Author: Douglas Coupland Title: Microserfs Edition: Flamingo, 1996 ISBN: 0-00-654859-8 p57 --- It's late at night. Basketball on TV; computer and fitness mags everywhere. Let me talk about love. Do you remember that old TV series, _Get Smart_? You remember at the beginning where Maxwell Smart is walking down the secret corridor and there are all of those doors that open sideways, and upside down and gateways and stuff? I think that everybody keeps a whole bunch of doors just like this between themselves and the world. But when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of /their/ doors are open. And your roller-skate down your halls together. Let me try again. I'm not good at this. Karla and I fell in love somewhere /out there/---I think that's the way it happens---/out there/. 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. Karla and I would talk about computing and coding. Our minds met out in the crystal lattice galaxy of ideas and codes and when we came out of our reverie, we realized we were in a special place---/out there/. 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. p63 --- Watched an old documentary about NASA. Then afterward 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. p92 --- Susan asked me later how I ended up at Microsoft in the first place. I told her, "No big surprise: I was 22... it seemed like a studly thing at the time. Microsoft got what it wanted and I got what I wanted, so all's fair and no regrets." I asked her: she said it was to get away from her parents and having to visit either of them because they were both trying to rip apart her loyalties in some nasty custody war. "I wanted to go to a place where loyalty wasn't an issue. /Ha!/ I wanted to not have a life because life back East sucked big time. So I made the choice to come here---we /all/ made the choice to come here. Nobody was holding a carbine up to our temples. So us crabbing about our zero-life factors isn't up for debate, really. Yet do you remember, Dan----do you remember ever /having/ a life? Ever? What is a life? I think I once had one---or at least dreamed of having one---and now with going to /Oop!/, I kind of feel like I have a hope of life again." I said I remembered having a life, back with Jed and being a kid, and Susan said being a kid counted as life only sort of. "It's what you do after you're a kid when life counts for real." I said, "I think I have a life now. With Karla, I mean." She said, "You guys really like each other, don't you?" And I said--no, I whispered--"I love her." I've never told anyone that yet---except Karla. It felt like I jumped off a steep cliff into deep blue water. And then I wanted to tell everybody. p101 ---- I put my forearm in the crook of her knees and pulled her as tightly together as she could go. Her neck rested on my other arm. I pulled the blankets over us, and her breath was hot and tiny, in little bursts like NutraSweet packets. "There's just so much I want to forget, Dan. I thought I was going to be a READ ONLY file. I never thought I'd be... interactive." I said, "Don't worry about it, Karla. Because in the end we forget everything, anyway. We're human; we're amnesia machines." p166 ---- [In the subconsciousness file on his computer:] Q: What animal would you be if you could be an animal? A: You already are an animal p198 ---- I mentioned to Abe about my lessons in shiatsu and the weird relationship people in tech firms can have with their bodies. He replied: I know what you mean about bodeis. At Microsoft you pretend bodies dont' exist... BRAINS are what matter. You're right, at Microsoft bodies get down played to near invisibilty with unsensual Tommy Hilfiger geekwear, or are genericized with items form the GAP so that employees morph themelfves into those international symbols for MAN and WOMAN you see at the airports. p213 ---- We asked her what the difference was between Apple and Interval, and she said that Apple tried to change the world while Interval tries to /affect/ the world. "We have a touchie-feelie reputation," she said, "probably because of Brenda Laurel's work in gender and intelligence, but believe me, it's /heaven/ to be able to do pure math, theoretical software, or watch Ricki Lake if you need to." (I should add, Laura is a real pool shark. I pointed this out and she said, "Oh, it's only math.") Brenda Laurel is the woman responsible for research into how women interact with math. She's the Anti-Barbie. p217 ---- NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS Me: to penetrate the Apple complex Karla: undisclosed (doesn't want to jinx) Ethan: to slow down time Todd: visit junkyards more often, to bench 420, and to have a relationship Susan: to hack into the DMV and to have a relationship Bug: to overhaul his image and to have a relationship p227 ---- Ethan got through to his parents on a cellular phone around sunset; he learned they were having the grandest of times, barbecuing burgers and corn on the front lawn, and meeting their neighbors for the first time in years. "Mom said the Ronald Reagan Library was untouched. Like I care." I think he wanted more drama. I think he