Read Online Microserfs by Douglas Coupland - Free Book Online

Miller
    Kristy McNichol
    Lance Kerwin
    skateboard
    trail mix
    PERL
    Job description
    toner cartridge
    very
    really
    a lot
    ummm . . .
    Martin-Marietta
    FRIDAY
    Susan and Karla came into the living room when I was reading the Handbook of Highway Engineering, and they both flipped out. They totally grokked on it. We kept on oohing and ahhhing over the book's beautiful, car-free on-ramps, off-ramps, and overpasses - "So clean and pure and undriven."
    Karla noted that freeway engineers had their own techie code words, just as dull and impenetrable as geek talk. "Examples: subgrades, partial clover-leaf interchanges, cutslopes, and TBMs (Tunnel Boring Machines) . . ."
    "They even abused three-letter acronyms," said Karla, who also decreed that Rhoda Morgenstern would have dated a freeway engineer back in the 1970s. "His name would have been Rex and he would have looked like Jackson Browne and would have known the compressive strength range of Shale, Dolomite, and Quartzite to the nearest p.s.i. x 10^3."
    * * *
    I am really terrible at remembering three-letter acronyms. It's a real dead zone in my brain. I still barely can tell you what RAM is. Wherever this part of the brain is located, it's the same place where I misfile the names and faces of people I meet at parties. I'm so bad at names. I'm realizing that three-letter acronyms are actually words now, and no longer simply acronyms: ram, rom, scuzzy, gooey, see-pee-you. . . . Words have to start somewhere.
    * * *
    Karla told me about when she was young. About how she remembered trying to make - no, not make, engineer - Campbell's Vegetable Soup from scratch - chopping up the carrots and potatoes to resemble machine-cut cubes - getting the exact number of lima beans per can (4).
    "I grew up with assembly lines, remember. My favorite cartoon was always the one with the little chipmunks stuck inside the vegetable canning factory. I used to guess at the spices, too. But in the end it never worked because I didn't use beef stock or MSG."
    * * *
    Random day. Fed on magazines for a while. Radio. Phone call from Mom, and she talked about traffic.
    * * *
    Industrial Light & Magic
    jump
    hit
    We're just friends
    run
    multi-user dungeon
    Ziggy Stardust
    Sky Tel paging
    FORTRAN
    IKEA
    Wells Fargo
    Safeway
    hummingbird
    I am an empath
    4x4
    Kung Fu
    Death Star
    platform
    oligarchy
    Highway 92
    Deuteronomy
    Staples
    Pearle Express
    Kraft singles
    cordless
    brain ded
    Silo
    an executive lifestyle
    Maybelline
    implicator
    Insert
    Font
    Format
    Tools
    SATURDAY
    Oh God.
    I knew I'd do something. Karla's on the warpath because I forgot our one-month anniversary. Doh! She gave me until bedtime tonight to remember, but I still forgot, so now she's not speaking to me. I tried to tell her that time isn't necessarily linear, that it flows in odd clumps and bundles and clots. "Well, err, um - what exactly is a month, Karla? Ha ha ha."
    "I don't know about you, Dan," she interrupted, "but I programmed my desktop calendar to remind me. Good night." [Insert one frosty glare here. A bored yawn; a bedroom door nudged closed with little baby toes.]
    It's nice to see this romantic side to Karla's personality - an unexpected bonus - but still, nobody likes THE COUCH. And so now after weeks of blissful insomnia-free sleep, I'm yet again PowerBooking my daily diaries here on the acid green couch in a big big way.
    Comely superstar Cher hawks cosmetics on late-nite TV. Mishka is also spending tonight in the living room and she is making foul smells indeed. At least it's raining out - buckets - and the weird too-hot summer is over.
    Tomorrow I will program my desktop computer to remind me of every one of our anniversaries, monthly or otherwise, until the year 2050.
    * * *
    Actually, we all have so much free time now. Karla, Todd, Bug, and I sit around awaiting our next product group assignment, feeling deflated and just plain exhausted. We forget about clock- and calendar-type time completely.
    Today, while raking