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Pee-too-weet?
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

Thanks to my Dad, I grew up on a steady diet of Vonnegut mixed in with Borges and Asimov and Ray Bradbury and a whole host of others... but now that I think about it, I think Vonnegut's work probably had the greatest hand in shaping some of my views on war and morality after I read Slaughterhouse Five.

Kurt gave a speech once, where he said, in part:

Do you know what a Humanist is? I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. 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.

We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, ''Isaac is up in Heaven now.'' It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ''Kurt is up in Heaven now.'' That's my favorite joke.

So, Kurt is up in Heaven now. But I'm sure he's perfectly fine and writing at other times and places in the world.

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Yeah, but Van Hellsing Had His Guns Autographed By Jesus Christ!

Via BoingBoing, a treasure-trove of 19th-century "vampire hunting kits" has been unearthed (heh) in Austria, and have hit the auction market.

This box contains the items considered necessary for the protection of persons who travel into certain little known countries in Easter Europe where the populace are plagued with a peculiar manifestation of evil, known as Vampires... Professor Ernst Blomberg respectfully requests that the purchaser of this kit carefully studies his book. Should evil manifestations become apparent, he is then equiped to deal with them efficiently... Professor Blomberg wishes to announce his grateful thanks to that well known gunmaker of Liege, Nicholas Plombeur, whose help in compiling of the special items, the silver bullets,etc., has been most efficient. The items enclosed are as follows...

1. An efficient pistol with its usual accoutrements
2. A quantity of bullets of the finest silver
3. Powdered flowers of garlic (one phial)
4. Flour of Brimstone (one phial)
5. Wooden stake (Oak)
6. Ivory crucifix
7. Holy Water (one phial)
8. Professer Blomberg's New Serum

This is so cool. My inner geek is screaming "This would make for the COOLEST LARP or Vampire: The Masquerade Props EVER!"

What would also make for great tabletop or RPG sesssion props? Why, this papercraft version of a control panel!

 

jadra , I bet you'll want to add this to your list of papercraft projects. :)
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Hear What I Sound Like, And Wonder No More Why No One Takes Me Seriously

I'm going to be a guest on Jason Easly's Political Universe Radio this Sunday, and I should be on around 2PM Eastern time. So if you'd like to hear me bloviate and maybe see if I sound like the mental voice you hear when you're reading my wordz0rz, give a listen!

 

Here's hoping my cough goes away by then.
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Yeah, What She Said

Pam Spaulding pretty much says it all regarding Imus, hip-hop, cultural misogny and why it's time to stop making excuses. And it's something that requires some not-that-comfortable self-searching if you're honest. For all the irritation I feel at girly, womanly, bitchy, and worse being bandied about as pejoratives, there have been times where I've used just that sort of language myself without thinking.

Thanks to

bridgetwannabefor pointing out the larger point of what I was missing.
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- 1UP

Not a particulary new Perry Bible Fellowship comic, but certainly a funny one.