Flamenado!

If I had a time-traveling spaceship,
I'd take it to Burning Man too.

I'm sun burnt, sore, exhausted and coughing up a week's worth of alkali silica dust. Yup, it's that time of the year again. Time for you to sit back, stifle a yawn and pretend to be interested in my blurry vacation photos. This year's Burning Man seemed a little smaller than last year's, probably due to the well-intentioned but kind of disastrous ticket lottery system, but there was still plenty of booze, art cars and gratuitous nudity. The Man burned and it was fantastic. Oh and also there were flaming tornados. Yes, I said flaming tornados, but I'll get to that.

Pictured: the titular man, pre-burn. He's the reason for the season.

Peace out guys, be back in a week.

I won't try to explain Burning Man other than to say that it's a big festival in the desert and the reason I leave wifi range and disconnect from the collective once a year. It happens in a place called Black Rock City which materializes once a year and then disappears completely after the event is over. It's sort of like Brigadoon, but with shrooms and house music instead of Irish people and I don't know, jigging or whatever.

With 50 thousand people, while it exists it's the third largest city in Nevada behind Las Vegas and Shitty Las Vegas (aka Reno). It's rad and you should totally go someday. It looks like this:

That's last year's Black Rock City from the air. I obviously didn't take this
picture because I consider airplanes a form of sorcery and won't get on one.

Pictured: Not me on stilts. 

Many people who go, go as groups and form theme camps based around some participatory activity like body painting or bacon, or mutual interests like bondage or bacon. There are even a few camps involving bacon. Some camps have bars, others have massage tables and almost all have music. There are surprisingly few things you can't find. This year my friends and I camped with a group of samba playing stilt performers who also juggle fire which is actually not an unusual combination among the BRC population. I myself am into none of these things as I hate fun, am uncomfortable with heights and fear fire, so I was content to sit and drink Tang®-based cocktails. 

Don't have herpes yet? No prob, our camp also had a kissing booth.

It brings the total number of Tina Turner
film references at Burning Man to 1.

The excellently named camp Deathguild even has its own Thunderdome where participants wail on each other with foam-covered baseball bats while suspended from bungee harnesses. Apparently they often draw blood...because that's fun. Anyway, as you can imagine, I didn't go in. Incidentally, the fine print on the tickets to Burning Man absolves the event of any liability in the event of your death due to heatstroke, dehydration or Thunderdome.

"Yeah, fine, whatever, Master Blaster runs Bartertown. Where's the bar?"

Another common sight at Burning Man:
filthy, filthy hippies doing yoga.

In addition to the partying, drinking, and pervasive stilt-related collar-bone injuries there's also a sort of spiritual/hippie component going on. It's easy to understand given the awesome beauty of the desert and the atmosphere of love and inclusiveness that surrounds and penetrates the whole festival. On the other hand the event began with some dude burning an effigy of the guy that was boning his girlfriend (it's sort of America's Guy Fawkes Night), so take it for what you will.

The Temple. People come here between dubstep and
pegging workshops to cry. Don't know what pegging is?
Then don't click on this. What? I did warn you.

Anyway, some of the best stuff at Burning Man happens at night, and much of it involves fire. Here's some shots of things burning:

There was a life-sized pirate wreck you could explore. It was edutaining.
Like all 18th century sailing vessels, this one shoots fire.

Here's a mock-up of Wallstreet. Shortly after it burned, financial institutions
ended predatory loan practices, tax loopholes for the ultra-rich were closed and
corporate personhood was abolished. Social inequality: solved.

Here's the man ablaze. Fuck that guy.

If you didn't need to click on the Puppeteer
link, add +10 to your nerd roll.

Anyway, I mentioned fire tornadoes earlier. Look, I'm not too proud to admit that when confronted by a flaming pillar of smoke and ash heading my way, it's my policy to move in the opposite direction. So when the base of the Man started shooting flamenadoes, I booked it like the Puppeteers from the core explosion. Before you judge me, keep in mind that these were tornadoes made of flame. Here, during my strategic retreat, I managed to snap a couple shots:

They were either the result of updrafts created by the intense heat of the
burning base structure or possibly some sort of hell portal.

Yup, I'm going with hell portal.

After the Man burns down, some people like to run through the
flaming embers and half-molten nails. We call these people idiots.