~*...burning man...thursday...*~

thursday, september 1

threesome thursday
who will join you? will it be a him or a her? or both? you've always fantasized about it...today is your day to act. friday morning, tell amazing stories that start "i met this cute couple and the next thing i knew..." hosted by: everyone in brc


photo by scott london

random repeating thursday event in black rock city

the joi of poi
thursday and friday, 7:00pm-8:00pm
learn the basics of swinging your way to a new kind of zen with poi play. find out about planes, basic forward and backward moves, the butterfly, three beat weave, and simple stalls. bring your own poi. hosted by: winking lotus @ esplanade and feedback loop


photo by scott london

random one time thursday event in black rock city

whiskey and whores stripper ho-down
2:00pm-4:00pm

bare your assets for our mutual entertainment. sign up is immediately prior to the event -- please provide music, costumes, and props. wow us with your pole dexterity. make us roar with laughter and quiver with excitement! mc'd by the drunken redheaded sluts. hosted by: whiskey & whores @ esplanade and 8:30.


photo by scott london

as you can probably tell from my blog and the pikchaz i post, burning man goes beyond anything i could possibly describe through words and pictures. i'm just making an attempt at describing the experience. there is so much that i have not included, that i could not possibly include. there were so many random encounters, conversations, theme camps, and interactions that i can't even remember them all, yet alone write about them and share a pikcha. you never know what you might come across, and in your haste to capture the moment, something new and just as mind blowing comes the other way. hell, i've been back for a month now and still haven't fully completed my blog about my experience on the playa. and as you can see, each blog entry for each day is pretty lengthy piece of prose.

cruising across the playa you could come across a couple getting married by a whore at the temple of dreams...

there are always people playing with fire...

photo by scott london

and blowing things up...

art in all its forms constantly served up at random.

the season premiere of malcolm in the middle aired last friday, and wouldn't you know it, they went to burning man! click here to read a summary of the episode.

i downloaded this episode, and i must say i found it funny. not necessarily the most accurate representation of burning man, but as the site says trying to explain burning man to someone who has not been is like trying to explain what a colour looks like to someone who is blind .

i think the episode did a humurous job of contrasting typical suburban life (or as close as malcom's family is with the average american household) with the freedom and creativity of the burn. and despite fox catering its representation of the festival to its audience, all of the quirky examples of random burning man weirdness were not out of the realm of what you'd see on the playa.

photo by gabe kirchheimer

"burning man is an incredible interactive experiment in human creativity. where you do art just for arts' sake. and you make music from instruments that came to you in dreams. its the one place where you're free to let go and really see what you're capable of creating without worrying about what anyone else thinks. that's what burning man is all about." - malcolm

^^^not too bad of an attempt at describing the burn, at least one person's perspective of it

photo by don davis

"the real spirit of burning man isn't about destruction, its about creating, participating, contributing. building a community that needs you, relies on you. its about allowing yourself to become part of the whole, and then coming away from it with more than you brought. aah, there's no feeling like it in the world. its a mind altering journey son, if you're willing to take it." - stanley's friend on the playa who was squirting stanley's ashes on people from a water gun

photo by scott london. woah, this guy's site has some of the best burning man pix i've come across. brilliant. make sure you czech it out.

well, back to my thursday morning. yah, i've only blogged two days of being at the burn so far and it is this huge. for those of you reading, i hope you're enjoying the journey. would you believe me if i told you i was trying to keep it somewhat brief?

olivia was pretty tired, so we rode back to her camp and i dropped her off. i then headed back to my camp to get changed for a new and mind blowing day on the playa. sleep is highly overrated, but i did take a nice break back at our camp and hung out with my krew. if i got tired, i just took a nap wherever i was. an hour here, a few more there...just enough to give my body enough rest to keep me going. but it was going to catch up with me, just not yet ;)

there was always lots of booze back at our camp. come to think of it, there was booze everywhere on the playa. non stop drinking. you'd think that with free booze everywhere all the time people would just be annihilated. surprisingly enough there weren't that many totally shmammered people stumbling over themselves on the playa. for me, i just found the level of drunk that i liked and then stayed there...all week. seeing as there was no last call, there was never that need to get booze in ya before the bars closed. i had brought two bottles of malibu rum with me, and it was about time i started gifting shots of its smooth bajan flavour around the playa.

