Whose Parrot Had Learned

Classic David Sedaris:

Once, at a dinner party, I met a woman whose parrot had learned to imitate the automatic icemaker on her new refrigerator. "That's what happens when they're left alone," she'd said. It was the most depressing bit of information I'd heard in quite a while, and it stuck with me for weeks. Here was this creature, born to mock its jungle neighbors, and it wound up doing impressions of man-made kitchen appliances.

-From "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" by David Sedaris in his essay Repeat After Me

This Life

You want the truth on this? I think he was somebody who desperately wanted to be popular and, because of that desperation, he wasn't.

-Paul, a high school friend of Jon Ronson

This American Life
6/23, Episode 314