Little Thinkers' Quotes (13 of 16): Kurt Vonnegut

Here is today's quote from Kurt Vonnegut, author of "Slaughterhouse Five." When I was a reporter in Woodstock, Va., several years and touring the local jail, I was amused to see there was a copy of this novel in the prison library:

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

http://www.vonnegut.com/

I also have to wonder if Vonnegut ever met the engaging Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek before the author's death in 2007.

GOP Pre-Convention Tweets: If We Had a Real Media

The 2012 Republican National Convention gets underway in Tampa, Fla., tomorrow, and we have decided to be both objective (in the Charlie Rose sense) and subjective as can be (in the Cenk Uygur sense). So, I guess for the next five days, we will essentially be like Fox News in reverse.

On Twitter tonight, east coast USA time, one of the main trending topic was #IfWeHadARealMedia; though most tweets were right-leaning, some liberals chimed in as well.

Before we post tweets ranging from right wing comic, talk-show host Dennis Miller, who will perform in Durham, NC, on Sept. 8, ironically the most liberal zip code in the Tarheel State, to Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who was part of Bill Clinton's War Room, let's go over the images:

1) Travis Tritt: The country singer has let his conservative views be well-known, but to our knowledge he has not resonated the same hate speech rhetoric as Hank Williams Jr. Tritt will be the feature performer at the Shenandoah County in Woodstock, Va. on Aug. 31st.

2) Big Splash. At $1.5 million, this Tibetan mastiff is the most expensive dog in the world, which means Mitt and Ann Romney could afford to have the dog as a pet. Today (Sunday) is incidentally National Dog Day.

3) Vincent Lecavalier. We don't know the political views of the Tampa Lightning captain, which is just as well, as he is a Canadian, and presumably can't vote in the American presidential election.

Here are the tweets:

1) @DennisDMZ (Dennis Miller): "Biden told Obama that's not how you spell Phio. You've got the O's switched around."

2) @LisainDallas (Lisa in Dallas): "#IfweHadARealMedia: They would report on the wars the same way they did under Bush."

3) @word_34 (Spread the Word): "If.......: You would know that Bush kept 1.2 trillion off the books for two unfunded wars."

4) @noiwillnotbe (I Will NOT Be Quiet): "#If......the republican war on women would be covered."

5) @exrepublicans (Ex-Repubs for Obama): "#If......: Bill O, Hannity, Hush, and Beck wouldn't exist."

6) @Reagan-Girl (Marjorie Haun): "#If......: Keith Olbermann would be behind glass in a "Ripley's Believe It or Not" museum."

7) @PaulBegala (Paul Begala): "Sure, Romney's humor is lame & offensive. Could it be strategic_ to distract from new docs on Caymans tax dodge?"

http://www.shencofair.com

http://www.travistritt.com

http://www.dennismillerradio.com

http://www.visittampabay.com

http://www.current.com

http://www.gopconvention2012.com

http://www.nationaldogday.com

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.vinny4.com

And, for more tweets from tonight about the GOP Convention, and see an image of a Tampa Bay Bucaneers cheerleader, visit our sister blog at:

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Bonus Quote of the Week- Dominique Dawes

Like students at my alma mater of Central High School in Woodstock, Va*, we are getting for spring break. So, we are planning not to post an entry until Sunday.

But, we will leave our loyal fans in Cyprus, Russia and Slovenia (I have no idea why, but we get an unusual amount of hits from those three countries!) with a quote from the great Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes, 35, who is a native of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Dawes, who also acted on Broadway in a revival of the musical "Grease," was the first African-American women's gymnast to win a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Dawes was part of the 'magnificent seven,' the nickname given to that gymnastics team, which also included Shannon Miller, Amanda Borden and Dominique Moceanu.

Dawes also won bronze medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In 2010, Dawes was appointed as co-chair of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.

We used this quote for our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" back on Feb. 1, 2001, and it proved to be quite popular:

"I found through research that between 50 and 70 percent of young girls who describe themselves as overweight are actually normal weight."

