Whatever Wednesday

Whatever Wednesday is dead.

Wait, before you freak out, keep reading. 

Reasons why

1. wednesdays are hard (Wednesday nights used to be my only free night, now I just have 9 consecutive hours of stuff without time for emails in between)

2. attendance has dropped off to the point that a population sampling of my apartment on Wednesday night is indistinguishable from any other time of the week

3. I'd rather have an infrequent, high quality newsletter than have a wanton rag that comes at the same time every week

4. the second anniversary just passed and I didn't even attempt to do anything to celebrate it

5. c'mon, you're as bored as I am

I was waiting for the right moment to break the news because I knew it wouldn't go over well and because I knew it wouldn't be easy for me, and it wasn't--to call time of death. Nor was it fun to condemn something I've been working on religiously for two years. But writing is my religion and it doesn't care if I worship false gods as long as I write about convincingly, so I'm starting over.

next steps: 

+by default I will be keeping this email list intact. If you wish to be removed, please let me know, and I will empathetically understand, as you will no longer be getting what you signed up for.

next steps for me:

+figure out a snappy name (what do you think about "endoplasmic ridiculum"?)

+set up web page to blog at

+write an email that's so dope that everybody wants to keep reading. 

If you find yourself in Whatever Wednesday withdrawal, you can always find the full archive here www.whateverwednesday.tumblr.com

Until the next chapter,

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

This weekend I was chatting with a Whatever Wednesday email reader at a party, and he commented that he liked how I had taken to opening my emails with a description of my location since it is no longer a foregone conclusion that I'm sitting at a desk. Right now, I am composing from Engineering Hall, where I stopped for a 40 minute break between classes because they have overpriced snacks. I'm sorry that this email is coming so late in the day; its literally the first break I've had since I left my apartment on bike at 9:30 this morning. I did have a 25 minute gap between classes around 1, but I needed to use that time to scrounge up some food. I got a calzone for lunch, not because I like calzones but because I figured I could relatively safely transport a calzone clutched in my left hand while I biked to my next class and steered with my right hand. Do you see how this left no additional hands for typing?

Indeed, I am kind of coming to hate Wednesdays, mostly because I have a 3 hour biology lab that is like hell on earth. The lab component is poorly organized, super annoying, and worth a third of the grade for the class. The lab bills itself as "exploratory" and "focused on life skills," when really it has the kind of pedagogical structure where the TA asks a question and then follows up with a series of subsequent "Why?"s until you've lost the point and feel like you're talking to a three year old who happens to be pretty close to getting a PhD. I can handle directions, and I can handle open ended questions; what I CAN'T handle is when they want you to "figure it out for yourself" but there's actually one confusingly specific answer that they're looking for and they won't answer any questions or tell you if you're on the right track because, you know, you're figuring it out for yourself. 

  It took most of my energy not to scream obscenities and light myself on fire with a bunsen burner during the psychological warfare that was that lab section, so that's all I got for today.

Tonight, we will be continuing our endeavors from last week, namely absinthe-fueled self-portraiture (I bought some dope new art supplies) and a glow-in-the-dark jigsaw puzzle of a wizard looking through a telescope. 8 pm, for good times.

Hello and happy Wednesday!

Today I am writing this email from the top row of a 600 person lecture hall where a lecture is currently underway. I had to go to class because, even though the videotape the lecture with audio and make it available online, they do those stupid clicker questions that are a glorified way of taking attendance and actually count towards your grade. So here I am, sweating, in a room that smells like the 70s, surrounded by hieroglyphs carved with pencils into the wooden chairs-desks-armrests that remind me more of summer camp than college while the professor talks about amino acids. Forgive me if this isn't my best email ever.

I realized that UW is the largest organization I've ever been a part of in terms of instantaneously, localized population--that is, not over the history of man, not spread around the world, but right here right now. Sometimes, the number of people is absolutely staggering. This is specifically true during the 15 minute grace period between classes, which unfolds like a chaotic changing of the guards, or maybe an aggressively atonal symphony. You have thousands of people on foot, fleets of bikes, slow-moving vespas, and a few enthusiastic skateboarders (not to mention buses and cars) all crossing the stress simultaneously at different angles. You need to focus all of your energy on not walking into anything else, moving or stationary. The cross walk is not a safe space. 

And this is all assuming you can actually get outside; I spent a full 4 minutes today trapped in the hallway of the chemistry building waiting for freshmen to get their heads out of their butts long enough to walk through the door marked "exit". It was kind of excruciating, but also kind of beautiful, in the way that life-sized entropy models can be kind of beautiful. 

That brings me to what I am actually doing in school, which I don't think I explicitly stated previously: I am back as a special, non-degree-seeking student to finish my pre-med requirements and ultimately apply to med school. This semester I am taking Organic Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry, Abnormal Psychology, and Microscopy. I realize there are a whole lot of levels of ridiculous to this story, but you know what? I believe in myself.

I also believe that people who believe in themselves is in dangerously short supply in our society. So tonight, in a kind of tenuously connected activity, sorry, we will be drinking absinthe and making self-portraits!

Come over tonight around 8 pm to emulate the best artistes of 19th century France! I will provide the green fairy and many art supplies, but I also threw out a lot of my art supplies in the move :( so if you have anything to contribute it will be appreciated. Also extra mirrors, maybe. 

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

I am writing this email to you from my laptop, sitting on the grass outside the iconic Agriculture Hall on campus while a bee hovers lasciviously around my left foot. 

I have now had each of my classes exactly once. I could tell you about them, but I think that's a conversation better reserved for parents and people with whom I have to make small talk. The highlights: one of my professors is obsessed with cats to a similar extent as my former boss's boss, so that made me feel right at home; I have a potential New Friend named Axel; and I've only embarrassed myself with my graceless bike riding in front of four lanes of traffic and several hundred pedestrians ONCE (so far). 

As it turns out, more through bad luck than any fault of my own due to scheduling difficulties, my Wednesdays are absolutely BRUTAL and not whatever at all. I have class from 10-7 with only enough time in between to figure out where I'm actually supposed to be/bike between buildings/fumble with my bike lock for 10 minutes/realize that I didn't actually like my bike TO anything/fumble with the lock again/forget what time my next class starts/spill water all over myself while filling up my water bottle/arrive at class sweaty, late, and looking vaguely like a freshman who just got out of synchronized swimming practice. 

Aside from the implications for my already non-existent campus social life (I do enjoy the irony of talking about being a loser to an email list of 150 people. And I'm not actually concerned--there's something about being anonymous again that's kind of...refreshing), this hectic Wednesday schedule leaves very little time for email composition. But FEAR NOT, dear readers, for I am a professional...nothing, but I am an adept problem solver and I will find a solution to this seemingly resolute conundrum. Maybe I will write the emails on Tuesday and wait to send them out until Wednesday, maybe I will wake up early in the morning to make time for my craft, maybe I will just write shittier emails, but I will NOT let Whatever Wednesday die. Though I may consider moving it to a different day, as a last resort. 

Anyway, tonight: one of my BFFs from high school (I consider most people from high school that I still keep in any touch with after seven years pretty much a BFF but this dude is particularly great) is stopping by for Whatever Wednesday on his way to Fancy Pants Business School. We are going to go to The Brass Ring on East Wash probably around 8:30 and play pool; I encourage you to join us. He is an expert on a variety of subjects including popular television, Colombian drug lords, and marketing soft drinks. 

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

As I write this email, I am on my way back from an 11 day visit with my parents in the house I grew up in, where I had a brief reprieve from the responsibilities of adulthood. I still did a few fairly productive things (e.g. get my car insurance reinstated because it had lapsed... what was that about responsible adulthood?) but mostly I just slept late, hung out, and ate my way through the kitchen like a locust. This was the first time I had spent an extended stretch at their home since before starting the job from which I so recently resigned, and I was struck by how nice it was to be sleeping in my childhood-bedroom-turned-guestroom without having the visit be about proving that I am no longer 16.

I also saw a half dozen or so dear, dear friends, which was lovely but does not need to be rehashed here because the joy of reconnecting with old friends requires more craft than I could currently give justice to.

I also taught my mom about "twerking" (or rather disabused her of the incorrectly associated concept she was harboring in her mental dictionary), which was challenging since I was unwilling to give a demonstration--I resorted to YouTube videos. This proved a useful lesson after the VMAs, when she was able to recapitulate Miley Cyrus's performance with accurate terminology. I, myself, only tuned into the VMAs long enough to be thoroughly bored by N*SYNC's reunion, unlikely (seemingly) every other person who lived through the '90s.

The combination of free time and internet outrage over Twerkgate led to my reading a lot of Jezebel-type articles and thinking about Jezebel-type issues, and I kind of came of to a conclusion. It all boils to something that I think most people would objectively agree on, all people are guilty of violating, and really people should have started learning when they were 7, which is, wait for it.... PEOPLE BESIDES ME HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT STUFF. Whoa. What I mean by this is, when you look in a very broad, generalized way at subjugation in our society, there is an enormous lack of empathy. If I say "I feel good about this" and you say "I don't feel good about this" (as it often comes down to with rape, or racism, or pigeon-holing of the differently abled), it is very easy for me to write off your feelings as somehow invalid. It is even easier if you belong to a different demographic than me and my peers, and it is infinitely easier if we are having this conversation with actions instead of words. I think there is a subconsciously held conception among certain swaths of society that other people don't really have different feelings than us, and if they do, those feelings are somehow invalid. I also see this same way of thinking arise in simple interpersonal conflict between two close parties, but any mature person can figure out that saying "your feelings are invalid" is no way to resolve anything in a conversation. Yet, people use that excuse all the time to justify greater and more important transgressions. In retrospect, this subject also deserves more craft than I can currently give justice to. If you have thoughts or feelings on this subject (especially if they are different than mine!) I would be delighted to hear them.

Tonight: no plan. Let's do whatever. Text me if you're interested. Please understand that this invitation includes all people on this mailing list equally... just be prepared to identify yourself if we've never corresponded via text before :).

Hello and happy Wednesday!

If you are extremely or even slightly perceptive, you will notice that I am sending this email from a different email address. That is because I QUIT MY JOB! WOOOOHOOOO! As such, my former email address is no longer valid. If you're interested, I posted the goodbye email I sent out, here: http://whateverwednesday.tumblr.com/post/58918105776/lastdayemail

I write this email, instead of from my desk as I delay a morning's worth of work, from the couch of my parent's house in Boston as I power through the entire discography of Grey's Anatomy. If you worry about the future of Whatever Wednesday, fear not! I am only here for a visit. I will be back whatevering in full force on my home turf by next Wednesday.

Regarding my unemployment status/future plans, as of this morning I am officially enrolled at UW in the three classes that I was really hoping to get into and waitlisted for a fourth. Even though I am technically going back and taking undergraduate classes, I have way more confidence now about calling the departments and asking for what I need than I did when I was actually an undergrad, which is pretty awesome. Classes start after labor day..... I think. I should probably figure out the exact date. That's kind of important.

There is no whatever activity planned for tonight, particularly given that I am out of town, but feel free to submit recaps of your own Wednesday endeavors to be featured on the blog.

I’m sending this to all the people that I see around to let you know that you won’t be seeing me around anymore.

  Leaving now is bittersweet, which I think is the best way saying goodbye can possibly be.

  Thank you, sincerely and deeply, to all the people who ever helped me, answered my questions, listened to my opinions, gave me difficult feedback that made me feel terrible about myself, let me cry in their office after hearing such feedback, advocated for me, gave me another chance, commiserated with me, celebrated with me, brainstormed with me, laughed with me, or just read my emails. An especially enormous thank you to my officemate Ashwin; without him, I would have literally (okay, figuratively) died trying.

  I will miss the people, sure, of course, but I think what I will miss most is the arcane language we share: the way we can get a roomful of people arguing for 15 minutes about the name of a button while three people discuss the workflow to a degree of nuance that causes everybody else’s eyes to glaze over then one person brings up a nonsensical hypothetical that forces us back to square one…and in the end we’re all cracking up about it. And whatever hilarious thing transpired is something that can never be shared with anyone else, because the punch line doesn’t make sense outside the context of steeping yourself in the application’s idiosyncrasies. There are many skills I honed here that will aid me in my future endeavors (e.g. communication, task management, maybe even committing 10-digit numbers to short term memory), but there are also plenty of things I learned that will serve me absolutely zero use ever again (e.g. memorized networked item numbers, TLG codes, seven different ways to find the port number for an environment).

  Oh, here’s a joke: A SQL query walks into a bar, approaches two tables, and asks “mind if I join you?”

  What I leave behind is my aloe plant, some ridiculous QANs, and little else because the cleaning crew is very good at its job.    

  I’ll be staying in Madison for at least the next year, so don’t be a stranger.

  I know some of you expect big things from me. I won’t disappoint you.

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

  A few administrative topics:

+ Beginning next week, I will be sending these emails from a new email address : [email protected] Make sure I don’t get lost in your spam filter! Also, if you would like me to send these emails to a different email address of yours, just let me know.

+ First time getting the WW email? Check out the blog www.whateverwednesday.tumblr.com

+ Send me a summary of your Wednesday activities to be featured as a Whatever Wednesday ambassador

  Now that those are out of the way, I present to you (because of certain germaneness)

  An Expert’s Guide to Painless Moving

1.       Do not acquire anything that could ever be considered an heirloom.

2.       Buy all of your furniture at IKEA. Throw it out periodically.

3.       Decorating is futile.

4.       Your feet can carry one pair of shoes, so you should only own one pair of shoes, maximum. You have two options here: flip flops (which are divine in the summer but do little to protect the integrity of your toes in the winter) or knee-high leather boots (for this option, you should also invest in one pair of high-quality socks)

5.       Burn all of your books and buy an e-reader.

6.       Burn your e-reader.

7.       Sleeping on the floor is good for your back. Not carrying a mattress & box spring up and down seven flights of stairs is also good for your back.

8.       Emergency space blankets are light and take up very little space in boxes!

9.       Do not under any circumstances paint the walls of a room that you are planning on living in for less than a decade. You may paint one wall for each decade that you plan on living there.

10.   If you have more than one winter coat, you’re doing it wrong.

11.   Only buy perishable food. Throw it out when it perishes.

12.   If you absolutely must own cookware, select one pan that can be used for all your heating/frying/sautéing/baking/broiling/toasting/defrosting/steaming needs. Give up any foods that must be boiled.

13.   Resist the urge to stock up on personal care items that you consistently use. Why should that contact solution be yet another thing you have to pack up when Walgreens can safely store it for you until you need it?

14.   Clothes. Ugh. Just don’t.

15.   If you have an object that you don’t have an immediate use for, but you kind of have an idea in the back of your mind that it would maybe someday be practical for something, it would probably make a good chew toy for a dog or a raccoon.

16.   Never plan to have guests.

17.   Instead of painting, birdwatching, or Frisbee, try taking up hobbies that don’t require supplies, like contemplating the nature of your existence.

18.   Dr Bronner’s soap can be used as shampoo, mouthwash, and detergent for space-saving goodness!

19.   Learn to rise and rest with the sun, like they did before electricity, thus precluding the need for lamps.

20.   Do not buy material things. Spend all your money on experiences, coffee, and single-use packets of stick-on earrings.

      Anyway TONIGHT is going to revolve around cleaning up & putting things away (in contrast to general Whatever Wednesdayness, which is more focused on generating sweet little messes), but we still be utilizing our creativity in the form of interior decorating—albeit in a slightly less fascist way than prescribed above J. If this is your cup of tea then by all means come help/hang out! Let’s say from 7 pm to 10 pm at my new address. The entry system was designed by complete idiots so feel free to call me if you need help getting in!

--Whatever Wednesday recap by Ambassador Dan!

Apparently, this is an allusion to this youtube video:

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

  I’m sorry that, recently, I’ve been the absolute worst at keeping up my side of the Whatever Wednesday bargain (although I suppose, in a meta, Catch-22 sense, this lack of conscientiousness too is kind of whatever). The good news is the lovely people of the Whatever Wednesday community have been picking up the slack with some highly entertaining submissions. You can check them out on the blog www.whateverwednesday.tumblr.com ! I also, you will notice, have changed the layout of the blog but it’s still kind of weird and I will probably change it again.

  My excuse for personal lameness today is that it’s my first day back in the office after 3 nights of overnight floor support. Allow me to populate the body of this email with moderately interesting details from that experience.

  + It was the nicest hospital I’ve ever seen. It looked more like freshly built upscale condominiums than a place for sick people.

+ It was also super catholic, with excerpts from scripture on the walls and a larger-than-life statute of some saint holding a child (or maybe Jesus? I don’t know, I didn’t get that close because I didn’t want to catch anything. JK!)

+ The pharmacy stocked rail whiskey (and kept it in their controlled dispense cabinet) because it’s the absolute cheapest way to treat alcohol withdrawal.

+ There is a law that nobody can be in the pharmacy if there isn’t at least one pharmacist in the pharmacy. I had never encountered this before, but ran into it a lot there since they only had one night pharmacist on duty.

+ There was a consultant in the pharmacy with me who said I looked familiar. After 5 minutes of the “how do we know each other” game, we realized that we had been at NYU together back in December.

+ The shirts they gave us to identify ourselves were contruction-worker orange. Additionally, one of the pairs of biz-caj (if you have a better phonetic abbreviation for “business casual” I’m all ears) pants I brought was a tomato-y red-orange. Additionally, the hospital is just down the road from a women’s correctional facility. I got a lot of jokes that night about how I “shouldn’t make any sudden movements” lest somebody mistake me for a “pen pal”.

  Anyway, tonight is the last Whatever Wednesday to be held at TTHM! As of next Wednesday I will be fully moved out of Titlington Hall Manor and into my new, slightly nicer residence. A monumentous occasion indeed. Come over at 8 pm to help me lay to rest all of my decrepit art supplies, boogie, break bottles, freestyle rap, tie knots, nap, expand our vocabularies, put trash in the trash, be sweet, crack skulls, perform surgery, conquer racism, teleport, reinvent the wheel, garden, come up with get-rich-quick schemes, write letters to senators, make babies, telemarket, discuss advances in environmental science, prank call Scott Walker, make a pile of spoons, read quietly, do handstands, stretch, speak in British accents, barter, or do whatever the mood dictates. This will be one for the record books!

Celebrating WW with my brother playing bball with the locals. We won 22-20. Game winner: older bro. Also key injury: older bro.

Sorry, I haven’t had a free moment to write an email today.

PS. Where's the question for the week? Oh well, here's my answer, you'll have to come up with the question: