ShaneWilson.net

Baka Beyond

Baka Beyond is playing the Folk Fest again this year. They were there last year and played the volunteer party, which was great. Their members are from six different countries and blend a variety of genres. Good stuff:

School's out

Well, I'm finished school until September, except for an English class I'm taking online starting in May. It feels good to be half way through and doing well. I'm not looking forward to going back to work full time at my shitty job though.

Yesterday I was supposed to be meeting a girl I met online for lunch, but alas I got stood up. Oh well, it's her loss I guess.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On Wednesday one of my favorite author's, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died. I've been a fan of his since I was a teenager, and Slaugherhouse Five is one of my all time favorite books. Here's a few quotes by him that I like:

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.

here is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms

The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me. Instead, their cigarettes didn't work. Now I'm forced to suffer leaders with names like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, 'Colon.'"....

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007)

So it goes

Library Display

One of the assignments I did for school recently was a Library Display Case display about Hunter S. Thomson. Here it is: