Kurt is up in Heaven now.
What a thing to wake up to.

Here is everything I learned from Kurt Vonnegut; That the universe is by its nature benevolent, in that it has no vested interest in cruelty, so it doesn't do much good to blame it when things go wrong. When it comes to brass tacks, most of the things we insist make us different from, better than or worse off in regards to our fellow men are just meaningless inventions, and that we're unwavering bands of light in imperfect machines.

Farting around is nothing to be ashamed of, Humanism makes for one dandy political party, and there is a meaning to life. We have an obligation to our most noble fictions, and to ourselves. Dostoevsky pretty much covered it all, and Shakespeare as well.

War is a ghastly business, women and firefighters alike deserve a lot better than they get, music is sacred, and we should be up to our necks in it. There was a time in living memory when men heard the voice of God. And in the absence of kindness, at the very least, you should still be able to count on civility.

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.

No damn cat, no damn cradle.

Here is also something I learned from Kurt Vonnegut; that you tend to be more interested in a person if you learn something fascinating about them right away. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time, Howard Campbell was only so involved in Nazi monkey business, and then a lot of things about Rabo Karabekian. What I learned early on about Mister Vonnegut is that he has one hyper-ascended testicle and he once jumped over a car, both actions attributable to a large, angry dog. To be honest, I don't know whether either of those things actually happened, but that's what he told me, and it's fascinating.

Here is Kurt Vonnegut's rules for how to write. They read to me like stringent but benevolent commands of a supreme being with a definite plan:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

And here is what he said was the meaning of life. Listen very closely:
To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.

So it goes.