SKATTIE
I didn't know Scott very well. To me, he was just some guy in Denver who emailed me out of the blue one day a year or so ago about something he'd read here, and we struck up an occasionally fervent correspondence for a while. Through him I got to know his friend Tab a little bit, and even though all our lives seem to have diverged the last few months, I still kept up with what they were doing.

Such is one reason I like personal weblogs. When written well, they're internal travelogue as work of art, and keeping them and following those of others is both low-maintenance and high-yield. For good or ill, Scott wore his moods on the outside of his body, and his sensitivity and attention to every single thing going on within six feet of wherever he was made what he wrote more human than most things I've read, online or otherwise. Most bloggers (definitely including myself) hide behind craft and pretense, couching their emotions in euphemisms. Scott had virtually no wall between himself and his audience. He spoke almost entirely in single entendre. You know how rare that is?

I never met Scott. I can barely even say I knew him at all. But that doesn't mean I don't miss him, or that I won't drink to him tonight. Oh, and keep writing, because one of us is always next.