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3efcd88
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My mood has changed now. And the sun has gone behind the clouds. I'm in this mood I feel occasionally... this mood where there's a very good friend nearby who I should be phoning. If only I could reach that friend and talk, then everything would be just fine. The dilemma is, of course, I just don't know who that friend is. But in my heart I know my mood is merely me feeling disconnected from my true inner self.
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Douglas Coupland |
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c025bc8
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It's like male geeks don't know how to deal with real live women, so they just assume it's a user interface problem. Not their fault. They'll just wait for the next version to come out- something more "user friendly."
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Douglas Coupland |
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5446b4a
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I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even ..
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consumer-culture
end-of-the-word
feudalism
technology
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Douglas Coupland |
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58661a9
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I wondered what it was to pray, because it was something I have never learned to do, and all I remember is falling.
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Douglas Coupland |
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5969723
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You like all animals at that moment, although no doubt you will one day choose your favorites. Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures. You popped out of your mother's belly, I saw your eyes, and I knew that you were already you. And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature--the core me--essentially hasn't changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments be..
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Douglas Coupland |
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520062d
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What is prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story -- something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.
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Douglas Coupland |
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872dfdb
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My brain feels like a cool, deep lake.
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Douglas Coupland |
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c8c91fc
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Life is soon
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Douglas Coupland |
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d7e59d8
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you're too old not to have had, how shall I say, certain experiences. You've had bad internet dates. You've had people be creeps to you. 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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madness
ideology
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Douglas Coupland |
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cc4695e
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Maybe thinking you're supposed to 'have a life' is a stupid way of buying into an untenable 1950s narrative of what life *supposed* to be. How do we know that all of these people with 'no lives' aren't really on the new frontier of human sentience and preceptions?
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Douglas Coupland |
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d7ca08f
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one of the biggest indicators for success in life is having a few crazy relatives. So long as you get only some of the crazy genes, you don't end up crazy; you merely end up different. And it's that difference that gives you an edge, that makes you successfull.
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Douglas Coupland |
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b2927ad
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And when you do find this letter, you know what? Something extraordinary will happen. It will be like a reverse solar eclipse - the sun will start shining down in the middle of night, imagine that!
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Douglas Coupland |
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eb78d27
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Maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't know even half the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of i..
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Douglas Coupland |
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7019fda
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The world was so unbearably pretty, and it continued being so all the way down the mountain to school. I felt slightly high because of the beauty, and the inside of my head tickled. I wondered if this is how artists go through life, with all of its sensations tickling their craniums like a peacock feather..
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nature
beauty
life
hey-nostradamus
high
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Douglas Coupland |
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e94394a
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Or maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't even know the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its..
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music
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Douglas Coupland |
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8af346d
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What one moment from you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet. What's your takeaway?'' There is silence. Tobias doesn't get her point, and frankly, neither do I. She continues: ''Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive.
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Douglas Coupland |
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7e82e23
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Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound--people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. I wonder if some day, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and h..
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Douglas Coupland |
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b187a2b
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You should be spreading the good word. You should be etching the good word onto the glass scanning beds of library photocopiers. You should be scraping the truth onto old auto parts and throwing them off bridges so that people digging in the mud in a million years will question the world, too. You should be carving eyeballs into tire treads and onto shoe soles so that your every trail speaks of thinking and faith and belief. You should be d..
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truth
urgency
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Douglas Coupland |
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1226da3
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If somebody wants to run for office, they had better to explain why they want to run for office. Wanting to be a candidate seems, in itself, reason for exclusion.
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Douglas Coupland |
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9b21d5b
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Our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events - a story - and when we can't figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow.
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Douglas Coupland |
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edc207b
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Okay, I know--my superpower--I'd be able to shoot lightening bolts out from my fingertips--great big knowledge network lightening bolts--and when a person was zapped by one of those bolts, they'd fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be under water, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school--and then they'd be up ..
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wisdom-inspirational
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Douglas Coupland |
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3637351
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What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?
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Douglas Coupland |
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0b54b0a
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Life is so expensive.
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Douglas Coupland |
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a944309
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In my ears i hear a noise, and this noise is the sound of the color of the sun.
