Post
by ZaphodBurner » Thu Sep 06, 2012 9:26 pm
Okay, I'm having a real problem here, and unfortunately this is the place I have to do this and a mod can move it if it's appropriate to do so. First, humbly, I apologize for calling a fellow burner a "stupid bitch," regardless of her behavior. I did not and will not mention her (playa) name and associate it with the phrase.
The culture of verbal abuse, or "snark," or whatever you want to call it, has to stop. It has to stop now. I love to fight, but, like a student of mine who according to police records punched a man so hard the guy's eyeball came out, I have come to this realization: We have to treat each other like we treat our loved ones, and we have to treat our loved ones well. Abusing each other is not a road we want to travel because, even if you can justify it somehow, you don't have any idea what the person you're abusing is capable of.
The box in my center console that normally carries a loaded Springfield .45 when I'm camping was filled instead with my iPad and cell phone charger, because I will not bring a gun into Black Rock City; nobody checked all the same. Might as well have been filled with gunpowder or weed... nobody looked. This is not a threat by any stretch, and I just wrote a letter to the Org and told them I will never knowingly bring harm on another burner because that is not what we do. Furthermore, and even if you abuse me, so long as I can I will say my salty words and turn the other cheek because I can take more than you can give and if you want to take me to Thunderdome and punch me out, I'll know when to quit because I don't want to hurt anybody anymore. But, I'm just me:
On the 4th of July, a friend of about 240 Oregon and Washington burners was murdered, along with her children, by her abusive husband. Not only did he murder his wife and children, he took a photo of it and posted it on Facebook so that all of us could see what he had done to her. Most people thought it was a joke. Instantly, I knew better. -I'm fucking really upset right now...I'm trying to do this quick. The caption of the photo was designed to cause further anger and hate. In other words, he outsnarked us. We're fucking beat, get it? All the insults, snark, verbal abuse and playa fights combined do not stack up to shooting a woman, filming it and showing it to all of her friends. You and I can't top that. He made us look at the photo, and about the best you're going to get by abusing me on the internet is a non-physical PTSD reaction from somebody you've never met. You can't touch me now, so fire away.
I'm a flight instructor and I carry a special tool after, in June, a student of mine named Nate, who took an IED in Baghdad, told me he has anger issues and that he's violent and suicidal when he loses control. I wanted to help a veteran, you know, but, we can't put those issues behind the controls of an airplane. I gave him and his wife a couple of free flights, but I carried a concealed weapon just in case he decided to take us out with him. Just having to do that fucking hurt me. The final time I saw him, I caught him smoking a cigarette under the fuel vent of my airplane and when I alerted him, he took a long, deep drag on his cigarette with his pregnant wife running away as fast as she could, and said "Fuck it." That was it, and I sent him home. The next day his wife called to say he couldn't come out to fly because "he was having a problem and they were getting help." I could hear men yelling and stuff being smashed in the background. He could be a role model and a hero to his family, like my grandfather was after he survived a gunshot to the head by the Nazis, but I'm swallowing hard here because it's not going to work out that way.
There is also Tony F, who took a frag in Fallujah, lost his best friend, and got kicked out of the Marine Corps for violence. Kicked out of the Marine Corps for violence, dig? He fucked a lot of people up and didn't stop when he got home. The day I met him, which was in Vegas, somebody bounced a ball off Tony's girlfriend's tits, and that's the first time I ever really witnessed, firsthand, war-related PTSD of the kind where three or four grown casino bouncers and a half dozen fratboys couldn't control him. He wasn't seeing four or five white dudes in a pool, he was somewhere else, like something you read about in a Vietnam novel. Out of respect for him and you I won't go into it, but, we're all very, very, very, very glad all he had on him was swim trunks. His wife told everybody to get away from him because you can't stop him when he goes over, but I sat with him for awhile. I stuck my head in the lion's mouth and begged him not to bite. I lived, if only because I know how to talk to a Marine. He would have killed people.
