RIP Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

by prokofy on 15/04/07 at 12:15 am

By Prokofy Neva, Community Affairs Desk

Kurtvonnegutshrine_002

Second Life avatars gathered again tonight at the Velvet club in Iron Fist to leave flowers, candles, cigs, and drinks in memory of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, a beloved internationally-known American author who died April 11 at the age of 84 of brain injury suffered after a fall.

Somehow a virtual world seemed the perfect place to remember a man whose characters easily moved about in time and history. Indeed, peterSL’s Twit Obit on Twitter within an hour of the news of the great novelist’s passing was perfect: “Kurt Vonnegut has become unstuck in time” — like the famous character Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse Five, a book many had read. The avatars talking about whose custom it was to leave alcohol and cigarettes on graves — Irish? Russian? — as somebody walked by bumping into people and speaking Spanish — gave illustration to Spin Martin’s Kosso’s new coined new word: “glocal”.

“He’s with Jesus now,” cyrusbryan had joked on Twitter, quoting an old joke that Vonnegut himself had said about Isaac Asimov.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be” was one of the many applicable Vonnegut quotations remembered for the occasion.

Kurt Vonnegut actually had an SL avatar, which was made for his visit in July 2006, apparently Vonnegut’s last sit-down interview, when Infinite Minds radio show had him speak on a broadcast that was simultaneously aired on a sim in Second Life, produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media and Infinite Vision Media. He was said not to have piloted it, but to have been busy talking and smoking his Pall Malls, talking about America. “Now it has become a nation I’m utterly ashamed of,” he said. “We’re the beacon of freedom to the whole world,” he said and described a sampler he’d like to embroider and put on the wall: “Dear Iraq, do like us. After 100 years, let your slaves go. After 150 years, let your women vote,” he said in criticism of the patronizing role the U.S. has been playing in the world. “It’s actually possible to get a better life for some individuals,” he said of Second Life, though confessed he was “frequently an enemy of technology.”

Kurtvonnegutshrine_004

“One thing that is missing from this computer life is…waiting for an answer,” Vonnegut told the SL audience, confessing he was a “Luddite”. “Mystery! Mystery!” he said of the anticipation of a friend answering a letter in snail mail versus email.

Regarding art, he said that the awful thing about art criticism was the demand to be original, but he urged people just to get out and create. “Just do it, and it will make your soul grow,” was his advice.

“I can’t see anything wrong with it,” he said about Second Life, admitting there was little in the real world he could say that about it. “Human resourcefulness at its best.”

36 Responses to “RIP Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007”

  1. ego wanker

    Apr 15th, 2007

    So prokofy and spin martin are now giving each other handjobs are they?

    Now that is a union made in hell!

  2. Inigo Chamerberlin

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Ah well, so it goes.

  3. Eric Rice

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Correction: I didn’t coin that. I learned the word from Kosso. And handjobs cost way more money than Prok can afford, SO WE ARE CLEAR.

    I have an allergic reaction to tinfoil, but will entertain all offers, kthx.

  4. Allana Dion

    Apr 15th, 2007

    “Just do it, and it will make your soul grow,”

    I hadn’t heard that quote before.

    A sad loss but he certainly left his mark on the world.

  5. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 15th, 2007

    The quote is in the interview he made in SL, go and listen to the video.

    The way the Twitter was worded, somehow I thought it was the *experience* of meeting Kosso that promopted you to make up this new buzzword:

    spin “And ‘glocal’ (props to Kosso) is my new buzzword. Kosso is a local homie located 6000ish miles away, across the globe.”

    So now I have to look up who Kosso is…. ok I’m going to *guess* he’s the CTO of podcast.com
    http://kosso.wordpress.com/

    Will fix.

  6. Neko Longduk

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Most SF writers I know are luddites, but Vonnegut was the special sort of genre writer who wasn’t really afraid of any kind of technology. Just because he didn’t use it, that didn’t mean he had to badmouth it, so he didn’t. He’ll be sorely missed.

    By the way: “Glocal” is a term that originated in the Japanese business world in the 1980s. It started appearing in business journals in the U.S. in the 90s.

  7. Steelth Bigwig

    Apr 15th, 2007

    I think it is important we remember people like Kurt, as well as Hunter Thompson, who redefined the meanings of jounralism and literacy as we know it today. RIP Kurt, I’ll leave a pack of Malls for you incase you decide to come back.

