Can't be first?

Thanks for the link, Joel. I was 16 when I started reading Vonnegut. He was subversive and profane. Perfect for the angst-ridden teen.

For the English AP test, I had to write an essay about how a single act of violence affected the protagonist. I scared my teacher when I told her I wrote about 'Sirens of Titan' since I hadn't read 'Crime and Punishment', which would have been the perfect book for that topic. Instead I wimped out and wrote on 'The Stranger' by Camus.

(In Miss Manner mode for a moment)

Omni, instead of running to tag the tree labeled "first post," alerted the crowd on the last kit.

How Vonnegutian of you, to chose a little kindness. SD owes you some pork pate.

JA, reading this after YK and KB primed the pump, I will have to run to the bathroom or let a student know that I am tearing up about a writer and his astonishing books.

repost:

greenwithenvy, thank you from the bottom of this veteran's heart.

CP, I was a little nervous about the couple of hours=1 minute thingy.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Deadeye Dick (and not just for the brownie recipes). In this story a kid accidentally kills a woman by misfiring a gun and then spends the rest of his life in guilt-ridden seclusion. Talk about calamity from chance. This is why I found Vonnegut so interesting even if I rejected some of his politics. He didn't avoid the notion that our lives are hopelessly and ridiculously dependant upon things we cannot control. He showed how to embrace this absurdity and find humor in it.

What a wonderful human Vonnegut was... I've never posted to any kind of internet thing before, but losing Mr. Vonnegut hurts some... Got to see him just a few years ago at a 'lecture' he gave. He was so funny and so profound. Thanks for your nice piece about him!

For some insane reason I bought this book by Susan Elizabeth Phillips titled "It Had To Be You".

Follow this link to see the cover I was expecting: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/susan-elizabeth-phillips/it-had-to-be-you.htm

Follow this link to see the cover I got: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/editions/edition.cgi?isbn=0066212308

Now I ask you: How the heck am I supposed to read this on Metro.

omni, I wish I could equivocate, but Susan Elizabeth Phillips is chick-lit, albeit entertaining. There are a few bodice-ripping-type scenes, though.

omni,

The same way you would read "Washingtonienne". Very discretely.

http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2006/09/booksfirst-august-2006.html

Some cover designer owes someone royalties.

When I was a teenager living in the miserable crappy town of Cleveland TN in the early 80's I discover Vonnegut and it helped...a lot.I was very lucky in that I went to a fairly good high school in a town that really would have been shocked if they knew the kind of things that a few great teachers allowed and encouraged us to learn. One of the wonderful "after school" programs that a teacher started was the Friday Night Film Club. This would now probably get you arrested but at the time my parents were supportive because 1) they didn't know the movies we watched, 2) they liked and trusted the teacher and 3) their marriage was falling apart and they had other things on their mind. We would go over and watch classic "important" movies with her husband and another teacher. We watched the greats...2001: A Space Oddessy, Citizen Kane, etc. and some more "challenging movies" like, Easy Rider, Straw Dogs, and others. Now some of these films were often violent, contained nudity and just generally challenged you to think. And I am sure that if the powers that reign in Cleveland had found out they would have fired her and maybe tried to ruin her. Really, it's a crappy, bitter conservative town. We watched "Slaughterhouse Five", not a great film but I loved it. I read the book...great. And I read "A BreakFast of Champions", which had a big impression on me, and many more. It is safe to say he was my first "favorite" author. I haven't read anything by him in years. But man oh man, it really did seem like he saved me.
Thanks Mr. Vonnegut...it helped and you mattered.

Omni -- embrace the opportunity and project "sensual man of mystery, here." As Raysmom says here, extended, "real man here, reaching chick-lit"

OR, cover with paper bag. I covered _Madam Bovary_ with brown wrapping because this was not exactly appropriate fare for a 6th grader.

Then your projection is simply, "man of mystery."

Omni, your covers remind me of the cover of a recent Maureen Dowd book. The only woman in a subway car is being eyed by the other passengers.

Fortunately for us, Viktor Klemperer also survived Dresden. http://www.randomhouse.com/randomhouse/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375756979

The last time I went to the dentist they were running late. The hygienist comes out and says "Sorry, I was a victim if a series of accidents". To which I replied "As are we all."

Of course, I fell in love immediately.

I always do some of my best thinking while walking (just got back from getting lunch): Duct tape cover jacket. Haha

S'nuke, your welcome, but we should Thank you and all others who have "served"

My last Vonnegut read was *Galapagos*, I must say it was a little hokie but I enjoyed it.

I was always tickled by the relationship between the names "Kurt Vonnegut" and "Kilgore Trout."

KV's thoughts on the absurdity of life will be missed, maybe he appeals to the displaced teenager in all of us. "When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told The Associated Press in 2005.

Wheezy, CP, after battling 2 labs who refused to leave the covered porch (it's raining! We'll hold it all day!) and spending over an hour bumper-to-bumper on I-95, your BF banter lifted my morning mood significantly. I'd only add that a used BF for $600 is probably not any more serious equipment than a BowFlex. I mean, when does getting the cheapest model ever pay?

And now off to a meeting where 3 of us will theorize that we can solve the offered problem--it'll just cost months of work and millions. Fast, fine or cheap. Pick 2 (have I reverted to my previous graf?)

Stephen Jay Gould used to quote "Galapagos." Gould felt that a story in which an entire new species evolves from people who just happened to book passage on a particular cruise line was a great way to explain the crazy contingencies inherent in evolution.

When I was heading to Germany in '72, one of my girlfriends at the time gave me a paperback, translated from German, about a German woman, possibly a stage or screen actress, who recounted what it was like to survive the Dresden bombing as a child. I can see the paperback cover in my mind's eye, a young, middle-aged woman with close-cropped hair, a hairstyle much like Mia Farrow's. I think the title of the book is "The Gift" or "Die Begabt" os some such, yet cannot find it via Google. Anyone recall this?

Here's another account--her grandmother's--of the Dresden firebombing written by a Canadian, Edda West, she an editor and researcher for VRAN News, the quarterly publication of the Vaccination Risk Awareness Network in Canada:

One American pilot recollects - " We bombed from 26,000 feet and could barely see the ground because of clouds and long columns of black smoke. Not a single enemy gun was fired at either the American or British bombers." The Americans dropped 800 tons of explosives and fire bombs in 11 minutes. Then, American P-51 fighter escorts dived to treetop level and strafed the city's fleeing refugees.

My grandmother described the horrific firestorm that raged like a hurricane and consumed the city. It seemed as if the very air was on fire. Thousands were killed by bomb blasts, but enormous, untold numbers were incinerated by the firestorm, an artificial tornado with winds of more than 100 miles an hour that "sucked up its victims and debris into its vortex and consumed oxygen with temperatures of 1,000 degrees centigrade." Many days later, after the fires had died down, she walked through the city. What she saw was indescribable in any human language. But the suffering etched on her face and the depths of anguish reflecting in her eyes as she told the story bore witness to the ultimate horror of man's inhumanity to man and the stark obscenity of war.

Dresden, the capital of Saxony, a centre of art, theatre, music, museums and university life, resplendent with graceful architecture - a place of beauty with lakes and gardens was now completely destroyed. The city burned for seven days and smoldered for weeks. My grandmother saw the remains of masses of people who had desperately tried to escape the incinerating firestorm by jumping head first into the lakes and ponds. The parts of their bodies that were submerged in the water were still intact, while the parts that protruded above water were charred beyond human recognition. What she witnessed was a hell beyond human imagination, a holocaust of destruction that defies description.