Randy the ABUSIVE FUCKING ASSHOLE, who is burning in hell right now for murdering his family as they were getting ready to go watch fireworks, won't be visiting Black Rock City in the future because he's dead and when I find his grave I'm going to shit on it, but Tony F from Vegas, or Nate W or Rick D from Portland, might. They might go to Burning Man next year because, you know, everybody's doing it these days. You can't tell--we didn't know--that they're dangerous and you don't adequately check for weapons.
If some smart-ass at gate abuses Tony, Nate or Rick (people in Portland are familiar with the Gypsy Jokers) and causes them to see red, here's the thing. These guys may, or may not, kill you right there on the fucking playa. If Nate-from-Portland says "Fuck it," your Gate girl and everybody around are, for real, likely to be flat-fuck hole-through-your-forehead headline-news fucking dead on the playa. Rick can't carry a weapon because he's a convicted felon, but, y'all don't check for that either but if you mouth off to him and he flips, he's going to powder your skull anyway. You can't not sell him a ticket because you don't know who he is. 2013 or 2014...he and his wife are planning on going after she graduates. His face is all fucked up from cage fighting and a "blood out" ritual, otherwise, he looks quite a bit like Mick Foley.
Again, with tears in my eyes, I'm begging you. Verbal abuse leads to physical and emotional abuse, and those things lead to death. My name is Chris and I drive a silver Ford van and I camp at The Green Hour. I haven't kicked anybody's face in since college. If I catch you peeing on my vehicle like somebody did on a Slutgarden car, I will bitch you out and shove you out of camp or turn you over to the Rangers. You can verbally abuse me all you want, but, this: Unless you're ready to see people crushed because some clueless fool insulted a Tony, Nate W, Rick D or Randy Asshole out there, think about what you say to people you don't already know. You learn really quickly in places like New Orleans when to keep your fucking mouth shut, because nothing you can say to somebody is worth being found in an alley or a canal. Being a smartass Gate volunteer with three friends to protect you, and the police off somewhere, might only get your friends hurt too.
If Tony shows up 15 minutes early as Marines habitually do, and you call him or his wife a "Dumbshit" and he goes to his dark place, what I'm saying to you is that somebody like him will destroy you before you know it's coming. If your gate buddy steps in to help you, he's fucked. Nate is suicidal. He smokes cigarettes next to gasoline and his pregnant wife. You think he won't get out of his car and fucking burn you? For all you fucking know, he's got an AK-47 or just a hammer in his rig. These people are all real. And, as I'm learning at my job with all the VA and GI Bill folks coming in, there are a whole hell of a lot of these folks out there.
The '90s are over, and times have changed. Maybe it would be a better world if we stopped insulting and abusing people for being human, especially if they're not trying to hurt others.
We're human, and we make mistakes. This does not give you a right, and nor does it help them heal, to be verbally abused because they lost the paperwork to their mutant vehicle, they arrived a couple hours early with an early-entry pass, you don't like their music, or they won't give you the drink you want, or you didn't get a blowjob, or they're homosexual... We all work, we all suffer, we all love, we all burn, and we all die. The first question is, can we get along in the meantime and the second question is, how prepared are you if you fuck up the first one?
What humanity needs more than anything right now is a loving, peaceful, forgiving society that doesn't tolerate the custom of abusing each other. Haven't we learned this yet? If we can't find that in ourselves from the instant we set foot on the playa until the instant we leave it, we'll never have that in the real world. Which is why I carry a .45 in my van, and why I try, try, try, to give to people in person with the same respect and dignity that I wish them to give others. I believe in a polite society even if I sometimes suck at it.
Thank you/fuck you/love you... feel free to move this, abuse me, block me, whatever. Fire when ready. I'm sorry if I have hurt you and I'm sorry for calling the Gate volunteer a stupid bitch. So...
WORST E-PLAYA RANT OF 2012!!!!
-Chris
gatt at juggerbot dot com
"The Red Baron is smart.. He never spends the whole night dancing and drinking root beer.. "-The WWI Flying Ace