after some food, booze, and a quick change into my daytime attire (sarong and sandals), i tossed a 40oz of malibu mango run in my backpack and headed off for more adventures. and, as usual, the place to be in the morning if i wanted to hear beatz was the deep end.

by the time i arrived at 9:00 and catharsis, i was surprised to find that there were no beatz bumping at the deep end. it was only 9am and the music that morning was not starting until 11am. so i kewled out in the covered chill area and began offering shots of malibu to people. i would walk up to with a shot glass in one hand and malibu in the other. if people wanted a shot, they'd have to first roll a set of erotic dice that i had brought with me.

one dice had an action the other had a body part (e.g. massage - boobies, lick - body, tease - toes, kiss - lips). i would say "you can do it to yourself, to someone else, to me!". oh man, did the shot and the dice ever go over well with people.

i was licked, teased, rubbed, groped, and i watched others lick, massage, nibble and play with each other...all for a shot of the smoothest rum in the world. malibu...seriously easy going!

"excuse me, can we borrow your boobs? this beautiful woman right here needs to lick them for her shot."

i met a guy who encouraged me to visit his theme camp which was just across the street from the deep end. his camp was called "cameltopia". he said there was going to be a cameltopia fashion show happening there in an hour. intrigued, i had to go czech it out...but i got distracted. on my way to cameltopia, i peeked my head into a theme camp called "porn&eggz". i saw no eggz there. while inside their camp, i met a beautiful woman dressed in a bikini top, cowboy hat, and lace panties with a funnel hanging from them. i asked what her name was and she answered "i'm the beer bong bimbo, who are you?". i told her i was the phenormenon. she asked me if i had a beer, and it just so happens i did. she took the beer and poured it into the beer funnel that was attached to her panties. with her thumb on the end of the funnel to stop the beer from flowing out, she looked at me and said "i want you to get on your knees and suck like you've never sucked before!". i obeyed. as the beer flowed down the funnel, through her panties, down the tube and into my mouth, the beer bong bimbo gyrated her body as she moaned in ecstasy, slowly pulling the funnel up towards her. by the time i was nearing the end of beer bong, my face was right in the beer bong bimbo's crotch. i savoured the last few drops of beer as it dripped from the funnel now naughtily placed in the beer bong bimbo's punani. she then fell to the ground shaking and moaning as if she had just experienced a mind blowing orgasm. dude! only on the playa can you randomly suck back a beer from the crotch of the beer bong bimbo!

downing a beer in 20seconds can really kick you in the teeth, especially when its served up in a bong. i needed to sit down, so i went back to the deep end chill area and took a little breather. the deep end bar opened before the beatz started, so i helped myself to a few vodka red bulls before dancing in the blistering desert sun.

my krew had shown up at the deep end, so we decided to do a little exploring. we jumped on our bikes and headed towards the open expanse of the desert, and whatever lay beyond the horizon.

a 108ft ladder to nowhere.


we decided to go see how dicky was doing. the dicky box is an art installation by dicky davies. dicky spent the entire week at burning man inside of a 10x10 plexiglass room. as it says on his site, the dicky box is an experiment of restriction in the world's most unrestrictive community.

dicky had enough food and water inside his structure to survive the week. he had his own toilet with a curtain to provide some privacy. he could also pull the curtains around the entire box so he could sleep in private. there was also a medical staff on hand to ensure his safety. visitors could talk to him through a 6"x6" portal covered in a mesh screen.

a parcel slot, similar to what hannibal lecter used in his prison cell in silence of the lambs, was how dicky could share things with people on the other side of the plexiglass.