Whoops, here's the Edda West link:

http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2003/02/20030230.php

Kilgore Trout was inspired in part by Theodore Sturgeon. Of course, there is always an autobiographical element as well.

And Tim, the visualization of Montana Wildhack alone justifies the film version of SH5. I am told that the film versions of 'Slapstick' and 'Breakfast of Champions' are unwatchable as they were both vanity projects by actors that did not 'get' the source material. I have studiously avoided them.

And KV's cameo in 'Back To School' is a priceless piece of meta-commentary.

Often overlooked in WWII is the firebombing of Tokyo. An uncle was involved in this, and really suffered for the rest of his life. The bombings of N. and H. obsure that Tokyo and perhaps a few other places in Japan experienced a Dresden.

I loved the bit when the English professor implies that the essay on Vonnegut ghost written by Vonnegut clearly shows that the writer knew nothing about Vonnegut.

"Back to School" could be one of the best sports movies, too. Think about the Triple Lindy...

As good and as subtle as KVs cameo is, Sam Kinison's is gut-bustingly funny.

bc

Um, in **Sirens of Titan**, it's the robots back on Tralfamadore which inspire the Earthlings to build a civilization. Salo, sitting on Titan, can only wait and watch, because he doesn't have enough Universal Will To Become (UWTB) fuel to power the process.

I also dug the Danny Elfman/Oingo Boingo cameo in "Back to School." Haven't read Vonnegut yet, came of age after Huck Finn and others had been banned, and KV was not on many reading lists. Sounds like an author I can get into, though.

The single thing I found I loved in all of Vonnegut's work that I've managed to read is that he knows how to cut through the fog and use dark humor to make his point. That always made the lessons he sought to impart fun to read.

In my opinion, he was somewhat of an enigma as a writer. No movie that was made based upon his work ever came close to the quality of the books themselves. That's quite a statement to be able to make about an author these days given the technology we enjoy in our movies. In his work, he proved to us over and over the power of the written word.

Note to self: talk with vet-student niece about the many dangers of providing care to crocodiles.

Both crocodile and vet survived, barely.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1645584.ece

I forgot to mention that I loved the fact Vonnegut could make us laugh at things we know we should not be laughing at.

bc

Around 1980, International Paper put out a series of 13 short educational pamphlets designed to demonstrate "The Power of the Printed Word." The best, by far, was Vonnegut's "How to Write With Style." I found a copy on the Internet here: http://public.lanl.gov/kmh/pc-24-66-vonnegut.pdf It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this pamphlet taught me how to write, and how to write well.

Good point, Gomer.

"Dead Man's Party" is my favorite Oingo Boingo tune. That's a killer groove.

bc

I wonder if the city of Indianapolis, IN is holding a vigil for Mr. Vonnegut?

Perhaps why KV's humor works is that he points at our bumbling -- and sometimes tendancy to cruelty -- always including himself in the mix.

The Imus moment pointed at a quality or trait or condition, naming it with such an ugly tone in the guise of humor, but left himself out of the mix. (He also flagrantly violated a standard, which is juvenile, and used a stereotype which suggests his own shallowness.)

We should make a boodle-disertation on the qualities of authentic humor.

Thanks Greg, I remember that pamphlet... And I know it influenced my desire (skill is another subject entirely) to put words on the page.

Shockingly enough, I can't remember actually reading a Kurt Vonnegut book. I know what the plot of Slaughterhouse 5 is, though. The Sirens of Titian reference is explained now.

I'm also ducking reading Crime and Punishment and Camus' "The Stranger", so nobody better die and make me feel guilty for those, too.

I think in America they tape snouts shut as soon as the croc is immobilized. But yes, every vet treating exotic animals fears the moment of realizing the animal hasn't been tranquilized enough and is waking up.

I learned how to write nonfiction from reading Isaac Asimov's essays. Thanks for the link; it does describe well why a drive towards simplicity is desireable in a writer.

>I forgot to mention that I loved the fact Vonnegut could make us laugh at things we know we should not be laughing at.

bc, that reminds me of a passage from Cat's Cradle where the philanthropist who built the hospital is walking around with his son. They're watching as bodies are being shoved into a mass grave.

The man puts his arm around the boy and says "Son, someday this'll all be yours".

Did you know we're on the front page? *dusting the shelves and making sure we've got lots of hangers in the front-hall closet*

You know the comments here seem to be self-serving and self-referential and quite often off-topic.

I was a college junior in 1989 and Vonnegut was signing books that afternoon in advance of his evening lecture. He opened my battered paperback copy of 'Slaughterhouse,' looked up and smiled: "Nobody's ever asked me to sign a stolen library book before."

Stick - Yes. And your point is?

I remember that Vonnegut pamphlet too. One of our writing professors handed it out during my freshman year in college. It's sad that for some this might be the most influential thing Vonnegut wrote. But I think he would have appreciated the absurdity.

Re bc's 12:45 posting: Can you please substitute 'Imus' for 'Vonnegut' and repost? But that's not what I originally came back to tack on ... Yes, his cameo in 'Back to School' was a nice moment, but clearly derivative of and not nearly as well done as the Marshall McLuhan scene in 'Annie Hall.' ... Discuss amongst yourselves.

Stick | April 12, 2007 01:28 PM says: "You know the comments here seem to be self-serving and self-referential and quite often off-topic."

Yep. Knew that.

Stick,

This blog itself is self-serving and self-referential. Scatalogical and eschatalogical in the same sentence, indeed.

As for feeling like you're 16: I can't remember where I read it. But I believe Vonnegut was once quoted as having said "Hey, somebody has to be sophomoric."

Bon voyage, Kurt. (That's why we're here today, right? Kurt Vonnegut died.)

But Imus isn't funny.

The more I reread it, the more this bothers me:

"His books were teenager books, really: To fully appreciate them, it probably helped to perceive yourself as an alien being, forced by Fate to survive on a completely demented planet. To be 16 years old, in other words."

I'm in my 50s, and I've felt this way off and on my whole life. I don't see Vonnegut's work as any more teenaged, or (by implication) any less serious, than that of any of the absurdists.

Here's a bit from Waiting for Godot:

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows. Where
it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they
shriek when you pull them up. Did you
not know that?
Estragon: Let's hang ourselves
immediately!

I wonder if Estragon had a big, um, mandrake. You never know who'll get one.

Someone has to say it:
"So it goes".

I probably don't give KV as much credit as Tim for saving my life, but it was close. Breakfast of Champions was the first work of his I read. We were living in Okinawa where we had almost no contact with American media. Saigon fell and it might as well have been the proverbial tree in the forest with no one to hear. I had a summer job typing in an Army office and I think my reading choices repelled the interests of young soldiers, who were too old for me anyway-even though they were babies themselves.

I'm not going to post the link, but there's a news photo out there related to the crocodile/vet situation that leaves nothing to the imagination...

And it kinda looks like a scene you might find in Vonnegut prose, to stay kinda on-topic.

Oh my Scotty just saw the photo on a local paper.

frostbitten, let me just note that you actually refer to a post by tim, not Tim.

Or Carl Hiaasen's prose, Scottynuke.

Who said being a "teenager book" meant it wasn't serious? I assert that anything that can grab the attention of a teenager and influence that kid for the better is serious stuff indeed. Further, the claim that Vonnegut appeals to a sense of teenaged alienation doesn't imply that it loses its appeal to older readers. For hidden within even my age-addled brain there lurks an angst-filled teen.