*- Central High School in Woodstock, Va., is a real place, but the school whose nickname is the Falcons is not my alma mater; it is like Javier the Intern, one of the running gags on our blogs.

Quote of the Day- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The editorial board here at "The Daily Vampire" which consists of managing editor (mr) Tilly Gokbudak (that's me) and a Honduran intern named Javier Gonzales (actually, a fictional person) decided late this afternoon to feature quips from literary and creative radicals for the month of August.

So, we begin with the late, great American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who penned "Slaughterhouse Five," which was available at the Shenandoah County Jail Library in Woodstock, Va. (I am not making this up!), at least it was when I profiled the correctional facility as a reporter some 11 years ago.

According to Stephen King in King's book "On Writing," Vonnegut would type the same page 75 times until he got it just right. This practice sounds a bit like the perfectionism of the late film director Stanley Kubrick, but I don't if I should mention that since King reportedly disdains the 1980 film version of King's novel "The Shinning." And we like Stephen King. In fact, we are wondering if the temperature in King's hometown of Bangor, Maine, is less than 97 degrees as it is here in Mount Airy, NC, at the moment (not really where I am at).

The liberal magazine "The Nation" has apparently been posting some famous quips made in its pages over the years, and Vonnegut made this provocative statement in the magazine's Nov. 28th, 1981 issue, which we imagine the Rev. Johnny Robertson of Martinsville, Va., (a real person) might not appreciate:

"God shouldn't be put in charge of everything until we get to know him a little bit better."

SIDEBAR: On a more somber note, we want to send our condolences to the family of Gizem Dogan, a 17-year-old Norwegian girl of Turkish heritage who was killed at the summer camp in Norway last week. All total, the attacks in Oslo and on the island where the summer camps took place, claimed 77 lives. Both the NPR news program "The World" and the English-language Turkish newspaper "Today's Zaman" reported that Turkey's Foreign Minsiter Ahmet Davutoglu attended Dogan's funeral in Trondheim, Norway.

Gizem Dogan is perhaps the most high-profile casualty of a violent action in the Turkish media since Furkan Dogan, (we assume they are not related) a 19-year-old Turkish-American from New York state was killed by Israeli commandos during the infamous armed raid fiasco aboard the Marmara Flotilla, which aimed at giving food and aid to Palestinians, in June of 2010.

We learned today that Furkan Dogan's father filed a lawsuit in an American court against the Israeli government in May.

Silly Picture to Fill Space- Tired Cat

It has been one of those weeks, but we will leave you with a short message from a fundamentalist church from Willis, Va., (near Floyd) whose views we fundamentally disagree with (I am a fervent human secularist):

"All Christians work for the same employer."

But, we do ask that you look into getting a homeless cat or dog a proper home. For those of you living in Woodstock, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley where I used to reside, adoption info for the county animal shelter can be found at:

shenandoahcounty.va.us/animalshelter

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Working at the County Fair

We are gradually winding our special Summer Jobs series of entries which concludes next week as we examine the possibility of high school or college students working at their local county fairs.

Alas, the city of Lyncbhburg, Va., has already their county fair (well the nearest jurisdction to them that has a county fair) when the Campbell County Fair was held in July.

But, in nearby Danville, Va., the Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair gets underway in the community of Ringgold on Sept. 17. The fair lasts until Sept. 25, and this year, it will feature performances from Colt Ford and Clarence Carter.

Additionally, there will be a demolotion derby on the first Friday and Saturday (as well as Sunday) of the fair, and there will be a monster truck rally on the Wednesday and Thursday of fair week.

The Shenandoah County Fair in Woodstock, Va., which is about three hours north of Lynchburg (and two hours south of Washington, DC) in the Shenandoah Valley gets underway on Aug. 27. Country singer Josh Turner is the feature act of the fair in Woodstock.

We would also like to take a moment to dedicate this entry to students at North Providence High School in Providence, RI, where Joseph B. Goho is the principal. They play their first football game of the season in a road game with crosstown rivals Moses Brown.

While we could not find out the school's nickname in spite of 'hours of research,' we were able to discover that the mascot for Hope High School, another Providence school, is indeed the Blue Wave!