I've noted before that I try to turn negative emotions into positive actions. Ordinarily, I keep the details of such activities to myself - I fear that crowing about one's good works tarnishes their luster. However, I thought this evening's adventure was worth sharing.

While I was headed to Burning Man, my former partner Animus_Voxx - who I still very much cherish and adore - did something that pushes the very boundaries of passive-aggression nearly as much as this document. She posted some bitter, pointed, and perhaps true commentary in a journal that only I know about, subsequently hid the post, then deleted the journal, and then undeleted it and posted yet more sour grapes.

I wouldn’t have seen those first words at all, but my ever-vigilant software agents caught these turds as they were flung into the infosphere. You must understand, I’m not a stalker; I’ve just been on the Internet an extraordinarily long time, and I have a great many automated processes that act on my behalf. I can’t not see things. If I have ever cared about you, when you sneeze online, I get wet.

Here I am on Friday night, TheDave and TheAmber have headed out to a party, aoisoyokaze and AES256 are nuzzling privately in the tent, and I’m feeling isolated and somewhat poisoned by these cooly calculated words. Besides all that, I’m still a bit on fire and wanted to go Burning. I’ve finished my work, and I’m left with nothing healthy to do whatsoever.

This little gnome concocted a plan to squeeze some lemonade from that citric state.

You know those codes on the Coke bottles? I save them. I even scavenged some from the empty boxes around Camp ?estionmark. Usually, I buy myself some pointless branded swag. A subscription to Wired, or 20% off on a pair of Dickies. Earlier this evening, I had just short of a thousand points, enough for a toaster or something. I discovered on the MyCokeRewards site that they could be donated to a school.

With a heart full of hurt and a head full of drugs So New They’re Legal™, I put on my burner gear and headed out into the night. Clad in a kilt, armed only with my paddle-shaped PackLight and an iPhone, I trod through the bleakest parts of the city.

I eventually made my way to St Turibius, a small catholic school in the worst part of town, behind a gas station and, in fact, a stone’s throw from a Coke bottling factory. I sat on the steps of the school, cracked open a still-cold can of Coke I had brought with me, and smoked a cigarette as I used the browser on my phone to donate all nine hundred and ninety four of my rewards points to the children.

I strolled home via a safer route, purged somewhat of my fear and hurt and anger, delivering kind words and actions to the street people I met on the way.

To me, this is Burning Man. The important part, anyway. Not the hedonism, not the spectacle, neither the Roman partying into the night nor the Spartan peace of the desert. Those things are necessary, an integral part of the whole thing, but what matters to me is the drive to share, to make the world a better place with whatever tools are at hand. To make joy for others, with one’s own joy a secondary emergent property.

I shan’t repeat the words that drove me to tonight’s madness. They may have been true. I am not perfect. I am keenly aware of my flaws and aware of the amusement they provide to my detractors. I am what I am.

But the children of St Turibius shall have toast.