If you haven’t noticed, I don’t write about anything anymore that has to do with my life. I write whatever comes to my head. I suspect that most of it is bad, and that the only reason I’m doing it is because I am no longer able to write about stuff which even vaguely matters, and that this is my way of coping.
I do not know why the caged bird sings. There is no hope. The only thing you can do is fall out the window and hope you fall on a soft shrub, and maybe that you don’t break your femur.
The caged bird sings because there is no music, and he wants to create some. He sings songs by Prince like “Pussy Control” and songs by Ben Folds Five whose names he doesn’t know. He sings them loud and clear, often in the morning when his masters are still sleeping. When they yell at him he changes his tune to something more upbeat, like “Charm Attack” by Leonna Ness. He is a sucker for female lead singers.
On Fridays he sings classical songs, usually Chopin and sometimes Beethoven. On Saturday he sings 80’s hair rock , namely Guns ‘n Roses and Van Halen. Despite the fact that he always sings “Patience” by Guns ‘n Roses, it is not his favorite song. He only sings it because it has a whistling solo. His favorite song is “My Michelle.”
On Sunday, the bird is silent for the first part of the day. He is letting the Lord rest. The Lord is the only person he lets rest. At exactly 12:01pm (there’s a clock across the hallway from his cage) he lets out a blood-curdling scream. He screams as loud as he can for five minutes, but no one in the house ever notices because they are all still at church. Sometimes he cries and laments his fate to be locked in a cage for the rest of his life. He sings the first 15 seconds of “Coming Down the Mountain” by Janes Addiction followed by the middle 45 seconds of “Rudy Can’t Fail.” He mimics the sound of Joey Ramone; he hates The Ramones.
When all is said and done, the caged bird sings for himself. He sings to annoy his owners, and he sings because he likes the sound of the chorus in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He will never sing David Bowie, because he would consider that sacrilegious. Not because David Bowie had weird hair or because he was gay, but because he wouldn’t be able to do him justice. Once he broke into “Life on Mars” before he realized what he was doing but then quickly stopped, ashamed of himself. That day momma did not smack the cage with her broom.
In two years, the caged bird will die. He will have sung 5,777 songs. His family will bury him in the plot of earth just in front of the house, and after school one of the children will put stepping stone on his grave to prevent the armadillos from digging him up. In just two more years, he will be all but forgotten with the addition of a new family pet, a ring-tailed lemur that stowed away on a ship from Madagascar to Singapore by hiding beneath a trash can.
This entry was written by , posted on January 19, 2010 at 11:53 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged i know why the caged bird sings, maya angelou, party, your mother. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I was almost a photography major. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I had a horrible grade in the class, it was boring as hell, and I spent the whole semester wishing I had the balls to talk to this marginally hot girl that sat two seats away from me. I think one time I got the balls to sit next to her and said, “How’s it going?” or something equally innocuous, and that was the extent of our relations. When I was younger I didn’t know the first thing about approaching girls. I still don’t know the first thing about approaching girls. But times were different back then, somehow. All I did was skateboard and drink cheap vodka and show up late for my 8:30 calculus class. That was pretty much the extent of my days.
Now I study Spanish — sorry, Hispanic Studies — and I still have no idea what the hell I want to do. Know what I really want to do? Move to a deserted island. This is an actual fantasy of mine. Move to a deserted island, learn to live off the land, and forget my name. Obviously this will never happen, because just like I didn’t have the balls to talk to that girl in my photography class, I don’t have the balls to buy a plane ticket to Tahiti, make a boat out of beer kegs and styrofoam, and sail until I find an island with no people on it or accidentally make it all the way to Antarctica. More balls is what I need, I guess. Maybe I should start drinking Red Bull. Apparently taurine is made from bull testicles. And though I know this is not true, maybe it would give me more balls anyway.
Writing has taken on a new place in my life for me. I don’t despise it anymore like I did after working for The Stranger. It’s fun for me now. I don’t devote very much time to it, but now it’s fun. The quality has probably deteriorated. I don’t proofread as much. I don’t revise as much. There aren’t really common themes, and it’s basically one big cluster-fuck of paragraphs made up of disparate ideas strung together to form sort of an adult baby babble. But it’s fun.
