atlantic coast of North Africa, where
it was caught in some current or storm that sent it across the
Atlantic to the Americas. Following the prevailing wind and
ocean currents, the expedition allegedly sailed or drifted
westward from some unspecified location in the eastern
Caribbean or the Bahamas to the Gulf Coast of Mexico,
where it came into contact with the receptive but inferior
Olmecs.... The Nubians subsequently provided the impetus
for the building of pyramids and ceremonial centers and
introduced a number of technological innovations and
practices (mummification, cire-perdue metallurgy, the
symbolic use of purple murex dye, weaving, etc.) which
presumably influenced Mesoamerican religion, mythology,
customs, and even the calendar.”
264 Hip Like Me

recipe for human stew.” Wade, op. cit., p. 155.

might have put it. See Dennis Lee, “Alligator Pie,” in “Dennis
Lee, Poems”
(http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/lee/poem7.htm).

a villager said. Roger Sandall, “See Here, Ms Truss,” 2005

(http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_See-Here,-Ms-
Truss.php).

which would it be. Daniel Stoffman, Who Gets In: What’s

Wrong with Canada’s Immigration Program, and How to Fix It
(Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002), p. 188: “The
Australian position is that if family reunification is important to
someone who has moved to Australia, it can best be
achieved by that person returning home. When the
regulation was changed, Ruddock went to ethnic
organizations and asked immigrants, ‘Why do you want your
parents here anyway?’ It turned out that many were just as
happy not to have them.”

eligible to immigrate. See George J. Borjas, Heaven’s Door:

Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 101: “A simulation of
the U.S. economy suggests that the per capita income of
natives would rise substantially if the country switched from
the current immigration policy, which admits a mix of skilled
and unskilled workers, to one that admitted only skilled
workers....” (Italics added.)

Falun Gong members. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 168. For why

Falun Gong members would more likely be found
persecuting others—as an alleged “homophobic mind
control cult”
(http://www.rickross.com/reference/fa_lun_gong/falun305.ht
ml)—than being persecuted themselves, see Rick Ross,
“Falun Gong” (http://www.rickross.com/groups/falun.html).

patronage appointments. Stoffman, op. cit., p. 52, 164.

References 265

Diversity is a great thing. Of course, in practice it’s actually a

little more complex than that. Cf. John Lloyd, “Study paints
bleak picture of ethnic diversity,” in The Financial Times,
October 10, 2006 (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4ac4a74-
570f-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html?nclick_check=1): “The
core message of [Robert Putnam’s] research was that, ‘in the
presence of diversity, we hunker down,’ he said. ‘We act like
turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been
imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who
are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people
who do look like us’.... When the data were adjusted for
class, income and other factors, they showed that the more
people of different races lived in the same community, the
greater the loss of trust.” Cf. also John H. McWhorter, “The
Campus Diversity Fraud,” in City Journal, Winter 2002
(http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_1_the_campus.html):
“In truth, ‘diverse’ college campuses are among the most
racially balkanized places in America. Separate black
fraternities and sororities thrive. They first emerged in the early
twentieth century, when white fraternities and sororities didn’t
welcome black applicants. Today, black Greek organizations
are thoroughly unenthusiastic toward whites.... In addition,
black students typically cluster in their own section of the
dining hall, throw their own parties, have their own theme
houses, and leave college with a separatist ideology that
they often didn’t hold when they first arrived.”

democracy and individual freedom.” Stoffman, op. cit., p.

15-6.

have promoted for years.” Mark Steyn, America Alone: The

End of the World as We Know It (Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, Inc., 2008 [2006]), p. 89-90.

