Generation A

by Douglas Coupland

You make the sandwich, you post it, and maybe someone somewhere will see it, and once they’ve seen it, you’ve created art. Bingo.

It puts you in a state of moral free float. If you copy them and believe in nothing yourself, then it’s the same thing: copying nothing equals zero. You’re buggered either way.

Those people will be driving around for the rest of their lives like that, looking for a place they’re never going to find, and there will always be a crumpled box of Pampers in the rear window alongside unreadable self-help books and badly folded T-shirts.

Everyone thinks I’m a doormat, but I want to kill people as much as the next person.

I had told the delightful Leslie that my name was Werner and that I was based out of Kassel, Germany, because it seemed like the kind of place that would be home to over-educated people with nothing better to do than to design commodities like designer silence.

Corny shit. Now there’s a word picture.

But people aren’t stupid—well, actually, people are stupid— which explains wars.

If only the world could see Rome for three-point-five minutes like this, we’d all be living inside some record producer’s wet dream of post-capitalist freedom!

I felt like the fetus at the end of the film 2001, signifying everything and nothing, rebirth and sterility, good news and bad news, the difference between sanctuary and its opposite.

Harj chose Morgan

Freeman, which was probably the best pick. Harj understands hierarchy.

decided that knowledge comes from real life and from travel and interacting with others. So I decided

to spend all of my awake time playing

World of Wa...

As a mud-coloured person, I decided that my only way to remain unmolested or unjailed was to maintain a comical, non-threatening “Apu” personality at all times. I do not think of this as a compromise, because I think I am basically a lovable shop clerk by nature.

The Craigs and the female Craigs took me to their bosom and made me one of their tribe.

No. A person must be born into Craigdom, with its multiple ski holidays, complex orthodontia, proper nutrition and casual, healthy view of recreational sex.

“To echo what you were saying earlier, why is it so hard to invent a story when every moment of our lives we’re basically winging it and writing stories on the fly?

Realizing that she was in love was a pain, and few things make us feel so alone in this world as unrequited love.

They’re an efficient way of transmitting vital Darwinian information. Your brain needs them to make maps of the world, maps that let you know what sorts of people and situations to avoid.

And it’s not as if Glog had some other, better way of naming things; he was just one of nature’s born bitchers and moaners.