PERSONALITY TITHE: A price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing human beings become boring: 'Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight. Afterward we're going to watch the shopping channel.'

-Coupland, Douglas
Generation X,'M T V Not Bullets'.

There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide, There hang his head, and view the lazy tide In its hot slimy channel slowly glide; Where the small eels that left the deeper way For the warm shore, within the shallows play; Where gaping mussels, left upon the mud, Slope their slow passage to the fallen flood.

-Crabbe, George
  The Borough, letter 22,'Peter Grimes', l.185^91.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days.

-Masefield,John Edward
  'Cargoes'.