Here are my top ten faves from Doug Coupland’s Generation X, the book that made him a household name in Canada and an idol of many workers receiving “competitive wages!” (10¢ above minimum-wage), many baristas and bookstore workers (like myself).  After the list, I analyze the new advent of a kind of “hipsterdom” that has invaded the minds of some GenX’ers in their mid- to late-thirties, refusing to recognize that there are many “individuals” younger than them that also had baby-boomer parents who didn’t have their kids in their early-20s, and are just as disillusioned by the current politics of complacency of the population that comprised the hippies, anarchists, and activists of the 1960s and 1970s.  (Generation X being defined as “belonging to the generation of children whose parents were baby-boomers, that is, their parents were “war babies”, born during or just after the Second World War – approx. 1939 – 1955.)

If you want to see the full list let me know.  If may force me to learn how my scanner works, after having it for almost a year and using only the “print” function:

101′ism: The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.

Yuppie Wannabe’s: An X Generation subgroup that believes the myth of a yuppie lifestyle being both satisfying and viable.  Tend to be highly in debt, involved in some form of substance abuse, and show a willingness to talk about Armageddon (as in the end of the world, not the movie starring Ben Affleck) after three drinks.  (Additional personal observation: tend to inhabit high-rise buildings with views of the downtown skylines of large cities, where their overpriced apartments have a distinct lack of furniture.)

Mental Ground Zero: The location where one visualizes oneself during the dropping of the atomic bomb.  Frequently, a shopping mall.

Mid-Twenties Breakdown: A period of mental collapse occurring in one’s twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one’s essential aloneness in the world.  Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.  (This is not on the favourites list because it’s happened to me!  I’ve just seen many friends, and friends of friends go through these “breakdowns”.  Seriously.   )

Cult of Aloneness: The need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of long-term relationships.  Often brought about by overly high expectations of others.

Celebrity Schadenfreude: Lurid thrills derived from talking about celebrity deaths.  (Dramatically on the increase, since the deaths of “M.J.” and Farrah Fawcett on the same day in summer 2009, and the following two weeks of “Billy Jean” and other of his worst “top hits” blasting from every pub, club, and gentrified house turned into poorly renovated but shiny “suite” inhabited by wanna-be yuppies of the “wanna-appear bohemian subtype” who ignore the markets and think they’re going to making triple their current incomes “any day now” and purchase the multi-million dollar house they rent a tiny space in.  No, the remixes played at “exclusive” clubs were no more palatable than the originals.  I don’t know many GenX’ers, aside from those that spent their formative years in the Communist Bloc that liked Michael Jackson when his music was popular.  Nor do I know any baby boomers that were any more than impressed by the “Thriller” video.  They did not play his records while we offspring grew up, they played The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and Pink Floyd, no?  Correct me if I’m completely off on this one, please!)

Architectural Indigestion: The almost obsessive need to live in a “cool” architectural environment.  Frequently related objects of fetish include framed black-and-white art photography (Diane Artus a favourite); simplisticpine furniture, matte black high-tech items such as TVs, stereos, and telephones: low wattage ambient lighting, a lamp chair, or table that alludes to the 1950s; cut flowers with complex names.

Poorochondria: Hypochondria derived from not having medical insurance.

Me-ism: A search by an individual, in the absence of training in the traditional religious tenets, to formulate a personally tailored religion for himself.  (That’s right, this was written before the recognition that the use of both gender prefixes was made mandatory to insure political-correctness, and “himself” was simply assumed to apply to both men, women, and those that lie between!  Sweet.  I cannot believe that “womyn” have since taken up this cause so vehemently while women/womyn/people with a goddamn vagina and breasts, ok? – are being stoned to death for getting raped in Saudi Arabia, being publicly crucified upon “suspicion” of adultery, and, as in the recent case that Western media has actually reported, middle-school aged school girls are publicly given enough “lashes” [in this case ninety] that they may likely bleed to death for possessing a cell-phone with a camera function. Fellow GenX-ers, we are also guilty of some pretty hypocritical “politics” – not everything can be blamed on mom and dad . )  Most frequently a mishmash of reincarnation, personal dialogue with a nebulously defined god figure, naturalism, and karmic eye-for-eye attitudes.

Fame-induced Apathy: The attitude that no activity is worth pursuing unless one can become very famous pursuing it.  ‘Fame-induced Apathy’ mimics laziness, but its roots are much deeper.  (Major A’ha Moment!  This is what was ‘wrong’ with all three men I’ve had serious relationships with!: 1) writer of the next “The Great American Novel”, owner of a club frequented by celebrities, inventor of miracle products, The Messiah/Lucifer…the list has faded somewhat in with time and its pregnancy with ridiculousness, 2) musician, poet, incredibly depressed reincarnation of Nietzsche, 3) The heir of the family that “built” British Columbia, and upon dating me, Manitoba as well, giving him license to yell at people who crossed him, at which point he would throw a temper tantrum featuring cries about the indecency of daring to question anything said to the son of the men who “built East Van!” – The real story?  His grandpa was involved in the construction of a road paved to Green Lake [no, you aren't the only one who has no idea where lake is located] and his great-grandfather owned a car-wrecking shop in the Mid-Main area.  Yes – all of us non-First-Nations Canadians have immigrant similar backgrounds, you’re not the “crazy one”, neither am I, though we are often told so)  All three refused to seek employment.  I applaud number 2 for at least not being too lazy to go on social assistance, or to university, albeit on quite an irregular basis. It all makes sense. )

