Well I kept quiet in order to not feed the troll, and now look. I'm proud of this tribe.

This was my ninth year in a row at Black Rock City. There are people there of every shape and age. The most common denominator is an open mind. Our camp is very music oriented with an incamp stage and live music on our Artcar. BRC is the only busy city I've been where 80% of strangers you pass in the street look you in the eye and say a warm hello. Too "pseudo-intellectual" for you? Fine. Reno also has a Rib Cookoff that week. Try that instead.

The are plenty of BM tribes to check out. You can get tickets at burningman.com. The gallon of water a day is really a minimum unless you plan not to to bathe in any way for a week. It is a harsh and unforgiving environment weatherwise. Do some research and plan well.

I always am annoyed by people who trash Burning Man without ever having been there. I myself have been up and down with the experience. Sometimes my wife and say say we're taking the next year off and going to Hawaii, spend less money and be clean. Yet I can look up from my desk and there's a confirmation of payment for this year's tickets. Go figure.

Id say its better to have too much water than not enough. i am planning on 20 gallons for ten days. better to have to much and share than too little and want.

The Scientific Method...IT WORKS!

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena :
- There are approx. 120,000 people registered on TRIBE...at least half of these are from the West Coast and particularly the Bay Area...many, if not most of these are 'adults' who attempt to portray themselves as unconventional, if not bohemian (hence, the Burning Man phenomenon) Cultured and highly literate, and one would assume readers and admirerers of the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, the late West Coast journalist and literary icon.

- All the above notwithstanding, at the present moment, in this whole wide wilderness of unfettered literacy called TRIBE there are 1067 references to Hunter S. Thompson and less than 130 of those were posted before 20 Feb. 2005, the day of HST's suicide.
From these facts one cannot help but think that there wasn't much particular interest in the writings or persona of HST before he was dead, at which time there came an outpouring of obviously feigned 'emotion', testimonials, anecdotes of the 'I met him once' variety, etc.


2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena :
-By and large, the membership of www.tribe.net is composed of fashionably non-conformist-bandwagon-wannabe-hipsters lacking both intellectual and personal integrity.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations:
- In contrast to the above observations and data, Tribe contains 2554 references to the teen pop idol Brittney Spears. Cursory observation reveals the content of most of these references to be 'I fucked her', 'I could have fucked her' 'I want to fuck her'' 'I hate her guts' 'I wish she was dead'.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments:
-Pending feedback and the completion of data reports by my colleagues.

...yup

-FK

Dude, id thank you, but i never asked you to go... Nor did I vote for the guys that sent you those places... I am (and we are) not responsible for your choice to join the military. I am sorry that you have so much anger, but I didnt do it, i didnt want it done. You made choices that lead you to where you are, and you can make choices to move on, it is really obvious every time you write that you are unhappy with your life. If it is so miserable than I encourage you to make the choices you need to make to find peace (no i am not advocating "the unthinkable" I am advocating that you search for some inner peace). i would say that you should be thankfull to be alive and have the use of both hands. you have been blessed with life; enjoy it.

And as to the poor me attitude; dude we all have suffering in our lives that could ruin us if we let it. I get every person on this board could tell a story that would make a grown man weep. The thing is we aren't hear to share our tragedies, we are here to talk about music.

And there are many kinds of roughing it.... yours was one. Camping in a wilderness is another. Given the choice I would prefer the kind of roughing it where you dont get shot at.