So it goes.

I just found out that Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night.

This blog owes it's name to the spacial phenomenon that was introduced in Vonnegut's book, The Sirens of Titan. I haven't read much of his work yet, and I don't know much about who Kurt Vonnegut was, but every one of the five books of his that I've read has definitely changed my life a little bit.

The first Vonnegut novel that I read was Breakfast of Champions, a gift from my friend Jeff, who was avidly reading all of Vonnegut's work at the time. That book was so different from anything else I'd read before- social commentary mixed in with what seemed to be the biography of a very real character called Kilgore Trout. It was so easy to read and so captivating, but ended up being very different from his other books.

Cat's Cradle bent my mind in ways I didn't know a book could bend it- making me think about how government and religion are codependent, and how people need the constant struggle to stay scared (and therefor, controllable). Not something that I'd ever considered before, but much of how I view the world today is through a lens put in place by that book (more accurately, the lens that I formerly had in place was removed). Words (and concepts) like karass, granfalloon, foma, and duprass have invaded my everyday vocabulary. If I could go out and buy a Book of Bokonon, I surely would. (Until that unlikely day, we've got this awesome reference)

Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for the little bit of enlightenment you cast my way, for helping me to see how goddamn ridiculous this world actually is.

R.I.P.

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five