Posts tagged ‘burning man’

September 10, 2009

burning man, day six.

sunday, september 6th.

a morning of getting breakfast made!!! fresh fruits and awesomeness thanks to michael and man fruits with agave honey equals rules!!

we were supposed to leave on monday, but we decided to bike to our craigslist rideshare people’s place because michael’s friend roger had offered us a ride back to los angeles on sunday before the temple burn. might as well leave earlier rather than later. were a little burnt out and word on the street was that the temple burn was really kinda depressing.


our tent was amazingly dirty! like i mentioned!

waited around the afternoon while jeanette left with carlos for michael and roger to come back and pick me up. totally left jeanette’s fucking bike at burning man because i had so much shit to do like breaking down the tent and cleaning and stuff and the bike — i don’t even know where it was — was nowhere near camp… so blahhhhh i forgot it, which sucks, but hopefully someone brings it back………..


we left at like 6:00pm or 6:30pm but already there was traffic, and it took a couple hours to get outta there! at least it was a beautiful time of day to leave!!!


the turnstiles we came in through!


random nighttime photog from the rv. it was this cool rv from 1985, rule!! it had these cool pilot chairs which spun! amazing! but it also had this funky smell coming from the sink! not so amazing! there was much trial and error to try and figure out where the smell was coming from, but no real luck.

stopped by denny’s on the way home and ate some hash browns with onions and gravy! yum! yum for denny’s, anyway! and then i slept like a motherfucker while roger and michael drove, but everyone pulled over at some point because both drivers were tired and everyone slept, and so our 12-hour journey took like at least 15-hours or something but whatever, it was all the same to me.

and thus concludes the adventure. more thoughts as they come but man am i tired of typing! i still have a zillion older journals to do which will probably never be done. for starters. finishing spain journal, finishing peru journal, finishing last “talk to us” session journal. when the hell am i gonna do this shit!

September 10, 2009

burning man 2009, day five.

saturday, september 5th.

mad libs!! yo!1!


cashew snacks? hails yeah!!!


our camp! left to right: hans’ tent, henry’s camp, shower… tent non-tent.


wet ones and rotting bananas, fuck jea!

acid!

bumbling around and stuff. with jackie, michael, jeanette, matt. woo!!!


jackie.


michael.


tom (we lost tom while heading out).


crazy dust storm style!!!!!!! awesome!!! could barely see like two feet in front of you at some points.


michael and jeanette!


dirty dirty mcdustmask!


i rather like my costume.


the. best. art. car. ever.


jackie climbing on this random giant structure thing.


reflections in matt’s glasses.


after all that, we tied up our bike on a pole and went to the car wash. BORING!!!!


BEST. BURNING. MAN. PHOTO. EVER.


jackie and greg (?) were walking in front of jeanette and i. jeanette mentions that she just wants to run and jump on them… to which i say, “I’VE BEEN DYING FOR A PIGGY BACK RIDE ALL MORNING!” and greg gave me one. is his name greg? something like that.


random shit going on.


random hare krishna shite.


we tied up our bikes. when we returned, the pole we’d tied it onto was HALF as tall and our bikes were all fallen over. wtf?

acid.


i really just wanted to go home but we kept adventuring all over the place. stopped by ashrum, but they were closing shite down.


stopped by random clubbo.


trippin’. first time of the day where i was just allowed to sit and cheeeeel, and man, motherfucker, it felt good, and it was what i was waiting for all day. all day i’d been like, “i don’t know what i want to do with myself,” and essentially, this was what i’d wanted to do ALL DAY.


cool haunted house art car jeanette took a photo of. i didn’t manage to see it, unfortunately.


the rocket. jeanette’s pic. i was busy hanging out in michael’s tent and hating life and embracing the weirdest day of my life (today was the weirdest day of my life).


a better look @ the car wash. jeanette’s pic! btw, when we’d gotten back from our daytime adventure, fuck, we were all DIRTY AS SHIT. and when i first got back and looked in our tent, everything in our godamn tent was covered with a huge layer of dust because we’d left our windows open. it was so fucking tragic it was hilarious and i came back out to jeanette, who was napping on a hammock or something, and was just laughing my ass off, asking her if she’d seen our tent. she told me she hadn’t gotten a chance to see it yet but i couldn’t stop laughing… it was so tragically funny. i find that lately i find tragically humorous things really fucking funny. haha.


awesome mothafuckin cloud!!!

spent the afternoon pretty much with michael and gabi, drawing and chatting and listening to music. so nice to do nothing. so tired of walking around that entire day. longest, weirdest day of my life! that night, all the kids got together and we got pretty much everyone in the camp. prior to burning, there was talk about whether the burn would actually go on or not because it was sooooo godamn dusty and the wind storms were seriously intense. but luckily, by like 10pm, the wind storms died down — perfect timing, really — and everyone made their way out onto the playa to watch the man burnnnn, bitch.


burning of the man! plus fireworks! oh yes!1!!!


jeanette and elliott.

blahblah, an evening of hanging out. lotta people went out and partied, some didn’t come home til 8:00am. i just chilled. again. longest day of my life.

September 9, 2009

burning man 2009, day four.

friday, september 4th.
the days all blur into one during burning man. thank god for photo documentation or it’d definitely all be a fucking mess!


had bought ingredients to make fresh food, so we made this kick ass avocado, tomato, spinach, and garlic salt sandwich! it ruled! and was cheap!! cause the avocados were only fifty cents! hail yes! unfortunately, i’d bought some veggies but didn’t continue to buy ice (and there was lotsa free food for us to eat), so didn’t get to eat all of the veggies. le weep.


redefining sexiness, part one thousand. gah! my sports bra had to be thrown out because the straps turned all brown and grody, haha!


jeanette made friendship bracelets! she intended to give people we knew a new one everyday, but i only got twoskis.


dani!


me!


loren!


day trip to pink mammoth… actually, we originally intended to go to this other place called solicious, which was listed on a map in the guidebook, but didn’t actually exist!!!


some dude was giving out pints of ice cream made from wine!! FUCKING AWESOME!


male go-go dancerrrr!


registration wall.


center campola!


inside center camp. we stopped briefly to explore but there was just some bad music going on and also stopped and listened to some lady who was talking about giving birth at home. a little strange. but kinda interesting. jeanette was bored which was funny because i thought she would be interested since she’s all about babies and birthing and blechy stuff.


canned baked beans for dinner! for which henry was making fun of us for eating since they had these nice flavored trader joe’s beans. ghetto gourmet!! but even better: canned baked beans before eating shrooms? done!


random picture of the sky jeanette took. purdy trippeh.


michael!


ren!


this flagpole grew with flags.


that night, a bunch of us went back to pink mammoth while blitzed. it was purdy fun and there was dancing to haus music and such.


blitzed!!!! fractals and patterns oh my oh me oh my.


ren plus random 4 sale sign. at one point, jeanette was like, “it’s obvious everyone here is fucked up because there is absolutely NO ONE here and NO ONE cares.” haha. so true. btw, let me say that biking while shrOomed RULES!!!!!


michael and i.

after going to pink mammoth, we went out to the main center area to go to the rocket, because we’d heard all day that the rocket was gonna launch!!! here are some pics from just hanging around near the center area. we went on top of an art car and just basically danced around and stuff. the rocket itself didn’t actually fly off or anything like that, but it had really amazing fireworks and these multi-colored like… explosions that looked like mini mushroom clouds… but they were like green and blue and orange… didn’t even know that shit was possible! it ruled!


crazy people who made the eyeball motorcycles had these CRAZY ASS really nice pods made out of recycled materials. i didn’t take pics unfortunately, but they ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLED.


after that, we went back to camp and everyone was going to go out to ashrum to go dancing, only… michael, jeanette, and i got lost because everyone was riding all fast and shite. so we ended up just hanging around and biking around and going to the man… (above).


then we went to the cubatron and lied underneath… only… dust kept flying into our eyeballs. luckily there was the glasses we could wear which helped a little and made shit trip out.


without glasses.


with glasses.


trippy shit! with glasses!

September 9, 2009

burning man 2009, day three.

thursday, september 3rd.
- woke up.