Generation X was and is loud about the wastefulness of their baby-boomer parents’ fall from activism into materialism when a bachelor’s or college degree could get you a well-payed job at the end of the 1970s, and are whiny about the fact that they don’t have any of what their parents were handed on a platter after high school, like such job opportunities after a couple more years of education, a wife who could stay at home and take care of the kids because families could afford to live on a single salary, and… a business suit?  Well, they, and I, have good reason to be angry, still do, and, believe it or not…

“Generation X” is only growing larger, much to the dismay of “Hardcore Gen-X-ers!” who think that mid-thirty year-olds have a monopoly on sitting in cheap but still overpriced pubs and complaining about their dwindling inheritances because their folks refuse to sell their McMansions and pay off their debt – while paying $7.50/pint – love Reality Bites more than any other movie ever and swear this will never change, and think that the fact that the Bachelor’s degrees they “slaved away at”, paying with student loans, should have gotten them salaries starting at $80,000, thus they go to the pub with their co-workers and complain…

Meanwhile, a new set of GenX’ers is joining them.  It seems baby-boomers either had children in their early-twenties, or waited until they were finished backpacking around Europe, doing acid, and “thinkin’ ’bout the government” (key word: thinkin’).  Thus, Generation X has just gained a sizeable number of new members, as us younger members have graduated with our bachelor’s degrees and are facing the music – where is my job?  where is the money?  what now? – so, why not join together to complain, and perhaps even do something about it, rather than dividing due to the ridiculous human creation of age based on mechanical time? We could try to, like, unionize the corporations we manage to get jobs working for, to start…

Basically I’m saying, bitter “close to 40 than 35 year-olds”, guess what??  You aren’t the only ones with Baby Boomer parents.  You aren’t the only ones that feel these things about their “hypocrite”, “materialistic”, “ignorant”, “debt- and denial-ridden” parents.  You aren’t the only ones that can relate to Winona Ryder or Ethan Hawke or Janaene Garofolo’s characters, who haven’t a clue where their next rent or mortgage payment is going to come from, but do have a whole lot of bad credit, a whole lot of nasty past break-ups with live-in boyfriends/girlfriends/often both and perhaps an engagement or two and a marriage gone south, a whole lot of insomnia and bitterness, and bathroom cupboards filled with prescriptions from the corporations we hate that don’t do a goddamn thing to make us “feel better”.  And don’t you dare call us “millenials”, “Generation Y-ers”, or “Generation Now-ers”!

We also feel the same way about all of the above. It’s not our fault that our parents waited until their mid- to late-thirties to have us.  We are you and you are us, so shut up already and join us in whining, complaining, and general disillusionment. Maybe we need a new plan if we are to “feel better” anytime soon.

We also saw both “Gulf Wars” on television.  We also call DVD Players “VHS Players” no matter how hard we try to change.  We also remember times “before the Internet”, and subsequently, AOL (“you’ve got mail!”…we  when it was nearly impossible to conduct a search and bring up anything close to what you were searching  for (often song lyrics in my case).

So… I know this diatribe doesn’t apply to all members of “Generation-X”, defined as previously defined (baby-boomer’s kids), but there are some who are quite unhappy that there are twenty-something members of “their” generation.  And to them I say, get over yourself!  Generations are defined by “generation gaps”, therefore, the year of one’s parents’ birth is key.  Social Sciences 101.

We must laugh together at Doug’s definitions.  They are absolutely hilarious, and applicable to a considerable number of my fellow young gen-X, and older gen-X friends, acquaintances, and enemies, no matter how much some may deny it – for example, some “wannabe-yuppies”, often like to deny that their parents are in debt, or pretend their own incomes are large enough to bail them out LMAO – get some furniture first, go to Europe yourself; the majority of them didn’t donate a cent to their parents when they started working and making the equivalent of much more than you! They bought one of the first VCRs – or, unfortunately, guessed wrong and went Beta – (kind of like PC) . This is not only intended to be a humorous article, but its conclusion and possible consequences are quite serious.

We must laugh with each other, not participate in the division of people living under the same, or incredibly similar socio-economic positions – an example of this, that at first may seem much more “extreme” on a scale of destructiveness, can be observed in the division of the black lower-class and white-lower class in the U.S.A. – substitute “black” for “Native” in the oh so wonderful land of “tolerance”, here in Canada – such that rather than work together to create new unions and demand better working conditions/higher wages/a better “safety net” for those who cannot find employment (for good reason – there are no jobs), spend their entire time concerned with “just getting by”, but also ridiculing one another.  When white folks started attending Black Panther rallies (radical black anti-capitalist group of the 1960s) the government got scared, and soon many Panther leaders were dead and the group’s movement quickly died with them.

It’s time for all of Generation X to do a little less complaining – about the newer topic of younger/older members (i.e. who really belongs.  Really?  ), and their boomer parents.  It’s time for some unity, as only unity can ignite the fire of change.  The fuel is flowing through the Oceans now, but only we have the power to overcome bitterness and bickering, and do something about it.

What?  I don’t know.  But I bet as a huge cohort of the current Western populace, we could figure a few things out – I think I’m pretty smart, and I bet you are too – but we can’t go at this as the automatons that our leaders want us to be.  Am I crazy for suggesting this?  No.

We have the power, and the government is a hell of a lot smaller than we are, but only if we choose to exercise it.  Obama failed to cause “change”.  So what.  So let’s go at this ourselves.  Time is ticking away, faster and faster, not mechanical, but relative.