Build Date: Sat Feb 15 17:50:38 2025 UTC
No, you don't understand, Michael. I *do* always have to be an ass. It's all I have left.
-- Tjames Madison
It's BURNING TIME Again
1999-08-03 11:11:03
Gar! It seems like it was just yesterday that SMRL was throwing a Giant Head of Spock into the fiery inferno that is the Burning Man. And now it's time for the whole shit shebang to happen again. But this time, EVEN CRAZIER!
August is the time of year when people crank their Burning Man efforts into HIGH GEAR. It's DEAD WEEK for Burning Man. It's CRAZY. Take, for example, Spock Mountain Research Labs: we're practicing our hog calls, desert-training the robot dogs, and brewing up VATS and VATS of hyperwhiskey for all our friends on the Playa! Not to mention the work that goes into disassembling our sekrit mountain labs to take to Black Rock City for a week. Jesus, that's HARD. But Beaujolais!
If you don't know what Burning Man is, well, HELL BOY, you're really lame and I can't really help you out on that point. Maybe you should check out our world-famous 1997 Burning Man coverage. Or you could look at this here Burning Man official page or even that crazy Saran Warp lady's ideas for this year's BURN.
Except for OUR coverage, though, you're gonna have a bit of trouble coming up with good writing about Burning Man on the Web. In general, the coverage falls into three categories:
[One thing that always bugs me is that people always talk about how much great stuff there is to SEE. This is patently untrue. Looked at from a purely entertainment level, Burning Man is really kinda lame. Sure, a 30-foot gold-lame tower with lasers and burning naked ladies is kinda cool to see. But a broken-in-half dusty tower lying on the ground with a lot of smelly naked ladies picking their nose and trying to keep it from blowing away is NOT. There's a good reason BM has a "No Spectators" rule -- being a spectator is boring. Seriously! Your better entertainment value is the floor show at Circus Circus.]
[Lemme tell you, that first year at Burning Man we did was the SUCK -- mostly because we just walked around seeing other people's stuff instead of doing our own. Yeah, it's fun the first time in some ways, but our more recent trip, in our persona of Spock Mountain Research Labs, was much, much, much, a thousand times much better.]
[Although it was a fuckload of work, too. Sometimes I wish I'd just painted my ass green and put a feather up my nose, because that's way easier than building a cyberbilly science lab in the middle of the fucking Black Rock Desert. Jesus.]
[More on that later.]
Anyways, there are some exceptional pieces out there, of course. Joab Jackson's great piece on Burning Man is fabuloso cool. But this is one of our "link" articles, here, and the link that I'm referring to in this article is REAL REAL good, at the end of this thing where it says "Check it out yerself." Do that! Check it out, because it's real good. Participant point of view, good writing, low on burbleage. I liked it, go crazy.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
First in a regular series! The Pigdog Journal Spocktail of the Week features recipes for EXCITING and DELICIOUS potions and tonics for your quaffing pleasure! Gulp down a whole lot TODAY! (More...)
It was Friday night at the Casa de Baron and everything was in place -- a group of friends had assembled, people were setting things on fire in the backyard, and a Ferry Corsten double-live CD was playing on the stereo. Everything was in place to make further scientific advances in beverage research and leisure technology. (More...)
An innocent trip to the Central Market resulted in a severe attack of arachnophobia (and a meal) when a depraved street kid set her vicious pet spider on an unsuspecting shopper. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)