Spontaneity has a time and a place

I just stumbled across Mark Pesce's little rant McBurners while I was looking for something else.

I have an axe to grind. I have a fight to pick. I have a hair across my ass.

And I want to share.

It started when I decided not to go to Burning Man this year.
....

It was a hard decision to make. But an easy one to keep.

Because once I’d made the decision—and freed myself from the almost obsessive nature of the planning that precedes each trip to the Playa, all the toy hunting and costume-making and theme planning and buying buying buying—I found I could step aside from the madness which swept into and consumed all of my friends—as it had for me, year after year—and take a good, honest, objective look at it. Well, at least as objective as I can be.

And I realized something. It’s become a cult. And it’s about time we all woke the fuck up and recognized it.

I’m not saying a cult is a bad thing, mind you.

Pesce, by the way, is an all-’round interesting guy, though his website does have that unhappy tendency to create eyestrain.