Book Report- My once a decade re-reading of Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.

In the swirling shit storm that our post Trump world has become, I found it necessary to consult a book I have loved since my late teens. "Sirens of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.  in many ways could be my favorite book of all time. It's not perfect, or particularly deep or important but it does combine many things that I love-It is an irreverent depiction of post war American morals- It is an existential satirical road trip through 1950's pulp sic-fi and mostly in the end it is a moving book about love, friendship and the purpose of being a sentient life form. When I was young I wanted to be a writer. I don't have the required skills or patience to do it properly. In recent years I have painted Sci-Fi pulp covers in homage to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, science fiction hack Kilgore Trout. My own novel "The Chronic Yard Sale" has the fingerprints of Kilgore Trout all over it. Sirens of Titan was the source of all that. It was a revelation when I first read it, like discovering a new dimension to your personality, which for a cynical, frankly depressed 1970's era teenager was welcome. I have re-read this probably four times, at critical points in my life- as a college student, as a young man unsure of my direction, as a new father and now as a decrepit and hollowed out bitter shell of a man,- Re-reading it during our present downward spiral to apocalypse was bitter sweet. It actually holds up well in it's pulp ethos, though it seems fairly naive now, the real world incongruence and garishness eclipsing it's much sweeter oddball vision. The theme of being used by history seemed actually preferable to the present chaos we find ourselves in.

A better metaphor

Society is an organism. There are multiple organisms to it but it behaves like an organism on a host body, which sounds parasitic but It all seems to work together. When cells in a body grow to fast or out of control we have a disease name for that: cancer. Our society has grown too fast and to large and in every place on our host planet we have this cancer now. It doesn't belong to one group, it doesn't have a single cause it just can no longer keep up. It seems to be terminal now that it has reached the brain- government. Trump is cancer.

What a awful death spiral!

This country has finally gone and done it: elected a callow narcissistic rich twit.  This does not end well.  Obama wasn't the messiah- he was okay, but this election (She won, not that the popular vote mattered) was a test and we failed. It is like the USA was a college kid who, during finals week has two choices- study really hard and maybe you can get a C- in the class you have been blowing off, or fuck it, get drunk and party and skip the final because you can and take the F and get thrown out of school. We choose the keg over trying to scrape by. We suck.

The big simulation

By now everyone has heard the theory that everything we perceive as real is one very large, very complex computer simulation. This is of course, sci-fi nerd speculation, best left to stoners gathered around a star trek bong in a basement apartment.  There are times however when I can't resist the feeling of what this world  might really be: a very ripe, surreal graphic novel, penned by some vast intelligence resembling Kurt Vonnegut.  Consider the absurdly garish circus act of Donald Trump- the comic book billionaire villain, who's very name seems like a sneering sarcastic bit of overly smug fiction: Donald Trump- as in" Donald Duck", wholesome comic misanthrope  and "Trump" a name calculated in self imposed superiority with the frat-boy aire of one upsmanship- it can't be real....His celebrity and nonsensical appeal to BOTH the holier-than-thou evangelical and the Howard Stern disciple knuckle dragger alike. He can't be anything but a figment of a grand auteur.

My own life seems to follow the same writer. My beautiful mom is slowing disappearing into the darkness. She and her gracious, funny and loving computer simulation program will not last to the next upgrade.  She can still hold a normal conversation but can't do much for herself. As my personal proof of the heavy hand symbolism of the author in my own story, yesterday, while stuck in traffic in the U-District, (owing to a head on wreck on the impressive Gothic bridge over the Montlake cut, a bridge whose mechanical guts were designed by my mother's engineer father Clifford McCallum), I  was talking about my mother's decline with my sister on my phone. Barely moving,  I was overtaken on my left by a long black Cadillac hearse. I can't say when I last saw a working hearse. It was a profoundly obvious metaphor from a novice writer, not unlike something I might have written.

This all could be a product of watching Westworld too.

Art visible in Public Place (kinda..)

My paintings are hung presently at Maestro Motors in West Seattle, Washington. 

Whatever.

Burning Elf 2015

Another year down the drain. Nice people. Nice elf. Disco light instead of fireworks and a talented guitarist, Nick Denke drafted at the last possible moment to play in the rain. Tom burned his hand on the spotlight and he hid in his room for the whole party.  Most people enjoyed themselves however.

Sweet Thang's Birthday.

She is my favorite. It's her birthday. Thank you universe.