Wunderluster

I was going to write about something, probably about saying goodbye or some seeping sentimental thing like that. But boy do I get selfconscious when I try to write about deep stuff. I sound like an inarticulate sap. Yeesh. How’s this?

“I said goodbye this week for what felt like the millionth time. Or maybe it’s because this one felt like a million goodbyes melted together and cast into one.”

I’m still perplexed by my hatred of my own writing. People tell me I’m good. I feel like I have things to communicate. I know I feel things and think things that good writers have felt before. Yet, I read this crap, right here, right now, in this space, and I want to erase it immediately. Sure, I can blame it on self loathing or something interesting like that. But even if I accept that, it still leaves me under-communicated and without anything creative to show for all my feelings and thoughts. And maybe that’s what irks me: for all these passions I feel and the dark places my soul wanders, I have very little creative to show for it. For all Morrissey’s sadness and disillusionment, he has his music. He’s telling people about the stuff that eats him up. We adore him.  He can connect to us and the listeners can all sit around and say, “boy, that Morrissey, dark and clever.” I’m sure he derives great satisfaction from that. This stuff that churns in me (unbelongable), I have nothing much to show for it, save for the uncomfortable “this guy is getting a little too deep” phone conversations with my friends. I know deep down I’m an adequate writer, but a good thinker and great lover. If I was great writer, good thinker and an adequate lover, I bet you I could make art. But my mix of acid and sweet has left me as a directionless and disenfranchised 30-minute conversationalist.

For tonight, I’m the unsatified. The un-expressed. The un-quenchable. The unknown.

Enjoy a uncomfortably weird Morrissey photo. (He’s laying with his Oscar Wilde collection).

(Trumpets blare)

(Huge oak doors swing open, onlookers gathered gasp as a daylight drenches the room)

(Trumpets blare again)

(Smugly, Zach walks past the crowd through the royal cathedral room, refusing to make eye contact with the plebes furiously genuflecting)

Hey, what’s up? It’s Zach, and I have two jobs and I want to talk again.

What? I abandoned you, forcing you to go to other, less good blogs of other, less good Northeastern Journalism School graduates? You’re mad about that? Whatevs. I was, you know, not doing much. Staying with mom. Being bad depressed (think Morrissey), not cute depressed (think Joaquin Phoenix).  But here I am, back with yet another new life and a finite attention span for you and this blog. You’re sold? Sweet.

Right, so let’s get the formalities out of the way. One, for those of you who don’t know, I live in New York City. Technically, I live in Hoboken, NJ, which is closer to Manhattan than most of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. Hoboken is where upperclass white people in high finance moved to in the 1990’s when they were priced out of Manhattan and had a longing to live their college days over again. (i.e., there’s a lot of gyms, a lot of high rise condos and bars with Irish names, including Douchebag O’Houlihans and Patty McConformists Pub and Boring Girl Zoo). These are the people mostly responsible for the financial apocalypse that’s keeping you from ordering dessert at your favorite restaurant. Yep, these are my neighbors.

And, oh yes, the jobs. I’m not going to say exactly what I’m doing, only that I got a day job that pays well (as in more than I’ve ever made before, as in, more than $4.65 an hour plus dour editor put-downs) and another job at night that could be considered a dream job if not for the fact it pays me $4.65 an hour plus dour editor put-downs.

With money and employment no longer viable reasons for suicide, I now have the time to dedicate to this blog to focus on my real suicide inducing passions: girls and reliving the past.

But before we get on to my woe, let me also deal with one more order of business. I’m also writing because, here among 50-hour work weeks (eek!), slate-gray Ipod centric commutes (puke!) and the urban jungle concrete coffin of New York (um, Bjork?), I’ve settled on the fact that I need to be creative as I canoe slowly with the other lemmings toward a numbing life in the lower-upper middle class. In addition to that sunshine, I’ve also figured out that I do a few things well: 1. Shoot a 17-foot jump shot, 2. Possess above-average comedic timing, 3. Hug good, 4. Write a bit better than some.  When I’m not doing any of those things, I feel incomplete, like I’m wasting myself. I haven’t always been sold on that last one, but I have a few good friends who support me and insist that I can, and should write. So to you few, who have encouraged me, I truly appreciate it, even though I might sometimes express my appreciation in the form of a dismissive castigation.

About Not Getting The Girl.

