Now who'm I gonna call?

I try to keep it light, here, most of the time. I figured when I started that most folks needed an occasional chuckle more than they needed a diatribe about the state of this or that or the other thing.

So I steal a joke off the inter-tubes, or I cast an old story in a way that I haven't heard it before. I have mixed success.

Especially when I look at it the next morning.

Sober.

And I go on and on and on some more about the marvel that is Lenny's Bar and Grill and SwapMeet.

But the humor corner of the inter-tubes lost a good friend and reliable contributor this last weekend. Some of you know it already from elsewhere: (Lowell) Gene Maudlin went to meet either Big Ernie or the dung beetles last Saturday, not even a week after "Rabbit, Rabbit."

Gene was better known to me and to most all of his 'tubin' buddies as Ol' Hoss, resident and subsequent escapee of the Old Folks' Home and curmudgeonly curator of the blog he called Old Horsetail Snake.

He held court there. And from there he touched the lives of more bloggers than I know or care to imagine. He commented actively with wit and with humor, not on mainstream blogs, but on tiny little out-of-the-way blogs like this one (most of the time, he had better taste, but he did swing by here once in a while).

So.

As of March 7, 2009, no more posts.

The internet will fill up the void soon enough, I suppose (dung beetles abhor a vacuum, and, as far as I know, Big Ernie does, too), but we've lost a quality that won't come back any time soon.