Hello Jed
May 27, 2010 9:07 AM Subscribe
30 objects, 40 audio and videocassettes, and 1,425 photographs, among them a Polaroid snapshot of Terry Fox’s artificial leg - Douglas Coupland submits his personal objects to the University of British Columbia.
(I'm fascinated that the provenance of a box of instant macaroni makes it archival. Very Couplandesque.)
(I'm fascinated that the provenance of a box of instant macaroni makes it archival. Very Couplandesque.)
As a queer, Canadian autistic, Coupland has for a long time been a kind of patron saint; how he writes in a highly sophisticated, heavily referent, infodump code, that is hyper aspie (like Microserfs); and how he also writes about bodies, disenfranchisement, queerness as a method, and an outsider status... add to that his understadning of Canada as a safe, almost post geographical set of floating cities and towns...
i wish someone would give him a gg, like now.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:19 AM on May 27, 2010 [3 favorites]
i wish someone would give him a gg, like now.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:19 AM on May 27, 2010 [3 favorites]
What, no shampoo collection?
posted by entropicamericana at 9:20 AM on May 27, 2010
posted by entropicamericana at 9:20 AM on May 27, 2010
I am called Dagmar, I am male, but I predate the writing of Generation X by 2 decades. I delight myself with the beleif that I was his inspiration.
For those unfamiliar 'Dagmar', AFAIK is a near exclusive name for females. Near exclusive except for me and this character. I wonder if Douglas has the same encyclopedic dictionary in red leather binding with the miss-print, that my parents had.
posted by artaxerxes at 9:21 AM on May 27, 2010
For those unfamiliar 'Dagmar', AFAIK is a near exclusive name for females. Near exclusive except for me and this character. I wonder if Douglas has the same encyclopedic dictionary in red leather binding with the miss-print, that my parents had.
posted by artaxerxes at 9:21 AM on May 27, 2010
i wish someone would give him a gg, like now.
Hell, make him the GG! I'd like to see Harper ask him for a prorogue.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 9:29 AM on May 27, 2010
Hell, make him the GG! I'd like to see Harper ask him for a prorogue.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 9:29 AM on May 27, 2010
What's a gg?
posted by Tesseractive at 9:45 AM on May 27, 2010
posted by Tesseractive at 9:45 AM on May 27, 2010
There are a few writers who I've always wished were Mefites. Coupland is one of them.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:51 AM on May 27, 2010
posted by roll truck roll at 9:51 AM on May 27, 2010
“I was feeling like I was on that TV show Hoarders,” Mr. Coupland said Thursday. “The excuses people gave for keeping an old empty Styrofoam cup were the same reasons I was using for holding on to stuff. It was a wake-up moment. “The moment it was out the door, I felt a thousand pounds lighter.”
See, this is why I like working in the 18th century. Time is a fabulous weeder. Sure, you lose some good stuff, but you get rid of a bunch of crap as well. I would lose my mind if I had to catalog Douglas Coupland's garage.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:53 AM on May 27, 2010
See, this is why I like working in the 18th century. Time is a fabulous weeder. Sure, you lose some good stuff, but you get rid of a bunch of crap as well. I would lose my mind if I had to catalog Douglas Coupland's garage.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:53 AM on May 27, 2010
I delight myself with the beleif that I was his inspiration.
Meh. I appear as a lead character in two of his novels.
And gg = Governor General I would guess. Or maybe PinkMoose is saying he should be given the U of Ottawa football team.
posted by GuyZero at 9:53 AM on May 27, 2010
Meh. I appear as a lead character in two of his novels.
And gg = Governor General I would guess. Or maybe PinkMoose is saying he should be given the U of Ottawa football team.
posted by GuyZero at 9:53 AM on May 27, 2010
a Giant wedGie.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:35 AM on May 27, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by blue_beetle at 11:35 AM on May 27, 2010 [1 favorite]
It's nice to know metafilter thinks of me when these things happen.
posted by hellojed at 1:17 PM on May 27, 2010
posted by hellojed at 1:17 PM on May 27, 2010
At a book signing 6 years ago, I won a box of Little Debbie snack cakes (Doug asked a Simpsons trivia question, I was the first to yell out the correct answer). Later, when getting my book signed, I asked him to sign the box of sweets. Imagine my horror when, a week later, I saw that my father had opened up the box of Little Debbies and was eating the cakes. The box now sits on my desk, stuffed with a styrofoam block to keep its shape. Thank you, Douglas Coupland.
posted by interiority at 4:36 PM on May 27, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by interiority at 4:36 PM on May 27, 2010 [2 favorites]
For a little while there Coupland was possibly the most hated writer in Canada, and I think it was mostly resentment snark over his early success. I think critics tended to dismiss some of his interesting transitional books like Life After God and Girlfriend in a Coma (paraphrase: "Just because the telephone doesn't have a cord, I'm supposed to be impressed?"). These books really endeavoured to capture an unsettled millennial zeitgeist, and I recommend them.
Shame the foray into television didn't fly, I thought the jPod sit-com was hilarious, but apparently CBC viewers did not agree with me.
posted by ovvl at 5:06 PM on May 27, 2010
Shame the foray into television didn't fly, I thought the jPod sit-com was hilarious, but apparently CBC viewers did not agree with me.
posted by ovvl at 5:06 PM on May 27, 2010
And please note:
The Terry book referred to is brilliant.
It is a pictoral biography of one person's life in the 1970's.
It also has a yellow-pages style appendix listing all of the doctors and technicians receiving grants in Canada for the study of Cancer at the time of printing, with a brief description of their specialty of research.
posted by ovvl at 5:08 PM on May 27, 2010
The Terry book referred to is brilliant.
It is a pictoral biography of one person's life in the 1970's.
It also has a yellow-pages style appendix listing all of the doctors and technicians receiving grants in Canada for the study of Cancer at the time of printing, with a brief description of their specialty of research.
posted by ovvl at 5:08 PM on May 27, 2010
Terry Fox ran a full marathon a day. That is, 42.195 kilometres, or 26 miles and 385 yards.
There is an inspirational biopic movie about him which, amazingly, not only doesn't suck, but actually is fascinating, The script doesn't glossify the heroism too much, which really makes it fly.
posted by ovvl at 5:18 PM on May 27, 2010
There is an inspirational biopic movie about him which, amazingly, not only doesn't suck, but actually is fascinating, The script doesn't glossify the heroism too much, which really makes it fly.
posted by ovvl at 5:18 PM on May 27, 2010
I thought of you. Terrifically jealous of your username.
That explains why I was sneezing all morning!
posted by hellojed at 8:26 PM on May 27, 2010
That explains why I was sneezing all morning!
posted by hellojed at 8:26 PM on May 27, 2010
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