Get off my lawn!

  Sitting on my patio after a good meal, just cracked open a superbly chilled beer, I flash backed to Burning Man. There's so many parties around me all with windows wide open, it reminded me of when I just got done working an 8 hour dispatch shift back at the depot. No fanfare there. Just Emery walking in the door saying' "You're free! Go party!"

  I growled or snarled and issued multiple expletives at the notion and said that all I want is an ice cold beer and to turn my goddamn radio off. "OutLaw clear and off com.. no wait, Simon. Simon. Will you come pick me up in the Temple of Golf Cart? NOW, please! Clear.. an off com."

  After Simon torturing me, like only he could do so well.. and a run in with Washoe County Sheriffs Dept pulling us.. making us stop because we were for doing doughnuts in the middle of the ghetto and I had an "open container" in a golf cart which is, we were reminded, a motor vehicle. I had to pour out my cold Sierra Nevada for which I was displeased. That was a long 10 mph drive, with traffic 5 mph, trip down 5:30 and to the other side of Center Camp (behind First Camp) with me maniacally switching back and forth between cursing the alcohol/girl abuse and laughing at the idiocracy of being pulled over in the Temple of Golf Cart. 

  We arrived back to an abandoned Bunnywood/Bollywood (i.e. Raspa and Lady Bee's Art Dept grouping also secret home of the Junior Staff Meeting) and I grasped another cold Pale Ale and flipped the cap off and... in walked a pile of ridiculously dressed in holographic panties with pink and purple fur coats and nothing else even though it's 40-50 degrees raver hippies announcing themselves with "IM A BUUNNNIIIIIIEEEE!!"

  That was the comment. I wished for that moment I had a pistol at least because, we were surrounded! "Arrgh.. go home ya damn hippies." They left and I remembered I work for this rave party thing and that's annoyingly the coolest thing ever. Some things never change...

 ~ OutLaw

DPW A Team 2000-2005

😜

peace.

OutLaw on Burning Man and What it's Become

I'm so sick of hearing about Burning Man!

It went from this (SF beach)..

I wish the LLC, whom everyone refers to as "Burning Man Org" which seems to be a derogatory term as far as I've seen.. had just cancelled it and retired with the copyrights still in their possession! So bad.. seriously! Then Burning Man could finally be an era we all look back on fondly in our memory and become stories we tell to our kids whenever they beg us to go to raves or whatever the kids are into these days.. Instead of being considered a community that has the right to decide for itself what to do with itself because the community has become a bunch of whiny lame ass self righteous dissenters who only want to talk shit about everyone and everything and not give any credit whatsoever to the people who worked their asses off half their life putting on the ONE THING IN THE WORLD THAT TRULY CHANGED THEIR LIVES forever.

To this (Black Rock Desert)..

But NO. I now have to listen to them whine about not getting tickets. Hear them boast about scoring tickets. See them beg and beg and beg for tickets for the next five fucking months escalating into a massive crescendo that will completely occupy my Facebook feed come the end of August and still not quit because they can post of Facebook from the goddamn playa now!? See! Even I who always stand up for the LLC/org members who are or were people I once considered close personal friends in addition to co-workers, have become a voice of dissent! Only difference between me and all the others I'm referring to is I hate burners instead of being a burner who hates the org. Actually the only difference between me and any of them is likely only in my eyes.. moment of clarity, eh? I'll readily admit when I'm wrong.. wish I could say the same for burners!