1. My Saturday night in New York, my cousin and his wife invited me out to a house-warming party in Brooklyn. It was a lawyer party (not in that you had to dress up like lawyers from John Grisham novels, but that it was attended by lawyers who work with my cousin’s wife, Liz). It was a surprisingly raucous affair for a group possessing Juris Doctorates from schools with terrible sports (Harvard, Yale, George Washington) and bank accounts that would make Hurley from Lost blush. So, good old Zach does what good old Zach does, he hides in the corner, talks to the only familiar person he knows (Cousin Ryan) and lets the Bud Light take him where it desires. After an alarming drinking tour de force called a “Power Hour”, essentially just an hour of power, Zach was buzzed and pleased to be out of his mom’s basement and finally co-mingling with people not aged 50 or 14. He was chatty, and by the end of the night, was perched by the the booze, scoping out the room for women who could reject him. Well, what should fate bring him, but a pretty girl, stylishly dressed and get this, she walked over to Zach. (The fact that he was leaning against the booze counter was merely coincidental. She wanted his shit.)

“Um, can I have a drink?” the girl asked.

“You want my shit, do you, you nasty-freak-of-a-soulmate?” Zach said to himself quietly.

“A drink?” she asked again.

“Sure. What do you want?” Zach asked. “I don’t know how to make that many drinks, just a Bad In Bed, Shockingly Hairy, a Self-Righteous Self-Obsessed. Perhaps I could interest you in an Anxiety-Ridden Self-Loather, that’s my specialty.”

“I’ll have a Bud Light, please.”

You’d think that this would be the moment where our hero would lose the girl. No, this is too easy.

In fact, he did start speaking to the girl. She had a great name, a name from an ubiquitous* 1980’s song. Zach proceeded to repeat the chorus of that song over and over again until the girl smiled awkwardly at first, and then really awkwardly later. Finally, on song-reference 37, Zach broke through, and they talked about nice things other than the fact that her first name was from a song that was really popular in the 1980’s.

But the party was wrapping up soon. Cousin and Cousin’s wife said it was time to go, and like a 5-year-old/eunuch/goddamn pussy, Zach put his jacket on, said his goodbyes and left with Ryan and Liz.

(Switching uncomfortably from third person to first person . . . —-slow motion noises—. . . 3 . . . 2 . . .1.)

So there  I was, definitely drunk, but also a bit giddy that I had a nice party chat with a cute girl. As we’re entering the subway station, my cousin informs me that 1980s-Song-Girl, apparently a friend of Ryan and Liz, wanted to meet up with us at a bar. Now, you know what I’m thinking.

According to scripture: Book of R. Kelly, Ignition (Remix)

“After the show, it’s the after party.  And after the party, the hotel lobby.”

So there, I was at least on my way to some form of lobby, if not her vestibule.

But on the train, the powers that be decide that it’s late, and that they do not, in fact, want to meet up for post-party drinks. Faced with the dilemma of either going home to sleep alone and waking up the next morning to a cup of watered-down coffee and my right hand OR having a potentially late night with a girl with a vestibule, I chose Chock Full O’Nuts and Righty.

So, poor old 1980sGirl was stood up. We couldn’t find her number in any phone. Too bad.

But wait (1159 words!).

It gets better.

A few weeks go by and I’m informed that 1980sGirl will be at bar for a big soccer game that’s going to be on TV there. Of course, I make myself up nice (pluck nose hair, put on deodorant) and meet up with Liz and Ryan at the pub. I spot 1980sGirl at the other end of the bar. I know I have a second chance. So, I come up with a brilliant  game plan. First, I’ll stay way on the other side of the bar and watch the game, careful  not to acknowledge her presence because girls like to be ignored and stuff (That’s what the Pickup Artist says, anyway). That kills two birds. Game + Girl Ignore = Awesome.

So the first half goes by. By now, my cousin is furious that I refuse to deviate from my game plan, so he walks us over to where 1980sGirl has been holed up. I step towards her, trying to make eye contact so I can come in with something sexy-fied like “Hey” and add an awkward, circular hand wave. But I peel off, realizing that she is getting her coat on and leaving. She never saw me.  Final score: Future Shrink’s Billing Office 2, Zach 0.

But wait (1365 words!), there’s more.

Another three weeks go by, and one night, Zach is at da’ club, illin’, and checking out potential girls with serious daddy issues and vestibules, only to see that 1980sGirl is there. This time, drunk on job interviews and the new season of Lost, I make my move, sans-dorky hand hello. I’m back in the mix, mentioning that her name is from a 1980’s song and that she is from one of my favorite places on Earth. I apologize for standing her up. She’s learned to laugh when I finish a sentence, what more could go right?

