All or Substantially All (ASA)

This past weekend Sandi and I finally visited the "cool" record store in Munich together and I bought this album:

I've listened to it several times now and I have to say I like it. This might lead Tom to believe that this group is destined for tragedy. I don't know, however, what he currently thinks of Belle & Sebastian, so maybe this doesn't apply in the case that he thinks that they're already bad. They feel a little twenty-something-single-Toronto-girl-with-a-dog to me, but I still dig the music, and that thought might have something to do with the band's association with Juno and Juno's 30-(at the time)-something writer. Also, I believe that Tom's axiom #1 of my life was initially meant specifically to apply to bands that I really like and though I'm glad that I purchased this LP, and I even have several of B&S's MP3s, I'm not sure that it necessarily passes the threshold into bands that I'm totally into and that therefore will inevitably start to totally suck.

If it does, though, there is still a potential saving grace for Scotland's homegrown sons and daughters in that this axiom apparently only applies to All or Substantially All (ASA) of the bands that I end up really liking. According to s. 4.1 of the Canada Revenue Agency's SR&ED Capital Expenditures Policy, ASA is "generally accepted to mean 90% or more". It's not clear to me, however, whether this applies to how long I've liked the band for, how much I like the band, how many bands fit into the "really liking" category, or something else altogether. The reason for my confusion likely stems from the fact that, as mentioned above, I as yet do not have a fully solid hold on what bands make the cut-off into the territory where the axiom applies, and more importantly, the ASA principal that governs these axioms was previously explained to me by way of a demonstration that involved the cities in which I lived and the hockey teams representing said cities. The difference being that Tom connected ASA to the fact that of my entire life I had only lived in some cities for a small amount of time, rather than another statistic that could have been used: namely, the total number of cities. That is something on the order of 10 and so if 3 of those cities didn't have great hockey teams then the accuracy falls down to 70% and we find ourselves below the ASA threshold held out by CRA's policies to be no less than 90%. And so if these bands have a weight of some kind, rather than all counting equally, then it would be very difficult to determine the ASA applicability for these edge cases.

On Sunday we ran 26km. That fell just below ASA of the amount of time that we were awake on Sunday.

Homage to Beer

I have, perhaps, on occasion, alluded to the fact that, though Munich is a very nice city indeed with numerous benefits and top marks in several categories, when you lay it all out end-to-end, if I could be doing more or less the same thing for the same salary in Grenoble or Lyon or Montpellier, I would jump on that as quickly as you can say Schmetterling!

All that being said, however, one of those top marks earned by this city mentioned above is with respect to a historical beverage known as beer. They really know how to make it here and they know how to enjoy it. This state of affairs presented itself to us quite proliferously recently when we experienced what is known in the medical literature as the Somnium Canadium, or "Canadian Dream", or, broken down into its constituent parts: free hockey and free beer.

It all started when I had the brilliant idea to attend a Red Bull EHC hockey game on a recent Friday evening. Tickets were going for the respectable price of 10 euros a pop and off we went. When we arrived a courteous young gentleman who no longer required the services of his two tickets decided to absolve himself of said magical pieces of cardboard just as we were arriving at the Olympiapark Eisstadion. First bonus of the night. But nothing could prepare us for what happened next...

For those that don't read German and can't make use of a translating helper, let me give you a hand. "Freibier" means "free beer" and !!NUR HEUTE!! means today only. And with that you get the standard Somnium Canadium. Following this most positive happening, it seemed most apt to pay homage to this beverage of the Gods, enjoyed by Monks worldwide.

Mom carrying a whole bunch of mugs of beer

At Nymphenburg getting thirsty...

In Salzburg getting thirsty

Quenching the thirst at Nymphenburg

Quenching the thirst in Salzburg

Enjoying an Austrian brew in the Austrian Alps

Enjoying several Bavarian brews in the Bavarian Alps

Teaching them young

The English Garden!