would have been happier to hear that his mother was pinioned beneath a collapsed chimney, trickling blood into the phone receiver held up to her ear by his father. p232 ---- Tech moment: we have our own Internet domain and are subservient to nobody. Our house is wired directly to the Net with a mail-order 486 using Linux on a 14.4 modem with a SLIP connection to the Little Garden (an Internet service provider down here). I am now daniel@oop.com. "@" could become the "Mc" or "Mac" of the next millenium. p270 ---- Susan couldn't be less subtle about her entrancement with Emmett if she tried. And Emmett's so thick, he misses every clue. It's a wonder humans ever manage to propagate. Today for Susan it was hotpants and a _Barbarella_ mesh top with plastic hoop earrings and a _Valley of the Dolls_ wig. She was like a 1967 _Life_ magazine cover. This outfit, coupled with the day's warm weather, Todd's working shirtless, and with Dusty's rehearsing Iron Rose IV competition practice sessions (Karla and Susan learning the poses)---the office now reeks of sex. This is not natural! p277 ---- Ethan says Type-A personalities have a whole subset of diseases that they, and only they, share, and the transmission vector for these diseases is the DOOR CLOSE button on elevators that only get pushed by impatient, Type-A people. Ethan pushes these buttons with his elbow, now. I'm starting to worry about all of us. In the spirit of Ethan's neurosis, we made a drywall list of keyboard buttons we would like to see: PLEASE THANK YOU FUCK OFF DIE OOPS... MY MISTAKE DO SOMETHING COOL AND SURPRISE ME p285-287 -------- No conversation is private in our small office, and every day I listen in on what is becoming a female bond-o-thon. Today, however, Karla, Susan, and Dusty really broke through a wall into a new level. It started out simply enough, with all of us discussing the way that food products in recent years have been cloning themselves out into eighteen versions of themselves. For example, old Coke, new Coke, diet Coke, old Coke without caffeine, new Coke without caffeine, Coke with pulpy bits, Coke with cheese... We tried to figure out the roots of product multiplication and we decided it was peanut butter manufacturers who decades ago invented chunky and smooth versions of themselves. Then things went out of control. Karla suddenly remembered to tell Susan about how Fry's doesn't sell tampons, and Susan got angrier and angrier, and the conversation became entirely tamponic. "I don't know what they /don't/ sell them. If nothing else, they're so damned expensive the profit margin must be like 1,000 percent." She phoned to fact-check that Fry's indeed did not sell them. Karla said, "This woman Lindy that I met at last weeek's geek party works at Apple, and /she/ told /me/ that in all of the women's bathrooms there they have these clear Lucite dispensers of tampons that are /free/. Now /that's/ corporate intrusion into employee's lives that I could live with." They all agreed /tampons gratis/ are the acme of hip. "Apple must be run by a woman," said Dusty. "Maybe it is and they're hiding it to stay on good terms with the Japanese." Karla said, "Wha...?" and Dusty replied, "Oh, come /on/n babe, Japanese businessmen are notoriously adverse to accepting authority from women, no matter how powerful they are in their American companies." Conversation lapsed into a discussion of Apple's charisma deficit crisis, but then soon enough returned to tampons, and for me it was /so/ embarrassing, like watching _Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom_ with your mom, and suddenly a Summer's Eve commercial comes on, and Mom scurries out of the room and you're not sure why you're supposed to be embarrassed, only that everybody /is/. Karla said, "But the bad thing about the free tampons at Apple is that they're Playtex, not O.B." All three in unison: "/Designed by a woman gynecologist.../" Susan said, "Playtex suck because they just get longer, not wider... When I bleed, it's not a vertical thing... it's 360 degrees. And it's so freaky because when you put it in, it's this innocuous little lipstick size, and then when you take it out there's this long cotton /rope/ at the end of the string! I'm afraid it's going to hook my uterus and I'll accidentally drag it out!" Todd sent me an instant mail, which blinked on my screen, saying, /I can't believe what I'm hearing/. Dusty said, "O.B.'s rock! But I guess not every powerful female executive is comfortable enough with her body to put her finger (fake '50s housewife voice) /you know where/." They all laughed ironically. Susan said, "I think that the lamest excuse women use about why they don't use O.B. is because they don't want their /index finger/ to get dirty... I mean whenever you pay for something with a dollar bill your hand gets filthy, but does that stop them from making purchases with dollar bills?" "They need to make tampons for those 'chunky' days... 