Today sucks. Two massive institutions have passed on. The elusive, enigmatic author JD Salinger has died of natural causes in his Cornish, NH home. Salinger’s last work was published in 1965 and he hasn’t given an interview since 1980. I mean, he could have really died in the 80s for all we know.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” Catcher in the Rye – opening line.

News also came in today that leftist academic Howard Zinn has died. When I was in college as a history major, Zinn was a god. His seminal tome “A People’s History of the United States” changed how Americans look at their past and took the spotlight off the founding fathers and put it on the laborers, feminist activists, and the Native Americans; the real backbone of the nation.

“Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

Someone in the afterlife buy these cats a drink.

- Oh Mars