Enlightenment ideals. See David Gress, From Plato to NATO:

The Idea of the West and Its Opponents (New York: The Free
Press, 1998). See also Ibn Warraq, Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2007).
266 Hip Like Me

exactly the right way to go. Cf. Paul Craig Roberts,

“Affirmative Action + Non-Traditional Immigration =
Doomsday Machine Aimed At American Majority...,” on
VDare.com, April 3, 2001
(http://www.vdare.com/roberts/politically_correct_hate.htm
): “With the assimilation of whites blocked by deconstruction
in the classroom and immigration creating a majority of
‘preferred minorities’ with privileged legal standing,
academic standards will not be the only white construction
to bite the dust. America’s destiny lies in Third World culture.”

fewer prejudices. See Victoria L. Guthrie, Patricia M. King and

Carolyn J. Palmer, “Higher Education and Reducing
Prejudice: Research on Cognitive Capabilities Underlying
Tolerance,” in Diversity Digest, Spring/Summer 2000
(http://www.diversityweb.org/Digest/Sp.Sm00/tolerance.html
): “[I]ntellectual development is significantly related to levels
of prejudice toward African Americans, levels of prejudice
toward homosexuals, and tolerance ... higher levels of
prejudice are more likely to be found in individuals who
evidence lower levels of intellectual development.”

life and in elections. Herman T. Epstein, “The Fourth R: Or Why

Johnny Can’t Reason”
(http://www.brainstages.net/4thr.html). Consider also Steven
Dutch, “Dutch’s Laws of Just About Everything,” 2003 (2001)
(http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/dutchrules.htm):
“The best idea I ever heard was that voters should have to
recite the Bill of Rights verbatim before being allowed to
vote. Failing that, we could attach a ten-question multiple
choice exam to each ballot. Votes would be weighted by
percent correct. With electronic voting, we could scramble
the questions to prevent cheating. Certainly if you’re too
dumb or slack to follow an arrow from the candidate’s name
to the correct punch hole, or make sure the ballot is correctly
done, you have no right to complain about the outcome.”

“genetic lottery.” Gregor Mendel’s ratios (i.e., probabilities) of

smooth vs. wrinkled peas come right out of the abstract
References 267

consideration of all possible recombinations of the genes

involved. The ability to do such combinatorial thinking is one
typical indication that a subject is at the formal/abstract
reasoning stage of cognitive development. And, species are
abstract classes of animals: If you can’t think in terms of
abstract classes in general—e.g., “autos” or “fathers,” taken
not merely as plurals but rather as classes abstracted from
your experience of concrete objects—you can’t think in
terms of species, either. The raccoon species or class, for
example, is not just a collection of all the world’s raccoons.
Rather, in programming terms, it is the abstract “template” or
“blueprint” (which cannot be directly experienced) from
which all individual, concrete raccoons are instantiated, as
instances or members of the class/species. All of that is
beyond the ability of the average adult, even in the
developed world, to understand ... even though the most
advanced (i.e., 99th percentile) children begin to grasp the
ideas at age ten.

a penis or a vagina. Patricia Holt, “Making Ms.Story: The

Biography of Gloria Steinem, A Woman Of Controversy and
Contradictions,” in San Francisco Chronicle, September 24,
1995 (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1995/09/24/RV65259.D
TL).

we can’t deserve our rights. John Howard Griffin, Black Like

Me (New York: Signet, 1996 [1960]), p. 44.

“hip enough.” Cf. John McWhorter, “The Demise of

Affirmative Action at UC Berkeley: Dissecting the Stalemate,”
(http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mcwhorter/mcwhorter_p
2.html): “This discrepancy [in the continuing low average
scores of middle-class African-American students on
standardized tests such as the SAT] today stems less from
deprivation than from a cultural tendency which expresses
itself in black culture regardless of class, namely the well-
documented one of black children to associate doing well in
school with selling out to ‘whiteness.’ The few hopelessly
268 Hip Like Me

nerdy black kids such as myself plow on in the face of this,

but often at the expense of general social acceptance, and
the majority of African-American children inevitably fall into
line to some extent with this evaluation of scholarly
achievement with ‘the other,’ even in comfortable middle-
class circumstances.”

they are somehow shameful. Cf. Griffin, Black Like Me, p. 184:
“[I]n order to succeed, [the black man] had to become an
imitation white man—dress white, talk white, think white,
express the values of middle-class white culture (at least
when he was in the presence of white men). Implied in all this
was the hiding, the denial, of his selfhood, his negritude, his
culture, as though they were somehow shameful.”

pride of heritage. Cf. Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within:

