Burning Stuff

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:54 pm

When I was a kid I went out to a large grassy field near my home and decided to see how big of a grass fire I could start and then put out....
I started with little fire circles, quickly putting them out, and then slowly making the fires bigger and bigger. Finally, one got away from me and I freaked...it was much bigger than I had planned for. I took off my jacket and smothered the fire circle like a madman, working myself into a frenzy of exhaustion stomping all over the place..... after an eternity I was able to put it out.
When I got home my Mom asked me where I had been and why did I smell like smoke.....I told her some old guy down the road was burning leaves and hung around him to watch the fire....she bought it. Only last year did I finally
tell her this story. She got a big kick out of that. I guess I was always into blowing things up with firecrackers ......and burning stuff.

VerbenaMaya · Post by **VerbenaMaya** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:38 am

As a kid, at night , I used to take cans of aquanet hairspray and any other flammable sprays and quickly spray artsy designs on the driveway & in the street, then set them on fire.
I would also pocket sparklers I was given for the 4th of july, and shave them with a pocket knife into a powder I could discreetly throw onto campfires to impress friends.
Sigh, & once I had a flint flasher ring that if you packed it with flash cotton or paper you could shoot flames or sparks across the room or yard, so cool, wish I had never lost it.
Later in college, I performed a mock Illuminati Initiation ceremony for a project, we had small fires in the corners of the performance space and a very large pyramid w/eye stuffed with Hay in the center, and an effigy of a man in a business suit atop it which we burned. After the show my studio partner wanted to take more photographs and had me pose next to some art in one of the corners. He waited until after he had gotten several good shots before he told me that my cloak had caught on fire.

Sigh, I think that I have been on fire at least 4-5 times now, none on purpose. Guess I was probably meant to go to burning man, just took my time about finally make it happen.

Simply Joel · Post by **Simply Joel** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 11:02 am

I took my trash out to the burn barrel last night, lit it and went back inside for a beer. end of story.

VerbenaMaya · Post by **VerbenaMaya** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 12:39 pm

Nice joel. I lit a cigarette a minute ago.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 12:41 pm

Simply Joel wrote:I took my trash out to the burn barrel last night, lit it and went back inside for a beer. end of story.

That I bet was a lot of hard work.

Simply Joel · Post by **Simply Joel** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 1:18 pm

DVD Burner wrote:
Simply Joel wrote:I took my trash out to the burn barrel last night, lit it and went back inside for a beer. end of story.
That I bet was a lot of hard work.

the beer, yeah, it struggled for awhile but was overcome by my thirst.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 2:04 pm

Simply Joel wrote:
the beer, yeah, it struggled for awhile but was overcome by my thirst.

Yeah, I saw that on WWF last night. Another epic battle.

RingO'Fire · Post by **RingO'Fire** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 3:07 pm

theCryptofishist wrote:
Simply Joel wrote:
the beer, yeah, it struggled for awhile but was overcome by my thirst.
Yeah, I saw that on WWF last night. Another epic battle.

I believe the term is "Battle Royale." My guess is that it was a tag-team match too. After Joel "put away" that beer, I'll bet another one attacked him. He probably "finished off" the second.

I'm going to have a no-holds-barred grudge match with about five or six beers tonight. Wish me luck!

Oh yeah, "Burning Stuff" Hmmm...where do I start? (I'm trying to think of something that I burned but that I haven't already talked about in the "Youthful Indiscretions" thread).

OK, here are a few (in the form of axioms):

When camping, it is generally not advisable to pour your stove fuel directly onto your struggling little fire.

When pouring your stove fuel directly onto your struggling little fire, make sure you move the fuel canister AWAY from the fire immediately after pouring.

When the vapors coming out or your fuel canister catch on fire, the best way to put out the fire is NOT to beat the open end of the container with your free hand.

When your hands catch on fire from being covered in stove fuel over an open flame, it's hard not to freak out, drop the fuel canister, and put your hands out by beating them on your pants.

When you drop a full fuel canister on the ground next to an open fire, the fuel will run out and make a real big fire real fast.

When all your stove fuel gets burned up in a big-ass fire and you're lost in the forests of Southern New Mexico, then you're really fucked. Then you always have to build a fire to make any hot food or drinks.

When melting snow for drinking water in a metal pot next to a big fire while you're lost in the woods in Southern New Mexico, remember, the part of the pot above the water level gets really really hot and will burn the fuck out of your lips when you try to take a drink out of it.

Corollaries:
Tennis shoes are not the best footware for hiking in the mountains of Southern New Mexico in March (even if the Redwing boot store that you went by to buy new boots from on your way out of town was closed).

The mountains of Southern New Mexico can get really snowy in a really short time, even in March.

It's hard to see poorly blazed trails under six inches of snow.

When you get out of the wilderness and find your way back to your car and find a note from the State Police on your windsheild and then go the Forest Service office and find a group of guys hunched over a table planning your search and rescue party, call your friends and thank them for calling the State Police and then call your mom and tell her you love her and that you're OK.

Quote from Forest Ranger: "Mr. Wild! Boy, are we glad to see you! We were just planning your search and rescue party!"

Quote from State Trooper (looking down at my feet): "Yep, your friends said you'd have on white tennis shoes with purple laces!"

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 3:11 pm

RingO'Fire wrote: Quote from State Trooper (looking down at my feet): "Yep, your friends said you'd have on white tennis shoes with purple laces!"

Too bad. That could have been adapted to be a fine epitaph. Something along the lines of "He died with his white tennis shoes and purple laces on."

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 4:27 pm

Ring O' Fire... I LOVED THAT!!!! Never been that stoned in the woods, but I can relate. "Survivor" called and they're leaving a spot open for you.

In a forgotten time in South East Asia, one night, a friend and I were atop a bunker, talking alot from chemical induced psychosis, when explosions started going off around us. We ignored them because they weren't altogether too close to us. By the time we realized we were being attacked, only three more rounds fell. We felt cheated.

Soooooo, we called in an air strike and blew the living shit out of the extemely empty field in front of us, lighting up the night with flares, rockets, tracers from mini-guns, and (my personal favorite) a fifty gallon drum that had been buried in the ground over a claymore mine and half filled with diesel fuel and Ivory Soap flakes. We blew that puppy off and sent a fireball off about fifty yards down the line. It was great. There never was a real attack... it was just the locals trying to stir us up from a distance. I hope they enjoyed the light show, too.

Fire, eh?

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 4:43 pm

Dang, dang, dang,
Why don't the people who throw these wars ever learn just how silly they get?

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 4:57 pm

We figured that we expended over $500,000 in fuel, ammunition, and soldiers wages that night... and the was 1969 dollars!!!

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:01 pm

samtzu wrote: $500,000 in fuel, ammunition, and soldiers wages that night... and the was 1969 dollars!!!

Lovely. I wish someone would give me $500,000 to play with. Even $500,000 69dollars. . .

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 5:08 pm

war story time I can see.....well I've got a burn war story or 2 up my seelve.....
Filmed GreenPeaces's Pacific Peace Voyage on the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 ( that's the one where the French secret service blew up the Rainbow Warrior, killing my friend Fernando Perierra). We had been evacuating Marshall Islanders from their Nuke poisoned land on the island of Rongelap to a safer island 100 miles to the east, Mejato. We had to do this because even after 34 years the ground at Rongelap was still too hot with plutonium to support a safe livelihhood for the people...many of their babies were being born with sickening birth defects. 53 years ago, the US against the warning of Navy meteorologists, detonated the largest thermonuclear blast in history, the "bravo test" . It was 100 megatons of explosive power. It completely vaporized an island 100 miles to the west of Rongelap. The fallout drifted over Rongelap as the Navy guys predicted. 100 megatons is like a freight train loaded with high explosives in linked boxcars from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast......if you can imagine that. That day the Rongelap folks said they saw 2 "suns" in the sky.....minutes later, what was left of a deserted atoll drifetd over them and snowed a plutonium dust that accumulated to 3" all over Rongelap! They were never warned. Many of them have radiation induced sicknesses to this day.
This is what happens when the government wants to do a burn.

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 8:02 pm

Cowboy wrote:

This is what happens when the government wants to do a burn.

... and they did it for the same reason we did... they just wanted to blow shit up...

Humans... I still think it was a bad idea to climb down outta' the trees...

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:48 am

cept for Budha, Ghandi, Rajneesh, Roy Bourgeois, etc etc..

