I see that Kurt Vonnegut has died. And I’m sorry, I really am, because in my youth, I adored his work. Unfortunately, it was the work from his youth, and as we both aged, I lost any appreciation I had for him. His later works pretty much failed.

The Chronosynclastic Infindibulum

But his early works, in which he coined such phrases as that above (the time/space continuum from Sirens of Titan and in which he was still full of piss and vinegar, and had yet to succumb to morbidity and chronic depression, those were brilliant.

Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt

I hope his widow, the photographer Jill Krementz (whom I met once in college, when she reviewed my portfolio…which she threw to the floor once she figured out what, exactly, was in the hotdog bun in that sort of blurry black and white photo) has the good humor and questionable taste (well, she and Kurt were married for a long, long time, but she did throw the hotdog picture) to put that on his tombstone. Assuming he has a tombstone. If not, then on his container of ashes.

From the wire story obituary comes this:

“We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard… and too damn cheap,” he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.

And, like so much of his social criticism, he was absolutely dead on.

Maybe I will miss him more than I think. To quote from another dead and favored author,

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

BTW: Poor Impulse Control also notes his passing here.

As does the always excellent Rude Pundit.