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20c28a0
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I am by now completely convinced that my downfall in life is going to be my inability to achieve computer nirvana like a true hacker or hackette. I think this lacking is the most unmodern facet of my personality--the career equivalent of having six fingers, or a vestigial tail.
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Douglas Coupland |
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7c40540
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Ho chiesto a Kaitlin qualcosa sull'ironia ed e saltato fuori che solo il venti per cento degli esseri umani possiede il senso dell'ironia - il che significa che l'ottanta per cento del pianeta prende tutto seriamente. Non riesco a immaginare qualcosa di peggio. Okay, forse si, ci riesco, ma immaginate di leggere il giornale del mattino credendo che sia tutto vero, in qualche misura.
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Douglas Coupland |
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8f75dca
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Nothing very, very good and nothing very, very bad ever lasts for very very long.
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Douglas Coupland |
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408ee93
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Statemi a sentire: il lunedi fa schifo perche sei arrabbiato per non aver potuto dormire fino a tardi, inoltre e anche il giorno in cui avviene il sessanta per cento delle riunioni che ti rovinano la vita. Il martedi fa schifo perche ci sono ancora quattro giorni lavorativi da superare; odi te stesso e il mondo perche sei intrappolato nella ruota per criceti chiamata vita, schiavo della paga. Il mercoledi e terribile perche ti rendi conto, ..
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Douglas Coupland |
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17c0b22
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When you crop a photo, you tell a lie.
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photography
appearances-are-deceiving
photography-quotes
honesty-quotes
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Douglas Coupland |
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1ce1538
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Why is it Americans are socially permitted to say 'fricking' when in fact everyone knows the word they're actually saying is 'fucking'? ...here you have some bland ho-bag telly presenter saying 'I'm so fricking mad' about whatever, while you, the home viewer, know she's three millimeters away from saying 'I'm so fucking mad'. But instead of being outraged because she basically said 'fucking' on TV, everyone giggles, like she's being cute. ...
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Douglas Coupland |
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30b953c
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So I got to thinking that perhaps that's what money is: a crystallization--or, rather, a homogenization--of time and free will into those things we call dollars and pounds and yen and euros. Money multiplies your time. It also expands your agency and broadens the number of things you can do accordingly. Big-time lottery winners haven't won ten million dollars--they've won ten thousand person-years of time to do pretty much anything they wan..
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Douglas Coupland |
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813a438
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Collecting and hoarding seem to be about the loss of others, while philanthropy and de-accessioning are more about the impending loss of self. (Whoever dies with the most toys actually loses.)
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Douglas Coupland |
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cbd3fa6
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I wish I could say that success turns people into plastic dolls, but the truth is that I don't know any successful people
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Douglas Coupland |
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a21c4d8
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I was convinced that all of the people I'd ever gone to school with were headed for great things in life and I wasn't. They were having more fun; finding more meaning in life.
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Douglas Coupland |
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750bc01
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The Fry's chain completely taps into MSE: Male Shopping Energy. This is to say that most guys have about 73 calories of shopping energy, and once these calories are gone, they're gone for the day--if not the week--and can't be regenerated simply by having an Orange Julius at the Food Fair.
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Douglas Coupland |
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cce4112
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Claire put scientifically enhanced popcorn in the microwave oven. "I never feel like I'm putting food in one of these things," she then says, entering with beeps, the time-set into the LED. "It feels more like I'm inserting fuel rods into a core."
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Douglas Coupland |
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7aef1cf
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Nobody ever mentions the good side of OxyContin: It makes you feel like Jesus fucking a horse.
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Douglas Coupland |
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98d7555
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if sophistication is the ability to put a smile on one's existential desperation, then the fear of a glossy sheen is actually the fear that surface equals depth. *** [...] we wake up, we do something--anything--we go to sleep, and we repeat it about 22,000 more times, and then we die. *** Part of our new boredom is that our brain doesn't have any downtime. Even the smallest amount of time not being engaged creates a spooky sensatino that ..
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Douglas Coupland |
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a3b9086
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Los ingenieros del agua dejaron el calentador de la piscina en marcha demasiado tiempo y, por la noche, los vapores de cloro se elevaron por encima de la vida vegetal del planeta, y yo imagine mi carne en el interior de la piscina, calida, protegida, sintiendo la gravedad, pero capaz al mismo tiempo de burlarla flotando. ?Flotarias conmigo ahora, si te lo pidiera, saltarias a la piscina, sin desnudarte siquiera? ?Podria desnudarte dentro, q..
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Douglas Coupland |
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fa94899
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The whole Silicon Valley is oxymoronic--geeky and rich and hip.
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Douglas Coupland |
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9aabffe
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The less of a life, the more mail you need
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Douglas Coupland |
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03386ef
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Loneliness is my curse---our species' curse---it's the gun that shoots the bullets that make us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.
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Douglas Coupland |
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5bcefce
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I'm not cheerful or domestic. I'm drab, crabby and friendless. I fill my days fighting a constant battle to keep my dignity. Loneliness is my curse- our species' curse- it's the gun that shoots the bullets that make us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.
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Douglas Coupland |
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3fbda14
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Please, God, don't let Warren be cheap. I'm too young to discuss coupons.
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Douglas Coupland |
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8778139
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He'd probably no more view his life as a story than he would view his life that of a sea cucumber.
