Microserfs

by Douglas Coupland

I feel like my body is a station wagon in which I drive my brain around, like a suburban mother taking the kids to hockey practice.

Todd is historically empty. He neither knows nor cares about the past.

“Imagine being a bee and living in a great big hive. You would have no idea that tomorrow was going to be any different than today. You could return to that same hive a thousand years later and there would be just the same perception of tomorrow as never being any different. Humans are completely different. We assume tomorrow is another world.

He went to Costco to stock up on Jif, and he ended up buying a trampoline

Identity is so tenuous—based on so little, when you really consider it.

Everyone’s body had certainly aged over the decade, but everyone’s essence was essentially the same as it had been when we were all in kindergarten.

she has so few ears in her life who will listen. Who really ever does, I guess?

The two of you start talking about your feelings and your feelings float outside of you like vapors, and they mix together like a fog. Before you realize it, the two of you have become the same mist and you realize you can never return to being just a lone cloud again, because the isolation would be intolerable.

And when you meet someone and fall in love, and they fall in love with you, you ask them, “Will you take my heart—stains and all?” and they say, “I will,” and they ask you the same question, and you say, “I will,” too.

I never expected love to happen. What was I expecting from life, then?

“Dan, let’s go out and get a Grand Slam Breakfast. I have $1.99 and it’s burning a hole in my pocket.

I got this awful feeling that I think is jealousy, but I can’t be sure, because it was a new feeling, and nobody ever tells you what feelings are supposed to be like.

I saw this documentary about how codfish have been gill-netted into extinction in Newfoundland in Canada, so I went out to Burger King to get a Whaler fishwich-type breaded deep-fried filet sandwich while there was still time.

I used to always think I had to have a reason to record my observations of the day, or even my emotions, but now I think simply being alive is more than enough reason. Unshackled!

There’s something about a monolithic tech culture like Microsoft that makes humans seriously rethink fundamental aspects of the relationship between their brains and bodies—their souls and their ambitions; things and thoughts.

I think when people invent their Net log names, they reveal more about themselves than their given names ever reveal.

He says it’d be inspiring to see people use other letters of the keyboard in their names, like %, &, ™, and ©

I’m not sure whether to be flattered or to consult an exorcist.

I wonder if we oversentimentalize the power of books.

I think you only ever truly feel comfortable with the level of digitization that was normal for you from the age of five to fifteen.

Being “in the loop” is this year’s big expression. Only three more weeks remain before the phrase becomes obsolete, like an Apple Lisa computer. Language is such a technology.

Sometimes we all forget that the world itself is paradise, and there has been much of late to encourage that amnesia.