I'm going to Burning Man

I just robbed a grocery store. I'm going to Burning Man.
No, not really. I'm just paraphrasing the song by Dada, 'I'm going to Disneyland'.
But I really am going to Burning Man, by damn. I got my ticket an everything. The ticket's pretty.

Dude, you're gonna have a horrible time. Yer gonna die. It's an endurance run, yer too candy-assed an old for that kind of extreme shit.

I'm doin' it. Hey, I've been in weirder places before. I was in Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love. I ended up sleeping in a borrowed sleeping bag under a bush in Golden Gate Park with a car thief from Chicago (not in the same bag, okay?).

That was 40 years ago. Yer a fossil. You'll crumple up an die. Nobody'll like you, these kids hate old fucking hippies.

Hey, I was never a hippie. I was a Freak, & remain so to this day. Hippies were those kids that showed up on weekends & we'd try to sell them bags of oregano for $10, which is what an ounce of pot went for then.

You went through the whole Summer of Love an never got laid. When fall came, you were still a virgin. That's how lame you are.
But then I went up to Seattle with nothing but my guitar on my back, to be with my ladylove. Then I got laid! Then I went down to Venice to not be with her. I've got such stories! These kids today, they're smart. They're conscious of their culture & how it got there. Some of them are, anyway. They'll sense my wonderfulness & love me. My stories will be my gift. I'm gonna live forever!

Those aren't stories, they're anecdotes. Nobody cares. The occasion will never come up when any of them will have the time or the inclination to sit still long enough to listen to you ramble on about what a loser you are.
But I'm a world-famous 'underground' cartoonist! I'm already an Art Hero!

But yer stuff sucks. And what have you done lately that's even remotely cool?

Well, I did this great big mural on a wall in Roswell. Outer Space with lots of rocket ships & planets & asteroids.... It's right on Main Street!

Facing the other way!

Well, it's a zen thing that's what makes it extra cool, right?

Sure, but nobody cares.

People come from other parts of the world and they take pictures of it.

Yeah, that & three & a half bucks or so will get you a latté.

Hey, I still got it. I'll be okay.

No, you don't. No you won't. You're so not prepared. It's yer first time you don't even know what the fuck yer doin' & yer all by yerself. You got no one to depend on but you, & you suck! You have unrealistic expectations.

I know. Nothing ever turns out the way I think it's going to. So if I think the plane is going to crash, well, then it isn't, because... Anyway, I'm going to leave my expectations at the gate, just like they say to do.

But you have so many. You'll never be able to let go of...
Oh, shut up!

I don't have to.

For at least 5 years, probably much longer than that, I can't remember when or where I first heard about BM, I've been (not) experiencing it from this side of a 17" monitor. This year, now, soon, I'm going to climb through the looking glass and be on the other side. In it. Like the Grand Canyon: all the pictures you see of it, even a Circarama™ presentation in Disneyland™ are really nice, but don't give you anything of the feeling you get when you're standing on the edge of it, looking a mile down into the bottom of it & having it extending out from both sides of you farther than the eye can see, as the wind blows on you & all that. Not the same. I know that. I gotta do this. Even if it kills me. There are definitely worse ways to go. I'll bet.

Yer a jerk. Yer gonna hate it. They're just a bunch of rich assholes. Sticking their heads in the sand as the world goes to hell. Yer just gonna be perpetuating the idiocy.
Yeah, but there's all this really cool art that I just have to see!

Yer gonna hate it. It's gonna suck.
I know.