A Book of Self-Esteem (New York: Little, Brown and Company,
1993 [1992]), p. 44: “When ‘Negroes’ became ‘blacks’ and
then ‘African Americans’ in the United States, it was part of a
long journey from the humiliation of slavery to a pride of
heritage.” Cf. also the renaming of dinosaurs from
“brontosaurus” to “brachiosaurus” in Steve Sailer, “Jurassic
Park III,” UPI, July 18
(http://www.isteve.com/Film_Jurassic_Park_III.htm).

epithet in the back door.” John H. McWhorter, “Losing The

Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America,” 2001
(http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/189/39/): “In
January 1999, David Howard, the white ombudsman to the
newly elected mayor of Washington, DC, Anthony Williams,
casually said in a budget meeting with two coworkers ‘I will
have to be niggardly with this fund because it’s not going to
be a lot of money.’”

repossessed “cunt.” Gloria Steinem, in the Foreword for Eve

Ensler, The Vagina Monologues (New York: Villard, 2001
[1998]), p. xiv: “By the time feminists were putting CUNT
POWER! on buttons and T-shirts as a way of reclaiming that
References 269

devalued word, I could recognize the restoration of an

ancient power.”

“bitch” and “ho.” Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange

Career of a Troublesome Word (New York: Vintage Books,
2003 [2002]), p. 36: “[Blacks] have added a positive meaning
to nigger, just as women, gays, lesbians, poor whites, and
children born out of wedlock have defiantly appropriated
and revalued such words as bitch, cunt, queer, dyke,
redneck, cracker, and bastard.

more than seven times. La Griffe du Lion, “Politics,

Imprisonment and Race,” Volume 8, Number 1, April 2006
(http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htm): “According
to the last decennial census a black man was 7.4 times more
likely than his white counterpart to be found behind bars.”

Reparations. Cf. Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of

Multiculturalism in Canada (New York: Penguin, 2002 [1994]),
p. 124, 126.

“up in smoke.” Cf. Jonathan Kay, “Six reasons why Stephen

Harper’s government shouldn’t deliver an apology,” in
National Post, June 11, 2008
(http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/arc
hive/2008/06/11/jonathan-kay-on-residential-schools-six-
reasons-why-stephen-harper-s-government-shouldn-t-deliver-
an-apology.aspx): “[T]he five-figure per person payouts from
the federal government to make amends for the [First
Nations] residential schools program has caused a deadly
upsurge in binge drinking in many northern communities—an
outcome any idiot would have foreseen.”

locally whenever possible. Buying locally keeps the money in

the community/country, and saves on transportation/fuel,
which lessens our dependence on foreign oil. Or did you
think it was just a “leftist moonbat” thing? You know what
else would decrease the demand for oil? Fewer immigrants.
See Steve Smith, “A California Reader Says Immigration Will
270 Hip Like Me

Makes It Impossible To Drill Our Way Out Of The Oil Crisis,” on

VDare.com, August 31, 2008
(http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_083008.htm#b2).

Mick Jagger. “Mick Jagger,” Contemporary Musicians,

Volume 53 (Thomson Gale, 2005).

people of the Orkney Islands. See Roger Sandall, “An

Australian Dilemma: Reconciling the Irreconcilable,” in
Upholding the Australian Constitution (The Samuel Griffith
Society, 1997)
(http://www.rogersandall.com/Archive_Aboriginal-
Policy_An-Australian-Dilemma.php).

Minnesota Vikings football team. AP Staff, “Jury: Williams

guilty on one count in Vikings boat party case,” Associated
Press, 2005
(http://www.sportsbooks.com/news/sports_betting/179219.ht
ml). See also Seattle Times Staff, “NFL wire notes: Koren
Robinson named in sex scandal,” in The Seattle Times,
October 16, 2005
(http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seahawks/20025638
70_nfl16.html?syndication=rss). See also CBS Worldwide Inc.,
“911 Call Released In Vikings Boat Party Case,” on
wcco.com, October 13, 2005
(http://wcco.com/vikings/Minnesota.Vikings.football.2.35198
8.html).