Tomorrow is another week. Wake up early. Do some push ups. Bike to school. Don’t be hungover. Try hard. Be nice. Speak clearly. Treat others as you want to be treated. Go skateboarding. Eat healthy. Eat Thai food. Eat spicy food. Run. Bike. Get some exercise. Make sure you sweat. Healthy sweat. Healthy beads. Good beads.
This entry was written by , posted on November 30, 2009 at 12:46 am, filed under Writingz and tagged en un mundo descomunal, siento tu fragilidad. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I have become completely ambivalent about meeting new people. I don’t know how I was when I was younger — I guess I just didn’t think about it. But now I’m completely ambivalent. On the one hand, I hate it: I hate being fake nice, I hate others being fake nice to me, I hate having to worry about offending someone with my sense of humor, and I hate not feeling comfortable. On the other hand, I love it: I love making new friends, I love the possibility that a person you meet could turn into a love interest, I love being able to make jokes that throw the person off balance because they don’t know if I’m kidding or not, and I love feeling slightly uncomfortable.
And yet I have almost no friends in Seattle. Sure, I have friends. Everyone has friends. But I don’t have many friends friends. You know what I mean: The type of people you don’t have to drink to be comfortable with; the type of people you could hang out with on a Wednesday afternoon; the type of people you could sit in a room with for half an hour saying nothing, and you’re both so goddamned self-actualized in each others’ presence that you don’t even notice the silence.
I know this happens as we get older. I mean, what 45-year-old dude has a tons of male friends that he hangs out with on a consistent basis? When you get older, you get hitched, and that new person dominates your life. So maybe that’s what I’m subconsciously getting ready for. Maybe my body and subconscious knows something I don’t. Maybe I’m about to meet Natasha, the girl of my dreams, and she’s about to cart me off to Bulgaria where I’ll have to spend the rest of my life cobbling shoes to support our two fair-haired children. In which case I would be more or less ready, because I would be leaving behind a fraction of the friends I had in high school.
As we get older we turn into cowards. There’s so many things we want to do, but we’re just too goddamned afraid to do them. When you’re young if you’re afraid to do something you either suck it up and do it, or you don’t do it and quickly dismiss it as a something you could never have done. But when you’re older the regrets start. You start hating yourself or hating whatever person prevented you from doing the thing you wanted to do. You get bitter. You buy a house or a car to make up for it, but it doesn’t replace the thing you really wanted to do, so you take up racquetball, or maybe start golfing despite the fact that golf has never interested you, and then you’re two steps away from fake chuckling at your boss’ joke and ordering scotch rocks to look classy even though to you, scotch tastes like unleaded gasoline.
I once read on a LuLu Lemon Athletica water bottle that everyday we should do something that scares us. I did this for about a week, and it mostly consisted of me asking strangers for directions and/or crossing the street in front of fast-moving cars. I didn’t do the things I really wanted to do, like go up to strange girls and ask them out, or rip off my shirt in class and belt out the chorus of Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy.” But I did learn something — namely that life is a lot more interesting when you do things that scare you.
How does this tie in with meeting new people? Well, for most of us, meeting people can be one of the scariest, most uncomfortable experiences of all. But we must learn to relish it, because it’s a lot better than the alternative. Unless, of course, you love racquetball and Glennfidditch.
This entry was written by , posted on November 3, 2009 at 11:29 pm, filed under Writingz. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I totally believe that you can more or less completely get to know someone in as little as two seconds. Or at least as much as you would ever want to know. This is not exclusively because I read the book “Blink” and blindly subscribe to everything Malcolm Gladwell and his Jew fro have to say. In fact, the more I see and read Malcolm Gladwell, I’m beginning to think he’s the Dan Brown of sociological/psychological literature. But that’s beside the point. What is not beside the point, and rather sitting in the same chair as the point, or on top of the point, or under the point, is that I agree with him that first impressions speak volumes. Because sometimes you meet a guy, and you just think, “That dude’s a douche bag.”
