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f0312fb
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If you know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow, the voltage of that experience is immediately mitigated.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e964a41
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His separation from the rest of society is beyond vast. But we are not working within the parameters of reality; we are working within the parameters of televised sport. And that's a critical difference. It essentially makes Ralph Sampson a tall, emotive, representational nonhuman slave. And within these parameters, four thousand rebounds don't mean shit.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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1f5a818
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accelerated culture does not respond well to the nonobvious.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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258483a
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Sampson wanted to be "a seven-foot-four guard." He was too pretty to be a soldier. Against the profoundly overmatched Chaminade, he took just nine shots and let his unbeatable team lose to a bunch of beach bum nobodies. He was the greatest, but he wasn't that great."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8854430
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There is no alternative universe where Ralph Sampson is a beloved symbol of excellence. There's no Philip K. Dick novel where he averages a career double-double and gets four rings. He could never be that guy. He was needed elsewhere, for other reasons. He was needed to remind people that their own self-imposed mediocrity is better than choking on transcendence.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7333741
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A ten-year-old boy doesn't want a hyper-dexterous giant to choke, just as a ten-year-old girl doesn't feel good when Britney Spears has a nervous breakdown on live TV. Only an adult can feel good about someone else's failure.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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45e575e
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The most popular single in the world was "Livin' la Vida Loca," a song about how Pro Tools made Puerto Ricans gay."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e077d98
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If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us--leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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06a78c2
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Axl Rose is the ear-cutting scene from Reservoir Dogs in human form.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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93cf11a
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Here, of course, lies the biggest difference between a successful interviewer and an unsuccessful one: the successful one makes the interviewee feel as though he or she is interested in the answers. The unsuccessful interviewer--and I have sat in or listened to enough interviews to know, unfortunately, and disappointingly, how common they are--does not.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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abb4e49
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Perry wanted to be the villain, probably for strategic reasons. But it didn't take. He wasn't smart enough; he probably didn't even know how "Ayn" was pronounced." --
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2a17eb1
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Metaphoric sheep get no love. There's no worse thing to be compared to, at least among conspiracy theorists. "You're just a sheep," they will say. "You believe what they want you to believe." But this implies that they--the metaphoric shepherds--have something they want you to accept. It implies that these world-altering shepherds are consciously leading their sheeple to a conclusion that plays to their benefit. No one considers the possibi..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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fd8c390
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But it would be far more effective--and considerably more inventive--to enact that same process with a text that has no preexisting meaning. A book that is "just a book": the forgotten airport bestseller no one took seriously or the utterly unknown memoir that can be reframed as brilliant and ultra-prescient. Instead of fitting the present (past) into the future, we will jam the present (future) into the present (past).18 And it won't be th..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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57f1457
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The practical reality is that any present-tense version of the world is unstable.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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068f434
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But I've mellowed over time, which is what all wine drunks and dope smokers say when trying to justify why they quit trying.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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342b760
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But here's the thing: He didn't get hung. The man climbed on a wooden watercraft and collided with North America by accident. It doesn't matter what happened afterwards or what his motives were. He found it. It happened. He's what history is. It was his destiny to be that particular man, and it was his destiny to do those specific things.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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fc2a85d
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Let's assume it was Christopher Columbus's "destiny" to discover the New World, and let's pretend he was consciously aware of that fact. What possible difference would that have made in his day-to-day life? He still had to build the boats."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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62ddfbc
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On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted.
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politics
rhetoric
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6fc2e59
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Sometimes I want to unknow things.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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058bc30
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Like so many modern people, my relationship with technology makes no sense whatsoever: It's the most important aspect of my that I hate.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8be4b4e
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In a roundabout way, Boba Fett created Pearl Jam.
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science-fiction
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9e93edd
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Gravity might just be the manifestation of other forces---not a force itself, but the peripheral result of something else... So if gravity were an emergent force, It would mean that gravity isn't the central power pulling things to the Earth, but the tangential consequence of something else we can't yet explain. We feel it, but it's not there. It would almost make the whole idea of "gravity" a semantic construction. [Attributed to Brian Gre..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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21a1374
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If you aspire to be truly open-minded, you can't just try to see the other side of an argument. That's not enough. You have to go all the way.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e3a072e
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If we all took media messages at their absolute face value, we'd all be sleeping with our best friends. And that does happen, sometimes.* But herein lies the trap: We've also been trained to think this will always work out over the long term, which dooms us to disappointment. Because when push comes to shove, we really don't want to have sex with our friends... unless they're sexy. And sometimes we do want to have sex with our blackhearted,..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6620701
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Without a soundtrack, human interaction is meaningless... I never have any idea how other people feel; they always appear fine to me. But if somebody had pointedly played Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" that night, I'm sure I could have constructed some empathy."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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63f90bb
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And this is not a criticism of coolness: by and large, the musical component of rock isn't nearly as important as the iconography and the posturing and the idea of what we're supposed to be experiencing. If given the choice between hearing a great band and seeing a cool band, I'll take the latter every single time; this is why the Eagles suck.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cc9b2c5
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As of the writing of this particular book, I have 43 "close friends,"* 196 "good friends,"** and 2,200 "affable acquaintances."*** *These are people I would phone immediately if I was diagnosed with lung cancer. ** These are people whose death from lung cancer would make me profoundly sad. *** These are people I would generally hope would recover from lung cancer."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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34fdc20
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The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no "normal," because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. You can't compare your relationship with the playful couple who lives next door, because they're probably modeling themselves after Chandler Bing and Monica Geller. Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are ..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b41da35
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It's impossible to understand the world of today until today has become tomorrow.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cd3c909
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I rarely remember the names or faces of nonfictional people.
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lit-lover-problems
vague
preface
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9162fdd
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Sometimes I find myself wishing that the world would end in my lifetime, since that would be oddly flattering; we'd all be part of humanity's apex. That's about as great an accomplishment as I can hope for,
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7211579
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Part of the presidential job description is the absorption of public vitriol.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6c4092c
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Important things are inevitably cliche.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b61e361
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Even eternally free people are enslaved by the process of living.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cdcc5df
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This is the kind of shit that would prompt Tyler Durden to hit somebody in the face.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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803269b
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This SimChuck is one suave bastard.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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208eebc
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We smooch hardcore.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b731dc9
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Seeing no resolution to my existential recognition of loss, I decide to eat lunch.
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Chuck Klosterman |