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The Onion has a list of the 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will up at their avclub.com site.

The Only Real Difference between Bush and Hitler is not one of them, but it is mentioned parenthetically under item number 7:

Vonnegut (who often said “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected” [emphasis added]) was righteously skeptical about war, having famously survived the only one worth fighting in his lifetime. And it’s never been more true: Left or right, Christian or Muslim, those convinced they’re doing violence in service of a higher power and against an irretrievably inhuman enemy are the most dangerous creatures of all.

Go now and read the rest of the article!

And, like, hell-oooooo peeples, the Real Reason Littleton Sucks is because all suburbs suck. Like, holy hell, Batman, at what point does redundancy equal prison and/or death, when gas hits $4.00/gallon?!? Shaaaa - get a clue already!

Ever since I joined bookmooch, I’ve been reading more. Thanks to the internet, I now have complete strangers sending me the books I never got around to reading but always meant to. One that I recently finished was George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I read this one a long time ago when I was in my early 20’s and decided to read it again, since everyone’s talking about it for some reason *cough cough* the GOP *cough cough*.

It made a larger impact on me this time around. Maybe because I’m no longer constantly chasing tail and taking drugs. Or maybe age really does bring wisdom. Who knows?

Anyway, about a gajillion words have been written about this book already. I can’t possibly add anything to that discussion. But I can tell you that for all the talk about doublethink, thoughcrime and Big Brother watching us, there is one phrase from that book that had a lot of impact on me, even though I’ve never seen it cited.

“Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

Yes, it is.

Read Nineteen Eighty-Four online here.

A few years ago, when I was working downtown, I would often go over to the chain bookstore in the Pavillions at lunch time for a coffee and to browse the books.

There’s an old saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but that doesn’t hold true any longer. You can tell a lot about a book by its cover.

Take for example a couple of books I remember seeing: I can have one look at the cover of The Devil Wears Prada and know that I have no interest in it. The same goes for Everyone Worth Knowing. Based on the covers, these two titles are obviously “chick-lit” for the Sex in the City set. The key is marketing.

Normally I don’t like marking guys too much. They’re an unholy mix of salesmen, statisticians, and Satan. But I do owe them one for getting me to buy Lord of the Barnyard purely based on the cover. It had a couple of blurbs comparing the author, Tristan Egolf, to John Kennedy Toole of Confederacy of Dunces fame.

It was a great book, funny and sad. I read it twice in a row. The author was one month younger than me. I could really connect with what he was saying through his book.

Well, I just found out that he committed suicide last year. It’s a shame. He was one of the good ones.