Historical Underdosing: To live in a period of time when nothing seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts.

Historical Overdosing: To live in a period of time when too much seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines, and TV news broadcasts.

[...] it's not healthy to live life as a succession of isolated little cool moments. "Either our lives become stories, or there's just no way to get through them."

I agree. Dag agrees. We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert--to tell stories and make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process.

"Anyway, I remember I was working on a hamburger franchise campaign, the big goal of which, according to my embittered ex-hippie boss, Martin, was to 'get the little monsters so excited about eating a burger that they want to vomit with excitement.' Martin was a forty-year-old man saying this. Doubts I'd been having about my work for months were weighing on my mind.

"'God, Margaret. You reallyhave to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff? That's just not enough. Look at us all. What's the common assumption that got us all from there to here? What makes us de_serve_ the ice cream and running shoes and wool Italian suits we have? I mean, I see all of us trying so hard to acquire so much stuff, but I can't help but feel that we didn't merit it, that ...'

"But Margaret cooled me right there. Putting down her mug, she said that before I got into one of my Exercised Young Man states, I should realize that the only reason we all go to work in the morning is because we're terrified of what would happen if we stopped. [...]"

"All of this was to try and shake the taint that marketing had given me, that had indulged my need for control too bloodlessly, that had, in some way, taught me to not really like myself. Marketing is essentially about feeding the poop back to diners fast enough to make them think they're still getting real food. It's not creation, really, but theft, and no one ever feels good about stealing.

"But basically, my life-style escape wasn't working. I was only using the real Basement People to my own ends — no different than the way design people exploit artists for new design riffs. I was an imposter, and in the end my situation got so bad that I finally had my Mid-twenties Breakdown. That's when things got pharmaceutical, when they hit bottom, and when all voices of comfort began to fail."

"[...] you know all of this sex gossip and end-of-the-world nonsense, I wonder if they're really only confessing something else to each other."

"Like?"

"Like how scared sick they all are. I mean, when people start talking seriously about hoarding cases of Beef-a-Roni in the garage and get all misty-eyed about the Last Days, then it's about as striking a confession as you're ever likely to get of how upset they are that life isn't working out the way they thought it would."

"And then I had an uncontrollable reaction. Blood rushed to my ears, and my heart went bang; I broke out into a sweat and the words of Rilke, the poet, entered my brain — his notion that we are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die. The burning blood in my ears told me that Mr. Takamichi had somehow mistaken the Monroe photo in the safe for the letter inside of himself, and that I, myself, was in peril of making some sort of similar mistake.

Squirming: Discomfort inflicted on young people by old people who see no irony in their gestures. Karen died a thousand deaths as her father made a big show of tasting a recently manufactured bottle of wine before allowing it to be poured as the family sat in Steak Hut.

Strangelove Reproduction: Having children to make up for the fact that one no longer believes in the future.

Squires: The most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup given to breeding. Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and are recognizable by their frantic attempts to recreate a semblance of Eisenhower-era plenitude in their daily lives in the face of exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles. Squires tend to be continually exhausted from their voraciously acquisitive pursuit of furniture and knickknacks.

Later on, Tyler escapes from dinner, leaving only me, Mom and Dad, the four food groups, and a predictable tension present.