The world took a sad hit today - Kurt Vonnegut died. The first book of his that I read was "Player Piano". I read it when I was, oh, fourteen? Fifteen? Good book, though at that age my appreciation for life in the corporate world was still a little under-formed. And then along came "Slaughterhouse Five". Anybody out there not read "Slaughterhouse Five"? At the time (for those just arrived on this planet), the Vietnam war was in full swing, two Kennedys had been shot, as had Martin Luther King, not to mention that the National Guard had summarily executed four antiwar protesters at Kent State, and Richard Nixon reigned in America. They were not optimistic days. Which is, perhaps, why Vonnegut's phrase, "So it goes," rang so true. The good guys were losing in a very big way. Kind of like today. Except, of course, that today it's even worse. Feel free to supply the tagline.