Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/19/kurt-vonnegut-butt.html
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That’s an interesting thing that I’m surprised no-one brought up during the whole tedious Hugo Awards Puppy kerfuffle in 2015.
In which, at the ceremony at the Spokane Worldcon, nominees were presented with laser cut wooden asterisk… coasters perhaps? And some folks took huge offence (generally the folks being hugely offensive admittedly).
In the UK an asterisk is often used to indicate a pinnacle of achievement - the top grade in an exam is not just an A, but an A* for example. So the purported motivation of the con committee, pointing out to people that they were very special made reasonable sense.
For Abe…
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What, everyone? Cos, well, you know how that saying goes… 
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As a physicist, I identify strongly with this image. It’s always bothered me that my asshole doesn’t have any discrete symmetries around the singularity, and I applaud this upgrade to C2 (180 degree rotational sym [NOTE 1]).
NOTE 1: Some of you will argue for the D point symmetry class that includes reflection of the plane, but please note that real assholes exist on a callipygously curved spacetime manifold [NOTE 2].
NOTE 2: The idea that asses were perfectly flat at some point in the distant past, and then `exploded’ into 3 dimensionality, aka “the big spank”, has been found to have no predictive power [NOTE 3], and is now more of a daydream than a mainstream hypothesis.
NOTE 3: But the asstronomical constant and accelerating expansion are totally f’reel.
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Does it come in black?
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*Buys shirt
Please buy from the Kurt Vonnegut Library, because it supports this great place, and is officially licensed: https://squareup.com/market/kvml/item/asterisk-shirt
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It was only just the other day that I first encountered the term “splatbook”. Because apparently “the asterisk is also known as a ‘splat’”.
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My favorite illustrated page from Breakfast of Champions, besides the one with the asterisk-asshole:
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Thank you. TIL that those gaming books on that shelf have a name beside “the other Warhammer and/or Vampire books.”
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There is an audiobook version of “Breakfast of Champions” narrated by John Malkovich. It is hilarious to hear Malkovich, in his droll voice, describe the drawing, “And then there is a drawing of an a**hole that looks like an 12 sided star.” (Or maybe he says asterisk? I now forget!)
I don’t have the audio clip of that particular moment, but here is a quick video about the behind the scenes of the recording:
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Wait a minute…that second beaver is sporting Vonnegut’s hairstyle!
Is this like when Chuck Jones drew Dr. Seuss’ Grinch and it began to look like him?
Have I just created the most unlikely segue ever?
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I think it it was Patrick Henry whose famous last words were “I regret that I have but one asterisk for my country.”
Same thing, really.
Welcome to BoingBoing!
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What saying, this one?
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Thank you!
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Now my avatar is either awkward or awesome in this thread, not sure which.
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