Well, then it came for her and her friend to leave. There’s an pregnant pause. She reaches into her pocketbook and takes out an Iphone and looks at it, then looks at me. It’s here where I should know that she’s telling me to get her number. But it’s here that I realize that last week, my phone went through the laundry so I had to borrow my grandfather’s back-up cell phone which he borrowed from Zak Morris in 1987.

She has Iphone. I have Satellite Phone from movie Predator. Fuck, no number is gotten. I’m way too embarrassed. (Final score: Zach’s Future Wife’s Future Shrink’s Billing Office 3, Zach 0).

She hugs me and says, “Well, I guess I have to go. . . I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

“I hope so,” I say, redeeming myself just a bit.

Then out the door she went, into the New York night and surely into some other guy’s vestibule.

For almost a year, I haven’t had much of an itch to write. The ex-girlfriend exorcisms are over. Couple that with the affirmation of success and belonging that I felt in New Zealand, I’ve been (for me) pretty content.

Nobody really wants to read about how happy you are, anyway. Happy people are gross. That’s why Travis and Oasis have sucked as they’ve aged and found families. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Yates, those miserly and miserable coots, saved themselves for the scene: self-destruction. They knew eternal happiness meant total irrelevance.

If you want uplifting, read the New Testament. Talk to your shrink. Me? I’ll ramble. I’ll suffer, but enjoy it.

But, surprise! No more about the past. You and me, let’s talk about the future. I’m holed up in an apartment, broke, looking out into New York City. You’d have to be dead inside not to be inspired.

I’m writing three essays, to be released in the week before my birthday (March 7). They will be on three topics. None will be about bad relationships.  Dubious? Let’s hope you don’t need to be.

So, three essays. To you. But really for me.

Please, put down the New Testament; piss to the epistles. Cancel your hour with Dr. Finkletwine; he’s only in it for the money, anyway.

Drink some bourbon, draw a warm bath, and let’s open up those veins. But in a good way.

The Wunderluster.

Hey people, sorry I’ve taken a…well, vacation from my blogging responsibilities. (Get it, vacation, I’m in another country).

It’s been a very hectic time around here. Basketball season has finally started. (Don’t ask, we’re 0-2 and I’m stressed). Also, I got a second job at the Otago Daily Times as a copy editor. (Don’t ask, I’m not very good at it and I’m stressed).

I’m pulling down about 40 hours a week at the newspaper and balancing basketball practice and games, so you can see how one might neglect his obscenely popular blog.

So, it’s with great (some mixed emotion word) that I write to inform you, my six, that Wunderluster is (probably) going to be retired.

(I’ll wait while you cry)

(…..)

(……….)

(……………)

 Ok, but lemme explain. I’ve never broken up with six people before. Um, I guess what I’m proposing is an open relationship. See, here’s the deal: for some strange reason, people at the ODT like me. They like me so much that they want to give me my own blog on their new website, to be launced at the end of this month. Yes, I said blog. 

Now, I’m not big on blog bigamy. So, what I’m hoping is this: that you’ll be happy for me and let me put our little thing (Wunderluster) into the background for a while and you’ll follow me over the newspaper’s site.

This is a good professional step for me and a chance to take a departure from penning Morrissey’s Diary here at Wunderluster and actually achieve my dream of penning Amy Winhouse’s diary over at the ODT.

See, the ODT is a major New Zealand newspaper. Frankly, I have no business being there. But I stumbled into the interview just days after the AFC championship game, walking on clouds. I mean, how could things go wrong? 

I’m pumped and jacked for this opportunity. Some continued support, with help from a link on Facebook, will increase my readership and turn me into the most influential American in New Zealand. (There are currently 37 of us).

Anywho, the content in this blog will be slightly different. Gone will be depressing musings about regret and Ms. X and bitching about being afraid of shit. But I mean, it’s not like the only reason you read this journal is to have a masochistic chuckle at my carwreck of a psyche. Wait a second…..

Anyway, it’s been a great three and half months. But frankly, we were never right for each other. You were always a little too shy in the sack.

I’ll come back with all the pertinent information, I’ll give you my new address so you can send me my stuff that you’ve kept in your room.

Yours truly,

The Wunderluster

(If this all goes to shit, please don’t go out with anybody else’s blog so you’ll take me back) 

Last week I went by the library to find a book to read, as one does at a library. After realizing that I’ve read nearly every interesting book there is, I remembered several recommendations for Don DeLillo’s “Underworld.” Apparently, it’s his magnum opus. Frankly, I find it a little forward for Mr. DeLillo to show everyone his magnum opus. Seems a bit scandalous. ANYWAY.

With modern American fiction not at the top of the library circulation list in New Zealand, a helpful librarian of middle age found a copy buried deep in the annals of Dunedin Public Library. Books about cricketers and eco-tourism abound, but you can’t get a seminal work on modern Americana on the available shelves in New Zealand.

But what should I find but a handy little bookmark in the form of a postcard within this buried text. Being in the intimacy-starved state I’m in, I was overjoyed to have a window into somebody’s correspondence. On the front of the postcard was a black and white picture of an aquarium janitor squeegeeing an underground see-through window of the whale pool.

Wicked intense and interesting, eh? Well, not really. It’s an untitled photograph from Garry Winogrand from 1963. It’s a Winogrand! A Winogrand! No, I don’t know who Garry Winogrand is, either. I’m just trying to spin a yarn here. 

The postcard is addressed to:

The Keans

448 Highgate

Maori Hill

Dunedin

New Zealand

The postcard is dated 7 June, 1991 and was stamped in London. The text is as follows:

“Hi there! Thanks for your card from Honolulu, hope you get a nice tan! Did you go back to that bay where we went snorkeling? Can you send me Rosemary’s address? Mike — I’m half way through a letter to you — thanks for your last one. Dad — it’s too late for the stuff to be organised for Andrei and Inga, they are leaving here in a week with as much as we have organised — They should be alright. But they may pop in for a visit if they get to Dunedin. I’m still cooking and doing a bit of law clerking for solicitors. Doing some more lighting for plays, too, and starting to edit Cakekitchen video. More soon, love Martin.”

Ok, so nobody is admitting to murder, talking about a lost love one or venting about heartache, but I found this long forgotten memento fascinating if only for one reason.

This postcard was mailed in 1991. “Underworld” was published in 1997. So, for six years The Keans kept this postcard to remind them of something or someone. Probably Martin. Rosemary was probably his stepmom. Dad is dad. Who’s Andrei and Inga? Who’s Mike? What on God’s green earth was the Cakekitchen video? More importantly, why did this postcard matter?

Well, memories are funny things aren’t they? I’ve made no secret of my own difficulties with dealing with loss and moving on. It’s not so much that I don’t want to move on, it’s just that anything can set off a memory. A familiar smell, a long lost love note, a blanket, a pair of pants, a picture or perfume. They’re all an immediate transport to somewhere else. Without moving on, life can be suffering and stagnant. But then again, throwing away pictures, gifts and memory saturated THINGS doesn’t feel right either. It’s almost sacrilegious. It’s some holy shit. Like chucking a Bible in the trash.

When Ms. X and I worked our way through the final stages of separation she asked me how to stop remembering things we went through together. Every memory and familiarity had immense context. While I’m no shaman, what I said was fairly prophetic and accurate.

To paraphrase, I said “to move on we can’t sit and think about how we’re dealing with the past. We can’t make coping a conscious choice. We can’t actively forget each other. The only thing we can do is to totally look forward and let new experiences replace our old memories.”

For my own poetic peace of mind, I’d like to think that Martin never came back to Dunedin. Something happened. He fell in love…or into a coma and never returned. And for years, Mike, Rosemary and Dad suffered without him and kept this postcard to remind themselves of their beloved son, cousin, brother or friend. But at that perfect moment, the one only fate can decide, the attachment to his memory was dissolved and “Underworld” was returned to the library and somebody was OK with forgetting to snag Martin’s postcard.

See, coping with loss isn’t about defining and ordering what happened in the past and coming to some kind closure.

 Nah, it’s about finding something better to think about.

I’ve passed several ideas around on how I could envigorate this journal. But for one, let me say this: the highlights of this place are my grumbling contemplations and borderline whining about things that have happened, meaning past tense, in my life. My travel writing is pretty poor, if not non-existent.

Now, Wunderlusting, as it were, doesn’t necessarily demand the topic be about seeing penguins, eating exotic meals or seeing a girl naked in the hostel bathroom. Wunderlusting as I understand is about looking forward toward adventure. As we all know, there are several types of adventures

 There’s professional adventure, for instance.

 I am on one of these now. My grip is white-knuckled. Coaching on the professional level is a constant poker match between players, coaches and other teams. You’re constantly trying to measure what the other one is holding without, of course, giving up what you’re stashing. I’ve found that I’m holding many intangibles: eagerness, wit, being personable and an ability to observe both on the human level and on the basketball court. That’s pretty good I think. But I’m up against people who’ve been to the rodeo more than a few times. My challenge is to show these cowboys I can ride having not ever really corralled a bull before. There’s a lot of posturing and it’s fascinating. I wish I could get into specifics, but I’ll have to wait and write a “Ball Four” – like masterpiece.

