DA A A B

In maniera efficiente e confortevole, il treno serviva molte persone felici: durante il tragitto da Tokyo a Kyoto, potevi pensare ad altri anagrammi tra nomi di città; studiare i mutamenti nella topografia e nell'ecologia del Giappone; leggere fumetti manga; disegnare mappe del percorso compiuto e decorarle con personaggi dei fumetti; chissà, forse potevi perfino incontrare la tua futura moglie mentre viaggiavi, in uno stato di assoluto relax, da A a B.
(Reif Larsen | The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet)

IL MODO IN CUI

Immagino che, come per le scarpe, le strutture linguistiche e il portamento, si possa imparare molto sul conto di una persona dal modo in cui lui o lei fa le valigie.
(Reif Larsen | The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet)

TIPO D'UOMO

Mi domandai se mio padre avvertisse che qualcosa non andava. Non era il tipo d'uomo che si metteva a far domande sul perché non spiccicavi parola. Per lui il silenzio era un piacere, non l'indizio di uno struggimento interiore.
(Reif Larsen | The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet)

CREDERE E NON CREDERE

Forse, trovare un equilibrio tra i piaceri dell'evasione e la consapevolezza della finzione era il motivo stesso per cui ciascuno di noi leggeva romanzi, eppure questa sospensione simultanea del reale e dell'immaginario non era mai stato il mio forte. Forse, per riuscire nell'impresa di credere e di non credere allo stesso tempo, bisognava essere adulti.
(Reif Larsen | The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet)

QUANDO E SE

Quando passai dallo studio della dottoressa Clair, superato l'atrio d'ingresso, la vidi vacillare sotto il peso di un gigantesco dizionario tassonomico - una mano reggeva l'enorme tomo, l'altra teneva ancora in alto il coleottero. Era quello il genere di immagine con cui avrei sempre ricordato mia madre, quando e se fosse venuta a mancare: assorbita nel tentativo di trovare un equilibrio tra la delicatezza di un esemplare e il peso del sistema a cui apparteneva.
(Reif Larsen | The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet)

ACROBAT

My Sex is a fragile acrobat
Sometimes I'm a novocaine shot
Sometimes I'm an automat
My Sex is often solo
Sometimes it short-circuits
Then sometimes it's a golden glow
[...]
My sex is savage tender it wears no future faces
Owns just random gender
My Sex is a wanting wardrobe I still explore
Of all the bodies I knew and those I want to know
[...]
My sex is an image lost in faded films
A neon outline on a high-rise overspill
(Ultravox | My Sex)

L'ULTIMA VOLTA

Alcune lingue, come il matsés peruviano, costringono chi lo parla a specificare com'è venuto a conoscenza dei fatti che racconta. Non possono semplicemente dire "un animale è passato di qui". Devono specificare, usando una forma verbale diversa, se l'hanno visto con i loro occhi, se l'hanno dedotto dalle impronte o se l'hanno sentito dire. Un'affermazione riportata senza alcuna "prova" è considerata una bugia. Così, per esempio, se chiediamo a un matsés quante mogli ha, a meno che le sue mogli siano lì in quel momento, dovrà rispondere al passato e dire qualcosa del tipo: "L'ultima volta che ho controllato erano due". Le mogli, in effetti, non sono presenti e non può essere sicuro che una di loro non sia morta o non sia scappata con un altro uomo.
(Guy Deutscher | Internazionale N.867)

SERIOUSLY

Looking at the room,
I can tell that you
are the most beautiful girl in the...room,
(in the whole wide room).
And when you're on the street,
(depending on the street),
I bet you are definitely in the top three
good lookin' girls on the street,
(depending on the street).
[...]
You're so beautiful,
you could be a waitress.
You're so beautiful,
you could be a air hostess in the 60s.
You're so beautiful,
you could be a part-time model.
[...]
Lets get in a cab, I'll buy you a kebab,
I can't believe I'm sharing a kebab
with the most beautiful girl I have ever seen with a kebab.
Oh, why don't we leave?
Lets go to my house,
we can feel each other up on the couch,
oh no, I don't mind taking it slow.
Cause you're so beautiful...
Like a tree, or a high class prostitute.
You're so beautiful,
you could be a part time model,
but you'd probably still have to keep your normal job,
(a part time model),
spend part of your time modeling
and part of your time next to me.
(Flight Of The Conchords | The Most Beautiful Girl [In The Room])

