Ingress panel at Dragoncon, true to Niantic form, they had a person on it from Portland Oregon, that no one from Portland Oregon had ever heard from. It's like they hate our organization or something. We have perfectly fine relationships between factions and so on, but with Niantic? WTF.
We have a player there who did report back.
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Ishmaeline of Domesticity drinker of smurf tears
Paid off that new car I foolishly bought last year.
Next target: My mortgage. If I throw the car payment money at that, my house will be mine free and clear by next July.
Then I'll be ready when my employer (probably inevitably) turns me loose.
Paid off that new car I foolishly bought last year.
Next target: My mortgage. If I throw the car payment money at that, my house will be mine free and clear by next July.
Then I'll be ready when my employer (probably inevitably) turns me loose.
Cool, I foolishly bought a car yesterday. I've been wanting a better "commuter car" - something that will get much better MPG than my current car, especially now that I've started a job intended to be full time, with a fairly long commute.
Plus, my daughter is supposed to get her license soon, and she's going to have driving responsibilities once that happens, so she needs a car. We're now a 3 car family.
And I survived that thing in the desert, I may have only been gone a week but it feels like months, how do you use a keyboard again, what's this weird mouse thing?
So a full blown burning man post, and you know it must be serious cause I used the actual name! This year was quite different, from a new camp to a giant RV, the land yacht.
Burningman isn't just a giant party, it's a crucible, a test of your endurance in a giant city you help build. In a way it reminds me of a Klingon ceremony, where everyone parties and fights through the night and is expected to still be standing when the awards are finally given out. (and if you think that's nerding, did I mention the NCC1701-D shuttlecraft I saw out there). But as usual it was in many ways a life changing experience.
This year I pushed myself pretty hard and was amusingly often on the edge of heat exhaustion but was able to keep it together and never had any serious problems, but I say amusingly cause I could feel my brain moving slower and occasional slurring of my speech even though I didn't drink at all. But I survived. Only really yelled at my RV buddies once, but they were good enough to fix the issue and things went smoother from there. Unfortunately it means I failed at a number of things including sending out mail, but I made a decent attempt at it.
Camping with the future was pretty awesome, they are a crazy bunch of people who run a pretty awesome camp, in some cases just sitting and listening to conversations was the best. I attempted to participate in camp activities as much as I could. It's funny what pushes peoples panic buttons, giving a talk to 40 people while hung over, yeah sure no problem, doing mad libs with like 10 people in a play like activity… ahhhh.
Saw tons of sights, biked around like crazy, it was a great year for it, I must play with google maps and see about how far I was covering each night. Had multiple random experiences, which are often the best thing out there and even was blinky'd by a magician who gave us rings and pulled a few 'quarter from the ears' off of me with a small led light.
Watched sunrise in deep playa to the thumpy sound of robot heart, it's quite amazing watching the sun hit the mountains behind you first and then slowly crawl down them to finally strike the flat playa. Also got the amusing sight of the cops going fanatic possible on/at some boat art car, at first it was one truck with another clearly speeding towards it, then another, and two more, and off in the distance I could see the dust trial of more, by the end I counted 7 or 8 cars/trucks all around one area, so I decided not to go to close but still checked it out. They seemed to be doing the standard everyone stand around thing. It was one of the few times I regretted not having my camera but luckily there were a few photographers filming it. Note, must figure out what wacked off their hive.
I ended up doing 5 sunrises this year although some from inside the RV.
(Temple burn, photo from burning man blog)
As usual I didn't take many photos. One burn I'm going to go out there for the purpose of a photo project but until then I've found I can't experience everything, drag around my camera and take photos that I wouldn't rip to shreds when I got back all at the same time. The magic of the internet means that there's plenty of other people taking 'memory shots' for me, with gps and time stamps I bet I can even find photos of the sunrise I watched taken by people near me so I don't feel too bad about not capturing the moment in these cases.
Now the hard stuff, burn night was the 1 year anniversary of the death of Maya, Anna's partner and a good friend. We spent part of the night getting high and remembering that night. It was hard but needed. I had no clue just how much I would miss her until she was gone. She was a broken yet amazing person, who was family and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. If you have a brilliant little introvert that always around but often hiding behind others in your chosen family, please tackle them and give them extra hugs. We then watched the man burn from Pipe Dream, even from a distance the fireworks show is still impressive.
