Kurt Vonnegut gone
Mr. Bonzo is feeling old, very, very, old.

On Saturday night, Mr. and Mrs. Bonzo stepped out to the Heights to see a wonderful movie, "The Lives of Others," which got the Academy Award this year for best foreign film. The film is in German with subtitles. If you have ever taken German in college, you will love it. Very highly recommended. Mr. B., having had a birthday recently, got his first senior citizen discount to see the movie. But tonight, reading CNN, he got a further jolt about his limited time on the earth with CNN’s announcement that his second god (Shakespeare is first) had departed.

Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, a "fourth-generation German-American religious skeptic Freethinker," and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army.

Ah, chemistry, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Mr. Bonzo will never forget Slaughterhouse-Five or the story (Cat's Cradle) about Ice Nine - a polymorphic form of ice that was stable above 0 (C) or 32 (F). His brother worked for GE and knew a thing or two about polymorphism. Kurt knew chemistry from his Cornell days, of which I was unaware until today. Vonnegut also worked briefly as a GE flack. I gather he did not like it.

Requiescant in pace, Kurt Vonnegut.

A sad Bonzo, who is grateful that people like Vonnegut exist and write to inspire us.