Amber, Herbs and Vonnegut

I've just begun a reread of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s a wild ride, careening though historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography and satire. I forgot how incredible, how mind expanding, how human this book is. A few indelible quotes:

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

***

After being taken by aliens:

Billy Pilgrim: Why me?
Alien: That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
Billy Pilgrim: Yes.
Alien: Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

***

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

~~~
 I’ve never had one of those crystal, herb and flowers natural healing types preach at me. None have tried to talk me into curing my neurofibromatosis type 2 with turmeric, garlic, ginger, some good old Omega-3 fatty acids and eating a raw food diet.

Hey, those in combo with acupuncture, yoga and maybe some malachite or selenite crystals could, like totally, do the trick…right? Right?!

I doubt it (to the extreme) but, sure. For now, I’ll wait and watch the natural cure grifters put their lives on the line. You know, just to build my faith that their promises work. What’s that? They don’t have Nf2? Yeah, hardly anyone does. It’s not one of the more trendy, hip diseases.

These snake oil salesweasels are close cousins to the pray-it-away Jesus-shilling flimflammers. I watched a cousin (who also had Nf2) and her husband get sucked into a faith healer’s bogus bullshit. Yeah, I attempted to talk them out of the crazy (asking “isn’t it possible that god is working through the scientists, doctors and surgeons to help us”) but they wanted a magic miracle cure delivered to their doorstep instantaneously.

That’d be awesome. I’d like that too. My cousin died, abandoned by her husband, alone in a nursing home.

What kills me about these supposedly deeply religious, god-fearing/obeying/loving is that they behave as though their all-powerful, all-seeing deity is their servant, working on their timeline and they're micro-managing.

I wonder why none of the natural health con artists and religious hucksters have targeted me? Possibly it’s because my fact infused, get-the-fuck-away-from-me, dangerously smiling growl is a bit off-putting. Could be.
~~~
An addition to the Governor Puppy Killer saga:

Klueless Kristi said, in defense of her puppy murder, that hard decisions have to be made and that "Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

Between the dog, goat and three horses, I’m thinking Noem just gets her rocks off by shooting animals. Her and Cheato’s sons would make great friends, no? Junior, the Cocaine Cowboy likes to off endangered species, maybe Noem can join him on his next slaughter of innocents? Possibly Governor Puppy Killer will replace la Gargoyle?

TAB in bloom

Wayne Pacelle, the president of Animal Wellness Action, said: "There's no rational and plausible excuse for Noem shooting a juvenile dog for normal puppy-like behavior."

"Raising and caring for a dog takes patience and kindness," he said in a statement. "Tens of millions of Americans who know and love dogs have to wonder about a person who expresses hatred for a young female dog and kills her.” (source)

~~~
One more Slaughterhouse-five quote:

The nicest veterans...the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.

The Amazing Bob was a Vietnam vet. Based on TAB alone, I wholly agree with Mr. Vonnegut.