Salzburg Stiegl

A repeat on the blog, but it fit this post well

Bavarian Breakfast

Drinking cold beer in the hot sun

Bavarian / Turkish Lunch

"I say! This isn't beer at all!"

Thanks for watching!

Pemulis and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

[Welcome to the first official Guest Blogger post on GrenobleWMD, contributed by loyal reader Gzowski. If you have a story to share with the readers of this blog, please submit it to our editors. We regret that only those submissions selected for publication will receive a response.

GrenobleWMD assumes first-print rights and electronic rights for unsolicited submissions; the original author retains his/her copyright.]

[Page 1]

        Pemulis was worried.  Not just apprehensive.  Extremely worried.

        Why, you ask, was Pemulis so worried?  After all, he had a loving wife, a decent job, a kickass apartment (if you could ignore the 572 trains that passed by every day), and friends in many nations not currently subject to famine, disease, or armed insurrection.

        Pemulis was worried because his parents were coming to visit.  Not just visiting in the sense of passing through on their way to somewhere else, but visiting in the sense of sleeping in the Pemulian bed, requiring food several times a day, occupying the bathroom whenever Pemulis felt the call of nature, and generally clogging up the hall with shoes, suitcases, and other paraphernalia.

        “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a ?” asked Joelle, who, having secured a solid 80% in her German exam, was no longer obliged to practice her German at home.

        “Grrr!” said Pemulis. “My parents are coming.  They’ll want to visit castles and museums and churches and fortresses and all sorts of places likely to be full of American tourists.”

        “It could be worse,” said Joelle. “They might be German tourists.”

        “Horrible!” said Pemulis, employing a word that was later to figure largely in the title of the story.

        “We could take your parents out to dinner,” suggested Joelle. “That wouldn’t be very touristy, and I wouldn’t have to wash the dishes.”

        “Good idea,” said Pemulis.
        “And we could invite our friends, Torstar and Alitalia.”

        “A very good idea,” said Pemulis. 

        Here Pemulis made a joke about his parents, but the joke had to be removed from the narrative for reasons of political correctness.

        “On the other hand,” said Pemulis, “we’ll have to sleep on the train side of the apartment.”

        “At least we can sleep in a sort-of bed,” said Joelle, “rather than the air mattress that has a hole in it.”

        “There’s a hole in the air mattress?” asked Pemulis, aghast.

        “Yes,” said Joelle. “The air leaks out slowly until you find yourself on the hard floor at 3 o’clock in the morning.”

        “How do you know?” asked Pemulis.

        “I read ahead in the story,” said Joelle.

        “That’s not fair,” said Pemulis. “But what happens on Friday?”

        “We go to Neuschwanstein and your dad makes up a silly song about it.”

        “Amazing,” said Pemulis.

        “It’s not that great a song.”

        “No, I meant that you can read the future.”

        “Not only that,” said Joelle, “but I got 80% on my German exam.”

        “Well, that is laudable,” said Pemulis, “but not quite as amazing as seeing into the future.”

        “I didn’t see,” said Joelle. “I just read ahead in the story.  If it’s not in the story, then I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of knowing what’s going to happen.”

[Page 2]

        “Did you just make that up?” asked Pemulis. “The snowball part?”

        “No,” said Joelle. “It’s also in the story.  On page 5.”

        Here a relative of Pemulis objected that it was not possible for characters in a story to know what was going to happen to them by reading ahead in the story that they were in. However, another relative of Pemulis, an as yet unmarried one, was totally down with it, thus proving that marriage often dulls one’s capacity to suspend disbelief.  This is why Neil Young is getting divorced after 36 years of marriage.  Or it could be the fact that he doesn’t smoke pot anymore and suddenly realized that his wife is, in fact, no longer 19 and nubile but is instead 61 and sagging.

        Later on, the Pemulian parents arrived and everyone had a great time.

THE END

        Commentary on the story was not long in arriving:

JSTOR460:  What kind of a story is this?  You can’t just end the story without any sort of denouement.  What happened in the rest of the week?

