there is so much more in love than black and white

[bedlam]

"this is a confession in the form of a question" -- bill hicks

L S D will change what you are. If you don't think it's amazing
JUST TRY IT

"you so pretty when you unfaithful to me!
you so pretty when you unfaithful to me!
you so pretty when you unfaithful to me!
your bones gotta little machine."

i thought i was able to get in touch with God through L S D
but it turned out to be merely Her answering service
FOR PLENARY INDULGENCE PRESS ONE
TO CONFESS YOUR SINS PRESS TWO
FOR THE ANSWER TO LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND
EVERYTHING, PRESS THREE
<beeeep>
WE'RE SORRY
ALL CIRCUITS ARE BUSY
PLEASE TRY YOUR CALL AGAIN LATER
MESSAGE ONE
qe42 circuit test seven

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In August of 1999, I drove 2200 miles to a place in Nevada called
the Black Rock Desert. It was, and is, and will be for many thousands
of years, a hot, cold, dry, windy alkaline desert in the middle of fkn
nowhere.

Every year, the hippies and punks and alternatives and wannabes and
other disordered undesirables congregate there around Labor Day
to act like idiots and waste money and eat drink and be merry and
set a stupid wooden statue of a man on fire. The nearest hospital is
about two hundred miles away. It has become a sort of "cool thing"
to do for people who care about doing cool things. It is a festival
of the Lost, a gateway to a world that is basically this world but
with a harsher physical environment, where people can feel like They
Have Done Something Significant. In an age where Farmer means
"Corporate Employee" and everybody in America thinks that
everybody else is stupid, and we are what our credit scores say
we are, it is a chance to step outside normal modern life for a week.

This festival is called Burningman. I went there three years in a row.
When I was there, I met all kinds of people, druggies, drunks, freaks,
engineers trying to erect a sixty foot geodesic dome suspended
above the desert, technicians who created a 2000 foot circle of
lights that could only really be appreciated from above where nobody
existed, families with children, children decades old looking for a
family, but mostly the Lost--the people who have heart and know
they belong somewhere, with somebody, and trying to find that place.

As a good American, I've reflected on my experiences there, and
decided that I want to try to make money from it. I wanna write
about what I saw and felt, and make a dvd and make a mill yun.
This message is a part of that. Call it a litmus test with a reagent
that doesn't respond. That's you dear.

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains
is the Zen you bring up there with you." -- Robert Pirsig

Mostly, Burningman is full of dirty hippies with vague ideas that
if we didn't have technology and order and stupid things like laws
then everybody would just be cool and have fun and everything
would be delightful and peachy. Of course, every hippie is a
fat, innocent little protoBuddha, just two or three beatings away from
finishing college and becoming a tobacco lawyer or some other
kind of pimp. So I was in my element. The really best people
have had a glimpse of hell. A glimpse of hell is enough to keep
even a stubborn mule on the path.

"I was talkin to Preacher Preach about Kissy Kiss.
WILL YA BUY ME A SODA?
WILL YA BUY
ME A SODA WILL YA BUY ME A
SODA WILL YA BUY ME A SODA?
try to touch me in the parking lot i say
HEY! HEY!" -- pixies

I was wandering around with my vodka, staring at all the stare-y
stuff, and I stumbled on this guy. He had dressed himself up as
a woman, with bright red lipstick, and a dress on. But his face and
body were so man-like, he didn't look like a woman. And he was
just sitting there looking so sad... to this day I don't think i've ever
seen a human look that said, except for a guy I knew in college
named Drew, and he killed himself in 1989 I think...

I hung out with this guy, I tried to talk to him, be his friend. He
just seemed so lost, like somebody waiting for a bus that he was
pretty sure had already done it's last run for the day, and thinking
about the long walk ahead.

We walked around taking the whole freaky place in, and I tried
to be nice, but be honest too. I wanted to lift his spirits, but I didn't
want to lie, ya know? He looked like the last puppy in the bin, the
one that no one wants because it looks sick. Like that runt puppy
that's one pillowcase and one bathtub of cold water away from the
great beyond, and knows it...

We walked along talking and we came to some drunken guy
standing on a tiny stage with all this karaoke gear, singing bad
karaoke, with a bottle of whisky in his hand and the microphone
in the other. We stood there in the crowd listening, and the guy
is singing and laughing at us all, and I went up and said, "Hey
man can I have a hit of your whisky?" and the guy says yeah
but you gotta sing for it.

So I get up and sing "Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum
and I scream the whole thing at the top of my lungs and the
guy is all pissy, turning knobs down so I don't blow his speakers
out. He looked like he came from San Francisco, like some
stockbroker. A real weasel... so I finish the song and I step
off the stage to scattered applause, mostly stunned dismay on
the faces of the people I'd been singing to, and I say,

"OK man, I sang, can I have a shot of whisky now please?"

and he's like

"No."

and I'm like

"Hey man you said..."

and he starts up another karaoke song...

So of course, I did the immediate HEARTWORK and reached deep
into that place where we all get betrayed and I screamed at him
eclipsing even the P.A.

"YOU MOTHERF------ YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR
GEAR HERE MAN. YOU BETTER WATCH THIS GEAR
ALL NIGHT."

and he shone his flashlight in my face and I said

"THAT'S RIGHT, GET A GOOD LOOK AT MY FACE
MAN. SEE IF YOU CAN PICK ME OUT LATER."

and i started to walk off. my man/woman friend came up and
said, "Hey man, I think I need to get moving on, no offense or
anything, OK? I just need to go."

I patted him on the shoulder and said, "Sure man, I understand
you take care OK? Take care of yourself."

And that was the last I saw of him. I wonder if he is still so sad
or if he found his people... he just started wandering off into
the night and crowds looking sad and shaken and I felt bad
but by God I hate liars, so I still don't feel bad about trying
to scare that yuppie tourista scmbag. I feel bad about the sad
cross dressing dude tho...

I got into a big argument with the Nevada State Police about
the First Amendment about a totally unrelated thing earlier too
paraded my patriotic committment to the Bill of Rights and all
and met a gorgeous topless chick who I got along great with
until she spit a mouthful of water in my face and left with another girl
who kept laughing at me and every other man like she knew a
secret that only women who know about women know about
women that men can never know about blah blah blah...

...i took a lot of pictures... i believe everybody *wants* to
be truthful, but almost nobody *tells the truth* and even fewer
people do the work to know whether they are B.S.ing themselves.
And if you aren't honest with yourself, how can you be honest
with anybody else?

I had a lot of other experiences there I want to talk about later
but I'll say this: even though the world is full of problems and
accidents and hazards which are mostly man-made and woman-
made, I believe like Anne Frank, that inside, most people are
basically good. So why is there so much evil and bad dealings?
I think people get confused. I think people get confused.

I think Jesus gets a bit annoyed with us when we ask Him to
do all the work all the time to remove every last bit of
confusion. I think we were given minds and reason so that
we can figure stuff out, and not screw each other over and
not have this confusion. But even when you try, it's God-
Awful hard to get it right, every single time.

But I think it's possible. I think it's possible for people to
communicate and let each other know what they want
and what they are feeling, and come to an agreement of
love. Or at least detente. Take any two people.

Take You And Me,
love,
bedlam

[bedlam]

don't listen to your professors

anarco-syndicalist fascism with corporate oversight

is the only way to go...

AND DON'T LET 'EM TELL YA ANY DIFFO

[skygod]

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains
is the Zen you bring up there with you." -- Robert Pirsig

A young man sat looking out the window at the mountains, and thought he saw more there than just the mountains.
An old man sat looking out the window and he just saw the mountains.
There is no reason to be sad about this.