Dab Gone Blog

Just a quick note to say I'll miss this guy. His was the first local blog I read, and still the one I read first every day. There are few writers I know who have as distinctive a voice as he does. As an English teacher, for example, I could easily have my students do a tone analysis through his diction (if it weren't for all the curse words, of course), or look at how theses are developed through evidence, repetition and clinchers. I loved his writing, even about topics I disagreed with, and the comments they generated. The characters he created - Big Gay Boss, Chesty LeBlack, his wife, OSP, his smoky neighbor - leapt off the screen. (Some I wish literally would do this, like Chesty.) I appreciated even things I never heard him mention, just that he did, like the clever never-varying two-word post titles. And his posts, and for that matter, his personal e-mails to me, often made me think, or laugh, or both. I printed out an e-mail he wrote well over a year ago to me about swimming tips that I still have right at my desk; it's my own personal Swimming for Dummies because no one has actually written that book. Lastly, he was the logal blogger I was most nervous about meeting, and he ended up being a pretty decent guy.

His also happened to be - incomprehensibly - the only blog that made it through the blocking software from the school computers, so now I'll have to find other things to do there. Like teach or grade essays or something like that.

I'll stop kissing his ass now. But he'll be missed, and best of luck in the future to him.