DISCLAIMER: This is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I am not trying to break copyright laws, I just thought it'd be cool to share. The portion of this blog posting in quotations is a direct, word for word, quote from said book. I am not taking credit for it or gaining financially or any other way by any means. I just wanted to share the passage with any classmates, instructor, or WWW browsers who may or may not come across it. I copied this from the mass-market paperback version of the book Copyright 1969 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Dell Publishing. This passage describes the way a battle in war really should be. So it goes.
"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, seperating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody tuned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."
- Kurt Vonnegut
Is that cool or what? Did you actually read it? Well if you liked that at all then I recommend reading that book. Some more B&N staff recommends: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson. We've been on a recommending kick at work so I thought I'd join in here. No I don't work on commission so I'm not gaining financially by posting up a quote from a book. Geez law enforcement, get off my back, I'm just trying to share! Damn copyright Nazis. Wait, am I talking to myself? Shit, I'm not even talking, I'm typing to myself. I'm a madman.
