Slaughterhouse Five News Feed From the book Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float by Sarah Schmelling

Billy Pilgrim is on planet Tralfamadore with a bunch of creatures shaped like toilet plungers. Barbara Pilgrim: I thought we talked about this. Billy: What is it about this that makes you so mad? Barbara: None of it’s true! There is no such planet! Billy: It can’t be detected from Earth, if that’s what you mean.

Barbara isn’t sure what to do with her father. Billy: I’m unstuck in time. Barbara: Is that so. Billy: Yes, in fact, I was just at a banquet for your brother’s Little League team. Before that I was in a forest in World War II. Then I was back in the womb. Barbara: Please don’t lie to me. Kurt Vonnegut: This was a fairly pretty girl, except that she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano. Barbara: What’s going on? Kurt Vonnegut: Barbara is a bitchy flibbertigibbet. Barbara: I’m going to log off for a while.

Billy is drunk in the backseat of his car. Billy sent a Tell Me Where My Steering Wheel Is So I can Drive Home request. Billy received a Standing Ovation from the Lions Club. Billy added Frozen European Creek Bed in World War II to his Places I Didn’t Plan on Visiting. Billy received The Crap Beat Out of Him from Roland Weary.

Billy is rich as Croesus. Billy removed “staying awak during patient visits at my optometry office” from his Activities. The Germans added Billy to their Prisoners of War. Billy became a fan of “Magic Fingers” Bed- Vibrator Machines. Billy took a What Kind of Earthling Are You? quiz with the result “Fine Specimen.”

Billy is nestled like spoons with a hobo. Billy saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. Billy added “If you’re ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!” to his Favorite Quotations. Kurt Vonnegut added “So it goes” to his Effective Rhetorical Devices. The Germans sent Billy a Coat That’s More Like a Three-Cornered Hat with Gummy Stains and a Dead, Furry Animal Frozen to It.

Billy says that to the Tralfamadorians, the heavens look like they’re filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. Billy added “have spent time as a Nonviolent Mental Patient” to his About Me. Billy is twelve years old, terrified, and standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon. Billy is being deloused. Billy is attending The Saddest-Ever Version of Cinderella.

Billy received His Own Time of Death. Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes. Billy became a fan of Kilgore Trout. Billy is now married to Valencia Merble. Valencia Merble joined the group Women with Carbon Monoxide Intolerance. Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes. Billy is loony with time travel and morphine.

Billy received a Mating request from Montana Wildhack, motion picture star. Billy is being patronized by a Blue Fairy Godmother. Billy took a leak in the simulated earthling habitat of the Tralfamadorian zoo. The crowd went wild. Barbara: Did you hear what I said? If you’re going to act like a child, maybe we’ll just have to treat you like a child. Billy: That isn’t what happens next. Barbara: We’ll see what happens next.

Billy is leading a sad parade of American prisoners through the streets of Dresden wearing a blue toga and silver shoes, with his hands in a muff. Billy is boarding a plane that he knows is going to crash, but he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so. Billy added “Making (while eating a lot of) malt syrup” to his Activities.

Billy is now friends with Kilgore Trout. Billy is crying his eyes out at a barbershop quartet. Billy is attending the Bombing of Dresden via Meat Locker. Billy doesn’t have echolalia. Billy is snoozing in the back of a wagon.

Billy suddenly wants to tell the world the lessons he learned on Tralfamadore. Barbara is putting Billy to bed and turning on the Magic Fingers. Barbara: Don’t go anywhere Dad. Billy is sneaking out and going to New York to go on the radio and tell the world about Tralfamadore.

Billy posted a Note. --I’m going to die February 13, So it goes. --That’s okay--to the Tralfamadorians, it’s just one moment in time and I’ll still be alive elsewhere. --The Tralfamadorians ignore the awful moments and concentrate on the good ones.

Kurt Vonnegut is grateful, then, that so many of his moments are nice. Billy was told that Tralfamadorian novels are a series of urgent messages with no particular relationship to each other, but that when seen all at once make something beautiful. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a Tralfamadorian novel. Kurt Vonnegut is not a fan of war.

Kurt Vonnegut said at the start of his story that there’s nothing to say about a massacre, when everything is supposed to be quiet, except for the birds that say “Poo-tee-weet?” Billy woke up one day in Dresden, and World War II was over. A Bird: Poo-tee-weet?