Generation X Read Online Free Page B

face facts: they do. Dickoids like Martin who snap like wolverines on speed when they can't have a restaurant's window seat in the nonsmoking
    section with cloth napkins. Androids who never get jokes and who have something scared and mean at the core of their existence, like an under-fed Chihuahua baring its teeny fangs and waiting to have its face kicked in or like a glass of milk sloshed on top of the violet filaments of a bug

    barbecue: a weird abuse of nature. Yuppies never gamble, they calculate.
    They have no aura: ever been to a yuppie party? It's like being in an empty room: empty hologram people walking around peeking at them-selves in mirrors and surreptitiously misting their tonsils with Binaca spray, just in case they have to kiss another ghost like themselves.
    There's just nothing there.

    "So, 'Hey Martin,' I asked when I go to his office, a plush James Bond EMOTIONAL KETCHUP
    number overlooking the downtown core—he's sitting there wearing a
    BURST: The bottling up of
    computer-generated purple sweater from Korea—a sweater with lots of opinions and emotions inside
    texture. Martin likes torture. 'Put yourself in my shoes. Do you really onself so that they explosively
    burst forth all at once, shocking
    think we enjoy having to work in that toxic waste dump in there?'
    and confusing employers and
    "Uncontrollable urges were overtaking me.
    friends—most of whom thought
    ' '. . . and then have to watch you chat with your yuppie buddies
    things were fine.
    about your gut liposuction all day while you secrete artificially
    BLEEDING PONYTAIL:
    sweetened royal jelly here in Xanadu?'
    An elderly sold-out baby boomer
    "Suddenly I was into this tres deeply. Well, if I'm going to who pines for hippie or pre-quit anyway, might as well get a thing or two off my chest.
    sellout days.
    ' 'I beg your pardon,' says Martin, the wind taken out of his sails. ' 'Or BOOMER ENVY: Envy of
    for that matter, do you really think we enjoy hearing about your material wealth and long-range
    brand new million-dollar home when we can barely afford to eat material security accrued by
    Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our own grimy little shoe boxes and we're older members of the baby boom
    generation by virtue of fortunate
    pushing thirty? A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly births.
    by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You'd last about ten minutes if you were my age these days, Martin. And I have CLIQUE MAINTENANCE:
    to endure pinheads like you rusting above me for the rest of my life, The need of one generation to
    see the generation following it
    always grabbing the best piece of cake first and then putting a barbed-as deficient so as to bolster its ire fence around the rest. You really make me sick.'
    own collective ego: "Kids today
    "Unfortunately the phone rang then, so I missed what would have do nothing. They're so
    apathetic. We used to go out
    undoubtedly been a feeble retort . . . some higher-up Martin was in the I and protest. All they do is shop
    middle of a bum-kissing campaign with and who couldn't be shaken off and complain."
    the line. I dawdled off into the staff cafeteria. There, a salesman from the copy machine company was pouring a Styrofoam cup full of scalding CONSENSUS
    TERRORISM: The process
    hot coffee into the soil around a ficus tree which really hadn't even that decides in-office attitudes
    recovered yet from having been fed cocktails and cigarette butts from and behavior.
    the Christmas party. It was pissing rain outside, and the water
    w a s drizzling down the windows, but inside the air was as dry as the Sahara from being recirculated. The staff were all bitching about
    commuting time and making AIDS jokes, labeling the office's fashion victims, sneez-

    ing, discussing their horoscopes, planning their time-shares in Santo Domingo, and slagging the rich and famous. I felt cynical, and the room matched my mood. At the coffee machine next to the sink, I grabbed a