treated Italian immigrants with scorn. Paul Gottfried, “Attack

Of The Pod Person I: Amnesty To Remake GOP,” on
VDare.com, 2004
(http://www.vdare.com/gottfried/lesser.htm).

benefiting from that injustice. Cf. Father Michael Pfleger,

quoted in Bernard Chapin, “Why I Feel Absolutely No White
Guilt,” in Pajamas Media, July 11, 2008
(http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/why-i-feel-absolutely-no-
white-guilt/): “[We must be] honest enough to address the
one who says, ‘Well, don’t hold me responsible for what my
References 271

ancestors did.’ But you have enjoyed the benefits of what

your ancestors did and unless you are ready to give up the
benefits ... throw away all the money you put into the
company you walked into because your daddy and your
granddaddy and your great-granddaddy, unless you’re
willing to give up the benefits then you must be responsible
for what was done in your generation cause you are the
beneficiary of this insurance policy!”

Men especially love murder.” Andrea Dworkin, in Laura

Lederer, ed., Take Back the Night (New York: William Morrow,
1980), p. 148: “Men love death. In everything they make,
they hollow out a central place for death, let its rancid smell
contaminate every dimension of whatever still survives. Men
especially love murder.”

by its nature, violent.” Quoted in Barbara Mikkelson, “Rape

Seeded,” on Snopes.com
(http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp).

embellished with meaningful looks.” Andrea Dworkin, Letters

from a War Zone: Writings 1976–1987 (New York: Dutton,
1988), p. 14.

issue of forced sex.” Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a

Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1989), p. 185-6: “Abortion policy has never
been explicitly approached in the context of how women
get pregnant; that is, as a consequence of intercourse under
conditions of gender inequality; that is, as an issue of forced
sex.”

dismissal of sociobiology. See Gloria Steinem, Revolution

from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (New York: Little, Brown
and Company, 1993 [1992]), p. 145; also see Gloria Steinem,
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: Henry
Holt & Company, 1995 [1983]), p. 246. For the details contra,
see Geoffrey D. Falk, “PVs,” January 12, 2008
(http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/January2008.asp#12)
272 Hip Like Me

and Geoffrey D. Falk, “Zaftig Snuff Tigers,” February 4, 2008

(http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/February2008.asp#4).

Simpsons episode. “The Old Man and the Lisa,” first aired
April 20, 1997.

“only go so far.” Cf. Bruce Hornsby and the Range, “The Way
It Is,” The Way It Is (RCA, 1986).

part of a minority group. Cf. Bernard Ortiz De Montellano,

“Multiculturalism, Cult Archaeology, and Pseudoscience,” in
Francis B. Harrold and Raymond E. Eve, ed., Cult
Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding
Pseudoscientific Beliefs about the Past (Iowa City, IA:
University of Iowa Press, 1995), p. 134-51
(http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&fi
le=article&sid=95): “[C]hildren acquire self-esteem by
accomplishing increasingly complex tasks, by learning, and
by being able to use what they have learned.... [O]ne of the
most important characteristics of successful people is
accurate perception. A curriculum that consists primarily of
assertions of black superiority with little development of
critical thinking, of high expectations for performance in an
effort to develop self-esteem, will ultimately be self-
defeating. Stevenson, Chen, and Uttal ... compared black,
Hispanic, and white children in Chicago and found that the
self-evaluation of African American children exceeded their
actual achievement scores. Stevenson’s group felt that this
was due to blacks not getting, or not incorporating, reliable
and accurate feedback on their performance. ‘Teachers
praise the children for modestly good performance instead
of pushing them to do better’.... Stevenson points out that
praising work that is substandard, often on the pretext of
protecting the self-esteem of the child, does not do the child
any favor, because one of the most important sources of
children’s self-esteem is realizing that they have mastered a
challenging task....”
References 273

“Fire on the Mountain,” circa 1973. “Mickey Hart and The

Marin County Collective, 1972–1973”
(http://www.mjckeh.demon.co.uk/jc/misc-
det.htm#mhmcc).

studio recording from 1974. Davis Gans, “Grateful Dead Hour

no. 500,” April 20, 1998
(http://www.dead.net/features/grateful-dead-hour-no-500).

