Burning Man time

[Chaos.Tiki]

Its that time of year for me when I take my Arcade Machine to Burning Man. And this is the first year that I will have GameEx displaying all the games.

For any users that are attending the festival i am camping at 330 and H-I in the Flamology camp. You will see the big blue tarp and my ? box arcade machine. Stop by and let me know what you think of my machine!

And once again, thanks everyone here for helping me get GameEx set up and making my machine feel professional. I'm really excited for this year and cant wait for people to play the games (and drunken morning Karaoke!)

i will talk to you all when i get back!

[nullPointer]

Have fun at Burning Man Tiki! Gotta admit I'm a bit envious (or at least me from 15 years ago is super-envious). Thanks for repping GameEx at the festival! Enjoy the debauchery in moderation (see that's the sad old 'responsible' me talking now ... me from 15 years ago asks, "What is this 'moderation' you speak of?"). Enjoy the festivities and be safe!

[KRC]

Have a good time CT, it's a shame that they don't have anything like this near me, all they have are sci-fi gatherings for people infatuated with Dr Who and Star Trek.

I think maybe the only gathering I could have is me and Simbamame as we live a couple of miles from each other.

[Adultery]

Youre closer than any GameExErs are to me!

[KRC]

Youre closer than any GameExErs are to me!

You never know, there maybe someone close to you who's not active in the forums.

I was stunned to learn that one of my xbl friends lived round the corner from me, very freaky .

[nullPointer]

<ThreadHijack>

It would be rather interesting to put together a GameEx users map through Google Maps (or equivalent), in which users could add their location.

OTOH I’m not sure I want you guys knowing exactly where I live.

</ThreadHijack>

[KRC]

<ThreadHijack>

It would be rather interesting to put together a GameEx users map through Google Maps (or equivalent), in which users could add their location.

OTOH I’m not sure I want you guys knowing exactly where I live.

</ThreadHijack>

Me neither, Ive already been burgled once

[Adultery]

My father in law is the sheriff here. I'm not worried. Lol!

[KRC]

My father in law is the sheriff here. I'm not worried. Lol!

Is he really, or are you joking?

If he is cool, are there any perks to being a relative of a sheriff ?

[Adultery]

No he really is.

I mean were very close (our families get along great and hang out a lot) so I get to hear about things before the public does, always get law insight, and I get to ride at high rates of speed in the front seat of a souped up Dodge Charger.

If I ever call a cop they seem to get here a lot faster too!

A couple weeks ago I stymied their tech department by jailbreaking his iPad just to show how easy it was. Blew their minds and that was fun!

I can't lie. There's definitely perks.

My wife just got a BS in Criminal Justice so she's persuing a career as a probation officer. I guess were a law family. Lol!

[Draco1962]

I think a map that drills down to the postal code level would be the most I would recommend. EmuMovies has one that maps based upon the city/stat/country you input as part of your profile.

[KRC]

My brother-in-law is detective chief inspector for the police borough of our area, but there are no perks for me unfortunately.

All I know is that he deals with high-end cases involving scum of the earth.

[celly]

A good friend of mine I actually met from a file share forum a few years ago. He ended up living down the freeway from me. We've been good friends ever since.

Back on topic real quick, CT I live in the Sacramento area and have never been to a Burning Man. My work sends me to Sparks NV. all the time and I get to see some of the "lively" folk who attend. Man, they have some cool looking bike floats and car props.

[Chaos.Tiki]

OK, I am back from the Burn and it was amazing! GameEx really made the Artcade very presentable and I did not encounter a single problem with it on playa! Unfortunately, my new X-Arcade tankstick did not handle so well... mamosas are very hard to clean out of the buttons. and the playa dust obliterated the trackball.

I will post my overall review of the burn here as well when Im done writing it.

But I will say... having the machine set up in Spanky's Wine Bar was such a good idea...

At Celly, there are very lively people there... and many of them were surprised to see a functioning arcade machine on the playa. So to surprise burners who drive giant fire breathing dragons with a simple arcade machine... priceless.

[Draco1962]

Sounds like a good time was had by all! Glad it was a success for you!

[nullPointer]

Welcome back Tiki! Glad to hear that everything went so well (except for the Tankstick obviously, bit of a pity that). Looking forward to hearing the full review!

[KRC]

Glad to hear it was good CT, looking forward to the full review also.

