Well, Crud.

Those of you who’ve been meandering around the interweb for a while will be familiar with the blogger Jon Swift, the mock-conservative who declared that he received his news through unbiased sources like Rush Limbaugh, and who said of the economic downturn, “At a time when Wall Street executives are being forced to give up their private planes, limousines, bathroom renovations and multimillion dollar bonuses, the idea that a homeless man has been allowed to hold on to his cellphone while others are making sacrifices is more than we can take.”

The writer behind Swift was Al Weisel. And sadly, Al Weisel has died:

Al was on his way to his father’s funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke.

I didn’t know Al personally, only through his writing. But his writing was superlative, the sort of satire his cognomen’s namesake would have heartily approved. My heart and thoughts are with the Weisel family, which is having to face far too much loss in too short a time.