To this! (Black Rock City)

The difference between me and the dissenters is I ACTUALLY HAVE FIRST PERSON KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE TO BACK MY OPINION opposed to hearing some dude that managed to become a famous dissenter (ie. Chicken John) ex burner who has now moved on with his life but not before raising a whole lotta hell scrutinizing the way the org ran things and claiming all the while to be one of the "original burners" which is simply not true as his claim some kind of authority that gave him the right to an opinion. (edit: actually he was around in the first days on the playa apparently according to the article I sighted but then again it could just be him talking big as many burners are known to do) Always about the damn community.. The truth is I guess it has to be because I know from direct experience as a DPW Project Manager for 6 years no one can accomplish anything in the desert alone! It was only by being a team player I was able to rise to such ranks as I did and was able to lead my crew like a team thus creating a small exclusive community or rather "the winners" of such things as racing Tony's (Perez aka Coyote.. current Head of DPW) crew in completing our half of the city's intersection's in t-staking and installing street signs.. The original "burners" or community members back when it was on the beach in San Francisco is the majority of what was once called the Org and they have done the BEST they can with everything they were thrown! Here's a good fair article on Burning Man's History including sentiments of John Law who I hung out with on the playa one 4th of July weekend and agree he's crazy (as the anti-Law camp says) but also very knowledgeable of the terrain of the Black Rock Desert. He was on a mission to shoot out propane tanks though btw.. which is illegal and enforced by the BLM making my opinion of him as equally respectable as Danger Ranger an antithesis because such is the nature of a "radical self reliant" philosophy.

And from this..

The fact of the matter is that Burning Man is just TOO BIG!! Everyone use to be mad at how much they have to pay to go to it but what they didn't realize is how expensive to was/or is to put on! Of course now there's at least 10 thousand burners who want to go and are willing to pay as much as they ask but can't because it's TOO BIG so now they're all dissenters because they didn't win the (literal) lottery to have an opportunity to buy a ticket!? Then there's the burners who can't afford a ticket if they won the lottery (like me) talking shit about how those who can are selling out to the Man and the greedy LLC who's retiring soon and turning it over to most likely people who were dissenters for a long while and now are going to become exactly who they hated and make the exact same decisions once they understand the situation surrounding the decisions and the fact that the options are always either not have the event or the other option and they will grow to hate and blame the BLM as much as we did who is just a federal "org" put in charge of managing land that nobody wants because there's nothing productive to be done with it other than throw a big party on it and establish a temporary city that packs up and leaves because no one really wants to live there all year.

To this!

I wish I didn't have to have these conversations or write these blogs every year! It just makes me so mad all the things I have to hear that are simply uneducated inexperienced opinions and opinions are like assholes ~ they stink! Everyone should just get together with their own damn friends, get a permit, and go build and burn their own damn man and see what happens then!

Build your own damn man!

applicationing

Still haven't completed all the essays on my college application yet... procrastination princess here! Deadline for the next term is Dec. 12 so I'm fine but need to keep trucking so I'm gonna try to freeform respond here so I have another extra super long thing to edit down to 70-100 words.. I dunno. It's better than having ones like this one I'm finding impossible to expand on:

~ Please finish this statement: “Online education is a good match for me because...

..it's all I can afford right now and I'm a night owl so it works with my schedule really well to be in discussion groups with people in different time zones. 

(31 words.. sigh)

~ Describe an incident which led you to challenge yourself (academically, emotionally, spiritually, etc)

In 2000 I found myself unemployed, homeless, and broke in San Francisco so I volunteered to go work for DPW at Burning Man. What started out as a means of survival turned into the most challenging yet rewarding experience of my life! The bay area had beat up my self confidence something fierce so I greeted the challenge of being a woman doing construction 8 hour a days in the hot desert. I was out to earn back my own self respect and while doing so I managed to earn the respect of all my co-workers and was not only recommended for a paid position but was even promoted to Project Manager. I learned that I can do ANYTHING I put my mind and that nothing is unachievable if you work together as a team. 

(135 words.. not bad :)

Edited to 99 words:

In 2000 I found myself broke and homeless in San Francisco so I volunteered to work for DPW at Burning Man. What started as a means of survival turned into an incredibly rewarding experience! I greeted the challenge of being a woman doing construction in a hot desert environment because I was determined to earn back my own self respect. By doing so I earned the respect of others and was promoted to a paid position. I learned that I can accomplish ANYTHING I put my mind to and nothing is unachievable if you work together as a team.

(hate that it's not as cool of a story shorter but oh well..)