Read Online JPod by Douglas Coupland - Free Book Online

I realized that I don't really know much about where Ethan works or what he does. I thought I'd see for myself. Sorry for interrupting your meeting . . ."
    "Steve. Steve Lefkowitz."
    They shook hands. Mom showed not a twinge of uneasiness at standing before a group of fifty-six geeks. "My! Look at all of you clever young people. What are you doing today?"
    Everybody giggled, and Steve, a master of timing, said, "Carol Jarlewski, what do you think of when you think of turtles?"
    "Turtles? Well, I think that turtles have to be intelligent creatures, because in evolutionary terms they go back farther than just about every other animal. They're good at surviving. And they're cute, too. Sort of cheeky. My sister and I found one in the pond back when we were kids, and it winked at me. Saucy little things."
    Steve looked at all of us. "And you thought turtles weren't hip."
    This was now out of my hands—not that it was ever in them.
    "Everybody, let's have Carol sit in on the meeting," Steve announced. "Her outsider perspective might add something valuable to our quest." People actually clapped.
    And thus Mom took her seat near Steve's podium and spent the next two hours beaming at me and offering the occasional idea, some of which were good. "Those skateboard monsters are always spray-painting everything, including the Edgemont Village Super Valu's walls, and in my opinion they all deserve a few months in jail. But why not make your turtle's shell a surface on which players spray-paint clues? The turtle can't see what's on his back, so one of his goals is to locate reflective surfaces throughout the game, while his competition is trying to wreck those surfaces."
    John Doe also lobbed out an idea that stuck. He suggested that a universally appreciated buddy-type personality was that of Jeff Probst—"charismatic host of TV's still-sizzling long-running reality show Survivor." I'm not sure if John Doe was kidding, but everybody clapped, and suddenly Steve said, "Hey—this sounds like an idea with legs."
    At the end, when I asked Mom if she wanted me to take her on a tour, she said, "That's okay, Ethan. Young Steven here is taking me."
    Steve didn't even look at me. His eyes were all on Mom.
    I schlumped my way back to the pod.
    . . .

    Random note from today's meeting:
    Fresh New Lucky Charms Marshmallow Shapes . . .
    . . . Masonic emblems
    . . . witch-dunking stools . . . stepmothers
    . . . PayPal logos
    . . . anal beads.

God is an Xkb state indicator
    God is a Window Maker docked application

    God is a multi-platform Z80cross-assembler

    God is a lightweight XML encoding library for Java

    God is a programmatic APIwritten in C++

    God is Oracle's OCI8 and OCI9 APIs

    God is a configuration backup utility

    God is Web-based group ware and collaboration software

    God is a graphical editor for drawing finite state machines

. . .
    Kaitlin was on the phone again, trying to extract herself from jPod. Cowboy was over by a ventilation unit, having a smoke. One of jPod's quirks is an air intake duct in front of which you can puff away on anything. Hell, you could let off an Exocet missile, and it'd suck everything up and away in a jiffy.
    "If that had been my mother who showed up today, she'd have made a big deal of telling people she doesn't shave her armpits," said John Doe.
    Bree said, "If that was my mother up there, she'd be asking every guy in the place what his salary was, and what his career prospects were."
    Evil Mark said, "If that was my mother up there, she'd be drunk."
    Kaitlin slammed down the phone in disgust. She looked over at us and put her face down on her desk.
    As we'd all gone through the same responses when we were put into jPod, we felt sorry for Kaitlin. She needed a bit of quiet time.
    Respecting her need, we entered work mode. The mood grew nice and quiet as we checked to see what was falling down the Chute. After maybe fifteen minutes, Cowboy piped up, 'You know, I'm so sick of cigarette smoking's negative