At the risk of appearing self-serving, here's a link to a photo "that leaves nothing to the imagination" (other than what the bitten end of a Taiwanese veterinarian's left arm looks like). Definitely for the squeamish who want to believe themselves edgy.

http://nicepics4all.blogspot.com/2007/04/zoo-vet-has-arm-bitten-off-by.html

Sorry for any confusion Sci Tim. I certainly would have flunked out of the E.E. Cummings school of usage.

I look at that and it still seems somewhat unreal to me. I'm glad the vet will be OK and hope he has good arm function afterwards.

I believe you mean ee cummings, frost. And Greg, thanksamucho for the link to KV's writing guide. Elmore Leonard authored a similar collection of writing tips a few years ago, would you mind hunting it down? I know one of them was/is: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." (Which, of course, is only worth a damn if you know to write to begin with.)

I've seen the movies of "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Breakfast of Champions" and they were... not boring is about the best I could say. But the movie of "Mother Night" really worked for me....

And anybody who hasn't read "Harrison Bergeron" should.

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

The crocodile seems to be holding the arm rather gingerly. Posing for the camera with it balanced delicately between his incisors. Where's the blood? Did he bite it sideways, then let it slide down to hold it just above the wrist? Or did he take the vet's arm in his mouth, bite down and snap it off, then regurgitate the arm and turn it 90 degrees?

Five bucks says it's photoshopped.

Oh- and I recently started a series by Australian writer John Mardsen, beginning with the book "Tomorrow, When The War Began". About teens, for teens, but doggone that guy can write some stories. A lot of adults I've mentioned the books to appreciate 'em.

I was thinking something like that, yes. In another picture you can see the crocodile with blood on one side of his mouth. Reptiles do not have firm hinge jaws like mammals do, so it is certainly possible the crocidile bit down on one side only to shear it off. Crocs, in fact, tend to bite off chunks to swallow.

And even knowing all that, it still doesn't look quite real.

Thank you for the link to Vonnegut's International Paper essay on style. I had not seen it before. I will share it with the Boy, who at this point has more interest in writing than experience, and who would rather take writing tips from almost anyone other than his parent who writes for a living. I can pique his interest by showing him the Vonnegut paperbacks which he will be able to read soon, but which may be a shade age-inappropriate now. Or not. Maybe I'll let him decide. I'd like him to wait until he's built up a little more teenage angst, though; I agree that, though Vonnegut speaks to the alienated or angst-ridden in all of us, reading him as a teen provokes a real sense of discovery.

Hey, am I the only one to get the irony here? Vonnegut survives his captivity, is released and goes on to write one of the great novels of the 20th century. Meanwhile, another captive innocent (victim of circumstance) defends itself against one of his captors and is shot and killed. So it goes.

Here's the latest on the vet's arm from the China Post.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/latestnews/2007413/45455.htm

Ivansmom: If KV stood for anything, it was/is the absolute necessity of subverting others' ideas of propriety. If you really want to honor his legacy, don't encourage your kid to read him. Leave the books (paperbacks, preferably stolen library copies) where he will think he's not supposed to find them; he'll enjoy them more that way.

Shriek, in January the Indianapolis mayor had declared this to be the "Year of Vonnegut" and there were to be a number of celebrations including his appearance and a speaking engagement on April 27. His son Mark is now going to do the engagement.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070412/LOCAL18/304120003

Thank you Blake Stacey for the heads up on the Sirens plot mangling. I've added some material from the book to the kit.

Stick, by "self-referential" were you referring to me? I thought so.

Actually, Audentes, it is "E.E. Cummings" after all. Frosty had it right. The lowercase thing first appeared on a book jacket as a graphic element--it wasn't anything E.E. wanted. He later disavowed it (the lowercase) and didn't like it. But various and sundry publishers and editors kept using it, and so it seems to have stuck to him whether he wanted it to or not. But feel free to un-stick it, please. We copy editors will thank you.

So sorry, Stick. I appear to have drifted off-topic. I won't do it again.

*oh, my fingers are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO crossed behind my back*

Sorry folks. I just realized that my earlier post sounds like writing. The last sentence should read, "Definitely for the squeamish who want to pose as edgy." (As someone who both writes for a living AND iss self-serving, I should know better.)
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Kurt's son-in-law, Geraldo Rivera. You think he'll have the crocodile's family on his show tonight?

In Shrieking Denizen's original post of the crocodile story, from the (London?) Times Online, the photo shows the arm in the crocodile's mouth. The article quotes another zoo employee saying that the crocodile was shot twice in the head, noting that neither bullet penetrated the crocodile's skin (crocodiles are rather well-armored), startling or annoying the animal into releasing its grip upon its snack. The crocodile already had been shot with a tranquilizer. The tranquilizer was insufficient (which is why it bit the man's arm), but probably was enough to leave the animal groggy and not behaving up to its full capacity for swift and deadly action.

The point is: it appears that the man and the crocodile both will survive.

Luke, re. "So it goes," see yesterday's blog item, scroll down to the comments to around midnight last night.

Audentes, I guess I'd have to agree with RD there. I never found Imus funny. Ah, well, there's no accounting for my taste, anyway. But that croc might be made into one of the finest purses, belts and pairs of shoes of the 21st century...

Ha. EF, that was a good pull about the philantropist and his son. I'm happy to do straight man duty for ya.

bc

Oho, Tim. I guess my reallocation of croc skin was premature...

bc

Set straight by Mudge. I'm honored. (Psst ... Can someone pull Wildbrod aside and gently inform her that Dostoevsky and Camus are both already dead? I wouldn't feel right; I hardly know her.)

From the NYT Vonnegut obit:
Church of God the Utterly Indifferent

Yup. Got that right.

To answer my own question earlier, which I was pondering while working in the yard. The book I was thinking of was the 1971 "The Gift Horse" by Hildegard Knef. I have it someplace, probably packed away in a box in the garage. What did she write of Dresden that continues to tickle my brain into the afternoon?

How could one forget her face? Starred opposite Gregory Peck in "The Snows of Kilmanjaro." Created scandal in Germany and roused the ire of the Roman Catholic Church because she was the first actress to appear nude in German films. Her book was a tremendous bestseller.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_Knef

Thanks Bill E. So Indianapolis' most famous son, (or is it Letterman now?) has been pardoned his infamous "Indianapolis is the @hole of the Universe." Good for him, the city wasn't all that hot about him not so long ago.

Howard, there are videos and multiple pictures of the crocs from all kinds of angles. But then there are no-planers and no-Moon-landers so feel free to believe whatever you want to believe.

Tim, the people of what we call the London Times arrogantly call their paper "The" Times.

So tim from Tenn. is not SciTim/HisTim/RomanceTim? No TennTim? I am dashed.

Geraldo is married to Vonnegut's daughter? Really? Worlds collide. Again.

When I say Geraldo Rivera's name, I think simultaneously on the bizarre movie Fitzcaraldo (sp, surely) and the Buick Riviera of the 70s, the one with the improbably-long rear glass window.

How I stumbled on KV. In the dorm lounge freshman year, I found a paperback of _SlaughterHouse Five_. I read this while waiting for the hall phone to ring. One sibling was quite ill the first year I went away, and in the manner of the times, no room phones , just a hall phone. So, I spent time in that lounge one weekend, listening for the phone and reading SH5. The book was odd, compared to Dickens and the Bronte sisters. Still, the mood fit.

I still recall that concerning Barbara Pilgrim, Billy's daughter, this word was applied: "flibbertigibbet." I was surprised to see the word in print, having heard my granny say it often. I thought it to be her word. Vonnegut's too. Ours, really.

Audentes, I'd love to leave Vonnegut's books around where the Boy will stumble on them. However, we have about 10,000 books in the house (okay, several thousand, I haven't counted them all). Unless I steer him to a shelf section, he'll never find them to miss. He is already interested in the sci-fi, though, so he may see them on his own after all (they're near that, anyway). The worst thing I could do would be to tell him he Should read them. Never happen.

My friends and I read ALL the Vonnegut books when we were in our late teens. I didn't realize it at the time, but they were a rite of passage for me. I haven't thought about them for a long time. Think it's time to reread one or two of them.

I know it takes all kinds, RD & BC. Just glad I'm not one of 'em. Dunno where you guys are, geography-wise, but as a native New Yorker of a certain age, I've been an on-off listener of Imus for more than 30 years -- more off than on when my parents had a smidge of control over my media intake. (To those of you who are younger than "a certain age," long before it became the responsibility of government, therapists, illegal aliens and children themselves, parenting was actually performed by responsible adults with a biological and/or legal connection to the youngsters involved.) I'd say I grew up listening to him, if not for the fact that most of his show's humor appeals to the part of me that refuses to grow up. "South Park" is a good analogy: It doesn't cause bad behavior by real children, but instead pretty accurately portrays the way adolescent boys (mis)behave, when grown-ups aren't watching.

Nope, I am not from Tennessee. I am, in fact, from Indianapolis. So, I have that going for me.

Ivansmom, take him to the shelf, start to suggest that he read the Vonnegut, then say, "No, well, hmmm. Maybe you're not old enough for these yet. There are some parts that it would make me feel kind of uncomfortable to think that I steered you to them. No, no, I don't think you're old enough for Vonnegut after all. Maybe A. A. Milne."

He'll read them.

Geraldo Rivera changed his name from Jerry Rivers. Didn't help.

*on the front page, above the fold*

Shriek, well, there you have it. Clearly ScienceTim is Indianapolis's favorite son.

Dumb question of the day, is today's Google homepage a tribute to KV?

I would think Ivan is still a little tender (isn't he still a pre-teen?) for the full Vonnegut.

But then again, I have been accused by certain offspring of being terribly old-fashioned in what I consider appropriate.

I can be so twentieth century.

bill, it's for Yuri Gagarin (first man in space). Click on the graphics.

Rhubarb alert -

Frost-Damaged Rhubarb May Be Toxic If Eaten
Created: 4/12/2007 11:09:50 AM
Last updated: 4/12/2007 12:07:22 PM

(AP) -- Property owners growing rhubarb, take heed: The fruit can be toxic if eaten after it was damaged by frost.

That's the warning from Elizabeth Wahle, a plant specialist with the University of Illinois extension. She says rhubarb shouldn't be harvested when the leaves are wilted and limp after a hard freeze.

Wahle says that not only do the leafstalks acquire a poor flavor and texture, but the leaves and eventually the stem may become toxic.

It's not as if I have any, though! Wish I did.

>I'm happy to do straight man duty for ya.

bc, there's nothing like a good straight man. I still vividly remember reading that passage. At first I just kind of giggled, but the more I thought about it the harder I laughed until I was just rocking with convulsive belly-laughs. I was about 15 at the time I think, and maybe started to see it from the kid's point-of-view.

I haven't pulled out any Al Stewart for awhile but I guess I need to listen to "Sirens Of Titan" tonight.

Yuri Gagarin died too? Oh boy, these things run in threes. I bet Camus or Dostoevsky is next.

:-)

P.S. Thanks Wheezy

I agree, RD. But then, I am VERY old, or so says the Boy, which, alas, means you are too. Language etc. aside, I think he'll actually enjoy them more when he's a little older.

My folks never censored my reading. They figured if I picked up a book that was "too old" I'd lose interest and stop. By and large, they were right. However, I have modified that approach somewhat with my own offspring. Partly this is because we didn't have that many books around when I grew up, so the potential for error (hey, isn't he running for President?) was smaller. Also, I suspect they may not have known what I could be getting into.

I have been informed by usually reliable sources that the "Jerry Rivers" to "Geraldo Rivera" story is an urban legend.

Man, those things are everywhere.

Hey Bill, et al. Glad you mentioned Google. Try this: go to google, then 'maps' then 'get directions' and type in 'New York, New York' (to) 'Paris, France'. Click "Get Directions" and scroll down to Line 23. Stupid Internet trick of the day, brought to you by a guy whose friends have too much free time. Oh, and Vonnegut's daughter is no longer married to Jerry Rivera (his pupal name), but the in-law relationship is not dissolved with the marriage at time of divorce. Anyhoo, Vonnegut mentioned it during the 1989 campus talk at which we met.

We've had a few newcomers stroll in today and should make them feel welcome. Trust us, if anybody is aware of Fedor's or Albert's corporal state, it is Wilbrod.

While true that "so it goes" (and not Linda Ellerbee's "And so it goes") has been exhausted, several other Vonnegutian catch phrases that can pass the Worty Dird filter are still available including:

•Listen:
•Hi Ho!
•Po-tee-weet.
•I am a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
•Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
•No damn cat, and no damn cradle.
•Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
•If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have nerve enough to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
•Let me note that Kilgore Trout and I have never used semicolons. They don't do anything, don't suggest anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites.

And my personal favorite:
•Live by the foma (harmless untruths) that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

(Wikiquote was consulted for accuracy. Like that will work.)

bill, I just went back and read one of the Google sites, and Gagarin died in 1968. Today is the anniversary of his first orbit in 1961.

Yuri, we hardly knew ye.

I would have thought his first obit was in 1968.

(Memo to self: get glasses checked.)

*

Hey RD, did you see the Times Style section? Nice trend piece on urban legends moving to the suburbs for the schools. Also, tip o' the hat to Science Tim -- a man truly wise in the ways of his namesake discipline -- for his advice to Ivansmom. Also also ... isn't "toxic rhubarb" rhedundant?

?

Mudge, if the ? was in response to the *, I read the * from Martin as a sort of rimshot to your "orbit/obit" joke.

Mudge: TOMORROW is the anniversary of Gagarin's first obit. (I always confuse the dates, too.)

Martin,
I missed that one.

Also:
• Good-bye, Blue Monday
• wide-open beaver

Today's Googleâ„¢ logo may be a tribute to Yuri Gagarin, but the guys hanging around the "e" look mighty Tralfamadorian.

"Ice-Nine" by Joe Satriani may also be worth a tribute spin.

Audentes is an anagram of unseated. Hmmm....

Ah.

Thank you, Wheez.

I was going to point out that Gagarin died in a fighter plane crash during training in '68, but you guys beat me to it.

bc

yellojkt, that whole "Surfing with the Alien" CD is worth a spin. In fact, I was listening to it today at lunch for that very reason.

Not as good as "Flying in a Blue Dream" IMO, but still pretty cool.

bc

Canada will rent 20 "gently used" Leopard 2 Main Battle Tanks from Germany and use them in Afghanistan. Apparently the Canadian crews object to the non-air-conditioned Leopard 1 they are curreently using. The inside temperature of this tank designed to wait for Russian hordes in a cool shady part of the Black Forest can reach 50-60 C (120-140F) during the Afghan summer.
Man, I don't know what's the daily rental rate on those MBTs but that Loss Damage Waiver is going to kill us.

Wow. Did I miss the boat on that last post. But if I may weigh in on Wheezy's commentary: I read Martin's asterisk less as a rimshot than a (facial exprssion similar to William Powell in formal wear, reacting to a Myrna Loy double entendre). And, yello: I'll take your word on it that Wildbrod is certain of Dostoevsky & Camus' corporal state(s); no explanation needed. After all, children may visit this site (and have their little hopes dashed upon learning that THIS is what the grown-ups do when there are no kids around).