[Chaos.Tiki]

This is a repost of a post that I posted, It is quite lengthy.

Ok, so I have to warn you off the bat, this is a long story, but this story takes place long before the burn. But there are reasons for everything. This year was quite the interesting year at Burning Man. It was no easy task to make it there since my camp got screwed when the ticket sales got screwed. I didn't think I was going to make it this year. Then I got the call from Flamology (my local fire spinning conclave) that they needed drummers to perform for their spinners in hopes of getting to Burning Man to perform in the great circle. I saw this opportunity and hopped on board. After many months of work, our troop leader came to us and said that he needed a new drum troop leader as the original one could no longer do the job for personal reasons. This was the moment I knew I was going to the burn. I immediately jumped on that without a second thought.

About that time, a little fairy breezed into my space and handed me a rope dart. She told me to spin it, and I did. That's when the real magic started to happen. I made a huge connection with that thing and it began to assimilate itself into my core being. I was addicted. I couldn't stop playing with the dart, and every time I picked it up I learned something new, and some of my friends started to egg me on to light it up. I didnt yet as I felt I was too new and a bit scared of the fire.

Now, the word finally dropped that we were not accepted into the great circle as a fire troop. It was a bit dissapointing to everyone. But we got the word that though we did not get in as the fire troop, they were going to give us another opportunity, to help hold space in the great circle as sentinals. (no not the giant mutant killing robots from X-Men, nerd) Our job would be to hold giant torches to help separate all of the fire troops from running into each other and cause even more chaos around the man burn. Now, my hope was renewed, I still have that chance. The only problem is, there was not going to be enough sentinal tickets to bring the entire tribe with us. And being a drummer, we were low priority for those sentinal tickets as we were not experienced fire handlers. I waited in anticipation for the final word, just hoping that I would get lucky, and after a couple weeks I got that word. And it was yes. I got that sentinal ticket. There were many hurt feelings from those who didn't get one so they opted to not return to practices. So now being the only lone drummer, I decided it was time to light up that rope dart, and it was magical.

Now I had a new problem, now that I knew I was going to get a ticket for the burn, I needed to find a way to bring my Artcade Machine to playa, and without the help of my camp, I wasn't sure how this was, or if it could be done. I didn't even have transportation to the burn for myself, let alone my 600 pounds plus arcade machine. I began begging everywhere I could for that ride but it seemed that it was getting grim. Everyone was full up and couldn't fit me even without the machine. It was very discouraging and I began to hit a sort of dark place until a good friend stepped up and said that she would bring the machine up but it would have to be a week early since she had early entry. SUCCESS!!!! I got a ride, but now a new challenge presented itself, I have no early entry. Finally another one of my good friends said that I can crash out in his apartment for a week in Reno and he'd find me a ride to get to the burn from there. At this point I get word that I have a task to do once I get to the burn for a ride home, I have to find a woman I have never met from Portland and get my roomate's van from her and bring it home.

I helped load the truck up and offered to drive it to Reno for them. I get dropped off at my other friend's apartment and shortly after I realized I made a couple of dumb mistakes. I left my food and my bathroom supplies in the truck that is heading to playa. Stoopid Tiki! Had to tap into the gas money for the return trip to get supplies so I didn't stick up my friends place and be a bum by eating all of his food. Now this was a difficult week. I was going stir crazy without a ride to leave the apartment, so it was all Gameboy and World's Dumbest Criminals/Tenants. After 4 days of this get word that the ride my friend set up in Reno for me fell though due to the fact that U-Haul hates burners and cancelled their order. Now I'm stranded in Reno with only a day left to get to the burn. Cue another freakout... SDP&KOG*F[OSDH[iOSD!#$FHASD)^FOHA@PA!!!!! After a few calls to friends at home, one of my fire troop friends hits me back saying he found me a ride with some other peeps in the troop who could squeeze me and my clothes into their already cramped truck. (a quick side note, this guy was someone I met literally the year before as I picked him up because he was stranded in Vegas needing a ride to the burn) So after several hours, the truck full of my saviors arrived to rescue me from Reno. I promptly offered to drive since they were all so tired and I had done nothing but vegitate for a week straight.

