Unicorns!

Wednesday around midnight. Burntown, 8:30 and Esplanade.

Three unicorns come into camp. Two have large drums, the other appears to be the leader.

Leader comes up to the group of five of us standing there and says:

"Where are the zebras?"

Me: "Uh, we don't have any zebras here."

Leader: "Hmmm, well I see a lot of black and white stripes here. Are you sure there aren't any zebras here?"

Me: "Yep, no zebras."

Leader: "Well look at your friends pants. They are striped like a zebra. I think you guys ARE zebras. You guys need to pack all your shit and get the fuck off the playa by tomorrow morning."

Me: "Um, look dude we are not zebras and we are not leaving."

Leader: "That's it you guys are getting the zebra treatment."

The three of them turn around and face the playa and the drummers start pounding their drums and the leader yells out "CHARGE!"

At this point about 40 unicorns storm into Burntown swirling around us and smacking drumsticks together and making a big ruckus and getting in our faces and being quite intimidating. After a few minutes of this they surround us in a big circle and freeze. We're standing there wondering WTF is going to happen next and the leader approaches us once again.

Leader: "OK, we have two things that can happen here: One, you can pack up and get the fuck off the playa or two: You can give us some beer.

Me: "I'm not really sure who's camp this is...but you're welcome to walk across the rope bridge."

Emma: "I have a beer." She gives one of the unicorns a beer and they proceed to climb on the rope bridge and re-group on the edge of Burntown. Then I remember that we actually have two mutant vehicles in our camp that are zebracorns and I go up to the leader and tell him. He goes into a frenzied monolog about how wrong it is that zebras and unicorns are reproducing and they all start squeezing in and crushing me. I bust through to the edge and start running with about ten of them chasing me. I guess they are pretty slow because I loose them in about 100 yards and circle around to the back of camp and just stayed in the shadows intill they moved on.

One of many funny experiences on the playa this year.

Multi Texts!

So I'm listening to the radio the other day and I hear a song come on with the cores that says...

"And I'm on my knees looking for the answer...Are we human or are we dancers?"

I think to myself how cool it is and it being a few weeks before Burning Man and how much dancing goes on there I want to send it out as a text.

As I'm thumbing through my contact list to send it out I realize how many of my friends would probably appreciate it and end up sending it seven times. That's almost seventy people and I guess it resonated with a few of them because over the next couple days I got forty replies.

Here they are in the order received with just the initials of the person replying to protect the guilty.

1) Dancers!! And while you're down there on your knees.... Zzzzzzziiiiiiiippppp !! (C.M.)

2) Have an open mind...but don't let your brain fall out! (C.)

3) C) Both! That's my final answer. (D. B.)

4) We r both... Arent we lucky? (K. L.)

5) Uh hello pushah (K. C.)

6) Who is this? (M.)

7) I'm a dancer (N.)

8) Hang on man we're only human for 2 more weeks... Let's fukin do this (J)

9) That is so fucking weird i have the chills that song just came on my i pod! HOLY SHIT!!! (M. R.)

10) Human dancers! (D'N)

11) We are DEVO! (J)

12) Dave Mathews? (T)

13) Yes. We are both at the same time (SK)

14) Why you gotta segregate the 2! ; ) (T. K.)

15) Lol. On the playa we are dancers! (R. N.)

16) wtf r u talking about? Was that for me? (T. T.)

17) Werdancerssojusthavefun (S. D.)

18) Human (sometimes) often searching for the good music to dance on. (P. H.)

19) We are all of it. We are everything. We are like nothing this universe has ever seen before. There is no limit because we are humans & its all brand new. (S. A.)

20) Human.....don't know about that?? But dancers hell yeah!!!! (K. G.)

21) Im on my knees looking for an earring. You're going to find something else if you stay in that position! (K. D.)

22) Cosmic dancers having a human experience (M. M.)

23) We are slaves to our inner selfs (S. H.)

24) I like. What from. (S. W.)

25) I definately think we are dancers and I plan on proving that Saturday night at the Cal CLub! (B.)

26) I know that song. (S. C.)

27) We r dancers given human form 2 animate the intangable energy that is our being. Our true nature is that of light... (D. 1)

28) If we allowed ourselves . . . (D. 2)

29) Freed our hearts of all things but feelings of joy and actions of love. . . (D. 3)

30) By virtue, we r compelled 2 dance like flickering light. (D. 4)

31) Is it a weekday, or weekend? Some times that gives me the answer... (S.)

32) We're dancers! boogey on reggae man! (E. R.)

33) or you're just listening to gay techno again! (E. R. 2)

34) Hi Tim. How R U? Myself? I'm doing pretty darn good! Thanks 4 the text. I'm not sure of what it quite means. Maybe U will be so kind and inlighten me? (S.)

35) Dancers trapped in human skin (R. T.)

36) The psych ward called & said someone showed up smoking a joint wearing a thong & riding a goat. I'm gonna come get u, but this shit has got to stop. (K. G. 2)

37) we're freaks! (M. M.)

38) Dancer for sure ...on knees or on feet ;) (L. J.)

39) Hah,good question (A.)

40) We are dogs....ruff ruff (J. L.)

This was quite the fun little experience. I think it might be fun to do it again sometime....

I did do something similar back on the day before Thanksgiving. I sent out a text that simply said: "I appreciate you in my life." I got back quite a few from that one as well but the most memorable reply was my friend Chuck who wrote: "Thanks for the personal and thoughtful text." At first I didn't know how to take it and then I realized he was mocking me so I wrote back: "Ouch." He wrote back: "Ha Ha, love you man." and all was right with the world again. I was having a shitty day up to that point and it really was quite a boost to receive all those nice texts.

It's an interesting phenomenum how technology plays a part in things that it traditionally does not belong. I recently lost a brother and was amazed at how much his facebook page has helped. From people just leaving a nice message to using his friend list to notify people from afar who would not have found out any other way. His email account was another form of communication that was used. Is it right or wrong? I think it probably depends on what generation you are from...

Another interesting tidbit is that some people don't know it's a multi text. They take it as a personal message and try to start a dialog about it. While this would be entertaining as well it would take a little bit more of a time commitment to keep those all going and still carry on a semi-normal life!

The Early Burn

From the moment we saw him on fire I was ecstatic! I just couldn't help thinking this is going down in the history of Burning Man and I'm witnessing it firsthand with maybe only 2000 to 3000 other people. We were at camp when I first noticed it. I had been trying to get my camp mates that were still awake watching the full eclipse of the moon to go out on Mother Nature, our mutant vehicle. I had felt like "something" was going to happen because of the eclipse. It was almost 3 am and I thought maybe someone would do some kind of performance or something like that. I mean just seeing a full eclipse is amazing, but to be in the middle of the desert AND at Burning Man. That's not going to happen again.

I had just climbed up to the top of Mother Nature with 2 or 3 other people when I noticed the man wasn't green anymore. He looked yellow! So we looked at it a few seconds more and I said "OH MY FUCKING GOD! THE MAN IS ON FIRE!"...no one believed me and I had to really convince everyone that it was true. So I yelled "TONY! GET YOUR CAMERA THE MAN IS ON FIRE!" Tony had just gone to bed about 10 minutes before and he heard me yell but he thought I was kidding and stayed in his yurt. The next day I told another camp mate that the man had burned the night before and he didn't believe me either.

So we fired up the art car and started driving out there. It was about a mile away. The funny thing was that if you looked around the circle that is the layout of Burning Man; the lights from cars and bikes and people were all heading in one direction. All of them towards the man.

A similar experience had been described to me earlier in my burn by Gary, the maker of the Inner Mind. The Inner Mind had, among many other things, 4 huge halogen lights that were pointed straight up in the air. He said when he was testing the lights he would look out towards where people were and a large majority of them would all turn towards the light. Then he would turn it off and they would loose interest and go back to whatever it was they were doing. It is very easy to have a short attention span on the playa as there are so many bright and shiny and noisy things to draw your attention.

So we get out there and the Black Rock Rangers had already set up a fifty foot perimeter around the burning man. There was a fire truck there but it couldn't spray high enough so it was just soaking the stuff below. As we were watching him burn I noticed a lot of the same things happening that happen at the regular burn. Some people were yelling "Save the Man!" Others were yelling "Burn the Man!" and "Stop, Drop and Roll!" and "Down in Front" (even though the crowd was only 1 or 2 people deep) All the usual things that people say at the burn. Everyone was tingling with the excitement of it all.

Of course the playa rumor mill that is notorious at Burning Man was running at full speed. All kinds of silly or sobering theories were being bounced around.

So then two more fire trucks show up and one of them can spray almost high enough. So he starts spraying the water a little bit into the wind and lets the mist drift into the man. After about 10 minutes the left arm falls off and a rumble goes through the crowd. Another 10 minutes and the fire is out.

About 10 minutes later two of our camp mates, Jeff and Sarah, come up to Mother Nature and tell us they saw the whole thing. (One of the nice things about having an illuminated 25 foot tall art car is that your friends can find you fairly easily.) The man climbed up the wires holding two of the shade fabrics together. It was as simple as climbing a ladder and I had heard other people had done the same thing earlier in the evening so that in itself was not that unusual. But this man climbed all the way up to the base of the man and started pouring something from his canteen onto the mans foot. He then lit something else on fire and stuffed it into the foot. When Sarah saw that she said she yelled "Hey! What the Fuck are you doing?" This quote was in the special edition newspaper, The Black Rock Beacon the next morning, sans expletive.

I think most burners were not that fazed by the early burning of the man. So much crazy stuff happens out there that it really wasn't that big of a deal. They took him down the next day (Tuesday) and started rebuilding. He was put back up a day after that (Wednesday) without his head. Thursday they put his head on and right before midnight the neon was turned back on. From then it really just seemed like any other time at Burning Man.

Space Shuttle

So did anyone else see the space shuttle steak across the sky tonight? It was neeto. I was on the phone with Stephanie and we spotted it at the same time. She was at her Mom's in Colfax and had just called to tell me she had drank too many drinks to drive home!

I heard some dude on KVMR talking about it this afternoon and set my alarm for 10:10pm and then forgot about it until my alarm went off. It zoomed by at about 10:17.

Dude said it was going 17,500 mph and would be in Florida in 15 minutes. Zoinks! It had a little bit of a reddish glow and took about a minute to go across the sky. At least the sky I could see. There were some trees in the way a bit.

Funny what an interesting radio program can turn into. Later on on the same station they did an hour long interview with Micheal Moore about his new movie, Sicko. Sounds pretty interesting and I always enjoy his Movies. This one is all about health care in this 'great' old country o' ours. It's not pretty.