The Green Tortoise: Deconstructing a Rationalization / An Open Letter to "Mike Tattoo" / Mike Bolger





Note: Yes, some of the links are to pages not on this site, and yet I speak of the pages at the other end as if they were on this site. Geocities is shutting down, and I'm in the middle of relocating the pages from my site there to new locations. Sorting everything out will take a little time. That having been said, everything is functional, if sometimes (temporarily) blemished on a conceptual level.

At the time of this edit, I have noticed that the old ePlaya is, once again, offline and some of the links, as a result, are coming up dead. I'm not going to bother to edit them. I regret any inconvenience, but I don't have time to play "now this site is here, now it isn't" with the Burning Man people. Maybe as you click on one of the links starting with "oldbbs", it'll work, maybe it won't. No guesses and no guarantees.

How strangely fitting for a page about Burning Man.




Certain themes tend to run through this site of mine, showing up again and again, and while this may make for a little repetitiveness, the very fact of that repetition is part of the point to reading the site: the observation that what I write about in this nonsequential journal are not isolated incidents that nothing is to be learned from, but firsthand experiences of recurring pathologies. One of those pathologies, as we see in the Fred Cherry Story, is the way in which a common craving for a quick and easy peace at any price radically empowered somebody who was seeking anything but peace. In Fred Cherry's case, the brand of hated involved was homophobia, and my ox wasn't the one being gored. This time around, ableism - bigotry against the disabled - was the brand of hatred that made its appearance, my ox was the one being gored, and I couldn't help but notice how very little had changed - at least not for the better.

This article is written in response to a series of posts entitled "Open Letter to Bad Times on the Green Tortoise Guy", and I will respond in a somewhat similar format, sometimes speaking to the author of that piece, sometimes to the others who posted on that thread, and sometimes to the reader, the third party who is reading this and maybe wondering what is going on. If you find that I'm writing the names "Mike" or "Michael" unduly often, please do be patient. I only do so for the sake of clarity, and so that offense will not be taken by mistake.

The logic we'll get to see out of Michael will be intriguing. One is reminded of one of the punchlines in "Animal House", when one of the hapless pledges is looking on in horror at something that has just happened. One of the seniors tells him "face it, Flounder, you (expletitive deleted) up - you trusted us!" What in the movie was a joke is very close to what we're going to get to see "Mike Tattoo" (aka Mike Bolger) seriously try to argue as an ethical position. What one should gather from the fact that BMORG seemed supportive of that argument, I'm sure the reader can guess on his own.






Let me start this article by putting everything in perspective. A few years ago, I wrote a personal account of a very unpleasant trip I took with a company called "The Green Tortoise". It's a bus line that runs tours to a number of locations. The particular location I travelled to on the Tortoise, on my first and last trip with them, was to an alleged festival of the arts called "Burning Man", held in the Black Rock Desert of Northern Nevada, vaguely near the town of Gerlach, a few hours out of Reno. "Vaguely" is the operative word, in this case. I wouldn't recommend that you try that one as a hike. It is close only in the Western US sense of not being so far away, that you'd notice the shift in local accent.

A few important details to mention, and maybe a few pet peeves along the way. First of all, that I can't drive. I have a mild case of cerebral palsy and visual motor problems that made that possibility seem a remote from the beginning, and my past efforts to learn this skill have gone about as well as expected: very poorly. This leaves me dependent on public transportation, carpooling and buses to get from point to point. That, and walking - but the hike from Chicago to Reno would have taken a while, I think, and I'm not quite sure of how I would have carried the food and water for it.



Secondly, that like most disabled people, financially I am not doing well. Fully 60% of us are completely unemployed, and most of the rest of us are underemployed. When I finally completed the coursework for my PhD in Mathematics, doing so with a Dean's list average in spite of working 60 hours a week to put myself through school, I thought that I might be one of the exceptions, but no, such was not to be the case. Between affirmative action and old boy network hiring, I found that there was no crack for me to slip through, into the job market.

One of the many ignorant rants I've had to sit through, down through the years, has been one about the "special privileges" disabled people get to enjoy because of the ADA. Those who are making this complaint, are badly misinformed. The reality is that we, as disabled people, have to be many times better at our jobs than our non-disabled competition, even for jobs in which our disability has no impact on our ability to perform, just to get an interview. In theory, discrimination based on handicap is illegal; in practice, in the job market that means nothing. There is no enforcement.

In a market in which those hiring are allowed to routinely place their drinking buddies in line ahead of far more qualified candidates without any objection from the so-called civil rights enforcement people, one soon finds that the social exclusion one encountered in school translates into economic exclusion once one gets out. The only way past this is to have skills that the drinking buddies can't even come close to approximating, in order to apply for jobs which nobody would ever be insane enought to hire those buddies to do. So, along I've struggled, with student loan payments to contend with, on a self-employed math tutor's salary, as I've put myself through a second degree program, forced back to square one, practically. Thus the need to use my dad's credit card on the trip out - I would never qualify for credit on my own, and in our family, we look out for each other. Dad's struggling, himself, but he does what he can to help. Some in California have called this "privilege"; we call it "being a good, closeknit family with solid values".

Let's also add that this is not money that Dad just simply gave me. I earned every dime spent on that trip. However, Chicago is a good 2,000 miles from San Francisco, and so I couldn't just hop BART and drop my payments off at the Burning Man Organization and Green Tortoise offices, in cash. In order to even be able to pay these people, from the other side of a continent, what I had to do was hand Dad the money, and then, in effect, have him pay. I hand Dad 200 hard earned dollars in cash, and Dad's credit card gets billed $200 for my ticket by the Burning Man people. Dad breaks even on the transaction, and I'm able to pay, even without a credit card or checking account of my own.

So, the only person buying me that expensive vacation was me, from money earned at about the same rate paid out by Walmart. Showing just how far some people are willing to go for the sake of being able to make a cheap shot, "Mr.Tattoo" would, very deceptively, refer to this as evidence that I was a spoiled rich kid putting everything on Daddy's credit cards. Of course, I would hardly qualify as being "rich" and as we see, calling me "spoiled" would be a stretch. But what is reality when one is playing to the prejudices of an audience with a chip on its collective shoulder?



That's two details; let's go for a third.

I am "gluten intolerant". That doesn't mean that I fly into a puritanical rage at the sight of a loaf of bread. Actually, I'm quite fond of bread - and of pasta, and of kibbeh, and pizza, and calzone, ... and of many other things that I really should not eat. My digestive system has great difficulty handling a protein found in wheat flour known as "gluten". A number of unpleasant things happen when I consume the stuff, including (but certainly not limited to)



  1. intense nausea, and frequent vomiting
  2. feelings of bloating
  3. abdominal pain
  4. alternating bouts of constipation and diarrhea
  5. a pounding headache
  6. disorientation
  7. fatigue
  8. disturbed sleep


and much, much more, but do you really want to read an article in which I talk about which parts of me ended up bleeding, and do I really want to go into the details? Probably not. Suffice it to say that among many other joys, I've displayed all of the symptoms of something called "Celiac Disease", (1) (2) (3) right down to the chronic malnutrition and weight loss and a number of other (ahem!) interesting side effects I'd rather not go into specifics about, these symptoms continuing until a while after gluten was eliminated from my diet. (At already over 6'4", back when I was much younger, I would be middleweight at around 200 lbs; I had dropped to 139. Your physician will confirm the fact that this is not good).

I almost hesitate to agree to call something like this a "disease", because it is highly controllable. One just eliminates wheat (and oats, rye and barely) from one's diet. One can still consume rice and corn, so there is one's grain, and fiber one can find in fruits and vegetables. The condition only becomes a problem if it is ignored. Poverty, in a way, almost becomes a blessing - as I can't eat out very often, almost all of my meals are homemade, from scratch, and so I know exactly what I'm eating almost all of the time.

Except, perhaps, when I'm on vacation. As much as I would have liked to have enjoyed a nice, crusty loaf of sourdough when I was out in San Francisco, having one just would not have been a good idea. Or a considerate one - this protein apparently also produces an insulin reaction in me, simulating a very unpleasant state of drunkneness, more hangover than buzz, with a great impairment of judgement and very unpleasant personality changes. I might not go out beating people up, but I would certainly become very unpleasant company, during those moments when I wasn't too busy throwing up.

