There is a piece of art out on the playa called Crude Awakening. Tonight at 10pm, it's going to explode.

In 05 these artists created The Passsage, and that piece is currently on Embarcadero Street in SF, striding into the city.

The image to the right is from 06, and it's the same artists' work. At night, those Leaping Giants held and dripped flame.

The explosion tonight is going to be epic.

The Chronicle sent out a reporter to blog about the event, it sounds like she wasn't having much fun, at first. That was two days ago, though. Which feels like eons under an angry sun and blazing moon. This post is dead-on. You literally never know what is going to cruise around the bend in the road. I hope her experience takes a turn for the better.

The fact is, it takes effort, planning and forethought to have fun in Black Rock City.

Wired is doing a much better job capturing the true spirit of the playa. They are letting the images and creations speak for themselves. They also let the accused arsonist say a few things. Check it out.

The sun is making a final dive towards the horizon right now. The Man is back up. The nightbreeze is blowing through. The shadows are long and cool and the gorgeous glowing forms and flames of this final frivolous night are starting to wriggle and torch.

If there's any possibility left at all of us making the move to BRC, this is it.

And there it went.

I keep trying to put myself out there in the desert, but it never feels true. Photos, stories and news reports filter out. But the specifics of the experience are distant.

After drinks at the bar we ended up at a friend's house for dinner. There are many apartments in the building, and tonight several of the apartments all joined together to create a multi-level feast. Apps on the top floor. Entree on the second. Desert down below, as it should be. And after hanging out with our friend and meeting these new fun people, we took Lu's bike from the basement where she had stored it for the evening, and together we rode it home.

She sat on the crossbar of the frame. I pedaled with my knees pointing up and out. My arms encompassed her as I gripped the handlebars, steering. Page street was quiet and the moon hung low over the distant hills of Oakland and beyond. It was the same moon that hung fat over the playa tonight. The bike we rode was covered in purple fur, decorated with daisies all around the frame. The purple furry basket held my backpack.

We marveled at how the playa had grown. The pavement. The artcars undecorated, parked in rows on either side. Our tent had a door, and a lock, and worst of all, stairs!

We felt the hot playa breeze on our cheeks this eve. We basked in the cool glow of the last summer moon. We coasted on memory to the apartment we're staying in, the place where we live when we can't be in our tent in Black Rock City.

(image from Tiffany Brown / Las Vegas Sun)

Here's the wiki of Burning Man, and another of Black Rock City.

And here are some funny images that might make you lol.

Last bit is a nice long series of photos that will take you from the road just beyond Gerlach, NV all the way into BRC, then on to the night of the Eclipse and Early Burn, to the aftermath and beyond.

Not being there is stupidhead-thinking. Our absence is lame craptacularity.

(I am using that image w/o permission of the owner, who I don't know, but I'll gladly take it down if it causes a problem. I just wish I was there to see that in person.)

I really like how these books would look all lined up next to each other. That's quite a collection of information we've created. Nice work people.

But I still can't believe I'm not out in the desert. And the fact is, there's still a 10% chance we're just going to say fuck it all and head east and north.

I also can't believe that this year, during the eclipse, someone lit the Man on fire! (update: here's the db that did it.) I'm certain that there are still people wandering around Black Rock City that a) can't figure out where the week went, and b) that someone did, finally, in fact, Save the Man! I'm sure they are certain that BRC ain't closing this year because for the First Time Ever, the Man didn't burn. Boy are they going to be surprised on Sat night! Maybe we'll even get to see it.

Here's another batch of photos from this year's event. Don't know the guy that took'em, but it's wonderful to see visions of the playa emerging on the 'net.

Update 2: lots more info on the early burn here, and the nytimes blog post here.

Labels: beer, burning man, wikipedia

Well, a year ago tonight we were already there. It feels wrong and stupid that we're not currently either a) on the playa or b) on the way. But such is life. Instead I'll have to simply enjoy the fact that it even exists on Earth, that out there in Black Rock City, Homouroboros slumbers idly, for now.

Here's BRC being created. This next image claims to be from this year, but that Mandela was there last year, too, so I'm not sure. Either way, awesome photo.

Here's the first shot I've seen of this year's Man.

Walking back from the bus today I saw a guy sitting near his car that was stuffed with gear and had a bike strapped to the back. The bike was decked out and the guy was just chillin', waiting for someone or something.

"Is that yours?" I asked him, pointing at the car.

He nodded.

"Have fun," I replied. "I'm soooo jealous."

His grin went wide and he shrugged his shoulders as if to say exactly what I was thinking as I walked by.

Leaving for the Warfield in a few minutes. Doors at 7. Show at 8. I'm guessing an 8:30 start, but who knows. They might really be rockstars and wait till 9. Can't chance it, though. No fucking way.

It's strange to be seeing a big show like this all alone. Lu is long out the door and across the bridge to Berkeley. She's rocking WILCO, and I really do want to be there with her, with our friends, with Jeff and all the rest of them... but no.

My two favorite bands on the same night. It's a wonderful problem to have and the choice has been made. Time to get ill.

Labels: beastie boys, fun, music, problems, wilco

Still need to listen to that freaking interview from last night. Still need more sleep and more time.

Still can't believe I'm seeing the BBoys tomorrow night, then spending the weekend in Mendo.

That's right bro, Mendo.

Google captured the sky. Cameras captured the largest typhoon, ever, back in 1979.

Here are the trails and hiking paths of the White Mountains. This site launched Thursday, and it should be an awesome resource for when we get back east.

For now, though, I gotta go to BED.

Haven't listened to this yet, but it is an interview of one of my favorite authors, by the writers of one of my favorite web sites. I'm really looking forward to reading Spook Country. I'll devour it as soon as it's out on paperback.

If someday I write a book as half as good as Neuromancer, I will be very happy indeed. And now rereading that wiki entry, I realize I need to reread the novel as well. I loved it the first two times and I'm sure #3 will be even better. Great books always reread spectacularly.

Here's a great article about how this year's Burning Man theme is The Green Man.

They have done a lot of innovative things to help reduce the event's impact on the planet. Bike-sharing, ride-sharing, biofuel and solar power are all part of the plan.

But of course, come Sat night, the Man is still gettin' torched! There are some who try to save Him every year but they haven't succeeded yet. Maybe this is the year. Anything is possible in Black Rock City.

Every now and then The Onion just nails it. For example the recent article about Dada and Wikipedia. Or should I say monkey asphalt green door slide parts? You get it right? Dada is the 'surrealist' art movement from the late 1910s. Nonsense words, bizarre juxtaposition. General foolishness and fun. More info here, if it's readable. Schizopolis is a great example of an awesome, utterly unique film that is definitely surrealist.

I'm gonna keep going for the weird tonight, so next is a page full of strange facts about the 1500s. These sound reasonable and informative, but to take truth from a single web page would be like only listening to your mom when buying concert tickets.

And then I was going to put up a page of all these crazy animals, but the page is down, so instead I've got what a business meeting would look like if people behaved like they do on the interweb. (Yeah, it's College Humor, but this one is funny. It's also got some graphic language, but I think you can handle it.)

We are down to 8 weeks left in San Francisco. There remains only a 10% chance that we'll make it to Burning Man. But then again, there's a 10% chance we could do anything at all. Still, I'll take it. And, if we don't make it to Black Rock City, I do want to devote that whole week to living life, as close as I can, to the ideals of that amazing city. Stuff like this. (thanks Matt & Tina!)

Labels: 10%, burning man, dada, video, weird

Looks like I have some work to do on my sci-fi reading list.

I've got most of the top 25 checked off, but there' still a bunch I haven't read. I can thank Dad for this. I loved the paperback sci-fi books he gave me out of musty closets.

Of all of them, I think Neuromancer, Slaughterhouse 5, The Diamond Age and The Man in the High Castle are my 4 favorites. At least for right now.

I finished the last story of The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami and it was just as intriguing and bizarre as the rest of the short stories in the book.

I also just recently read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. So good. It was dark, edgy and tense while retaining wonderful simplicity and honesty. The novel was brutal and thrilling in its honesty and directness.

The simple facts of the apocalyptic life that McCarthy envisions for these nameless characters propelled me down the road of their journey. This book is beautiful and bleak and heartbreaking and true, and you can read it over 2 days at the beach, in the sun, with your amazing family around you. Go for it!

Labels: books, dad, sci-fi, summer reading, The Road

Okay here are the facts. It's Saturday night and Lu is asleep. I should be, but I'm not. I started messing around with Facebook because Lu invited me to her network, and I gotta say it's more fun than Second Life.

Another fact is, I need help defeating the Pirates. Although I'm a Pastafarian, I'm also still a Ninja. I guess you could call me part of the group of Ninjas for Flying Spaghetti Monsters. It's like Jews for JC, but weirder.

Life has sped up to light-speed.

I can feel the days slamming down one after the other like dominoes under an old man's palm.

Wha-BAM! Less than 2 months left in SF. Take that! Now seven weeks! Hi-YA!

A vortex approaches my life, or vice-versa.

It's okay. I gotta shake it off.

Maybe this tank would help protect us. It's also perfect for Burning Man.

Or take a moment for a fascinating read about rubber duckies afloat on the seas for years.

Then there's this little known letter from GWdB, to Nigeria.

And at last but certainly not least, allow Slash to make you an offer you can't refuse.

Labels: burning man, time, vortices, wilco

For now, I work in the Storage Room of Broken Dreams.

It's not the only such storage room in America. In fact, rooms just like it lurk in nondescript administrative buildings clear across the world. Some of them hold the personnel files of the employees of large corporations. Others contain municipal records.

But there is something especially heartbreaking about the Registrar files of a local college. Dismissal forms, police reports, tattered transcripts, sometimes even the surprising Outside World in the form of newspaper clippings or doctors' notes. Both of which only appear to identify why the student didn't.

