BURNcast is on hiatus!

Hello BURNcast fans!

Just like we did last year, we're taking some time off during the holidays and won't be back 'til 2008. Feel free to call 775-363-5861 to give us your feedback, rants or raves. See ya next year!

Love & Rockets,
DaBomb

BURNcast #068 - Over the Rainbow with Miss Tickle and ModMan

As the title says, in this episode we discover what Miss Tickle and ModMan did respectively during the rainbow. Recorded 2 September 2007 in Black Rock City.

Credits:
Music: "Pressure Tones" from Burning Babylon, now available at Magnatune

BURNcast #067 - Conversation with Miss Tickle

In this episode we speak to Miss Tickle the day after the Man burned the second time to talk about costuming, the early burn and her week at Burning Man. Recorded 2 September 2007.

Happy Tutu Tuesday

OK, so last week I got ill. And this week we've got issues!

Sorry about this, but we've got some technical issues on the back end for today's episode.

Lecter, who does all the IT work for BURNcast, had to take his computer in for repairs. It was tragic, and expensive. Sorry, Lecter. :(

The good news for BURNcast listeners is that he got it back today and he'll be posting the latest episode tonight when he gets off of work.

Until then, I invite you to DOWNLOAD to all 66 previous episodes at NoSpectators.com in either .mp3 format or .m4a format.

If you'd rather STREAM the show via your computer, just click on the BURNcast player at the right side of your screen at here.

So get caught up for tonight. Stay tuned!

Burning Man circa 1862

Greeters, c.1862

In 1847, Larry Harvey and his followers, fleeing persecution on Baker Beach, reached the Black Rock Desert and announced

It is enough, this is the right place, leave no trace.

From the Book of Mark (Wahl). Read the entire account here.

Hot for Burning Man

Below is a rare article in the middle of winter about Burning Man written by Charles Shaw (aka "Seven" and not TwoBuckChuck!). What I mean by rare is hardly a dust mote is being written about the event at the moment and probably won't be until ticket sales start again next year.

As for being hot for Burning Man, you can be sure that I certainly am. For those of you who pinged me asking me where the lastest BURNcast episode is, all I can say is that I literally have been flat on my back sick. I'm only now starting to feel some semblance of health.

Furthermore, the Tribe.net outtages have been a serious bummer. WTF? I even became a premium member! I'm feeling so disconnected! :( How about you guys?

I have the next episode of BURNcast almost complete but then I'll be taking off for a winter hiatus break. More details when I post the next episode.

Enjoy this new article!

Hot for Burning Man
by Charles Shaw

It’s Getting Haute Out There. How Free is the Burning Man?

	A shot of the amazing art piece, “Crude Awakening.” This pyro-tech-laced masterpiece is a commentary on our dependence on oil. The figures below worship the 100’ high oil derrick in various positions of prostration. Photo by Catherine Bailey

It begins as a pilgrimage of light inching its way across the Nevada desert. Thousands of cars, vans, RVs, painted buses and mutant art vehicles carrying inside them the minions of “The Man.”

They are some 50,000 strong: neo-tribal fire-spinners decked in bones, feathers, and tattoos; half-nude ambassadors of the love revolution; pyrotechnicians, metal workers, survivalists, demolitionists, DJs, deconstructionalists, atheists, alchemists, and aesthetes. All of them, waiting for Sunday midnight to come so that they can pass into a renewed Black Rock City and begin building this year’s Burning Man community.

This mind-bending cultural bacchanal is held every year for one week in late August on the gypsum powder of the Black Rock Desert near Pyramid Lake in northwest Nevada. From far-flung parts of the globe, Burners come to give expression to possibilities for the human race in unregulated space.

This year’s theme, “The Green Man,” invoked the planetary environmental crises. Perhaps without intending to, this theme highlighted the prodigious waste and consumption at the core of this most unsustainable of festivals, despite its “leave no trace” maxim. Most Burners reacted to the theme with ambivalence, perhaps best exemplified when on Monday night, hidden in the darkness beneath a blood red lunar eclipse, the Green Man burned before his time, torched by a disillusioned dissident disgusted with the size and scope the festival had attained.

Truck sculpture on the playa at Burning Man. Photo by Catherine Bailey

The community pulled together to rebuild him, and the festival continued, driven by Mother Nature, whowhipped up dust storms that rocked the city, crasheddomes and towers, and uprooted whole camps.

On Friday the rains came, followed by a double rainbow that punctuated the intermission between Daniel Pinchbeck’s talk on the coming cultural shift and Starhawk’s passionate address about creating a permaculture from the ashes of our collapsing ecosystems.

Four a.m., Saturday: a meteor shower blitzed the skies as I made my way to the Sapphire Portal, an evolutionary interface that provides an environment for personal and planetary transformation. Inside, we huddled together against the cold through the remaining hours of the night, and awoke to the light of the rising sun pouring through the portal gates, surrounded by people praying, dancing, and practicing yoga.

Saturday night, after the anti--climactic burn, the Black Rock faith-ful watched as “Crude Awakening,” a massive art installation of nine 30-foot tall metal humanoid sculptures worshiping a 100-foot tall oil derrick, was destroyed in a massive pyrotechnic explosion. Although a powerful statement on our obscenely wasteful relationship to fossil fuels, it was, for the green-conscious, a case of torturous hedonism.

Next year’s theme is “The American Dream.” Already we can hear the distant sirens blaring.

---

Charles Shaw (aka “Seven”) wrote this article as part of Liberate Your Space, the Winter 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Charles is a Chicago-based writer, executive editor of Evolver/Reality Sandwich (realitysandwich.com) and former editor of Conscious Choice.

Burning Man + Librarian Manifesto... Huh???

OK, I'm gonna let y'all know a secret. My 'day job' is as a student in library school. One of my classmates sent me the link to this little gem.

I acknowledge that librarians may not be considered the height of coolness (I should know!). But I find this video... baffling, frankly. At first I was excited (ooh, Burning Man and libraries?? neat-o!). I love it when my worlds collide. But what on EARTH does Burning Man have to do with a librarian's manifesto?? Wha'??

The closest link I could come up with was this statement: "I will educate myself about the information culture of my users and look for ways to incorporate what I learn into library services."

Hmm, library services for Burners-- workshops in welding and working with flammable fuels, perhaps? Books on building temporary structures? I'm really reaching here.

I think this is a great example of our 'culture' (if you can call it that) being stereotyped for its coolness factor. Maybe this isn't a new thing, but that it hit so close to home for me was rather surprising. And confusing. Maybe a little bit disconcerting too.

Santarchy in Second Life

Santarchy in Second Life will be hosted the Cacophony Society this weekend for those of you (like myself) who won't be attending this Saturday's event.

Below are the details and a crash course for Santa in SL:

Santa in Second Life: A Crash Course 

1. Get a relaxing beverage in your hand.
Don’t spill on your keyboard, Santa.

2. Go to http://www.secondlife.com

3. Sign up for a free account
—give yourself up to an hour for this.
Don’t bother customizing your avatar
— you can do that any day!

4. Go thru Orientation Island—
Learn how to walk
How to teleport
How to “take” things into your inventory
How to “wear” stuff

5. Teleport to Pier 109, 139, 23
Or return to this website and
Click this link to send your avatar to our start point.

Be there by 4:00 PM SLT (same as Pacific Time) or earlier if you want help figuring all this out.

6. Do a search for, and join the group called “Santarchy” (not “Santa Rampage”-- that was last week!). If you aren’t in the right group, we won’t be able to communicate with you.

7. Ask Dusty for your Santa outfit.