Vonnegut Excerpt:

From the best chapter in the book:

"We are gathered here, friends," he said, "to honor lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya, children dead, all dead, all murdered in war.  It is customary on days like this to call such lost children men.  I am unable to call them men for this simple reason: that in the same war in which lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya died, my own son died.

"My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child.

"I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die.  To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.

"But they are murdered children all the same.

"And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs.  That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

The Secret is Protein

Nothing changes.  Excerpt from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963):

"The trouble with the world was," she continued hesitatingly, "that people were still superstitious instead of scientific.  He said if everybody would study science, there wouldn't be all the trouble there was."

"He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life someday," the bartender put in.  He scratched his head and frowned.  "Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they'd finally found out what that was?"

"I missed that," I murmured.

"I saw that," said Sandra.  "About two days ago."

"That's right," said the bartender.

"What is the secret of life?" I asked.

"I forget," said Sandra.

"Protein," the bartender declared.  "They found out something about protein."

"Yeah," said Sandra, "that's it."

The Real Ultimate Sadness

Today I went to the library to check out a book by Kurt Vonnegut.  (Christos the Greek was there; it was weird.  That dude goes to all of my local hang-outs).  I had to walk past rack upon rack of DVDs before reaching the Adult Fiction section.  Only one Vonnegut book?  What the hell?  The library is a sad place where sad bibliophiles go to feel sad.

New Lands

There is a crystal, beautiful moment in time when everything is just flat line.

Stasis.  Nowhere to go, nothing to see, nothing to be.

Outside of it all is loneliness
But silence
When you can hear only the voice in your head
Speaking the purest truth out of a cacophony of lies.

Perspective from an improbable purgatory
That sheds light on the darkest truths and
Brightest falsehoods.

Then the mirror shatters because
Moments cannot last and
Time insists.

The topography of memory is dangerous,
But it provides a useful map –
Not of where one must go
But of where one has been.

Do you choose to retread the familiar land,
Or do you look for new ones?

To walk off the edge of the map is
To walk off the edge of the world.

Who is willing to explore with me?