So picture me in the middle of the desert, where food and water are scarce, heaving up the food almost as quickly as it goes down, losing water with every upchuck, spending most of my trip looking for a portapotty, while my head feels like it's going to explode. Sound like a good time to you? Or really a good, or a very healthy idea? Oddly enough, this is one that I wanted to avoid, and let's face it: this much is common sense. Since common sense is one thing that this Midwesterner has in abundance, I had the sense to call out to the Green Tortoise months in advance, and explain the whole situation to them, being sure to also mention a few allergies. In no uncertain terms, they said that accomodating these medical needs would not be a problem, and they'd be glad to do so. Having been given that guarantee, I then purchased my ticket.

I then got out to California, and found that the next few weeks turning into an excursion into Hell, as a direct result of the Green Tortoise staff going back on its word over and over and over ... In particular, the promise to make food available to me, which would not make me violently ill and dehydrated, was one of the promises the staff went back on, leaving me in the middle of a desert, miles and miles from any place where I could buy something to eat, going from camp to camp begging for food. People spared what they could, but there wasn't much to be had, leaving me facing what amounted to a week long forced fast. A very expensive trip ended up being ruined, because the people I did business with lied to me, in order to get my business. "Take the money and run" seemed to be their operating philosophy. That, and an arrogant disdain for the customer, who had just paid the company hundreds of dollars for the pleasure of being on this trip.

But just saying that doesn't really get the point across, so I wrote up the experience in the form of a Journal. Going day by day, detail by detail, I tried to give the reader a taste of the experience of being there, apparently with some small success.



While some work goes into trying to create a narrative that will bring somebody else into a moment that one experienced, one might not expect there to be much to argue about. Would one not think that this is all fairly straightforward? How much should anybody really be arguing with the proposition that breach of contract is wrong, and that a business has no right to defraud its customers? Would you not think that it is faily obvious that if one makes a deal, that one should feel obligated to honor it? How can one even be free to do business if, after one gives the business one's money, it is anybody's guess whether or not the business will then provide that which it was paid to provide?

Believe it or not, somebody would come onto the e-Playa (the Burning Man Bulletin Boards), and seriously try to argue that I was being unreasonable, when I objected to having been defrauded. That individual signed in under the name "Mike Tattoo", declining to give his real name as he launched into a series of semi-coherent personal attacks. One of his more remarkable assertions would be one that I was suffering from a misplaced sense of entitlement when I expected the Tortoise staff to live up to its contractual obligations, because it, a company which charged each of us hundreds of dollars for this trip, should not be considered to be a commercial entity! Since he seems so eager for a response, I thought, why not oblige him?

If you, the reader, are still at the "how's Tattoo going to even try to defend this" stage, the answer is: in the usual way we've come to expect, when somebody argues that night is day, especially in a Burning Man or other countercultural setting. Remember the story of the Emperor's New Clothes? The one in which a pair of dishonest tailors tell a vain ruler that they've made a fine suit of clothes for him which the wise could see, but the foolish could not? And the word gets out to the masses about this fine set of clothes, so when the emperor goes on parade in the alogether, almost everybody claims to see this fine set of clothes, because nobody wants to risk being thought of as being foolish - except for one small boy who yells out that "the king has no clothes"?

If that fairytale sounded a little too high-concept to be real, guess what? It's not. Somebody has succeeded in building almost an entire subculture based on a version of the tailors' scam, and we're going to get to see Mike Tattoo try to get the rest of us to play along with it.





Note: If you'd like to see the posts that I'm commenting on in their original context, go to

http://oldbbs.burningman.com/index.cgi?14@208.0uEya1H9gdO^3@.eee01d7/0


where you can see for yourself that I have not quoted these people out of context. On the other hand, the individual who I am responding to has blatantly misrepresented my remarks at several points, as you can see by reading "Bad Times on the Green Tortoise" at

http://web.newsguy.com/commonsense/burning-tortoise.html

For clarity, my own comments will continue to be in black; the quoted material is red, blockquoted and italicised for the convenience of those who can't see colors.




Open Letter to Bad Times on the Green Tortoise Guy
Mike Tattoo - 10:51pm Jun 27, 2003 PST


Dude,

Hi there. Not quite sure what to call you since you never really introduced yourself or signed your name,


Comment : Yes, Mike, it must have been very difficult for you to guess who would have written a page entitled "Joseph Dunphy's Homepage at Newsguy" (on which this article was hosted) or "The Halls of Eternal Disbelief (by Joseph Dunphy)" (the main page for the site, which the other pages keep returning one to). Though some might have thought that when you clicked on the update list for this site and discovered that its' name was "Joseph Dunphy", you might have begun to guess. Perhaps you were thrown off by the diabolical name of the partial mirror to that site which is part of "Joe Dunphy's Page O' Squat" at Arthost.com: "Joseph Dunphy's Rebuttal Page: The Halls Of Eternal Disbelief at Arthost/Freewebsites". I can already picture you musing this one over. "Like is his name 'Joseph Dunphy' or is it 'Arthost/Freewebsites' and why all of the mystery? What's his game?"

But I'm sure that you have some vitally important thoughts to share, so do go ahead. I'm listening.



but I just read your Bad Times on the Green Tortoise journal :

http://web.newsguy.com/commonsense/burning-tortoise.html



So you're clear on the fact that it is a journal, meaning that it was put together in a fleshed out narrative format for the sake of creating a feeling of mood and scene in order to convey an experience, something more like a story than like, say, a court document in which one is to stick to the minimum set of facts needed to make one's case? Good. Let's see if your attention span will be good enough to allow you to remember that.



And felt the need to say something. My name’s Mike Tattoo.


Sure it is. And my name is Mr.Roarke. "Bawth, bawth, ze bus, ze bus!". "Yes, Tattoo, I'm coming" ... but you have something serious to say. My bad. Go on.



I’ve taken the Green Tortoise 7 years straight to Burning Man (1996 – 2002). I’m the only person (bus drivers included) that can make that claim. So it’s with that experience that I can speak with some authority on Burning Man and Green Tortoise issues.


I find myself reminded of old saying "on the Internet, nobody knows that you're a dog." "Mike Tattoo" could be anybody, including an employee or the owner of the Green Tortoise, for all that most of us would know. But let's say that he's telling the truth. Then what we're left with is a non sequitir. Tattoo, throughout his posts, does not dispute the facts of the case. So, this being so, how would the number of times that he let himself be suckered by the Green Tortoise into giving them money for next to nothing in return, make his pronouncements on the ethics of going back on one's word especially relevant?



I feel like I have some incites


Do any of them involve the spelling of the word "insights"?



and some advice I would like to give you and perhaps other Burning Man bound Green Tortoise travelers can take some of this to heart.

Just as it takes a certain type of personality to “get” Burning Man, it takes a certain type of personality to “get” the Green Tortoise.


Yes, here comes the "Emperor's New Clothes" gambit that I mentioned earlier.



It’s a crazy carnival ride with loose European women,


And would that be your personal interest in the matter, Mike?



load snores, uptight single travelers, one night stands, and great drinking buddies. Perhaps one of my all time favorite lines from one of the older Burning Man tickets was something along the lines of “This pass entitles you to nothing in particular. Have a great experience on your own” … or words to that effect. And that’s one of the most important truths that you have to understand if you want to “get” Burning Man.

This isn’t Club Med.


Really? You don't say, Mike? Because when those half naked hula girls kept dropping by with piña coladas and leaving frango mints under my goose down pillow, I could have sworn ... (looks around) what, that was only my tent? Yeesh. Next thing you're going to tell me is that I was the only one with a personal masseuse ... oh, come on, nobody else had one of those? No, you can't be serious ...

And of course, I'm not. But let us remember what we are talking about, and as much as Mike is trying to confuse the reader as to what my specific complaint is, let's keep it in mind. This is not "I was charged big bucks, so where's the foie gras and truffles" - this is "I explained a food-related medical problem in advance, and you people gave your word that you would provide food that would not leave me doubled over vomiting in the desert, food which I've now paid you for ... so what happened to those guarantees?". But, apparently I'm supposed to ignore a medical condition, just to be a good sport about it all. Let's see what the Medical School of the University of Maryland thinks of this idea, by looking at "Facts About Celiac Disease". You may have already seen this, because I linked to it above. Here's an excerpt:


What are the long-term effects of celiac disease?

Untreated celiac disease can be life threatening. Celiacs are more likely to be afflicted with problems relating to malabsorption, including osteoporosis, tooth enamel defects, central and peripheral nervous system disease, pancreatic disease, internal hemorrhaging, organ disorders (gall bladder, liver, and spleen), and gynecological disorders. Untreated celiac disease has also been linked an increased risk of certain types of cancer, especially intestinal lymphoma.


Just in case anybody is unclear on what "untreated" means, the article goes on ..


What is the treatment for celiac disease?

There are no drugs to treat celiac disease and there is no cure. But celiacs can lead normal, healthy lives by following a gluten free diet. This means avoiding all products derived from wheat, rye, barley, oats, and a few other lesser-known grains.


This is no different from taking the money of somebody who has displayed symptoms of diabetes, getting him to pay for his meals in advance - and then serving him everything sprinkled with sugar. You've fed him, but you haven't, because you know darned well that he can't eat that. Given the potential complications, for me to agree to do to partake would be foolhardy in the extreme; even without those complications, we'd still have the reality of me being left leaning over, vomiting in the desert. Either way, not too cool, and a reasonably good rebuttal to the frequently stated article of faith that "burners look out after each other". Look at what somebody is trying to pressure me into doing to myself - and how many of these burners, who I'm supposed to casually put such great trust in, do you see objecting?



This isn’t a resort where just because you paid money to be here you’re entitled to some kind of experience or room service. That’s the thing that some people have the hardest time letting go off. You have a whole planet where you get to be the “paying customer” but on the playa you’re not. If you go in with that attitude of , “OK, I’m a paying customer, I paid my $200 +. Now entertain me !


I invite the reader to look over the journal that "Mike Tattoo" is ranting and raving about, and try to find even one place where I complained about the lack of entertainment. The lack of food (which I had paid for and was announced in advance to be part of the package), breach of contract, personal abuse from the staff, ... but not the lack of a stage show. Mike is setting up a straw man argument, and we'll get to see him do that a lot.



I want my moneys worth.” You’re gonna go home bitter and disappointed. For sure. Chances are you’ll probably even feel the need to devote and entire web page to that emotion so that you can share that feeling with the world (whassup Dr. Cliff !)

I say this because you mention the word “customers” in your article 12 times.


Given the fact that these people walked off with a few hundred dollars worth of my money, I suspect that the word "customer" fits.



Advice # 1 : If you want to truly get the Green Tortoise / Burning Man experience you have to drop that sense of entitlement that comes from a consumer oriented culture.


No, this is a sense of entitlement that comes from a very basic ethic that predates the existence of Capitalism: that of honesty. The problem, Mike, is not that I'm not getting it, but that I'm getting it all too well, well enough not to swallow the convenient spin that you're trying to put on events. This revolutionary new view that you're trying to push, between puffs on your bong I would suspect, is something I've already seen, barely repackaged. It's the Neo-Conservative Corporate Yuppie ethic, only applied to a much less solvent corporation with a much less clearly defined product and a far lower level of service. Which is to say that the yuppies deserve far more respect.

But here we have it - the whole notion of responding to somebody who has your side dead to rights, with the non-argument that his complaints can be ignored out of hand because if he was tough enough, being (expletitive deleted) over wouldn't bother him. If trying to fast talk a group of heads into going along with that party line is a revolutionary act, then should we conclude that Bill Gates is a revolutionary and should we expect to see Microsoft showing up at a few political demonstrations?



So you don’t know how to drive.


The reader is invited to take a look at Mike's post in its entirety when he's done, here. When he sees the full context that these remarks appeared in, he'll see that I am not going off on Tattoo without reason. Yes, Mike, it is true that I don't drive.

A great many Chicagoans don't, as shocking a thought as that may be in as car-obsessed a place as California. The reason, in many cases, is one of simple geography - Chicago and most of its neighbors do not sprawl the way the more recently developed cities of the West Coast did. Chicago, in particular, grew upward far more than it grew outward, with the result that a parking spot in my neighborhood costs as much as some apartments. Supply and demand - we have a lot of people chasing a handful of parking spots. Driving is not something that poor people get to do around here, and that's probably just as well. The streets are gridlocked as it is. And, unlike the case with the more widely scattered Cities of the Bay, the towns and cities of the Chicago Metroplex are right on top of each other. By the time one hits something recognizably rural, one has travelled a really long way. The Regional Transit Authority can get us to where we need to go, by and large, because the population density is there to justify the level of service necessary for such reliance to be practical.

So, Mike's very parochial ignorance to the contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing odd or irresponsible about a Chicagoan, especially one of limited financial means, never learning to drive. To say nothing of a Chicagoan who has had an irreversible disability inflicted on him that would get in the way of his learning. I mean, really, what's next? Getting on the backs of deaf kids who don't learn to play the flute, or blind kids who don't learn to draw? But Mike seems to want me to "take responsibility for my own misfortunes", and doesn't seem to feel the boring questions, like how much control I had over the circumstances leading to those misfortunes, should matter.

Fine.

Yeah, Mike, it was very thoughtless of me to suffer major damage to some of the motor centers of my brain during a botched delivery. I probably should have looked into getting a different obygyn to handle my birth, but not having been born yet, I found that my ability to transact business was very limited at the time. Sure, being disabled has been a real party time, what with never being able to dance as an adolescent or catch a ball as a child, but I shouldn't have been so shortsighted. By gosh, I should have gotten my lazy fetal backside out of that amniotic sack, marched ... er, slithered ... over to the hospital, looked through those records and ... no, somehow that doesn't sound too practical. And Tattoo's decision to use something made necessary by a neurological deficit an excuse for a personal attack, sounds even more tasteless than the unrealistic scenario that I just described.



You have an expired state ID and you traveled to San Francisco on your Dad’s credit card with little cash.



No, reminding the reader of what actually occured, as opposed to the spin that Mike wants to put on it, I travelled out to San Francisco on my own cash, some of which Dad helped me transfer over a distance of about 2,000 miles using his credit card (specifically, the money for tickets, and money spent on some of the emergency expenditures the Tortoise's surprises made necessary). And let's remember why it was that I had "little cash". After the Tortoise staff took Dad's credit card number over the phone, they indicated that the stay at the hostel was paid for. Not until I came in through their door, struggling with my luggage after a long trip in from the airport, did they decide to share the small detail with me that despite what I had been told over the phone, they hadn't billed the hostel stay to the credit card. This was an unexpected $100 added expense to my stay. In effect, I had to pay twice for my lodging, and for a low income person, that hurts. To be sure, Dad reimbursed me as quickly as he was able to do so, but that didn't do anything for my cash flow problems at the moment.

A very reasonable question, which Mike does not address in his extremely vague rant, is how I was supposed to anticipate any of this. None of this behavior was explicable, even from the standpoint of pure unprincipled greed. Pure greed is not going to move people to capriciously refuse payment. As mentioned in the very journal Mike is referring to, one branch of the same corporate entity that is the Green Tortoise was taking plastic. For one branch of the same business to do so while another branch does not is unheard of, and in doing so, that business did something contrary to what it said it would do, over the phone, when I was still here at home in Chicago, 2000 miles away. How could I possibly have seen this coming, in time to act in response to this to this bizarre and utterly unheard of policy? Cash in hand is cash in hand, no matter how it arrives, and by setting a policy that was guaranteed to catch customers by surprise, the Green Tortoise interfered with its own cash flow. Who does that, and why, and how were we supposed to know?

But when the facts are not on one's side, one can always sidestep them by being vague enough, can't one, Mike?



Things didn’t work out as you had expected and you didn’t seem to deal with those complications very well.


Define "dealing with them well".

Now, the reader should keep in mind that during this entire post of his in which "Mike Tattoo" responds to my journal, he never goes into specifics. "Things didn't go as you expected" ... the reader, just seeing Tattoo's rant without having looked over my journal first, isn't going to know what that means. The phrasing makes it sound like I did something like yell at a bus driver because one of our tour stops was rained out.

