The death of Jon Swift — a formidable blogger.

I'm very sorry to read about the death of Jon Swift — whose real name was Al Weisel. He died after 2 aortic aneurysms, which happened as he was on his way to his father's funeral, according to a comment on his blog — which hadn't been updated in about a year. The comment is (apparently) from his grieving mother.

Swift was a terrific writer. He liked to antagonize me, but that means nothing now, other than that I'm honored to have provided some raw material to a fine writer. Here, he pretends to find it fascinating that I stopped by his blog:

Although I am grateful for every one of the new readers who visited this blog in the last week, I am especially surprised and delighted with one new reader in particular who finally decided to drop in. For years she adamantly refused to read my blog or even mention my pseudonym even as she said the most scurrilous things about me. I'm not sure why she resisted coming here for so long unless it was because she was afraid that my writing was so persuasive and reasonable it would shake the very foundations of her carefully constructed world view and set off a dangerous logic loop in her brain that would cause it to short circuit. For many years she remained steadfast in her refusal to let one word of my prose sully the purity of her thoughts. But perhaps the evenings in Madison, Wisconsin, are particularly cold and lonely this time of year and perhaps she had had one too many glasses of wine by 5:30 p.m. on January 8, 2009. And so that evening, as a bitter wind howled outside her window, she checked her Sitemeter to see how many visitors Instapundit had sent her that day and saw yet another link from my site, just sitting there enticingly, beckoning, whispering, "Click me. Click me." Imagine the inner turmoil she experienced as she tried with all her might to resist clicking on the link. Must. Not. Read. Jon. Swift. Then her will power failed her and she could no longer resist, and throwing all caution to the wind, she finally succumbed and clicked that fateful link that whisked her away to my blog. And soon she was reading, feeling that first rush as my prose entered her veins. Who knew it could be so good, she said to herself as one by one the words swept away the cobwebs and the dust in the attic of her cranium, cluttered with crazy theories about breast-bearing feminists, the plots of unfinished books that bored her, deep insights into American Idol episodes and even that dark corner where Bill Clinton waits, crouched lasciviously, ready to betray her all over again. And imagine that moment when her giddy anticipation was finally fulfilled and she came to the first mention of her name, right there, right there in black and light brown, her name in all its glory!: Ann Althouse. So welcome to my modest blog, Ms. Althouse. I wish you had told me you were coming and I would have tidied up the place a bit. I hope you finally found what you were looking for.

He emailed to let me know he'd written that. He said:

Thanks for the visit. I hope you enjoyed it and will be coming back soon. But let me know next time when you're coming over and I'll tidy up a bit first.

I responded:

That post was awfully needy. Not that I read more than the parts right around my name.

He said:

You know, as reflexively mean as you can be sometimes, it's hard not to like you anyway.

I responded:

Okay, I gave you a link, since you bowed down to me.

He said:

Very funny. Thank you.

Jon Swift

Thank you, Jon Swift.