So, today involved a lot more wandering and being driven by distraction. I visited the nearby Potato Camp to play with the potato cannons for a while. The cannon would be loaded with a potato, primed with hair spray and fired with a button. That hair spray must have burned something fierce, since the potato was ejected from the barrel with a significant kick, only to splatter on a big billboard (assuming you didn’t have terrible aim). The billboard had a killer robot, killer dwarf, and killer dinosaur on it. Given the splatter patterns, it seemed that almost everyone aimed at the dwarf (especially its crotch). I was the ONE AND ONLY person to aim at the killer robot. Personally, I really feared it. I didn’t want it to use poisonous gases to poison our asses. I’m proud to say I hit the robot right in its evil robo-neck!
I attended a lecture that afternoon about the biology of the playa. Even though it looks like a dry, dusty, and inert place, the dust is filled with tiny eggs that spring to life once every few years when the lake floods. For about a month until the lake dries again, there is a flurry of activity and a crazy short-lived ecosystem springs to life, composed mostly of tiny shrimp-like creatures and birds. After the lake dries, everything goes dormant again.
That evening, there was a significantly different ecosystem that evolved in Black Rock City.
First, I’ll tell you about two of my awesome camp mates, Catie and Erikas. They arrived a few days after I did, and are friends of Wendy’s. They were virgin burners, just like me. They were really fun to hang out with. I enjoyed spending time with Brent and Wendy, but they were frequently busy with responsibilities for the Flaming Lotus Girls. Catie and Erikas has significantly more time to hang out, and since they were virgins burners, too, they had a closer point-of-view to me regarding the whole event. We quickly formed a new “Comedic Trio” (just like the Comedic Trio that was formed in Laos with Alex and Chris and I).
Anyways, that night, the three of us took part in the Billion Bunny March. We showed up at a specific camp, took the Bunny Oath, and received bunny ears, face paint, some carrot juice and vodka.
The Bunny Oath
I freely and hoppily renounce my dirty stinking messed up carcass of failed and foibled humanity in order to evolve as a sentient, furry being. I hereby come over to the bunny side. I will hop. I will wiggle my tail. I will deliver colorful eggs to the masses and support a universal campaign of fluffy goodness a jellybeans for all. HOORAY!!!
I know that sounds very much like the ridiculous sort of thing I would come up with myself, but I am very serious. That is what the oath really said, and I am not exaggerating one bit!
After what I estimate to be several hundred bunnies (not really a billion), had gathered, a parade was begun through Black Rock City. There was a Bunny Ringleader with a megaphone to lead us on. There was a Bunny Marching band to play some tunes. It was all very VERY silly.
We temporarily swarmed the centre camp to assert our dominance before marching towards The Man statue itself. There was a brief run-in with the Animal Control folks who tried to capture some bunnies. It was all a joke, of course!
Once we were at the man, I took the opportunity to climb the tower, since I hadn’t done it yet, and it was basically taken over by the bunnies by this point anyways.
It was definitely one of the craziest and most random experiences in my whole life.
That night, Catie, Erikas and I visited the Flaming Lotus Girls art work. I had seen it before it was finished, but not in action yet. During the night, with the fire burning and shooting out violently, it was an impressive and awe-inspring sight. The place was packed with people visiting the art work, too. It was definitely one of the biggest draws there. Everyone said it was one of the best artworks at Burning Man.
Friday August 29, 2008
In the morning, I visited a cafe looking for Kona coffee (from Hawaii), and ended up having masala tea and playing an impromptu game of Scrabble instead. The best word that I spelled was “vexed”. I did not win, but it was close all around. I spent most of the rest of the morning hanging out with one of the other players, Twirls. She was a virgin burner, too! We went to another cafe camp called Hippocampus. The staff there was very entertaining. One man asked us if we were enjoying the morning and if we needed anything. I declared that I wanted a “cup of sunshine.” He held up my coffee cup and aimed it at the sun so that it was lit up inside with sun rays. He said, “Here is a cup of sunshine for you.” I would then try to look in the cup, but my head would, of course, block the sun and I would only see a cup filled with shadow. We repeated this game a few times. It was all very amusing. Twirls and I enjoyed some waffles at the waffle house, too, before we had to go back to our own camps.
I spent a lot of the rest of the day sitting around my camp, rather than exploring and being driven by distraction. I was chatting with my camp mates and neighbours when I heard a very alarming announcement from the street in front of our camp.
ICY COLD HANDS ON YOUR GENITALIA! COME GET ICY COLD HANDS ON YOUR GENITALIA!
Oh my. I know the weather is extremely hot, and some people might consider that refreshing, but it still seemed rather extreme. The people in my camp turned our chairs around and faced the street to watch the show. With stuff like this going on right in front of you, who needs television?
The campers across the street from us had dressed up as hot cops and set up a road block across our street. They stopped people for extremely trivial infractions like, “Illegal flag placement on bicycle”. To “punish” people, they could be subject to either the icy-cold-hands-on-their-genitalia, or subject them to ‘capital punishment’. The punishment was pretty tame. Usually they would make you get on your knees and the two female hot cops would stand in front of you and bounce your face around between their boobs. Hilarious. It’s random stuff like this that makes Burning Man so fun and unpredictable.
Sitting and watching the show was pretty fun, but I decided that I could help, too. Since I had taken whip-cracking lessons the day before and got a free whip, I figured it was an excellent opportunity to help enforce the road block. I got out there and cracked my whip a lot. Eventually, though, the hot cops declared me a vigilante and confiscated my whip. They felt it was necessary to punish me, too. I was innocent, I swear it! At least they made good use of the whip and used it to spank people.
That night, we got dressed up in our best light-up gear and did a lot of exploring. Again, it was the Comedic Trio who were out and about. We watched a bit of the circus act before heading back to the Flaming Lotus Girls artwork to see the huge fireworks and liquid fire show they put on. It was absolutely nuts. It’s astonishing how much work goes into something like this... and it is completely done by volunteers who pay for it themselves. Amazing stuff like this happens all over Burning Man. I don’t think there’s anything else like it really on Earth.
Hopefully I can get the rest of this blogged in one more post. Maybe in a few days? *crossing fingers*
No comments:
Post a Comment