At the risk of killing this rebuttal through terminal repetitiveness, let's remind the reader of how exactly it was, that "things didn't work out as I expected". There were no "acts of God" at any point along this trip. The weather was mild and clear (or at least precipitation and stormfree) the entire time. There were no earthquakes, no landslides, nothing like that. There was nothing more behind the problems I encountered out there than the free and individual choices of a lengthy string of people who, on their own, decided to behave bizarrely and fail to live up to their own commitments, in a way which nobody could have been reasonably expected to forsee.

Consider the situation in the store. Dad, after I'd finally succeeded in getting through to him, had just found out that the Green Tortoise staff had lied to me over the phone, when they said that they had charged the hostel stay to his credit card. He is now trying to get money out to me to cover the resulting cash flow problem. Remember that this is pre-9-11, and the "expired state ID" that Mike keeps harping about, did not expire back in 1995. It expired on my birthday, and as the birthday was a recent one, in most of the world, nobody cared. Why would they? The entire purpose of asking for an ID is to establish identity, and unless one has progeria, one isn't going to age much in a month or so. One will still be recognizable from that ID. And indeed, nowhere outside of California had I ever found it to be a problem. I boarded the plane with that ID without incident. To make a fuss about this would be illogical and unheard of, at least at the time.

But then I got to Mike's hometown, and this situation arises. I call around to the different currency exchanges, encountering a lengthy series of people who seem absolutely delighted to have an opportunity to be anal retentive about something. And I'm running out of pocket change. Dad joins in on my search for a reasonable human being, in the City by the Bay. It's been three years, but I'm pretty sure that Dad was the one who finally found a manager of a grocery store downtown (which had its own currency exchange), who was willing to act like a human being, sort of. The manager's offer, which Dad accepted, was that Dad would wire the money out to the store. The store would then give the money away to whoever came in, identified himself as being "Joseph Dunphy", and asked for the money. The store would not check for identification, and the transaction would be entirely at Dad's own agreed upon risk - if somebody else dropped by with my name and that request, Dad would be out of the money. This was not a reassuring thought, especially given the demographics of San Francisco and the fact that "Joseph Dunphy" borders on being the Irish equivalent of "John Smith", but there wasn't much else to be done. Dad agreed to this arrangement.

The manager of the store then told the assistant manager about this, and as it was now the early afternoon, went out for lunch. Keep in mind that the store is facing no liability. Keep in mind that this woman has been given a direct, reasonable, ethical and lawful order by her boss. Keep in mind that she chose to work for the man. But, instead of honoring her own commitments as an employee and carrying out the directive given to her, she chose to stage her own little revolt, and ignore her boss' instructions. I then had to chase Dad down - from 2,000 miles away by payphone on whatever change I could scrounge up near the Embarcadero - to tell him about her refusal to do as her boss had told her to do.

What would you expect to see happen on your own job if, after your boss told you to do something, you adopted a "to hell with you" attitude and went out to do the exact opposite of what you were told to do? This woman apparently got a well deserved talking to - a poor substitute for the well-deserved firing that willful insubordination will get an employee in most parts of the country (and rightly so). In a huff, she paid out the cash to me that she was supposed to in the first place, capping off the bad afternoon her own bad attitude and behavior had brought into my day, with that every popular San Francisco cliche about "taking care of your own stuff".

The reader will please keep in mind that the major facts of everything just told him, were already mentioned in the journal that "Mike" has been spouting off about. In what sense did either I or Dad "handle this poorly"? What was I supposed to do? Hop a plane - the ticket being paid for with, I'm not quite sure what - and fly back to Chicago to pick up more money? Or was Dad supposed to fly the money out to me, in person? The mind truly boggles at the thinking represented by an ignorant remark, like the one that Tatoo is making. Obviously, when one is 2,000 miles away from one's own home and possessions, and from everybody that one knows, and is too poor to qualify for a checking account or credit card of one's own, money by wire is going to be one's only option. We made the best of a bad situation created by the refusal of other people to act like reasonable, responsible adults.

Here, as so often seems to be the case among the Friscans, one gets to see that strange mix of inwardly directed, "laidback" lassez-faire indifference and outwardly directed anal retentiveness that made the people I was meeting so very memorable. This is sometimes known as the "tourist trap" syndrome, this whole attitude that the responsibility for the consequences of willfully and capriciously irresponsible behavior lies with the person who suffers its ill effects, not with the person who inflicts them. When I am gainfully employed - as I know that I will be, eventually, I'll be sure to keep this in mind, should I ever think of doing business with any San Francisco based firm.

Considering how the economy of California has been doing over the last few years, something tells me that I'm not the only visitor to have had this thought. I have not been back to San Francisco since this trip, and judging from what I've seen of its local culture, I'd hesitate to ever return. Even in New York, people will understand the concept of "behaving in a professional manner". The Friscans just don't.



Advice # 2 : Be a boy scout. Come prepared. Have a back-up plan. Know how to adapt. Or, as we locals like to say “take care of your own stuff”.


Far more easily said than done, when one finds oneself without the food that one has paid for, one's cash reserves have been depleted after being forced to pay for one's lodging twice, and one is then stranded in the middle of a lifeless, chemically reductive gypsum dust desert, in which nature has been unable to succeed in creating a viable summertime ecosystem at any time during the last 10,000 years. Short of tracking down and cannibalizing some of the Tortoise staff, what kind of "adaptation" did you have in mind, Michael? Was I supposed to find a way of transcending the need for food and water?

Or was I supposed to assume that all promises would be broken, once we were past the point of no return, and pack a backup supply of food, just in case I didn't get fed the food that I had already paid for?

Reality Check: Everything that I brought to San Francisco from Chicago, 2000 miles away, had to fit into the one piece of carry-on luggage and two bags that United allows each passenger. That, however, was downright luxurious compared to what the Tortoise allowed - again, withholding the messy details until we were just about to leave, and had no time to make alternative plans. Everything that we brought onto that bus, under the Green Tortoise's own policies, announced at the last minute, had to fit in the two pieces of luggage that we were allowed.

Even if I had known in advance that the Tortoise staff would go back on its word and not provide food that I could eat, and decided to bring my own food - where would I have stored those supplies? And that's what's wrong with that glib cliche about "taking care of your own stuff", Mike - it leaves no room in the discussion for reality.



It’s not The Green Tortoise fault that you don’t know how to drive,


Oh, garsh, there's that pesky attention span problem again, and I had such hopes for you, Michael. You wouldn't be doing the whacky tabaccy, would you? Nothing I wrote could be reasonably interpreted as an attempt to blame the Tortoise for my cerebral palsy. But how very interesting that you seem to be implying that the fact that I'm handicapped means that I should be quiet and sit down, without you being brave enough to come out and directly say something that bigoted. Why say something that you can easily be quoted and directly challenged on, when you can let insinuations do your work for you, eh Mike? There's a word for what you're hinting at - ableism: prejudice against the disabled.



that you have an expired state ID, and you traveled to San Francisco on your Dad’s credit card with little cash.


Oh, but it was very much the Green Tortoise's fault that I found myself with very little cash at that point, Michael, a point which doesn't go away just because you try to confuse the reader about the chronology. I entered that door with well over a hundred dollars on me, which would have been more than enough to cover a week in San Francisco in the kind of simple comfort that I am happy with. It was after I was forced to pay for the same lodging twice that I found myself short on cash and not before, as hard as you are working to confuse the issue in the minds of those who are reading your postings.

As for the other two points - but for the fact that the Tortoise did not honor its contractual obligations, the peculiar local reaction to a State ID that was just barely out of date would never have become an issue. Your defense of the indefensible is something akin to a line that "sure, we abandoned the deceased by the side of the road, but it's not our fault that a blizzard blew up". One can't escape moral responsibility for one's own unethical actions by passing the buck like that, or by expecting the victims of one's actions to be psychic. "How could I have been reasonably expected to know what I was getting myself into" is the question that you've been sidestepping, throughout.



Sure, they gave you bad advice and steered you in the wrong direction.


More vagueness? Yep. What else?

