{"id":2131,"date":"2007-04-11T20:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-12T03:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2007-04-11T20:44:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-12T03:44:00","slug":"god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=2131","title":{"rendered":"God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kurt Vonnegut <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/11\/books\/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=1&#038;hp&#038;oref=slogin\" target=\"_blank\">has died<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Kurt Vonnegut was the man who got me started reading science fiction. One year at camp we had a counselor who would read us stories from <i>Welcome to the Monkey House<\/i>. I was hooked. I think the first was &#8220;Report on the Barnhouse Effect.&#8221;. I think many were quite prophetic: look at the story of Harrison Bergernon and the political correctness of today. Then, of course, there was the humor from the title story:<\/p>\n<p>I did not sow, I did not spin<br \/>\nand thanks to pills, I did not sin.<br \/>\nI loved the crowds, the stink, the noise<br \/>\nAnd when I peed, I peed turquoise.<\/p>\n<p>So thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for your delicious words over the years, and your wonderful advice, as expressed by the title character in <i>God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater<\/i>: <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It\u2019s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It\u2019s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you\u2019ve got about a hundred years here. There\u2019s only one rule that I know of, babies \u2014 \u2018God damn it, you\u2019ve got to be kind.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kurt Vonnegut has died. Kurt Vonnegut was the man who got me started reading science fiction. One year at camp we had a counselor who would read us stories from Welcome to the Monkey House. I was hooked. I think the first was &#8220;Report on the Barnhouse Effect.&#8221;. I think many were quite prophetic: look <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=2131\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries","category-lj-xfer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}