Burning Man Dies

It’s never funny when a man burns to death. But it can be slightly amusing. Especially at Burning Man.

The big desert counter-culture slash fit-in-dominant-culture festival culminates with the ignition of a 40-foot tall wooden burning man. A solid way to show your environmental credentials. A nonsensical carbon burn of enough wood to construct sixteen Habitats for Humanity homes. One Burner who completely lacks irony decided to charge into the flames of hipster Hades. He didn’t fare well.

According to the police report, the still unidentified Darwin Award winner broke through a “human-chain of security officers”. That sounds impressive but it mostly means he had to bust past two rent-a-cops almost holding hands. The crisped fella was air transported by one of those damn modern technology helicopters to UC Davis hospital where he later succumbed to his burns. There’s no SPF strong enough for running into a four story structure fire in only a loin cloth.

Toxicology reports are being conducted so everybody can confirm what they already know. Or at least get a solid molecular break down on the specific drugs involved. The festival is called Burning Man but you’d think somebody would’ve figured out along the way that man-made conflagrations and naked people high as fuck isn’t a great mix.

Next year bring out a big screen and show a burning Yule log in the fire place. Though this self-immolation is far and away the most interesting thing to ever happen at Burning Man. You’d hate to thwart it before it caught on.

_{Photo credit: Splash News / Getty}