  8. Jerry Paffendorf

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Vonnegut was the first writer interesting enough for me to hunt down and read every single thing he ever wrote, and in a very, very short span of time. I think the only book of his I’ve never read, minus his post-retirement work, is the one he wrote as Kilgore Trout [wow, my Vonnegut days were well before my internet days, and it took a quick trip to Wikipedia to find out just now that he didn't really write the unread Kilgore Trout book I thought he did, Venus On The Half-Shell, which is nice too somehow]. I’d even hunt down and oggle over his his side projects like Sun Moon Star.

    My favorite Vonnegutism is, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” It’s something his uncle used to say, and he repeated it in a few of his books. Something like 10 years ago I saw him speak at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in New York. He made everyone in the room stand up if they’d had a teacher who’d inspired them in their life, or a question just like that. Everyone stood up. Then he asked everyone standing to say hello to the people standing next to them. While they were doing that he pulled a bunch of flowers out of his suit sleeve and said, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” Now I say it, too. Sometimes it just fits better than anything else you could possibly say.

    My only other inside Vonnegut story I have may be made up, but I’ll tell here it anyway because it’s nice and I’ve never told it outside of a few friends and it feels like one of those things that ‘may as well be true’ anyway. I had a classmate in school who said he had a relative who used to clean Vonnegut’s pool. He said Kurt had a table with a typewriter by the pool where he’d sit drinking beer and writing. When it was time for a new beer he’d throw it out in the deep end and then dive out to it like a bullet and grab it. When he missed the beer, that’s when he’d stop writing.

    I don’t know if that’s true, but the kid stood by it and it made me smile to think about. He said about Billy Pilgrim in Slaughter-House V, and so I guess himself, “I could carve a better man out of a banana,” but “In the water, I am beautiful” was another thing he said, thinking he was more graceful when he was flowing around in liquid than puttering land. Most of his books are all hazy with time in my head, but concept-wise, after the Tralfamadorians who could see in 4D, or see in time, which still inspires my interest in lifelogging (getting the long-view on your life, and so maybe understanding better why now is the way now is), it was one of his stories with water that stands out the most: Galapogos, a scenario where humans stop evolving towards greater intelligence and tune themselves to return to the water and live like fish. Long-term, maybe that’s what we’re doing with the Web.

    Anyway, bye, Kurt. It’s weird, I think this might be the first celebrity passing that made me feel sad enough to really reflect like I did about it, and what his work meant to me. Or not so weird. His ideas were a real influence when I was a kid. Thanks for the write-up, Prokofy, and thanks everyone at Velvet.

  9. Melissa Yeuxdoux

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Thanks for an excellent article, and ave et vale, Mr. Vonnegut.

  10. General Cronon

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Yes, but I remember a jerk before. His name is Adam Linden. I filled out a report or him not to long ago. Once he banned a friend of mine for not agreeing with him. I need to know the story on him if anyone can help:-). He was a real jerk, I have links to chat logs to prove it.

  11. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Neko, thanks for that correction. It’s always dangerous to declare anything “first,” or say that anyone “invented” a term when more likely it was in the air, and, as you pointed out, in a Japanese business journal in the 1980s. What we can safely say is that Kosso popularized this term in Europe, then Spin picked it up and started popularizing it in the States, or something like that. The term “Internet” itself was like that, no?

    Jerry, those are hilarious anecdotes. I don’t recall ever hearing that Vonnegut had a pool or did stuff like that. Perhaps he had a country home or something with a pool? I’m trying to picture it. He and his wife lived in an apartment in NYC in the UN area in the 40s, I used to see him on Second Avenue now and then. There was this non-descript bar he used to go into and in fact people didn’t recognize him, he just looked like some old guy at the bar. As it happened, I used to work on various cases of imprisoned writers whose defense he took up, there was a committee we were on. Once he took a Russian writer recently released from labor camp and allowed to go to the US up for drinks to a tower restaurant over by the UN, I came along to translate. He was a kind man who took an interest in other people, and that’s what makes a great writer.

    I found it rewarding to listen to this Second Life interview with him again. At the time he was actually *in* SL, I remember struggling to tune him in, on a URL that kept dropping out and losing sound, so I missed a lot of it. Well worth listening — and re-listening to, I found.

