For those who’ve been wondering — and those who’ve noticed — I am aware of Acidman’s death. My gal Kelley called while I was on the Road Trip From Hell to tell me the news. Bless her heart: she’s the only one who had both my phone number and the guts to think I might want to know. I think everyone else realized how much bad blood had passed between Rob and I in the past 4 years.

As to that news, I don’t know what to say. I do not want to believe it. I want to cry out: “Fake!” because that’s the Rob Smith that I knew — a guy who’d do whatever it took, disgregard whatever conventions, thumb his nose at any sort of sentiment and ethos that would tell him that faking a death was not a respectable way to get hits.

My first reactiona when I heard Kelley’s news: The guy lived alone — who the hell “discovered his body” at 2 a.m.? If it wasn’t suicide, what was that B.S. entry about it “being the end” earlier? When did his preteen kid learn how to write blog entries and upload pictures on his dad’s blog? Isn’t cremation a convenient excuse — just like that shoebox they buried him in? And how the hell did anyone know Rob’s “express wish” was to have his blog continue since, according to earlier entries, he neither had any assets nor any reason to bother with a will? Oh, and: Wouldn’t it be just like Rob to fake his own death to get out of the burden of always having to one-up himself blogging?

But perhaps that’s the most revealing thing I have to say about Rob Smith: I had no reason to trust him. He used me up, burned our bridges, and came damn near close using the rest of my life as kindling to fuel fires stoked with his personal demons.

Many of you remember, albeit not as poignantly or indignantly as I do, that Rob was my blogfather. Those who remember most likely recall — again, not as vividly or resentfully — the role he also played in the fiasco which severed all my ties with my blogmama. To the blogosphere those might be “old news.” To me, they were defining moments and I, as a human being, have been permanently altered by them in ways that haunt my present and will, no doubt, shape my future. But none of them are good.

Rob Smith improved my world by encouraging to blog. He damaged my soul with his thoughtless manipulative ways. I suppose you could say that the best and the worst moments of my life in the past 4 years were the works of Rob Smith. He was just that kind of guy.

Suffice it to say that I remember Rob Smith, but I took to heart my mother’s advice to say nothing if I have nothing nice to say.

RIP, Acidman. For your sake I hope you encountered the God that I believe in, because otherwise you’re in the kind of hell where you can only wish to blog the kind of weiner roasting you’re in for.

Sunday, July 16th, 2006, 11:33 pm   |   Blog bites, My Venomous Life  |  RSS feed Comments and pings are currently closed.