Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

So, true story.  I went to college with Garret.   He was amazing.   Brilliant, kind, and full of energy.   He was hilarious, he was brilliant, and he most often surprised me every single time he sought me out and sat down next to me.   He sat down to me at one point, and just goes, "Hey, you know what?  I wonder how obsessive-compulisve the guy who wrote the first dictionary was.   Not only did he need to know what every single word meant, he needed to write it down."

At another point, he sat down next to me, and confessed he wanted to open a restaurant that sold ice.   Cubed ice, crushed ice, shaped ice, all kinds of ice.   But just ice.   He also wanted to call it something like Uncle Joe's Southern Cooking and have ads that were of juicy hamburgers rotating, so you could see all of it.   He thought of the truth in advertising angle, too.   When you came in and found out all he sold was ice, he was going to tell you, "Well, I never said you couldn't bring your own..."  I believe that conversation ended with me, gaping at him, telling him he'd lose so much money.   He nodded, and said something along the lines of he knew but he thought it would be hilarious anyway.   

He sat down next to me at another point, and goes, "Hey, did you know there's a cure for the common cold?"   He listed the side effects, all of which were symptoms of the flu.   He also ended with, "They made a cure for the cold that gives you the flu.    That's like coming up with a cure for depression, but it gives you hallucinations and paranoia.   Hey, you don't have depression; now you have schizophrenia."   

There was never preamble to this, either.   He just sat down and kinda got right down to his oftentimes strange, but always hilarious or brilliant thoughts.   He also seemed to know every time I was depressed; he would come across campus, knock on my door, and cheer me up.   

Anyway, I picked up Murderland.   I'm going to start it immediately.   I hope it's as disturbing and twisted as the modern day Divine Comedy Garret had been working on in our college courses.   It was - and I know I'm using these words too much - as amazing and brilliant as anything else Garrett did.   

If this is half as good as anything he was producing in college, it'll be one of my favorite books.