  12. Inigo Chamerberlin

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Just to set the record straight – the book ‘written’ by Kilgore Trout? If you mean ‘Venus on the half shell’, KV had no part in its writing. For a while the true author was unknown, finally Philip Jose Farmer put his hand up to the deed, a revelation that KV was fairly annoyed about by all accounts. Ah well… all in the past now I guess.

  13. ego wankers

    Apr 15th, 2007

    “What we can safely say is that Kosso popularized this term in Europe, then Spin picked it up and started popularizing it in the States, or something like that.”

    umm..no. Why don’t you try doing some proper fact checking for a change.
    And you have the nerve to slam people for doing far less all the time.

    This is really what burns me up about ego stroking spinsters like prok, spin cartoon,etc etc …you just grab anything to pump your own conversations up, and when caught out in the facts area you fail to properly correct your mistakes and just brush it off.

    fwiw the history of glocal has nothing to do with spin, kosso or any other blogroller, and appears to be more accurately derived from “Glocalization”, originally a concept used in Japanese business jargon, then adapted by sociologist Roland Robertson to describe the dual character of globalization as being global and local at the same time.
    http://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/staff/details.php?id=40

    *sits back and waits for proks usual lame brush of when caught out in the facts dept*

  14. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 15th, 2007

    >Glocalization”, originally a concept used in Japanese business jargon, then adapted by sociologist Roland Robertson to describe the dual character of globalization as being global and local at the same time.

    Um, you need to improve your reading skills. That’s not *popularizing*, that’s merely USING the word first, in a limited context, putting it in some obscure context, which many people in places other than those that use “Japanese business jargon,” or read “sociologist papers” live and work in.

    So the point is that people OTHER THAN fabulous Japanese businessmen and fabulous sociologists can use it. And by the way, having come across my fair share of Japanese businessmen and sociologists writing about media, I haven’t heard it. Not that THAT means anything. But I am talking here in this article about POPULARIZING.

    I said POPULARIZE.

    And you are an asshole.

  15. ego wankers

    Apr 15th, 2007

    and true to form->*sits back and waits for proks usual lame brush of when caught out in the facts dept*

    You stupid fuck, it’s been popularized for the last decade or so.
    Just because you have not heard it or spin or kosso does not mean it does not exist and people have not been using it.

    In a mashup culture where derivative works are the norm not the exception, the least you can do for credibility’s sake is to accurately reference the roots of an idea…not elevate yourself because you heard about it *first* and told somebody else to make yourself look cool.

    Prok, you really are a turd. I was actually thinking you might be reforming yourself in your mission to be seen as the shining light of justice in teh emerging metaverse, but no…you still are a raving looney turd.

  16. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 15th, 2007

    1. It hasn’t been popularized if nobody in the United States uses it.

    2. Spin who is very plugged in and very au courant hadn’t used it before and began using it because somebody in Europe who is a podcasting big deal dude started using it.

    3. I think it’s safe to say that if Spin hasn’t heard of it, and hasn’t used it, well, it just hadn’t arrived yet. ME not hearing about it, sure, that’s because I’m lame and out of it. I’m not a tekkie.

    4. Googling it, I see no significant major media use of it.

    5. And…googling it, guess what kids! I find that you are merely talking out of your Wikipedia ass, cutting and pasting whatever twaddle somebody pasted up on Wikipedia said about this, namely:

    “Glocalization as a term, though originating in the 1980s from within Japanese business practices, was first popularized in the English-speaking world by the British sociologist Roland Robertson in the 1990s, and later developed by Zygmunt Bauman.”

    Gosh, dumbgass, you could at least not CUT AND PASTE RIGHT OUT OF WIKIPEDIA WITHOUT CITING IT DER and cite some actual knowledge of your own but WHOOPS you don’t have any.

    6. I see various folks from Bulgaria or Kuala Lumpur who aren’t native speakers of English using the term glocalization. It’s easier sometimes for non-native speakers to use a term that for native speakers jars, because it sounds contrived. But I don’t see any significant, major, mainstream use of it, even in some sub-culture.

    7. The term seems to have grown out of the old War Resisters’ slogan, “Think Globally. Act Locally,” which of course, I was saying long before you were BORN.

