So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84. Feels to me a lot like losing Hunter S. Thompson, though I confess I read more, and understood more, of HST than of Vonnegut. Anybody who reads this blog would love his last book, a collection of essays called A Man Without a Country. There's something comforting about the guy, so disheartened by the way humans behave toward one another, yet always finding something redeemable, something good, some way to live among it all.

From today's sfgate:

To Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," summed up his philosophy:

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "