Emphasis on the “No No No” part of “Never Can Say Goodbye”

Does anyone else feel like the only adult in the room is leaving?

~SGEW

The blogosphere has long been poorer for having lost Steve Gilliard. Now it’s practically broke.

Class act, that broad, and always worth reading, right down to the little details (if the title of her retirement notice doesn’t make you swoon a little, you suck at personhood, though she’d be the last one to back me up on that).

I relate the following is by way of explaining how much I respect hilzoy:

Few years back, I got into it with one of the Sensible Conservatives over at Obsidian Wings, and not being aware of the posting rules, used a very naughty word (offhandedly, y’know, not like FUCK YOU BUSH FLUFFER), and got spanked by Andrew Olmsted, one of hilzoy’s co-bloggers. I tried to slink off good-naturedly, but I guess some sulkiness came through, because he immediately set to smoothing things over, and I was like “naw, dude, it’s cool, I just don’t have any interest in watching my language, on account of the borderline Tourette’s; I’m not gonna stop reading or anything.” Then hilzoy showed up to engage me, in her usual light-the-world-up-with-a-digital-smile kinda way, and I was like “Jesus, people, I get that your mission statement is to answer Rodney King’s question in the affirmative, but honestly, I’m not worth the effort. My whole thing is being kind of a dick, it’s apparently not a good fit here, and that’s fine; my remaining options include every other site on the internet. Now stop being such lovely examples of human kindness, you’re freakin’ me out.”

It always stuck with me how well that exchange spoke of both of them (not so much of me, but again, that’s sorta what I’m going for). Then Andy got shot through the neck in Iraq and died, but that’s neither here nor over there.

Anyway, little over a month ago, just surfing around, I happened to stumble across this post mere moments after it’d gone up, and not a comment in sight. That thread was a blank canvas, beckoning me, like a patch of wet fucking cement.

And a line of such perfect inappropriateness, so deliciously not in the spirit of things, popped fully-formed into my head (I usually have to expend a massive amount of energy just to get my verbs and subjects to agree, never mind tag a joke), as though God Himself were saying “do it, gil. Besmirch away.”

But I didn’t, because I knew hilzoy wouldn’t appreciate it. It wasn’t even one of her posts, but hilzoy IS Obsidian Wings (the rest of the crew there’s fine but if they keep the name it’ll be like when I saw the Drifters sans Ben E. King).

Anyway, clink that link and just imagine the self-control it took for a guy like me not to write “no, seriously, you owe me a new monitor.”

That’s how much I respect hilzoy.

All the best, professor. Your departure will not go unnoticed, sorta like how the boat sinking at the beginning of Lord of the Flies didn’t go unnoticed.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/18/09 at 04:16 PM • Permalink

And here is that link I referenced: http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/10/b arack_obama.html

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