Brown Town is currently in a state of upheaval. Everything has changed. It used to be sunny; now I’m watching the rain drip off the roof by my window. The end of the season used to seem like a speck on the horizon; now it seems like it’s just around the corner. The picnic tables used to be fairly tranquil; now a subwoofer leaks Eminem into my dorm room throughout the wee hours of the night.
Plus, there are the new people.
I am a feeler, not a thinker. This was made abundantly clear to me in high school every time I took one of those damn personality tests which basically turn out to read like a horoscope, always “confirming” things about you that you already suspected. However, I still believe I’m a feeler. In arguments, I let emotions–not facts–lead the way. I am sensitive to tone of voice and facial expressions. I sometimes judge people not by what they do or what they say, but by how I feel about them.
Which brings me to the subject of the dude I recently met.
When I met one of the new dudes in Brown Town, I instantly experienced waves of repulsion. I saw him from 40-feet away, and without knowing exactly why simultaneously felt angry, sad, confused, and sort of like I wanted to go to my room, pull the screen off my window, and slam my head through it — all at the same time. And I didn’t even talk to the guy.
Since that “encounter” I have had several more encounters with this fellow. In one I walked down the male dorm hall while he inexplicably mad-dogged me for several seconds until I jutted into the bathroom. In another I overheard him verbally attacking one of the housekeepers1with a kind of vehemence and disdain in his voice usually reserved for abusive fathers. In the third encounter he was obviously drunk, and talked about firearms at length.
What does this all mean? Not a whole lot. But it also means everything. It means, in short, that those waves of revulsion I felt were not unwarranted. It means that you truly can get a feel for a person just by seeing them walk by, or just by looking at them. It means that first impressions, while not always correct, can hold an amount of truth so vast it seems incomprehensible. But most importantly, it means that Malcolm Gladwell and his Jew fro are right. And also, of course, that Dan Brown is an idiot.
1Basically, he made fun of the housekeeper for having to perform semi-desirable tasks. Meanwhile, he’s a dishwasher.
This entry was written by , posted on July 30, 2009 at 10:32 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged blink, first impressions, malcom gladwell, tipping point. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
La pantorrilla me duele un chingo. Esto puede ser porque he embarcado en un nuevo regimiento de terapia física que espero que me ayude a curarme de la pinche tendonitis de una vez. Tendonitis del talón aquiles. Ustedes ya no quieren oír hablar de esto. Han sido muy indulgentes conmigo, y por eso se los agradezco.
No sé por qué, pero esta vez se siente diferente. Por primera vez en mucho tiempo tengo fe en que voy a mejorar. He leido el estudio. Todos los pacientes se curaron y pudieron volver a sus actividades anteriores. Lo único que tienes que hacer es hacerle un chingo de ejericios a tu pantorrilla. Es así de simple, menos, por supuesto, que no es así de simple. Tienes que hacerle un chingo ejercicio. Te tiene que doler. Los ejercicios tienen que hacerte incomodo y no puedes querer hacerlos. Si así es, tienes chance.
He aprendido una cosa con esta pinche tendonitis, y es esto: No existe una solución fácil. No te la puedes quitar con unos simples estiramientos. No te la puedes quitar con ignorarla. No te la puedes quitar con bajar de peso unos cinco kilos. La única manera en la que te la puedes quitar es trabajar y trabajar y trabajar en la pantorilla, haciendo que tu pantorilla parezca una cosa del Increíble Hulk. Así se cura, y así le voy a hacer.
Normalmente al emprender un regimiento así diría, “Bueno, si no me funciona, volveré a pensar en una estrategia nueva.” Pero esta vez no queda lugar para fallar. Yo sí me voy a curar. Yo sí me voy a quitar la pinche tendonitis una vez para siempre. Y yo sí voy a poder volver a mis actividades anteriores, la patineta y el fútbol y el wakeboarding y el correr libre, libre como el viento, libre como el niño feliz que era antes. Y así va a ser.
This entry was written by , posted on June 5, 2009 at 3:19 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged ecentric calf strengthening, sweden, tendonitis. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
A surprisingly hog-free aisle.
Turkey: Close cousin of the pig.
Airplane bathroom.
Airplane bathroom, part two.
Shit’s big.
Walking to the metro.
