Scottish poet and humorist Ivor Cutler died on March 3, 2006, at the age of 83. The name probably doesn't mean anything to you, so you'll just have to trust me when I say that the world is an infinitely less odd place without him, and that's too bad.

Cutler was born in Glasgow, Scotland on January 15, 1923; he mined his destitute, Depression-era childhood for surreal comedy in his masterpiece, a series of dreamlike autobiographical sketches collectively called Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Volume 2 (a 1978 album of these monologues has been reissued by Rev-Ola). He became a music teacher, a job he held even after he became first a popular radio comedian and then a recording artist and noted children's book author. He had a few flirtations with the pop mainstream, most notably in 1967 when he played Buster Bloodvessel in the Beatles' artsy flop Magical Mystery Tour, but from the mid-'70s onwards, his primary artistic outlets were in small-press poetry (he wrote several dozen books) and in the post-punk indie label scene, facilitated by the late British DJ John Peel, an enormous fan who broadcast over 20 live radio sessions of Cutler's poems and songs.

These performances ranged from gnomic poetry (the entirety of one of his most famous poems: "If your breasts are too big, you will fall over/Unless you wear a rucksack"), to rambling, bizarre stories accompanied by his own wheezing harmonium and cheerfully deranged songs set to boogie-woogie piano riffs with lyrics like "I'm happy, I'm happy/And I'll punch the man who says I'm not," all delivered in a completely deadpan voice with one of the thickest Scottish burrs on record. Listening to Ivor Cutler reveals a world where people with woolen eyes get annoyed if you try to replace them with real ones, restaurant menus feature Bicarbonate of Chicken and family stories include the time dad had intercourse with a polar bear on a Canadian vacation. And yet, he wasn't merely a charming goofball, because a persistent dark streak runs through his work: there are moments of genuine anguish in poems like "An Old Man," some of the autobiographical material makes Angela's Ashes read like P.G. Wodehouse, and even the goofy, child-like "I Believe In Bugs" ends with Cutler looking forward to being dead and buried, providing nourishment for various creepy-crawlers.

Try as I might, I can't feel bad that Cutler is gone: he'd been in ill health for years, was reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's, and said in one of his last published interviews a few years ago that since he had outlived all of his friends and family, he was basically just waiting to die. Sometimes it's best to let go. Still, he will be missed.

-Stewart Mason