To be exact, Mike, they lied to me on the phone about accepting payment for lodging and didn't live up to the commitments they made with a paying customer. This is a little different from, say, telling somebody that the City Lights Bookstore is on Market Street. Far more damage and far less innocent incompetence is involved.



S**t happens. Deal with it.


And sometime that "s**t" gets mentioned in consumer reports and in journals, and the people who were spreading the s**t don't end up looking too good as a result, as much as their friends and fellow employees may want to whine about the fact. Mike, in a broader sense, we're left with the question of what your point in posting is, aside from your visible enjoyment of the opportunity to put your arrogance on display? Everything word that I put in that journal was absolutely truthful - a point that you, yourself, have not disputed. So, your complaint is that I did your friends a terrible injustice by telling the truth about them?

What an interesting concern. "Deal with it", yourself. While I was denied the opportunity to make an informed decision for myself, about whether or not I wished to do business with the Tortoise on the terms that were inflicted on me as a customer, others who come across that article are going to be a bit more fortunate in that regard. So, your argument would be that they shouldn't have that freedom to make an informed choice, because there's nothing wrong with a business defrauding its customers? Mike, have you been cleaning that pipe of yours? You really want to control that dosage better.

This is what I was referring to, when I spoke of your effort to pass off a rewarmed Yuppie, Neo-Con attitude, dressed up with a little radical rhetoric, as being something "progressive". You seem to want to take us back to the robber baron era, when Capitalism was a one way street in which business always got what it wanted, and business owners were treated like nobility, being placed above criticism by the mere mortals who bought their products. However pretentious your rhetoric may be, your attitude is one out of another century. The fact that it is one you adopt on behalf of a feeble concern like the Green Tortoise doesn't make your attitude progressive; it just makes it pathetic, and not even in an original way.



As an adult, as someone who works for a living, as someone who lives in The City, there are a dozen different minor catastrophes that happen to me every day.


Again with the vagueness, Mike?

The reader is reminded that one of my "minor" catastrophes involved being left in the middle of a desert without the food I had paid for, for what was easily the better part of a week, because somebody refused to honor his contractual obligations. To listen to Mike's dismissive piece of handwaving, one would think that I was complaining about something no more serious than being late for a movie.

Well, Mike, I too work for a living, albeit not a very good one, and how very progressive of you to look down upon somebody for being poor. But, your attempts at trolling notwithstanding, real adults know that what we're responsible for in life, are the informed choices we make, not the things that other people decide to do to us. There's an expression for what you did in that post: it's called "blaming the victim", and there's nothing responsible about doing that, at all.

Also, living in the heart of a city four times the size of San Francisco as I do, I'd suggest that you wait until Frisco has over a million people, or at least until it's the biggest place in its own metropolitan area again, before trying to impress the rest of us with your pronouncement that you live in "The City". Otherwise, people who live in real cities (eg. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego ...) are likely to fall over laughing every time you start to speak.



The day that I had planed out and the day that eventually did happen are usual two completely different beasts. We all develop coping mechanisms to deal with these spontaneous accidents and move on.


So, I take it that if one has a good, positive mental attitude, one doesn't need food? Intriguing. Perhaps you could travel to Ethiopia and share your wisdom with the masses, many of whom suffer from the delusion that they're capable of being harmed by a lack of food, when, as you have revealed to us, such mundane things as protein and carbohydrates are not needed by he who is wise enough to develop these "coping mechanisms", thus transcending the merely physical. Oh please do enlighten these misguided souls, kind Master!



Chances are, if you fail to develop any of these coping mechanism or fail to plan properly and continue to blame other people for your own misfortune all of your vacations will turn out like this one.


No, Mike, I've never had another vacation turn out like this one, and aside from getting into a lot of attitude, you continue to be vague on what this "good planning" would consist of. So far, it seems to call for such physical impossibilities as packing goods to bring with me than take up a volume larger than that to be found inside of the bags I'm allowed to bring; developing skills which my cerebral palsy will not allow; transcending time and space to get to money that is two thousand miles away from me; spending money that I don't have; and you defend all of this with some vague metaphysical appeal to "coping skills", that in some unspecified way are supposed to allow one to make use of that which one does not possess.



The water situation : I know you got all bent out of shape because they won’t let you bathe with it. Sorry, thems the rules that are clearly spelled out.


No, my ungrammatical friend, "them's the rules" that aren't spelled out until after the fact, once one has bought one's ticket, and the Green Tortoise has one's money and it's too late to ask for a refund - and no reasonable person with even reasonably good reading comprehension skills could have read my article, and taken my complaint on that point to be anything else. By withholding knowledge of something that is unheard of, almost anywhere else, and would be a deal breaker for a great many customers, the Green Tortoise deprives those customers of the opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to do business under those terms. This is grossly unethical.



There’s a very good reason for it too. All it would take is one prima Donna to go thought the entire supply.


And yet, oddly enough, the camp that I ended up staying at instead of the Tortoise, which charged $60 in dues to the Tortoise's $240 in fees (above ticket costs, not counting the stay in the hostel), had no problem letting its members make use of the sun showers, using the camp water supply - and we ended the week with a surplus of water. Let's add that unlike the $240 which the Tortoise charged, this $60 didn't just drop into the camp director's pocket. For example, our camp built a stage with its own lighting system - that costs money. Compare this to the Green Tortoise which, with a number of customers many times the total number of people in our camp and four times the per capita contribution, did nothing more than put up a shade structure for the cooking area and yell at the customers for using paper towels to wipe their hands off after doing the dishes. The Green Tortoise people ended up sleeping on the bus, whereas our people had their own individual dome tents and some large central meeting domes ... begin to see where I'm going with this, Mike?

Our little camp did far more than the Tortoise did, with far less money to work with, per traveller and certainly far less money taken in, in total. What you're trying to imply is infeasible, other camps did without difficulty. In fact, I didn't find a single camp among the dozens I visited that didn't provide water for bathing to their camp members. Some did not bathe, but that was by choice, not by the will of some camp director who would go on a ranting jag about a camp member using two drops of dish soap, instead of one.



Easily. Follow a DPW truck (like a lot of the Torise people did)


Again, this very pleasant bit of playa "urban folklore" was dealt with in Ninnies on Parade: Burning Silliness Online back in 2001, when I mentioned the problem of "Playa Boots", toward the bottom of this page. In real life, unless one is already soaped up before the truck arrives, one really can't wash that way. Not unless one is capable of running through slippery gypsum mud with several pounds of wet drywall mix hanging off of each foot. But, as always, what is reality when we have a mantra to share, eh Mike? Here it comes ... get ready ...



Adapt. This isn’t Club Med.


And there it is, again. Excuse me while I set my watch by it. Shall we chant that one a few more times, Mike? Or, I suppose that we could just go with "Om renge myo kho", or something like that



The food situation : see advice # 1. Weekend of 2002 was the largest group that the Green Tortoise had ever fed in


Of course, I went in 2001, not 2002, but you've been showing remarkable courage in the face of the facts, so do continue, Mike ...








Mike Tattoo - Friday, 06/27/03, 11:07:29pm (#1 of 5)


.....The food situation : see advice # 1. Weekend of 2002 was the largest group that the Green Tortoise had ever fed in it’s company history (Way to go Gardner !)


Leaving us with the (probably unintentional) impression that we're hearing from a company employee, because who else would know that?

Point of correction, Michael, and one well familiar to anybody who has ever been on a Green Tortoise trip: the Tortoise doesn't "feed" anybody. The Tortoise sends its own customers in to do all of the cooking and cleaning, while the paid staff do nothing other than "supervise", and don't even do a good job of that. The only thing that Tortoise provides is the raw materials, and I do mean RAW. Aside from a few side dishes, this is not stuff that we're just heating up, the meals are cooked from scratch, using food that we've paid for.

Continuing the spin, Mike is about to try to leave the reader with the impression that I was just sitting there passively waiting to be served, and griping because the waiter didn't come to my table first. Now here's the reality: no waiter and no tables, aside from the ones that we're working at. There I am, I've cut up a small mountain of vegetables over the more than two hours I've been working in their kitchen, on a trip I've paid $240 to be on. I'm over an hour late, and somebody is waiting for me, and the Tortoise staff isn't even giving me an estimate on how much longer I'm going to be asked to stay. I am slowly missing the entire day, and wondering what the point was of my even coming to a festival that I'm not even going to be allowed the opportunity to see.

