How To Enjoy Burning Man From the Comfort of Your Own Home

Didn’t get a ticket this year? Scared off by the $1000+ price on Stubhub – or the ire of the Burnier-Than-Thous if you pay more than $380 for a ticket? Don’t worry, because now you can enjoy Burning Man from the comfort of your own home.


From Tedd St Rain-bow:

How to enjoy the Burning Man Experience from the Comfort of your Own Home (just in case you felt bad about not going):

  1. Tear down your house. Put it in a truck. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together. Invite everyone you meet to come over and party. When they leave, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.
  2. Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.
  3. Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.
  4. Lean back in a chair until that point where you’re just about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.
  5. Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 3 days. Hide all the toilet paper.
  6. Set your house thermostat so it’s 50 degrees for the first hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.
  7. Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don’t go to a doctor.
  8. “Downsize” last year’s camp by adding two geodesic domes, a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.
  9. Don’t sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.
  10. Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume. Forget to pack it.
  11. Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car and trailer are completely packed with stuff. Tell everyone that you’re going to a “Leave-No-Trace” event. Empty your car into a dumpster.
  12. Roast and give away 1,000 hotdogs to strangers while singing your favorite obscure Tom Lehr songs.
  13. Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream. Realize you’ll love the music for the rest of your life.
  14. Spend 5 months planning a “theme camp” like it’s the invasion of Normandy. Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp. Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you’re sick of it or can’t find it.
  15. Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until someone offers you cocktails and dinner. Or acid.
  16. Leave a nice couch on the side of the highway.
  17. Bust your ass for a “community.” See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.
  18. Parade around naked and then complain that someone is ‘oggling’ you.
  19. Get so drunk you can’t recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours. Tell your boss you aren’t coming to work this week but he should “gift” you a paycheck anyway. When he refuses, accuse him of not loving the “community”.
  20. Search alleys until you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn’t want it. Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.
  21. Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that’s happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.
  22. Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali’s more disturbing, but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.
  23. Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.
  24. Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.
  25. Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life building a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a fun house on the edge of the city. Hire people to come by and alternate saying “I love it” and “this sucks balls.” Blow it up.
  26. Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire. Play a short loop of drums n’bass until the embers are cold.
  27. Make a list of all the things you’ll do different next year. Never look at it.
  28. Have a 3 a.m. soul-baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you’re hallucinating.
  29. Lust after Bugs Bunny.

If that doesn’t work for you, you can listen to the on-Playa shenanigans at BMIR radio or watch them at UStream.

9 comments on “How To Enjoy Burning Man From the Comfort of Your Own Home

  1. Some additions:
    – Walk into the darkness with your girlfriend. Leave her there.
    – Hop on a city bus wearing a furry outfit. Tell the driver to take you to Center Camp.
    – Go to the mall. Hand out homemade necklaces to strangers. Ask what they did to participate today.
    – Invite your girlfriend’s bestfriend over to your house. Have sex with her. Confess, and tell your girlfriend, ‘What happens at Burning Man stays at Burning Man’.
    – Go to the park, and hammer nails into wood. Feel superior to everyone else who isn’t participating.

  2. OK you criminals. I’m all in with this. The first person, group, deity or cult that finds me 2 (or 3 so my boy Snuggles Roc can have one too, if its possible) face value tickets and a parking pass will be gifted up to 10 hours of my legal services for free. This does not include appearing in court because that sucks for everyone. I’m especially good in intellectual property for all you artists out there…. Make it happen people, PM me or post it or whatever. I have business law essays that need to be graded before dawn. Text me, i’m flying out in the AM. 407 446 9911

  3. FYI: I wrote a lot of the lines here back in 2001, but the original text had been floating around for a while before then. Still makes me laugh every time I read it.

  4. http://blog.burningman.com/2014/08/photosvideosmedia/where-do-i-find-the-pinhole-cameras-this-year/

    Dear Burners Me. I have enjoyed most of your postings. Thanks.

    The Burners Blog wrote a nice article about us you may like to share. Or not.

    Anyway, we have been creating some of the most extraordinary photos using our hand made, Ginormous, pinhole cameras and developing the 30′ x 42″ photo paper on site. In our desert darkroom we re-create every year! Since the late 90’s!!

    I”m proud of our work and encourage anyone to look us up and play/create along with us.

    Kindest of Regards, Larry Michael http://www.pinholeproject.org

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