there was even a dicky release party on the monday after the burn welcoming dicky back to the larger world after having spent the week inside his box. dicky davies: an isolated psyche amongst a community consciousness.

i had an appointment with olivia at her camp at 4:20, so i decided to head back to our camp and get ready. on my ride back i came across the human carcass wash hosted by poly paradise. the wash was an interactive washing experience that honours your stated boundaries. there was a lineup of naked people around four large plastic basins. a person stood in one of the basins, the people around the basin would ask "what are your boundaries", then they would wash the person standing in the basin while respecting that person's stated boundaries. the washers were armed with spray bottles full of soap and water, or just water depending on which basin the person being washed was standing in. everyone had to wash, then they would be washed. of course i had no boundaries, so being rubbed down, cleaned, massaged, washed, rinsed, and dried by naked people was fine with me :)


and oh man did it ever feel good to be clean. there are no showers on the playa, and you are constantly covered in a layer of playa dust. baby wipes are your friend, and your shower, so being cleaned by naked people at poly paradise was heaven for me. of course it was a no camera zone, so no pictures of naked people washing other naked people. and just because you are naked didn't mean that everyone there was a supermodel. it wasn't sexual, it was natural.

i arrived back at my camp and quickly dropped off my heavy backpack. holy shit i carry around a lot of stuff with me. but my backpack turns into a chair, so it comes in handy a lot of the time. with all the shit i carry with me, it gets pretty heavy. combine that with the intense sun, and carrying a bag around all day is pretty tiresome...and hot.

i was at the department of tethered aviation by 4:20, just in time for kite fly 2005. there was some free time before the annual release and flight of the huge kite from d.o.t.a., so olivia and i spent a bit of time flying our own kites. i grabbed a simple red kite from the large selection of kites at d.o.t.a. and tried to catch some of the desert wind, but it seemed as though the wind and intense dust storms of the previous two days were no longer blowing violently across the playa.

it was then time for d.o.t.a. to launch their huge kite (which was appropriately red in colour). this thing was massive, about 20ft long and then a tail that was at least 150ft long. it was attached to the back of a pick up truck which would pull it across the playa. all of us who there to witness the launching of the kite were instructed to stand by the kite line to make sure people did not ride over it. then the truck began its journey across the playa, pulling on the line of the kite as it ascended into the desert sky. everyone cheered as the kite raced across the sky. i would post pix, but my camera was playa'd by that time. the pix i took were beyond blurry, just like my vision was at the time.

yah, once my camera started taking pix like this i realized that it was over for my fuji finepix f410.

it was turtle and my night to cook dinner, so after the kite fly i had to book it back to our camp and start making food for 10 hungry burners. the meal for the night was simple...burritos! all we had to do was brown some ground beef, cut up vegetables and grate some cheeze. though it was simple, i was just beat. not having slept since we arrived tuesday morning was really taking its toll on me. well, i did take a nap or two, but nothing more than two hours each time. good thing turtle rekognized how wiped i was, and did all the cooking. all i had to do was chop vegetables and grate cheeze. schweet.

it was also ryan's birthday, so the girls baked him a birthday cookie..in the microwave! yah, i don't know how they did it either, but the thought and effort was appreciated by the birthday boy. if you're reading this ryan, it was great to share your birthday with you. burning man krew 2005!

i changed into my outfit for the evening, a white silk kung fu number, and gathered up my tingz for the night. my theme for costumes was simple, normurai stylee all week long. seeing as i have so many kung fu outfits that i've pretty much worn to death here in the city, i wasn't afraid of wearing them for one last time on the playa. dust, dirt, desert, it didn't matter to me if the outfits were destroyed. i got enough use out of all of them.

i made a quick stop by d.o.t.a. to grab olivia. we tried to convince her friend rena to join us, but she had other plans that night...and was lookin moighty foine too.

our destination was the c4 camp at 4:30 and bi-polar. that was where many of my canadian friends were camped out. c4 was an acronym for crazed canadian cosmic cats. on our way to their camp, of course we were distracted. there are just too many things happening on the playa to distract you.


