Chamblee54

This is a rendering of Cat’s Cradle. Parts one, two, three, four, five , six, seven, and eight are previously published. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. They were taken by Dorethea Lange for the Farm Service Administration in 1937 and 1938.
114-when I felt the bullet enter my heart The business of disposing of Papa Lorenzo’s remains was postponed for a little while. Ambassador Horlick Minton, the husband of the lady who indexes, was set to give a speech. The ambassador threw away his prepared text, and spoke of the futility and cruelty of war. He recited a poem from “Spoon River Anthology”, a book that PG read in tenth grade english. This was 1969, the year of the Vietnam War Moratorium. A massive protest was held in Washington, and in high schools around america, students who opposed the war wore ( which is how you say war with a southern accent, the waw wuh is ovah) black armbands. In the english class where “Spoon River Anthology” was studied, the teacher told the one girl wearing an armband to take it off. She refused, and was sent to talk to the principal.
115-as it happened After the speech by the Ambassador, the celebrants went to see the military display. The only trouble was, one of the planes was malfunctioning. It crashed into the base of the castle, destroying the foundation of the castle (the building, not Julian and Philip Castle), and sending most of the people at the ceremony into the ocean. It was a bit like 911, except there was no hijackers, only a plane engine that was not working. Or maybe it was intentional, and Kurt Vonnegut was the mastermind of 911.
116- the grand ah whoom Somehow, John, Frank, and the Crosby’s are spared the fate of the castle, to fall into the ocean. The remains of Papa Lorenzo goes hurtling into space, and into the water below. As Papa goes, so goes the Ice-Nine in the room. Suddenly, the ocean is frozen, and the sky is full of worms. Wendy’s will be making a lot of hamburgers that afternoon.
117-sanctuary John and Mona found a hidden chamber that had been outfitted for emergencies. They were there, as the rest of the people at the castle descended into chaos. The word sanctuary has had many meanings over the years. Not all of them have been evident to the casual observer. In his first quarter of college, PG had an English 101 professor, who was an admirer of William Faulkner. It seems that a woman said to Mr. Faulkner that she had read “Sanctuary” four times and did not understand it. Mr. Faulkner said to read it a fifth time.
118-the iron maiden and the oubliette In their dungeon hideaway, John and Mona are alone from humanity. The radio does not work. Tornadoes are whipping the earth above them. John wants to screw Mona, but she is afraid of becoming Pregnant. And the book of Bokonon is consulted, and the first thing it says is to close this book, it is full of lies.
119-mona thanks me After a few days in the dungeon, John and Mona climb out into the world. It does not appear to be very hospitable. When PG was a kid, we assumed that the Russians were going to drop the bomb on us. Many people built fallout shelters, so they could live underground until the radiation faded enough to come out. The only problem was, what were you going to do then.
120-to whom it may concern John and Mona go exploring, and find a lot of corpses. It seems like Bokonon came across all these people, waiting for him to deliver them, and he told them to eat ice nine and die. This was thirty years before the jonestown kool aid party. No only was Bokonon a prophet, he didn’t have to worry what flavor of kool aid to use. When you ask google “what flavor kool aid did they use at jonestown?”, you get 6,300 results. It turns out that the magic potion was flavor aid, a cheap imitation of kool aid. The flavor used was grape.
121-I am slow to answer Mona looks at all the frozen bodies, thinks it is cool, and kills herself. John then steps into a taxi, along with H. Lowe and Hazel Crosby, and Newt Hoenikker. The appearance of the cab is one of those plot devices that does not make sense. This is near the end of the book, and it makes less and less sense all the time. Mr. Vonnegut has been quoted as giving three of his novels a grade of A+. Those are Cats Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, and Mother Night. Slaughterhouse is the best known of his books, and was made into a movie, thus becoming the most profitable book of the Vonnegut archive. It is said that when a young author cops a contract to publish a book, 95% of the people he tells about it will say “Will they make a movie of it?”.
122-the swiss family robinson John, the Crosbys, and the Hoenikker brothers settle into an idyllic lifestyle. Everything they could want has been frozen, and need only be thawed out. Being swiss does not mean they have been sliced into sheets with large holes.
123-of mice and men This book is essentially over. PG has read through to the end. The five remaining humans on the island are never rescued. How the manuscript of John’s book got to New York is a mystery, along with the cab that worked after the ice nine catastrophe. There are a lot of questions at this stage, such as, what was PG thinking when he thought doing a rendering of this book was a good idea? Of course, writers block is a cruel inmate, and this concept may be in for another go round. Maybe a chapter by chapter rendering of the Bible will keep the Jesus worshipers amused. PG was once told, by a professional Jesus worshiper, that “you are nothing but the devil”. Actually, he heard that more than one time, from the same professional Jesus worshiper. If, as some say, PG is the devil, then it might be his duty to do a chapter by chapter on the magic book of.
124-frank’s ant farm Frank has built an ant farm, and watches it intently. Cable tv does not reach the island anymore, and the ant farm is the only live entertainment. Frank says the ants work well together because they cooperate. PG thinks that cooperate is French for “shut up and do it my way”.
125-the tasmanians Errol Flynn was from Tasmania. When he was a child, he tied a piece of fat onto a string. The fat was fed to a goose, who immediately eliminated it. The piece of fat was fed to another goose, while still tied to the string that ran through goose number one. The second goose eliminated the fat, while keeping the string going through his body. The process was continued until several geese were thus connected by a string.
126-soft pipes, play on John and Newt Hoenikker consider going to the top of Mount McCabe, and leaving a symbol on top. At first it was going to be an American Flag, but the seamstress was sewing on six pointed stars, and it did not seem right. John could not think of what would be a proper symbol to leave on top of the mountain. This is the reason PG never got a tattoo. He could not think of an image that he wanted to be permanently connected to his body.
127-the end This is the last chapter of Cats Cradle. We still don’t know John’s last name. We still don’t know how the manuscript gets to New York, much less the five caucasians still on the island. We still don’t know what the Americans and the Russians do with their ice nine supply. The rumors that the collapse of the castle, and the subsequent contamination of the region with ice nine, the rumors that this was a cia sponsored test of the capacity of ice nine…we don’t have the answer to that either. Mainly because PG just made that up. We do know that Bokonon (spell check suggestions: Boondocks, Nabokov, Beckon) makes a guest appearance in the last chapter, and talks about killing himself. But this is the end. Jim Morrison was 16 when this story was set, and probably had never heard about Bokonon. This is the end. The killer awoke before dawn…