Repost from Kurt Vonnegut: Liberal Crap I Don't Want to Hear Anymore

To commemorate Easter Sunday, I am posting a Vonnegut interview. On September 13, 2005, Jon Stewart interviewed Kurt Vonnegut on The Daily Show. I still laugh at the interview and think it is brilliant. I think they should have let Vonnegut read out his, "liberal crap I don't want to hear anymore," so I will republish it here along with the clip from the Daily Show interview.*
     It's too bad Vonnegut is dead; I saw him as a contemporary Mark Twain. If someone were to ask me who was the funniest and most insouciant writer in America, I would have to say, Vonnegut. Lewis Nordan is pretty goddamn funny too, as well as David Sedaris. But, I think Vonnegut tops them all.

Give us this day our daily bread. Oh sure.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Nobody better trespass against me. I'll tell you that. I'll cut you a new you-know-what. 

Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful. You mean we can't use torture?
Blessed are the peacemakers. Jane Fonda?
Love your enemies - Arabs? 

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The hell I can't! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in s**t. 

*Comedy Central scrubbed the video. If you want to watch the clip, you'll have to pony up some cash to watch it.

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Dot's Diner

I'm not you're momma!

Reading is Smexy

It's a commonly underrepresented fact that reading is smexy.

YAY! Reading!

Yes, reading is smexy. It's that cross between smart and sexy — that makes any reader a sight for sore eyes. So pick up a book. And read. It'll make you look better than even a freshly cut do.

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Compare and Contrast: Old and New Telephonic Device

Holler once if you used a rotary phone. Holler twice if you've only used a cellular device. Holler three times if you had a party line. Holler four times if you talked to a friend with a tin can and strip of string. 

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Video Games Live: PBS Station in Louisiana Films a Live Symphonic Orchestra Feature Music from Popular Video Games

At the Pontchartrain Center in Metairie, Louisiana PBS is filming a live symphonic overture of famous video games, like Super Mario and Legend of Zelda by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. I attended the event with friends and was greeted by a student. Wow.

Location:Horseshoe Rd,Kenner,United States

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Bathroom Graffiti

Graffiti from a desk in a church school in Bordelonville, Louisiana
Some of the Graffiti dates back to the 1950s. Some of it was more recent, like the one above.

Shawn B.

Wuz

hyre

on 

2-22-06

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Infographic: How to Write a Research Paper

You'd think that a mural by Dom Gregory DeWitt of Christ (painted in the Abbey Church in Saint Benedict, Louisiana) would be a strange visual to teach students how to write a research paper — but sometimes the weirdest ideas are best!

Use this simple hand out to teach students how to form an argument for a research paper.

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Marengo Street Free Collective Library

I was at Hey Cafe on Magazine street yesterday, sipping a coffee and writing, as usual.

I walked over to Marengo and Magazine and saw this green box.

Thit Marengo Collective Library

Take a book / leave a book

Take a DVD / Leave a DVD

Read! Watch!

Free Materials for the People

Noticed some Richard Wright; Season One of the Office.

Come help feed starving readers, at least with words, not spaghetti.

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Photo: "Police at Crystal Burger"

The Finest dine at Krystal Burger (Nothing Like It!) on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Opinion Poll: Do Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Virginia Woolf Look Alike?

For all you Virginia Woolf fans out there, here is a nice picture of her in youth. And then there is a photograph of Thérèse of Lisieux, the Catholic Carmelite saint. Am I the only person who thinks Woolf has an uncanny resemblance to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux?

Photograph of Virginia Woolf as a Child

Thérèse of Lisieux dressed up as Joan of Arc

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Art: "Hands"

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What is the Difference between Comedy and Tragedy?

