There are so many questions about Burning Man in general, and my participation in particular that I'm happy to address the Mysteries with my own frequently asked questions page. 1) What is Burning Man, and why do you go? Oy. You could go to burningman.com for a better analysis. "Art Festival" makes it sound like a place to buy bad watercolors from retirees. And yet most of the 25,000+ attendees are there to create. I think of it as a zone of almost completely free self-expression, bounded only by time (a week), space (a few square miles in the desert), respect for the community, the survival requirements imposed by the extreme environment, and the occasional enforcement of state and federal laws. Speaking of laws and The Man Who Is Putting Us Down, Black Rock City appeared this year a couple of miles away from its home in 2000, in a county with a sheriff of a more generous nature. In marked contrast with last year, there were only a handful of arrests, all by the Bureau of Land Management, and most for substance distribution. By and large, the BLM seemed more concerned with making sure people didn't endanger themselves or others.

photo by Matisse Enzer, Hippie

2) What were a few of your favorite things? • Joey and Matthew riding a sled backwards through a line of flamethrowers, built by the Seamen (an SRL offshoot). • Being interrogated by a life-size replica of Joe Friday, in which the dummy asked questions randomly snipped from the Dragnet TV show (eg., "Did you know he was a hippy, ma'am?" "How long have you been using marijuana?"). • Fake advertising. Who among us can honestly say we don't love a giant billboard on behalf of sodomy ("call your recruiter today), nor flyers posted on the porta-potties ("Lose 30 pounds in 30 years. Ask me how,"and "Missing giraffe.")? * You know those little "perpetual motion" bobbing birds that have a big bulb at the ass end to make 'em go? Someone built a 10-foot high version. • Sharing a radio frequency with the Malo Chango monkey camp. We'd speak. They'd mock. Eventually, they came over for dinner.

One of our lettuce-hugging neighbors, Erin seemed ordinary enough. But she can't conceal her true agenda as a fifth columnist for eggplant. Note the beady eyes with their contempt-for-bacon stare. Her life is a total sham. photo by Matisse Enzer, Hippie

3) Meat Camp. Explain, please? Flesh. Pure and simple. My fellow Meaties and I built a camp to celebrate carnal appetites in general, and barbecue in particular. And with so many vegetarians gathered in one place, what better opportunity to torment the "hug animals, don't eat them" set? Our position just down the street from Spaghetti Western Camp gave us a continuous stream of the meat-deprived on their way to watch Clint Eastwood movies and eat vegetarian spaghetti at sunset. Surprisingly, a majority of passing strangers enthusiastically gobbled down the slices of steak, skewers of lamb, burgers, Li'l Smokies and other assorted snossages we brought out. It might have had something to do with Miles cracking his bullwhip, and threatening to throw the vegans on the grill. But a common refrain I heard was, "Thank God! I've been stuck in a camp of vegetarians for the last four days and I thought I was going to die from malnutrition." A friend on Echo asked if Meat Camp resembled the "Lu'au Nazis" of CHERRY 2000. There's a certain cultural affinity. But no Hawaiian shirts and shuffleboard. 4) What's Black Rock City like at night? As I watched green laser beams shoot out from a replica of Emerald City, across the open Playa, and dance across the distant mountains, I turned and took in all the robotic machinery spitting flames, pulsing domes, video projectors, EL wire, night clubs and Tesla coils lighting up the dark, dusty desert. And I thought it looked like a county fair from the 23rd century, on the Planet Lovetron.

5) What's the deal with Sex? Is there, like, a lot of sex there, man?

Funny you should ask that, friend. Why, yes, there is a lot of sex in Black Rock City. I just don't get any of it. Actually, a lot of us in Meat Camp were in relationships at the time. And others put themselves in Rikers-style lockdown. The opportunities for random, sweaty, animal rutting, if not actual love, are ever-present. There are many reasons why. Part of it is the emphasis on freedom of expression. Another part is substance abuse. One widely-discounted theory holds that wide-spread nudity may be a factor. But since everyone bathes wherever he or she can hang a sunshower, nuding-up doesn't mean anything in and of itself.

For example, one afternoon, as most of Meat Camp beat the mid-day heat in the shade, a diminutive girl wearing nothing more than dust goggles and mardis gras beads bounced up to toss a howdy. After hanging out for while, she announced that she was going to get her pubes trimmed and dyed purple at Pamper Camp, and that she'd be back for dinner. And it didn't mean anything...Oh wait. Yes it did. "Li'l Smokey, the Meat Sprite," as we would come to know her, had focused with laser intensity on Joey X. Fortunately for us all, she got separated from Meat Camp's group stroll through the vortices of sound and fury that night.