I’m learning at my job at a furious pace. The position, plus my relative lack of practical experience, demands it. Understanding the wave you’re riding is probably the first key to any great adventure. This brings me to the biggest black mark on my life so far. I have been on a great adventure in the past, but I didn’t really know it at the time. Sure, I had a look at what I was saying and what I was doing and I admitted that it was all pretty cool. But when I look back, I was weighed down by trivialities. Triviality is the business of the righteous and I have been Pat Robertson incarnate in the past.

Now, you probably want some sort of explanation as to what the fuck I’m talking about. But try as I might, I can’t tell you. See, I’ve tried to repay my debt for taking a good thing for granted. (This is not to say that this good thing was “the right thing” or “the only thing” for me, but rather that it wasn’t fully appreciated at the time). I mull over where I could have done better. I have dreams replaying opportunities where I went overboard with zeal. Yet, there will be no respite from this ghostly curse until I kill it.

But there’s the rub. How do you kill something that’s not alive and not dead, either. Sure, you can talk about loss, grief, death, guilt until you’ve run out of words. But what does that do? At a certain point, those topics become central to one’s day-to-day inner-monologue and engulf so that other adventures go further unappreciated.

On the other hand, you can always try to ignore regret, but I always know when I’m distracting myself.

And that’s the cycle that I’m in. Regret has the best of me. That’s why I can’t update this blog regularly. Writing about what really burns me is only going to feed the monster.  

Let me clarify: this is where I want to be. This is right. This is a good start. It’s progress. But as for this cursed cloud that hangs, well,  I just don’t know what other penance is left to pay.

(P.S. — Anyone who suggests this is all just cyclical, self-fulfilling thinking can kiss my ass and will be banned from this website.)

(P.P.S. — Anyone know the score from the Super Bowl?)

Hey, it’s me. You know, the guy who pooped on his friends in his last blog post and didn’t bother keeping in touch for the next two and a half weeks. Yeah, it’s me. Sorry about that, but I’ve been a little swamped.

 It’s a good thing though. There’s been plenty of stuff going on at work and I’ve been about fishing, hiking and the like. The basketball season, well, proper practices and such start on Monday. So the great odyssey is upon me. It’s all so very exciting.

 I’m going to be short and honest here until I have the time and inclination to talk at length about other interesting stuff: I meant what I said last time. Friendship is a drag. And adulthood can be quite lonely. But a byproduct of accepting these facts is not taking for granted when good friends and good breaks enter your path. I’ve been lucky to have both good fortune and good mates (NZ word for “friend”) in my life and now I feel more equipped to take care of them. Loss means learning.

 I just don’t have anything that interesting to say right now. Just bear with me, I’m putting it all together and working hard and living very happily. In the mean time, find someone to love on Valentine’s Day and don’t forget that I’m a Pisces.

(Editor’s Note: The Wunderluster tried to make this coherent and meaningful, but he got pissed off about three-fourths of the way through and realizes this post mostly went to shit. Enjoy!)

Thanks.

I’ve just tried to call some of you. It’s about four in the afternoon on a hotter than usual summer’s day here in Dunedin and I needed a friendly friend fix and you weren’t there. Nobody picked up. You’re all probably watching the NBC Democratic Candidate Debate. Let me be clear: I’m not killing myself about you not picking up, or mentally killing you over it either. However, like any great epiphany, or convenient segue; it made me start thinking about something.

Friendship.

Please, please don’t run away. I promise some of this will be interesting and I’ll crack a joke about myself and you’ll snicker and nod your head. Just bear with me here.

No, I’m not talking about MySpace friendship. I’m not talking about summer camp BFFL’s (Best Friends For Life), either. Neither Bros, nor Hos fall into this conversation. I’d like to talk about the crux of modern adult friendship, which I might add, is a fucking drag.

Let me preface this bitchfest with a little note. Lo, around early November, I was still hell bent on moving to New York City in January. But I was feeling suffocated, as one would when one lives in one’s mother’s basement. So, in a time of need, or a need for a friendly friend fix, I called one of you just to chat about life. You didn’t pick up. Nor did you call me back in what would be considered a reasonable amount of time. I’m talking about five days.

Like all the petty ways in which I’ve tried to measure my life (you’re nodding now!), that particular persona-non-caller registered as the litmus test for my universe in that moment. It was time for a change. That was enough. So I bought a ticket, said my goodbyes. Yada yada yada and now I’m so fucking happy I got rainbows in my eyes and sunshine bursting outta my ass. Everything is fine now, truly. 

