"Damn you!" I screamed at my computer for the fifth time that evening, resisting the urge to throw my mouse through the monitor. All I wanted my faithless machine to do was download a fifty-meg Traci Lords video, and yet it still persisted in not coughing up the goods. I resolved to try one more time, with some light websurfing to tide me over during the monstrous download.

The year? 1999. The connection? 33600 bps.

Rabidly seeking any means possible to avoid schoolwork, I ran a Google search for various tube-rats, and discovered an apparently self-titled, superbly irreverent webpage. Apparently some guy called"The Ferrett" ran it, and boy was he a nutjob. Still, the man's scathing humor and amusingly frank discussion of his, ahem, tendencies helped me while away the hours.

Then my computer locked up and froze on his inane stream-of-consciousness babbling. It also froze on Traci Lords with a very unusual expression on her face, which is probably the reason any of it stuck in my head. [Knowing Ferrett's appreciation for Ms. Lords, there was definitely something cosmic going on. - Knut] Either way, the computer repair guy was certainly amused. I put the events of the evening out of my head and went on to fail my exam the next day in style.

Cut to four months ago. Again, furiously dodging my responsibilities, I stumbled across a wonderfully time-wasting Magic forum, decklist, and strategy page all rolled into one: StarCityGames.com. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the editor was none other than the selfsame Ferrett from the days of yore. It was like running into an old flame at a gaming convention, though without the paralyzing sexual tension or numbing humiliation that results from trying to explain why you're dressed up like Baron Sengir. I vigorously reacquainted myself with this deranged individual, reading his (mostly) uproarious essays and even lurking on his LiveJournal now and again. This man's words alone were responsible for at least of pint of spittle being sprayed onto my computer screen in my near-epileptic fits of laughter.

And now, I discover the Ferrett is moving on up. It's like meeting JFK only a few months before he ate the magic bullet; and, after LBJ gets sworn in, being able to say only,"Yeah, I met him on the subway once. I think he was eating a hot dog." A veritable pioneer of wittily creative sadism is ending his reign, and I'm not talking about Saddam Hussein. For years the Ferrett ruled StarCityGames with a velvet fist in an iron glove, and gamers loved him for it. Like a Vietnam-vet gym teacher, he watched players grow in both skill and ferocity, always careful to keep them involved in the game if they started to stray. Will the ones-and-zeros guts of the webpage benefit as much from his watchful eye?

The Holy Kanoot, bless his heart, will carry the torch passed him. Nevertheless, I have to wonder: who's going to take such pride in loving Repopulate? Who's going to write analogies so complicated they make SEC tiebreakers seem like a 7/7/7 draft?

These questions and more I ponder as I continue to procrastinate. I suppose it's only the usual march of time. Still, change always sucks when it happens, no matter how much it might be for the better. I don't want to have to adapt; I want things to stay the same forever.

But they ain't gonna. Counterspell rotates out, the price of gas goes up, and the Ferrett changes jobs.

In the years to come, if ever anyone wonders where I learned such vitriol, they need only look to one man, the same man who taught me it was possible to despise humanity and still write for it.

Sayonara,"Hundroog!". It's been a blast.