I once did one of those online surveys to find out what the internet thought my political leanings were and what historical figures they aligned me most closely with.

The results said I was Gandhi.

This scared me somewhat, because Gandhi voluntarily stopped having sex when he was 36-years-old.

And he didn't drink alcohol.
And he went through long periods without eating food. And when he did eat food, he did not eat meat.

And he Voluntarily stopped having sex.

So in other words, the dude was clearly insane in the membrane.

No way in three-shots-to-the-chest hell do I want to be Gandhi.

That would be worse than waking up one morning and discovering that I’d turned into a goddamn hippy.

I hate hippies so much, that this morning when I woke up I scared myself by coming to the realisation that I may actually be a closet hippy.

In fact… while I haven't had any tests done to prove this, I’m beginning to suspect I'm 1/64th hippy on my mother's side.

My mother is always talking about sending out “positive vibes”.

And she recycles gift wrap.

I don't know whether it's because she's trying to save the planet, or because she’s just cheap, but I do know that opening presents when she's around takes forever because you have to make sure that the paper doesn't tear, or get crinkled, and that the sellotape comes off nicely, or else she gets all upset because she can’t add it to her reusable wrapping paper collection.

I remember when I was growing up that in the time it took to open some birthday presents without destroying the wrapping, I had aged another year.

At my 21st birthday, she gave me a present wrapped in paper that she had saved from her own 21st, when I was just a baby in her belly.

She has a pretty strong anti-drug stance though.

I used to as well, but then one day I listened to a Bob Dylan album and he said that every body must get stoned and so I went out and insulted some Muslims.

Another reason why I think I’ve been infected with Hippy is that I’ve also come to discover that I care more about trees than I do about human beings.

It’s no secret that I want to level this city and replace it with an Ewok forest.

I’ve also been taking truckloads of photocopying paper from work.

I don’t so much see it as stealing, as retrieving the bodies of my fallen perennial comrades.

I've even formed a group called the Christmas Tree Liberation Front.

Last week we kidnapped three elves and we shall not release them until Santa Claus publicly denounces the cruel December cull that sees millions of trees killed just so their corpses can be dressed up in bells and lights and angels and stood in the corner of someone's living room, so people can put presents under them in honour of Baby Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus.

I don’t really go in for organised religion. I'm sort of too... disorganised.
That doesn’t mean I’m not a spiritual man.
I like Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. And shots of double-negatives.

But I’ve been reading this old National Geographic magazine and it has an article in it about Buddhism and I realised we share similar ideas, on a philosophical level.

Then I started to realise that I might just be Buddha reincarnated.

Stay with me here:

Buddha was a prince.
The first record I ever bought was by Prince.

Buddha was a martial artist.
I was a teenage mutant ninja turtle.

He was over six feet tall.
Yes, the weather is fine up here, thanks for asking.

He spent most of his time meditating.
I too am lazy. I sleep when I am meant to be working.

He spent his life hoping to find nirvana.
I’ve been looking for my Nirvana CD for the past nine years. I leant it to my brother and he said he returned it, but now I think about it… maybe he didn’t.

Oh wait. Hang on.

"Buddha was celibate from age 29, until his death."

Fuck that.