With heavy rain forcing organizers of the popular Burning Man event to close its gates on opening day, many festival goers are viewing the rain as a sign from heaven and reconsidering their plans for the week. “We’d become so enmeshed in our noncommercial alternative lifestyle, we’d lost sight of what makes this whole thing possible: money. What we’ve been looking for might have been right in front of us the whole time.” said one Bay Area denizen standing by his car on the side of the road. “Let’s play some cards!”

In fact, the combination of Tom Cruise’s morally bankrupt yuppie and Dustin Hoffman’s autistic math genius might be a perfect encapsulation of the Silicon Valley elite that now finds itself stranded in the middle of the Nevada desert. One would-be Burner expostulated it this way: “If you could take everyone here and harness their raw greed and ambition with this crowd’s analytical understanding of complex systems, we could take down every casino in Reno.” Said another, “Of course I don’t have my underwear. I’m definitely not wearing my underwear.”