    So again, fuck you!

  17. Hiro Pendragon

    Apr 15th, 2007

    A great author has passed on, and people squabble over an imaginary word. Sad.

  18. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Also, I’d like to point out something here, so typical of the SL scene.

    I wrote about this term “glocal” in good faith, in good will. I was merely trying to give it more currency by showing that it applied to a scene where people from around the world in SL come and go, and some participate in this shrine to the memory of Kurt Vonnegut, that he had meaning for more than just school-kids in the US. Perhaps that’s overstated, perhaps not, but there it is, it was said in good faith.

    And I cited the term “glocal” which I had never seen before despite doing a great deal of reading all over, because it just seemed cool and interesting. I cited Spin Martin’s use of it in good faith, trying to give him credit, merely because in good faith, I thought he had come up with it after meeting a guy abroad that he felt some kindship too. I didn’t realize his “props” meant that that guy Kosso had thought it up, or was perhaps using it widely and popularizing it. We don’t know. More than likely, the guy would say, “but I didn’t make it up either.”

    No matter. The point was merely to give credit to the sources for where I got it, in good faith. The point of the story isn’t to over-celebrate somebody for inventing some word. The point of the story is to remember Kurt Vonnegut.

    You, ego wanker, being a wanker of the ego of the first order, anonymous, and engaging in typical fucktardery, come on here to slam, play “gotcha,” whine, and complain that somebody is stroking somebody else’s ego, when they aren’t even doing that.

    Your point could have been made *in good will* like my article was written *in good will* by saying, oh, did Spin say he made that up? But I heard it from a Bulgarian or an Indian or at some leftie green conference and hey, here’s what Wikipedia even said about it.

    But you, like Lordfly, like the two dozen other chief Toxins of the forums, have to enter the discussion *in a spirit of ill will in bad faith,* not for the purpose of sharing knowledge, but for the purpose of *being a dick to other people*.

    And that, boys and girls, sums up 99 percent of the problem of the forums. The Lindens were tone-death and morally blind to the problem of ill will and bad faith. And I wasn’t. And a few others weren’t. And we fought back. And still fight back. But goddamn, it gets old.

  19. ego wankers

    Apr 15th, 2007

    Yes, copy paste from wikepedia [hey, it's the one that pops up first on google and the one that most people will click first dumbo] but further fact checked [who trusts wikepedia without cross checking] and referenced the original socialogist’s home page, IN CASE YOU DID NOT NOTICE. Did you bother to go that far? no. Other sites on the web mentioned more or less the same lines, but mistakenly tag him as american.

    Fyi anyone who has done a decent MBA or biz degree has heard of the concept/word in one form or another. So POPULARIZATION through bloggers is needed now to give it the full seal of internut credibility is it? Your disdain for creators and originators of things is palpable
    ie: “So the point is that people OTHER THAN fabulous Japanese businessmen and fabulous sociologists can use it.” Well, also try previously mentioned postgrad business programs, einstein, and their dissemination of it into all walks of business. Just because a blogger didn’t talk about it or you have not heard of it does not mean it does not exist in popular consciousness.

    and, jeez, where would the fun be without punching your buttons, prok!
    You have been such a turd to so many people you deserve a smak round the head now and again.
    Sucking up to bloggers/podcasters is um, an interesting new strategy in your quest for credibility on teh internut->”Spin who is very plugged in and very au courant hadn’t used it before and began using it because somebody in Europe who is a podcasting big deal dude started using it.”

    ahaahaaahaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaa…so it goes.

  20. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 16th, 2007

    I don’t see how I’m devising any “new strategy” to suck up to bloggers. That’s pretty stupid. I regularly criticize Spin and complain on his blog. I’m sure he’s not entirely thrilled with me. I hardly can be accused of sucking up to Spin Martin, my God. But he is someone who is on the conference circuit, speaks everywhere, blogs everything, is at the interstices of this and that in the whole Web 2.0 VW mash-up, and you have to hand that to him. It’s just recognizing somebody’s professionalism at what they do, that’s all — which is…um…so unlike what YOU do, narrow-casting from Mom’s Basement on an anonymous nick.

    I fail to see why I have to have an MBA or any sort of “biz degree” to partake in intellectual life, and trust me, the words “glocal” and “glocalization” are not even at the buzzword phase yet. I think most editors would take a red pen to them as being too precious and too jargony even for something jargon-laden.

    You’ve characterized Wikipedia very well. It’s the first one that comes up…because dumbos like you click on it like monkeys, over and over…making sure that it’s the first one that comes up.

    Try clicking on something else for a change, monkey. It’s spelled “Sociologist” and I don’t care whether he’s American or Guinea Bissaun, the point is, it matters not if some sociologist has used a term in some specialized and jargony way. I talked about how it was being POPULARIZED.

    The way Kurt Vonnegut POPULARIZED things like thinking about the war, or time, or being an outsider, or morality, or religion. Making it accessible to people, making it readable.

    I don’t see that the word “glocal” or “glocalization” exists in the popular consciousness whatsoever. It’s not a term anybody uses anywhere on blogs that I can see. I mean, gosh, Google it and see where it is. In like conferences in Bulgaria. And that’s ok, it may be perking its way up. But I can bet two things: a) you are not an expert on this b) it is not perked up to real public consciousness.

    Um, I don’t see any stampede to this thread to prove to me that the world “glocal” is now in the public consciouness (whatever THAT is). BUt…uh..surely Allana will be along any minute!

  21. gloKal

    Apr 16th, 2007

    Results 1 – 10 of about 522,000 for glocal. (0.04 seconds)
    Results 1 – 10 of about 24,000 for glocal glocalization. (0.27 seconds)

    hmmm…seems to be pretty well b) perked up to real public consciousness imo

    But I guess that unless the latest hipster blogroll trendsters are not sprinkling it in their latest “conversations” then it has relevance according to you? [and you are an "expert" on what exactly prokofy? whining? self-promotion? arse licking? shit stirring? cursory analysis? soviet disinformation campaigns? paranoia? spittle? invective? er...nothing at all perhaps except your often ill-considered opinionated self promotional trolling?]

    so…it…goes….

  22. gloKal

    Apr 16th, 2007

    er, I mean->But I guess that unless the latest hipster blogroll trendsters are sprinkling it in their latest “conversations” then it has no relevance according to you?

  23. CarlCorey Colman

    Apr 16th, 2007

    In 1970-something… probably 72 or 73.. I found myself in Barnstable, Mass and on a whim looked up Vonnegut in the local phone book and there it was! I stood in the phone booth and pondered what I (a 22 or so year old kid) would say to Kurt if he were to answer the phone. Heh… not wanting to sound like the fan-boy I was (a term that hadn’t been invented yet but I guess I got the concept) I left the phone booth feeling great that I’d seen the name in the phone directory!

  24. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 16th, 2007

    Um…like Google is going to be an acceptable source for me????

    Um…sorry…but…The Twitterati have spoken, re: the words “glocal” and “glocalization”

    jeffbarr @Prokofy – heard them, never used them, think that most people would be puzzled by them.

    SinTrenton @Prokofy Well, newpapers in Scandinavia are trying hard establishing that word (glocal, or in Swe/Dan/Nor: glokalt). Still success to come.

    *Shrugs*. Twitter is SO important for correcting Goggle and Wikimpedia, God bless it!

    CarlCorey, that’s quite the story! And doesn’t that sum it up? You meet a famous person, or you *could* meet a famous person…but what will say to them? I’m trying to recall if I asked Kurt Vonnegut anything or said anything of worth, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t, I just translated or said something mundate or told some fact. That’s how it goes lol.

  25. ego wankers

    Apr 16th, 2007

    So you use twitter to demonstrate what exactly?
    You can use the latest kewlest web2.0 geek toy?
    That you have some “names” to drop, that you are on the right list, you are now hanging out with da kewl kids in the power korner of the web2.0 playground.

    Prokofy has ARRIVED?

    Jeez, you must be the hippest one at the church socials!

    *shrugs*

  26. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 16th, 2007

    No, I use it to demonstrate the opinion of two people whose opinions I respect. That matters just as much to me as some ridiculous Google return from monkeys.

    I’m hardly any kewl kid, and I don’t think some web page is a “power corner,” that sounds pretty silly to me.

    Um, perhaps if you used at least an SL name, you, too might be the kewl one at the church social.

