War happens, yes.  But why do good men, different men, men doing things differently have to die in the course of the game of HQ's that frequently washes the cobbles in the blood of our people?

Sometimes men do things that they're not proud of. Sure, we live in a world where the wind blows as much as the cock crows, but when you really look deep within yourself, what do you see? Are you proud? When we're all just walking to and fro and hoping that the limelight hits us at our good angle, can you really blame anyone? Daniel, he was a man like any other. 

It really reminds me of a story that my grandfather once told me, and if I could remember the words then I would speak them right now so poignantly that you'd be evoked with the emotions of a million crying infants all screaming out for the same thing-- their mothers, which is where my point finally comes into view.

Daniel, like the rest of us, just wanted to be heard. So instead of asking why Daniel died, why don't you ask why he lived? His mother. His father. His parents, really, both could receive some level of culpability in this action: For how can a man die unless he is first born? I wrote a song about this moment and I'd like to share it with you all now if that's okay.

Daniel, Daniel, he hit himself once. I saw it.

I did. He hit himself once. What does this mean?

Once.

I've seen it in my dreams. Once.

Twice.

Three times, you're out, at the old ball game.

Now please hold all applause for now, because that was just the first verse and it really comes into its own when you hear the chorus, which is just three buttons being scraped rather hard up against a wooden table. I won't be singing it all tonight, however, since you really need a bassoonist to pull the raw emotions that I'm trying to convey in this song, which really some would argue is more of a story or a set collection of musical stories rather than just a song, you could really call me a playwright if you wanted to. 

But unlike Shakespeare, I don't have... wait, hey, I just remembered that story that my Grandfather once told me and it has a whole lot of relevance to the rest of what I'm trying to explain, which would be why good people like Larsen sometimes have to die and this happened way back during the great wars, but in Illinois instead of Europe.

So, you see, my grandfather wasn't a bright man, but he was a hard worker. In fact, he had two plaques and a Des Moines Congressional Medal of Farmers, because he was a farmer in Iowa, as you all probably could have surmised from what I've said already, and back then farming was something that we all needed, but my Grand Pappy, well he was special when it came to that shit and speaking of shit, he could name you every type of manure just by smell alone... if it came from a cow or a sheep, he could tell you the difference.

He was so good at this particular skill that he was invited over to the great state of Illinois to be one of their most prolific of shit sniffers, someone to help wrestle up those smells and tell you where it came from. They were having a minor bobcat problem over there and really needed the help as none of the trackers before could exactly tell where these ferocious creatures were hiding. So what did my grandpa do? Well what any man would have in this particular instance.

He smelled. Oh boy did he smell! He sniffed and sniffed until his olfactory nearly gave out on him, a complete collapse of all of his senses-- something inside of his nose crashed from the insane levels of sniffery that he was sucking up into there, the air just collapsed both of his nostrils and the man up and almost died.

Now what does this have to do with Daniel, you ask? Well sometimes when a man is pushed to his limits, when he excels at something so great that only he can pull it off, well... sometimes that man just can't handle the pressure. Now, as far as I can tell, Daniel wasn't really good at anything so I guess this story doesn't really fit as well as I first tricked you into believing, but he perhaps pushed whatever limits he had and just could no longer handle the spotlight.

At the end of the day, once our five minutes of fame are up, where do we really go from there? The higher that we climb, the truly harder that we must fall. Sometimes leaving everlasting imprints on many people where the crater now sits. While Daniel left a very small, almost miniscule crater in his absence, he left one nonetheless. 

Really, what else can I say? No, really. What else can I actually say? I can't keep doing this. I can't keep just sitting here talking about fucking Dan all night and day. This is driving me fucking insane. I'm just sitting up here like a clown, reciting all of this bullshit about some man I didn't even know and for... and for what? What do I even get out of it? A measly forty million dollars? 

Gary, what are you doing with your life, Gary? You fucking piece of shit. You always do this. You- you see something that you want and then you go for it and you give up. Screw that. I'm not giving up. I'm going to keep going.

You know what? I fucking loved Daniel. There, I said it. He may not have been the brightest or nicest and maybe I didn't even know that he existed up until TaptGutt mentioned him here. But that is not the point. The point is that sometimes death happens and there's just no fucking reason for it, you know? Sometimes people just FUCKING die. I'm sorry that I'm being so blunt up here with you all, but that's just the truth and I'm not going to run from the truth.

No one gets to live forever. Not even a beautiful soul like Daniel. I guess that's really all I have to say about the subject, I'm sorry that I couldn't say more. I hope this helps to bring you some closure. I know it helped me.