Another one of my heroes shuffles off the mortal coil - I started reading his books when I was 14 and saw a lecture of his at a local university a couple of years later - he was one of those authors that shapes an outlook (for better or worse, haven't decided yet) if read at an impressionable age.

Vonnegut was the court jester to this ship of fools. I'm sad that he's gone - I suspect that he would have liked to see how things were going to turn out, and would have had something suitably acerbic to say about it. Wherever he's at, I hope he's having a smoke and a drink and laughing his ass off at The Joke.

I just went to his website and theres a picture of an empty bird cage with the door open...nothing more.

I loved his last book 'A man without a country'.