"And so it goes and so forth"

I've forgotten who it was that said that you know you're getting old when the first section of the paper you read is the obituaries so that you can see if any friends have died.

I sort of felt like that this week. First, my favorite punching bag, Nina Wong died. I don't want to make jokes about death but I can't help but wonder if she'll be buried in pig-tails? I would have made a post about it earlier except I was In Guilin last week on a death march tour with the lovely, smart, looks twenty-five years younger than she is, hard working and beautiful wife. It occurs to me that making a joke about someone dying is only funny on the day or the day after they die so, I'll not speak of her again.

What Miss Piggy's passing means is that Regina Ip has moved up a slot in my ridicule list. Madam Broomhead is now number two just behind Long Hair Leung and tied with Donald (I'm not really a Chinese Mr. Bean) Tsang.

On a sadder note, at least for me, Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday; he was 84 which I guess is certainly old enough that his dying shouldn't be a surprise. Vonnegut was a strange author. Lots of Christian schools won't stock his books but I buy all I can get for my library. I found his cynicism and world weariness to be exactly the response that non-Christians should feel when they look at the human condition. His books always made me laugh and cry at the same time. Fiction, when done right, makes you think about your world and how it could be better or worse than it is now. Kurt Vonnegut's books always did that for me. The Sirens of Titian and Breakfast of Champions are my favorite Vonnegut novels.

I felt the same way two years ago with the death of Saul Bellow.

I had to resist the urge yesterday to make a book order with every Vonnegut novel I could find.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who reads strange fiction