LEAFSRULE:  Yeah.  What he said.  Leafs rule.

JSTOR460:  This blog is about Pemulis and his family.  It’s not about a stupid hockey team.

LEAFSRULE:  *****

[This comment has been removed as it contravenes accepted norms of communication between civilized adults.]

RUSTY13:  Hey hey my my.  Neil Young can never die.  More to the divorce than meets the eye.  Hey hey my my.

JSTOR460:  Hey hey rust for brains!  Didn’t you notice that this blog is not about Neil Young?  It’s about Pemulis and Joelle, two Canadian kids just doing the best they can.

RHYMINSIMON:  “Can” doesn’t rhyme with “Joelle.”

RUSTY13:  Yeah, JSTOR460.  What do you say to that?

LEONARDO:  I found this latest blog to be of great personal interest as I too have often attended the Mozart Festival in Salzburg, and when Herbert von Karajan was guest conductor, we would often take the funicular up to the fortress and enjoy a tasty Stiegl brew while discussing what was wrong with the last performance.

RUSTY13:  Who mentioned Salzburg?

JSTOR460:  What blog are you reading, LEONARDO?

LEAFSRULE:  Habs suck.

RHYMINSIMON:  OK, here are some rhymes for Joelle:
        So fell
        Toe bell

        Low smell

        Oh hell

        Pretzel

[Page 3]

JSTOR460:  “Pretzel” doesn’t rhyme with “Joelle.”  The last part of it does, but it still doesn’t scan because the stress is on the first syllable in “Pretzel” and the stress in “Joelle” is on the second syllable, or it would be “Joel,” which is a man’s name.

RUSTY13:  Also, “Neil” doesn’t rhyme with “Joelle.”

PEMULIS81:  You are all crazy.  I don’t want you reading and commenting on my blog, even if it is actually a guest blog and full of ridiculous stuff that I didn’t say or do. When I write my own blog, it’s full of dreamy stuff suggesting that beneath my edgy tech-savvy exterior beats the heart of a romantic philosopher, a Kerouac for our time.

LEAFSRULE:  Who’s Kerouac?

TSNINSIDER:  Kerouac was drafted 13th overall by the Islanders in ’87, but he never got further than the AHL and retired in ’93.  He now runs a bed-and-breakfast in St. Thomas, Ontario.

PEMULIS81:  Not that Kerouac.  A different Kerouac.

LEAFSRULE:  Quack, quack.

JOELLE:  Pemully-Pooh!  Your parents are here.

PEMULIS81:  Haven’t I asked you not to call me that?

JOELLE:  Yes, but it’s funny.

PEMPARENTS:  Where should we put our shoes?

PEMULIS81:  Grrrr . . . . . 

        At this point in our story, a train went by and the conversation was lost in a cacophony of trainlike sounds.

        The story continues on page 4.

[Page 4]

        “Hey, hey!  Rise and shine

        It’s time to visit Neuschwanstein . . .”

        “Christ!” said Pemulis under his breath.  “What now?”

        Pemulis Père had intruded into the room where Pemulis and Joelle were pretending to be asleep.  This intrusion was less well received than it might have been by the junior Pemuli.

        The last two lines of the song were lost as Pemulis Père was giggling to himself, an action of which he was all too often guilty.  Pemulis Mère was pretending not to have heard.

        Neuschwanstein, in case you are ignorant of the history of the place and too proud to quickly consult Wikipedia, which is what the rest of us do, was at that moment resting comfortably on a mountain in southern Germany, awaiting the arrival of the Pemulis clan—father, mother, Number 2 son, and daughter-in-law.

        Now Pemulis Pater was singing his song in the shower.  Pemulis was grinding his teeth, in the certainty that some of his remaining hairs had fallen out in the night and found their way into the mattress of their pull-out couch, which they were soon to offer to a Pemulian friend, the vivacious Sophie, on whom Joelle intended to keep a watchful eye.