What is even better, though, is my task in this sad room. My task is to make sure that the large stack of papers that another temp attempted (ha!) to file, but was unsuccessful, in fact belong with files that are missing. He did a good job. 90% of the time he was right. Sometimes I figure out a new spelling. Much of the time the scribbles are illegible. All of which means that 90% of my day is spent *not* filing documents, because those files don't exist.

There is something deeply twisted about the fact that rooms like this need to exist. I wonder if these files will ever be looked at. I wonder, of all the files in that room, which of them will be essential to the success of someone at that school. Which piece of paper in which file will make all the difference? It is possible that it could be the piece of paper that I decipher and insert into the correct manila slot that will someday lead to happiness and glory for someone that attended that school.

The only problem with telling myself that over and over again as I try and find a home for this documentation of a court appearance, or that official form requesting or approving the movement of transcripts, is that eventually, I stop believing it.

It's also because I spend all day *not* filing a whole stack of documents.

I begin to wonder if it matters, at all, where I put them.

I begin to wonder if it would actually help the people that work here for me to just 'disappear' those unfileable documents. But to do that would undermine the very foundation of being a temporary file clerk, and there is simply no way I could ever cross that line.

Even when the last name matches and the first name is close, but clearly different. Even when I'm certain the name on the document before me is probably the true full name that is on the label on the file, in that drawer. If it's not right, I don't file it. And I don't file a lot.

All day, in fact.

It boggles my mind that a job like this could exist. Then I read this article in the NY Times today, and it all makes a little more sense.

Labels: broken dreams, san francisco, temp, work

Who's ready to give this kind of computer a try?

So fun! Lu had no idea where we were going and she was quite happy with the little surprise I planned. The slides are just off of Seward in a little park, about 50 feet up from the Douglass intersection.

There are 2 of them, about 30 feet long and they are made of cement. One still has a few reddish patches and the other some yellow, so they are named Ketchup and Mustard. We learned that from cool kids that were hanging out there. You move pretty quick down the slides, and if you use cardboard and put a little sand on the chutes, you can even catch a little air at the midway bump n' turn.

The park is actually called the Corwin Street Community Garden, and the slides were built back in the late 60s. Developers wanted to use the lot to build houses, but the community rallied, had a sit-in when the bulldozers arrived, and finally managed to secure the area as an open space and mini-park. On May 21, 1973 the park was opened with the 2 slides. Many years later the abandoned lot above the slide park was turned into a garden where you can see a whole bunch of amazing plants, and chill out on a bench named "Paradise Found."

And of course, the view from up there is amazing!

After the park we continued our little urban hike, going up up up until we could go no more. But on the way back down to the car we saw an owl perched in a tree far above, hooting softly. It was really cool. We also stumbled upon Kite Hill Park which was just around corner, and although incredibly windy, it was also a great spot to view our gorgeous city.

Labels: fun, san francisco, seward, slides

Taking Lu for a slide this afternoon as a surprise. I probably shouldn't even be posting this because it sounds like the last thing people want is more attention for this hidden neighborhood gem. Nonetheless, there it is, and when we get pack, we'll have pictures.

August is fun because that's when the Perseid meteor shower happens. This year the best night to catch them is late night on the 12 into the 13th.

And also, just as August ends and September starts, we will be treated to a very rare meteor shower, one that only happens about every 50 years.

Here's some more info on what meteor showers are all about. And here's a list of all the meteor showers for 2007.

Wow. This was so much fun at 1:52am and before. I hope you like it too.

Ahhh, thrunk, my redheaded stepchild of a blog. You are the place where I come to beat up words and throttle ideas.

So it was the Northeast Babytime Tour on our last little vacation to the East Coast. The next time, the East Coast will be the place we're leaving to go *on* vacation. I'm thinking maybe San Francisco. Ha.

I'll always be thinking San Francisco from now on. Even though it feels like the right time to make this move, there's no question that this city has become a home to me. A place like this, once inside you, it never leaves. And so a part of us never leaves it, either. Talk to Heisenberg if you have questions. I can't help you with facts on this one, I just know it to be true.

And of course as soon as plans are made, they change.

Why go to New Haven and poke around a bunch of apartments we won't be able to rent? What if we fall in love with one of them? It'll only make things more difficult when we do go back to move in for real and don't have that one awesome place we saw the first time to shove our shit into.

Instead, we decided to kick it at the coffee shop, have some lunch and then head to the beach for a little bit. It was a great choice, and a truly relaxing day.

When the time comes to find our apartment in November we are confident we will find something great. No need to waste our time and theirs looking at places we could never live in.

In NH now at my bro's and it is truly amazing to get to hang with my nephew. I'm so excited to have him as a part of our lives all the time. The fact is, Oren needs a crazy Aunt Lu and Uncle Bones to keep him entertained. And we are more than happy to play the part.

Ah! He's awake. Time to get drooled on, again.