Piss Clear: Black Rock City's favorite alternative newspaper

You know you're a Burner, when...

You take the weird big bubble wrap stuff that your mail order computer equipment was packed in (Flo-Pak Cell-O air cushions, to be precise) and wrap it around your body trying to come up with a Playa fashion concept.
Someone says 'PVC' and you think 'shade structure' before thinking 'sprinkler pipe.'
You have playa dust in a salt shaker on your table as a condiment, just in case you get homesick for Black Rock City.
Sneakers in the dryer sound suspiciously like the bad techno music you heard on Burn Night.
You have some Burner friends in a non-Black Rock City context, and you have to ask them what their real names are to order to introduce them to your more mundane friends.
You're much better prepared than most of your family and friends to handle a situation when the water or power goes out.
Your mundane friends come to you first to borrow a tent or camping equipment.
You get more e-mail from the Burning Man list than from spammers.
At the after-Christmas sale you're in the store, loading up on strings of lights because, "those would be great for our camp!"
You start wondering when tickets will be going on sale, to an event that's still ten months away.
You go to a park and find yourself picking up even garbage and moop that others left behind.
Your new source of cool ideas in fresh gear for club wear and parties is the Army-Navy surplus store.
You are standing in line at 3 AM in a Wal-Mart in Reno, waiting to pay for batteries, plastic sheeting, 12 gallons of water, and a bicycle - and so are the half-dozen people in line in front of you.
You go to the Louvre and wonder what all of the various "masterpieces" would look like wreathed in glorious flames.
You can't get enough of CNN and Fox News and the War in Afghanistan not because of the war coverage but because the terrain and dust storms look so much like Black Rock City that you get homesick.
Getting up everyday and putting on clothes seems unnatural.
You never really go camping but have way more camping gear than any of your friends.
You start saying things like, "This one time at Burning Man..." a la American Pie's "One time at band camp" refrain.
You start lusting after the deluxe sun showers at REI.
You start collecting weird objects that just seem Playa-esque.
Wearing ram's horns to a party seems like the most natural thing in the world.
Getting your oil changed at Jiffy Lube makes you giggle and then get all serious.
Going "home" takes on a whole new meaning in August.
You're the only one in the entire Reno Hilton parking lot with a cargo van. (Filled with camp trash to boot!)
Watching the acrobatics at Cirque Du Soleil makes you wish you were running around doing cartwheels in Black Rock City.
You cave in the top of your Suburban and you smile ... because it was just enough wood to make your ideal structure.
You care more for the people you met in Black Rock City than your own neighbors.
You consider the epithet 'freak' a compliment.
People don't understand why you just "give things away.' Or pick up litter.
Water becomes your drink of choice and you always subconsciously note whether or not you "piss clear."
You're heard arguing with another man about who's skirt is more manly.
You keep multiple bottles of water stored in the fridge and in your car. And you don't live within hundreds of miles of a desert.
The wallpaper on your screen is a shot you took of a piece of untouched Playa from five feet in the air.
You'd drive three hours on the crappy traffic-choked interstate just to have a beer with somebody you camped near two years ago.
You subconsciously break your non-BM friends down into two categories: Those that could appreciate and involve themselves and become Burners, and the others.
- compiled by Penfold, Pyrokitten, Bobby G, Fred Silver, Joe McCleskey, Dogdrum, Erika Bellas, Andy Wing, Bonzai, William Schaeffer, iD, and SirJames of the Playa