Blank-Collar Workers: Formerly middle-class workers who will never be middle-class again and who will never come to terms with that.
Grim Truth: You're smarter than TV. So what?
Instant Reincarnation: The fact that most adults, no matter how great their life is, wish for radical change in their life. The urge to reincarnate while still alive is near universal.
Intraffinital Melancholy vs Extraffinital Melancholy: Which is lonelier: To be single and lonely, or to be lonely within a dead relationship?
Zoosumnial Blurring: The notion that animals probably don't see much difference between dreaming and being awake.
Douglas Coupland's a visual artist as well? I thought he was just a pop-cultural memetic sniper of sorts.
I'm a bit down on this list too. It looks like he just did a lot of: 1. have a semi-interesting idea; 2. instead of telling it to Twitter or his buddies at the pub, make up a smartarse term for it.
I liked 'Microserfs' though.
Well, if you're Douglas Coupland, that's what people expect (and pay) you to do. Much like if you're Tim Burton, you draw candystripe twee-gothic fantasias.
He's whatever you want him to be! Had a clothing line there recently as well: http://canada.roots.com/women/roots-x-douglas-coupland/womenDouglasCouplandCollection,default,sc.html
The Meaning of Liff is funnier and less smug.
Having lived in Canada for 6 years now, I have grown to hate anything Coupland with a passion. His hamfisted pop art is pretty much de rigueur for the Toronto condo developer looking to satisfy their regulatory public artwork requirement, and somehow it manages to be both bland and offensive (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/tryhank/3000369335/ ).