I am about to tell are shameless lies.

So proclaimed the creator of that zany religion "Bokononism", Kurt Vonnegut, in "Cat's Cradle". Consequently, when I when I read this post by a precocious reader of Vonnegut earlier during lunch today, my first reaction was that it may not be true at all, and that Vonnegut, like his most famous protagonist Billy Pilgrim, might just be tripping down into some parallel and weirdly macabre universe.

Vonnegut's work* was deeply appealing to the optimistic pessimist in me, who simultaneously believed that the world is going to hell in a hand basket in a minute as well as that life is beautiful, as I acclimatized and accultured to the weirdness of the New World subsequent to an arrival here some seven ago.

RIP Mr. Vonnegut. You have made a reader who is not interested in sci-fi read sci-fi that showed how real life is indeed worse (or weird) than any fiction a writer can dream about.

* This is a wonderful archive of his pieces, many of were part of his last book of non-fiction "A Man Without a Country"; re-reading some of which made me chuckle again, and say amen!