Coffee and Code

Kurt Vonnegut passed away on April 11th, 2007. He was one of my all-time favorite authors.

I've read a few of his books; my favorite is 'Hocus Pocus'. Vonnegut's writing tended to piss 'the establishment' off - as a matter of fact, his work has been banned by public schools all over the place. (I consider this to be a good thing.) He was an iconoclast to the end, and I'm going to miss his writing.

One of my favorite Vonnegut moments was during his appear ance on the Daily Show (Comedy Central) - this was just a few months ago. During the interview, the conversion drifted toward global warming and climate change. Vonnegut said something akin to:

'Human beings are essentially a virus. It's only a matter of time until Mother Nature's immune system kicks in.' [ paraphrase ]

Which, I think, is an interesting way to look at our current situation. As Vonnegut himself might say, so it goes.

So it goes... goodbye, Mr. Vonnegut. Thanks for all the books.

All is quiet in my temporary autonomous zone tonight; I thought I'd give a shout for Robert Anton Wilson, who died recently. I've read some of his work, and I gotta say that I dig what I read. I'll miss his amusing website updates as well.

I'm not sure if the page exists anymore, but there used to be this biography page on his website that would randomly switch words and phrases out with bizarre grammatic equivalents... That and there was a cool SWF on the site that switches RAW's head out with first a monkey and then (a buddha? can't remember) and a yin-yang symbol.

In other news: still working on the weblogger! I'm looking forward to being able to allow people to leave comments again.