numb3r_5ev3n

Burning Flipside 2017 was awesome, I just wish there had been more of it - I didn't end up getting out there until very late Friday night, because I couldn't get Thursday and Friday off. I didn't get to do all of the ranging around I wanted to do - and by the time the temperature had dropped sufficiently enough that I actually had the energy to do it, we had to hit the hay because loadout was that morning. Oh well. It is what it is.

At least it didn't rain until Sunday. The burn itself was a Flipside miracle: we almost thought we wouldn't be able to do it once the rain let up, until the Rangers/Fire team were like, "F it, we'll throw diesel on it detonate a mortar and throw fireworks at it until it gets the job done." (A campmate and I were actually eavesdropping on the meeting at the Ranger camp where this was being discussed, because we were sick of waiting around for news.) The actual burn was probably the best one so far in the five years that I have been going.

In other news: so, I've started playing Undertale.

 So, Burning Flipside is less than three weeks away. And because I can't get all the time off that I would normally get, the usual phenomenon of "procrastinating about packing because of work, and then throwing everything that's left into a plastic bag the morning of, and leaving around noon on Thursday" is not an option. I will be leaving *from* work Friday afternoon, and hopefully getting to the event before the gate closes at midnight - which is totally doable provided I can get my ass to Mars out of DFW, specifically through DFW traffic, in less than an hour and a half. 

And this means all my gear, my boots, my spare boots, and my backup spare boots have to be ready to roll when I roll out of the parking lot shortly after 5PM on Friday the 26th, three weeks from now.

So, most of the Burner community that I interact with is in a serious state of schadenfreude about Fyre Fest. I mean, with my income, $105.00 for a Flipside ticket can technically be considered an extravagance. These folks shelled out anywhere from 5000-12,000. And ended up being served ham sandwiches and housed in FEMA tents. The urge to point and laugh is strong (one tweet: "SPOILED RICH KID: "Poor people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!" RICH KID AT FYRE FEST: "MY SANDWICH IS BAD! SEND EVERYONE!")

As someone said in another article, the true hallmark of privilege is still having a future after something this fucked up happens to you. But at the same time, I kind of feel terrible for joining in all of the schadenfreude? I seriously hope no one has actually come to harm because of all of these shenanigans? Because I know what it's like for an event to seriously go south, even though I and the people I was camping with got out of Flipside 2015 right before the flash flood hit that turned the event into three separate islands, stranding people for up to a week and eventually necessitating that people be airlifted off of the land?

And in the meantime, I'm thinking, "How much do you think Ja Rule and Billy McFarland are willing to part with some of those surplus FEMA tents for? I'm asking for a friend."