Slaughterhouse-five

A pleasantly gorey picture

Kurt Vonnegut.

Excerpts from Wikipedia because I'm lazy like that:

Because the events have made him insane, Billy has come "unstuck in time." He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamador. They exhibit him in a zoo with movie star Montana Wild-Hack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They believe in predestination. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the correctness of their theories.

Slaughterhouse-Five explores Fate and Free Will and the illogical nature of human beings. Protagonist Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, randomly experiencing the events of his life, with no idea of what part he next will visit (re-live) — so, his life does not end with death; he re-lives his death, before its time, an experience often mingled with his other experiences.
Billy Pilgrim says there is no free will; an assertion confirmed by a Tralfamadorian, who says, "I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe . . . Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." The story's central concept: most of humanity is inconsequential; they do what they do, because they must.
To the Tralfamadorians, everything simultaneously exists, therefore, everyone is always alive. They, too, have wars and suffer tragedies (they destroy the universe whilst testing spaceship fuels), but, when Billy asks what they do about wars, they reply that they simply ignore them. The Tralfamadorians counter Vonnegut's true theme: life, as a human being, is only enjoyable with unknowns. Tralfamadorians do not make choices about what they do, but have power only over what they think (the subject of Timequake). Vonnegut expounds his position in chapter one, "that writing an anti-war book is like writing an anti-glacier book," both being futile endeavours, since both phenomena are unstoppable. This concept is difficult for Billy to accept, at first.

The picture is of Dresden. Whatever that is. Ye, I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I just search for random picture because I like 'em. There ain't no higher purpose. I'm an ignorant fool.

: \

Since we're on this topic, I'd like to share what I remember about a poem I saw on the wall of the Holocaust Memorial in Washington: Something along the lines of "I scream, and turn grey"

Damn, I wish I could remember more. It was so good.

I used to be an avid Jew-joke teller, until I went to that memorial.

No, fuck that, I will never renounce shock humor. Shock humor for lyfe, yo.

DEAD BABY JOKES >: D