Foma

I can't really talk about this.

This man had more sense than any two or three thousand of the rest of us put together. Idiots spew about Great Americans. People who know what Great Americans are will remember Kurt Vonnegut.

I shouldn't be sad. The man spent 62 years suiciding. Why should I begrudge him that supreme effort--dishonor it, really--by weeping my day away?

But I cannot come close to articulating how much this man influenced my entire system of belief, how he saturated my thought process. I am caught off balance by this (though I should not be), forced to examine my own life. I will not report to you on what I find.

It is worth remembering, on this day, that all namecalling can be reduced to this: there are those who truly believe that we have, or will, become Bokonon's heirs; and there are those who do not.

And now, if you will pardon me, I must go smoke a cigarette.

"The dilettantes ask for Pell-Mells."