After waiting for hours in the line we made it into the burn. I get to the Flamolgy camp and set up. Now it was time to start the great scavenger hunt. I had a huge list of people to meet up with and only a short ammount of time to do it, and I didn't have a clue where some were staying. The most pressing things first, I had to find my camping gear and arcade machine and I also had to find my roomate's van. My stuff was easy enough since I knew it was at Spankey's Wine Bar. Once it was located I asked some campmates to help me move it back to camp. This was no easy task since Spankey's was literally on the other side of town from my camp. It took 4 trips to get all of my stuff to camp. I got a tow from a random stranger when I hauled my bedding. My friends helped me push half of the arcade machine along with my stools and bag-o-stuffed animals across open playa. The other half of the machine I pushed solo as I felt tired of asking for help since it felt like that was all I had been doing all along. Once at camp I set up and began to run the machine at dark.

This was the moment I realized I live at the edge of nowhere and there wasn't many people who were going to walk by to play the machine. Just as I was about to shut down my troop lit up. I felt this was a good time to try and use that feature from my new GameEx front end program, the jukebox. PC speakers and wind make it hard to hear but I did the best I could. After we got done spinning our fire, I announced to my troop that tomorrow morning I was going to wake up and start doing Karaoke (also another feature of GameEx, I know I am pimping that name out but I swear by that program as it made my machine turn from a PC in-a-box to a real boy).

Im going to start this by saying sorry. Sorry to those who didn't get the memo because they weren't there for it or weren't paying attention when I announced it. So for those who don't know, my arcade machine does karaoke, but since GameEx doesn't have native microphone support yet I found a fun workaround. Sing really loud. If you know me (and some of you didn't beforehand) I can get loud. So, sorry that I became your karaoke alarm clock. And that those who heard the alarm go off, came over and joined in on the early morning noise, makeing it exponentially louder. But hey, you didn't get that memo, and now you know. And the more you know...... rainbows.

Now that karaoke at camp was over I was faced with a delema. My neighborhood was a bit quiet and dull. Great for rest, not so good for attracting people to my art. I decided then that I should take the Artcade back to Spankey's wine bar. Remember folks... this is across town. Instead of taking the short path (straight across open playa) and baking in the hot desert sun, I would take the longer path through the city streets, that way I could stop at some of the cool sites and get drinks... lots of drinks. Now this was a fun adventure. Well worth the effort that went into pushing this extremely heavy ? box. So many people had to stop and ask what was in the box and at one point there was an enire bar full of people chanting "what's in the box." Now this is a fun game because I had a different answer for each person, it went from two fighting midgets, dreams, a dead mafia crime lord's body I was looking to dispose of, and many others that I just cant remember. The answers would get weirder as I was pumped full of all kinds of liquor. (a side note, in mundane society I won't drink liquor, just beer) So after several hours of fairly hard labor I was sufficiently toasted, on alchohol and the sun.

I arrive at Spankey's Wine Bar to find them doing karaoke. So a little background about Spankey's, since you need to understand what this place is. It's a BDSM bar. So inside the dance floor there are platforms for dancers and assorted racks with straps for those who are into a little spanking and whipping action. Out front there is a large mechanical ass slapping machine that sounds and looks about as intimidating as you might imagine it to be. Out back there are showers in cages for those who want to make a display of their showing action on playa and a covered room with the words "The Slammer" spray painted on it. I will leave what that is to your immagination. So back to the story, my friend (who took the machine up) comes up to me saying I need to sing because they weren't getting enough other voices going. Now if you haven't guessed, I'm a karaoke clown, I can not resist the urge to get on that stage and go full, so this was not going to be any exception. I hop on that rickety stage that looked like it was about to come crashing down and started to sing Baby Got Back. Now if you've heard me do this song before, then what happens next should be no suprise. Now Spankey's was backed with many of the most attractive women I've seen (well BM is all together) and I proceed to rock the house. The dancer boxes quickly filled up with these super sexy half naked woman shaking their asses at me. The dance floor is jumping with at least 30 more people all sexy, women and men. I've done that song countless times, but never was it as sexy as this. Best Karoke EVER! I parked the box my a suspension rig and started to drag the cart back to my camp for the other half of the machine.

