church of the kidnapped baby jesus

Kurt Vonnegut is the most brilliant person ever. I had forgotten that at one point in my life, all I wanted was to be Kurt Vonnegut. Listen: he fought in WWII as a teenager. He was in Dresden as it was bombed. He was confronted first hand with what turned into the most critical issues of the 20th century: imperialism, evolution, racism, jingoism, hatred, religion. And he then managed to create a body of worked that dealt with these issues in a humanistic way that people can understand. He admits his own personal weaknesses through his characters. There is no preaching, no moral superiority. He attended the PhD Anthropology program at the University of Chicago through the GI Bill. And the he publishes Cat's Cradle as his thesis. I spent several years as an Anthropology major, during which I learned how many problems Anthropology has as a discipline rooted in ideas of Imperial domination and Colonial subjugation. Kurt Vonnegut, as an Anthropology PhD, synthesized all these issues and confronted them in historical and societal context in Cat's Cradle. Not that the ethnography of the Yanamomo isn't a valuable source, but who understands Anthropology more?

Of course, as he has gotten older, he has become tired of all the rhetoric that politicians throw around - most of his brilliance stays underwraps now. I can't think of one person I admire more as a human being.

Kilgore Trout in 2008!