If you've come for more witty observations about China, you're going to be disappointed.  I don't feel like it.

Kyle David Swanson dies two years ago today, of cancer.

I've been dreading this day all week.  What would I do, how would I deal?  Last year involved alcohol, The Matrix: Revolutions, a war hammer, and a watermelon.  But this year was more controlled, most likely because I don't have anybody to take care of me being out of control.  Or growth or something.

But I still feel numb in my stomach, and I still want to scream and cry and damage something.  Instead I shall tell you all a little about my friend and what he meant to me.  Because what really makes me angry is not his death, but that the world will go on as if he never was, and he will be forgotten.

Please read this excerpt from the Hitchcock Hall house minutes for the week of 4-24-03, written by then-house secretary Christian Kammerer:
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Finally, I can’t very well get through the minutes this week without some mention of the tragedy that occurred in the past few days. By that I of course refer to the passing of our good friend Kyle Swanson. I actually debated whether I should write about this in the minutes, as many of us are only now beginning to heal and get on with our lives, and I would hate to reopen the emotional wounds that have recently been suffered. But in the end, I decided that I really needed to say a few words, not just for those of us who were friends with Kyle, but also for those of you who were unlucky enough to never get to meet him or know him that well. And, though I can’t hope to display the same heartfelt eloquence that Sebastian was able to muster at the funeral, I hope that in some small way I can express the sense in which Kyle’s de! ath was a tremendous loss for the whole dorm, school, and world. I shared a floor with Kyle for all of last year, what was, upon recollection, quite likely my best year at this school. Never was there a better person to just have around. Kyle loved to play the guitar, but whenever he was going to play he’d go to see the other people on the floor, asking them if he was being a bother and if they had work he was interrupting—neither of which was ever the case. Rather than being a bother as he feared, we loved hearing him playing in the background, which is more than I can say for a lot of the music I’ve heard blasted in the dorm in my four years here. Kyle could be very quiet and retiring at times, but nevertheless he was an excellent conversationalist and his sometimes-unorthodox viewpoints sparked many lively and memorable debates. I remember having an argument with him over the institution of marriage and its role in the modern world. Kyle said that he never wanted to get married, b! ecause any person he was with should stay with him simply because she loved him, not because of some legal obligation. While at the time I was one of the people arguing against this position, in his case I think it would have worked, and I’m sure there would have been any number of women eager to live out their days with a guy like Kyle, ring or not. It makes me especially sad to think that none of them ever got the chance. Though I never told him this, I always thought of Kyle as sort of the ideal man’s-man. Whenever you needed a tool or help fixing something, he’d be willing and able to lend a hand. Furthermore, the dude was simply ripped: incredibly athletic and a specialist in the martial arts. Yet his brawny exterior carried with it none of the negative stereotypes often associated with such a personage (no offense to any of my friends or relatives who are members of fraternities and the like, but you know what I’m talking about.) On the contrary, rarely would you find a more soft-spoken and considerate individual. Besides, he was just a big geek at heart—his penchant for gaming is well known, his prowess in the field of real time strategy was oft observed, and his experience in Stratego was unmatched. He was the only person other than myself that I ever let put up posters for movie night, for the Sunday that he showed Ghostbusters. And though his wackiness was often overshadowed in public by the more vocal antics of his partner-in-crime Sebastian, when he wanted to he could be the wittiest, funniest person in a room, the sort of person who would come up with “rogue house minutes” when certain elected officials were not doing their duties. As proof of this, I’d like to close with a sampling of the chorus of Kyle’s parodic rendition of “The Roof is on Fire”, chronicling with painful historical accuracy the Napoleonic invasion of Moscow:
Red Square, Red Square, Red Square is on fire
Red Square, Red Square, Red Square is on fire
We don’t need no water let the cossack bastards burn,
Burn, Mother Russia, burn.

Rest in peace, Kyle. We’re going to miss you.
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Did you read closely?  That's right, his partner-in-crime Sebastian.  He was my partner, my best friend.  What are you supposed to do when you lost your partner?  The act can't go on, half of it is gone!  I was going to rule the world, and he was going to be my minister of finance.  But no more.

Now I will tell a story.  So many good ones- the time my friends came from out of town and we popped into his room and he was sleeping naked (though artfully covered with a blanket), the time we built that fort in the rec room, the hours talking together trying to figure out girls (he was as confused as me.  "Sebastian, if a girl says she wants to have a million babies with you, what does that mean?"), the even more (much more) hours playing RPGs, working together scav hunt first year making all of Homer Simpson's inventions.  But here is the story I choose to tell~

Second year of college we had an open door policy with each other.  We lived next door, and we would always be in each others' rooms talking, playing computer games, writing papers, playing Stratego, whatever.  Even though his room was about half the size of mine, I liked his better.  So compact, so efficient.  He was good like that.  Anyways, one time I walk in and he gets flustered and is like hold on.  He was writing something he didn't want me to see.  I wasn't mad, cuz its his room and whatever but I was surprised because he wasn't usually embarrassed about his work.  I assumed he was writing another song.  He was the best song parodist I knew.  Christian already wrote a bit about "Red Square is on Fire", but my favorite was "Keep on Rocking During Finals Week"  (to the tune of Keep on Rocking in the Free World.) Anyways, I assumed he was in the middle of writing another song and didn't want me to see a work in progress.  But that's weird because I usually helped him.  In fact I was the one who convinced him to sing one of his songs for the then upcoming house talent show, so what gives?  Well maybe I was a little mad.  Well the talent show comes and Kyle plays his song, to rave reception (he never realized or at least acknowledged how popular he was.)  But then what does he do, he sings another song, debuting tonight, called "Sympathy For the Social Chair" to the tune of the Rolling Stone's "Sympathy for the Devil".  Its a song he wrote about the social chair of Hitchcock Hall, me.  It was a tribute.  He was so awesome.

I'm not mad at the world or God or anything.  But I'm really sorry that he's gone.

Feel free to email me with your stories.

-The Wandering Norseman-