Ely (noun): The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.

I can still remember the day vividly. I came into work on the morning of May 11, 2001, sat down at my desk and powered on the shitty terminal (not computer) I used to enter data for eight hours a day into a database system that was perhaps three generations from punch cards and beads on string. Howie, the raggae-junkie-jew that sat across from me had been staring at me like a freshly packed gravity bong from the moment I walked in.

This, however, was not unusual.

I ignored Howie, hoping like hell he wasn’t trying to clean up again (he tended to get either violent or extremely emotional) and sipped the muddy water Dunkin’ Donuts calls coffee. I could feel his bugged out eyes on me like two balloons being rhythimcally smashed into my face.

I was really not in the mood for this shit.

“Did you hear?” Howie asked. “Hear what?” I responded, dreading the response.

“Douglas Adams is dead.”

You know that camera trick they do in movies when they move the camera closer to the subject while they zoom out with the lens? It makes the subject zoom closer, while the background zooms backward, giving the illusion of time and space bending slightly along the edges. As a viewer it gives you that feeling of vertigo and dissolution. That’s what it felt like.

I went to the nearest actual computer, (that douche-bag Marina was out again with a coke hangover or maybe another STD) and looked it up. It was true. He’d had a heart attack. That blonde California cunt he’d married, the one that got him to quit drinking and smoking and start exercising, she did this to him. He started feeling chest pains while on the treadmill. He was dead by the time they got him to the hospital.



I was devastated. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I really was. I had read Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at the tender age of thirteen and had since acquired and devoured everything he had put his name to, including some very rare and limited titles like A Last Chance to See and The Meaning of Liff. The man was an icon, a demi-god. He smoked and he drank and he slept late, he was funny as hell and he was the picture of half-drunk effort transmuting into incredible success, a trait I find extraordinarily endearing.

Of all the reasons I was so distraught, the ones that really got to me were the most selfish. Sure, the world had lost an incredibly intelligent, amiable and hilarious writer, and little Polly had lost her father at the tender age of seven, but all I could think about was the fact that I would never read another work by Douglas Noel Adams. This later turned out to be false, but unfinished The Salmon of Doubt, posthumously published, made the void of his absence in this world just a little darker, not brighter.

What affected me the most was that I was never going to meet him. I know it sounds weird, but I had always assumed that one day, somehow, I would get to meet him, shake his hand, and let him know how important his works were to me as a developing self-loathing alcoholic and under-achiever.

But it will never happen.



In deference to the great loss I was feeling, that very weekend, Elise and I bought a adorable gray and white dwarf hamster and named him Douglas. The cat, however, promptly drowned him in the toilet.

Anyway, the reason I’m regaling you with this tear-drawing narrative, is to punctuate precisely how I did not feel when I came into work on the morning of September 4, 2006. I was in the kitchenette making a pot of coffee and Perry, the coffee freak I made fun of a while ago, now our administrative guru (read: secretary) came out of the bathroom. As he wiped his hands on his jeans he said, “Hey, did you hear Steve Irwin died?”

“Yeah.” I said, as I tried to figure how the damned pot turned on. I mean, there were three buttons, and none were marked. Who the hell designs a coffee pot with three unmarked buttons? How many things can a coffee pot do that it needs three buttons?!

Needless to say I was not devastated. No offense to those of who will sincerely miss the old Crocodile Hunter, but I always thought he was a bit of a joke, and frankly, seemed to take great pleasure is annoying dangerous creatures by smacking them in head and shaking his kakhi-clad bottom in their venomous faces. Fortunately, this made watching his television specials kind of enjoyable. After dinner one night at the mother-in-law’s house, we found ourselves rolling on the carpet, watching Steve Irwin repeatedly slap a black mamba in the face, warning the viewers at home (on account of Black Mamba’s being so common in the Detroit area) to never attempt such a thing.

As it happens, last year, my mother-in-law was in Australia visiting a friend, and got me some Steve Irwin postcards from a local Toyota dealership. They pictured the Croc Hunter jumping into the air like a Kansas City faggot next to a Four Runner with the word “CRIKEY!” hovering above his head. They were great fun, and the three days the fetching Mrs. Sonnier let me keep them on the fridge were equally so.

Yesterday I got an email from the mother-in-law. The email stated that, in addition to the postcards, she’d coerced the guy at the dealership to give her some promotional posters picturing Mr. Irwin wrestling stuffed animals for the sake of letting everyone know that genuine Toyota parts were vastly superior (crikey!) to non-genuine Toyota parts. In light of Mr. Irwin’s untimely demise, she thought that they might be worth some money, so she looked online and found a signed Croc Hunter poster on eBay that sold for over $3,500!! ($3,500 AU = $2,600 US)



Now this is about the time my skepticism takes front seat, sticks his thumb in the belt of his trousers and says “bullshit” just loud enough for everyone I the room to hear.

The question is: Did this transaction actually take place? Or perhaps is this just a ploy to generate freakish interest in other posters this guy has listed?

It wouldn’t be unheard of for some guy to create an account just to “buy” his own poster to freak people out and make them think his other posters are worth more money. I find it extremely dubious that since the slae of this poster, two more have sold in the neighborhood of $2,000, and the next most valuable signed poster sold for a paltry $800.

This is where I run into questions about my implacable love for the human race. Could someone really be this stupid? I mean, this is not John Lennon or even JFK Jr., this is a friggin’ Aussie hillbilly with a mullet and penchant for reptiles.

In any case, the listings I made for the mother-in-law’s posters was removed, presumably for a violation of terms and conditions. The listing stated that a “portion” of the proceeds would go to conservation charity (I just cut and paste the item description she emailed me) which apparently is against the law.

Is my skepticism getting the best of me on this one, or do you think some asshole might really be willing to pay $3,000 for a signed poster of the sexiest man in kakhi?

I must admit, however, that with just a little digging, one can find innumerable examples of Steve’s death sending shockwaves throughout the world. The guys over at Super Awesome WOW have concocted (by that I mean cut and paste) a list of Chuck Norris-like facts about Steve Irwin. My favorite is “Steve Irwin took revenge on the stingray by piercing its heart with his penis.”

A flash game by the title of “Terri Irwin’s Revenge” has been making its way around the internet. The purpose of the game is to guide Steve’s widow (a native of Eugene, OR, if anyone cares) through a sea of stingrays, blasting them with her trusty shotgun and a handful of “croc-bombs.” There are few things more endearing than tasteless humor.



And on the subject of revenge, fans of the work of Mr. Steve Irwin (which, if you’ll remember, was conservation) having been smiting stingrays on the coast of Queensland. According to the authorities, since Mr. Irwin’s death, at least 10 stingrays have been found dead with their tails chopped off at Dundowran Beach and Deception Bay. This is, of course, equivelant to burning down rum distilleries after the death of Ernest Hemingway, just because you loved him so much.

So maybe people really are that stupid. Maybe that same guy that brutally murdered those stingrays is the same guy that bought that damned poster for $3,000. Maybe he dresses up like Terri Irwin and wrestles with his life-size Croc Hunter doll. Maybe he plays hours and hours of “Terri Irwin’s Revenge” with tears streaming down his face. Hell, maybe it is Terri Irwin.