Tag Archives: environment

Jan 9 2014

$40 Well Spent

This video made my day today, much more than waking up early like a kid on Christmas Day waiting for Santa to have come…hoping that a theme was finally going to be announced, 7 months before the gates open, only to find that it was a “bazaar” one…and Lottery 2.0 with it.

Happiness, and helping the world, doesn’t come from figuring out ingenious new ways to tax people. Masking new taxes and surcharges and “additional fees as applicable” with a hint that “it’s good for the environment”…well, draw your own conclusions, I’m not even going to go there tonight. I’ll let this video speak for itself.

HappyCowYou want to see 3 people with nothing to do with Burning Man on a stage? Then watch a frikking TED talk on YouTube, you don’t need a $30 million a year dance party and 100+ “Regionals” for that. You want to spread a culture of gifting, compassion, and kindness, and environmental responsibility around the world? You could do worse than the sentiment expressed here. Ain’t no BLM “rangers in action” “we’re Earth Guardians” videos making me cry tonight…

From the comments:

“Anyone who saw how the cows ran into the open today would ask themself, where do you even see something like that these days … this joy of life, the spontaneity, the excitement. How could anyone not have seen that”.

$40 is about the cost of a decent steak in a San Francisco restaurant. Support this cause here . I eat a lot of steaks. My girlfriend is a vegetarian, as are many of my beloved friends and family. Some of whom are Burners. How can I live with myself, then? Am I a hypocrite, accusing others of hypocrisy? Whatever, bra. A wise, magical woman told me once: “cows need a lot of land. If we didn’t have a commercial use for them, the land would be used for other things. Therefore, by eating steaks as a species, we’re actually preserving these massive amounts of land for this animal species, which otherwise would get next to nothing”. I know that militant vegans will debate this statement, but that doesn’t make it wrong. What other animal in the Universe gets so much land? Certainly not elephants, tigers, orangutans, or even humans living along the ancient Silk Road between Bodrum to Chengdu…

To me, the happiness of these animals, and preserving habitat for all animals, is a more worthy cause than “commerce and trade on the Silk Road”. Oh, wait: “we’re going to save the roads in the middle of nowhere with a $40 surcharge” #cowavoidslay #cameltoe #savingtheworld

Maybe gleaning an extra $40 from 35,000 people is really going to make a difference in the world, and I’m just being a hater.

P.S. Where do you think those mushrooms you’re chomping down on the Playa come from? The Silk Road? Or the cows? Or both?

P.P.S. From Wikipedia:

Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe and Arabia. It opened long-distance, political and economic interactions between the civilizations.[5] Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and various technologies, religions and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the “Black Death“), also traveled along the Silk Routes. In addition to economic trade, the Silk Road served as a ways of cultural trade between the networking civilizations.

Dec 15 2013

Happy Holidays and Happy Burning

Dear Burners. Thank you for reading this blog. I started it in February last year, in the midst of BMOrg’s ticket lottery scandal. It seemed like the Burner community wasn’t being fed the truth, and so we wrote about that. And time proved us to be right – to the displeasure of some at BMOrg.

When I go to Burning Man, I stay in an RV. It’s a cheap one I bought off eBay, because the Playa is hard on equipment. I’ve been to Burning Man in larger RVs. I’ve stayed in camps with meal plans, I’ve paid people with tickets and accommodation to drive me in and out of Burning Man. Usually, I’ve driven myself, but let me put it this way: I don’t stay in a tent.

I realized that some of the opinions I was expressing here, were maybe not reflective of the whole Burning Man community. So what – it’s my blog, I have First Amendment rights like Burning Man keeps suing for…I should be allowed to express my opinion. But as this blog became more popular, I started to wonder if I was unduly influencing the crowd with my own personal, biased, opinions – that were not reflective of the majority.

cartoon-santa-hatSo I invited another writer to come and contribute to this blog – Whatsblem The Pro. He had a large community discussing Burning Man on the Internet, an event (like Black Rock City, LLC’s hostile takeover of the Cacophony society-spawned event) that is shrouded in the fog of war and mists of history. To me, he was someone who comes from the other end of the spectrum of Burners: he is not flying family members to the Burn in private planes, he is not spending thousands to support different art cars, he is slogging away unpaid to make Burning Man art installations that we all get to share in.

Maybe I did the wrong thing. Maybe I invited the wrong author. If there are other voices in the Burning Man community who want to be heard, please speak up – there’s no time like the present! I hope everyone can understand that I invited another voice in, to present another perspective, NOT because I agree with that perspective.

I feel that it has been interesting and useful, over the last year or so, to have a couple of different voices and viewpoints about Burner culture, and the question of if BMOrg (or it’s new, still undefined, successor) is the best steward of our culture going forward… for centuries. Maybe I’m wrong, I know we’ve created some controversial opinions here. Despite what some think, we don’t exist just to bash BMOrg at every turn. We bash them when they fuck up – don’t blame the messenger!

I would like to thank Whatsblem for everything that he has brought to this blog. But, the time has come to clear confusion, and CLEARLY part ways. Burners.Me is now large enough in audience, that people are starting to get quite concerned about things that are written here. Recently, as editor I have had to step in and tone a few things down – just for the sake of reasonable civil discourse. Life is too short, and this is a frikking hobby to me. I want the opinions expressed on my blog, to be opinions I agree with, or even if I disagree, whoever is stating their viewpoint has to provide at least some evidence to back their accusations up.

toucan raver

Image: SeaStar

Lately I have sensed some confusion about “who is behind Burners.Me”. Even Whatsblem has been telling me, “everyone thinks I run this blog”. He is in Reno, and I can’t speak to what people in Reno think and say. Let me clear this up: it’s me, BurnersXXX, aka Zos. You can email me at zos@zos.org . I started this blog and I have NOTHING to do with Burning Man. We are NOT pretending to be part of Burning Man in any way, I have strived to make this clear from the start. I am sharing my opinions, you don’t have to agree, you can come and share your own, please do!

animals-piranha-fish-goldfish-fish_food-shooting_yourself_in_the_foot-mmon339lIf you wonder why I am not “less” anonymous, it is purely due to my real world life. Those within the bubble of Burning Man see it as unequivocally amazing. Those in the real world, the non-Burners, will understand that for many “Burning Man” is a curse word, not a blessing. “Burning Man”‘s culture has become totally commodified under BMOrg’s stewardship, and it’s a global brand name…and yet, despite their unprecedented (for a rave) media blitz, the rest of the world has NO CLUE about the 10 Principles, and thinks ONLY “drug/sex/orgy” about this party “Festival of Freedom”. Any Burner has had to deal with expressing this disconnect between Defaultia and Our Home.

Thank you all for staying with me this far. I hope I can continue to provide you some entertainment and information in the future: if you keep reading, I promise you the tone will be different. I know there are many readers here who are with Whatsblems “Steal This Movie” view of the world, over my “let rich people come and bring people who get paid to be part of their crew” view. Am I wrong, and others right? No, obviously…why the fuck would I bother to write this, other than I believe in what I am saying?

Since the beginning of my writings here, I have tried to present a balanced perspective, despite what the naysayers have to (nay)say, backed up with facts and links and references. I might not be neutral, but I’m no spammer or slanderer. It’s a shame I even have to state that, but BMOrg pretends to be a lot of things they’re not, and they employ gang-stalking tactics like “shunning” and info-wars tactics like “trolls and shills” to enforce their role in our lives. In the end, this is a dictatorship run in secrecy, with lies under their belt. Burners under The Man have less rights than US Citizens under the Constitution.

stock-vector-burning-headless-halloween-man-cartoon-90347905I encourage everyone else in the Burner community who have opinions and insider knowledge to come and share with us. We welcome it, just as we welcome Whatsblem the Pro to continue participating in this discussion with his perspective too. In particular I would like to thank Pico, A Balanced Perspective, Nomad, Bob from BMIR, Matt (or was it Mark) with the inside rave story, and everyone else who has taken the time to give us detailed comments that added to our collective conversation. I started this blog to express my opinions, but my own opinions have definitely changed over time, based on some of the well-made arguments I’ve read here.

What will my blog Burners.Me look like in the future? Who knows, I may never post again! If I do, it will be less of the snark you may have seen in the past, and more about the positive thinking and ideas for the future. I don’t believe 100% in science, since there are more than a few things that science can’t explain or prove…and I don’t believe that Burning Man is scientific. Disprove me if you can! I do believe 100% in magic, it has always worked for me, even when science has let me down. I believe that Burning Man is magic.