photo by scott london. daam this guy's got some wikkid shots on his site.

we stopped at a domed tent near the c4 camp because of a woman yelling out "exploding bubbles! exploding bubbles!". intrigued, olivia and i had to see what all the hullabaloo was about. inside this not so decorated dome tent was a machine blowing bubbles into a meshed off area in the middle of the dome tent. the dome was was lit with blacklights and the bubbles were blacklight sensitive. there were two large holes in the meshed off area that allowed people to poke a stick into the bubble zone. the stick was a long piece of wood attached to a car battery with a button near the handle. on the end of the stick were two pieces of metal. when you clicked the button, an electrical charge was sent to the two pieces of metal turning the stick into sort of a lightning rod. but here's the thing, the bubbles were not made with soapy water, but with liquid hydrogen. when you touched a bubble with the lightning rod it exploded in a ball of fire, pure hindenberg stylez. exploding bubbles! oh man was it ever crazy fun blowing up bubbles with that stick. a theme camp where you can blow things up. there were two lightning sticks, so it sort of turned into a race to see who could blow up the most bubbles. another creative example of interactive art that people set up to share on the playa. the guy who set up the tent asked only one thing...if you enjoyed blowing up bubbles, then spend a few minutes outside of the tent encouraging people to come in and explode bubbles. hey, it worked on us. so olivia and i spent the next 10 minutes encouraging people to go inside the dome and blow shit up before heading over to the c4 camp. EXPLODING BUBBLES! kewl shit.


photo by wademar horwat

the c4 camp had a huge orange dome set up that looked like a cat complete with ears, eyes, and a mouth. we were heading there for the lick-her and lingerie party they were having, which was prefaced by the great canadian beaver eating contest. yes, it was exactly as the name sounds. no cameras allowed, no single men allowed. nucking futz.

they were having some difficulties with their soundsystem, so the music was cutting in and out. not very good for dancing, but the atmosphere made up for it. there was a girl walking around the dome with a can of whip cream squeezing it out on people and encouraging people to lick it off. what a great way to get people licking each other. hmmm...great idea for next year.

i knew quite a few of the people at the c4 camp because of some burning man events in toronto that i attended in previous years, more specifically santarchy. imagine a hundred santas, santa's elves, and santa's sexxxy ho ho hos bar hopping through the city at christmas time singing anarchist christmas carols like walking 'round in women's underwear and deck my balls. oh man is it ever fun. "who's in charge? SANTA! who organized this? SANTA! who needs a drink? SANTA!"

i was darth santa...santa had turned to the dark side and was loving every minute of it. my friend isa was 7mos pregnant at the time time and was santa's knocked up ho. her husband, darryl, wore a leather coat, sunglasses, and a santa hat. he was keanu klaus and his saying all night was "ho!".

olivia met a cute boy named culprit, at least that was his playa name. as i mingled with some other canadians, olivia took her new found friend to explode some bubbles and make some music at the light harp.

when they returned, we got on our bikes and headed across the playa to hear some beatz, making frequent stops along the way for random playa distractions.



we stopped at a few places to dance, but house music was calling me. hey, the reason why we end up at the house of lotus is because it is always bangin out solid house beatz and the people there kick ass! any place with a large arch that is on fire and playing sexxxy house is alright with me.

olivia and culprit spent most of their time in the chill tent at lotus getting to know each other. they clicked really well. as for me, i'm a people person, and a makeout bandit. i will kiss pretty much anyone, often times before i even get someone's name (if i even get a name). i found that making out with random strangers on the playa was a very easy thing to do. i was in heaven. i don't have enough fingers or toes to count the number of people i made out with on the playa. mmm...kissing.

the beatz at the house of lotus were propah, as usual, and we danced until the sun rose from behind the desert mountains. this was my third sunrise in a row, and it would not be my last. but after three days of celebrating on the playa, and three sunrises, my body needed to shut down and get some rest.

- that black rock city phenormenon \m/^_^\m/