... and an anagram of "used neat."

a nude set

tan suede

I'm going to stop now.

>potential for error (hey, isn't he running for President?)

Ivansmom, thanks for the plug. It's more like strolling at this point... I'm taking the stealth approach to conserve money and time, and because it fits Sun Tzu's approach. Hence the story about running for President of Cuba. Shhhhh.

Humor is hard. Kinda knew Gagarin had long since gone kaputnik. But thanks for looking out for me.

yellojkt just explained the asterisk to me. I'll let him explain it--don't want to steal his thunder. Yello, take it away:

Welcome to the newish ones. I might greet you by name, but I have muffed this before. So I welcome you, and expect that KVians would feel at home here.

I am trying to get to the pool today, and if I do, will have that suspended animation experience and will mediate on KV. Fits perfectly.

Safe drive home everyone. Foma all around.

Martin, excellent: *

Shriek, I don't doubt the story. I'm fully aware that Yuri Gagarin landed on the moon, at least after he died. I just thought that that particular croc photo looked improbable.

Shriek hope the used tanks work out better than the used subs from Britian.

OK, let me get this straight. Paul Wolfowitz was/is boffing one of his staffers, and then he gives her a raise from $132,660 to $193,590. But to avoid conflict of interest, the GF transferred to the State Dept., even though she remains on the World Bank payroll. But now he's sorry, and has apologized.

OK, got it. And this guy still has a job? Uh, is there anybody here from the HR dept.?

I assumed that the "*" was a reference to a critical plot point in "Breakfast of Champions" -- a valiant effort to get things back on topic. Valiant, but doomed.

Sorry, Bill. I get in pre-school teacher mode sometimes, and I'm told things go right over my head.

In 9th grade, I was nearly finished writing a paper on Cat's Cradle when some 900 people living in Jonestown, Guyana, drank from a vat of cyanide-laced purple Kool-Aid and committed mass suicide.

I had to start over, given the circumstances of life (or death, in this case) imitating art. The paper wrote itself.

As part of 'Breakfast of Champions', Kurt Vonnegut provided his own illustrations. For example he included two different illustrations of a "beaver" depending on the context in which the word was used.

He also apologized for the poor quality of his drawings and used as an example, how he draws an a**hole, which closely resembles an "x" and a "+" superimposed over each other. As a shorthand, the humble asterisk "*" is often employed as a substitute.

The Vonnegutian a**terisk became an inside joke trademark of his and was added as an official part of his signature. An example can be seen in the letter I scanned on the post Joel linked to.

Artwork and other items featuring the a**terisk used to be available on www.vonnegut.com which has gone dark today in memorium.

There was a lot of really cr*ppy news today, but this actually made me cry. RIP, Mr. Vonnegut.

Not a problem, Wheezy.

I have to admit that "How to write with style," which was linked above, was the first KV I ever read.

What should be the second?

Slaughterhouse Five. It's the biggie.

And "anagram" is itself an anagram of "Managra" -- which of course is a misspelling of Nicaragua's capital. Thanks for explaining to me, after all these years, why KV signed my SH5 with an asterisk. Always good to be in on the inside jokes. ... The big laugh for me in today's news is that Wolfowitz, one of principal architects of the Iraqi boondoggle, apologizes for giving money to his girlfriend. What a load off his mind. Second place is Newsweek's piece on how badly A-Gonz is bombing the prep sessions for his upcoming testimony. I'd suggest he tell the truth, only nobody in this WH knows how to coach that. G'night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. ... I'm off to free the lizard.

He was a great writer. He was kind to me. I named my first cat Foma. When I graduated college in 1970 and before I went backpacking to Europe, I wrote Vonnegut a letter thanking him for his writing. I addressed it to Kurt Vonnegut "somewhere in Barnstable, Mass." Months later when I returned there was a letter waiting form me: "Thank you for your kind note. Nice, nice, very nice. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr." His last gift was his last book which I read on an airplane to France. I laughed and cried, as I have today remembering his work which I intend to re-read.

I'm not sure you go to Slaughterhouse Five right out of the gate. Sirens of Titan is young Vonnegut as science fiction writer. Cat's Cradle a more mature writer. But since Slaughterhouse Five is, I think, his BIG book, why not save it? I barely remember a thing about Breakfast of Champions (other than the asterisk) or Deadeye Dick. Anyone want to champion God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or his story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House ? Galapagos?

I remember a scene from a Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to school" in which Dangerfield calls up KV and cusses him out after a professor gave him a failing grade on a paper of which the subject was KV and unbeknwonst to the professor had been written for Dangerfield by KV. For some reason, everytime I saw KV that scene always popped into my head and gave me a chuckle.

FYI, Imus fired. Lost his radio show. That's the word.

KV Must-reads:
Slaughterhouse Five
Cat's Cradle
Breakfast of Champions
Sirens of Titan

Overlooked gems:
Mother Night
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Bluebeard
Galapagos

Not essential:
Jailbird
Dead-eye Dick
Timequake
Player Piano
Hocus Pocus
Slapstick

Short Stories:
Welcome to the Monkey House (source of anything found in an English class collection)
Bagombo Snuff Box (early stuff)

Essays and Non-Fiction:
Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (semi-essential)
Palm Sunday
Fates Worse Than Death
A Man Without A Country
My review of 'A Man Without A Country' and a belabored rockstar metaphor are available here:
http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2005/10/vonnegut-without-country.html

Drama:
Happy Birthday, Wanda June
From Time to Timbuktu (a teleplay pastiche)

There is a lot of other ephemera floating around like a children's book, a bound essay, books on tape, etc.

Several books have been made into movies. Only "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Mother Night" are worth watching. Several of the 'Monkey House' short stories were faithfully done as television shows and are available on DVD.

The best source on the web about Vonnegut even though it has only been lightly updated in recent years is The Vonnegut Web: http://www.vonnegutweb.com/

Your mileage may vary. Professional driver on a closed course.

I'd agree that "Monkey House" is a good warmup for the later Vonnegut. My copy is falling apart, but I still love it.

Then "Cat's Cradle", then "Sirens", then S5.

That's how I'd recommend it, anyway.

bc

I hope some teachers out there are using the Imus incident as a debate forum about what is appropriate in public discourse.

It'd be nice to see SOME good come out of this incident if just a few teen boys realize saying words could lose them their jobs rather than make them look like cool rappers.

Albert Camus's dead?

Next I guess you'll be telling me Shakespeare died when I wasn't looking. I'm always the last to get the news around here.

College Parkian,

"Flibbertigibbet" comes from King Lear (III, iv). It's the name of a demon in a 1603 book by Samuel Harsnett, **A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures**.

I'd start with Welcome to the Monkey House, if I'd never read any of his stuff. A chance to enjoy some first-rate stuff while acclimatizing to his eccentric style. Next? Maybe Mr. Rosewater, and then yello's must-reads, but in reverse order. Everything leading to S5. After that, frolic among the lesser works.

Fired, Joel? Hurrah!

"Anyone want to champion God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or his story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House ? Galapagos?"

I'll champion all three of them, though Galapagos is probably best left until you know you're a mature Vonnegut reader.

The other thing about S-house 5 is that, if a reader is not accustomed to reading sci-fi and accepting abrupt jumps in narration due to time travel, I would think it a bit of a difficult read. Mrs. Everything, who hasn't read any KV (or sci-fi) asked me what to read today. I pushed her towards Cat's Cradle even though S-house 5 is the more famous novel.

I was composing my bibliography while Joel was posting his recommendations. I think we are on the same wavelength. I would recommend Cat's Cradle for the absolute beginner.