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Douglas Coupland |
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61b2b36
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I used the phrase 'a certain age.' What I mean by this is the age people are in their heads. It's usually thirty to thirty-four. Nobody is forty in their head. When it comes to your internal age, chin wattles and relentless liver spots mean nothing.
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Douglas Coupland |
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6b8eab8
|
Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.
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state-of-being
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Douglas Coupland |
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173f5c9
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He felt intact but worthless, like a chocolate rabbit selling for 75 percent off the month after Easter.
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Douglas Coupland |
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291d976
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This place is like some cosmic dream crusher. All you can get out of a place like this is a creepy little tingle that lets you know your kid is never going to be anything more than a customer-that the whole world is being turned into casino.
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Douglas Coupland |
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666b7af
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Susan, nonetheless, wanted to know why she was having such a dating problem. Dusty said, "I think your problem is that you think everyone else is a freak except you, but everybody's a freak- you included- and once you learn that, the World of Dating is yours."
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Douglas Coupland |
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fa7cca5
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You will see the effects of dark secrets making themselves known-- via their minds and bodies and via the stories your friends...will begin telling you...The only payback for all of this-- for the conversion of their once-young hearts into tar--will be that you will love your friends more, even though they have made you see the universe as an emptier and scarier place...
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Douglas Coupland |
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8fee767
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Life need not be a story, but it does need to be an adventure.
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Douglas Coupland |
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a89c1a9
|
Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.
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Douglas Coupland |
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92badb7
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Dag insists that all dogs secretly speak the English language and subscribe to the morals and beliefs of the Unitarian church...
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Douglas Coupland |
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fa7afeb
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It's so hard to balance in our minds the knowledge that 'the world' is mundanely 'a planet.' The former is so holy; the latter merely a science project.
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world
science
planet
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Douglas Coupland |
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eb38304
|
The world is a glorious place, and filled with so many unexpected moments that I'd get lumps in my throat, as though I were watching a bride walk down the aisle - moments as eternal and full of love as the lifting of veils, the saying of vows and the moment of the first wedded kiss.
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life
love
wedding
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Douglas Coupland |
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64bcd80
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Anti-sabbatical: A job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing computer knit sweaters in Hong Kong. Employers are rarely informed of intentions
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Douglas Coupland |
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98b00fc
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I walked far down a dirt side road and into a farmer's field - some sort of cereal that was chest high and corn green and rustled as its blades inflicted small paper burns on my skin as I walked through them. And in that field, when the appointed hour, minute, and second of the darkness came, I lay myself down on the ground, surrounded by the tall pithy grain stalks and the faint sound of insects, and held my breath, there experiencing a mo..
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Douglas Coupland |
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c111d6c
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But then a bumblebee bumbled above us and it stole our attention the way flying things can. Mom... Dad...
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Douglas Coupland |
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676c51c
|
And the reason Luke is thinking about time and free will is because he believes that money is the closest human beings have ever come to crystallizing time and free will into a compact physical form. Cash. Cash is a time crystal. Cash allows you to multiply your will, and it allows you to speed up time. Cash is what defines us as a species. Nothing else in the universe has money.
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money
time
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Douglas Coupland |
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40607e1
|
As brothers and sister we knew instinctively that if we were going to stand in darkness, best we stand in a darkness we had made ourselves.
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Douglas Coupland |
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0d1b93f
|
I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this strongly about anything or anybody ever again. This was unexpected, my soul's connection to you. You stole my loneliness No one knows that I was wishing for you, a thief, to enter my house of autonomy, that I had locked my doors but my Windows were open, hoping, but not believing, you would enter.
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Douglas Coupland |
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da31164
|
When you're young, you feel like life hasn't yet begun, like life is scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays - whenever. But suddenly you're old, and the scheduled life never arrived. I find myself asking, 'Well, then, exactly what was it I was doing with all that time I had before I thought my life would begin?
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Douglas Coupland |
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3500506
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How did society ever function without you, little Sharpies? Your nibs have the precise amount of give to create a line quality with character, yet not so much character as to be smushy. Thank you, little pens.
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Douglas Coupland |
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84541e7
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You don't believe magic is possible in lives lived within traditional boundaries.
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Douglas Coupland |