'Self Medicated', a film about youth drug addiction and radical intervention has been making the rounds at the festivals for the past few years but is screening in Seattle this weekend. After watching the trailer I get the feeling that this might be a little hokey, but that it could also be another 'Traffic', in that it sheds light on drug use in a way never seen on film before. I don't know, you decide...

I just got this through the tubes:

Hi, folks. This is the *alleged* arsonist/douchebag/attention whore himself, writing you from Fernley, NV, where I have been chilling out for a couple of days.

Having read your various comments, a few things should be addressed. First, this operation was extensively planned well in advance, and the number one thing to Black Rock Intelligence was that NO ONE be hurt. If you people actually knew us, you'd know that we have an extensive background in doing things exactly like this. In fact, we were on the ground for some thirty minutes before ascent, scoping the scene and clearing people in order to minimize any possiblity of injury to others. We were aided by several people who were recruited on the playa the night of this burn (BRI has no idea who they are, so don't bother asking).

Second, the operation was planned in conjunction with the lunar eclipse because Black Rock Intelligence knew that another event at the trash fence would draw the bulk of lunatics to it, rather than to the Man. In fact, one of our peripheral operatives aided in getting as many people to the fence event as possible to help BRI achieve its goal of zero injuries.

Third, word went out across the playa days in advance that Black Rock Intelligence was pulling this op. This word continued to go out right up to the moment that our chief operator began the arduous climb up the guide wire. As you can all see from the results, BRI performed flawlessly in this regard.

We could give a fuck less what you all think of us for doing this. Most of you are newbies who have been drawn in by the semi-religious nature of the event, or maybe just the easy drugs and easier sex. You have nothing to offer the event other than your fucking money and obedience. You spend the rest of your lives in mortal fear of everything that insurance companies tell you to fear, and pretend that you're free and clear because you spend four days at a desert bacchanal where spinelessness is not only encouraged but genetically replicated for implementation in successive generations. In short, you are the swine of which Thompson spoke. Get over yourselves.

Some of us live quite well without fear. Doing so requires the ultimate in what Burning Man used to represent: personal responsibility and individual liberty. That's all been lost in the last decade of Burning Man's history. Consider this operation a history lesson that was desperately needed.

One final note: Black Rock Intelligence has been permanently disbanded. All other operatives have made the ultimate sacrifice by swallowing their L-pills to avoid being captured alive. I am the sole surviving member of BRI and ask that you respect my mourning period for those who gave their lives so that this operation was a complete success.

Paul D. Addis
Fernley, NV

Can't make this stuff up... 'Big Brother', China's most famous heroin addicted elephant, is being released back into the wild after rehab. Which begs the question, how do you contain a junky elephant?

A drooling and twitching Big Brother had to be transported to a special park in the neighbouring island province of Hainan for treatment, after cold turkey proved so tortuous at a local centre that "even its iron chain could not contain it", the paper said.

After being diagnosed a heroin addict, park authorities in Hainan spent a year gradually weaning "Big Brother" off its dependence through methadone, regular bathing and massage.

I think everyone can go for a little methadone, regular bathing, and massage. Don't you?

I found this op-ed today which dares to take an edgy anti-opium stance (way to put yourself out there man!). And like many people who are passionate about what they believe, author George Putnam throws it down like it is. Some tasty bits follow:

It is this reporter's opinion that the Bush administration has decided not to destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan even though the president previously linked the Afghan drug trade directly to terrorism.

...

Opium grows on 477,000 acres of land in Afghanistan. That’s a 17 percent increase over last year’s acreage. Afghanistan now accounts for 93 percent of the global production of opium which provides the raw material for heroin.

U.S. forces, if allowed, could destroy the crop using aerial spraying techniques. But President Hamid Karzai rejects U.S. offers to spray the illegal crop claiming the herbicide would affect livestock, other crops, and water supplies.

Further opposition reportedly comes from the CIA which claims destruction of the Afghan opium would destabilize the Pakistani government … would threaten to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf’s government if the crops were destroyed.

Arguments like these always seem to boggle my mind. If destroying poppy fields causes more damage and instability, then doing it on purely moral grounds would be a disaster. The opium market would not dry up overnight, and the supply would simply move somewhere else, probably into Pakistan and Iran, or even Venezuela. Poppies can grow all over the place. Poisoning Afghanistan accomplishes nothing but a temporary setback in cartel supply chain logistics. Today's organized drug syndicates can adapt way faster than Wal-Mart.

Here's a big story for all you rugby fans about the pressures of being a star athlete. After being popped with a tab of E in his pocket at a 'routine search' (thanks terrorists) at London's Kings Cross Station, rugby player Andrew Johns confessed to taking MDMA for years to escape the pressure of stardom.

"For 10 years I've taken it on and off, generally during the off-season.

"There's times during the season when I've run the gauntlet and played Russian roulette and taken them.

"There were times when we'd be playing the biggest game of the season and it (taking ecstasy) would be in the back of my mind.

"I wouldn't say I had a drug dependency - I do it occasionally - (but) I had an alcohol problem.

"I used it (ecstasy) to escape the pressure.

Because of his recent troubles with the law, Johns will no longer be considered for the World Cup team. But I have to ask, what does "run the gauntlet" mean? Does that mean he takes a chance at failing a piss test during the regular season, but does it anyway? Or is this some crazy rugby team locker-room thing I don't even want to know about...

After extensive internal review, NASA has decided that they didn't do anything wrong and there is no problem at all.

No word on whether the person who wrote this overwrought article about the Lunar Eclipse was stoned, though.

An interesting study found on Science Daily suggests that the cognitive effects of alcoholism (brain damage) can be measured in how well alcoholics respond to emotions and danger. From the article:

Alcoholics tend to be deficient in both cognitive and emotional processes. Previously, most brain-imaging research focused on cognition rather than emotion. A new study uses functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) to examine emotional processing, finding that alcoholics have stunted abilities to perceive dangerous situations.

"We knew that alcoholics show a deficit in accurate recognition of facial emotions," said Jasmin B. Salloum, research scientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and corresponding author for the study. "This can lead to insensitivity to, and overestimation and/or misattribution of, certain facial expressions."

To quantify these results the research team then tried to pinpoint the precise areas where damage was most acute:

Results showed that the greatest deficit among the alcohol-dependent individuals was in brain activation during decoding of negative emotional expressions, particularly in the affective division of the anterior cingulate cortex. The anterior cingulate is part of the prefrontal brain area.

"The cingulate is involved in many higher order executive functions such as focused attention, conflict resolution and decision making," said Salloum.

Egads!

My thoughts on this recent incident mirror James's in his comment to the listing. I wrote this on another blog, and repost it here:

The first year I went to BM, 1998, about forty different people independently told me in advance that I shouldn't bring along anything that I would be upset if it got dirty, broken, burned, destroyed, or lost.

We build cities with police forces, oppressive laws, fire departments, day jobs, taxes, etc. so we don't have to live our lives in fear of disruption and chaos. That's a good thing; I'm glad I don't have to worry about getting eaten by a lion or blown up in the middle of the night. On the other hand, we all have something inside that needs a bit of chaos; so in a healthy society, we construct ways to allow ourselves a relatively safe slice of escape from all the rules and rigidity of normal life. Carnaval, traditional harvest bacchanals, Burning Man, etc. It's always been this way.

If Burning Man is a place of chaos, then it fulfils this function for us. If Burning Man is a place where people who burn things early get arrested, then it doesn't fulfil this function anymore. There's nothing wrong with places that don't seethe with chaos; in fact, almost all of us who attend Burning Man, and almost everyone else for that matter, choose to live in places of order, not places of anarchy and chaos. No one likes to get eaten by a lion, or killed in his tent by a speeding car at night (which happened in the '90s, and from what I understand was really the trigger for adding rules and order to the event.)

But one does ask oneself, if Burning Man isn't serving this purpose for us, then what is it other than a less-comfortable version of home? Or a staged show, a spectator event, the same year after year? People may have a primal need for an escape from order, but I don't think people have a primal need to get really dirty and uncomfortable just for its own sake. So the more Burning Man becomes like just another city, the less it provides the energy to maintain its own cultural momentum.

