03 August 2007

No one remembers Richard Bachman

I had a dream last night that I met Stephen King. I read a lot of Stephen King between the ages of 12 and 18. I haven’t read anything of his since The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which came out in 1999. So, in my dream I was at his house and he was sitting on an easy chair and I was lounging on the floor, all relaxed-like. He had flying fish in his apartment. They were just swimming through the air, and crapping everywhere the way I assume a pet budgie would when let out of its cage. They looked like parrot fish.

What do you suppose we talked about? Me, the one-time aspiring author and Him, the one-time greatest horror writer in the world? (He’s not the greatest anymore. He hasn’t written a decent thing since some guy plowed him down on the side of the road. I don’t read horror anymore, so I’m not sure who usurped the throne.) Well, I (of course) lectured him on the ills of the commercial fishing industry. I seriously told him that he shouldn’t eat fish, then I told him why, in great detail. He wasn’t listening to me and was trying to convince me that eating fish is okay. I don't care if you are they guy who wrote IT, and therefore caused generations of adolescents to be afraid of clowns (my best friend was afraid of the shower for weeks after seeing the movie). I don't even care if you wrote the original stories for The Shawshank Redemption and The Shining. Eating fish is never okay, Stephen.

No comments: