Titanic Post

The mainstream obituaries are emphasizing Kurt’s off-beat career and the mixed reviews for his books. Don’t believe a word of them. Kurt Vonnegut was a force of nature, with a heart the size of Titan, an unfettered genius who changed us all for the better. He was possessed of a sense of fairness and morality capable of inventing religions that could actually work. Now he’s having dinner with our beloved siren of social justice, Molly Ivins, sharing a Manhattan, scorching this goddam war and this latest batch of fucking idiots.

~Harvey Wasserman

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.

Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.”

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Two articles by Thomas G. Palaima about music and what it does to us, posted on Common Dreams.

Well, Bob Dylan is breaking the hearts of Americans again, mainly those born between 1925 and 1955, and he is doing so on a weekly basis. If you are smart, you will give him a chance to break yours. Let me explain…

Bob Dylan has sold his true soul by appearing in a Victoria’s Secret ad. One version of this lament appeared recently in the Los Angeles Times and the American-Statesman. Leslie Bennetts, an editor for Vanity Fair magazine and a baby boomer mother of a teenage daughter, thinks Bob has sold out. Worse yet, Bennetts says her daughter, a Victoria’s Secret shopper, has had her image of Bob Dylan irreparably marred…

I usually don’t respond to hoax warnings, but this one is important.

You must read this and please send this to everyone on your email list. Alert your neighbours and friends especially the old and vulnerable. This is not a joke.

If someone comes to your front door and says they are conducting a survey and asks you to show them your butt, DO NOT show them your butt.

This is a scam; they just want to see your butt.

I wish I’d gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap.

In 2006, things will be different. Yes, much different. I will clean my house of all clutter and keep it that way. I will get rid of anything I haven’t used or thought about using. I will remove all of my deceased mother’s estate stacked in two rooms and one outside shed. I think this will be alright—she died in 2003. I will take all the books I will never read again to the library for their book sale. Even if I were to read the books again, it wouldn’t make me any smarter, wiser, or a better human being. They didn’t help the first time either.

I will finish all the inside and outside projects that I still dream about doing or that still bother me for not being completed. I will finish that garage before the summer. I will spend money only on those things that make me smile. No more taxes!

I will stop watching TV programs that don’t interest me. I will get more exercise. I will get my triglycerides back to normal, thank you Dianne. Dianne gave me the most artistic, insightful, and understandable diagnosis I have ever had from a medical person. I will be generally more aware. Beware!

I will discontinue use of my left-brain. Sane.

I have one big regret from last year. A good friend asked me to go dancing with her. I declined, saying in a moment of flippant stupidity, that she really didn’t want to dance with me unless she was up to my ‘free-style.’ Although I haven’t danced in over 25 years, I wasn’t all that bad a dancer then. So if you ever read this and want to give me another chance, I’d be delighted to dance with you. I resolve to dance more and talk less. Yes.

I resolve, furthermore, to accept death, war, cruelty, and anything else bad I can’t do anything about. I will dance and laugh until I die. I’ve heard death is a pleasant experience. Happy New Year!