- redefined sexiness.
- a c i d .
- walked out to the main plaza.
- got some coconut vegan ice cream which wasn’t so much ice cream as it was like, cold marshmallow, but it was tasty, or whatever.
- hopped on this art car… don’t even remember what it looked like, ahha.
- couldn’t stop cracking up for the first ten, fifteen minutes of being on the art car because the shit is just ridonkulous… basically people get on and dance around and then everyone who the car passes by dances around to the car… just kind of ridiculous in concept all around.
- saw awesome things on the art car but most awesome of all was this guy who looked like the most hippie hippie on the face of the earth and he was like missing teeth, had really long dirty hair, and was wearing no clothes. he was jumping up and down on a car with a HUGE smile on his face. it was … so… amazing. i so wish i had gotten a pic. one of my favorite moments of the trip.
- got dropped off by the art car on this one street because there were sock puppets being made. it seemed fun, but i vetoed the idea because we would have been there forever and the vibe was like soooo super quiet and housewifey. the particular street we got dropped off on was funny, too, because there was a sign saying one of the places was called “hushville,” and it really was soooo quiet. it was hilarious.

- wandered around aimlessly and found some stuff to paint on! i only did the pink sections.


- spoke with lady from funny face lemonade!!! they gave out lemonade and took pictures of people!

- tried to trip myself out.

- took a picture of this baby because jeanette was OBSESSED with it. still is, actually.

- got tripped out on this art wall where everything was moving around. awesome!

- initially saw this piece, which was one of the most trippy. all the colors bled into one another… breathed… moved… swirled.

- saw some fun patterns in the eyes of this boy.

- took a long way home.



- watched jeanette play basketball with a buncha miami boys and talked to this seventy year-old lady whose daughter had bought her burning man tickets for her birthday.

- stopped by the couchsurfing camp where no one was really that friendly except for this one girl and had really kinda weird awkward but interesting conversation with her.

- proceeded to head back.

- helped guy build tent.

- got stopped by chick who needed feminine products.

- waited as jeanette got obsessed with more kids.

- we were far from home, which was at 9:30 and chaos.

- jeanette was waking around to take some photos of the skyline when i saw these two people walk by me. when jeanette came back, those two people walked by also… to them, i said, “it’s you two again!” and because i talked to them, they offered us these two food tickets for a pre-paid vegan dinner! amazing! above: one of the food offerers, annie lalla, and i!

- crazy awesome posing!

- at dinner!! guy from montreal who used to live in seattle until eight months ago! i forgot his name! but i got his info!

- ate really awesome food! other than the fake meat, which was not so good here!
- post dinner, there was some interesting weird babbling that was kinda nonsense rhetoric about enacting change and “doing this everyday” whatever “this” was… “this” seemed to just be eating a nice dinner with a bunch of people who had paid three hundred bucks to be in a burning man camp that gave you food and all that.
- there was also post-dinner group “om” chanting, which was pretty rad.

- met random guy, jacob, on the way back, and he wasn’t headed in any particular direction, so he walked with us back to our camp. he had a cooler full of beer and red bull. he was an interesting chap who said he only came because it was his twin brother’s scene and his twin brother couldn’t make it, so he went in his place… but that he was a really conservative guy who was all for social liberties but not monetary liberties.

frolicked in awesome tinsel forest!

- watched jeanette get spun around in this boot that spins!

jacob got some random bunny ears and pawned them off on me!
- stopped by a cool place that offered crepes! sweet AND savory!

- jacob came back with us and chatted for a while with everyone and then jeanette started to shave off half his beard, hahaa, not particularly successfully, really.

- went dancing that evening and wanted to just sit and vegetate. did a little bit and saw some swirling fractals looming in the distance when i closed my eyes.

- got all excited about the awesome sand colors near this robot. there was some good music going on here, for sure!

- saw some of my favorite art cars — the above eyeball cars!

- also really enjoyed this time one.

- went elsewhere and met up with this mexican-norwegian drug dealer guy who gave us ebombs because jeanette had lost some.
- tried to catch some music set but were late for it!! blah!
- hung out at the place with mexican-norwegian guy and it was kinda funny but also kinda strange…………………. brain. cooooooool. trippy as hell really cause he looks like this super like chubby kinda thuggish dude but he’s like smart and funny and a good graffiti artist and fucking — most shocking one here — can JUGGLE pretty decently — like… can kick shit off his feet and behind his back and shit, and it’s just like WTF!!! anyway, he kept agreeing with shit jeanette was saying and she commented, “you’d be the perfect boyfriend,” and he escalated this soon to her being his wifee — which she was not particularly plussed with, but i found it amusing and was egging him on. haha!

- biked around and saw this photogartho thing which was hardcore WTF cause upon first glance, one thinks it says “photograph” or “photography,” but it says “photogartho” and wtf is photogartho?!!!!!

- came upon this awesome place that was ACTUALLY PLAYING DRUM N’ BASS!!!!! AMAZING!!!! and this guy from seattle — along with some friends — made this awesome like thermal touchscreen thing. played around with that fer a while. AWESOME.

September 9, 2009

burning man 2009, day two.

wednesday, september 2nd.
- woke up in the rv when we were in reno.
- stop at savemart to buy water!

- pick up random dude named finn. he’s a canadian from toronto who had bussed to reno and was looking for a ride to burning man. he lost his wallet at the supermarket and basically said, “fuck it!” and went with us to burning man.

- purchased random kiddie bike for $30 from the last town before burning man, gerlach.
- got to the front gate, where andreas, finn, and i had to go to will call while the others waited with the rv in line.
- luckily, we got our will call tickets right as they were about to pull up to the ticket line.

- got quickly inspected by above man who was dressed fully in drag but said he was the only straight guy in his entire camp.
- finn couldn’t pick up his will call ticket because supposedly he bought it with his mom’s credit card and hence it was under her name.
- generally they can detain entire carloads of people if that happens, but they let us through. they being the guy who was dressed in drag, and his name was john.
- dropped off kelcey first at her camp.

- got driven to our campsite, where we met up with dani and loren, who had set us up with a nice little shade structure by spreading a tarp between their car and their carport thing. awesome! loren also lent us his tent.

- changed into a ridiculous get-up. ate a lot of pub mix (see plastic thing in my hands).

- explored on bike. exploring on bike really, really hurt my ass.





- rode into the middle of town and the “seasons” danced around me.

- tried to check registration in center camp but the computers were down, so gave up. i did get stamped by this girl in line, though, and she humped me and screamed, “you’re not a virgin anymore!” or something ridiculous like that. jeanette was meanwhile obsessed with this singer-songwriter chick.



- took a picture of my favorite freaking building thing!!! party nekkid!

- even party nekkid’s shadow was rad!



- it wasn’t a full moon but it looked like it, pretty much.

- explored with dani and loren at night… went to the cubatron! bitching about my ass hurting the entire way, of course.

- loved the shit out of the all-seeing eye car.



- went to the temple… so fucking amazing! jigsawed individual pieces with all styles of art. kinda depressing, really.

- sat there for a while, looking out and watching people… weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

September 9, 2009

burning man 2009, day one.

tuesday, september 1st.
- planed from seattle to los angeles.
- got to airport like an hour plus early because i felt (for once in my life) that i wanted to go early.
- lucked out because i just barely missed the cut off time for united check-in (45 minutes beforehand) and there was a HUGE line but they said people who were going to los angeles could cut.
- some old guy got jacked because his flight was 15 minutes before the los angeles flight and he had been waiting patiently in line and got into the expedited line ten minutes after the “cut off time” for check-in… so they told him basically he was fucked and were SUPER freaking rude to him about it! and he’s an old guy!
- got on plane.
- met jeanette at her work via a shitload of metro transfers and crap. kinda confusing but i figured it out because i’ve used los angeles public transport a whole bunch more than the fucks that live here.
- got to her work, sat around, did some work on my laptop, then we went to the supermarket and bought some last-minute phoods and stuff.
- went back to her work and got picked up by an rv by chauntelle, one of the craigslist people we were ridesharing with to get to burning man.
- went to chauntelle’s best friend (and ex-fiance)’s house and waited around for ages for other people to show up.
- mad packing and shit, and the other people who showed up were dani — this chick who really likes cooking and bought SO much food, andreas — this gay argentinian guy, and kelsey — this younger girl who just was talking about wanting to get fucked up! at burning man.
- we were trying to attach a trailer to the rv but the hitch didn’t quite fit and needed to be turned upside-down to work, so dani’s dad (who had gone with her two years in a row to previous burning mans) had to go to the hardware store to get equipment and get stuff fixed for us… quite nice of him!

- blahblah. long ride. mostly slept and i got one of the best spots in the hizouse, woOooOooO! slept like a baby.
- all the other girls smoked out but i refrained, but they all passed out anyways.
- the rv was kinda scary and i kept waking up because shit was bumping around and it seemed like the trailer was gonna fly off or something. not that it ever did… but we did hit a side rail or something, haha, and dented the outside of the vehicle, woo!!
- was mid-sleeping and mid-texting aaron when i saw andreas and chauntelle smoke some stuff which turned out to be speed! woo! felt a little strange shortly thereafter but not sure if it was all imagined in my head or if i did get kinda high because they were smoking it right inside and i was right next to them.
- lalala.

July 8, 2009

trnsfirgmers sucks.xican

The new Transformers movie blows chunks, dude. I was SOOOOO bored. Too much action makes Vivian sleepy.

At least in the preview before it, there was this lovely quote in one of the commercials:

“Movies take your breath away. In reality, some diseases do too.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAH.

So, the night before, I’d hung out with Aaron from Nurses and he and John walked me home from Hippo Hardware to the Multnomah house… which was essentially 2.5 miles one way. HAHA. And they had to walk back. :{ Sadface. But I wasn’t wearing nearly enough clothes because I’d ditched my warm weather clothes in Josh’s car after we went to Ashland, because it was so godamn hot in Ashland I didn’t possibly think it could be freezing in Portland. But it was, godammit! Or at least my cold weather tolerance REALLY sucks now. AAAAAAH.

That day, Cole, Brian, and I had gone to eat Mexican food, and Cole had freaked out a bit because his pork tacos had guac on it… he literally tried to eat it but gagged and had to go outside, haha. I guess he likes the flavor OK but simply can’t handle the texture X:

We headed back and basically just sat at this bar for a while. Lottsaaa sitting. And shooting the shit. And sitting. They basically just downed beers after beers and I guess later that night got cut off from that place, haha. Cole was saying that he felt like he had to entertain me, and I’m just like… I so don’t care… I will totally sit here and watch you guys drink beers all afternoon. And did that we did.

Aaron picked me up probably around 6? or 7? I don’t remember. And we headed over to some venue I forget the name of at the moment. Some band he likes was playing that evening, and we sat down to watch the first one, but decided they were too “dad” aka too much like a bunch of dads playing alt-country, and it was just really boring, so we left. Prior to that, some guy was chatting him up… some ex-Portlander who was currently living in Taiwan and involved in the music industry there… and I guess felt really comfortable in the music scene there and was staying there for musical purposes, haha. There was some attempt to describe Nurses’ sound because it’s kinda psychedelic-pop, but most people don’t seem to understand what that is and expect like a radio-friendly sound, or something. Weird.

So we left and just went to walk around, and Aaron knows everyone and their motherfucking mothers. It’s ridiculous, seriously. We walked down the street a bit and were talking about drugs and he was telling me this lovely story about cocaine-of-a-key-in-the-bathroom-of-a-shitty-sports-bar, saying that they were playing at this sports bar where the TV was on while they were playing their set… and how it could’ve been construed as really pathetic and really sad for a musician or it could’ve been construed as really hilarious and amazing, and that he took the latter route of thinking, haha. So interest. Anyway, while we were talking about drugs, and were half a block down from this one house, some guy called his name and we turned around and went back. Turned out they were some workers from the Doug Fir, where Nurses had just played a show, and we sat and chilled with them for a while. There was weed offerings, … hash offerings, actually… which I generally would have been whatevers about, but given the fact we had JUST been talking about drugs, they were wholly necessary to partake in.

We were there for a while and Aaron was talking a lot and going off about haha pretty weird shit like Michael Jackson and how Michael Jackson was probably only more famous than Prince because he came with a lot more baggage… and there was some talk about Nostradamus… haha… there was also a STOP sign pointing right at the house door when one comes out, making for funny jokes about how people living in the house would just feel down about life and demotivated everyday without really knowing why. Haha. At one point, Aaron was like, “I hate to ask you guys this, but do you by chance have some… AGUA?” And he went inside with one of the girls to get some agua and it took them quite a while to come out. In that interim time, the people at the Doug Fir were basically telling me how amazing their show at the Doug Fir was, and how they actually sat through and watched a set… and basically, if you work at a venue, music becomes tiring at some points, I’m sure… but that the Nurses set was actually good enough to make the workers actually want to watch it. Which is crazy amazing cool.

