The Roof

problem has been solved, I think, but as always, in the short term, and this time the roof is mobile.

In other news, Eric Holder and our humble president continue to shield War Criminals, which has a surprising effect--surprising only because it is a well-drafted law, quite crystalline in its clarity, and may be translated as, essentially, IF YOU TORTURE, MOTHERFUCKER, YOU'RE A WAR CRIMINAL, AND IF YOUR VICTIM DIES, YOU DIE, AND SO DOES ANY CUNT WHO TRIES TO GET YOUR BACK, NO EXCEPTIONS.

Here, W., et al would be the "torturin' motherfuckers" referred to in this vernacular version of the statutory language, and "any cunt" would be, well, Eric Holder and Barak Obama, among others.

WTF else can be said? 'Cept bring them down. All of them. Now.
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Internet access will be limited soon. Will post again, though I know at this point it's just screaming into the void...

The Brink

Hmmm.

This doesn't look good.

I can sympathize on a real level with these people now.

As of August, I don't know where I'm going to live.

Not in the "where will my job/adventure take me?"-sense, but in actual fact, I don't know how I will be able to keep a roof over my head.

As of August, no roof.

Ready access to the 'Net will cease long before that, like June 7th-ish.

Maybe I'll be able to post after that, maybe not. But, let's face it, after taking much time off of blogging, no one reads, 'cept maybe the tapper crowd.

I'll try to stay positive, of course, but I think I know for the first time what is meant by staring into the Abyss, and having it stare back.

Finally

I guess what this proves, albeit in the horse-is-long-dead vein for some of us, is that the Spaniards have balls.

Are you listening, Eric Holder? The Spanish are making you look like a twenty-dollar whore, on your knees in an alley in Georgetown before Bush, Cheney, Wolfie, Rummy, Condi et al in a slow-moving line, using the smooth stumps of your meth-blackened teeth to stimulate the viagra-taut syphylitic cock (or Condi's thumb-sized herpetic clit) in your mouth--

OK. Admittedly, that is some heavy-handed metaphor. But I hope you managed to squint hard and see what I mean, which is, despite a few historical hiccups, (you know, the Inquisition and all) the Spanish fucking well nailed Pinochet (who managed to die, alas, before the prosecution was complete)--

And now they're comin' for W and the whole merry, torturin' crew--

On one hand: YEE HAW!

On the other: I am getting quite tired of this shit. What kind of country are we when somebody else has to take down our war criminals?

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At the local level, various forces have aligned to place me in the fields, or really big gardens, I guess, where we've planted enough food to feed us for maybe half a year. But we've a couple months before any bounty really rolls in...how we make it 'till then is anybody's guess, but it will include battling slugs and deer and coons and birds and the occasional wild boar.

I do not know what experience you may have with these creatures, but suffice it to say, they are not to be fucked with. Mean bastards, after they tear up half an acre. And forget shooting, trapping, poisoning, etc. Out of the question. As noted in Ishmael, their only crime is wanting to eat.

As humans, we should try to remember that for the foreseeable future. Because a lot of people will be getting hungry very soon.

Why I Sulked

It started, I suppose, before my time, when firearms and motorcycles were banned in 1996, and reached its peak in 2004, the last time I went. That year, the preliminary literature, suddenly—astonishingly--promoted Burning Man as “kid friendly” despite the ever-present back of the ticket promise that YOU RISK SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH BY ATTENDING BURNING MAN.[1] When we pulled in at midnight on Sunday, we endured a van-search—for stowaways—that’d make a narc wet his pants from envy. As the 2004 week ground on, I felt besieged by the so-called default world, the very thing we seek to escape.

For example, on Thursday, a woman woke me up at 9 am, not to share sex, food or drugs, but by talking on her satellite phone. I crawled out of my tent, eyebrows dusty, a little bleary, and beheld her there, wearing a terrycloth robe and slippers, sitting calmly in a cushioned Adirondack chair outside an impossibly shiny behemoth RV, a scene so suburban and blasé that for a moment I thought it was satiric performance art. But this woman kept chatting away like any oblivious tool with a cell phone in a strip mall café about how Neat It Is To Be Here. I was amused, then incredulous. After twenty minutes, I bailed, biking in to Center Camp to get ice before the heat really hit, where some massively uninformed kid offered me $20 for my place in line.[2] Later that night, the police made Jiffy Lube (a recurring Playa fixture renowned for supplying literally buckets of condoms and lubricant-packs to anyone—just grab a handful—as well as for the casual gay hook-up: Get In, Get Off, Get Out) tear down from its roof a giant wicker rendition of male-on-male sodomy. A mother-with-young-child had complained the sculpture was obscene. This is peculiar, because “community standards” govern these issues. By Black Rock City standards, sodomy--straight, gay, or otherwise--is barely a beige fiber in the tapestry.[3]

Had I witnessed the event, I no doubt would have suggested to Mommy, with deadpan concern, that she gather Jr. and juice boxes and flee back to suburbia, preferably before a roving Death Guild patrol kidnapped her and her child for a slow, Satanic sacrifice, under the kliegs in Thunderdome.

Sure, these are trifles, and I certainly had better options than sulking. I should’ve made a joke about the sat-phone to the woman then cooked her breakfast. I should’ve gifted my place in line to the uninformed kid. I should’ve simply ignored the fact that Jiffy Lube and/or Burning Man, LLC, didn’t tell the police to stick it, pun intended, regarding the wicker sodomy sculpture.

I concede the’04 festival had its moments. Like smoking salvia divinorum in a geodesic dome with carpets and pillows and candles and my friends Jens and Shalom watching out for me…(I’ll try to get to that later, but don’t fuck around with this stuff, not before talking to me or someone else who has been there...I’m still processing that trip, three years hence, truly terrifying, shamanic-level experience) and making ice cream at 2 pm on the Esplanade with Ben and Anita (who met at Burning Man in 2002 and are getting married this year--Congrats, kids!) and serving it up to every parched (and amazed and delighted) Playa person who emerged from the dust; finding Eli, a kindred spirit I only see at the Burn, who wasn’t apparent when I first turned up in his camp. Upon inquiry, a tripped-out dude in dusty black leather and dreads smiled and pointed to the van at the end of the shade structure. He spoke with a Brixton accent: “He’s in there—pop your head in and say hi.” The grin should have warned me. I slid back the door, and there was Eli, kneeling with a tiny video-camera, filming a guy shaving (what I assume was) his girlfriend’s pussy. Engrossed, neither of them even looked up. Eli, however, without missing a second of filming, glanced over from behind the viewfinder with one smiling eye: “Hey! Great to see you Gurn. I’ll be right out,” and he was, with a hug, a joint, an offer of DMT (which I declined, because of the salvia the night before)--and a copy of the video on a flash chip.

But despite the obvious link, to me Burning Man could be neither the purifying flame seen by the yoga-tarot chick nor the one I sought for myself. Indeed, I’d stayed away for over a thousand days, and intended to keep staying away, because even in Black Rock City, I could no longer see the edge of the envelope--my favorite place to be.

Next: Despite everything, a Return to the Burn.

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[1] Thank the lawyers, most of whom know such a disclaimer is actually pretty worthless. There have been several deaths and many more injuries at Burning Man over the years, but earlier attendees understood that the Black Rock Desert is dangerous just to hang around in, all by yourself, before you add several thousand libertines toting firearms, explosives, motorcycles, flamethrowers, ultra-light aircraft, and an equally impressive arsenal of drugs and alcohol. It’s ostensibly an arts festival, sure, but that label never came close to covering it.

In any event, lawsuits are no longer unthinkable, and now Burning Man exists as a relatively new (about 15 years in most states) type of entity dreamt up by the corporate lawyers, the Limited Liability Company. I can create one for you, too, if you ask nice.

[2] Burning Man, recall, is a gift economy, so offering money for anything is not only verboten, it’s rube-level ignorant and crass. These writings assume you know the basics. If you need a primer on the event, go here, and for my own first impression, here.

[3] In other words, in a community where public nakedness, sex, bondage, etc., are commonplace, U.S. Supreme Court cases ensure the sculpture could not possibly be deemed “obscene”— thus it’s protected under the free expression clause of the First Amendment. Jiffy Lube had every right to tell those cops to fuck off, like they did in 2001.

I'm Not Going

I left her house in the shaggy hills of Eugene, Oregon, and flew on my bike downtown, sated by opium, hashish, and sex, but I vaguely recalled I had a meet set up--

And then I was in the W.O.W. Hall, watching Les Claypool for the “gee, I think I’ll throw it in the street” sum of $5. In retrospect, the reason it was $5 was probably because Les wasn’t playing bass. The box office guys sure didn’t let on, and I’m assuming they knew. Indeed, unless you already knew Claypool was making a movie spoofing the post-Dead/Phish jam-band scene, you were pissed off like me ‘cause Les wasn’t even apparently on stage. You know, the skinny, big-hat weird-beard bastard thumping away on the Thunderbroom in the look most known from his animated rendition in the opening credits to South Park.

Naw, I learned later instead he was there, in a convincing fat suit and overalls, with long hippie hair, gold-rim glasses, a Trey-on-heroin beard and playing drums for chrissakes. It was a little different from what I expected, but these expectations were formed mostly slamming about a deep-mud mosh-pit as Primus headlined Lollapalooza, maybe 1992, at Riverport in a driving rain-

But I think of Les today, partly because I feel he still owes me a fin (okay, $10--I had a date) but mostly, because as part of his ripping on the whole jam band scene, he sang a little tune entitled Are You Goin’ to Burning Man?

As the fat drummer sang on, I caught him smirking at the three generations of hippie-freakers-by-the-speakers, whirling away with no apparent sense of irony. But I stood stock still, like Entwistle amidst the chaos of The Who, and finally understood the whole show was a put-on.

Burning Man, to me—and apparently, to Claypool—had become a joke.

Next: Why.