Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

It is sad, of course, when someone you know or feel like you know dies. But when the one who dies is one of the few brilliant, innovative, critical, bright, insightful and hilarious writers left nowadays, someone who always exhorted people to think for themselves and not believe everything they were told, specially if it comes from the government, it is not only sad but frustrating.

Kurt Vonnegut died last Wednesday... I hope he was taken away by a "flying saucer"; it is the least he deserved. I've posted below part of Requiem, a poem taken from Kurt's A man without a country, as well as the sad, telling image that was posted on Kurt's web-page after he died:

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.