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:12 pm

nother war story if ya can stand it......
I burn stuff just about everyday now...for the past 22 years...no shit.....and shit is what I burn not figuratively but actually...I burn real dried cow shit in a 2000 year old fire ceremony from the MandakUpanishad, taught to me by one of my dear old gurus 22 years ago. I brought this on the Rainbow Warrior and prayed for safety for the crew and success for the mission during our grey whale campaign in Siberia.....turned out to be the most successful and safe campaign Greenpeace ever did! The trip got top exposure on 60 minutes, CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC. I love fire...as a matter of fact....I worship it too.

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 6:29 am

Well... if we're talking about burning shit, here's another war story...

For a while, I was given the 'shit' detail (for my stellar attitude). Every other day I would go around to the back of the latrine and pull out a half dozen 55 gallon drums (that had been cut in half and placed under the holes in the bench) that were half full of shit, piss, and anything else that had been thrown in there. I then had to lift them up to shoulder height and put them on the back of a deuce and a half (two and a half ton truck), drive them outside the fire base, and dump the shit in a trench. I would then add diesel fuel, or jet fuel, and torch it off. I would end the day with shit, the smell of shit, and shit smoke, all over me. I loved that job.

Part of my ceremony was to then light up a huge joint and proceed to get fucked up, burning good shit. I never made it onto CBS, NBC, or CNN, but I did make it back alive. I guess the VC thought that anybody burning shit wasn't worth shit so they left them alone.

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:26 am

...cool story dude......

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 2:17 pm

By the way, Cowboy, this isn't the thread for it, but I am falling in love with you, too... and I don't go that way. Your interaction with Bambi has jumped you up about five notches in my esteem ladder. You are approaching the Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Mandela triumvirate... You and Mohammed Ali... and a buddy of mine named Tom Vannucci...

Oh, yeah... YOU REALLY BURN, DUDE!!!

Gotta' keep the burn theme going...

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 4:50 pm

ah shucks......and to think I used to be a Catholic....hey doesn't that sound like a-hholic...c-atha holic .........ya need more than 12 sreps to get outta that one...more like 122 steps.....yeah...when I was an altar boy....oh jeez.....I use to get off on burning candles, incense, wicks, altar lamps...old dried palms from Palm Sunday shit...I was a burner in training with the Catho holics... I love you- too- Samtzu

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:27 am

I was an alter boy too!! First drunk? Sacramental wine at the age of 10! I've got a few stories, a few scars, and, yeah, I did the whole candle/fire thingy with a mournful, abused Jesus hanging over me all the time.

It took me about twenty seconds to abandon the church, and about fifteen years for it to abandon me...

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:29 am

By the way... that's altar boy... otherwise it sounds like a whole new scandal for the Catholic Church...

shitmouse · Post by **shitmouse** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:22 pm

ha.
when we were kids, we all had to get around on dirt bikes in black forest.
one day going up to the corner store to get gas (@.50/gallon), we popped off some 'ground bloom flowers' that made themselves over to a golden grassy field while we rode to the store in july heat...

fueld up, heading back in the direction we came, when we come upon the field which was now on fire! we too crapped our pants, and eventually put the fire out, BARELY! lesson learned... talk about puking stress.

-- then, last year i built a giant magnifying glass for burningman.
i had crafted a "safety" for it which was a slip that covered the scorching menace, but all week long, someone was getting zapped by it, even after them attending: "how not to get burned" class taught by.....me...
-- we torched a tiki head that represented the 2 assholes that murdered my best friend, and watched some coins turn to liquid. amongst a host of other things people brought by. (rings, pictures, food, etc.)...

good for getting the beavis out.
-b

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 10:11 pm

shitmouse this is an unbelievable story! Are you gonna bring the magnifier this year too??? Please do......I wanna melt some stuff.....

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 6:33 am

I'll second that.

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 7:30 am

Me too!!!

Lark · Post by **Lark** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 7:45 am

Giant magnifying glass - What a great idea. Melting stuff is even better than burning stuff. How hot does it get at the focal point? Can it fuse sand into glass?

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 8:03 am

If you like melting stuff, try doing a sloppy aluminum pour in a bonfire. A good big torcher'll give you enough heat to melt old aluminum windowframes, cans and the like in a cast iron pan or dutch oven which you can then do sandcast pour with or just splash on the ground or into water. Fun AND dangerous! Whee!

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:00 am

There's nothing like bright, shiny, noisy things, combined with the opportunity for self destruction!!!