'light' days panty-liners blow!" said Karla. This is obviously a universal tampon concern judging by the enthusiasm that ensued. Todd instant-mailed mme, /Women have *chunky* days? Are guys supposed to know this stuff? I'm experiencing fear./ I was trying to think of a "guy" equivalent of chunkiness, but I couldn't, and meanwhile, the three of them just kept rocking on, and Todd, Bug, and I just buried our heads deeper into our work areas. Dusty said, "/Gawd/... I was rilly, /rilly/ freaked out the first time I had chunks. No one /ever/ tells you about that in, like, school or at home or anything. You see those Playtex commercials and they've got this watery blue liquid and that's what you're expecting, and then one day you look at your pad and there are... /chunks/ there. Gro/ta/cious." Karla, ever logical, said, "I knew intellectually it had to be uterine lining, but I envisioned the lining as being thin, wispy... not like chunks of liver." Dusty figured, "We, as women, also need to invent some alternative to that adhesive they use on pads. I wouldn't even wear them if it weren't for chunks. It rilly bothers me to think of these chunks that want to migrate south, but they can't because of this Tampon Roadblock. So I always wear pads on like the second day, but I hate them. It's like getting a drive-by waxing." p306 ---- Bug has broken up with Jeremy, who he says is too politicized and too extreme. He was fairly open about it with Karla and me. "Jeremy wanted me to be /just/ like him, which wouldn't be so bad, except /he's/ just like all of /his/ friends. It's like Coeur d'Alene all over again---except with pasta and better defined pectorals. And it doesn't annoy me that Jeremy wants me to be just like him. That's actually kind of nice. But what bothers me is that Jeremy is just essentially not like me, and we're too disparate to ever be in sync. I thought, you know /dating/ would be a bit easier. It's /not/. And what's /truly/ freaky is realizing I'm vulnerable to identity changes because I'm so desperate to find a nich. I feel like Crystal Pepsi." p342 ---- The TV began showing these three-minute pay-TV movie clips. ("/Hey, let's watch Curly Sue!/") Then one came touting the AVN Awards, the Adult Video News Awards. Susan yelled, "The Stiffies!" It's an actual Academy Awards-style show for porn people. We had to pay. It was simply too juicy /not/ to. People were sashaying up the aisles to collect awards for things like "Best Anal Scene" and they were getting all teary and emotional making acceptance speeches. It was unbelievable. p348 ---- [ . . . ] The casino noise was horrendous. It put Palo Alto's gas-fired leaf blowers to shame. As Karla and I were walking to the elevator bank, Todd came with us and did his impression of the machines: "Dollar slots go /koonk-koonk-koonk-koonk-koonk/; quarter slots go /kathunka-thunka-thunka-thunka/; dime slots go /nink-nink-nink-nink-nink/." He did a really good job as a machine. I think he bonded with the slots. p349 ---- [In the subconsciousness file on his computer:] We generate stories for you because you don't save the ones that are yours. p350-351 -------- The CES is a trade show like all other trade shows: thousands and thousands of men, for the most part, wearing wool suits with badges saying things like: *Doug Duncan, Product Developer*, Mattel... or NASA, SIEMENS-NIXDORF, OGILVY & MATHER, and UCLA, and so on. Everyone loads up on free promo merchandise like software samplers, buttons, mugs, pins, and water bottles as they dash from meeting to meeting. The booths are all staffed by thousands of those guys in high school who were good-looking but who got C+'s; they're stereo salesmen now and have to suck up to the nerds they tormented in high school. p352 ---- After lunch, we went to see the Pentium movie at the theater Intel put up in the main lobby. It was about how interactivity was going to make your life better in the future, and we couldn't stop giggling because of all the Pentium jokes about decimal points being spammed around the Internet. You knew that every single person watching the show was, too. "0.999999985621," I whispered, setting everybody off into spasms again, and finally we had to leave because were annoying too many people with our giggling. I guess if you find jokes about decimal places interesting, then you truly /are/ a geek. p357 ---- The porn pavillion itself was creepy. This weird porn energy and lots of women with breasts like basketballs. It sounds so great in that bachelor fantasy way, but then you see it, and you freak out. Actually, pornography really just makes sex look unappealing. After about thirty minutes we'd reached our limit, and were heading toward the door when we saw the crowd surge in the direction of one particular booth, and we looked, and there was John Wayne Bobbit, dressed in Tommy Hilfiger, like a Microsoft employee, standing amid all of these siliconized inhabitants of the planet Temptron 5. Bug said, "Here it is, one day you're just a nothing buttwipe who cheats on his wife living in the middle of nowhere, and then /BAM!/, two years later you're wearing Tommy Hilfiger windbreakers surrounded by eleven women with seventy-inch breasts in Las Vegas, Nevada, with the whole United States of America wondering if your dick works." The real world is a porno movie. I'm convinced.