There's plenty of strange stuff slapped onto sites like Craigslist on a daily basis, but my favorite annual wave of weirdness hits every September. That's when patchouli-scented vagabonds like Katy Perry and Susan Sarandon return from Burning Man, the planet's most prominent and freaky utopian experiment / hippie party, and try to find the friends and lovers they made in the heart of Black Rock City. They're living in different cities; they might be living under different names. All they have to work with are a few substance-addled memories and the insane connective powers of the internet.

Of course, not everyone has the opportunity to go to Burning Man. They can read about each year's new batch of missed connections just about everywhere, but they'll never have the chance to feel the pain that comes with losing that friend, the one you split a joint with as a giant wooden effigy went up in flames in the distance. I feel bad for these readers, and I want to help — that's why I built this Burning Man missed connections generator. You won't be able to feel the heat on your face or smell the chai in the air, but you can create your own message meant for another attendee. Who knows? If you post it on your local virtual bulletin board for kicks, you might even make a new friend.