Question, have you got wifi-switcher installed?

You might have a module not loading, for some reason.
Check lsmod for wl12xx (there should be two mentions: mac80211 and cr7.

About the long output, you could shorten it by using grep

/sbin/ifconfig | grep wlan0

Could you also give the output of dmesg, preferably in a file that you can attach to a posting here on the board