Finally, enough is enough. On a very expensive trip, these clowns have gotten over two hours of uncompensated labor from me. Consider how long I had worked preparing food for other people, had I asked somebody else to prepare a little food for me, this would have been more than reasonable, nothing more than the slightest gesture of reciprocity, especially given what we were having for dinner.


Chicken Fajitas

We're taking about an item that, at the outside, takes five minutes to prepare. Go to a taqeria and see for yourself. So had I - please note the use of the subjunctive - HAD I asked somebody to fry a little something up for me, there would have been nothing unreasonable about that. BUT I DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT!

What did I do, that Mikey has his nose out of joint about?

I'm standing at a work table, and I'm almost the only one there. Most of the others have been dawdling about coming, showing one of the many problems with that whole "communal kitchen" concept: we are left at the mercy of the least punctual. A bunch of the food I've cut up is in front of me, and a number of hot plates are nearby, not in use. I ask if I can use some of that cut up food, and one of the available hot plates to fry up a quick dinner, saying "look, it's been over two hours, somebody's waiting, and I just have to get out of here".

Leading the staff member I'm telling this to to engage in some of the abusive behavior described in "Bad Times on the Green Tortoise". This is the same guy who, on the trip back, was kind enough to hide my sleeping bag under the floorboards, leaving me shivering my way through the night. Yes, he (our driver) was just that petty and that vindictive about having his decisions questioned.



It’s a small miracle of almost military like planning and coordination.


If he's referring to the Soviet military, maybe, because even the faintest hint of efficiency was destroyed by the Tortoise's arrogant management style. People were left standing around, not knowing what to do next, waiting for other people to show up, waiting to be assigned a task ... and worried at every moment about the likelihood of being screamed at for something like, well yes, wiping the grease off of one's hands using paper toweling. I found myself in that position after I was told that enough vegetables had been cut up, and my next task would be ... to sit around indefinitely.

But if the reader is tempted to believe Mike, as he makes use of Hitler's "technique of the Big Lie", then let ponder the fact that Mike has not disputed the fact that it would take that team of customers over two hours to prepare chicken fajitas, something that is, as I have said, regularly (and rapidly) available in many Mexican fast food establishments. To stretch a five minute task into an over two hour one is not efficiency, under any sane definition of the word.

This incident also points us toward the answer to a question that I've been asked before: "If you guys were cooking from scratch, more or less (aside from some of those items being canned, and a few processed items like refried beans being included), couldn't you have just prepared something gluten-free for yourself?" No, because the staff, which seemed to be getting a real ego rush out of micromanaging its customers, wouldn't allow me to do so. What am I supposed to do at that point? Get in a fistfight with one of them? If they're going to be like that, there's relatively little that I can do at that point, other than make sure to remember to never do business with them again.



To interpret that flow and demanding food before everyone else because you feel that your needs as a paying customer supercede those of everyone else will not get you very far.


Uh, what flow would that be, Mike? The end effect of my not being allowed the use of that station to cook my own meal, for myself, was that the station sat idle, not that it was freed up for use by somebody else. So, logically speaking ... Yes, I know that "logic" is not a very postmodern thing to believe in using, but bear with me ... logically, how would my use of facilities that would have otherwise not been in use slow anybody's attempt to do anything? Especially when the only "flow" taking place at that point seemed to consist of people standing around looking fairly lost, wondering when they were going to be allowed to do anything other than zone out?



All the veteran Green Tortoise crew are used to dealing with Zsa Zsa Gabor prima dona types. You really don’t want to get lumped into that category.


In other words, "mind your place or else, boy". Got you. Yes, this sounds like an experience well worth the $240 (not counting the $200 for the festival we paid to get into, and in one sense or another, weren't allowed the freedom to attend).



Your $240 : You mention your $240 eight times in your article. It sounds like your $240 is very dear to you and you feel short changed by Green Tortoise.


Yes, Mike, some of us do work for a living, and rightly resent it when we get cheated out of money we've worked for long and hard, by people who lie to us in order to get our business, and then refuse to live up to their commitments.



Well, let’s just assume that you rented a car and drove out there from San Francisco (I know, you can’t drive. It’s one of your many deficits, but just bear with me).


Oh, sure, and thanks for diving in with the able-ism. But, before we let you slide off on this point, Mike - what is your point? Aside from the ignorant attitude that you are displaying by harping on the fact that a disabled person has not done something that his disability rules out, one is left with the question of what, specifically, are you getting at? Are you saying, "you could have driven instead of taking the bus, and therefore you're to blame for anything that Tortoise did"? By that logic, a bank should have the legal right to embezzle the finds deposited in it, because its customers could have chosen to do business with a different savings institution, instead, and muggers should be set free because those they mugged could have walked down a different street, never running into the mugger, thereby avoiding being mugged by him.



Lets say you found a car at $60 a day (most I’ve dealt with are $80+ but I feel for you man and want to cut you a deal) , At $60 a day from Tuesday night to Monday afternoon is $420 (yeah !) + say $100 on gas is $520, so strictly from a transportation standpoint, The Green Tortoise @ $240 just saved you about $280, right?


Uh ... yeah. Apples and oranges, Mike. If I was able to drive and had rented that car, it would have been my own car to use, when I wanted and (within broad geographical limitations) where I wanted, during the time of the rental. The Green Tortoise bus was certainly not at my disposal, just any time I wanted it. A more valid analogy would be to Greyhound taking me out into the desert.



Wrong.

Try a couple thousand.



Really? A bus trip into the desert would have cost thousands of dollars? What do you say we check that claim out, Mikey? I called the Greyhound number at

1-800-661-8747

and asked the very pleasant lady at the other end of the phone how much a bus trip from San Francisco to Boston would cost. You might be surprised to learn that this very long trip, much longer than the trip to the Playa, would cost one no more than a very reasonable $182 one way, $364 round trip. Now Mike, I know that you're a Californian, so Geography might not be your long suit, so please get a map. Notice how when you drive from San Francisco to Boston, it's almost impossible to avoid going through a desert?

So tell me, Mike, how DO the Greyhound people pull this miraculous feat off? Do they, perhaps, drive their bus into a wormhole, allowing them to pass from San Francisco to Boston without crossing the country in between? Do they go westward, taking the long way around, treating their customers to a round the world cruise on the ship their bus drives aboard, as their passengers thrill to the sights of the Orient? Or is it maybe a pony express kind of thing, with the riders switching from one bus to the next as each breaks down? I've long heard Nevada referred to as the graveyard of buses, over many a harrowing tale told in our local Dennys.

Or could it be - and I only raise this as a possibility - that you're throwing the bull? Hmmm. An interesting possibility, you have to admit. And did you like the way I worked the 2004 Burning Man theme ("Vaults of Heaven") into the discussion of your unbelievably, shamelessly creative version of reality?



The desert eats cars.


And just imagine what it would do to a rickshaw! But I didn't take a car or a rickshaw, I took a bus, so this is a little beside the point.



Everyone has auto horror stories on the playa. Also, all the local rental agencies are hip to Burning Man and have specific anti-Burning Man clauses in their rentals for Memorial Day weekend. Everyone has stories to tell of thousands of dollars wasted on Burning Man rental cars mishaps.


Ah, yes, Mike. Undocumented anecdotal evidence which is not on-point: It just doesn't get any better than that. But why did you not have the boldness to pursue this fallacy to its logical conclusion? Why, just imagine how much the Green Tortoise saved me, because I didn't take a taxicab from San Francisco to the Playa? Or charter a helicopter? Or a team of greatly overheated and confused Siberian huskies, fresh from its victory at the Iditarod, hitched to one of the few intact pioneer wagons left, being driven in shifts by the cast of "Friends"! Just imagine how much that would have cost!

