Celebrity Death O' The Week - or - Kurt Is Up In Heaven Now

Hey listen: I am sad today because Kurt Vonnegut won't be writing any more. It's surprising to me that it makes me sad -- he hadn't written anything I have read in at least 2 years. It's surprising to me that I'm not just sad for myself, but for college students dressed in colorful robes that might have listened to him tell jokes and stories, and for people that only read words on a computer screen or drive-thru menu. That is surprising because I am not currently a Humanist.

It's not surprising to me that I'm not sad for Kurt Vonnegut. He knew that he would die one day, and he did. So it goes. But despite that knowledge, he was a Humanist anyway. In fact, he was the honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Here's what he said about Humanists: "We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community."

I would be a Humanist, but I'm very busy. Maybe I'll get around to it soon, now that I'm done reading drive-thru menus.

If you haven't read Slaughterhouse V, one of Time's 100 best novels of all time, then I will lend you a copy. You really should take a break from all this interwebs business anyway.

I'm not going to go thru Vonnegut's life and works. You can go read wikipedia's entry for that. Don't worry -- I know you're not going to stop reading the computer screen. But the least you could do is make yourself a little more knowledgeable while doing it.


"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life. Old age is more like a semicolon."

That's what Mr. Vonnegut said about getting old.


"I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other."

That's what he said about smoking.

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."

That's what he said about technology.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. did not commit suicide the classy way - with Pall Malls -- nor did he die horribly on the evening news. But while those things would have certainly placed a period at the end of his life, he was far from a loathsome semicolon.

He was 84 years old on Wednesday night, when he died of complications from a fall. So it goes.

Kurt is up in Heaven now.

He would think that is funny.