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(Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God darn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy nuts we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.) The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club. (With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.) The second rule of Fight Club is - you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. ("We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra." "Martha Stewart." "crappity smack Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man." ) Third rule of Fight Club, someone yells Stop!, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. (I got in everyone's hostile little face. Yes, these are bruises from fighting. Yes, I'm comfortable with that. I am enlightened) Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight. (Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal Church.) *** Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends. *** Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas. (Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddarn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!) Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes. (WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! Ok, you are now firing a gun at your 'imaginary friend' near 400 GALLONS OF NITROGLYCERINE!) Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to. (After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down.) And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club ... (Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.) ... you have to fight. I'm not tagging ths as copyright. The words intrigued me enough to arrange them in a semi-poetic structure, but all of these lines are taken directly from the script of "Fight Club", so (as the title indicates) this is not an original work--just a study in the use of someone else's work in a different application.
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