Close your eyes. Try to get a rough estimate of how many people from high school through college and up through now you’ve met and talked to at least more than five times socially. In my mind, the five conversation threshold lays the seeds for a MINIMAL friendship. So for me, I’d say I’ve averaged about 20 or so 5-Convo friends since I was 16. That puts me up around 200 people that could be in my close social network. Now, of those 200, who do I talk to on what I would regard a regular basis (as in twice a week)? One. Yes, I’m taking into consideration the fact that I’m in fucking New Zealand. I get that. I’m estimating since, say, this past summer. So, from young adulthood, until mid-20’s, my good friend rate is about .5 percent.

Please, stop giving your computer the middle finger for a second (it’s very unladylike) and let me poke holes in my previous paragraph, both relieving your dainty digits and further articulating my soul.

There are myriad reasons my good friend rate is about .5 percent. Moving. Work. Relationships. Travel. Family. Flame-Out. Different Classes. Different Workout Schedules. Outgrowing. Outdrinking. Bad habits. Bad Sex. 

Whatever.

I’m not saying anything new here: it’s hard to keep friends throughout your adulthood because your life is changing so much around you. We’re all happy with that explanation, right?

When I hear people talk about long gone connections, most sentences start with “Well, I’ve been so busy that…” or “Me and So and So had so much going on…” This again, because I’ve come to find out is how things work, is acceptable. If the majority of people function a certain way, there exists a logical leg to stand on. If you begin sentences like mentioned above, remember, I still love ya.

But I believe that work and proximity determine adult friendship. This means that who is available when you’re not working (or is at work with you) and who is in a reasonable distance from where you sleep are your friends. That’s who you invest in and who invests in you. Again, this may be Civilization 101, but I find it terribly depressing.

 (Editors Note: It’s all downhill from here.) 

Some of you I thought I’d know forever. I thought our kids might know each other. Heck, I even was looking forward to fathering some legitimate and not-so-legitimate Zach Jr’s with you, too.

 Most of you are gone or on your way out. Friendship, I guess, is a little allegory for life. From the moment of creation, friendship is on a one-way ticket to death. This makes marriage such a transcendent venture. Sickness. Health. Richer. Poorer. Your friendship with your spouse should be impregnable to such ills as moving to a new apartment in the Upper East Side or a new job in Tucson. But I repeat, should be. 

Friendship is a war of attrition. I’m going to fight that war tooth and nail. But do me a favor, look around and take stock of the people you have and love them intensely now. Your life together withers each day. Make an effort to extract from friendship every last bit you can. Don’t be too busy. Don’t be too tired. And next time, pick up the fucking phone.

To honor a former editor, I submit to you, My Six, several mini-posts or “Blogvellas.” Think of them like Shakespearean Sonnets, except not about “the Dark Lady” and just as overtly homosexual. 

1. An alarming number of you have corresponded with me about my sexual health in the wake of my last post. I would like to put all rumors to rest and say that my sexual health is pristine, with my date rapes up only 16 percent thus far in 2008 and my porn usage stagnated due to the low third-world-like internet access here in Middle Earth. So, just chill with the sex references. It’s not befitting of a blog like this to toss such virtual verbal salad. Ahem.

2. To those of you who don’t already know, my long struggle against Kent County Hospital finally ended last month with me winning. Here, jump in the Wunderluster Time Machine again (yes, again) and I’ll spin the fascinating story of pan-continental basketball domination, boogery crying, reconstructive knee surgery, the painstaking and soul-stretching fight back to perfect physical condition, a $12,000 surgery bill, 27 months of denial, a last minute reprieve from a hospital and sanctimonious gloating. Wait. That is the story.

Anyway, I’ve had a $12,000 guillotine hanging over my head since the Hospital decided that a bureaucratic coding snafu wasn’t worth correcting; a snafu that switched the burden of the bill from my poor, cash-strapped heath insurance company to the economic behemoth that pens this burgeoning electronic journal. The hospital was all ready to take me to court, but fortunately, I’m just poor enough to qualify for financial aid. Hoo-f’ing-ray.

3. When I first moved to college in 2K1, I threw around a few revolutionary ideas, as one does at such an intellectual bastion as Northwester…I mean, Northeastern. One idea was a book about how we could really misunderstand tone and context in online convos – like Instant Messaging. Yeah, I am that smart. Get over it.

I’d like to think that half-assed sociology book fetus was in fact the cousin twice-removed of what would become the news-feed-of-our-lives, Facebook or yet the Byzantine MySpace. I’m not the first to talk about how these social networks have changed our lives. So, I’m not going on that track. I will say this: Facebook has ruined my day before. Of course, it’s made my day before, too. But, I’m not going to go on this track either.

