May 13, 2004

• I can die now. A post with both Kurt Vonnegut and Snoop in it.
• If I had a vote, anf this was then, it would be cast for Eugene Debs. Great post, pete_best! All my bananas are at your disposal!
• The thing I love about Kurt is that he makes it sound like common sense.
• Kimberly - exactly! I read it and was just "mm hmm . . .mmm hmmm, yeah" in my head the whole time. I'd say it is common sense.
• great link. it makes me very happy that Kurt is still around making sense.
• Great find pete...but why are gems like this hidden in the corners of the internet, instead of being on every newspaper's front page?
• vonnegut = the man. rocket88: it's part of the vast left wing media conspiracy.
• boo! Shhhhhhh! now he knows! Also, I should mention it's via J-Walk Blog
• well I have long loved the vonnegator myself, his fiction is beautiful and like others here his rambling rant has a strong resonance for me. that said, I guess I will be the first here to voice a less positive note. perhaps it is just me, the godless atheist scum that I am, but the (vaguely rapturous) references to jesus didn't sit right with me. Perhaps KV has always been a dissenting out-in-left-field christian (or jesus-ian??) and I didn't know. I am sure it is my own prejudice but at this point in the scheme of things I have such a difficult time not associating christianity with so many of the attitudes & policies that kurt is railing against. any xian monkeys out there want to shed some light for me?? I know intellectually that the 2 need not be diametrical, but the monkeymind has a hard time with that!!
• it's all good Medusa - all good. *hands the 'dusa some drank*
• Medusa, I suspect that if more Christians were like Vonnegut (i.e. follow the teachings of Jesus, which are relatively peaceful), you (and I) wouldn't have a problem with the religion. Unfortunately, very few are.
• "So science is yet another human made God to which I, unless in a satirical mood, an ironical mood, a lampooning mood, need not genuflect."
• Medusa- IANAX, but religions are like political parties: no one checks your beliefs before you join up, so the group ends up with a whole bunch of people who don't really think the same way. Christianity has as much to do with the attitudes Vonnegut mentions, as a Lincoln Republican has with a Neocon: i.e. not much. And what rocket88 said.
• *mmm warm n fuzzy* not sure if I feel this way from the kind & supportive comments or the drank *hic*
• Doddering is right. As usual, I can't agree or disagree with all of it. Overall, too rambly for me. His age is beginning to tell. *f8x ducks and covers*
• f8x, I don't entirely disagree with you there...perhaps the source of some of my unease with the tone. the drank should insulate you against the painful pelting of rotten bananas *passes styrofoam cup* glug glug
• I read the dead tree version of this last week and was looking for a place on the web with it. Glad you found it, Pete. Now I don't have to scan it and email it to everyone I know.
• I just can't belive that the multifluous pete_best described Vonnegut's piece as "common sense", when, IMO, one of his major points is that Common Sense is an Oxymoron! Sense is not common; most people operate on a mixture of unthinking acceptance of tradition and addiction to whatever gives them a zone of comfort. (I do it too; sometimes I consciously step into the "discomfort zone" intentionally, but not as often as I should.) And, while I have been drifting consistantly away from all things religious for most of my adult life, I think Kurt has stuck on one way that "liberal" Christians can successfully fight back against the "conservative" Christians. Put the Beatitudes up against the Ten Commandments... Now, what's really in that styrocup, 'dusa? Sippin' syrup, cock punch, banana juice or Kool-Aid(registered trademark and correct spelling, if you please)?
• well I have to say that despite my knee-jerk reactionary anti-xianness, I have always been a huge cs lewis fan & have long felt that if all xians in the world lived according to xian precepts as conveyed in say, the chronicles of narn, that the world would be a lovely place. (also, perhaps all muslims could be esoteric sufi mystics or espouse the lovely ideas of Farid Ud-din Attar's conference of the birds) wendell, honestly, I would prefer bourbon (bourbon & cock??). its 12:11pm in cali, that's not too early for a drank is it?
• i heart vonnegut
• I'm pretty sure that all of the Jesus and beatitude references were purely cultural and/or literary. Vonnegut's always been pretty up-front about being an athiest who was impressed with the Jesus story. As far as I know that's still the case, unless he's undergone some old-age conversion.
• Master V. reproduces to perfection the disgust and sarcasm I have been feeling in the last ten years.
• Yeah... when one reads his collections of essays, as well as novels such as Timequake, it becomes evident that Vonnegut is a flat-out secular humanist (although he has referred to himself as a "half-assed Unitarian" as well, IIRC). His family identified themselves with the German "Freethinker" movement, and that perspective evidently stuck with Kurt. As others have noted in this thread, when Vonnegut refers to the Sermon on the Mount in his work he's either (A) illustrating the dissonance between what Jesus (possibly) said and what contemporary conservative Christians believe, (B) drawing parallels between Jesus and socialist thinkers such as Debs, and/or (C) paying homage to a philosophy by which he is deeply impressed. I'm a Vonnegut freak, so I was totally psyched to read this. Thanks, pete_best! [banana]
• Xian is the former capital of China, Let's keep that clear. Hmm. V. is using Christianity for what he thinks is just. Good for him, but there is a lot more X where this came from, that is less pleasant to the contemporary ear. I'd rather not have big J. as a hero. I can see V's fascination, but: no.
• wendell okay, howabout "comfort sense"?
• pete_best : I approve of your new phrase.
• I'd rather not have big J. as a hero. I'd rather have jernie as a hero. *sings* Dutch Boyz in tha House! Woop, woop! Give it up for my man ova tha'. Yo, who's with me for an Amsterdam meetup? /drunk
• I am honored to be on the same planet as Senor Vonnegut. Just lovely. The man still has his chops.
• Kurt is a secular humanist, and is one of the most famous of that persuasion. Last time I saw him speak, he talked about how when Isaac Asimov (the late, great science fiction writer and notable humanist) died, he said something a his funeral that everyone there thought was positively hysterical. He said: "Well, Isaac's in heaven now." He said people laughed until they cried. It was the funniest thing he could have said, surrounded by humanists. He said he hopes that someday, when he dies, someone makes the same joke about him. I hope, when that day comes, I'm not the only person who remembers this. When I saw him last, he did not look well. He never looks well, but he seemed in poorer health than before. His mind is still racing at a million miles a minute, but his body can't keep up. Vonnegut does like the Jesus story - as a story. It is kinda interesting when you think about it. Nice guy comes into a society built on death and power and wealth, and starts saying people should be nice to each other. So they kill him. (Side note: Sometime, if you ever really want a treat and you're in a room with Vonnegut, ask him to graph Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." it's the most hysterical thing you'll ever hear.)
• I've been a tremendous fan for a long time - I understood the Jesus story to be classic Vonnegut, pointing out hypocrisy wherever he finds it. (LOVED that story musingmelpomene, thanks for posting it! /sf geek)
• musingmelpomene, interested readers can find that delicious bit of Vonnegoodness in his Palm Sunday, available in finer bookstores and libraries everywhere. The part of the talk you're thinking of comes from the chapter entitled "The Sexual Revolution." The hilarious graph of Kafka's Metamorphosis is on page 287. If you haven't read Palm Sunday, you really ought to: it's probably Vonnegut's finest work. I saw him when he came up to Madison to speak, and he put me in the mind of those old-school superheroes. You expose the average bystander to extreme radiation and he'll die quickly and painfully. Expose Pete Parker to radiation and he'll become a teenaged mutant (pardon the redundancy). I'm inclined to think that smoking an obscene number of cigarettes has made Vonnegut immortal.
• More political commentary from Vonnegut: I Love You, Madame Librarian.
• The world according to Kurt Daily Show interview Kurt Vonnegut’s In These Times Opus
• I went to the bookstore yesterday in part to buy A Man Without a Country (the collection of essays featured in the first link from homunculus). They were sold out, and I was told by the girl at the counter that they can't keep it in the store... they order a batch, put the books out on the "new in hardcover" table and customers snap them up rapidly. As Vonnegut himself might put it, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
• I was planning to post a couple of those links on his birthday homunculus. Thanks for the Daily Show link!
• Alas the Daily Show interview ended too quickly I thought. Vonnegut was just getting started when Jon had to bail. Rats.
• Your Guess Is As Good As Mine Vonnegut in "In These Times" magazine
• Damn good article.
• "And so on." Vonnegut is the master of the sentence. Read that last article again,or reread one of his books. Each sentence just does just what it's supposed to do. No more, no less. But, if you're paying attention, the sentences build into...something else. And so on.
• Twisting Vonnegut's views on terrorism
• He envies Twain and Lincoln their literary talents, but also their dead children. If my sisters and I were a little more devoted, we would have drawn straws. This made me laugh a little too hard.
• “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”