Column: Farting around Kirkwood Avenue, the right hand of Kurt Vonnegut, fighting robots over donuts
Wrapping up its months-long schedule of events on Saturday was Granfalloon: A Kurt Vonnegut Convergence—the annual festival hosted by the Indiana University Arts and Humanities council.
The B Square’s regular beat of local government coverage does not include cultural festivals like Granfalloon.
I am not exactly a Vonnegut scholar. Every single time, if I want to make sure I get it right, I have to look up Vonnegut’s definition of “granfalloon,” which is “a proud and meaningless association of human beings.”
But I am fond of saying that I will also cover what happens in my own backyard.
And Kirkwood Avenue, where Granfalloon’s big musical performance gets staged, is close enough to where I live that I think it counts as my backyard.
So it is fair sometimes to take a break from reading through an upcoming city council agenda, to head from 6th Street over to Kirkwood just to “fart around”—as I did on Saturday night.
The whole quote, from an essay by Vonnegut, goes like this: “I have had one hell of a good time, and let me tell you we are here on earth to fart around and don’t let anybody ever tell you any different.”
Even if it’s a popular quote, it’s worth remembering that it’s basically the punchline to a long set up, which starts with Vonnegut heading out the door to buy an envelope. His wife asks him why he doesn’t just buy 100 envelopes and put them in a closet near his office. Vonnegut continues: “I pretend I haven’t heard her.” So off he goes, to buy the envelope.
From there until the punchline, Vonnegut recounts his adventures that started with buying an envelope, which made for “one hell of a good time.”
If you’d like to watch Vonnegut deliver the essay in his own voice, YouTube has a recording of an excerpt from his 2004 lecture at Case Western University.
Anyhow, when I headed over to Kirkwood, I bumped into a giant puppet of Kurt Vonnegut, which requires three people to animate—one inside the body and one for each hand. Vonnegut’s right hand, for at least part of the day on Saturday, was Ryan Lally, who is an IU graduate student in English.
I asked Lally how he got the gig as Vonnegut’s right hand. He told me that a friend of his broke their foot, while attending a science fiction conference in Estonia. So Lally was filling in for his friend.
Later on Saturday evening, I was looking east down Kirkwood towards the stage where a band was playing. I did not recognize the band, because I had not studied the musical lineup before heading out—I was there to fart around.
So I used this one weird journalist trick: I asked the nearest local elected official that I could see. Bloomington Township trustee Efrat Rosser told me the band was Sleater-Kinney, which features Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, who is co-star of the series Portlandia.
The one lyric I remember from the performance was “sunny day”—so I farted around on the internet for a bit to track it down, landing on a Sleater-Kinney song called “Modern Woman.” The phrase shows up in a refrain: “My whole life / Was like a picture of a sunny day.”
I asked ChatGPT what the song meant. The AI robot produced a thing that I figured was worth picking a fake fight about. The fake fight I picked was over the line “I took my money And bought a donut / The hole’s the size of this entire world.”
Here was my response to the robot: “The song just doesn’t work, because it portrays donuts in a negative light, when everybody loves a donut.”
ChatGPT was undaunted and composed a revised essay with seven sections, concluding with this one:
Reconciling the Donut Issue:
To address the critique that the song doesn’t work because “everybody loves a donut,” it’s important to focus on the broader metaphor. While donuts are generally seen positively, the song uses them to represent the fleeting nature of consumer satisfaction. The song isn’t anti-donut; it’s anti-reliance on material goods for deep happiness. This nuanced view can help listeners understand the intended message without feeling alienated by the negative portrayal of a beloved item.
In summary, while the song uses the donut metaphor to critique consumer culture, the inherent positivity associated with donuts might undermine this message for some listeners. The song’s broader critique remains relevant, but acknowledging this disconnect is important for a comprehensive analysis.
Based on that response, I don’t think ChatGPT knows how to fart around. Or maybe it’s just doing it better than me.
I’ll wrap this up with an image I created shortly after Vonnegut’s death in 2007. It features promotional yardstick from the Vonnegut family hardware store in Indianapolis, which has accumulated to the set of my wife’s possessions. Her dad attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis at the same time as Kurt Vonnegut.
I added the little rubber baby riding a little rubber pig based on a quote, which at the time I attributed to Vonnegut’s commentary on the Iraq War, but which now does not turn up in any internet search that I have tried. I am not sure why. Anyhow here’s the quote and the image:
