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Showing posts from September, 2003

let it burn, baby, burn, let it burn right to the ground

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Burning Man Avant-garde apocalypse, beatnik bacchanal, counterculture carnival, Discordian Disneyland, Mad Max meets Mardi Gras. "Burning Man is a self-service cult. Wash your own brain." Dehydration, dust storms, and decadence, a potluck Las Vegas, a pyromaniacal playland, a true Bazaar Of The Bizarre. "Burning Man is all about finding playmates. It's like recess for kids." The Road Warrior crossed with Fellini Satyricon as co-written by Pynchon and DeLillo. Sex, drugs, and psychedelic trance, sorrow and survivalism, a camping trip in a neon wonderland, a mad scientist's mirage made flesh. And ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, and only the desert remains. People have written a lot of things about Burning Man, some of it even coherent, but I didn't find any actual description of the mechanics of the event, so I think I'll take a hack at it -- partly for others, partly for memory, partly because I think I may be using the playa as a fiction