From briankaz@elaine7.Stanford.EDU Mon Jan 20 14:57:34 1997
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 14:09:30 -0700
From: Tantric Tristram briankaz@elaine7.Stanford.EDU
Newsgroups: alt.books.kurt-vonnegut
Subject: Kurt Vonnegut '44

Hi, I haven't posted in a while but could not pass up this opportunity.
My friend sent me an article from the Cornell U. newspaper, in which two
short articles, presumably by KV (credited as being the associate editor
of The Sun), are reproduced.  Man, these are weird!  I hope I'm not
infringing on any copyright laws by reproducing them here.  Anyway, here
they are:

                        Nothing Better to Do

A Worrisome Thing to Leave You to Sing the Blues -- in the Night

        It's pretty damned disturbing to tell a girl to go to hell and
have her disappear.  She came out of it all right; turned out she'd gone
to breakfast instead.  It was her own fault -- she refused to touch any of
the Old Dog Breath Blended, which made us plenty incompatible.  She swore
it made us a potential hatchet killer.  We swore she did.
        Cleaning George and broken glass out of the fire-place kept us
occupied for a while.  George swore he wanted to die like a saint.  We
told him our troubles, and agreed on a suicide pact.  Hari kari with a
dull knife was easily the most popular method suggested by interested
spectators, and to that end we were bent when George suffered a violent
case of paralysis.
        The little woman pattered in again, full of egg and forgiveness.
We lurched into the dramatic reconciliation with a peace-offering of milk
punch.  We didn't throw it, we dropped it.  Her fur coat's being starched
was entirely an accident.  Holy smoke, would she listen?  What a childish
show of temper!  We smoothed over the situation by advising her to go to
bed until she was willing to apologize.  Sir Galahad, the golden jerk
that had taken her to breakfast, put in his two jiggers of sunshine by
lunging between us.
        He must of [sic] hit us from behind and carried us down into the
bar, for it was there that we recovered.  A fierce attack of
jungle-breath made respiration a faux pas.  Our date had left without a
whisper; without thanking us for the flowers we had bought her Friday
evening.
        She'll doubtless carry back with her an extremely exaggerated
version of what happened.  Publication rights have already been sold on
her bread-and-butter letter -- yet to arrive.

We Chase a Lone Eagle and End Up on the Wrong Side of the Fence

        Charles A. Lindbergh is one helluva swell egg, and we're willing
to fight for him in our own quaint way.  Several sterling folk, Sun
members not excluded, have been taking journalistic pot-shots at the Lone
Eagle, effectively, too.  The great work is spreading.  Give the stout,
red-blooded American -- the average mental age is fourteen we're told --
a person to hate, tell him to do so often, and he and his cousin Moe will
do a damned fine job of it, provided there are plenty of others doing the
same.
        The mud slingers are good.  They'd have to be good to get people
hating a loyal and sincere patriot.  On second thought, Lindbergh is no
patriot -- to hell with the word, it lost its meaning after the
Revolutionary War.
        What a guy!  Look at the beating he takes.  Why on God's green
earth (we think He's sub-let it) would anyone lay himself open for such
defamation if he wasn't entirely convinced that he must give the message
to his country at any cost?  To offer an obstacle to the premeditated.
Roosevelt foreign policy is certainly to ask for a kick in the face.
        There was another bum who stood in the way of America's divine
destiny during the shambles of 1917.  Hughes, that's the guy, former
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.  That's the sort of louse that makes
trouble.
        Crusades, not that they're not worth twice the cost, cost about
five million men these days.  It's America's purpose to defend its way of
life, to bankrupt itself rather than let Hitler take our South American
trade -- a farce which ends in red ink every time -- and to send the best
crop of young technicians the country has known, who could make this
fabulously wealthy nation self-sufficient within itself, into battle.
        Charles A. Lindbergh has had the courage at least to present the
conservative side of a titanic problem, grant him that.  The United
States is a democracy, that's what they say we'll be fighting for.  What
a prize monument to that ideal is a cry to smother Lindy.  Weighing such
inconsequential items as economic failure and simultaneous collapse of
the flaunted American Standard of Living (looks good capitalized -- it'll
be fine for chuckles in a decade), and outrageous bloodshed of his
countrymen, the young ones, is virtual treason to the Stars and Stripes
-- long may it wave.
        Lindy, you're a rat.  We read that somewhere, so it must be so.
They say you should be deported.  In that event, leave room in the boat
for us, our room-mate, Jane, mother, that barber with the mustache in
Willard Straight, and those two guys down the hall.

Editor's Note:  The opinions expressed above are those of the author and
do not necessarily reflect the views of The Sun.

 

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