Terror

This week has been a good week. Apart from work, which is eternally a source of varying degrees of uncomfortability. rather, thursday, friday, saturday will be/were good'n's. thursday, after school and after applying for my passport, i got together with my friend dane for a couple of hours. we enjoyed food, funny movies, and each other's company. It was pretty sweet, basically.

I went home, messed around on the internet for a few minutes, and then went to take a nap before tae kwon do. I wasn't laying down for more than three minutes when my roommate Drew shouts, "Cuyler, you need to wake up now!" "Son of a bitch," read my thoughts, "is something on fire? I don't wanna be running and stuff." "Dan Simmons is at the tattered cover!" he shouts. As soon as he hit the S in Simmons, I was falling out of bed struggling to put on my pants. I emerged from my room, pants mostly on, shirt half on, shouting to Drew, "come on! what's taking so long?" We were off to Dan Simmons.

Dan Simmons is my favorite modern author. Author above authors. He writes cross genre fiction. Everything from horror, to adventure, sci-fi (mostly speculative), detective, as well as romance i do believe, though i haven't read his romance. My two favorite book (series) by him is one called Hyperion (the strange epic struggle between the god of the humans and the god of the machines), and another called Ilium (the trojan war... in space. Sounds lame, I know, but it ain't. It rocks balls.).

I love listening to Dan Simmons speak. I've only gotten to do it one other time, but I loved it then, and I loved it this time. He always talks about the process of creating his novels and the sources that go into it, and a thousand other details. He spent most of the time discussing 1840's British naval exploration this time, as his novel is the fictional, and monstrous, account of a real voyage that got lost in Antarctica, and the clues they've found are simultaneously terrifying and maddening. For example: they found a long boat stuck in the ice with several men aboard. Three of them completely clothed, frozen to the boat. A third, a complete skeleton, with tooth marks and knife marks marring the skeleton. "They turned cannibal" one expert is quoted as saying. That's possible, but apparently this skeleton was of a fourteen year old boy when the youngest person that left port would have been 18, and at the time of their disappearance, 23. there are several similar occurrences. Another longboat with another skeleton, this one full grown, another fully clothed man at the back of the boat, gripping the side of the boat in, what is assumed, fear. No visible signs of aggression between the clothed man and the naked skeleton.

The last time he came to the Tattered Cover, Dan said, "I am here, with my people, in my church." He was referring to the book store. He went on to elaborate that with such small numbers (readers as a whole), surely we accounted for something that could be considered religious. He then gave us facts: "Roughly 2 per cent of Americans read for pleasure. 50% of that number read trashy romance novels. I speculate that 95% of those left read those damned Left Behind novels." We all laughed. I felt a little bad that the only piece of prevalent Christian literature has got to be some of its worst, and the only Dan would have been exposed to. I mean, not that Christians have done anything really worth while since this country was founded, but nevertheless, why couldn't he have discovered Donald Miller, or Rob Bell?

I bought 3 books: 1 to read, 1 to never touch (which he drew a picture in of a terrified crewman. awesome.), and 1 to give to my absent friend. I talked to him briefly about how I learned of the mistake of only buying one signed copy, but mostly, I would just like to listen to him talk. The guy in front of me criticized Dan for his description of a polar bear: "you said that the creature had a triangle-head. now, when i picture a polar bear, I don't see a triangle for a head. I see a head that might be described as triangular, but not a triangle-head."
"That's because it's not a polar bear. It's my monster," Dan responded. I chuckled. What kind of douchebag criticizes the author signing his own book? Especially when you, the signee, are more than likely completely incapable of producing an equivalent.

After that, Drew's mom and grandpa took us to get some dinner. I like drew's grandpa. He's a friendly type who reads way more than I do, and way more than I ever have.

Tonight, I have dinner with a friend, tomorrow a day with friends, and dinner with friends as well. Sunday is church, and quite possibly dinner with friends.

And while work is always a source of discomfiture, there were 2 awesome spots. In chronological order: an older guy said, "I couldn't help but overhearing, you're a bass player?" So we got to talking, and it turns out he's the frontman of a local act in denver. He says he wants to give me a call and have me try out for playing with them. That would be pure awesome, and a pseudo fulfillment of a minor dream: to play local music.

2. This full on awesome kid. He was maybe a year and a half. Couldn't really speak yet, but he was really charismatic, and him and I had a good time talking gibberish back and forth. Then he started yelling: AAAAAAHHH!!! AAAAAAHHH!!! AAAAHHHH!!! So i turned to him and went, "hey, shhhh!" so then he put his hand over his mouth and in a hushed whisper yelled: aaaahhhh! aaahhh! that kid was awesome and, quite frankly, positively impacted the rest of my week.