Facebook has done an immense job of chronicling my life like I could not have imagined. It has photos from my last three years. It has my address, job history, the fascinating results of my friends’ movie knowledge quizzes, the fact that I’m a pirate and not a ninja and illustrates though a nifty graph, and my social history. And somehow, and this is freakin’ amazing, Facebook posts links to Wunderluster every time it’s updated without my prior knowledge! Basically, it’s my life index.

This dawned on me a few days ago when, in my news feed, the “R.I.P. Skip Gruneberg” Facebook group appeared. In high school, during my ill-fated and not-talked-about Hendricken days, my 1987 Ford Econoline Conversion Van would occasionally break down and I would need a ride to school. With some prodding, okay, a lot of prodding, Skip would drive about three-fourths of a mile out of his way and pick me up in the morning for school. Though a member of the now-defunct and overtly homosexual Hendricken social club The Swixtas, Skip was generally a good dude.

The point is not to harp on him here. And I can’t properly memorialize him, either. But I sit here in awe, in New Zealand, and know about the fate of a footnote of my life. Even 10 years ago, I would have never have known about what happened to Skip. I’m not going to any Hendricken reunions. I’m certainly never cavorting with any known douchebag Swixtas. Anyway, R.I.P. Skip Gruneberg.

4. Day-to-day life here has been going much better. Dunedin has returned from its month long lunch out. And, the moody Otago weather has mellowed out. This made for a sea-kayaking trip out to the small seaside town of Karitane. Yes, I have a friend out there: an American professor and his courteous and startlingly well-behaved family of five sons and a wife. It was beautiful. Along with the domestically annoying, yet annoyingly functional Monica, I set out in the two-seater vessel and traversed a peninsula, spying yellow-eyed penguins, seals and a manta ray.

 Yet in the same week, I watched the first season of The Wire in just less than 36 hours. That’s 13 hours of The Wire. Sixteen hours of sleeping and seven hours of other, boring stuff. It’s good to know that my life here has finally found some balance.

5. I’d like to give this site some routine features… besides the top quality gripes of an intellectually insecure half-breed. One feature was started last week with those mind-boggling philosophical life questions I threw out to My Six. But it doesn’t count yet because it didn’t have a catchy name in capital letters. Monica just suggested the clever, yet not entirely bright enough, “Zach’s Corner of Q’s.” Veto. I’m going with iWunder. So without further adieu, the eagerly anticipated debut (but not really debut) of the iWunder feature!

A. You have the chance to flash forward five years and meet your soul mate. (Note to the delusional: this is assuming you haven’t already found them.). This is the person who will complete you in every way: ignite your deepest desires, buy you good Christmas presents, have that heart-softening knack of kissing you when you’re angry and will make you a spinach and feta omelet and perfectly percolated coffee on cold, winter weekend mornings. This is not just your soul mate; it’s your soul mate, soul mate.  The rub is you’ll have just a vague memory of the previous five years, akin to a comatose dream. However, you will not live through these five years. There is no guarantee you’ll meet this person if you don’t take the five-year free pass. Do you make the life trade?

B. Imagine three people of the opposite sex. Person 1 is very physically attractive. But sex with this person will cause a 50-50 chance of sterility due to a groin-crippling STD you’ll contract. Person 2 is physically acceptable, nothing to get all excited about, but is a generally nice person. Sex with Person 2 has to be done in front of their spouse, an acquaintance of yours who is watching intently and approvingly. Person 3 gives you the willies, but is not necessarily a bad person. Doing it with No. 3 will cause a pregnancy. Abortion is not an option. Who do you do? WHO DO YOU DO?

C. Do you like me better with short hair or long hair?

A little Jewish humor to get us started off.

Q: What happens to a Jewish guy right before he bumps his boner into a wall?

A: He hits his nose.

Hilarious, right?

Many of you reading this have either (1) slept with me or (2) really wanted to sleep with me, so a boner reference is sure to have my readership plunged deep into the throws of some most furious carnal passion, but stick with me here.

This joke is not to inspire the six of you to either leave your boyfriends, husbands or finally admit that you’re gay. It’s a metaphor, people.

Since arriving in Dunedin four weeks ago, Monica and I have been bumping our boners into the wall. See, it’s dead here. The university students that number nearly 40,000, give the city its soul and very reason for commercial existence, have gone for the summer, leaving an urban skeleton.