YOUR LIFE AS A STORY

1) It's going to get worse
2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic
5) You'll spend a lot of your time feeling like a dog leashed to a pole outside the grocery store – separation anxiety will become your permanent state
6) The middle class is over. It's not coming back
8) Try to live near a subway entrance
12) Expect less
13) Enjoy lettuce while you still can
15) Make sure you've got someone to change your diaper
17) You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual
23) Everyone will be feeling the same way as you
25) Dreams will get better
26) Being alone will become easier
28) It will become harder to view your life as “a story”
33) People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s
34) You're going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought
38) Knowing everything will become dull
41) The future of politics is the careful and effective implanting into the minds of voters images that can never be removed
42) You'll spend a lot of time shopping online from your jail cell
43) Getting to work will provide vibrant and fun new challenges
44) Your dream life will increasingly look like Google Street View
45) We will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves
(Douglas Coupland | A Radical Pessimist's Guide To The Next 10 Years - The Globe And Mail)

SEE ALSO

ANTIFLUKE A situation in the universe in which rigid rules of action exist to prevent coincidences from happening. Given the infinite number of coincidences that could happen, very few ever actually do. The universe exists in a coincidence-hating state of antifluke.
BLANK-COLLAR WORKERS Formerly middle-class workers who will never be middle class again and who will never come to terms with that.
CHRISTMAS-MORNING FEELING A sensation created by stimulus to the anterior amygdala that leaves one with a strong sense of expectation. (See also Godseeking).
CLOUD BLINDNESS The inability of some people to see faces or shapes in clouds.
CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC MONEY THEORY The hypothesis that money is a crystallization or condensation of time and free will, the two characteristics that separate humans from other species.
DENARRATION The process whereby one’s life stops feeling like a story.
DESELFING Willingly diluting one’s sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible. (See also Omniscience Fatigue; Undeselfing).
DIMANCHOPHOBIA Fear of Sundays, a condition that reflects fear of unstructured time. Also known as acalendrical anxiety.
FRANKENTIME What time feels like when you realize that most of your life is spent working with and around a computer and the Internet.
GODSEEKING An extreme version of Christmas Morning Feeling.
GRIM TRUTH You’re smarter than TV. So what?
IKEASIS The desire in daily life and consumer life to cling to “generically” designed objects. This need for clear, unconfusing forms is a means of simplifying life amid an onslaught of information.
INSTANT REINCARNATION The fact that most adults, no matter how great their life is, wish for radical change in their life. The urge to reincarnate while still alive is near universal.
INTERNAL VOICE BLINDNESS The near universal inability of people to articulate the tone and personality of the voice that forms their interior monologue.
INTRAFFINITAL MELANCHOLY VS. EXTRAFFINITAL MELANCHOLY Which is lonelier: to be single and lonely, or to be lonely within a dead relationship?
KARAOKEAL AMNESIA Most people don’t know the complete lyrics to almost any song, particularly the ones they hold most dear. (See also Lyrical Putty).
LYRICAL PUTTY The lyrics one creates in one’s head in the absence of knowing a song’s real lyrics.
ME GOGGLES The inability to accurately perceive oneself as others do.
POST-HUMAN Whatever it is that we become next.
PSEUDOALIENATION The inability of humans to create genuinely alienating situations. Anything made by humans is a de facto expression of humanity. Technology cannot be alienating because humans created it. Genuinely alien technologies can be created only by aliens. Technically, a situation one might describe as alienating is, in fact, “humanating.
STANDARD DEVIATION Feeling unique is no indication of uniqueness, and yet it is the feeling of uniqueness that convinces us we have souls.
UNDESELFING The attempt, usually frantic and futile, to reverse the deselfing process.

(Douglas Coupland | A Dictionary Of The Near Future - The New York Times)

IL RIFUGIO

Forse era per questo che la vita dello scrittore mi era sempre sembrata così allettante: per il rifugio che offriva di fronte alla fatica dell'inserimento sociale, per la luminosa legittimazione conferita alla solitudine.
(Jonathan Coe | La Famiglia Winshaw)

TERRITORI PERICOLOSI

Senza rendersene conto, giacché in quel periodo non permise ad alcunché di interferire con il suo entusiasmo creativo, venne via via approssimandosi a territori pericolosi: puntava verso quello stile sordo alla moda compreso fra l'astratto e il figurativo; fra decorazione e totale assenza di coordinate descrittive. Stava per diventare invendibile.
(Jonathan Coe | La Famiglia Winshaw)

TELEVISIONE, TELEVISIONE

"Oh sì, adesso è a questo che puntano. Non gli basta essere ricchi da far schifo, mettere le mani su uno dei posti di maggior potere in televisione e avere due milioni di lettori che ogni settimana tirano fuori moneta sonante per scoprire che hanno il battiscopa tarlato: questa è gente che vuole - e cazzo se la vuole - l'immortalità! Vogliono che i loro nomi figurino nel catalogo della British Library, vogliono le loro sei copie omaggio, vogliono poter inserire il bel volume rilegato tra Shakespeare e Tolstoj nella libreria del salotto. E ci stanno riuscendo. Ci stanno riuscendo perchè gente come me sa fin troppo bene che, anche qualora trovasse un nuovo Dostoevskij, non venderebbe metà delle copie che realizzerebbe una merdata qualsiasi scritta da un coglione qualsiasi che legge le previsioni del tempo alla televisione, televisione del cazzo!"
(Jonathan Coe | La Famiglia Winshaw)

QUESTA PIEGA

Non ricordo quanto rimase, o di cosa parlammo, ma so che mi piacque questa insolita pratica di eloquenza, e che dovette protrarsi per un bel po', per diversi bicchieri svuotati e riempiti di nuovo, prima che cominciassi a stancarmi e a non sentirmi più a mio agio. Non so come mai, inevitabilmente, la cosa finì per prendere questa piega: io, in realtà mi stavo divertendo. Eppure il desiderio di rimanere solo con me stesso si palesò con repentina intensità.
(Jonathan Coe | La Famiglia Winshaw)

CAPITAL-T TRUTH

None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water. This is water."
(David Foster Wallace | This Is Water)

DEFAULT SETTINGS

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
(David Foster Wallace | This Is Water)

DEFAULT SETTING

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
(David Foter Wallace | This Is Water)

HUMAN POTENTIAL

He says We can't live like this, child. A whole nation has lost the cool side of the pillow. First thing every morning I taste in my mouth the human potential for evil.
(David Foster Wallace | Crash Of '69)

PRETTY GIRLS, STUPID THINGS

So I said, "Excuse me, did you know your shirt was on inside out?" And the person, who was May, turned around and said, "Yes I know that." When she turned I could not help noticing that she was unfortunately very pretty. I hadn't seen that this was a pretty girl, here, or else I almost certainly wouldn't have said anything whatsoever. I have always tried to avoid talking to pretty girls, because pretty girls have a vicious effect on me in which every part of my brain is shut down except for the part that says unbelievably stupid things and the part that is aware that I'm saying unbelievably stupid things.
(David Foster Wallace | The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing)

THE TRIP

If someone tells about a trip he's taken, you expect at least some explanations of why he left on trip in the first place. With this in mind perhaps I'll tell some things about why things weren't too good for me on Earth for quite a while.
(David Foster Wallace | The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing)

GOOD OLD EARTH

I've been on antidepressants for, what, about a year now, and I suppose I feel as if I'm pretty qualified to tell what they're like. They're fine, really, but they're fine in the same way that, say, living on another planet that was warm and comfortable and had food and fresh water would be fine: it would be fine, but it wouldn't be good old Earth, obviously. I haven't been on Earth now for almost a year, because I wasn't doing very well on Earth.
(David Foster Wallace | The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing)