I find that I am a very unconvincing liar when I am hungover. I usually look depressed and more often than not smell vaguely homeless, which was certainly the case two days ago when Canadian border officials interrogated me at length just outside of Blaine, Washington.
The official in question was an imposing middle aged woman with a curt manner of speaking and a gaze like an executioner. Over the course of the next 30 minutes she would make me go from feeling completely innocent to feeling like I had somehow been a key player in Hitler's Nazi Germany.
"So, how long will you be staying in Canada?"
"Uh...19 days," I responded.
"And how are you getting back?"
"Uh...I don't know....quick shuttle?"
"Do you have a return ticket?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, uh, I guess I just don't plan that far ahead."
Swing and a miss. "Strike one!" called the umpire as the woman shot me a gaze like I had just tried to feel up her 16 year-old daughter. She retreated to her desk, told me to sit down, and after about 15 minutes (at this point everyone in the bus was waiting for me) came back.
"Ok, Mr. Wetzler, tell me what it is you do back home in Washington."
"Uh...I'm unemployed."
"And where do you live?"
"With my parents."
Low, breaking-ball inside. "Strike two!" This woman was absolutely owning me. Every question she asked had my eyes searching nervously for answers and looking extremely suspicious despite the fact that I basically had nothing to hide. I was innocent. Not guilty! But she had me feeling quite the contrary.
"Ok, Mr. Wetzler," she began again, "here's what we're going to do. I'm going to let you into Canada, but only on the condition that you do not work, do not go to school, and that you get the fuck out of here by February 20th."
She actually said "get the fuck out"*.
Then she pulled out a piece of paper that had the same things written on it: "Cannot work, cannot study, must leave by February 20th," folded it up, and stapled it inside my passport along with a vibrant blue stamp that said, "This Guy is an Asshole. Canada Rules."
"What an absolute sweetheart," I thought to myself. Christ, I might've even asked out the young damsel had the scenario been slightly different, say, one in which she wasn't verbally hack-sawing my legs off at the knees.
Which prompts me to ask you this, Canada: "Where is the GD love?" We're neighbors. We're supposed to be homies. We exist so that you guys can say, "Hey, at least I'm not American," and you guys exist so that we can say, "Canadians are dirty heathens." I mean, give me a break. I'm not a bad guy, and I'm not even that big of a liar. I'm not doing any of the things the woman told me not to do; I didn't put up ads this morning on Craigslist: Victoria, looking for work, and I'm not typing this blog from a cozy, well-lit cubby at the University of Victoria.
And I'm definitely not staying till February 20th. I'm staying till June.
- Boosh Clown
*She actually did not.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Ushuaia
I would like to formally apologize for the recent lull in blog activity. But I do have an excuse: I am Hella South. I am in Ushuaia, one of the most southerly towns in South America. It is approximately as far south of the equator as Anchorage, Alaska, is north. It is a mythical land of polar bears and blue-headed boobies, a land of seal-blubber parkas and whale-bone canoes.
The good thing about being so far south (see: Souf) is this: unless I am to dip my supple hindquarters into the fridgid waters of the Atlantic and attempt to swim to Antarctica, I can't go much further. Which means I have to go north. Which means I have to go to Buenos Aires. Which means I have to go home.
Plus, I saw a penguin yesterday.
Most of you are probably wondering how my mental health is holding up. I have been on the road for quite some time, and lately have been traveling on my own. It is, judging by my last blog entry, a fair question. I cannot at this point give you a full psychological report, but I can say this: the hippie count is somewhere between "Low" and "Nonexistent." Which is thrilling. Yes, friends, it would appear that hippies do not particularly care for cold weather, an agreeable phenomenon for whose explanation I have a variety of hypotheses:
1) In a tropical climate, warm air and languid breezes offer plenty of opportunity for armpit sniffing, an activity hippies are known to enjoy with particular zeal. Vice versa, cold climates offer very little opportunity for armit sniffing, as one must cover himself in a parka or some other kind of heat-conserving garment.
2) "Reggae Riddims" are popular on the beach. They are not popular, however, when the beach is 14 degrees and dotted with ice floes.
3) There is very little marijuana this far south. Indeed, it would probably be easier to find and smoke some kind of hallucinagenic lychen than it would be to find pot.
4) The only drum circles here are done by the natives right before they go out to sea to ritualistically hunt and kill gray whales. Anyone wearing tie-dye is harpooned.
As you can see, this is not an environment particularly suited to "free spirits." In fact, it is an environment not really suited to anything but grizzly bears and people that are "fucking gnarly." Hippies are not gnarly. They are docile. The ideal environment for a hippie is 72 degrees F, beach hammock, Peter Tosh CD, and ganja. If the ganja is plentiful and there is no deodorant for a 1-2 mile radius, all the better. Hippies do not like adverse conditions. They like to "take it easy," "go with the flow," and they especially like to "chill." Why is it then, I ask, that hippies are associated with "overcoming adversity," especially through activities like non-violence? Why would they be associated with anything requiring mental competence or physical strain when their keenest abilities seem to lie in fashioning bongs out of apples and weaving hemp necklaces? It is downright puzzling, and I will not attempt to provide a concrete answer just in this post. I will, however, say this: the song "Legalize It" by Peter Tosh is not about marijuana. It is about laziness. It is about sloth. It is about the soul's right to retreat from society and live in a world dominated by tofu and Manu Chao CD's. A world dominated by "peace" and "love."
But in Ushuaia, there is no time for peace and love. Indeed, there doesn't need to be. There are no drugs, no crime. The people are of an amiable and hard-working type that endures the harsh climate with a smile its face.
Hopefully it will continue like this for centuries to come, for I fear the day when a confused-looking tourist wanders out of the bus station, struggling to pile his dreadlocks under his oversized knit hat that vaguely displays the colors of the Jamaican flag. That day, if it comes, will be a sad day. It will be a day in which we will have to kiss the time-honored whale hunts goodbye, making way instead for some kind of giant tofu replica with flippers made of vegan seaweed. Traditional song and dance as we know it we will be thrown to the wayside to make room for such groups as "The Toots and the Maytails," and a breed of dancing that resembles mating orangutans in slow-motion. But worst of all, my friends, there will be no more smiling faces, for the hippies take it all. The happiness, the freedom, the ambition. Every last goddamn drop. And they replace it with "love." Peace, and love.
-Boosh Clown
The good thing about being so far south (see: Souf) is this: unless I am to dip my supple hindquarters into the fridgid waters of the Atlantic and attempt to swim to Antarctica, I can't go much further. Which means I have to go north. Which means I have to go to Buenos Aires. Which means I have to go home.
Plus, I saw a penguin yesterday.
Most of you are probably wondering how my mental health is holding up. I have been on the road for quite some time, and lately have been traveling on my own. It is, judging by my last blog entry, a fair question. I cannot at this point give you a full psychological report, but I can say this: the hippie count is somewhere between "Low" and "Nonexistent." Which is thrilling. Yes, friends, it would appear that hippies do not particularly care for cold weather, an agreeable phenomenon for whose explanation I have a variety of hypotheses:
1) In a tropical climate, warm air and languid breezes offer plenty of opportunity for armpit sniffing, an activity hippies are known to enjoy with particular zeal. Vice versa, cold climates offer very little opportunity for armit sniffing, as one must cover himself in a parka or some other kind of heat-conserving garment.
2) "Reggae Riddims" are popular on the beach. They are not popular, however, when the beach is 14 degrees and dotted with ice floes.
3) There is very little marijuana this far south. Indeed, it would probably be easier to find and smoke some kind of hallucinagenic lychen than it would be to find pot.
4) The only drum circles here are done by the natives right before they go out to sea to ritualistically hunt and kill gray whales. Anyone wearing tie-dye is harpooned.
As you can see, this is not an environment particularly suited to "free spirits." In fact, it is an environment not really suited to anything but grizzly bears and people that are "fucking gnarly." Hippies are not gnarly. They are docile. The ideal environment for a hippie is 72 degrees F, beach hammock, Peter Tosh CD, and ganja. If the ganja is plentiful and there is no deodorant for a 1-2 mile radius, all the better. Hippies do not like adverse conditions. They like to "take it easy," "go with the flow," and they especially like to "chill." Why is it then, I ask, that hippies are associated with "overcoming adversity," especially through activities like non-violence? Why would they be associated with anything requiring mental competence or physical strain when their keenest abilities seem to lie in fashioning bongs out of apples and weaving hemp necklaces? It is downright puzzling, and I will not attempt to provide a concrete answer just in this post. I will, however, say this: the song "Legalize It" by Peter Tosh is not about marijuana. It is about laziness. It is about sloth. It is about the soul's right to retreat from society and live in a world dominated by tofu and Manu Chao CD's. A world dominated by "peace" and "love."
But in Ushuaia, there is no time for peace and love. Indeed, there doesn't need to be. There are no drugs, no crime. The people are of an amiable and hard-working type that endures the harsh climate with a smile its face.
Hopefully it will continue like this for centuries to come, for I fear the day when a confused-looking tourist wanders out of the bus station, struggling to pile his dreadlocks under his oversized knit hat that vaguely displays the colors of the Jamaican flag. That day, if it comes, will be a sad day. It will be a day in which we will have to kiss the time-honored whale hunts goodbye, making way instead for some kind of giant tofu replica with flippers made of vegan seaweed. Traditional song and dance as we know it we will be thrown to the wayside to make room for such groups as "The Toots and the Maytails," and a breed of dancing that resembles mating orangutans in slow-motion. But worst of all, my friends, there will be no more smiling faces, for the hippies take it all. The happiness, the freedom, the ambition. Every last goddamn drop. And they replace it with "love." Peace, and love.
-Boosh Clown
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