r.i.p. kilgore trout (or: lots of things were ugly, and most everything hurt)

First Saul Bellow, now Kurt Vonnegut. I guess I'm a real grownup now.

My roommate and I went to see Vonnegut speak at USC in 1995. We were both pretty heavy into Spaghettios at the time, and we had an unserious plan to go up to him after the talk and invite him back to our dorm room to share a can with us. This would be a much better story if we'd actually made the attempt, but I suppose it's just as well, because I'm 94% sure he would have accepted, and we wouldn't have had a clue what to do with him.

Now it's twelve years later, and I don't think I've read any Vonnegut in at least a decade; but still hardly a day goes by that I don't think about some damned filthy thing he wrote about assholes, or five-and-a-half-inch-wide penises, or mushroom cellars. This is, needless to say, high praise. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that reading Vonnegut provided me with my first introduction to the art of using obscenity, irony, and cruelty to say deeply humane things — to the only kind of art I take seriously, in other words.

So: Why don't you go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, Mr. Death? Why don't you go take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?