“When the Levee Breaks.” Andy Fyfe, When the Levee

Breaks: The Making of Led Zeppelin IV (Chicago, IL: Chicago
Review Press, 2003), p. 131.

white boy in hip-hop.” Corey Moss, “What’s Up with That Guy

in the ‘99 Problems’ Video?” April 5, 2003
(http://www.mtv.com/bands/r/rubin_rick/news_feature_0405
03/).

“Rapper’s Delight.” Rolling Stone Staff, “Rappers Delight: The

Sugarhill Gang”
(http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6596093/rappers_d
elight).

ah you don’t stop.” The Sugarhill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight”

(Sugarhill Records, 1979).

giving it back to us.” Quoted in John H. McWhorter, “How

Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back,” in City Journal, Summer 2003
(http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html).

stole it from us first. Or maybe Hart, with his intense interest in

world rhythms, picked up the idea from some Third World
culture. History is not clear.

melanin. Bernard Ortiz De Montellano, “Multicultural

Pseudoscience: Spreading Scientific Illiteracy Among
Minorities,” in Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 16, No. 1, Fall 1991
(http://www.csicop.org/si/9111/minority.html).
274 Hip Like Me

Cleopatra. Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa: How

Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History
(New York: Basic Books, 1997 [1996]), p. xii, 9, 14.

Josephine. Ibid., p. 133.

Beethoven, Haydn, Solomon, Hannibal. Malcolm X, in Alex

Haley, “The Playboy Interview: Malcolm X,” in Playboy
magazine, May 1963 (http://www.malcolm-
x.org/docs/int_playb.htm): “Hannibal, the most successful
general that ever lived, was a black man. So was Beethoven;
Beethoven’s father was one of the blackamoors that hired
themselves out in Europe as professional soldiers. Haydn,
Beethoven’s teacher, was of African descent. And
Solomon.” See also Peter Brimelow, “Invisible Men,” on
VDare.com, 1993
(http://www.vdare.com/pb/taylor_review.htm): “[Jared
Taylor, in Paved With Good Intentions] tracks several years of
self-feeding press references to the heinous scandal of a
white Stanford student hanging a caricatured blackface
Beethoven on the door of a black student (who, as it
happens, had insisted Beethoven was black).”

Odysseus. Michael Elby, “Ancient Greco-Roman descriptions

of Egyptians,” 2000
(http://www.geocities.com/enbp/quotes.html): “In
describing the skin tone of Odysseus, Homer used the word
melanchroiês—a form of the same word that other Greeks
sometimes chose to describe Egyptians, and one that is the
source of much Afrocentric misunderstanding. If taken
literally, the word would mean ‘black-skinned’; however, it is
clear from the context that Homer means ‘of swarthy
complexion’ rather than racially ‘black,’ and intends to
describe Odysseus regaining his youthful color.”

Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln. Lefkowitz, op. cit., p.

200, footnote #29.
References 275

Moors. Malcolm X, in Alex Haley, op. cit.: “Whole black

empires, like the Moorish, have been whitened to hide the
fact that a great black empire had conquered a white
empire even before America was discovered. The Moorish
civilization—black Africans—conquered and ruled Spain;
they kept the light burning in Southern Europe. The word
‘Moor’ means ‘black,’ by the way.” (Of course, so do
“Negro” and “nigger,” eh? Be careful what you wish for.)

more victimized today. See Bob Allen, quoted in Frederick R.

Lynch, Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of
Affirmative Action (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), p.
181: “We have institutionalized a counter-white-male bias.
We’ve created a new group who are being discriminated
against.... You’ve got no access to legal recourse or power.
We have institutionalized discrimination against one group.
When does it end?”