Surgical mask times = Good times.
This entry was written by , posted on May 19, 2009 at 9:01 pm, filed under Ravenna, Uncategorized, Writingz and tagged continental airlines, mexico city, swine flu. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Yagga, Yagga, Yagga. He made out with the Guatemalan girl who had the face of a flounder. He sucked her face long and good. Then later that night she made out with an 18-year-old English boy. Fucking Limey.
Kosovo, 1995. The year after the year after the year after Saddam Hussein invaded with Iraqi troops and seized an oil stock hold the size of Delaware. Those were the good ol’ days. Now it’s just Omanian refugees and oil tycoons who don’t know when to quit at the craps table. I’d move to Abu Dabi, but it’s too damned expensive. Maybe I could sell Martha’s old rock.
My name is Tex Avery, the fourth son of John and Wilma Avery. I have 13 brothers and 1 sister, Sheila. Sheila has a very rare form of autism that causes her to be insufferably normal. You would never know she had autism unless you saw the doctor’s diagnosis.
I myself have Asperger’s syndrome, which basically causes me to be very emotionally detached. In fact, every kid in my family has some kind of disorder or another. My brother Phillip is blind in his right eye and deaf in his left year. Sometimes he loses feeling in his thumbs.
About three years ago we had a family reunion and everyone showed up except Mary. Mary’s disorder is probably the strangest of all of ours: She always thinks she’s one day ahead of everyone else. If it’s Thursday, she thinks it’s Friday. If it’s New Year’s Eve, she thinks it’s New Years Day. So Mary showed up to the Butte Country Recreational Area a day before everyone else with enough potato salad to drown a baby. And no one was there to eat it.
This entry was written by , posted on April 21, 2009 at 12:30 pm, filed under Writingz. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The purpose of today’s blog post is to explain to you all my hopes and dreams. I will literally be exposing my insides to you — the things that make me tick, the things that make me angry, the things that make me smile — in an attempt to show you where I think I stand on the road to a achieving a certain set of goals, and why I want to achieve these particular goals in the first place (Note: I will be figuratively exposing myself to you).
Lately I have still been interning at L’Etranger, but my internship is quickly coming to an end. Which of course raises the question: What will happen when it’s over? Will they offer me a high-paying job, say, as Editor in Chief of Making Sure All Content is Rad? Probably not. Will they ask me to start writing articles that actually get printed in the paper? Maybe, but probably not. Will they ask me to extend my internship and keep coming into the office and keep doing the awesome stuff that I have been doing over the past three months? It’s very possible, but I sort of doubt it. Will they ask me to keep submitting stuff to the online blog and then “take it from there”? This is more on the right track. I have no idea what will happen when this internship is over, but I suspect it will be something along those lines.
However, not to disappoint you, faithful readers, I already have several plans. But before I tell you my plans let me quickly outline some of my life goals for you so you can start to get an idea of where this whole writing thing might one day (hopefully) lead.
Basically (and this is where I get really hesitant because I hate talking about shit that I actually care about on this website) I would like to one day write books. Or a book. One day I would like to write a book, and I want it to be hardcover, and I want it to have a cool cover, and I want it to somewhere say something from The New York Times book review like, “Wetzler’s musings on the world of femme rock often border on trenchant, but never stray from delightful.” Something like that. Someone who worked for The New York Times would obviously come up with something less awkward, but you get the idea.
In addition to writing books (or A book) I would like to write for a magazine. Which brings me back to what I am going to do after this internship is over. Should I not be offered a job here is Dictator at Large or Resident Madman, I will be forced to look for employment or internship opportunities elsewhere. It has recently come to my attention that Spin Magazine offers three-month internships, one of which will be starting June of this year. So I’m going to apply for that. Look out NYC! What up Brooklyn? What up — um — Yonkers? Wetzler is on the way. I just wish Chipotle in New York didn’t cost 13 dollars a burrito. Maybe I’ll have to get a job there.
