Let's not make this one more complicated than it is. The name of this ring, "Burning Man", is close to being self-explanatory. It is for sites that are about Burning Man, or about things that take place at Burning Man or at other events called "burns" that are somehow reminiscent of Burning Man. Admission to this ring takes place at my sole discretion and is not subject to debate, voting, or appeal. So, if you have a site selling beauty supplies and you want admittance on the basis that a lot of burners use beauty supplies and a poll you just took showed that 67 burners out of 90 favored your admission to this ring, that's nice, but take it someplace else, 'mkay?

This is not the Ring of Fire. That's a ring on the Webring system which, at the time of this writing, is not run by me or anybody I know. It has admitted a lot of sites which I would not (eg. that site about legal self-representation), and probably would reject a lot of sites that I would accept. I don't apply the "no negativity" ideological filter to admissions; if Dr.Cliff or the stopburningman.org people want on this ring, they're on-topic so they're welcome to join, even if I don't always agree with what they have to say. Maybe even because I don't even alway agree with what they have to say. What I'm aiming for, if I get there, should offer a more balanced view of these events than can be found through the more controlled channels of communication found in Black Rock City, showing the bad along with the good, and if this is an unpleasing one to the "peace out" crowd, so be it. No, actually, right on!

One of my favorite Burning Man moments, even if it is one that I wasn't personally present for, came when somebody reverently handed John Law the head of the Man. Law took the head, and then tossed it on the ground and started jumping on top of it yelling "this is wood and we are going to burn it", ie. stop taking this so d***ed seriously. Stop beating the fun out of the experience by trying to turn it into something it isn't. If you think that you've just found a religious epiphany in the sight of a group of unwashed naked revellers bouncing around a recently ignited giant piece of lawn furniture, then you need to get a little more depth in your life. If you think that a giant, pink flaming paper mache anus is great art, get thee to a museum. If you've stuck your head up that anus in the hopes of hearing great secrets revealed by the bodypainted "priest" within, just coming out of his sambucca soaked slumber, open a book. Burning Man was never utopia, it was never the answer to all of your problems and questions, and to see it as more than the great chance to goof off and learn what it means to be yourself is not just to miss the point, it's to put yourself on the road to some bad craziness.

When you take a look at the pictures you see on the navbars for this ring, reminding us of some of Burning Man's less than glorious moments, this is what we are trying to tell you. LIGHTEN UP and know what is important. Stop taking your bad self so seriously, or in one way or another, reality is going to end up handing you something that really is serious.

If you travel the ring, you'll find that the navbars have been customised by the individual members. I encourage this, but ask the members to consult with me about changes made to the navbar. Specifically, what they've done is replace the navbar image with another of their choosing, and replace the site linked to through the image with one about some part of the Burning Man experience that the image symbolizes effectively. The darkest of these is surely the Katherine Lampman story, which is one of those truly serious things that we talk about. All of this brave talk about looking at the back of one's ticket that we hear so much of on ePlaya has a decided dark side. Some of those who, as we say, need to get over their bad selves, have responded to attempts to discuss safety as an issue with loud hoots of scorn and derision, and the fact of the matter is that to reinforce carelessness is to court tragedy. Get too serious about things that aren't serious, and you end up not being serious enough about that which is important. The "mount poogee incident" I linked to a mention of, below, is mildly amusing (at least from a distance), and I think most of the incidents people choose to highlight with their links will be, but the darker moments need to be remembered as well.

If you'd like to join this ring, you'll need to sign up for the Stop! at Burning Man list, become a positively contributing regular and THEN tell us about your site. If I like it, I'll open up the ring and let you in. If not, you still are part of one of the few Burning Man forums on which civility is expected and that expectation (oooh, blasphemous word) is enforced. Keep in mind that whatever Larry Harvey has to say on the issue, as far as we're concerned, Postmodernism is a crock. The standards of civility expected are the common sense ones that Westerners have grown up with for centuries, and they don't look like anything out of either Derrida or Emily Post. If you can accept this, then feel free to continue onward to our list.

The ring is this way, when you're ready to check it out.