But it's not on-point, and have you figured out why it isn't on-point yet, Mikey? Because what is relevant to one's bottom line is not how much one could have spent, theoretically, but how much one did spend. Let's say that private auto travel through the desert was as expensive as you allege. This is doubtful, given the fact that much of Nevada is economically depressed and yet the locals are still driving, ruling out the possibility that the cost of driving those cars around exceeds $100K per annum - the cost that would be incurred if one week of use cost "thousands of dollars" (ie. at least $2000).

But let's say that you were right on this point. One would still be left with the fact that the Tortoise has done nothing so extravagant as providing each of us with the luxury of his own private car. So again, Mike, we're back to apples and oranges, and the question of who it was that you were hoping to fool.



Bottom line : as much as you like to paint yourself as the victim, you’re not. I know people with fates far worse than yours. You just whine more about it more than all of them put together.


Kudos, Mike - You actually managed to hold off until your second post before dredging up that tired old rationalization. "How can you complain about (fill in the blank) when there are people dying of AIDS / children starving in Somalia / War in the Middle East / etc." Except that the Green Tortoise's business practices have done nothing to cure AIDS, end war in the Middle East, or do anything else, other than line their own pockets, so the relevance of that canned retort is doubtful, as it always is. One also has the amusing irony of the word "whining" coming from somebody who spent a few posts on e-Playa sobbing about the fact that a truthful account of a trip with the Tortoise wasn't casting his 'friends' in a very positive light. Since you like the cliches so much, why not?

Pot. Kettle. Black.



The Green Tortoise Burning Man trip is like traveling with the circus of beautiful women (how come you never mentioned any of them in your story ? What about the curvy , bouncy, English girls with dreads from 2002 ?


Well, Mike, again, I went in 2001, not 2002. You seem to be having trouble with this concept, so let me help you out: 2001 and 2002 were different years. You see, that's why they had different numbers attached to them. Got less confusing that way.

Sarcasm aside, you've tipped your hand all too deeply. Comments about great drinking buddies and loose European women and curvy bouncy English women ... in other words, I'm supposed to not worry about minor issues like being left for days without food, because seeing that story was crashing the buzz you were getting from enjoying some quick drunken nookie in the dust with loose, curvy, bouncy strange women from England who you'll never see again? And this is your pitch? Have you even started to think about how shallow you're sounding in those posts, even by California standards?

To say nothing of the absurdity of implying that the Tortoise should get off the hook for its unethical business practices because some hot girls bought tickets. Seriously, how old are you? 15? 14? A grown man's thought processes should be taking place much further above his beltline than yours seemed to be, when you were writing that passage.



Wound’t you rather write about the beautiful people that you saw and experienced than the lousy time that you were responsible for creating in the first place ?)


No matter how many times you play the broken record game, Mike, BS remains BS, and as the reader can see for himself, your remarks have been rebutted successfully and in detail. "Blaming the victim" was reprehensible behavior before the Tortoise started running, and it remains cowardly, reprehensible behavior to this very day.



The Green Tortoise Burning Man trip is a crazy tour that seems to continually enthrall some people and p*** off others. I get it, I really do.


Yes, but will there be enough penicillin to treat what you're getting?



And with that, I’m out of here -

Thank you San Francisco and good night , you’ve been a great audience -


A legend in his own mind. I wonder if Mike hears a laugh track in the background, every time he tries to tell a joke? Faster than one can say "birds of a feather flock together", we would soon hear from a kindred soul - kindred to Mike's soul, that is, not mine and I hope, not the reader's.



Mike Tattoo








Doctor Boudreaux - Saturday, 06/28/03, 12:14:30am (#2 of 5)




"Doctor Boudreaux" is one of the many login names that Bob Stahl of BMORG has adopted, in his years on those boards. ("Slithey Rabbet" is another). Among a variety of great moments, including an attempt to smear a group of us for being involved in the running of the Alternative Chicago/Ft.Wayne Burning Man List without the approval of the "anarchists" in his little group in San Francisco, a different attempt to shut down a Burning Man movie night here in Chicago, and years of just generally being a disruptive pain in the neck, in 2003 Bob would barge his way into the thread on e-Playa I set up to introduce Café Satan, where he would truly distinguish himself.

Already knowing that my mother had died a few months before Burning Man 2001 (of leukemia), Bob seized onto a a skeptical reaction of mine to somebody's complaint that I was working an inexcusable hardship on him by using a font face that he didn't care for as an excuse to dive in with some character assassination, eventually going so far as to tell a "joke" about my allegedly keeping my mother's decomposing body in my attic, one that would not be hard to get for anybody who had seen the movie "Psycho". Bob then followed me into another part of e-Playa to continue his trolling, when I tried to start fresh and have a constructive discussion. Let us note that the historically highly censorious moderators of e-Playa had nothing to say about any of this. Clearly, they approved.

Bob and I had not been friends up until this point, but even by the incredibly low standards I've seen in many other places on the Internet, this was clearly out of line. Bob, to this day, maintains that he has been victimized by my lack of a sense of humor. So one might consider the source as one reads Bob's comments:



Well said, Mike, but be aware that the author of that web page and other such keyboard-clankings is what you might call a professional crank.

To believe that he ever even rode on Green Tortoise, much less ever attended or planned to attend Burning Man, you'd have to show me the ticket records or produce witnesses. I don't know how it happens that Green Tortoise or Burning Man or anyone else become his targets on mailing lists, BBSs or Usenet -- his philosophy seems to be anti-everything,


Bob, just about anybody would object to the kind of behavior that we've come to expect out of you. Even on ePlaya, where as a member of BMORG you're a member of the local cabal and the local biases are all in your favor, you've been warned about your behavior at least once, by a member of your own organization. One doesn't have to be "anti-everything" to be anti-abuse. One just has to have at least a little common decency and a little self-respect.

As for what I've been opposed to ... so far, I've been opposed to academic fraud, historical revisionism, homophobia, child molestation, racism (going either way) and a number of other issues where, even though I was the voice of traditional, historically rooted common sense and, where applicable, went on to be vindicated by history, I still got flamed, often mass-flamed. I take some small measure of pride in the fact that in spite of all of the unpleasantness, I never gave in on a point of principle just to appease those I was being attacked by. There's this little thing that's gone out of fashion with the advent of Political Correctness, called "courage". I won't lay claim to a great amount of it, because, after all, I'm on the other side of a glass screen from the crazies I kept encountering, but at least I can lay claim to a little.

What an interesting comment on Net Culture that this is often viewed as being a thing that I should be ashamed of. And how do people who were clearly in the wrong manage to continue hostilities after the political winds have shifted, and their highly unworthy causes are no longer in fashion? By doing what Mike has done in his posts, and what "Petro" did in the "Fred Cherry Story": by giving only the spin, while remaining vague and evasive about the damning details. Which is why, as I've said many times, pages like the Halls of Eternal Disbelief need to be written - so that the truth will out, in full documented detail.

But when all else fails, you can always project your own personal vices and misdeeds onto others, can't you, Bob?



he expresses it online, and resolving all that is a job for his shrink and his conscience, not us. Please don't take any of it personally, and if he responds here on the eplaya, please don't feed the troll.




Good going, buddy, I knew you could do it.









desert pearll - Saturday, 06/28/03, 9:32:50am (#3 of 5)


please don't feed the troll.
specifically:
wheat
rye
oats
barley
or flour-dusted nuts.




And don't forget the breakfast crepes that Mike will be saying that I'd be demanding, but for that gluten business. I'm still trying to get over the sheer ignorance that the man showed, by equating a complaint regarding a health concern with one about the elegance of what was being served. Which, by the way, is one of the things that I DID NOT fault the Tortoise on. (The raw ingredients that I did see looked pretty good; if food sensitivities weren't an issue, I would have found much of what I saw simple, but pleasing).









Mike Tattoo - Friday, 07/18/03, 3:49:03pm (#4 of 5)


"Please don't take any of it personally, and if he responds here on the eplaya, please don't feed the troll."

Yeah, not really looking to encourage that type of behavior, just there was something I felt I had to get off my chest.

There are bonds that you make with people on the playa. For those unfamiliar with it, or with bonding with people in general, it comes off as a "cult" but a more honest word for it is "friendship".