So the city looks like fun. It teems with several closed businesses and is plastered with more concert posters than Brooklyn. And, because the key economic demographic is trekking through the rest of the country have casual sex, eating Tim Tams and drinking flat whites, no jobs exist for those of us who need them.

Well, let me qualify that. Monica works as a waitress at the Ra Bar, an upscale café/bar (mostly bar) that is located in the Octagon, the city’s nerve center. But waitresses here don’t get tips. But what they do get is condescending locals, retarded tourists and the odd slap on the ass by the inebriated denizens. I don’t need that shit.

But you guys are saying “wait, you got a job with that world famous basketball team that’s gonna pay you gobs and require that you get some minor celebrity perks like third-rate groupie tail.” This only partly true. While I’m banking big time on that last part, the basketball pay is going to be spotty at best as my paycheck is tied to specific projects I work on, not an hourly rate or a Zach-friendly salary system. The pro season doesn’t really even start until February. So, I’m going to need another job regardless.

With all the momentum that came with this trip: the romance of travel, the escape from my mom’s basement, the deeply satisfying rubbing-it-in-to-your-friends phase, I’ve kind of hit a wall…with my soul erection, or Soulrection. I’m metaphorically dry humping drywall. Now, I’m famous tenor Flacido Domingo. I vacation in upstate New York at Lake Flacid. I recently dropped flacid with a couple of hippie friends.

But, wait, wait, wait. It’s really not all that bad. Essentially, I’m only damn near broke. But what would a Wunderluster entry really be without dragging the readers down with unfunny jokes, immature and untimely sexual references and a general bleak outlook on life without uplifting the spirit just at the very end to prove the author’s worth? Exactly.

Without further ado (and whining), the good stuff!

1. Nothing.

2. Just kidding.

*We finally have friends. At the hostel up the street, we’ve somehow befriended the owners and their motley crew of internationals who are vaguely our age. So, every night, I make my way up the hill around 7 p.m. without the knowledge what debauchery will ensue. Usually, there’s no debauchery, unfortunately. However, it’s a place to drink, tell stories and play unusually competitive board games, usually inflamed by unreasonably aggressive Germans.

We spent Christmas with these hostel people and went off-roading into the Otago countryside. I, of course, DJ’d the whole five-hour trip. Needless to say, everyone in the car was in raptures and ready to rip off each one of my fingers.

The day before that, our group drove down to the beach on the advice of my flatmate, to dig for cockles. (A quick note about the flatemate: due to the terms of our lease agreement, I can’t mention this dude in the blog. So, bear with me). Cockles are, if you stupids didn’t already know, like small clams. After ethnically cleansing the shelled delights from the bay, we drove back to the hostel and peer-pressured said flatmate into cooking the cockles for a dinner party of 10. It was delicious. And it has inspired me to only gather my food from now on. So, I do the shopping and Monica cooks. It’s like frontier living.

*I’ve been tossing around some philosophical questions in my head recently, so I put them to you, My Six.

1.For the ladies only: One day, Jesus Christ appears to you and says “look, my dad and I have been talking and we agreed he fucked up with the whole immaculate conception thing. Admittedly, it’s a little, well, unbelievable. So, we want to bring the next generation of our dynasty in the proper way. Wink, wink.” Here’s the question, do you bang Jesus? For those of you who are curious, Monica refused to answer the question on grounds that it was sacrilegious. I said yes because (1) I’d be super-famous and (2) parents would be naming their kids Zach-Katherine, Zach-Jane, Zachia, Zachie and several other derivatives thereof for 2,000 years.

2. You’re stuck on a deserted island for three years, Cast Away style. You can pick a television or movie character to spend that time with. Who is it? Mine was Kate from Lost. Monica’s was Hans Solo. He-who-will-not-be-name-due-to-the-lease-agreement picked Amelia Earhart. No kidding.

3. You’re given the chance to immediately find your soul mate. This is the person who completes you in every way imaginable and gives you transcendent bliss and comfort. But here’s the trade-off: this person is of the same sex. Now, to make this transition a little more palatable, a genie that looks like me appears to you wearing nothing, save for a blue speedo and matching blue turban and said if you make the choice, you will forget that you were ever heterosexual. But everything else is the same. Monica said no because of cultural repercussions. I said no because I’m employed full-time as a bi-sexual genie. Dr. Voldemort, M.D. kicked me in the face and went back to reading his biography of Amelia Earhart.

Finally, I would like to wish you all a happy new year. In accordance with recent history, my New Year’s resolutions will remain unchanged.

1. Love and success, hopefully at the same time.

2. No more freakouts.

Enjoy 2008.