Fun Feuds in 2004

[technopatra]

Hi everyone! Just got back. I had a blast this year, due in no small part to a feud in my village, which I'd love to share with you:

We, the Cafe kids, shared a village with the Commissary boys, Junior, ZigZag, and Roy Bob, collectively known as the Hillbillies. They are are western-gear and twangy music. We shared a manager in BizBabe, who is a big-time hippie.

Well it all started during the winter, when via email the Hillbillies would tease Dana about being a hippie. {side note: I am informed by friends from Santa Cruz that hillbillies and hippies have feuded since time immemorial, and that this is the natural way of the world}

BizBabewould then spur then on by signing her emails with "Starlight kisses and butterfly dreams" and such. The 'billies then continued the verbal feud upon reaching the playa. Dana then retaliated by lighting several sticks of Nag Champa and proceeding to smudge the bad karma away from the 'billies, who chased her and doused them with beer. One stick remained lit, and she snuck into Junior's tent and let it burn. Someone ratted her out, but by then Junior had a fire in his belly and upped it a notch.

Before we get into that, let's talk about Carpet Day. You might know that the Cafe has 38,000 sq feet of shade, about 25,000 of which has to be covered by carpet. About midweek during setup, we have to move, place, unroll, and nail down the carpet in the Cafe. This is nasty, dirty, hard work. The carpets contain about 2 years worth of playa, and that makes them really freaking heavy. Carpet day is something we all dread, and we go to great lengths to make it palatable enough for folks to help us (this year we had an accident-free trip to the reservoir and had a lovely swim, chatting with a couple of local Nevadans who brought us cocktails and water).

So at 6am on Carpet day, we are woken up to the billies running around with a loud speaker, playing some twangy music , and carrying soap on a rope and yelling "WAKE UP HIPPIES, IT'S CARPET DAY! CLEAN UP, YOU DIRTY HIPPIES!" They saw Dana peek out of her trailer and then jumped down and danced a jig. Dana bounded out of her trailer and warded them off with a bottle of Redneck-Be-Gone, aka glitter spray, and they headed for the hills.

Well it was no longer just between them, since they had woken our whole camp up an hour before we needed to. And if we know one thing it's this: nobody messes with Technopatra. They threw down the gauntlet and someone had to pick it up and slap them with it.

I decided to play the slow con - I made a big show of switching sides - I got my cowgirl on and publicly renounced my hippiedom. I went out drinking with the billies, shouting their Rebel Yell "Whoopity-do!" I courted them for a week, wherein they started caliing me "Daisypatra" and bragging to BizBabe about my conversion. She played along, catching me in the Commissary and yelling "Traitor!" so they could hear. They told her it warmed their black shriveled hearts to have me join them and thought it was "cute" how I tried to keep up with them. Suckers.

I kept it up for a full week, all the while gathering vital intel - I needed to know when they were going ot all be out of camp so we could take their sacred space, the OK Corral.

The corral was a horseshoe-throwing and wrasslin' pit - 2 stakes, some trash fencing, horseshoes and empty beer cans. I had assembled a crack team of Decor chicks to sneak in and hippie-ify it when they weren't there. Our chance came when they had a memorial for a friend who couldn't come to Burning Man this year. They made an effigy of him and were going to have a procession to a burn platform to burn it.

The moment came during a party we were throwing for the tech team. I cam running in shouting "Code Red! Code Red!" and we leapt into action. We had a box of fluff and ran over to the corral. We hung prayer flags and fake flowers on the fence, and ran power from their own generator to power these pretty pastel easter egg-like Christmas lights. We covered the horseshoes and stakes with fun fur, and I made a big peace sign on the ground with all their empty beer cans. Then to top it all off - we covered everything in a patchouli/sandalwood blend, so that when they took it off they would get it all over them. The stuff lasts for at least a day.

I repeat: nobody messes with Technopatra.

They didn't notice it for a day and a half, and even then, they thought it was BizBabe - they had no idea it was me.

They tried to retaliate by bringing in 6 pulse engines to wake us up a few days later - these engines are not only amazingly loud, but will actually shake anything within a few hundred feet. But the vehicle they needed to bring them in got confiscated the night before - HA!

When they finally figured out how I had played them like pianos, Junior wanted his own revenge. I woke up to the sound of my tent zipper closing (I leave it open a little bit). Then I heard the sound of a stake being hammered and called out "Mornin', Junior!" I hear a very loud "GODDANGIT!" and he went away, totally busted trying to stake my tent shut.

I was a little disappointed, as I already had phase 3 ready to go - their other public space was a dome called Spatula City. I was going to deck it out with Bonnie Blaze's wind chimes and have our friend Jaguar lead a yoga session in it to the strains of Buddhist monks chanting. Jaguar is that super tall very tribally tattooed shaman who runs around in itty bitty yoga shorts, thereby already kinda freakin' the billies out.

It was super fun - I gave the boys pendants for being worthy adversaries. And I did have huge amounts of fun hanging out with them. They are all unbearably cute boys and I do have a soft spot for the billies, be they hill-, psycho- or rocka-. And I was stoked when Junior brought out the moonshine - except for the part where the fumes burned my eyes, it was really good stuff.

It was awesome to get in touch with my inner prankster. Anyone else have a good feud story?