(Photo from Burning man blog)
Fuck all people with feathers and headdresses. Seriously, if you own a headdress and you wear it to parties you should feel shame and apologize to the local tribes you are insulting. it's moopy, and disgusting, it's not cool or pretty it just outs you as a clueless white moron and clearly first time burner. Headdresses are not burning man or burner wear, please light them on fire before we do it for you. Be glad I'm a nice person or I would actively light them on fire. I say this as someone who is both cherokee enough that our family has items from the trial of tears where an entire people were marched to their deaths and white enough to know these things are no longer for me, but would like you to stop disrespecting them. I left and didn't return to at least one sound camp because of you assholes. Which ended up being fine, as I spent most of my dancing at art cars.
For next year (or next time) I think my previous thoughts to light or blinky the fuck out of people is certainly going to happen. The number of dark people, darkies we like to say, is just horrible (you're right naked jeff, that does have an unwanted racist connotation, guess I'll stick with dark wads, to be nice and all) was impressive. Saw a couple crashes and a number of ambulances at least one from someone getting hit according to the people around. So many people don't realize they are dark and can't be seen.
Hmm, how to not end this on a down note, the constant small acts of kindness that become the norm out there make you have hope for humanity, it's all not that hard to create awesomeness and love for the sake of it.
ETA (Terms, Moop is Matter out of Place, the land has to be returned to its original state so every piece of trash has to be picked up down to feathers and glitter. Every year the whole thing is walked by a group who cleans it before inspection and grades your camp, those who leave trash can be not placed or even banned the next year.
The city is an open circle with the man statue at the center, at 12 o clock is the temple beyond that is considered 'deep playa' contains no roads and smaller art pieces. The area between the man and the first road in the circle is inner playa and contains the bigger art pieces.
Pipe dream is a couple story box shaped climbing structure with a coach strapped to the top of it that our camp put out in front for people to climb.)
(Photo from the Atlantic, the inner playa circle is a mile across.)
Not to take over this thread or anything but... hey fire, we had a deal, I go to a week long heathenistic ritual around you and you don't burn down my home towns, so far you aren't making good on this deal.
So far it's eaten at least 6 homes, two of which are the childhood homes of high school friends.
If You would like to donate to the costs of evac'ing large animals, there's a donation page already setup here, Butte Fire Animal Evac Fuel Fund
ETA: While the magic of internet lets me watch the fire maps I found this little gem, "Resident at Mierkey Rd advises he has 400-500 pounds of explosives in his home, is refusing to leave and is potentially hostile to fire personnel. Fire crews have been ordered to avoid his area."
Have I ever mentioned one of our claim to fames is a serial killer?
Lisa, you should look up John Butler Trio. I think you'd really like them. Saw them at a festival, fucking incredible (incidentally, the same one where I saw Iggy & the Stooges, Rammstein, Tool, and various other, more forgettable, acts).
My mom sent me this today. I had no idea what she was on about till I saw your post. :thanks: for informing me of your woes, now I feel up to date on the world.
OK, so I could tell that the show was excellent. We got pretty fucked over on the seating for reasons, but I came to terms with that, and was prepared to enjoy the show right up until it started.
Because a big gigantic garbage person from New Zealand who has lived in Denver for 16 years now with his also-present female companion sat next to and sometimes partially on me. He finds Kraftwerk amusing. He noticed that one of the songs they did was about "DURRR AUTO-BAHN." He noticed that there was a Volkswagen Beetle in the video, and he also liked the part where, like, the cars would roll up on you. He also noticed that when they did a part with a satellite slowly approaching earth, they had a "You are here" style icon over Denver, and then he also noticed that as the images got more detailed, they focused in on a nearby street intersection!
It is a good thing there are so many boring parts where it's just, like, music without singing, or else the singing is in some different language, because otherwise, it's like he might not have had the opportunity to share all those salient facts.
