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God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut
Perhaps the mothership will allow me this post to break temporarily from the Third Person and shun the royal We to say this evening I was told that Kurt Vonnegut died and it made me so sad. To me, Vonnegut was like all greats - the exception to the rule. A sci-fi writer who tricks you into believing you're reading English literature, a magician who tells you the trick before he pulls it off and then he pulls it off, and a poet who disguised his rhymes in novels.
He loved insane people. He hated the idea of God. And he wasn't afraid of anything, especially when it was time to tell someone that they were full of shit.
Most people are given Slaughterhouse-Five too early and Cat's Cradle too late. The only reason I can imagine that high school kids are not given Breakfast of Champions as their first introduction to Vonnegut is because perhaps teachers are uncomfortable when the narrator of the novel decides to draw an asshole (which looks like an asterisk), and later a row of assholes.
Maybe one reason that people cry when good people die is because that just leaves more rows of assholes.
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Tonight's midnight movie is a long interview that Mr. Vonnegut participated in last year. Yes the interviewer is annoying, and we don't get to Kurt until three minutes into it, but if you liked his work, and if you liked him as a man, I think you might like this chat.
So it goes.
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Simply put, we cannot do this essential work without your help. Federal funding for public media has been clawed back by Congress and that means LAist has lost $3.4 million in federal funding over the next two years. So we’re asking for your help. LAist has been there for you and we’re asking you to be here for us.
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