Anyway, when Aaron and this chick finally came back, he’s like, “If I had to rate your apartment from 1 to 10, I’d rate it FANTASTIC!”

Shortly after this, we got going on our way, and randomly turned some streets and ran into John, who was freaking hiding behind a trashcan. It was only a little surprising, haha. Guess he’d seen us coming. He launched quickly into this story about how he was scared because he’d decided to take a walk through a graveyard after going to dinner, and that he had seen five fresh graves with an entire Russian family in them, haha. Fucked up!!!!!!!!!!! Aaron mentioned to him that the Doug Fir people were just down the street, and we hatched a plan where John would basically go back and say some of the exact phrases that Aaron did, like about AGUA and FANTASTIC and Michael Jackson. Some talk about him rolling around on the ground with fake seizure action and then screaming out random phrases like that. Haha.

He went back, and we went on our way, but soon decided we needed to head back to the venue anyway. So we backtracked, too, and crossed paths with John before he had done the deed. Right when we got there, though, he asked for some AGUA and I guess the guy who lived there gave him a SLIGHT look of WTF but not enough to catch on. Once he’d gotten water, he came back out and said that he rated the place FANTASTIC, and THAT they got, but later, when he referenced Michael Jackson, Prince, and Nostradamus, the shit went completely over their heads, haha. And I guess they answered with all seriousness when he asked whether they thought that Nostradamus had predicted Michael Jackson’s death. Come ON, kids!! Come ON!!

Anyway, getting slightly sick on the 2.5 mile walk home was fine, and I woke up feeling fine the next day. But drinking a Cherry Vitamin Water prior to watching Transformers, which I prefaced to Cole prior to drinking it, “I hope I don’t get sick drinking this. I’m allergic to cherries,” was death. I drank about half of it, and halfway through Transformers, my head was pounding and I was freezing my fucking ass off. It was ridiculous! It lasted all that night and I could only be cranky pants, haha, and then Jeanette called me and told me she didn’t know if she could go to Burning Man, and that made me even MORE cranky pants!!!

May 21, 2009

infuriating conversation, 101.

My roommate woke me up this morning with something along the lines of, “He’s so gay. He’s so gay and so Indian.”… with regards to his current boss at the Indian restaurant. This is his third time making references to Indians in a racist manner, and I fucking hate it.

Which prompts a conversation I had with him the other day. I was taking about Burning Man. The rest of the convo went like this:

Him: Are you still going to New York?
Me: I don’t know. Depends on the money.
Him: People say that money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does.
Me: Not in my life…
Him: Well, I think because I’m a man. To men, it’s true.
Me: (Otherwise speechless and walking away to downstairs) Jigga, please. Don’t even give me that shit.
Him: (Calling after me on the stairs) Women like me because I hold the promise of money.

~__~ I don’t know the last time I have associated with a human such as this, and it’s an interesting experience. It quite tests my patience. In many ways, it’s like, well, he’s Mongolian and immigrated here when he was ten, and then grew up in fucking Ohio… so it’s like the worst of both worlds — Asian ignorant parents and white ignorant surroundings — but FUCK, man. Patience-testing. There’s a lesson to be learned here, about patience, really, there is. But it’s realllllllllllly hard for me. Yet in a way, it takes a while for people to shed all that they know about life. BUT FUCK, MAN.

April 24, 2009

back in the bay area.

Three and a half weeks later, the trip to Peru is over. Now I am at my parent’s house in Livermore, in the Bay Area of California. Things would probably be weirder if I wasn’t so damn tired. Already planning my next vacation, maybe? I’d like to go to a Spanish-speaking country and REALLY work on my Spanish. Leaning towards Mexico and Mexico City because it’s close and cheap. I’d also like to go to Burning Man, though. All things cost money. Snagnamit. TBD. ~__~

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.