". . . screwed, blued and tattooed . . ."

Are you feeling screwed, blued and tattooed because the man slipped it to you? Like, stay loose, hit the pad and share a thumb with your pash.

Huh?

If that made no sense to you, check out "The Hippie Dictionary" by John McCleary. Using the new book to translate, readers come up with the more conventional: Are you feeling mistreated by the authorities? Relax, go home to bed and share a very large marijuana cigarette with your significant other."

Those expecting the dictionary, published by Ten Speed Press, to be a stodgy reference work are in for a jolt.

McCleary's book is chock-full of pointed editorializing, slang and swear words culled from the vernacular of the 1960s and 1970s hippie youth, who questioned authority and created their own counterculture.

. . . among the book's entries are such gems as "hey man" (the most prevalent greeting of the era) and "swacked" (high on drugs or alcohol).

One of the more amusing entries is found under "like," which McCleary calls an unnecessary word that along with "you know" and "I mean" has come to dominate U.S. speech.

"What is strange about these exclamations is that, even though they have no real bearing on the conversation, they indicate a desire ... to communicate with clarity and understanding."

. . . the book's entry for the term "hippie" says, "The true hippie believes in and works for truth, generosity, peace, love and tolerance. The messengers of sanity in a world filled with greed, intolerance and war."

. . .McCleary has no apologies for expressing highly subjective views in what is ostensibly a reference book.

In his entry on President John F. Kennedy's assassination, he wrote, "It is interesting to note that liberals are the ones who are killed in their prime, and conservatives die old in their soft beds. This world would be a better place in which to live if John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., had lived to die in their soft beds."

McCleary said his editorializing is necessary because the hippie era was a very opinionated period and some of the themes he touches on help illustrate the hippie philosophy.

-- from CNN's Offbeat News.