If I don’t get the internship at Spin and L’Etranger doesn’t ask me continue on, I have several back up plans. One is to work at a summer camp in the San Juans on Lopez Island. This would be great because it would give me a chance to exercise some of the authority I never had growing up as a youngest child. I would be doing things like organizing canoe trips or teaching young campers how to dive. When the campers didn’t dive properly I would scream at them and tell them they’re parents would never love them until they learned how to dive right. Or I would swim up from underneath them and pull on their ankles and pretend I was a giant sea monster. When they laughed upon seeing that it was just me I would splash water in their open mouths and yell, “Stay alert!
The backup plan for Fall of the year of our Lord two thousand and nine is graduate school at the University of Washington, in the Department of Hispanic Studies. This is where you go to study Hispanics. Or it might just be where you go to study Spanish. As in the summer camp scenario I would have an opportunity to mess around a bit with those ensnared in the confines of my strict but beneficent authority: Multiple choice tests where each question has several pages of choices; Pop quizzes during which I dance flamenco shirtless in front of the students to test their concentration; Extra credit to kids who bring me Pagliacci before or after class, and even more extra credit for kids who lightly dust the slices with Parmesan cheese and red pepper. The possibilities are endless.
These are the options, and to tell you the truth, I’m optimistic about all of them. Spring is just around the corner so naturally optimism is in the air. My friend Lee is flying in from London on the 16th and we are going to party our eyes out. We are going to go camping and watch Sounders’ games and touch Lady Gaga’s inner thigh. I am going to introduce him to tall cans of Pabst and six-dollar pitchers of Rainier. Maybe we’ll even jump in Lake Washington.
So I will keep all of you posted and strive towards the realization of these goals (particularly those described in the paragraph concerning summer camp) and I will also let you know if all of these options fall through horribly and I am forced to exercise option “F,” an option that involves hiking in Burma (now Myanmar, I suppose), learning to cultivate opium, and losing my mind.
Talk to you soon!
-Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on March 9, 2009 at 5:02 pm, filed under Writingz, the intern files and tagged brazil, brazilian girls, homme, huskies, opium, san juans, summer camp, uw. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The son shineth freely upon thy face. Ere, hath thee thy will submerged, upon which looks a dog’s tail wagging. Cometh hither, for thine hither ere hath doth will. Willeth the wither, upon hither heather, forbidden feather? Thinkest thee proud, crumbled visage worthy of freedom’s lusty quill? Think not, fiend, then, of those who think meekly on thee?
Tis I, said the fiend, who looks upon thy bosom, as I look upon an asses flanks. For morrow’s marrow I ask not. Only for to-day’s.
Next on Where’s Wetzler?: Love’s Labour’s Lost (and Found in a Chicken Burrito): Chipotle in Shakespearean Terms
This entry was written by , posted on March 5, 2009 at 4:03 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged awesome, Chipotle, fergie, shakespeare, william. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
So you’re getting into this whole Intranet thing and you want to know the ropes. You just set up a Gmail account and you’re pretty excited to be getting mail, but are nonplussed when you get your first piece of “Spam.” A huge breakthrough comes when you have your first ever “chat” on Gmail. Suddenly Gchat is all you can do. You can’t get enough. But it’s still unfamiliar territory to you. The “BRBs” and TTYLs” have got you a bit confused. The thing that confuses you the most, however, is internet laughter. Specifically the “ha’s.” At first you were uncomfortable with even writing out “ha’s” to denote laughter. “That seems contrived,” you thought. But gradually you broke down and eventually you did your first one. “Ha ha ha,” you wrote. “Dude, did you just put spaces between your ‘ha’s?’” your friend asked. You suddenly feel like an Internet Apatosaurus. “How the hell am I supposed to ‘ha?’” you wonder. Well, start off with a little reading:
THE WHERE’S WETZLER GUIDE TO “HA”s
Ha – The single “ha” spans the gamut between sarcasm and the consolatory laugh. If a person has given you a single “ha” they’re either A) Making fun of you, B) Know you expect a laugh and don’t want things to get awkward, or C) Trying to express the most minimal amount of amusement. They could also be sleeping with your girlfriend. The point is this: Beware the single “ha” and beware the single “ha-er.” Used sparingly it can be effective, but overused it can ruin relationships.
