O O Ø O O O O
Epitaph for E
This week’s material started as an epithet, and an impressive one at that. I was on my third page of swearing before I realized that I had actually meant to write an epitaph.
Fortunately, since Microsoft’s grammar checker doesn’t know the difference, neither will most of our readers. Assuming we even have readers, that is, which is easy to do if you pretend that the 80 to 100 hits a day we’re taking aren’t all Code Red variants.
Back to my epitaph. Or perhaps it’s an elegy. I suppose it could be both, if I had a modicum of poetry in my soul. I do have the sense to stop rambling before it becomes a eulogy, but only just barely.
Evan Spence, Pint Day Saint, co-founder, and all-round good guy is leaving the building. After more than five decituesdays, he is taking his ball and heading east. This embodies a certain irony, as “East” was once the dirtiest of the Pint Day four-letter words (in the same class as “Work”, “JAWZ”, and “Electricity Deregulation Deathmarch.”)
To paraphrase quite liberally from the Bard: Horacio baby, this sucks,
It’s like eating kittens. Just plain wrong, and no-one should do it, ever.
Not that I believe for a second that he should be doing any differently. If there’s anything Evan is suited for, it is architecture. My formative elementary school years and many cubic meters of Lego taught me as much. It’s just that dammit, this leaves a rather grotesque opening in my weekly sanity schedule.
Sure, it’s a little selfish, but after 10 years of buffering the doldrums of everyday employment with philosophical ponderings, technological titterings, sporting segues, and biased, unabashed bitching, change is going to be a little hard to take.
And we all know the official pd.o stance on change: It’s like eating kittens. Just plain wrong, and no-one should do it, ever.
I suppose I have to offer a little bit of leeway here. After all, It was me that, 10 years ago, left our fine city for the other coast. In my defense, that one was sort of expected—mandated, even—but the great gods of undergraduate studies, and their underlings, the high school guidance councellors. “Thou shouldst go to University, ” they proclaimed, “And thou shouldst leave home to do it.” We listened, but perhaps my Circle-K Coffee Club caffeine intake propelled me a bit further than expected.
I should, but I won’t. Though the official record shows our acquaintance dating back to the fifth of grades, these past ten years have had the most substance. Through corporations, Kubbernutzes, marriage, mortgages, the workforce and websites, we’ve managed to pound through without serious damage to ourselves or our fraternity.
... philosophical ponderings, technological titterings, sporting segues, and biased, unabashed bitching ...
That’s quite an accomplishment. I have to wonder if it would have been possible without our Tuesday institution to fall back on. Or maybe I don’t. I’m sure we could have muddled through without it, but who would want to?
So thanks Ev, for the last 17 or so years of friendship. I’m fairly confident there will be more. It’ll just have to take a different seat in a different pub for a while.
As for your trip: May the gods of the road keep you safe, and the gods of the pint keep you sane. When you get to the end of this enormous land-mass of ours, for gods’ sake stop, find a pub, raise a glass for me. You know I’ll be doing the same for you out here.
Skoal.
Kjell Wooding
Tuesday, August 22, 2001
PD DIX