  27. dildo baggins

    Apr 16th, 2007

    Well, no offense to the fine upstanding Korporate warriors [an evangelist? isn't that like what reuby linden was? who now blathers on that roi means nothing]that Bag Lady has drafted in to show she’s the hippest thing at local fete “excuse me for a moment vicar, my phone is twittering…my god, it’s a message from spin…I must fly, teh metaversal needs me! another tekificiwiki wrong MUST be righted” but I’ll take 500K google references [even 25K to be honest] over a tiny sample of people on the Korporate talk show circuit.

    tho I must say I do like Sin’s fav quote “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” (Oscar Wilde)”

    And you, prokofy, you egotistical whining bag of insufferable bloated blogroll bigotry, you are TEDIOUS to the extreme!!!

  28. Prokofy Neva

    Apr 16th, 2007

    how many alts do you think you wheel out today, Nolan? Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if all the IP addresses of all the nicks on here were published, and found to be the same person, and found to be you?

  29. Billy Pilgrimreaper

    Apr 16th, 2007

    God bless you Mr. Vonnegut.

    BTW. a decent copy of Venus on the Half Shell can still be had for cheap on Amazon. Even if he didn’t actually write it himself (a ghost writer for a ghost writer of a ghost writer?), I consider it a must-read for a complete picture of the Vonnegut universe. One of my favorite stories next to Richard Brautigan’s “Dreaming of Babylon”. Highly recommended reading.

  30. Billy Pilgrimreaper

    Apr 16th, 2007

    Oh and to you guys arguing over the imaginary term “Glocal” in a thread aboiut the passing of a great literary figure – fuck you.

    Go defile a grave or something, like the ignorant monkey shits you are. You haven’t got a clue about literature, so all you can do is throw feces from your tiny-brained google searches of wiKIpeDia and TWITter. Like fucking schoolyard delinquents in a sissy-boy slap fight. Fuck you guys. If I see you in SL I’ll fling a handful of virtual shit in your faces just to make you feel at home – the ignorant monkey shits that you are.

    Again – fuck you.

  31. Anonymous

    Apr 17th, 2007

    Y’know… I agree. This was supposed to be about a great author’s life and death ….

    There are like two kinds of people here: those who are serious about honoring them memory of one of the finest human beings to traverse the real landscape and those who want to write something negative about Prokofy in any venue available.

    Let me tell you, I’m a newbie here but as far as I can tell, the anti-Prokofy people have failed to gain any credibility with me in my brief time reading this blog. Prok has written interesting posts that I’ve read and appreciated and subsequently been attacked for no clear reason — at least from my newbie point of view. I’ve just shook my head and “tsked” in the past but co-opting this thread, which was clearly started with no ulterior motive, is beyond the pale. You people who find Prokofy so odious have convinced me that I’m clearly not on your side in the future and probably never have been in the past.

    Oh.. yeah, I agree with Billy Pilgrimreaper: Fuck you.

  32. CarlCorey Colman

    Apr 17th, 2007

    By the way, that last post was me.

    And, in case anyone is interested, the author pretending to be Kilgore Trout writing Venus on the Half Shell was Philip Jose Farmer… himself a long time Vonnegut fan.

    And, again, to everyone on this thread but Billy and Prok: the same two words as before.

  33. Inigo Chamerberlin

    Apr 17th, 2007

    Really Carl? – right up to that last sentence you actualy had the moral high ground…

  34. Anonymous

    Apr 17th, 2007

    I just re-read Mother Night again… The last lines of the 1966 introduction seemed something that a strange person might plug into this rectagular comments box. I am a strange person. So… “There’s [a] clear moral to this tale, now that I thing about it: When you’re dead you’re dead. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It’s good for you.” After a whole bunch of stuff in the middle, Vonnegut closes with the words, Auf wiedersehen. Peculiar man. Odd sentiments.

  35. CarlCorey Colman

    Apr 17th, 2007

    Inigo – you’re right and I regret the closer.

  36. Billy Pilgrimreaper

    Apr 18th, 2007

    Carl, carl, carl – don’t fall for their adolescent turnaround game, call a spade a spade man. The only way these illiterati amuse themselves is with kindergarten playground tactics of “That’s what your are, what am I?” It’s a common retaliation tactic and actually quite cute. I just hope we didn’t insult their intelligence to the point where it discourages them from writing – practice makes perfect guys!

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