As we've seen, Michael, "honest" is one word that you should get extremely shy around, considering how rarely it seems to apply to your commentary. But this is what you think friendship is, or would have others think that friendship is? People who charge you $240 just to hang around with them, and completely lose it when one shows signs of having a mind and a will of one's own, and expects them to abide by the norms of civilized society? Real friends try to build each other up and look out for each other, not tear one's spirits down so that one can live up to the expectation that one will let oneself be taken advantage of, without protest. Real friends don't object to a little healthy assertiveness, among other reasons, because real friends don't stand to lose anything from it, that they'd want to have.



I never really make a big deal about it at the time but when people are honest and kind to me and extend a hand of friendship then I treat them the same way, and when I hear someone else, especially a spoiled brat living on his Dad’s credit card, bad mouthing them online I feel the need to speak up in their defense.

Speaking of which, I didn’t catch it the 1st time, but dude actually PAID a nearby camp $60 to use their sunshower!


Now, Michael, weren't you the one who just got done venting about "honesty"? The mudslinging comments about "living on his Dad's credit card" have already been addressed. And now, apparently unsatisfied with having only one person to throw mud at, Mike wants to portray that camp that I was staying at as having been a commercial concern itself. Not only are his remarks inaccurate, but a key part of their inaccuracy is exposed in Mike's own post, in the very next line. I didn't pay for the sunshower, I paid for a camp membership - and then stayed with that camp.



Not barter, not be creative and trade, but just straight out "For $60, I was able to purchase a membership which gave me access to sun showers, and shelter. (A very pleasant, comfortable little dome tent)."


Excuse me, Mike, but aren't you the one who's been ranting about my alleged demand for special privileges? Everybody else in my camp paid that membership fee. (That camp should not be confused with the Green Tortoise, from which I only got a ride and a lot of grief). Why should I have asked to be exempted from the membership fee which everybody else in that camp had to pay, and with good reason? Why should the organizers be expected to carry the burden of financing everything in our camp, on their own? Considering how few of us there were, and how much was built, if they were turning a profit, I'd certainly like to know how they pulled that one off. The shipping alone must have cost them serious cash.

This is a little different from the Tortoise, which charged four times as much for what amounted to being little more than an expensive trip on a crowded bus, turning what had to be a very healthy profit, indeed. There is a massive difference between being a commercial concern with an attitude to match, and saying something like "hey folks, I'm not rich, so what do you say you chip in your fair share and help defray some of the expenses we're running up". To compare the two is like comparing a college kid who charges a $2 party cover, which he uses to buy more beer for his guests, with a bar owner.

I'm also wondering who these people would be, who would be greeting this part of your rant with approval. Mr.Stahl, of course, has an axe of his own to grind, so no surprises there, but what could possibly be the rationale? Practically every camp I've heard of charges a membership fee for the same reason the camp I stayed with did: because otherwise one WOULD have to be rich to be able to organize a camp, and should one have to be?



And then dude has the never to lecture the rest of the Internet about the non-commercial aspect of Burning Man :

"Burning Man is a non-commercial event, and here I was getting there using the Green Tortoise, which was commercial to the hilt. She was right, it was a dysfunctional combination. Then one makes the experience a chance for commercial gain, which brings in the element of greed, which is now free to run unchecked"


Yeah. Let's take a look at the passage that Mike quotes out of context.



"What did I learn? "Don't do business with the Green Tortoise" is a good lesson to walk away from this one, with. But if that was the only lesson that I had learned, I would only be walking in the direction of the next bad experience. So, in more general terms, how could I have avoided this?

What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? The coordinator for the camp I was staying at said it, and she was so right. My problem was that I had approached my attendance at Burning Man in a manner contrary to the nature of the event. Burning Man is a non-commercial event, and here I was getting there using the Green Tortoise, which was commercial to the hilt. She was right, it was a dysfunctional combination. One starts with a subculture in which everything is being done as a favor for everybody else, which gets people out of the habit of thinking that demands can legimately be made of them. Then one makes the experience a chance for commercial gain, which brings in the element of greed, which is now free to run unchecked. Open thievery can now be mixed with self-righteous pride without the mix seeming odd to those inflicting it on their customers.




which is exactly what happened. "Got there, talked to experienced burner, she told me where I made my mistake, and I saw her point" - if Mike sees a "lecture" in a passage like this, especially in a journal (where the point, by definition, is to convey the experience), then he needs to take that mountain sized chip off of his shoulder, and go seek out a therapist who will be licensed to prescribe the medication he so clearly has a crying need for.



F***ing Lame.





Yes, you are, and yet you continue to post. How very brave of you, Michael!



It’s like a virgin with a premature ejaculation problem writing a sex column in Hustler.


Rather more about your reading preferences and dating life than I needed to know, Michael.



Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Here’s a quarter. Go buy a clue.


Save your quarters, Michael. Given the fact that you seem to think that $240 will buy you a friendship, I think that you need to buy that clue a bit more than I do. Or maybe you can save up a lot of quarters, and hire yourself a tutor who can help you with those reading comprehension skills that you seem to be lacking. Just don't try to get her to do any of those things you've read about in Hustler, even in she is a "bouncy, curvy English girl", because she probably won't be "loose" enough to agree to that sort of thing.



Mike Tattoo




Yes, Mike, that's what you keep telling us your real name is, but you know, I was a little skeptical about that, so just out of curiosity, I decided to check your profile on the old e-Playa. I come across the e-mail address youcantbewhatyouwere@yahoo.com, which under a simple Yahoo search, turned up this page, on which I found your e-mail address and the name "Mike Bolger", not the improbable "Mike Tattoo". You would seem to be a little less anonymous, now.

Doing a Googlegroup search on "Mike Bolger" and "Burning Man", I came across exactly one, slightly profane post by somebody with the e-mail address dislex@sfsu.edu. Searching under that address brought up this (again slightly profane) page written by a broadcasting major at San Francisco State who talked about the pleasures of kicking his friends in the backs of their heads - a punk rocker, apparently. One gets the distinct impression that the "dislex" in his address stands for "dyslexia", which would make you, Michael, that most special of all creatures: somebody prejudiced against a group that he, himself belongs to; a disabled ableist. If so, then what is to be said about somebody who has been on the receiving end of what he is now dishing out, knows exactly what it's like, and continues anyway? And if you think that talking down to somebody because of his case of cerebral palsy is acceptable, should some of us return the favor and start commenting on your numerous spelling errors, in an equally disrespectful tone? If you wish, Mike, we can go there.

I'll leave that link in place. There may be a number of Mike Bolgers in San Francisco, but I suspect that we're already looking at enough detail to pin down exactly which Mike Bolger we're talking about, and ensure that the credit his actions have earned for him ends up being his, and his alone.







Doctor Boudreaux - Friday, 07/18/03, 9:12:25pm (#5 of 5)


He's had his rant up on the web for a couple years, and he's trolled newsgroups and BBSs for at least ten years, picking subjects for trolls apparently at random. You're not in this f***stick's league, and please trust that you are not his target. Don't even respond to my post. Leave it alone.




Two striking things about this continuing accusation of trolling I get from Bob: 1. He never provides any specifics 2. Other people let him get by with that. Which should tell you just how much value they place on fairness and the truth, and why I keep winning these arguments.

Yes, I'm noticably smarter than Bob, a fact that I'm sure doesn't make his day and probably explains more than a little of the spite I've seen from him, and I'm drastically smarter than Mike Tattoo. But that's not why I keep wiping the floor with them, rhetorically. The key isn't ability, it's character. I never argue a point that I, myself, don't believe in. That means that while Bob and Mike have to shuffle and jive, and hope against hope that nobody catches on to what they're doing, all that I have to do is go point by point and slowly dissect their prose. All that I need to win is patience, and those who've been to graduate school have that in abundance. Bob and Mike may get some cheerleading from their allies, but as for how they will look in the record? It's a foregone conclusion, one that they'll never see coming, because good little postmodernists that they are, they've wiped away their ability to conceptualize the value that gives me such an unfair edge over them. And that is why Bob is right when he says that Mike is not in my league. If truth be told, we're not even playing the same game.





Where to, next? This page is part of the "Mostly Evil" site on Artshost / Freewebsites.com.







Hosted free by FREE WEBSITES - Free Hosting with Online Website Builder!