Cat' s cradle

"Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John. Jonah - John - if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still - not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.
Listen:
When I was a younger man - two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago ...
When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be caUed The Day the World Ended. The book was to be factual. The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was droppe'd on Hiroshima, Japan. It was to be a Chrisdan book. I was a Chrisdan then. I am a Bokononist now. I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon. But Bokononism was unknown beyond the gravel beaches and coral knives that ring this little island in the Caribbean Sea, the Republic of San
Lorenzo."