“the new black.” Cf. Steve Sailer, “Is Brown the New Black?
Assimilating Latinos into the Politics of Victimhood,” in The
American Conservative, March 10, 2008
(http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_10/feature.html
).

precious badge. Cf. Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge,

Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in
Women’s Studies (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), p. 77:
“[Mary] Daly’s expressions of solidarity ... are particularly
objectionable to black women, who see her as
‘appropriating’ oppression that ‘belongs’ to them.”

privileged majority can be racists. Cf. Melanie Phillips,

Londonistan (New York: Encounter Books, 2007 [2006]), p. 60:
“Jews [in Britain] were not considered to be a minority
because of the prevalent Marxist analysis that racism
necessarily involved power, and since Jews were seen to be
powerful, they were part of the majority and so could never
be victims. Anyone from the Third World, however, was
suitably powerless and therefore their values had to trump
276 Hip Like Me

those of the majority. And anyone who resisted this was

pronounced guilty of racism or xenophobia.”

“suffering contest.” Cf. Patai and Koertge, op. cit., p. 51:

“Comparing types and degrees of oppression is a tough
business, and, not surprisingly, it has led to much hostility as
one group elbows another for pride of place in the contest
for ‘most oppressed’ status.”

we’re all helpless victims. Cf. Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions:

The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (New York: Penguin,
2002 [1994]), p. 95: “[T]o see oneself as a victim of history
rather than as one of its victimizers, is to confer on oneself a
delicious sweet-and-sour confirmation of one’s own
existence: deliciously sweet because you cannot be denied;
deliciously sour because you have been brutalized. This life
you lead is not your fault.”

“backlash.” Cf. Christina Hoff Sommers’ debunking of Susan

“Backlash” Faludi’s dismal, flailing and failed attempts at
rational thought and competent scholarship, in The War
Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young
Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 147-9. Cf. also
Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How Women
Have Betrayed Women (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994),
p. 227-55.

pleasing shade of light brown. For a less happy ending, see

Steve Sailer, “Mapping Human History,” on VDare.com, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/human_history.htm): “Th[e]
notion that the entire world will soon consist of one beige
race is both highly popular and highly dubious. I see little
statistical evidence to suggest that there will be significantly
greater racial admixture in either Asia or Africa anytime in
the 21st century … and that’s where most humans will live....
Most of the growth in racial mixing will be restricted to regions
where intermarriage has been a long tradition (primarily Latin
America and some remote islands) or are immigrant
References 277

magnets (presumably North America, Australia, and Western

Europe).”

Vanessa Hudgens. Ruben V. Nepales, “Vanessa Hudgens: ‘I

love being a Filipina,’” in Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 9,
2007
(http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/entertainment/entertain
ment/view_article.php?article_id=81617). See also Lynn
Barker, “Interview: Zac Efron, Vanessa Anne Hudgens: High
School Musical,” in TeenHollywood, May 17, 2006
(http://www.teenhollywood.com/d.asp?r=123403&c=1038&p
=10).

Heather Locklear. Mario de Valdes y Cocom, “The Blurred

Racial Lines of Famous Families: Locklear,” 2008
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/fa
mous/locklear.html).

Vanessa Marcil. E! Online Staff, “Vanessa Marcil: Profile,” in E!

Online
(http://www.eonline.com/celebrities/profile/index.jsp?uuid=
ba1bf713-6488-434d-aa0d-84227c2f85e7).

Megan Fox. Sirius Radio Staff, “Megan Fox on family

background and celebrity inspired tattoo from Maxim
Radio,” on Sirius Radio
(http://www.sirius.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Sir
ius/Page&c=BackStageAsset&cid=1181270896791).

Tiger Woods. Steve Sailer, “Is Love Colorblind?” in The

National Review, July 14, 1997
(http://www.nationalreview.com/14july97/feature.html).

too stupid to use a condom. See Edwin S. Rubenstein,

“National Data: Penicillin is No Match for Immigration,” on
VDare.com, November 14, 2007
(http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/071114_nd.htm): “In 2005
... approximately 68 percent of gonorrhea cases reported to
the Centers for Disease Control occurred among non-
Hispanic blacks. The infection rate for blacks ... was 18 times
278 Hip Like Me

that of non-Hispanic whites and 4 times that of Hispanics....

Syphilis, a rarer though more virulent STD, infects blacks at ...
over five times the non-Hispanic white rate ... and about
three times the Hispanics rate.... Similarly, blacks and
Hispanics—each with about 13 percent of the U.S.
population—accounted for 49 percent and 18 respectively
percent of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses, respectively, in 2005.”

we marry them. David Berreby, Us and Them: Understanding

Your Tribal Mind (New York: Little, Brown and Company,
2005), p. 221: “A saying in one African tribe supposedly held,
‘They are our enemies. We marry them.’”

Anglo-Saxons. Steve Sailer, “It’s All Relative: Putting Race in

Its Proper Perspective,” on VDare.com, 2002
(http://www.vdare.com/sailer/presentation.htm):
“[I]ntermarriage is what turned the Angles and the Saxons
into the Anglo-Saxons. And one way to raise the
intermarriage rate is to cut back on immigration. Here in
California, native-born Americans are something like three
times more likely to intermarry than immigrants.” (Italics
added.)

Mexifornians. Cf. Victor Davis Hanson, “Mexifornia, Five Years

Later,” in City Journal, Winter 2007 (http://www.city-
journal.org/html/17_1_mexifornia.html).

work that Nature intended. Sailer, op. cit.: “[I]n the long run,
intermarriage is the most fundamental solution for extended
families at odds with each other.”

rednecks. Cf. Steven Dutch, “The Consumer Society,” 1998

(http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/westtech/XMODERN2.HTM):
“[A] ‘redneck’ was somebody who had to work outdoors,
becoming chronically sunburned in the process. (The term
was once highly pejorative, but with entertainers like Jeff
Foxworthy using the term, it has lost much of its force.)”

I will survive.” Grateful Dead, “A Touch of Grey,” In The Dark

(Arista, 1990).
 Trademarks
“Veggie Delite” and “Subway” are registered trademarks of
Doctor’s Associates, Inc. “Avery” is a registered trademark of
Avery Dennison Corporation. “Dilbert” is a trademark of SAI.
“Muppet” is a registered trademark of The Muppets Studio,
LLC. “Fraggle” and “Fraggle Rock” are registered trademarks
of The Jim Henson Company. “Transcendental Meditation” is
a service mark registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office, licensed to Maharishi Vedic Education Development
Corporation. “Coke” is a registered trademark of the Coca-
Cola Company. “Oreo” is a registered trademark of the
Nabisco Division of Kraft Foods. “Corona” is a registered
trademark of Grupo Modelo S.A.B. de C.V. “Heineken” is a
registered trademark of Heineken International. “Puma” is a
registered trademark of Puma AG Rudolf Dassler Sport.
“Formica” is a registered trademark of Formica Corporation.
“SalesLogix” is a registered trademark of The Sage Group plc.
“BlackBerry” is a registered trademark of Research In Motion,
Ltd. “Roundup Ready” is a registered trademark of Monsanto
Company. “Lotus 1-2-3” is a registered trademark of Lotus
Software. “Bose” is a registered trademark of Bose Corpora-
tion. “Baileys” and “Baileys Irish Cream” are registered trade-
marks of R. A. Bailey & Co. “Cherry Garcia” is a registered

279
280 Hip Like Me

trademark of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings, Inc. “Pen-

tium” is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. “Timbits”
is a registered trademark of Tim Hortons Inc. “Volkswagen” is
a registered trademark of Volkswagen AG. “Playboy” and
“Playmate” are registered trademarks of Playboy Enterprises,
Inc. “iPod” is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. “Visual
Basic,” “.NET” and “VB.NET” are registered trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation. “Microsoft” and “Access” are trade-
marks of Microsoft Corporation. “Rockman” is a registered
trademark of Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc. “Aunt Jemima” is a
registered trademark of Quaker Oats Company. “PV” is (not)
a Registered trademark of Professional Victims of America.
 About
the Author
Geoffrey D. Falk is the author of The Science of the Soul: On
Consciousness and the Structure of Reality, Stripping the Gu-
rus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment, and “Norman
Einstein”: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber. He studied elec-
trical engineering and physics at the University of Mani-
toba. Following that, he kicked ass as a best-in-class com-
puter programmer. He currently divides his time between
writing, software development (www.crmfrontiers.com) and
music composition (www.myspace.com/geoffreyfalk).

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