Of the "late" Vonnegut (post-BoC), my favorite is 'Bluebeard'. It takes the BoC character of charlatan modern artist Rabo Karabekian and expands his story. It can be read on several levels, not the least being a critique of post-war modern art. Karebekian can be seen as either a Pollock/Rothko composite or as Vonnegut. And really, all tortured artists in KV's work are himself.

The boss has it right:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/12/imus.rutgers/index.html

I've only read Cat's Cradle; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (from which I got "waste of skin" and "too dumb to live" but otherwise I don't remember it); From Time to Timbuktu; Breakfast of Champions; and Welcome to the Monkey House. I started Player Piano, but it didn't motivate me to read very much of it. I mainly read GB,MR so that I could work out the references in FTtT. My father became a big fan after reading Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse 5. I never got around to reading either one, somehow. I'll have to add them to my list.

I loved Cat's Cradle. Breakfast of Champions sat well with me, perhaps just because of how it embraced its setting in and around Indianapolis. Welcome to the Monkey House was uneven, but some of the stories had elements that really, REALLY stick in the mind (for instance -- the Ethical Suicide Parlors of WttMH are immediately recognizable in Soylent Green, even though that movie is based on a novel by Harry Harrison (which I haven't actually read), also used in a Simpsons parody of Soylent Green).

There is a deeply strange and extremely profane Vonnegut short story in Harlan Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions anthology, called the Big Space Ford (um, not exactly), which starts off from the phallic imagery of missiles and the symbolic fertilization of space by manned spaceflight. I was still mostly oriented towards hard SF in those days, so I had little patience for a story whose main plot element is the stupid and useless launching of vast amounts of sperm (and only sperm) into interstellar space. It wasn't a great story, but I s'pose it was supposed to be a satire of technologically-facilitated sexism.

//Wolfowitz, one of principal architects of the Iraqi boondoggle, apologizes for giving money to his girlfriend. What a load off his mind.//

What a load off his mind. Made me laugh out loud. Thanks.

Audentes, I think you fit in well here. So do all the other newcomers. Something good may come from KV's passing: new friends on the A-blog!

I'll second yellojkt's enthusiasm for Bluebeard. And, er, I hate to complain again, but. . . "Black Stacey"?

:-/

yellojkt, thanks for the recommendations. You should post your KV recommendations on kb's book review site. I've enjoyed my Boodle recommended books and will look for some more KV (read SH-5 ages ago - maybe time for a re-read).

Shrieking Denizen re leased tanks. You know you're a tough hombre if your job is repo man for leased tanks.

Looking at that list I realize that, outside of Welcome to the Monkey House, I have only read the "non-essential" Vonnegut. And I was pretty amazed by those. That says something about the guy.

I am also impressed by how many people report Vonnegut's personal kindness. It's good to see someone who advocates kindness actually being kind. And it gives me hope.

Finally, I can't help but wonder if Vonnegut might not be tempted to punch a hole in the time continuum to take advantage of his increased book sales.

Just a thought.

Thanks for being right on the money in your analysis of Kurt's work and his place in American literature. As a kid in Indiana I shopped at Vonnegut's Hardware and when I found out a writer like Kurt could come from the right winged, repressive place where I was being raised it was a revelation for me. He was an original human being with a gift for expression. He will be missed.

Nice discussion with Dirda on Vonnegut:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/12/DI2007041200946.html

One of the early replies from Dirda mentions Montana Wildhack. I am reminded that an old college friend of my father's (possibly an old girlfriend, I dunno, I've only met her once) married into the actual Wildhack family from whom Vonnegut derived the name.

Boy, StorytellerTim, you put the Boodle into a deep, deep slumber...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You know, I liked the former Dirda photo with glasses. Fit the bookwormer image perfectly. Current picture looks like the guy going through middle age crisis who's going to hit on your 19 year old daughter.

Mostly kidding, I like his chats when I have the time.

I remember when nobody boodled when they weren't on the clock. Now the Achenblog is open all night.

Yello, self-serving and self-referential is no longer limited to business hours.

Certainly, a first star to you today.

Mudge, I'm not sure the Boodle's awake again yet. I know I still feel comatose.

>Mudge, I'm not sure the Boodle's awake again yet.

Wilbrod, I had a great answer to bill's 9:29 but I can't afford to lawyer up at the moment and have too few advertisers as it is.

That was me at 5:43, by the way. A hearty welcome to our new friends.

I don't think I've read any more than some of Vonnegut's stories. I'll have to change that.

I am struck by my new knowledge that Vonnegut wasn't just a Humanist, but truly, wholly human.

KV's passing has left us rather quiet; muffled as the W.H. Auden poem about grief says.

heh heh - I was going to respond to Blake Stacey with an Imus-inspired wisecrack. But I really shouldn't. Welcome, Blake. Joel must have been boodle skimming too fast.

I'm going to have to pick up some Vonnegut for my plane trip next week. Especially since I could be snowed in at Denver for a long, long time...I really enjoyed A Man Without a Country. And I agree with him about semicolons.

EF, enquiring minds want to know. Take your best shot.

I just watched the Grey's Anatomy thing, and there was this song playing in the background that I wasn't particularly paying attention to, but gradually I became aware of it, and liked it. I Goodled a phrase from it to find out what it was. It's called "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol--a song and a group I never heard of. But I like the lyrics, and their performance. It's a nice "quiet" song. Here's the lyrics:

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words,
are said too much
they're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things
Will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Dirda is the best-read person in the Solar System:

Virginia: My favorite book is "Slaughterhouse-Five" because it shows how a human being copes with total war, using humor and the need to escape. It reminds me of Picasso's "Guernica" named after a town that was also completely destroyed.

Thanks.

Michael Dirda: That's an interesting comparison, and probably an apt one, though there's not any humor in Guernica. Back in the 1960s there was an anthology from, I think, Esquire called "Smiling Through the Apocalypse." It was a mode that many writers adopted. The "black humor" that we find in Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," Gilbert Sorrentino's "Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things," and even much of William Burroughs is one aspect of it. But Vonnegut is also very much a part of science fiction -- as Kilgore Trout once said "I love you guys" -- and much of 1960s sf, the New Wave, resembles Vonnegut. Think of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories, J.G. Ballard's tales of "inner space" and the work of Thomas M. Disch and Harlan Ellison. But the most Vonnegutian of them all, and in my view one of the great neglected writers of our time, was John Sladek. Books like "Roderick: The Education of a Young Robot" or his earlier novels such as "The Muller-Fokker Effect" are brilliant, bitter looks at the way we live now through the lens of sf. That's what Vonnegut did in his own early fiction.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/12/DI2007041200946.html

>EF, enquiring minds want to know.

heh, thanks bill, but it was probably better as is. :-)

I love that phrase though, use it all the time.

All things Snow Patrol-wise:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:azfixqyjldse

By the way, I would consider an affair with Paul Wolfowitz if I could get raises like that. Sorry if that goes into TMI.

More on writers we admire and writers we love:

McLean, Va.: I am 27 years old. Kurt Vonnegut has been my favorite writer since I was 17. If the best place for a writer is to be on the bookshelves of the public, especially the younger generations, then Mr. Vonnegut has succeeded.

Damn the world, I am the lesser for his passing.

Thank you for doing this chat. I didn't realize I could feel so sad by the passing of someone who I never met.

Michael Dirda: Well, Vonnegut was a writer whose great gift was that he always seemed to be talking directly to you. He wasn't writing, he wasn't showing off, he was just telling you, nobody else, what it was like, what it was all about. That intimacy made him beloved. We can admire the art of John Updike or Philip Roth, but we love Vonnegut.

Mudge, Snow Patrol is very popular up here, and it is a nice song, my friend is taking her son to the concert soon.

Just remembered seeing KV on the Daily Show, I haven't read a lot of his work but this clip endeared him to me, hope the link works,

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=18090&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=%2Fshows%2Fthe_daily_show%2Fvideos%2Fcelebrity_interviews%2Findex.jhtml%3FplayVideo%3D18090&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true

Apparently historian Douglas Brinkley also recently interviewed Kurt Vonnegut:

But Kurt Vonnegut is clearly weary. "Like they say, I'm 82 and homeless," he says. "It was the same way when World War II ended. The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now? I've wondered where home is? It's when I was in Indianapolis when I was nine years old. Had a dog, a cat, a brother, a sister."

After a few hours of fine conversation, Vonnegut and I headed out for Lasagne Ristorante, his favorite nearby eatery. We walked down 3rd Avenue in suffocating heat, the air pollution level felt lethal and for a couple minutes, Vonnegut just kept coughing. Perspiration beads formed on our brows. Vonnegut's good humor dissipated. He was back on his "Perils of Oil" soapbox, insinuating that the evil slime had gushed into our lives via the River Styx, courtesy of Hades. "Evolution is a mistake," he says in disgust. "Humans are a mistake. We have destroyed our entire planet over transportation, whoopee. The Bush administration says it's conducting a war against drugs? Then let them bust the Oil Lobby. Talk about an awful, destructive substance. You pump this gas stuff into your car and you can zoom a hundred miles an hour, kill pets, and shatter the atmosphere to smithereens."

And then, after an awkward silence, the Dresden survivor offers a philosophical one-liner. "Life," he says, "is no way to treat an animal." And then, for some reason, we both burst out laughing.
***

Speaking of life, it appears dinosaurs and chickens are related on a molecular level. See the WaPo.com home page.

I read Dirda's chats and feel very proud when he mentions a book or author I've actually heard of, much less read. His chat today was very good.

My hair is starting to look a bit like Vonnegut's.

I know of Snow Patrol because they opened for U2 in Europe. I may even have a tape or CD of theirs somewhere around here. So much to do, so little time.

Dirda was at his best this afternoon.

Thinking of Dirda, I got to watch all six hours of "The Best of Youth," an Italian movie/miniseries, at a class in our local art museum. It was in two-hour segments, not quite the best deal because the middle segment ended after a terrible event. As the critics had figured out, it was highly novelistic (not at all in a Vonnegut way, perhaps more Stendhal). Stendhal is admired and perhaps loved, at least in French. Perhaps time to read? "Best of Youth" had episodes in Florence, and Stendhal supposedly fainted, overwhelmed, upon entering the cathedral. Call it Stendhal's Syndrome.

Good one Loomis.

JA thank you for your 10:19. It's like "I'm sorry to inform you that you've become a part of a scientific experiment with an extremely uncertain conclusion. Ultimately, there is nothing you can do about it. It might be helpful, however, if you smile." That is the most we can do. Oh, and be kind.

Finding protein in big, beautifully preserved Tyrannosaurus bones (and also some vastly younger mastondon bones) was wonderful, but the big science deal tonight is the genome of the Rhesus macaque. I don't know if there's still a feral colony of them at Silver Spring.

dmd... thanks for that Daily Show clip.

A better link is:

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=18090

Charlie Rose is doing a segment of his show on Vonnegut tonight. His shows are available on the web for a while, usually.
http://www.charlierose.com/

Gadzooks, I'm a dork.

Other than Vonnegut, I've read some Moorcock, Heller, Ballard, Sladek, Roth, Updike, and lots of Harlan Ellison.

Interesting that Dirda called Sladek neglected. I'm thinking about it, and Dirda's right. And I'm not just saying that because Sladek passed years ago.

To be truly, wholly human... interesting, TBG.

bc

John Sladek? I loved "Roderick at Random" as a kid.
I adore robot novels and his approach was really fresh and apt: a good robot story always examines humanity in a way. I found it funny Roderick had oepedial complexes and the whole shebang.

And his crazy free-association logic... here's a quote reconstructed from memory.

Roderick says, "Oz must be real, because you know, Baum's first name is Frank, and that means truth, you know."

"uh, but Frank L. Baum's middle name is Lyman."
"Lie-man? Oh dear."
"Yeah."

The comparion to Sladek does push Vonnegut up on my "Big writers that I may stop avoiding" list.

Yes, I saw the rhesus macaque story, also on the WaPo home page with the dinosaur-chicken story, and immediately Googled this specific species of primate and the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, where mulch fire Helotes Mayor Jon Allan works. According to this link...:

http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/ncrrprog/cmpdir/PRIMATES.asp

(See the San Antonio foundation's listing under Southwest National Primate Research Center, about 1/4 the way down the page.)
...their current genetic research involves:

Genetic and environmental bases for susceptibility to atherosclerosis, hypertension, osteoporosis, obesity, and infectious diseases; *construction of baboon and rhesus gene maps*; genomic screening for disease-related genes; genetic management strategies for research colonies; development of new genetic analytic strategies and software.

...so I'm assuming they were part of the consortium to work on the mapping of the entire rhesus macaque genome.

Maybe this all ties in somehow because Allan's favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut. (San Antonio Express-News assistant op-ed page editor Robert Seltzer reported this several weeks ago, part of a Q&A interview with Allan. I provided the link.)

Joel! You are a real reader as well as a real writer! Excellent.

Michael Dirda is the bookman (he's the bookman...). And he's published more than a few of my discussion contributions. Including one on Jane Eyre when he said, "A fine exigence on the text. What more can I say?" Excellent.

I love the new photo. Why? Because bookish men are ta hotness. The non-bespectacled Dirda is hunky. Oh ya. (Sorry 'Mudge. Fickle, don't you know.)

Actually, Wilbrod, it's even better than that: Lyman is his FIRST name...

We know him as L. Frank Baum.

"Can I go home now? I've wondered where home is? It's when I was in Indianapolis when I was nine years old. Had a dog, a cat, a brother, a sister."

Linda, that is such a wonderful story. Thank you for posting it. It touches me in a very personal and timely way. I have an elderly aunt who is refusing chemo. She told me, there is nothing there for me now. I think she would have agreed with Mr. Vonnegut's sentiments, only home for her is probably in the front yard, rolling down the hill in the sunlight.

Ha. John Stewart just closed out a bit with John Oliver on the war with "So it goes," as the stage lights faded and they went to commercial.

bc

But surely, Loomis, you don't believe there is any genetic component to the many diseases adults endure and manage?

You've been quick to pin responsibility for Boodlers' health crises on those self-same individuals' lifestyle choices.

Dave Eggers writing for Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the few writers in this guide that I can be sure that everyone has already read (unless "everyone" includes people who cannot read, or do not read, or are very young, or speak a language into which his work as not been translated)

More here:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/12/eggers_on_vonnegut/

Good catch, TBG. Lie-man is my first name, too, don't ya know.

So, Stewart closes the Daily show with a clip from the Vonnegut interview and a graphic "Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes."

Then Colbert opens his Report with, "Welcome to the Monkey House."

Ah, off to bed with me.

bc

Great kit and boodle. bc confused me by mentioning Don Imus' face and luggage. Why are the basketball players mad at swamp crawlers?

Morning all! *semi-caffeinated Grover waves*

Somehow, after the events of the past couple of days, "Happy Friday the 13th" seems entirely appropriate. Particularly because the WaPo copy desk seems to have forgotten the active voice:

"World Bank president apologizes for role in giving raise to staffer with whom he was involved."

