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b1aa921
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Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair.
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humanity
nature
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Douglas Coupland |
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98cc002
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You're right, a spleen is a strange thing-we technically don't need one, but maybe spleens are kept in our bodies in case we mutate or evolve, and if we grow wings or tentacles we need to have the spleen in place in order for them to work.
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Douglas Coupland |
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97b7657
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Time, Baby - so much, so much time left until the end of my life - sometimes I go crazy at how slowly time passes yet how quickly my body ages. But I shouldn't allow myself to think like this. I have to remind myself that time only frightens me when I think of having to spend it alone. Sometimes I scare myself with how many of my thoughts revolve around making me feel better about sleeping alone in a room.
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Douglas Coupland |
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3b36fba
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With Jason I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and t..
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Douglas Coupland |
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74f8d5c
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I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.
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Douglas Coupland |
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16587ab
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I think God is how you deal with everything that's out of your own control.
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Douglas Coupland |
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f1785f1
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We're all born lost, aren't we? We're all born separated from God - over and over life makes sure to inform us of this - and yet we're all real: we have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must.
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Douglas Coupland |
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fb18eca
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Hasn't it been a long time since you had a flying dream?
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Douglas Coupland |
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f9e580c
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I'd sooner have died than admit that the most valuable thing I owned was a fairly extensive collection of German industrial music dance mix EP records stored for even further embarrassment under a box of crumbling Christmas tree ornaments in a Portland, Oregon basement. So I told him I owned nothing of any value.
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records
value
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Douglas Coupland |
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507ef16
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The belief that tomorrow is a different place from today is certainly a unique hallmark of our species.
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Douglas Coupland |
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d3bb62c
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I say 'Uhmm...' a lot. I mentioned this to Karla and she says it's a CPU word. It means you're assembling data in your head - spooling.
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Douglas Coupland |
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fa5d1ab
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Besides, animals don't even have time. Only humans have time. It's what makes us different.
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Douglas Coupland |
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16750ca
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You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
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Douglas Coupland |
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ece6892
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Sometimes you accidentally input an extra digit into the year: i.e, 19993 and you add 18,000 years on to *now*, and you realize that the year 19993 will one day exist and that time is a scary thing, indeed.
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Douglas Coupland |
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844d32f
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What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.
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Douglas Coupland |
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1c86d11
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You know what the best thing is about the end of the day? Tomorrow, it starts all over again.
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Douglas Coupland |
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94f830b
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Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail.com.
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individuality
reading
society
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Douglas Coupland |
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b8900cc
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It's starts out young- you try not be different just to survive- you try to be just like everyone else- anonymity becomes reflexive- and then one day you wake up and you've become all those other people- the others- the something you aren't. And you wonder if you can ever be what it is you really are. Or you wonder if it's too late to find out.
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Douglas Coupland |
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3d56c1d
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Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Misplace a single or and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge.
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grammar
language
syntax
words
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Douglas Coupland |
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71f43ec
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You know, from what I've seen, at twenty you know you're not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or a professional. And by thirty, a darkness starts moving in - you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing the rest of your life; you become resigned to your fate.
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Douglas Coupland |
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38170e0
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a feeling at once destructive, romantic, and grand-like falling into a swimming pool dressed in a tuxedo.
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Douglas Coupland |
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1f2a7f7
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Q: If you could be an animal, what kind of animal would you be? A: You already are an animal.
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Douglas Coupland |
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94cf5ca
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I sit on the steps in the heat of the sun and listen as one by one these car alarms extinguish themselves until once more only the muted roar of the city is audible, and the city, bathed in sunlight, once again resumes dreaming its collective dream. Cars roll down the city's roads, plants grow from its soil, wealth is generated in its rooms, hope is created and lost and recreated in the minds and souls of its inhabitants, and the city conti..
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Douglas Coupland |
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89c5c02
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Anyway, I want to remember that love can happen. Because there is life after not having a life. I never expected love to happen. What was I expecting from life, then?
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Douglas Coupland |
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f8a44cd
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Is that all time is - our perception of how quickly it does or does not pass?
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time
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Douglas Coupland |
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f2dc4d9
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And in his heart, I think, he's now learned what I came to believe, which is, as I've said all along, that the sun may burn brightly, and the faces of children may be plump and achingly sweet, but in the air we breathe, in the water we drink and in the food we share, there will always be darkness in this world.
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Douglas Coupland |
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79f31ac
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What I will tell you, son of sons, is this: shortly, if not already, you will begin noticing the blackness inside us all. You will develop black secrets and commit black actions. You will be shocked at the insensitivities and transgressions you are capable of, yet you will be unable to stop them. And by the time you are thirty, your friends will all have black secrets, too, but it will be years before you learn exactly *what* their black se..
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Douglas Coupland |
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df1c761
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People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.
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books
brain
hijack
songs
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Douglas Coupland |
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e55c453
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Sometimes I think God is like weather--you may not like the weather, but it has nothing to do wit you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it.
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Douglas Coupland |
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c326a07
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And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning's will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.
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Douglas Coupland |
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e914a23
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And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature-the core me-essentially hasn't changed all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel that same way I did when I woke up at the age of five.
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Douglas Coupland |
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5986286
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As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would float and be naked--pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses--all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter. Our minds would be blank and our eyes closed as we floated in warm waters, the distinction between our bodies and our brains reduced to nothing--bathed in chlorine and lit b..
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Douglas Coupland |
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8233675
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Life was charmed but without politics or religion. It was the life of children of the children of the pioneers -life after God- a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven. Perhaps this is the finest thing to which we may aspire, the life of peace, the blurring between dream life and real life - and yet I find myself speaking these words with a sense of doubt. I think there was a trade-off somewhere along the line. I think the price w..
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Douglas Coupland |
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a0204fd
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Life is maybe like deep-sea fishing. We wake up in the morning, we cast our nets into the water, an, if we are lucky, at day's end we will have netted one-- maybe two-- small fish. Occasionally we will net a seahorse or sometimes a shark-- or a life preserver or an iceberg, or a monster. And in our dreams at night we assess our Catch of the Day-- the treasures of this long, slow process of accumulation...
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Douglas Coupland |
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44e8845
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You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.
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Douglas Coupland |
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92425ac
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At least when you're young you're also stupid.
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Douglas Coupland |
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8706750
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It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we understand the factors that make us do the things we do?
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Douglas Coupland |
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7813b69
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Imagine you are sitting down in a chair and on a screen before you you are shown a bloody, ripping film of yourself undergoing surgery. The surgery saved your life. It was pivotal in making you you. But you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we ever understand the factors that make us do the things we do? When we sleep at night - when we walk across a field and see a tree full of sleeping ..
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Douglas Coupland |
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031f41b
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All systems have failed me. In five minutes I'll be fine again for a while, but right now the inside of my head feels like Niagara
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Douglas Coupland |
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539ee13
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Death without the possibility of ever changing the world is the same as a life that never was.
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Douglas Coupland |
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3ebbae4
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Our achievements may make us interesting, Tyler, but our darkness makes us lovable.
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Douglas Coupland |
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6035bd2
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Dimanchophobia:
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sundays
time
unstructured-time
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Douglas Coupland |
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c55afb3
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Post-adolescent Expert Syndrome The tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the battlefield. Also the reason why religions recruit kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers almost exclusively from the 18-21 range. "Kyle, I never would have guessed that when you were up in your bed..
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teenagers
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Douglas Coupland |
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2d458cc
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So I came down here, to breathe dust and walk with the dogs-- to look at a rock or a cactus and know that I am the first person to see that cactus and that rock.
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Douglas Coupland |