A Punctuative Tale
How totally cool is this? WFIU’s David Brent Johnson hipped me to this site the other day: Salo University is an online project dedicated to the works of Kurt Vonnegut, with a different Indiana University prof essay-ing on one or another of the Indianapolis-native author’s works every week.
Physics profs, historians, literature mavens, religious studies experts, philosophers, and reps from pretty much every academic discipline either have are are invited to opine on the novelist’s oeuvre and/or dissect and place in personal perspective his words.
The U.’s Lilly Library, BTW, holds the world’s largest attic-ful of Vonnegut’s notes, drawings, letters and manuscripts.
BTW 2: I just came upon a corpse blog* by the travel writer Rolf Potts. It’s called Vagabonding and his April 23, 2003 post is a tale about meeting Vonnegut at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. Now, Vonnegut, as the cognoscenti know — I didn’t, so what does that say about me? — signed his autograph with a certain little flourish, an inside joke.
[ * A blog that’s still up but hasn’t been posted to in months or even years.]
Vonnegut observed that a certain part of the human anatomy bore a striking resemblance to a specific punctuation mark. Feel free to use your imagination. Anyway, Potts, when he was a young pup and hadn’t come close to being published yet, thought he’d make the great satirist roar by bringing said punctuation mark up. Well, read the post.
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One Down, Three To Go
This coming January 20th is an anniversary. Two anniversaries, as a matter of fact. One is personal: It’s the date last year when I had my drug catheter port surgically removed. For cancer patients, that’s a true landmark.
I might have been inordinately happy that day except as I sat in the waiting room, televisions on either side of me were blaring the inauguration of President Gag. I took some heart in the knowledge that if things worked out optimally, I’d be under general anesthetic at precisely the moment Li’l Duce would take the oath of office.
And that’s exactly how things turned out.
Never have I needed so badly to be doped up.
Rather than mope through next month’s one-year-mark of the end of our country as we knew it, you just might hop on over to Washington DC and gambol about during the National March for Impeachment.
And if Wash. is out of the question, you can bet some ambitious souls around these parts’ll be agitating for the slob’s removal, so keep your ear to this track for further info.
Now, I wouldn’t bet the mortgage payment on impeachment actually happening — the better money’s on P. Gag either croaking or just quitting — but, shoot, it’ll be heartening just to be rubbing shoulders with like-minded folks who haven’t confused the orange harlequin with an actual human being with a soul.
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Commedia dell’arte della Realtà
Only Kurt Vonnegut would be imaginative enough and literarily seditious enough to flesh out a fictional Li’l Duce presidency.
Hell, had Vonnegut lived, he’d have had to quit his chosen profession because once he-who-must-not-be-named became president, all satire, all farce dropped dead.
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Sweet Sounds
I have it on excellent authority that the weekly Jazz Night at the Blockhouse is the goods.
The cool strains begin every Wed. at 8:00pm. Then again, these are jazz gigsters, so eight o’clock is prob. more like the time you should begin dressing and combing your hair in preparation to depart for the show.
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A Mop Of Seagulls
Yes, friends, time passes.
[Mike Score, co-founder and lead singer of A Flock of Seagulls, now makes music as a solo act.]
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Mortality
One of the reasons I don’t want President Gag to die in office is it’d be pure torture to have to endure all the grieving and mourning rituals that follow the passing of an American head of state.
Then again, maybe it’d be worth the three day orgy of phonus-balonus hankie-wringing just to know the son of a bitch is out of office. Should Li’l Duce depart this world pre-2021, the Academy Awards™ for Best Actress and Best Actor will go, collectively, to the vast majority of TV news anchors who’ll have to feign anguish and sorrow on-screen.
Me? I’d actually tune to Fox News just to see the likes of Sean Hannity sob like a kindergartner who’s been sent to his room for waggling his pee-pee at the dinner guests.
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