You can tell Awesom-O all your secrets

Arizona Burner Trouble Troy, aka Butters, made the excellent Essentials Survival Guide video that I posted last week. This has proved somewhat controversial amongst Burners, with soon-to-lose-her-Virginity Andrea saying:

it is the most pretentious, self-righteous and patronising shit ever! I hope so called veteran burners aren’t like this because I will be disappointed…I am hoping that veteran burners are not going to disappoint me by being patronising and looking down on a first timer.”

Burner Rich took exception to some of the recommendations:

according to this video, I should bring a kiddy pool, sandals (for playa foot), and prepare to throw away socks (after I run behind the poo water truck), glow sticks (since battery powered lights are hard to find) and single-use water bottles, since nobody has heard of reusable ones and big containers. I should hand out gum and burn incense in the portapotties. Ok, got it! These instructions will make me look at home and popular, I’m sure.

I just re-watched the whole thing again, and I can’t see why people are hating on this. It is packed with lots of really good advice and wisdom. I don’t find it patronizing at all, someone is giving you a ton of valuable knowledge for free, what the fuck is wrong with that? I would say Rich has a good point on the Playa foot, definitely wear socks with the sandals, one of the worst things I’ve ever done at Burning Man was walk around in sandals. You want to minimize contact between feet and the highly alkaline Playa dust. And EL Wire definitely beats glow sticks, and reusable water bottles beat disposable. However, they do not spray poo water on the Playa…somebody’s talking shit here, and it ain’t Burners.Me!

I’m pleased to report that the music was much better in this next video. Despite the title, it doesn’t have any actual information in it to train Virgins – for that, watch the Essentials Survivor guide. But it will give you a great idea of what you’re in store for, so you can be bursting with excitement like the rest of us. As we told Andrea:

the magic’ll happen all right! The more positive energy you give, and the more you turn off your mind and feel your heart, the more you will get back. Just don’t rely on glow sticks and cheap-ass moopy glow bracelets. Get some battery powered EL wire, a headlamp torch and a carabiner mug (with a copy of your ID taped on it), and you’ll be fine. Whatever you need on the Playa, will appear rapidly and be gifted to you. I remember discussing this magic at the camp with a virgin friend of mine from Australia in 2010. She said “oh yeah right, well in that case I want a pony”. We both laughed. Like, as if, right? As if someone’s just going to show at Burning Man with a horse.

It took less than 10 minutes before some random stranger appeared right next to her with one of those ride-on plastic toy horses. She noticed it, “OMG a pony!” – and without any hesitation he gifted it to her. Now she had a pony. He knew nothing about her pony comment. Two hours later, we were walking around the Playa, someone saw her pony and came over to talk to her, showing off their pony. By the time the sun set, she had been offered two more ponies as gifts. There was suddenly an abundance of ponies. She didn’t need any more, since she already had a pony of her own. I took one and attached it to my bike with duck tape. It actually made a great decoration, and made it easy to find my carriage bike.  

Pity she didn’t come back last year, because then a giant frikking horse manifested, 50 feet high, right there on the Playa. So vast that it eclipsed the Man. It was a safe horse (Trojan!)

Burning Man is like that. Dream the greatest dreams you can, because what you dream of will manifest. Sometimes instantly. Sometimes years later. Stay positive no matter what! Remember it’s a party 🙂

I challenge anyone with a ticket for this year to watch this and not get SUPER excited. We’ll be home soon!