Along the way I decided it would be best to do the next part of my scavenger hunt, find the woman I've never met before and locate my roommate's van. Lucky for me, I was smart and told her to register at playa info. I got her adress and away I went. Along the way I had people ask me about the empty cart so I would make up stuff again and gave a girl a ride in it. Eventually I ran across some neighbors from previous burns and used their water spicket to cool myself off. After a few drinks and a couple of rounds of "bring the girl into camp for a drink" I ran off to the van. I went to the camp I was looking for and behold there was the van. I finally met that girl I never met before and she informed me that there were some fun things in there that would better suit me than her. I gladly took them off of her hands. (little glowy fun things, not substances you dirty minded people)

Now its time to take the second half of the box. Again, I didn't ask for help because I'm stubborn like that and the machine was my burden to bear. This time I opted for the short route. Halfway through open playa, a tire on the cart blows out. Now im stuck in the middle of nowhere, not even close to any art or camps for shade. I can't push the cart for another 2 miles on a flat so there was only 1 thing I could do. Once again, I had to beg for a ride. And the only things around were these large and complicated art cars. I've learned that tho the art cars can cary the machine, it won't fit into most of them. So I flagged about 3 cars down who all refused because there was no way to fit it on board. Finally a truck pulls up full of a bunch of angry looking burners (presumably from Death Guild) and they gave me a lift to Spankey's.

So I'm to the point in my week where things are going to get a bit tough to explain in chronological order so I'm going to have to section them off into their appropriate sub categories. First things first, the playa girlfriend. A girl from Vegas in my troop was pretty interested in me so we met up and after that, spent a considerable ammount of time together. Now this is special to me because in my 5 years I've been at Burning Man, I have never had a playa girlfriend. We took a few tours through the city and made a bit of an adventure out of it. We stopped by the Wall Street installation, (it was a group of 5 wooden towers about 4 to 6 stories tall) where we went to the top and I began shouting at all of the "peons on the ground" that I stole all of their money and that I own everything including their government and even the skin on their asses. I commanded to them, that they must worship me by giving me all of their possesions and let me claim the rite of "prima nocta." After a few laughs and a couple "fuck yous" from the ground, we went off into the night.

Next up we found a large metal spinning thing that resembled a UFO with a man standing in the middle of it throwing blue triangle pillows at people. We decided that this wasn't going to fly when we were hit. We through them back and eventually I jumped on board and hit that man at point plank. Then I couldn't help it, the power of the spacecraft was too powerful and I succumed to the temptations and joined the dark side. I began to hurl those pillows back out and accedently hit my playa girlfirend square in the head. I hopped off and she mocked me a bit then we were off. After a bit of riding we smelled this amazing smell comming from what appeared to be a small fishing vessel. We walked over and discovered that this was the legendary tuna camp, they were cooking fresh tuna caught by their deceased captain at his memorial art peice. They gave us a couple of thise steaks and it made me mouthgasm. Best Tuna Ever.

Our next stop on the love tour brought us to a fire art installation called Super Street Fire. Of couse something videogame related would bring me over there and I will say, totally worth it. There were two platforms that players could stand on that were wearing motion sensor gloves. In between the platforms was a field full of at least 20 fire poofers that would poof in sequence as they travelled from one platform to the other. So I challenged my playa girlfriend to a match and she accepted. Fireballs and hadookens were being sent back and forth so fast that it was hard to know what was going on, at the same time it was exhillerating standing in the field full of flame throwers. I hate to say it, but my playa girlfriend kicked my ass. I lost both rounds. She claims it was revenge for the pillow thing, I still say she is a button masher, lol. After exploring an old sunken pirate ship sticking out of the playa and walking around a couple of burning art pieces we retired and proceeded to make alot of playa love. Good times.

Now that I got the mushy lovey dove stuff out of the way I got a couple other things to cover before we are done. First and quite simply is running the machine at Spankey's. This was awesome because it blows people away that see a working arcade machine on playa. Many people say that I'm pretty ballsy to have an art piece centered around a computer, as electronics and playa go badly together. But thats nothing that vent fans and filters can't get a bit of a handle on. I encountered an individual who just happened to be familiar with what my arcade machine really is and even requested a few titles that I had like Streets of Rage Remake. So I show him the Normal Super Mario Bros and a few Fusion Fangaming titles like Megaman DL2 and Xeno Fighters R. And once again, I pimped out the GameEx software to him. lol. I will say its hot to see super sexy half naked women dancing just feet away from your arcade machine.