Hah — This “ha” has gotten me out of so many jams. The “h” at the end initially seems like an accident. Half the time I type it people probably think it is. But if you know your “ha”s there are no accidents – just icy cold emotional detachment. The person you’re talking to didn’t say something funny enough to warrant a “haha” but you don’t want to hurt their feelings with a “ha?” Bam—give ‘em the “hah.” No feelings hurt, and no integrity sacrificed laughing at a lame joke.
Haha – The double “ha.” A most perfect entity. Your classic laugh. This is the “ha” you will use 67% of the time (if we’re rounding up to the nearest whole number). Anything that is funny enough to garner a laugh (not a real laugh, of course; You’re still silent for the double “ha”) but not so funny that you’re beside yourself, doubled over and slapping your knee. The beauty of the double “ha” lies in its versatility. You CAN use it for the beside yourself doubled over scenario, but it would amateurish (and frankly, somewhat irresponsible). Just remember the golden rule: if something funny has been said but air has not physically escaped from your body in the form of a chuckle or laughter, the double “ha” is your “ha.”
(See ENDNOTE for “Miscellaneous ‘Ha’s”)
Hahaha – All right. Now you’re starting to have a good time. You’re letting your hair down a bit. Maybe you’re even flirting—I don’t know what the hell you do on the internet. The triple “ha” means something pretty awesome just happened1. You’re probably not actually laughing sitting on your couch or your computer chair, but you’re close. You may have chuckled, or let out a slight guffaw. If you were born after the year 1985 (or are just lame) there’s a chance you typed in the letters “LOL.” Either way, the triple “ha” signifies genuine comedic material.
Hahahaha – Get ready, ‘cause it’s belly laugh time. I’m talking Seinfeld-esque comedic weapons-grade uranium. The quadruple “ha” is not to be thrown around lightly. In fact, unless you’ve been internet chatting for at least a few years, don’t even touch it. If you’re using the quadruple “ha” you’re putting your reputation on the line, so the shit better be funny. Think about the hardest time you laughed reading David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day (probably in the chapter “You Can’t Kill the Rooster” or “Me Talk Pretty One Day”). Whatever just made you “hahahaha” better be comparable.
Anything over “Hahahaha,” or “Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahaha
hahhahahahahahahahhahahahahhahah
ahahahahahhahahahahaha” – I once, no joke, filled up the equivalent of twelve single spaced pages with “ha”s. It’s OK, I know what the fuck I’m doing. Anything above four “ha”s, however, and you’ve entered “expert” realm. I can’t really coach you here. Hopefully, though, if you’ve made it this far, you don’t really need coaching. You probably get laid constantly. Complete strangers probably recognize you on the street. You probably have groupies.
With a great amount of “ha”s comes great responsibility. Thomas Jefferson once said, “An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.” I don’t really know how that fits in here, but it’s a fucking awesome quote. What on earth is a vestry? Is it a group of men standing around wearing vests? ANYWAY, the point is this: have fun with your “ha”s, but be frugal. We’re in the midst of a recession, and the last thing anyone needs is reckless “ha”s. I mean, in this economy…
1Unless, of course, you’re overly liberal with your “ha”s, and dole them out like the pamphleteers at Westlake that thrust shit in everyone’s faces. Don’t be overly liberal with your “ha”s. You’re not going to get on anyone’s good side. You’re not going to make the joke funnier. You’re just going to cause a goddamned scene.
ENDNOTE: There are a lot of other ways to “ha” that for purposes of coherence will not be covered in this post. There’s the “hehehe,” which is awful, and the aforementioned spaced “ha,” whose prevalence is waning. A Mexican girl I talk to online even gives me the “ho ho ho,” which was kind of endearing around Christmas time but now is just kind of weird. I myself like to throw in the Spanish “jajaja” because I think it looks hilarious, and sometimes even get crazy with the French “ha” which I was told by a half-French (and whole gorgeous) girl named Soizic is just a successive string of lowercase “LOL”s i.e. “lolololo” (insert joke about the French being ridiculous). Get creative. Have some fun with it. And remember: you’re always safe with the double “ha.”
This entry was written by , posted on February 15, 2009 at 6:14 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged gchat, gmail, ha ha yourself, internet ha, internet talk, lol. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.