Also, he would not have been able to STAND THE FUCK UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SHOW AND START TAKING CONCESSION ORDERS FROM THE PEOPLE BEHIND US IN THE MIDDLE OF A SONG. (They got drinks and popcorn.)
It was really only at the point where his female companion accidentally turned on the fucking flashlight app on her fucking phone, which she was not supposed to have out anyway, and shone it directly in my face, then loudly said OOPS! and the two of them started a whole big yelling discussion about how amusing it was that she had accidentally turned on her flashlight app that I leaned over and told them to stop it.
Which they did, for a little bit, before they started talking again and I made Matlock switch seats with me.
The show is in a small opera house. It has assigned seating and ushers circulating to make sure people aren't using their phones. Nobody (else) is drunk. There are no fucking mosh pits or crowd surfing.
If you can't watch a show without loudly narrating every. fucking. thing., if you have ADHD or something to the point that you cannot sit still and be quiet for a couple of hours, if you believe that synthesizer music is some sort of blank space that should be filled with your commentary, and if you are completely unfamiliar with the music or the genre and find it necessary to share every single first impression you have of it with those around you, DO NOT GO TO A KRAFTWERK SHOW.
I'm just fucking pissed. I've been looking forward to that since they announced they were coming. I have loved Kraftwerk for close to forty years, I had never seen them in concert before, and I never will again, and that motherfucking piece of shit fucking ruined it. Fucking ruined it.
Oh, damn. Even though you and I are sworn musical enemies (although I don't dislike Kraftwerk and would have enjoyed that show sans dipshits), I have been in that same situation more than once and I totally sympathize.
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hide, witch, hide / the good folks come to burn thee / their keen enjoyment hid behind / a gothic mask of duty - P. Kantner
In terms of 1970s German synthesizer music I was always more of a Tangerine Dream guy, but Kraftwerk was awesome last night. The 3-D effects were outstanding and the music was gorgeous. You could actual FEEL it, on accounta that synthesized percussion goes bone-deep.
Would have been nearly perfect but for Fuckington P. McFuckerson.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
None of my What's Up With Me compares to the recent news in this very thrad, but I'm feeling very so I have to share.
I did some tree trimming earlier this week. I even had to go out and buy some special tools and bins because I didn't have them before now. Honestly, I thought I wouldn't have as much yard waste as I ended up with. Turns out I did more trimming than I thought I needed to. But that's neither here nor there.
My original plan was to transport it all to the special part of the landfill but I wasn't going to pay to offload this stuff. What I should have done was research what the city could do with it, which is much simpler. All I needed to do was put it in a pile on the curb. I stuffed some of it that I had already finely chopped up into a small bin and the rest I cut not to exceed 4' - as required by the city.
When my roommate seen what I had done his first impulse was "Why can't we just shove it into the trash!" AND I HAD TO YELL AT HIM SEVERAL TIMES ABOUT IT. Luckily for me they pick up that stuff on the recycle day (every other Thursdee, which was yesterday) so the stuff wasn't sitting around forever. I put everything out Wednesday night and then began my vigil.
See, I'd never put out the yard waste for pickup before so I was ascared it would be ignored for days and I'd have to call someone to take care of it or something.
TURNS OUT. Whoever THEY are they picked up the yard wast long before the other trucks came for recylcables and regular trash. I totally had to rub it in his face that I was so right and he was so wrong.
AND THEN as a special reward the universe gave me something else. He was out doing some errands and we're coming up to an intersection, beyond the intersection the road was narrowed to one lane. He makes a snap decision to pull into the empty lane at the stop light where, right after the light is the narrowing of the lane. He thought he could get ahead of all the traffic BUT HE WAS DENIED. In the lane next to us was a big ol mini-van. When that light turned green she was off like a bullet, leaving us in her dust.
Someone called me a self-loathing prescriptivist today, and I HAD shit to do, but I guess I'm going to need to adjust my schedule to accommodate an unexpected "take a long hard look at your life" day.
Re: What's up with you?
we havent made it to much this year honestly. Funny thing is I was gonna ask you how it went! Have you enjoyed Dragon Con?
...........
so I have to share.
Linear Mode
