Having bought JPod,

Yesterday I bought JPod by Douglas Coupland, not Copland as in the operating sytem (?), composer, and previous entries herein.

This was a bad idea because,...

• I paid cash, when I had some book tokens sitting in an envelope next to my LaCie hard-drive, and therefore could easily have used them.
• It was on three for two, and I only bought the single book, but these three for twos, usually mean that you end up with stuff you don't want anyway.
• I am trying to reject materialism, and so don't feel that I need to treat myself to an impulse purchase each Friday, as a 'reward'.

Of course yesterday was not Friday, it was Thursday, but it was deemed to be a Friday, as I am on annual leave today.

Having bought JPod, which clearly was a bad idea, I now cannot in clear conscience treat myself to another impulse purchase,

if I were to treat myself to an impulse purchase it might be

• Clifford Font by Akira Kobayashi - one of the ones with big caps and little caps, but there are so many, it is confusing me
• the Martial Arts Weekend album by the Extra Glenns, which feature John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats,
• a self designed tee shirt from one of those places which lets you design your own tee shirt
• Macintosh laptop

However buying JPod was a good idea, because I am enjoying reading it, I really enjoyed Microserfs, which it is an obvious successor to, Generation X was okay, but not as geeky as Microserfs. I think I must have thrown out my copy of Microserfs and of Generation X, because I cannot find them, but if I do buy new copies, then they might turn up. I read them when I lived in Aberdeen, and I have a clear memory of walking down a street to buy a chinese takeaway, thinking in the style of Douglas Coupland.

Similarly I remember Paul Auster's writing infecting my imagination.

I was thinking of writing an ongoing blog entry as a detailed parody of JPod, but clearly as my parents have not inadvertantly murdered anyone, and I am not actually a code monkey, it might lose some of the particulars.

I have been listening to a lot of Mountain Goat's music recently, and the particular syntax of those, and JPod, and being tired, rather loops round in your head, and you start feeling like a character in someone else's imagination.

Things that bother me about Douglas Coupland

• I bought copies of Microserfs and Generation X, and now I cannot find them
• he makes lots of references to products etc, which I don't ordinarily like, but it works really well in his books, without seeming tacky
• the lego mini figs on the cover, in isometric projection are drawn wrong, the arms should be further forward, and the heads should be further forward, probably with visible necks
• he always seems really miserable in his interviews, as if he really hates writing, or really hates interviews, but he must be really rich, and could live in shed in the middle of nowhere with a laptop and never need to work again, so why should he bother writing books if he does not want to, or doing interviews if he does not want to,
• he has written way too many books, if he had only written a couple, then we would all think that they were the best thing since sliced bread

Last point, cross refer with Carl Hiaisen, (not spelt like that) and pretty much everyone else who writes nowadays.