Changing the Same

Most of you know that I love Kurt Vonnegut. None of you know that he died this week. You may think you had already heard that, but really those are false memories added only after you just read it. Not that it matters. He's dead, and it's your fault. You learned it, remembered it, and caused it. Reading is dangerous. Then again, so is consciousness. Kurt Vonnegut would probably congratulate you on his murder. If he could. If you hadn't killed him.

I love Kurt Vonnegut enough to have named my first-born blog after a quote from one of his books, which may or may not be love in this neotechnological society. Sure, the URL (politicalpasta.etcetera) reveals that I intended some kind of mock Drudge Report *plus pasta*, but that's totally old news. I rushed the original title because all of my friends were blogging like barons (of blogs) and I wanted to fit in. It seems like only a few of them are really writing anymore, however. You probably killed the rest of them. You also probably are them. Weird.

The book the always-above quote is from is Mother Night, but I had to look it up to remember. I pretty much completed the Vonnegut library within a few months, purchasing most of the books, imagining the others. They don't all stand out to me because I read them in the same life cycle. Next time I'll have to change my life more between reads. I could get married after Player Piano, join the Navy before Breakfast of Champions, and start listening to electro some time around God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. And I could read Sirens of Titan whenever, cuz I really like that one.

I used to say that Kurt Vonnegut was my favorite author. That's probably not true anymore. It's his fault. Vonnegut praised Mark Twain repeatedly in script and song (mostly script), so last summer I put off doing work/building my CV in favor of reading the Twain catalogue. It was awesome, and I progressed more than I would have under those other options. Twain made me like America again, or at least "America" the concept. Or at least the Mississippi river. I don't know.

Movies that feature people reading Huckleberry Finn whilst drinking lemonade will never be criticized by me. Even if they feature women in their underwear.

Wait, I meant especially.

A lot of people say that Vonnegut's works are immature, developmental reading for the young intelligentsia. So what? The older I get, the more obvious it is that maturity suxx. Adult fiction often tries so hard to be serious that it loses any and all of its charm. I don't want to listen to a book that sounds like an emotionally distraught businessman. I want to listen to a book that sounds like an emotionally distraught businessman who contextualizes his troubles in science fiction. But Vonnegut hated being called a science fiction writer, so I'll change that to exploratory fiction. As in exploring the life that could be if we stopped thinking about money and started thinking thoughts.

I hope, as a semi-habitual writer unfortunately condemned to excrete banal academic rubbish, that at least some of Vonnegut has rubbed off on me. I think it has. Apparently his masters thesis - "Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales" - was rejected along with his diploma. In my eye (an eye that sees its papers consistently marked down for jokes and elsewise creative efforts), that is something to strive for.

Mark Twain. Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Those are my author heroes. Those are my dead author heroes. Maybe one day a young girl will tell me that I faintly remind her of one of those guys, before asking me why I decided to resurrect the Goosebumps series. "Because as good as those other guys were," I'd say, "they just didn't provide the right material for a choose-your-own-adventure spinoff. RL Stine did."

I'm now thinking that young girl is around 18. And hot. Whatever.

Seriously, though, it is an honor of existence to read Vonnegut. I will be changing this blog's URL to imaginary-lines.blogspot.com within the next week in memoriam. I've also hated the old URL for a while. Death is an opportunity for change.

Thanks for most of what you left me with, Kurt Vonnegut.

I don't know what to do with all that confusion about humanity you brought up, though. Not that you care anymore.

Lucky bastard.

To Be Continued

West Virginia, Morocco

I may not be typing a lot lately, but I am practicing modeling poses in Africa:


My brain is just regaining form, after smoldering for months in baseball's hot stove. This blog, for instance, currently has a 6.87 ERA, giving up 2.12 WHIP. That's not good, even this early in the season. It's also not statistically feasible after only 1 start, which just goes to show what a little imagination can do.

Are you confused about the sports analogies I'm making? Am I leaving you feeling awkward and bloated? I might have solutions for you then, although I guess I'm technically the problem. Ignore "that" for now.

Solution 1: Start watching baseball instead of cricket. Cricket matches have tea breaks, and though I do now like mint tea, this doesn't override the scientific fact that cricket is boring. Sorry, that's how science works.

Solution 2: Start watching baseball because it's fun in its own right. Tell me what's not fun about this idea: A bunch of men of varying weights stick their hands in glove-molded dead parts of cows and then throw around sphere-molded other dead parts of cows and sometimes hit the latter with wood. Vegetarian-wise the idea doesn't sound great, nor does it even hold up poultritarian-wise, but I'll make you/me feel better by saying that cows love baseball, too.


Solution 3: Start watching baseball because you have nothing better to do. Jobs and school are simply distractions from recreation. Sure, I'll waste $20,000 if I keep watching baseball instead of writing essays, but money doesn't buy happiness. I can't even make a profit anyway, unless you count diplomas as profit, which is stupid. Besides, it's not my money. It's my parents. Suckers.

Solution 4: Don't eat so much cheese. This references the dumb "bloated" remark I made above. According to WebMD, cheese, as well as wheat products, can exacerbate irritable bowel syndrome. Interestingly, wheat bran is listed as a remedy. I don't follow that logic, nor do I know why I've admitted to being on WebMD's irritable bowel syndrome page. Next I'll be talking about how itchy my nipples are, or how they're only batting .185 through 3 games...

Solution 5: Read Crime and Punishment. This has nothing to do with anything, but I read it last week and it's actually okay. Some good philosophy, without as much of the boring family politics found in Tolstoy's War and Peace. Do I sound pretentious yet? You would say that, plebian.

Solution 6: Stop ignoring "that." Cut out the problem, "that" being me and my baseball analogies. Or just replace me with a viable alternative: