There is cruelty in the unpredictability of life. Random and raging, it takes out those who love it most without a second thought. Mike McFarland was THE living embodiment of carpe diem. He didn't let ONE day of his gift of life go to waste. He traveled, he experienced, he raved, he rocked, he learned, he played... he saw the fruits existence had to offer sitting on the proverbial top shelf and always found the ladder. Built the ladder, more often than not. Mike was taken from us disgustingly early - a foul, unspeakable injustice, a violent tear to the tapestry - and no amount nor quality of words I could write will ever relate the utter anguish this scars into me, into us. And yet, the last thing he would have ever wanted was for this to bring us to sour on life in his absence. There is no life worth living without risk. Mike loved risk, and living a full life is the greatest gamble of all. That's the point! That's what makes it exciting. And even though the house won in the end, the stubborn bastard had a hell of a streak, and a hell of a hand. If minds were cars, Mike had a fleet of Maseratis in his head. Smooth, articulate, elegant, eloquent, sharp as a dagger, with the kind of recall that would make RAM blush. It didn't matter what it was, or how vaguely you described it: if it was a movie, a song, a story, Mike would know the title within a few tries. He seldom paused for 'uh's or 'um's - when he spoke, you were engaged and fascinated. He was everything I admired in an intellectual and all I still strive to be. Not just as a mind, but as a heart. Mike was about community. He loved people. It takes a village, as they say, and he built a village everywhere he went. As Chris Bevins once proclaimed, "Mike McFarland would attend the opening of a candy bar wrapper" - If you invited him somewhere, he would show up, because he understood that showing up is the most important thing a human can do to show they care. And if you were a guest at a convention with Mike, you were going to dinner with him. Plain and simple, no exceptions. If you missed a Mike outing, you were missing out on a core memory. He would take massive groups of us to the best food spots in town, having planned everything meticulously in advance. He loved to make the people he loved smile, and he knew just how to do it. So I'm going to smile. I will grieve, but I *will* smile, because that was why Mike loved life. To be happy and to make others happy. To impart knowledge. To entertain. Mike would want us to look at all he's done and smile. Join me in giving him that, at least. When all is taken away, turn to your purpose. They can never take that. "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Mike lived.