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life
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Douglas Coupland |
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5f4cef7
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Leslie entered the lounge like a taller, studlier version of the Kentucky Fried Chicken colonel.
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kfc
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Douglas Coupland |
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31d0d58
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Holy crap!" Rachel wondered what it was about extreme disaster that made people invoke both religion and excrement - bookends to mark the polarities of human condition?"
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humor
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Douglas Coupland |
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377ddac
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I've been thinking about this so much. When I say time I mean history, or... I think it's human to confuse history with time." "That's for sure." "No, listen. Other animals don't have time - they're simply part of the universe. But people- we get time and history. What if the world had continued on? Try to imagine a Nobel Peace Prize winner of the year 3056, or postage stamps with spatulas on them because we ran out of anything else to put ..
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Douglas Coupland |
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cc7cef6
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Es tarde. Hay baloncesto en la tele; revistas de ordenador y fitness por todas partes. Quiero hablar del amor. ?Se acuerda alguien de esa vieja serie El superagente 86? ?Del principio, cuando Maxwell Smart recorre el pasillo secreto y hay toda una serie de puertas y rejas que se van abriendo lateral y verticalmente? Creo que todo el mundo tiene un monton de puertas como esas entre ellos y el mundo; pero, cuando estas enamorado, todas tus p..
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Douglas Coupland |
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9e68580
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Neal fished around in a bag, removed something and handed it to me. It was a forky thing, but with a round depression. "What the fuck is this?" "It's a spork." --
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Douglas Coupland |
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b157b14
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Jesus, Neal, watching you eat with a spork is like seeing Helen Keller at a ladies' afternoon tea.
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Douglas Coupland |
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6dfce99
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Once you've used your brain flat-out, you can't go into the SLOW mode. You can't drive an Infinite J-3B and then get downgraded to an Daewoo. Brains don't workd that way.
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Douglas Coupland |
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9beaa90
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It had been drilled into us that to feel fear is to not fully trust God. Whoever made that up has never been beneath a cafeteria table with a tiny thread of someone else's blood trickling onto their leg.
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Douglas Coupland |
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31a2ef1
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It's amazing how you can be a total shithead, and yet your soul still wants to hang out with you.
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Douglas Coupland |
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5026ada
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Wow. Whoops. Sorry. ... I just lost two hours inside a YouTube kitten warp.
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technology
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Douglas Coupland |
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1ff7abf
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Could I ever be a Craig? No. A person must be born into Craigdom, with its multiple ski holidays, complex orthodontia, proper nutrition and casual, healthy view of recreational sex. My
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Douglas Coupland |
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1456806
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we started talking more about all of the fiftysomethings being dumped out of the economy by downsizing. No one knows what to do with these people, and it's so sad, because being 50 nowadays isn't like being 50 a hundred years ago when you'd probably be dead.
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Douglas Coupland |
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36401a2
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it would have been an affront to all good souls who had worked for a better world over the millennia not to engineer a system for preserving finer thoughts after the millennium arrived and all ideologies died and people became animals once more.
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Douglas Coupland |
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54bdd18
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At meetings you have to explain what you've accomplished, so naturally you fluff up your work a bit, like pillows on a couch.
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Douglas Coupland |
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a3577cf
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You see ... I know nuclear warheads have a bum rap in our culture--radiation, nuclear winter, massive extinction, sad little doll heads lying in the gutter covered with bits of black muck. But to watch one exploding in real life is insanely fucking awesome. Yes. It is true. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself, snacking on saltines and drinking Arrowhead bottled water while our plane circled a heaving, pulsating, smoking-h..
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Douglas Coupland |
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4d3d6fb
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The thing about Jason Bourne is that he only really shines when he's being chased. Without the forces of evil pursuing him, Jason Bourne is basically council house trash living on KFC and the proceeds of his illegal Polish and Romanian girlfriends who'll toss you off for a tenner at the local lottery ticket kiosk.
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Douglas Coupland |
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06b5a15
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One psycho for every nine stable people in the company is a good ratio.
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Douglas Coupland |
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5c0ec5d
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Sometimes we all forget that the world itself is paradise, and there has been much of late to enourage that amnesia. (Microserfs, p 366)
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Douglas Coupland |
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fdc594b
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People don't have dominion over Nature. it's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing. The future and whatever happens to you after you die - it's all melted together. Death isn't the escape hatch the way it used to be.
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nature
death
dominion
environment
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Douglas Coupland |
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a929377
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I seriously wish that he had spent his entire childhood being serially arse-raped by teachers, scoutmasters, members of the clergy, relatives, policemen, doctors, door-to-door salesmen and all registered sex offenders within a 500-mile radius of his unprotected bedroom.
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Douglas Coupland |
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f197960
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The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be so much more powerful than he will ever be.
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Douglas Coupland |
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9138e6c
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We threw chew toys to Misty, Mom's golden retriever that she bought two years ago secondhand. Misty was supposed to be a seeing-eye dog, but she failed her exam because she's too affectionate. It's a flaw we don't mind.
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Douglas Coupland |
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08b3a3b
|
Brennan remembers a Nortel recruiting truck showing up at a Newbridge mass termination meeting at the local hockey arena and offers this practical advice: "If all the meeting rooms are booked at the same time, it means something's up." By "something," he means firings."
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Douglas Coupland |