There is something about the debacle of the Burning Man Festival 2023 that doesn’t sit right with me. I’m unsure how it is being sold to me and therefore how I should be thinking about it. If I should think about it at all. It seems to me that a festival with a ceremonial peak involving burning a hominus giganticus statuus, is the perfect reflection of the values, morals and efforts to promote said values and morals of the festival organisers and goers. The only difference in 2023 was that the victorious element of the celebration was water not fire, completely appropriate given the water rabbit nature of this year of our lord, An(n)us Restricticus.
My 20 year old son just walked in and said ‘Hey, have you heard about the Burning Man?’ I had no idea, forgot it was on and that it thinks it’s important. Anyway, he said about the rain and the mud and the 70,000 people stuck in the desert. Of mud. He said the armed forces had gone in to evacuate and bring supplies and it was a national state of emergency. That people had died. My brain fired up and fired out ra-ta-ta-tat thusly
Haha! They got rained on. All those executives and celebrities trying to find meaning and purpose and lots of drugs.
What’s good enough for Glastonbury….
Oh my god it sounds like Armageddon, I really should care.
I hope nobody really did die. (Somebody DID die but I think there’s always at least one death at festivals of this nature. It is unclear as to the cause of the death though nobody is positing that he ‘drowned in a mud crush’ or was ‘suffocated by thousands of bodies rampaging in a panic’, or indeed that it was in fact ‘climate change’ or even ‘See? look how hopeless you all are at having fun.’ I hope he died doing what he wanted.)
They’re going to use it to highlight climate change. All those crystals in the sky did their job and created the untenable consequence that people at Burning Man should get wet and muddy. Now enough people will get on board with the encroaching life culture that is being imposed on the billions of us who have lost the battle against our capitalist overlords due to being asleep, stupid or both.
I went online. First up, Diplo (who’s Diplo? I said) and Chris Rock walk out of festival. Diplo was up on the CNN screen being lightly made heroic by the anchorman who was asking ‘what did you guys do over the hours as you were making this trek towards getting finally picked up?’ Like, apart from walking and the inevitable conversation along the way.
Aside: For the love of pagan gods, what do they want us to feel at this point? Shock? Horror? Awe?? Don’t matter as long as we’re sucking voraciously on the sweet teat of addiction to anything that supports the nihilism we are drowning in. A bunch of guys walked over some wet sand to go home to their comfortable families. The story worth telling should have been/be of the millions of refugees who have fled/flee everything they know because the military industrial War Lords for Profit want what’s under their feet. Sometimes it’s under mud, sometimes it’s under sand but the fuckers want it.
Back to my stack: The ‘you guys’ appear to have included Chris Rock - comedian, DJ Diplo, Cindy Crawford, supermodel and Randy Gerber rich bloke married to Crawford - and a few others who just aren’t famous enough because they’re on the wrong side of the camera and/or marriage stakes. Chris declined to appear with comment but he was seen hanging on the back of the truck, smiling and wearing a blue New York Knicks jacket, which got a mention. Chris don’t need to give his shit away for free!
Turns out they walked out of the festival, giving Diplo, ‘pretty strong legs after that walk’. It’s particularly fitting that they walked out as the business of getting out of the Burning Man festival is called the ‘Exodus’. Remember Moses? He parted a river for to provide a path for god’s sake! Then again, maybe they shoulda waited for more rain and a boat in a repeat of the Ark story. My god, it was a big deal wasn’t it? Positively biblical in proportion!
Here’s some facts - they walked about 6 miles, a moderate morning’s tramp for most able-bodied people. It took three hours. Most of the festival took place, with all the incredible moving structures, lights blazing and the incredibly beautiful build of the Temple of the Heart, which was this year’s theme. There was not a ‘copter in sight, Joe Biden won’t even have to pretend to know what’s going on, though if he did say a few words for the ‘victims’ he might make a better fist of it than he did with Hawaii. Perhaps he will remember the time his lake house, wife and 67 Corvette didn’t burn down from an electrical occurrence. Hunter will be able to relate how he actually did burn his life after being both stupid and arrogant enough to leave incriminating evidence of his family corruption rackets in a laptop repair lab. Yes, I’m leaving that in the paragraph that starts ‘Here’s some facts’. Do something about it please, American voters. Stop voting, revolt and live your lives in the more beautiful way your hearts know is possible (misquoting Charles Eisenstein).
IS WET SAND MUD? No mention was made of the rebranding exercise that allowed wet sand to be called mud. If you want mud, walk across an English field on a summer’s day.
‘The simple answer is no, sand + water is not mud. Sand is rock which has been ground down into fine particles, typically by wave action and forming beaches along the sea shore. Mud is a combination of inert rock particles and organic material which has been saturated by water’ So let’s respect the science shall we?
That’s why mud is black and stinks (the rotting organic material caused by excess moisture) and on a wet Glasto day people smell like shit so by comparison, wet sand is for pussies.
Back to the rigorous journalism of CNN: I watched on and found there is absolutely nothing to worry about on behalf of any emotional distress caused to Mr Rock as he is going to use the experience in his next Netflix Special, so yay! (I know I will laugh because in amongst my imaginary life as a rebel for the cause of living in a world that is cared for and where we all love each other, I allow myself to take any paltry scraps of joy I find in my downtime after a hard day’s work trying to grow vegetables and keep some hens.)
I also learned that festival goers give themselves fantasy names for the time they are there, so they can pretend they aren’t really Bob or Jane working a shitty job for a shitty company that pays shitty dividends to shitty investors who don’t give a shit about Bob or Jane or the world or anything at all. Guys, BE your fantasy name ALL the time!! Take a leaf out of the books of people who are truly ruling the world! Klaus Schwab’s fantasy name IS Klaus Schwab cos he’s doing what he loves and getting away with it!!! Bill Gates, same! (Elon Musk just sounds like a fantasy name. But he sure pulled it off.) And these are but a few of the capitalist overlords I was talking about earlier, you know the ones who have won the battle for your life.
Perhaps the best bit was in the coverage by the Reno Gazette on ‘Dirty D’ the imaginative fantasy name for a fat naked guy who refused to give the name he uses in the ‘default world’. Here he is doing a fat salute to the rising sun, a vision of a free spirit taking just about as much joy as he can take, knowing that in a coupla days he’ll be back at the Amazon dispatch pissing in a bottle but making overtime. The caption claims that he has just rolled in the mud but now you know that is misinformation as SAND DOES NOT MAKE MUD. Besides, his limbs and the under swathe of his belly are yellow, the colour of wet sand in the Black Rock Desert.
Perhaps the saddest or truest or least/most meaningful event at the 2023 Soggy Man Fest was the burning of a giant heart structure. Fire and the heart are a much matched pair in our story telling, usually demonstrating inspiration, creativity, passion, commitment, achingly great sex, etc etc. I flicked it off, bored, once I saw that it was just another bonfire for our vanity.
Chur. x
You know, I really have no prejudices against anyone and have no reason to find women not funny, but I really can't name a single female comedian that makes me laugh. They also tend to be completely wrapped up in the political nonsense of the day like all the late night hacks who carry water. Yawn. You've definitely got a good wit though. Maybe you should go on tour and show the pros how it's done!
Well, someone finally convinced me that chicks *can* be funny. Congrats, Bro.