Aw, crap

I received a couple of emails this week about The Beach Bum, a pretty regular visitor here.

The first said he'd gone into the hospital and was in a bad way.

The second, which came in late last night, said he didn't make it.

Now, a lot of us out here are anonymous and we can pretty well say or do whatever we want. We can invent entire lives in the Blogosphere; there's no reason why we can't also invent our own 'deaths.' Maybe somebody is joshing me. Maybe, as was said of Mark Twain once, rumors of BB's death are greatly exaggerated.

But I don't think so. RIP, Beach Bum.