I think there are a lot of people who still remember what BM used to be about, and who feel very strongly that the thing it used to be is a lot more important than what it is now. Those people are not thoughtless assholes for working to revitalize the chaos. You might disagree with them, but if you really do then you should ask the organizers to make it clear that Burning Man is not about radical self-expression anymore so those people will know to stay away...

Part two of our ongoing Burning Man saga, where our correspondent looks for "stuff to do" on a hot day in the middle of the desert:

6:07 AM: I didn't sleep very well due to all the noise last night, lots of music and screaming and partying going on all around me. A few times I thought incoming campers were going to drive an RV right over my tent, causing me to shit my pants and run for cover as yellow headlights and the sound of gunning diesel engines sent me scurrying from my tiny nylon shelter. Fortunately I was spared. Perhaps next year I won't set up my tent so close to the road. Also, around 2 AM someone took a piss right next to my tent. I wake up to find a Playa Puddle (a small indentation and dried lake in the mud) right next to my cooler. Charming.

8:15 AM: I'm craving coffee so I head to Center Camp for an espresso, the only thing you can "officially" purchase at Burning Man with cash besides a ticket. On my way I see people cooking breakfast, cleaning camp, washing... It is much more like "camp" than the blinky-light party I remember from last night. The music is now more subdued and mellow. Everyone is still sleeping or chilled out. A few zombies looking like they've been dragged through mud (literally, they were covered with mud) roam the playa amidst morning bike-riders. Hopefully they will sleep before the sun bakes their shell of filth permanently to their bodies.

9:34 AM: After two lattes, an hour of lounging on couches, and a headful of the strange chatter among the local freaks ("Did you get that thing out of your foot yet?" "No, I'm just keeping my shoe on until I leave..."), I decide it's time to head out and find some artistic culture. I walk no more than two minutes before I find "The Alter of Misanthropic Art", which more than lives up to its name. In addition to dismembered action figures and disemboweled stuffed animals pinned to the alter in obscene positions and covered with what appears to be actual blood (chicken blood?), this candle-ringed alter (the candles were not lit, it was morning) was topped by a photo-realstic image of a naked George W. Bush (on all fours, ball-gag in mouth), being ass-reamed by a grotesquely obese Dick Cheney (smiling in ecstasy, leather harness, SS hat, holding a riding crop). The caption, in Gothic lettering reads "NeoCon Love". It looks like a high-res color output from an industrial poster-sized laser printer. I marvel at the Photoshop technique, how much it must have cost to print such an abomination, and what the people at Kinko's (or wherever) must have thought when they printed this thing. As I'm gawking, a balding overweight man with a big bushy beard wearing nothing but a furry loincloth and sandals (a bear?) stands beside me and says, "Sends shivers down your spine..." I nod and say, "Yeah, but in the bad way..." just to make sure he doesn't get any wrong ideas.

As y'all have no doubt heard, the axis mundi of Black Rock City, the Man himself, was set on fire at 2.58 AM yesterday - four days prematurely. Actor/Performer/Asshole Paul Addis has been booked by the local authorities for arson, and is out on bail. But we could probably see this one coming: a few month back, Addis was interviewed for 10 Zen Monkeys, and gave plenty of indication of a simmering instability:

Twelve weeks ago we recorded an interview with Paul Addis — the man who burned the Man and was promptly arrested for arson. And even back then, he was constantly flicking his lighter.

Addis has always had a bug up his butt where Burning Man is concerned. It's not clear when, before this year, he ever attended the festival - but that didn't stop him from expressing some very strong opinions:

"No amount of diffusion filters can give Harvey what he doesn't have: vision or loyalty. Don't fear the Hat, ladies and gentlemen. He's just trying to realize what it's like to be the Bill Graham of the 21st century."

I myself have made a few snarky remarks about The Hat over the years, but it seems that Addis had a bit more in mind. After telling his campmates that he was going to Burn the Man all by himself, well, that's just what he did. This little bit of Gonzo Terrorism probably won't have the intended effect: Valleywag is already reporting that his one-man show about Hunter S. Thompson - scheduled to tour the West Coast later this year - will likely meet with a combination of hostility and indifference. Yes, we all now know who Paul Addis is. And that fame will be a problem for Addis in all the years to come.