I’m going home to renew my US visa. Hopefully you guys will let me back in! Wish me luck please, fellow Burners. If not, I’ll still be writing this blog. More than 25% of Burners are not from the US, this is a global phenomenon now. This post is literally my last act in the United States, possibly forever.

Burn on Burners, happy holidays, happy Hannukah, merry Christmas, happy new year! See you on the flip side.

Dec 5 2013

Burning Man: Back to the Future

by Whatsblem the Pro

Or you can just sit there forever in your Rules-Royce, sucker

Or you can just sit there forever in your Rules-Royce, sucker


Whether the topic is children on the playa, cops on the playa, feathers on the playa, or just rules in general on the playa, burners are going to argue bitterly and at great length about it. Any time these topics are raised in any burner forum online, the conversation draws hundreds of comments, many of them aggressive to the point of abuse. It’s as though the desert fosters endless dispute in spite of all the groovy talk about togetherness and family and unity of purpose.

How can we resolve these seemingly unresolvable disagreements?

Consider the original reasons for going out to the Black Rock Desert in the first place; it was largely because the remoteness and harshness of the place made it a good place for a Temporary Autonomous Zone. It was a place where you could get your dog good and drunk and let him drive your car across the playa at 120MPH while you leaned out the passenger window, peppering the drive-by shooting range with buckshot. . . and there was nobody who could tell you with any authority that anything about that was wrong.

Ever since Larry Harvey and his gang co-opted that freedom by putting a fence around it and selling tickets, you aren’t even allowed to bring your dog, much less get him drunk. The speed limit is 5MPH, and firearms are frowned upon. . . because as everyone will tell you if you happen to lament those bygone days, the event is just too big for it to be practical to not have any rules. While that’s probably very true, it’s also true that without the fence and the tickets the event may very well have remained small enough for it to be OK. . . but I digress.

When the festivities on Baker Beach grew too large to avoid unwanted attention from the police, it became clear that San Francisco was no place for a Temporary Autonomous Zone of any size, as it would not and could not be tolerated by the locals. . . so, thanks to the Cacophony Society, a TAZ capable of supporting Burning Man as it existed in those days was established in the Black Rock Desert. Now Black Rock City itself is so big that the locals there balk at the idea of having no rules. . . so instead of discarding the best thing about the event in its early days, why aren’t we establishing a new TAZ to serve the needs of the woolier, more freedom-loving denizens of Black Rock City?

The obvious answer, of course, is that no matter what Larry Harvey or Marian Goodell say in speeches and press releases, Black Rock City LLC is a corporate business entity that exists for the purpose of making money, not for fostering anything too radical in the way of culture, and that purpose is inimical to the very idea of autonomy. The Disneyfication of the playa marches ever onward in the name of profits, and public relations problems are dealt with in the corporate way: by paying people off and covering things up. For example, I speculate that rape kits are not available at Burning Man, not because the environment is too harsh or the chain of custody being too difficult to maintain; but because having rape kits on the playa would mean that far more rapes at Burning Man would be reported, instead of shrugged off and forgotten about. Many rape victims would rather stay at Burning Man and quietly put the rape behind them than spend the rest of the burn in a Reno hospital talking to cops and doctors. In short, maybe we don’t have rape kits out there because it would hurt the corporate brand that the Org owns and profits from.

The profit motive is what brought us to this, and the profit motive has swollen the numbers of people attending to the point that most of them no longer have much in common with the free spirits that came to share their visions with each other in the early days of the event. At this late date, any proposal that suggests Burning Man might return to its origins of envelope-pushing freedom is immediately shouted down as unreasonable and unrealistic.

Imagine, though, a designated area on the playa – for waiver-signing adults only – with no rules. A place near enough to BRC to get to easily, but far enough away that gunfire isn’t a problem. A controlled-access TAZ. An anarchy park, within the confines of Burning Man. A place with no cops, no rules, and no limits.

Black Rock City can grow and grow, and so can the rules and the Disneyland-like aspects and the mandated safety and the numbers of children and the vast hordes of finger-pointers and burnier-than-thou shamers. . . and we’ll still have (we’ll once again have) a place to be ourselves, completely unfettered by anyone’s rules or expectations.

Comments are encouraged.