So Long and Fare Thee Well

Sad to hear that Kurt Vonnegut has moved on to the other side. Once, maybe twice in a generation, a voice comes along that demands nothing less than the total freedom of the human mind. Sure, there are other voices saying the same thing, but you can ignore them, pretend they're not there, but not Vonnegut. You've at least heard of Slaughterhouse 5, and if you haven't read it go buy it, or get yourself to that thing called the library and check it out.

I had the honor of attending a lecture of his at the University of Massachusetts back in the early '90s. Unlike unthinking "liberal" douches like Noam Chomsky, who demands that you accept everything he says at face value because he's Noam Chomsky, (who if you listen to carefully you'll find he's really a great big fascist asshole), Kurt demanded that we challenge and question everything, take nothing for granted, and never back down from what we know to be morally wrong.

In my mind the man was nothing less than a champion of the human spirit, who's voice will continue to call on us to stand up for what we believe in, to never accept the folly of human stupidity. Like Ken Kesey, and Mark Twain, Vonnegut saw America for what it was, made us look at it, made us smell and taste it, laugh at it, cry with it, and instill us with the notion that we have a say in making it what we all know it could be if we just got it out of the hands of the pinheads, and greedy douches.

Thanks for all you did Kurt to push us forward and wake us up.