Now for the other and major part of my burn, the rope dart and my obligations to Flamology and Black Rock City in general. I did a considerable ammount of fire spinning on the playa. The wide open field was exhillerating. I had no fear of hitting anyone or anything and I was able to just go. Everytime I saw a fire spinner, I would ask to dip with them and they were always cool about letting me use their fuel. But then again, how could you say no to Mario? Alot of people complamented my skill and my willingness to not dress like a tribal hippy when spinning. This burn was also a great opportunaty to learn more about my newfounded craft. At home there aren't many rope darters around to help show me more stuff so everytime I saw one I made the effort to pay attention to what they are doing. I have come to the conclusion that I am a bit weak in the shooting department and I'm moderate at wraps. But I'm good at comboing those same wraps. I also met a woman who was more than happy to teach me about the relation to warrior Tiki culture and fire spinning that inspired me to incorparate one of my greatest weaknesses in my performance and make it a part of it. I have trouble smiling when I spin. I get so focused in what I'm doing that I forget that I am performing, so instead of being a happy Tiki spinner, I should take it to a darker place and be more scary warrior Tiki. I think that will make quite the impression on the audience.

So enough with the technical stuff and back to the story at hand. Flamology obligations. I was here at Burning Man to be a sentinel and by damned if I wasn't going to do that. Fast forward past boring meetings and having a watch on playa, blah blah blah. Its burn night. I am positioned in the 4th position facing the 2:00 side of the playa wearing my Fire Mario costume. The anticipation of the burn is killing me as I stand on the inside of the great circle watching the massive crowd forming in front of me. Finally, the cart starts comming where I have to light my giant torch from. I stick the tip of my torch in that firey oven and I feel the rush of power flow. (dirty, dirty minded people) I was holding space. This was huge, I really felt like I was a part of something much bigger than myself. As soon as the fire conclave finished performing, I collected my supplies and joined Flameology at our viewing spot inside the great circle. At first things seemed pretty usual. The fireworks went off with no problems, the man was beginning to burn, then the usual big explosion that everyone cheers for. The man falls off of the building he is standing on, but that building is looking oddly intact. It just keeps burning and burning.

This is where things change dramatically and I will never forget this part as long as I live. My best guess as to what happened was that the building was made from a very strong and slow burning wood. The building stood there burning and burning and burning. The flames suddenly shot inward then it exploded again. Very large and very hot. In front of use the fire started spinning and then turned into a tornado and came right for us. The fire tornado rained chunks of cinder the size of softballs to the ground. The cinder would explode into smaller chucks is it made contact with the ground, and it was raining all over us, fire tornado still comming at us. Now at this moment the one thing that ran through my mind was the woman at the meeting saying if anything goes wrong to just get out of there, forget the tools, if you gotta think about it then its too late. So my ass was gone, I was already behind my entire group and the kerosine buckets and torches were sitting up front of the group. There was no way I was fighting through group to grab stuff. I will give them credit and this is credit to them, while I got my ass out of there like a little frightened bitch, they grabbed all of the fuel and torches (while it was still raining fire from the sky and tornados were flying at us). So many kudos to you all, I started to think how to grab them but then those words from the meeting rang in my head, If you have to think about it... besides even all the firefighters were running. We regrouped further away and continued to watch the burn. The man's tower was throwing one fire tornado after another in our direction but we were far enough away that the tornados didn't rain cinder from the sky. Best Burn Night Ever! So much action happened that it felt like it was ripped straight from Independence Day.

Don't worry folks, the end is comming. I brought up the struggle to get to the man for a reason. All week I heard about this trailor that exploded out in city at the very beginning of the burn. On the last day of the burn I am approached by a kid involved with the Flamology community in Vegas. He tells me that he is stranded here with his trailor because the ride the brought his trailor bailed out after a couple days on the playa and asked if I could help him get back to Vegas. Remembering the trouble I had getting to the man this year, I felt responcible for helping these people get home. Then I discovered that their trailor was right next to said exploded trailor and they also caught damage from it. So I stay 1 extra night to get a good nights rest and loaded them up.

Ok, a couple final thoughts that couldn't be fit into the story so it may seem random. Remember to get a fishing permit for Black Rock Desert. Bike shopping is best done after the burn, I got a half dozen working cruzer bikes that way. I finally cought a squirrel. Her name was Love Nuts. The ticket image for the man is totally ripped from the Perv's camp spicket by the side of the road. Best Swag Ever. I was watching Fullmetal Alchemist before this burn and after this review of the burn, I will say that Equivilent Exchange is my personal theme for this year.

[Adultery]

Wow! Now THAT was a story!