The loss of just one soul…

I’m not going to make this a eulogy. I just need to talk about this because it hurts so much.

Yesterday I lost someone in my life who was a truly good person. You don’t find a lot of those anymore at least not like him. So to make clear my pain, let me explain the man and then I can explain my own feelings about that man and his passing from this life to whatever comes next for him.

I first met the guy about 18 months ago. He started posting on the forums for a podcast called Keith and The Girl (you might’ve heard of them, they’re kind of a big deal). As with all people I tried to get a feel for what kind of person he was by the things he would post. He was a bit aggressive, especially in flirting with the ladies. He seemed to make a few snide remarks towards the guys and I started to think maybe he was kind of a jerk.

I saw him pop up on chat every now and then and I’d see some people I got along with making fun of him here or there and so based on his posts and how seriously he would try to defend himself, I somehow thought it would be ok to join in and not like him. When I joined Paltalk and saw him on camera, that just made it worse. He would sit in a darkened room, leaned back. All I would see is from his upper lip and above. He was, like me, a bit overweight (ok I’m a fatass so sue me) and it kinda freaked me out. Couple that with his wild and aggressive flirting and I took him to be a bit of a creep.

There was a point where I said a few things to him and he’d shoot back. I don’t know if I took it personal and went for the jugular or if I just said something that maybe hit a bit too close or it could be that he had just had enough already. Either way, he really got hurt and let me know about it. He didn’t scream at me. He didn’t rant and rave about me. All he did was calm himself down and post a sobering and humbling message that let me know I’d gone too far and that he’d been hurt by what I said. I wish I could remember what that was so I could be sure to never say it to another person ever again.

Anyways, after this incident I realized what I’d done, what I’d been doing and that I’d never given this guy a fair chance so I deeply apologized and he forgave me almost immediately as if I’d never been mean to him at all. We’d team up together in PalTalk and chat. I remember one night after an episode of Uncast, Victoria and Butch and I were all drunk and having a great time. We jumped on Paltalk and we had already dropped the tops and were flashing everyone in sight. Anthony was the first one to take his shirt off and join the fun. Soon after, everyone else joined in including at least one person who would never do it again and hadn’t done it before then. It was nothing sexualized. It was just a group of friends hanging out and being silly together. We played music, we laughed, showed our elbows off and I have to say it was the most fun I had had in a long time. In fact, I’d dare say that no night of paltalk has been so crazy or epic as that one.

As I got to know him I realized that flirting and giving shit to the guys was just part of who he was. He just started off that way with us right off the bat. Some of us didn’t take it well because we didn’t know him yet and didn’t feel he should be joking like that when we weren’t close enough to make that acceptable. In the end it was just one in a long list of things we liked about him.

The thing we liked most was his personality. The man was always smiling and always so open and honest about himself. He always had a quick comeback for every insult. He always had time to spend with anyone that asked for his time. He was always there in chat, Paltalk or on the forums. He laughed a lot, made more than his fair share of lude comments and he would make fun of himself before others even got the chance. It just seemed like he was a ton of fun to be around when things were great and when someone needed to be serious he wouldn’t hesitate to drop the lolz and help them out or be there for them. I tried my best to be as supportive as I could in return but I worry now that maybe I didn’t do enough. I know, it’s normal thinking and of course I think something would have been said if that were really true and it does no good to worry now.

I wish I’d gotten on the Skype bandwagon and talked to him personally when I could. I might have to look at my skype connection and do that when I can. I think part of the reason is nerves. I get nervous talking to people I haven’t previously spoken to and I’m also not very good at making conversation so I kind of avoided the Skype thing because of that. I regret it now because maybe I could have gotten to be closer to him as a person than I was. Still, that doesn’t make his passing any easier for me.

Anthony Hartman, aka windowsanddoors aka WD aka Wad, founder and creator of /m\/m\. I’ve been shedding a lot of tears the last 12 hours and I plan on shedding a lot more before the pain has passed. He’s in a better place. He’s no longer hurting. He doesn’t struggle for breath anymore and he’s no longer limited in his travels because of his medical condition. I can take comfort in that. I can take comfort in the deep and powerful blessing from God that I got to spend some of my life with him. I will take his example and use that to change some of the ways I treat the people around me and the way I think about the world. Anthony had a buddhist philosophy and I can most definitely get behind those ideas. Now I’m a Latter-Day Saint (though often it seems I don’t act like it) but I can certainly appreciate the calm and caring way he viewed the world. He realized that people can hurt people. He realized how cruel some were and he detested it but he always strived to be the best friend and best son and best brother or whatever that he could be. He wasn’t perfect and he knew it and used it as an excuse to keep trying…to keep making himself a better person especially when it was easier to NOT be.  He was a brave man and took a lot of pain before his body finally gave out to something as simple and yet complex as pneumonia. November 12, 1985-May 26, 2008. I’m going to miss you, brother.

See? I said I wasn’t going to write a eulogy and apparently I did. Whatever. It feels weird thinking back on those who passed and how my heart reacted with each passing. The gammit was run complete. Some sent me into depression for months. Some I had hardly any reaction at all. I mean my cousin decided to end his time here earlier than I believe God had intended and yet I have shed more tears and felt more heartache for this man who’m I’ve never actually met face to face. I feel like such a terrible person but yet the facts are there and I can’t help how I react when I lose someone I care about. Sometimes the shock produces no tears and no pain. They’re just gone and that’s that. Sometimes it tears me apart. It’s not like I’ve loved any of these people more than the others (well Stephanie was a bit of a special case given the circumstances and how close we were but still) but I have to just take solace and remember the great things that each of these people gave to me and the affect their lives had on mine. There are more losses to come I’m sure. I would just be grateful if they or God would wait at least a few years.

Read Full Post »

Get Out

From the Daily Kos:

by Delaware Dem

Fri May 23, 2008 at 05:10:57 PM PDT

Senator Clinton, I cannot give you the benefit of the doubt.

You are too smart.

You are too intelligent.

You are too politically astute.

Your statement was not mistaken.

It was intentional.

It is now obvious that you and your campaign are in fact staying in this race, knowing that you cannot possibly win the nomination, in some sort of morbid fantasy that something horrible befalls Senator Obama.  Whether that something horrible be a scandal, a devastating revelation, or death (intentional or otherwise), it does not matter.

It is now revealed that your real reason for staying in this race, and thus prolonging the party disunity and your supporter’s acceptance of reality, is some sort of intentional Plan B.  Thus, it has been your intention to wait for something bad to happen.

Assassination.

It means you have been thinking about it.

It means you have been considering it as a possibility.

And because of your contemplation, you decided to stay in the race for that reason.

Now, if you were considering Obama’s death as a possibility, and considered yourself an alternative, or a Plan B, surely you are smart enough to know that the Democratic Party would have obviously turned to you as our candidate, if Obama had been assassinated, or died, or could not serve as our nominee.

And surely you would have known that it mattered not if you had previously suspended your campaign.  Hell, even if you had conceded to Obama, and Obama died, you would have been tapped to be our nominee.

But you decided to stay in the race anyway, and you decided to advance this notion of assassination and other bad calamaties befalling our presumptive nominee not once, not twice, but FOUR times.  Going back to March.

So I cannot give you the benefit of the doubt.

It is now obvious you have considered Obama’s murder as a political possibility and a reason to prolong our disunity.

And that makes you immoral.   And unfit to lead.  It reveals that you have no character.

It makes me not want you in my political party.

So get out, Senator Clinton.  Get out of this race.  Now.

Yes, I am shoving you out, because you deserve it.

AND…from Keith Olbermann’s latest rant:

God knows, Senator, in this campaign, this nation has had to forgive you, early and often…

And despite your now traditional position of the offended victim, the nation has forgiven you.

We have forgiven you your insistence that there have been widespread calls for you to end your campaign, when such calls had been few. We have forgiven you your misspeaking about Martin Luther King’s relative importance to the Civil Rights movement.

We have forgiven you your misspeaking about your under-fire landing in Bosnia.

We have forgiven you insisting Michigan’s vote wouldn’t count and then claiming those who would not count it were Un-Democratic.

We have forgiven you pledging to not campaign in Florida and thus disenfranchise voters there, and then claim those who stuck to those rules were as wrong as those who defended slavery or denied women the vote.

We have forgiven you the photos of Osama Bin Laden in an anti-Obama ad…

We have forgiven you fawning over the fairness of Fox News while they were still calling you a murderer.

We have forgiven you accepting Richard Mellon Scaife’s endorsement and then laughing as you described his “deathbed conversion.”

We have forgiven you quoting the electoral predictions of Boss Karl Rove.

We have forgiven you the 3 a.m. Phone Call commercial.

We have forgiven you President Clinton’s disparaging comparison of the Obama candidacy to Jesse Jackson’s.

We have forgiven you Geraldine Ferraro’s national radio interview suggesting Obama would not still be in the race had he been a white man.

We have forgiven you the dozen changing metrics and the endless self-contradictions of your insistence that your nomination is mathematically probable rather than a statistical impossibility.

We have forgiven you your declaration of some primary states as counting and some as not.

We have forgiven you exploiting Jeremiah Wright in front of the editorial board of the lunatic-fringe Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

We have forgiven you exploiting William Ayers in front of the debate on ABC.

We have forgiven you for boasting of your “support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans”…

We have even forgiven you repeatedly praising Senator McCain at Senator Obama’s expense, and your own expense, and the Democratic ticket’s expense.

But Senator, we cannot forgive you this.

“You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

We cannot forgive you this — not because it is crass and low and unfeeling and brutal.

This is unforgivable, because this nation’s deepest shame, its most enduring horror, its most terrifying legacy, is political assassination.

Lincoln.

Garfield.

McKinley.

Kennedy.

Martin Luther King.

Robert Kennedy.

And, but for the grace of the universe or the luck of the draw, Reagan, Ford, Truman, Nixon, Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts, even George Wallace.

The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!

And to not appreciate, immediately – to still not appreciate tonight – just what you have done… is to reveal an incomprehension of the America you seek to lead.

This, Senator, is too much.

Because a senator – a politician – a person –  who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around in part, just in case the other guy gets shot – has no business being, and no capacity to be, the President of the United States.

Good night and good luck.

Read Full Post »