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Ready to (Black) Rock - 2003
by Adrian Roberts


Woo-hoo! We're back and ready to rock ... Black Rock, that is! Yes, it wouldn't be Burning Man without Piss Clear, the silly newspaper with the silly name. Welcome to the tentopolis known as Black Rock City, where you need to always drink enough water so that you piss clear!

Let me tell you, it feels so good to be here right now. For the past two weeks, I've been busting my ass doing pre-production work for this ol' newspaper, and now - finally - I feel like I can relax.

What's that? Pre-production? Hell, you don't think we actually design all these covers and layout most of this stuff here, do you? Fuck that, we're on vacation! Most of the grunt work for Piss Clear is done before we get here - fashion shoots, feature articles, haiku. I mean, if we did everything here, we'd never end up leaving the RV!

Sure, we've still got a bunch of holes to fill, such as our always-popular "What's Out/What's In" list and our new daily column by one of my favorite writers, Malderor, which faces this page.

Then of course, there's this space, where every day I'll blah-blah-blah about, uh ... something ... generally right before our press deadline. Once again, I'd like to thank our guys at Waller Media for helping us out again this year. Be sure to visit their camp, the Holy Ones At Xallah, out on Vision. I know, it's way out in the boonies of Black Rock City, but that's the way they like it - unlike us media whores, who love being in Center Camp!

Location, location, location!
Yes, this year you can find us right at the edge of Center Camp, practically on the Esplanade. I'm not sure how we scored such prime playa real estate this year, but I can assure you that our interview with theme camp placement goddess Harley DuBois had nothing to do with it - especially after you see all the stupid questions we asked her!

Yes, 'Stupid Questions.' That's the name of a new feature we're debuting this year, where every day we interview someone involved in doing a big, large-scale, city-wide project. Can you believe there are going to be two Guinness Book of World Record attempts on the playa this year? Keep reading Piss Clear this week to find out more!

All I ever think about is...
These past few weeks leading up to Burning Man, I'd been feeling envious - envious of people who have nothing else going on in their lives other than preparing for the Big Fucking Camping Trip.

You see, the entire month of August, I was distracted. No matter what I was doing, whether it was (shameless plug alert) singing with my band Blue Period, or DJing with the Mysterious D at one of our club nights in San Francisco, or launching our new monthly bootleg/mash-up party called Bootie, all I ever really thought about was getting my ass to Black Rock City. I'm sure you know the feeling.

That of course, included doing Piss Clear. I teased my girlfriend, D, that she was a "Piss Clear widow." It'd be funny if it weren't so true. I spent so much time obsessing and editing and designing and proofing this newspaper, that I barely had time to pack for the actual trip. Would you believe I did all my Burning Man packing in one day? It's true.

Of course, if you've been coming here as many years as I have - as of last year, I was into double-digits - I would hope by now that packing would be easy. We run a pretty low-maintenance ship around here anyway, concentrating more on having a great newspaper rather than a great theme camp.

At least we've got a big sign and some rope lights though, huh?

Help deliver Piss Clear!
Unlike the BMorg-operated Black Rock Gazette, we are funded by nobody, so we often need all the help we can get - and we need help delivering the paper! There are 6000 or so of these things printed each and every day, and we would love to have some sassy and sexy paperboys and papergirls to help spread the love, er ... paper around.

If you're interested in helping out, please stop by our offices at Center Camp and we'll be happy to give you some newspapers to deliver. And hell, if it's too early and no one is awake yet, just grab some from the front rack and go to town!

Piss Clear is not just our way of contributing to Black Rock City's gift economy - it can be your way too! Feeling lame because you didn't bring enough "playa gifts" for everybody? Being guilt-tripped into "participating"? Fuck that! Deliver Piss Clear, and it's instant participation - suddenly, you've got a whole handful of gift-gifting! It's easy and fun!

We're looking forward to being your source for entertaining reading this week in Black Rock City. We'll even throw in the occasional hard-hitting news piece, such as this issue's controversial cover story by Radio Electra's Rockstar, exposing the reason why there aren't as many radio stations on the playa as there used to be.

Stop by our offices to pick up free Piss Clear temporary tattoos, and we'll see you out on the playa!





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