Ask Ranger Hot Head

[spectabillis]

aw c'mon everyone, please prove me wrong.

[ubu]

Thank the rangers for being there. Burning man is ok.

There is a hell of a lot of infrastructure and a ridiculous amount of work that takes place just so you can say you had a good time in a godforsaken place.

One Big ol ranger dude came up to me as I was leaving and asked me if a had a good time. of course I did. in no small part due to you guys.

I'd want to check your heads if you were not crabby, salty, and crotchety.

It ain't no disco out there, so go ahead and dance your ass off.

BMan is apocalypse training.

go hothead, go!

by the way, where is the nearest porta-pottie?

[safetythird]

I had nothing but good experiences with the rangers this year. It was very cool talking to a couple of them guarding the man Sat night. It was very cool to get the wind gust warnings from them early in the week. Really cool "tales from the playa" from the village rangers. It was really freakin cool of them to tend to a dehydrated drunk puking all over himself in our village bar. EMS gets 2 big thumbs up too.

Crusty and ill-tempered? I imagine a few were by the latter part of the week. No more crusty and ill-tempered than some eplayans, and they aren't even on the playa anymore. They are just crusty and ill-tempered by nature.

S3

[DVD]

If I had to deal with e-tards and hippies all day, I'd be pissy too.

And that's exactly why you shouldn't be a ranger. As I said, to expect anymore would be a delusion of massive proportions.

It be like signing up for the armed services and being in utter shock when you are ordered to kill brown people. It's what you signed up to do.

[DVD]

If I had to deal with e-tards and hippies all day, I'd be pissy too.

It be like signing up for the armed services and being in utter shock when you are ordered to kill brown people. It's what you signed up to do.

Wow an extremely far overreaching and inappropriate analogy. What an ass.

Grr. I hate it when my inner idiot takes over.

[Bitterman]

Dang it DVD, sorry for channeling thru you. I've been trying real hard to curb myself.

[Ranger Genius]

Rangering is serious business. It's involves a lot of grim responsilibity...

Serious business? Really? Shit. I guess I've been going about it all wrong, then. I've somehow managed to spend most of my time on shift avoiding anything that resembled responsibility wherever possible. No. Not true. I spend most of my time answering the question "where is the nearest porta-pottie?" After that, it's avoiding responsibility. A gentle nudge here, a subtle word there, and there's no problem for which I need to be responsible.

I do, however, take issue with the characterization of us as dourly completing our assigned duties. I must say that I've never had so much fun on Playa as when I'm 'working.' I meet so many interesting people and get to share and hear so many stories, that I can't imagine experiencing the event in any other way. In the interest of fairness, I did work one shift in 2004 that was utterly miserable. Two hours on the "stick" in a blinding whiteout. If you'll remember, there was no place to take shelter under the man that year. So after two horrid hours, my partner and I called for relief. Then since her camp was in our new coverage area, we stopped for a few minutes and enjoyed a hot 4-course meal. Almost made it worth it.

As for authority, for most of us, the only authority we have is that which we derive from the respect of the participants (though there are a few with some real authority. Thankfully, I am not among them). For the most part, though, the only tools we have with which to solve problems are a little training, a sense of humor, our personalities, and a really fucking nice hat (many of which, you might have noticed--or might yet--bear a button emblazoned with the phrase "Question My Authority.").

RE: Eplaya handles advertising the fact that the bearer is a Ranger: I used it to mitigate the apparent arrogance of my handle. I didn't actually pick it, but if I introduce myself simply as "Genius" I come off as even more of a prick than I really am.

[Tiahaar]

Late Sunday night after the Temple Burn, about 11:45ish, I arrived back at camp to get some sleep to be the designated driver out the next day. I was feeling both happy/sad in that end-of-the-burn-year sort of way and also very lonely as the rest of the camp was still out chasing the burns and tunes. So I got out my radio scanner. It had not been turned on all week but I needed to here somebody was out there, and miraculously I locked onto the secret Ranger frequency. First impression was "damn, these guys are really professional!" Radio messages were precise and to the point and often with a touch of humor thrown in. It was immediatly evident that this group knew how to work together and do their job. I heard of the fun/stress of trying to get the clocktower burn to go off OK with the gusting winds, the plaintive request for some overtime from the night shift lead noting that at the moment he had "One...Lone...Ranger...", and various requests for info and help for people around the event. WAY COOL AND WAY EXCELLENT WORK RANGERS!!! The next morning this behind-the-scenes info was very helpful to get a peek at the Ranger's side of the Exodus, and helped our camp decide to wait out the traffic snarl and leave later in the day when things had cleared.

I think Rangers are great. They've always been friendly when coming by my camp. However the thing that's impressed me the most was the skill and training evident in that glimpse into their "secret" life.

[DVD]

Rangering is serious business. It's involves a lot of grim responsilibity...

Serious business? Really? Shit. I guess I've been going about it all wrong, then.

I expect there are realities that can be grim though. But that's not why I am here. I am here because you make sense. Other things don't. You typify what I expect of rangers... you make the job appear attractive. It seems as though you have a deeper appreciation of a sense of what Burning Man is to me. And this means that I have a predjudice. I don't expect a ranger to treat me and my camp the way a (very)few did this year. But pile that on how I was treated by other various arms of the Org and I wind up making a judgement about rangers based on my prejudice. *Even though* one of the Org I worked with this year was a very prominant ranger (who again typifies my expectation of same and more). I ignored all of these examples available to me and made a systemic judgement based on very few samples. Pretty lame on my part.

I think there is still some kernel of truth to my base feeling though- that the Org seems to have that Incorporated Beuracrasy itchiness about the way its arms move.

I made a promise to do a bit more volunteering this year at the office...