*SIGH*

Adn I think "Blame Imus" is going to become this year's slogan...

"CAMDEN, N.J., April 12 -- Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) was critically injured Thursday when his motorcade crashed en route to a meeting between radio personality Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team, a doctor said.
Corzine, 60, suffered numerous broken bones, including his sternum and several ribs, but his injuries were not considered life-threatening, officials said. He was recuperating early Friday in critical but stable condition at Cooper University Hospital in Camden after two hours of surgery to repair a seriously damaged leg and other injuries."

*SIGHHHHHHHHHHH*

SCC: AND, even...

*scrambling for more coffee*

At least the Nationals won...

:-)

"Can I go home now? I've wondered where home is? It's when I was in Indianapolis when I was nine years old. Had a dog, a cat, a brother, a sister." --KV
*******
...and a mother, he poignantly did not say. -KB
*******
"We are human only to the extent that our ideas remain humane." - KV
********
"I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.

"I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that." - KV
*************

*big sigh* Used...and cruelly abandoned. In favor of Dirda. *big sigh again* I'm a bookman, too, ya know. Do I not have hotness? OK, that's not a good question. Cut me, do I not bleed interminably (it's just the Plaxiv and aspirin regimen)? So I'm not exactly...hunky. A little closer to chunky, maybe. OK, a LOT closer to chunky. Arnold Stang-close to Chunky. There, I've asdmitted it. Can we please move on to something else now?

*grumbles to self, "I bet Michael Dirda can't bake a faux-sour cherry pie AND whip up a pot of killer crab chowder containing Alaska King Crab legs and enough sherry to paralyze Samual Johnson...." sulks, kicks puppy*

'Mudge, the faux cherry pie will work with Yoki. Did you bake it, snap it and send the pic? Yoki will return to you, no doubt.

In Whole Foods (I admit to a love/hate relationship here) I found frozen bags of plain Bingie-type cherries -- stones included though. I will try your faux sour cherry pie sometime this month. Lime, not lemon, right?

Had odd dreams of kind space aliens that merged the Mrs. Beast of the Wrinkle books with all sorts of Vonnegutian beings, and a dash of Tribbles, I believe. The Tribble-flavor is no doubt, the little doglet who arrives furry and cold-nosed at 5ish each day. Just checking to see if I am still there, and able to open the door to the wide yard at 6:30.

Feral birdie is surviving. Son of CeePee named it Hermes....a sight better than Durdy-Burdy. Perhaps there is hope for him.

Good morning, friends.

Good thoughts your way, Martooni.

God loves us so much more than we can imagine through Him that died for all, Jesus Christ. Peace.

'Morning, Boodle. If at all possible, stay at home and pull the covers up over your head. Let us review:

(1) It is Friday the 13th.
(2) They are calling for snow this weekend in the DC area.
(3) Taxes are due by Monday.
(4) Karl Rove's e-mails seem to be missing.
(5) Paul Wolfowitz is sorry he's boffing a staffer he gave a $60,000 raise to and involuntarily transferred to the State Dept.
(6) Mallaby says the World Bank is both demoralized and has no "moral clarity." Hard to believe any institution run by Wolfowitz lacks moral clarity.
There's a report FEMA is squandering/has squandered $40 million in food money. FEMA? Hard to believe, I know.
(7) A bomber infiltrated the Green Zone in Baghdad. I see that the Surge is working pretty well.
(8)Dinosaurs appear to be related to chickens, and here I am without a recipe for Beer Butt T Rex. Or a grill that big.

On the other hand, there are only two small pieces of good news. Make that three small pieces:

(1) Imus has been fired. Civilization inches forward a quarter of a millimeter. (Somebody e-mailed a hilarious note to David Bird on WaPo radio this morning: "Can't get enough Imus news. Can't you hook a sister up?")
(2) The Onion will be on a WaPo chat this morning at 11.
(3) It's FRIDAY.

And so it goes.

You may proceed with your day. Good morning, Cassandra. Take your meds, please, and/or use the inhaler.

SCC: Whoops, a little Remedial Numbering for Dummies:

(7) There's a report FEMA is squandering/has squandered $40 million in food money. FEMA? Hard to believe, I know.
(8) A bomber infiltrated the Green Zone in Baghdad. I see that the Surge is working pretty well.
(9)Dinosaurs appear to be related to chickens, and here I am without a recipe for Beer Butt T Rex. Or a grill that big.

Don't feel badly, Mudge. I bet Michael Dirda has never even *met* Al Roker.

Mild rant coming up on the use of the word "Mistake" as in "Wolfowitz Apologizes For Mistake."

To me, this use of the word somehow implies that the man did all this by accident. As if his actions were morally equivalent to forgetting to carry the four when doing multiplication.

Granted, I don't expect him to appear in sack cloth proclaiming that he has sinned, but there must be some word that better describes the deliberate nature of his actions than "mistake."

End of rant.

RD- hubris maybe.

Nice Appreciation of KV:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041202428.html

frostbitten - That would work, but it may be too esoteric of a word. I keep leaning towards "sorry for being an a$$" But that might be going too far the other way.

Today's dead trees WaPo front page had no less than four completely independent stories about the incompetence/malfeasance of the Bush Administration (Mudge's #4,5,7,and 8). I doubt that is a world record, but the shear breadth of the scope is impressive.

"So that's how I feel now," he said. "Please, I've done everything, you know? Raised kids and all that, worked, tried to do good work -- can't I go home now? And I think about where home is. It's Indianapolis when I was 9 years old, and you can't go back there. But I had a mother and a father, a big sister, a big brother, a dog, a cat -- and yeah, that's where I'd like to go."

I like that version better, he remembered to mention his parents that time.

It took a while (I'm slow) but I finally thought of the word I want to associate with Vonnegut, that I don't think I've seen in any of the obits and remembrances. It was this: INNOCENCE. Even though he went through some of the worst experiences the world could dish out, Kurt never lost his innocence.

//innocent (adj.) 1. Uncorrupted by evil, malice or wrongdoing.//

8:23 (apparently I'm both slow and absent-minded...)

Mudge,
the worst thing about Wolfowitz hiring lovers and cronies is that his major contribution at the WB is the anti-corruption push he championed over the past couple of years. He pushed rules that takes into account the respect of the rules of law/honesty/morality in giving money away to developing countries. Do as I say and not as I do...

Somebody screwed up -- the Democrat-eating cannibal was Alfred/Alferd Packer of Colorado, not the Donner Party.

I think that you make a good case kbertocci. From what I have read about Vonnegut, the man, I think that another key characteristic is that he was inquisitive.

He seems to have thought about everything mercilessly. Like many brilliant people, I get the feeling that he had little choice in the matter. I think part of him wished he could believe in some overarching meaning, but he could not.

This made him terribly aware and alive.

But I think it also made him very sad.

RDP, good point. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you sad..." Wait, that's not how it goes.

I know something about depression, too, and since I first experienced it I have connected the emotional response with the experience of facing the world head-on, without illusions or fantasies to buffer reality. This is complicated, because we don't really know which is the cause and which is the effect. There is a lot of evidence to show that our emotional set point is genetic. We are pre-disposed to our disposition, you might say. Some of us are Eeyores and some of us are Tiggers (we know who we are...) It might just be that Eeyore is free to see the world the way it is because he doesn't EXPECT happiness.

I think I'm in over my head here, better just go back to my cubicle-duties.

This is from Dirda's chat yesterday. I think it says a lot about Vonnegut; what we all seem to find wonderful about him.

I thought the best part [of his Rice University commencement speech in 1998] was how he noted that while some of us, no