"Midway in my life's journey, 'I stumbled into a wood.'" 
— Dante, Inferno, Canto I, Line 1

    What is the difference between comedy and tragedy? We enter the woods; at the threshold of woods and plain are the dividing lines between tragic and comedic, between love and loss. The woods represent chaos in literary symbolism. Or not. Everything depends on the red wheelbarrow. Is it how we see it? In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, when the eloping lovers enter the woods at night, all hell breaks loose. Lovers are switched. A wayward actors' troop is also lost, set to perform at a state wedding, but one of their players is turned into an ass, being an ass anyway - his name is Bottom. Puck, the mischievous sprite, pours a potion into the Queen of the Fairies' eyes and she falls in love with Bottom.
    In the morning, though, after all the enchantments have worn off, everything is turned right - the basic structure of a comedy. A comedy is technically a narrative that begins with a conflict, like mixed up lovers or lost in a wood, but in the end conflict is resolved - which is why Dante's journey through Hell is called a comedy. Dante goes through the stages of hell and survives to tell the tale. Dante, with Virgil the poet's help, makes it to Purgatory and, eventually, with Beatrice's intercession, ends up seeing the beatific vision (which is quite boring, if you ask me). Isn't the journey in the telling?
    And what is the difference between a comedy and a tragedy? Is the line always direct, written in the sand? I agree the line is a thin one, as played out in Woody Allen's farce Melinda and Melinda. The movie is a demonstration of the thin line between both genres. Is life at its essence tragic or comic? The movie tells the story of Melinda from two perspectives, one tragic, the other comedic. In the tragic version, Melinda shows up at her sister's dinner party unannounced and all hell breaks loose. She dumps her husband for a younger photographer but the center cannot hold and she ends up in the tragic version in a mental hospital. In the comic version, Melinda shows up at the dinner party as a childless and down-trodden neighbor who captures the attention and delight of the guests. The film cleverly goes back and forth between the two stories as a way to illustrate the point the difference between tragedy and comedy. For the ancient Greeks, tragedy was primarily a cathartic experience. To process tragedy, the events of the narrative are re-enacted on the stage and by seeing the horrible events unfold on stage (or on screen) the spectator comes away cleansed from the experience. Thus the invention of drama. Emotion is processed publicly as a way to experience collectively the pain of tragedy. Even today don't we go to a sad movie and cry? What happens in this experience? Are we sad for our own sorrows or someone else's? Are our tears and identification with a character on the stage? Do we cry so we can replace our own sufferings with the sorrows of someone else, an emotional scapegoat? Tragedy is not a private act, but a public one. We publicly place sorrow on the stage to feel better afterward in the same way we laugh collectively in front of a prime time TV show even when it is not funny. Catharsis is a purging of the emotions but the same can be said when we witness, and privately enjoy the suffering of others; a little bit of schadenfreude, gaining pleasure from the downfall of others somehow makes us feel a little bit more exalted. Even though we don't like to admit it, don't we often say to ourselves about someone else's tragic story, I am glad it isn't me?
Odysseus slays the suitors

Comedy and tragedy depend on a slight twist of fate; Woody Allen likes to play with this idea, beginning Melinda and Melinda with a discussion of the difference between the two. It is a gross deduction, but life is a comedy when we are the ones who do not suffer and it's a tragedy when the tables are turned. When Dante is in hell he is a comedy for he goes through hell commenting on the suffering of other people. Dante meets Odysseus in hell, the man of many wiles who was separated from his wife and family for twenty years. Dante punished Odysseus in hell for his extreme pride or hubris, a lack of understanding of his own human weakness. Odysseus in life is punished to roam the seas in a search for home because he relied on his own intellect and not on the gods. Odysseus returns home, rids his halls of the suitors and he reunites with his wife and son. Dante does not view Odysseus so comedically, however, and remains suspicious of Odysseus as if inspired by Poseidon's rage. Dante sees Odysseus as the man of many deceits. The flip flop is directly related to fate, perception, choices, and perhaps luck. If I am deceived to believe life is merely either a comedy or a tragedy, I deceive myself. Pride and self-deception cause war; cause intolerance - the inability to see truth in any given situation. The blindness is our own. Someone may ask, why are seers physically blind? By losing their physical sight, they gain an inner sight of the mind. It is not what you see but how you see it. The narcissist sees only himself. The hero sees his victories. A murder does not see his crime. A lover sees an ideal. I am blinded from truth not because truth is absolute, but I am unable to decode properly what I see before me. The Greeks seem to have understood this which is why they created the blind seer who could see but they also saw that most of us are Cassandra and we do not listen. It is not that we do want to listen, but rather, we are blocked - flustered for a bit, and we cannot read properly. It is in the tangle of interpretation that we go back and forth: comedy, tragedy, comedy, tragedy, comedy, tragedy, comedy, tragedy . . .

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