I’m headed to Black Rock City for the weekend.  It sounds like something out of a videogame but for the uninitiated (a group to which I suppose I still belong) it means I’m going to Burning Man.  It also means subsisting in the open Nevada desert for more than a couple days.  In honor of these terrifying conditions, I present to you a list of my Top 5 Desert Pop Culture References that I will take with me to BRC:

5. The English Patient — An epically long and (curiously) epically lauded movie about some dude who gets his face burned off in the desert.  Overall I remember feeling pretty lukewarm about this movie — didn’t love it as much as the critics, didn’t detest it as much as Elaine Benes — but the sheer length of time it took to watch burned lasting images of desert sandstorms and Kristin Scott Thomas into my mind forever.

4. “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)”, The Simpsons — In this classic episode Homer finds himself hallucinating in the desert after eating a lethal pepper at a chili cook-off.  This may have genuinely been my first clue to comprehending the subversive potential of mind-altering substances; personally I’m thinking heatstroke might have the same effect.

3. Star Wars — Who could forget the desert planet of Tatooine, with its Jawas, Sand People and double sunsets?  Given the propensity for kooky costumes at Burning Man, I fully expect every camp to look something like Mos Eisley.

2. Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — Thompson’s classic travelogue of Vegas and the surrounding Nevada desert, ostensibly reported entirely from an altered state of mind.  I think it’s going to be pretty difficult not to channel Thompson’s prose (or Johnny Depp’s narration) during all the madness I expect to see this weekend.

1. Frank Herbert’s Dune — I have to confess that I haven’t actually finished this book.  But from the bits that I read last year I understood quite viscerally what it meant to be on a desert planet where any exposure to the elements could spell immediate death.  People going outside on Arrakis have to wear special suits just to harvest their sweat, for Pete’s sake.  And let’s not get started about the giant sand worms.  Here’s hoping BRC isn’t anything at all like Arrakis, but if it is, I feel a little more prepared for it.

I feel certain I’ve missed some other glaringly obvious ones (Wrath of Khan was #6 if you’re curious, though I don’t even remember if there truly was a desert), but that’s all I’ve got right now.  Did I mention that at night the desert is supposed to turn to Hoth-like temperatures?

See you on the other side

There was a Cheez-It toast. The University of Wisconsin band showed up on the dance floor. Way, way too much alcohol was consumed. And yes, the groom’s perennial staple of “Bust a Move” was performed (pictured).

Post reception there was ample time to sample a bit more of Madison’s late night bar scene, not to mention a midnight snack or two. My last glimpse of the bride and groom was the two of them, separated from their celebratory herd, giggling like madmen with each other as they cavorted down the streets of Madison — off into the night, off into their new lives of epic private adventure.

Congrats, Whazzmaster and Spacebee.

Couple questions. Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to a) have a “Don’t save” button at the end of a form, b) color it the brighter, more attractive color, and c) put it on the left within easier reach for someone who has just filled out all their information? Seriously, Billmonk? Seriously?? Notice how the extra text even results in the “Don’t save” being the larger, more clickable button?

Being the open-minded person I am, I started thinking, “Surely there’s a good reason for this.” Wrong. There’s NEVER a good reason to confuse your user like this. Why does this button exist? Why not just let someone save a form with bad data when they can easily delete later? And if for some ungodly reason you really need to have this button because you love the way it looks and can’t live without it and want to marry it and have lucid dreams with it where the two of you grow old together, why insert it right at the end of your successful user flow?

To help further illustrate this amusing absurdity I went to the trouble of mocking up some visualizations of comparable situations:

That last one actually works, just seeing if you’re paying attention.

I could totally do that thing where I wax poetic about how great a hockey team the Blackhawks are: how they swept a very good San Jose Sharks team in the playoffs this year, how their ridiculously good young players are only going to get better, how this may be the start of an awesome sports dynasty…

But the simple truth is I just don’t understand hockey. And yes, even with my home team winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in my lifetime, it still wasn’t enough to get me to sit down and watch a single game. Maybe someday. All I know is, not only did they win that obscenely large chalice but they did it in killing fashion.

So congrats to the Blackhawks and my beloved city of Chicago. You killed it. I admire your dominance from afar.

“I can have hit records all day, but who fucking cares?” she explained. “A year from now, I could go away, and people might say, ‘Gosh, what ever happened to that girl who never wore pants?’ But how wonderfully memorable 30 years from now, when they say, ‘Do you remember Gaga and her bubbles?’ Because, for a minute, everybody in that room will forget every sad, painful thing in their lives, and they’ll just live in my bubble world.”

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, ‘Too late.’ There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.”
- MLK

Killing it
performing at the highest level; ripping
That guy surfing the blue board on the south side this morning was killing it…
- Urban Dictionary