Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Some years ago I became obsessed with Kurt Vonnegut and proceeded to buy all of his books in paperback and devour them.  (I had a fascination with paperbacks - proper mass market, not those oversized trade paperbacks - because I could slip them into my back pocket and carry them around with me.  I imagine I probably thought it made me look cool, but really it probably just contributed to my future back problems.  So it goes.)

Cat's Cradle was the second of his books that I read.  Slaughterhouse Five was the first.  I read everything he had written at the time (and at the time he was still alive) and while I'm sure some things have been released posthumously I can feel honest in saying I've read all his books.

Anyway, with this whole virus pandemic shitstorm (or pool-pah as Bokonon would have it) I was thinking about how much care we're having to take in washing our hands and disinfecting ourselves and not touching our faces because all it would take would be one tiny bit of COVID-19 to be introduced into our system for the whole thing to invade and replicate and I couldn't help but think of ice-nine and how it was the very same.  And yes, it took that stupidly long sentence to make my point.

So I read the story again, after digging out my old, dusty paperback, realizing once again how incredibly allergic I am to dust, and buying the e-book so I could enjoy the book without sneezing.

And now I'm a bokononist again.  It's something to do and gives me something to focus on while I try and sort out the insanity that is happening in the world right now.

​Busy busy busy.