ST. MAGNUS DAY III

Today would have been Magnus Skullsplitter’s 35th birthday.

After two and a half years, Magnus’s absence is a simple fact of my life. It is no longer truly painful. I no longer get that lump in my throat when I think of him. It’s been long enough that my memories have started to become unreliable and conflated. That unfortunate side effect of time’s unwavering march means that I’ll do anything I can to try to keep him in my thoughts. For me, the key to keeping Magnus alive in my heart is to do what he did best…tell stories.

Ah, the stories. This weekend, five jackasses that knew Magnus very well descended on Fort Collins for a beer trip. And while beer may have been the stated catalyst for the journey, spending time with friends and swapping stories was the true reason we made the trek. Based on the amount of time we spent talking about him, a stranger passing by might have assumed he was a part of our crew who was just spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom.*

*Knowing Magnus, that’s not so far-fetched.

We talked about Magnus’s love of fruit beers and terrible music. We talked about the books we read that he recommended. We talked about the time he [REMOVED BY EDITOR FOR GRAPHIC CONTENT] and that other time he [REMOVED BY EDITOR FOR POTENTIAL LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS AGAINST THE SKULLSPLITTER ESTATE].

Magnus was our resident story-teller and story-collector. When we lost him, we lost that resource, but in his absence, the rest of us are attempting to take up the mantle. He was the king of relaying a story 100 different times and slowly changing it to make it even better. Granted, the finished product rarely represented the actual events being reported, but who gives a shit? Magnus cared about entertaining…not about that fuzzy thing we call “truth” (he was a lawyer, after all).

If you knew the man, I would urge you to spend a few moments today taking up the gauntlet Magnus inadvertently threw down when he left us. Our finest raconteur may have shuffled off this mortal coil, but there’s no better way to honor him than by spinning a yarn. Stop texting, checking the web and watching Arrested Development for a few minutes today and tell a Magnus story. You can start by talking about that time he [REMOVED BY EDITOR FOR DEPICTION OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY].

We miss you, buddy. You were the goddamn best.

Addendum: If you’d like to read more about our friend Magnus, click here. Or if you want to read the posts he wrote before he left us, click here. He also participated in many of our Conundra and some of our earliest Maltercations. Considering that the site had only been live for ten months when he died, it’s pretty amazing how big his impact his been on it. He had a big impact on everything and everyone he touched.