        In deference to our digital age, a cookie has instructed the story at this point to give way to advertising, in this case for Oktoberfest wear.

        The story resumes.

        A Pemulian relative:  I’m not related to anyone in this story.  

        Another Pemulian relative:  I’m marrying an Anglican, so I’ll believe almost anything.

        The ghost of DFW:  It’s not my fault.  I keep telling everyone here, “It’s not my fault.”

        A Pemulian friend:  If I had read this first, I would never have bought a car from Pemulis because of his weird relatives.

        “How much further?” asked the parents of Pemulis as they climbed the road that would take them above the  tallest spire of Neuschwanstein, bent on securing a vantage 

[Page 5]

point from which they could, if not battered to exhaustion by Chinese tourists, take a photograph of the castle, built by the mad King Ludwig, who died in mysterious circumstances—a fate considered appropriate by all the servants in the castle, who had long harboured thoughts of hurling the king from the top of any one of the towers of Neuschwanstein, so long as his descent was swift and fatal.  As we know, it is difficult to get loyal servants and keep them, and this was true even in King Ludwig’s day, when the old and faithful might be replaced at any moment by the younger and prettier, as Neil Young is hoping to do as soon as the divorce is finalized.

        [Here followed an extended account of Neuschwanstein’s role in the Second World War, a story that regretfully did not make the final cut, but you can look it up in Wikipedia, which has been previously recommended.]

        Later that night, Pemulis and Joelle awoke to find themselves less well insulated from the hardness of their floor than they had anticipated when they retired, their air mattress having exhaled steadily during the night until it ran out of breath entirely, while the vivacious Sophie slept on, blissfully unaware of the painful drama enacted only centimetres from where she lay.

        “Can we fix it?” asked Joelle.

        “I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell,” replied Pemulis.

        The story comes full circle.

                                            THE END

        “Is it really the end?”

        “It’s The End.”

        “But what about the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?”

        “That’s today.”

        “Today?”

        “It’s the day you read this story.”

        “Oh.”

Dreams of Summer 2014

Pemulis awakes in that hazy half-way zone in between sleeping and being awake where your senses are just becoming aware but your brain has yet to process the immediate situation of an in situ reality that includes such important state values as what day it is, where it is that you are awaking, and what you have to do that day. It's a kind of limbo that lasts probably less than a half-second and doesn't really have any describable feeling because by definition your senses aren't really in a fully functioning state (well your senses may be working fine, but the machine to process those signals isn't there yet); things are "booting up" in the computer world vernacular. But what does have a feeling is when the start-up process is done and you feel a jarring and very sudden snap as everything revs into high-gear all at once and you forcefully land in a thud in the here and now. Pemulis has no idea about the statistics of how often one experiences the good or the bad inevitable outcome of this process either for humanity at large or even for his own self, but if he had to guess it feels that the phenomenon presents itself -- surprisingly, prima facie -- more often on the good side. When that transition takes place there are really only two possible sentiments that one feels, and their embodiment can be summed-up by one of the following: (1) oh YES!; or (2) oh SHIT!. The former occurs, evidently, when, since you have no immediate context I suppose that your brain most naturally falls into its most recent state of thinking which is that you're about to get up and go to work because that's what you've been doing for the past five days or so. But then when everything comes together you realize that no, it's actually Saturday morning and the beautiful beautiful weekend has just begun. The latter, though less common probably owing to the fact that the brain has less time to acclimate to a routine of bliss and happiness over a course of several mornings, also occurs, and makes up for its lower probability of incidence by being infinitely more sudden and jarring and all-around terrible than the former, and probably more common, is good. This really bad version happens when you've been so fortunate as to be dispossessed of your normal worldly duties and replaced them with days of wonderment and love and freedom and care-free living for a long enough time that that state of being has become the default that your brain presents as it is booting up, let's say, and then you realize in a swift metaphorical smack to the head that work is back and man does it ever hurt.

The good news in all of this, however (yes, there is some), is that for the brain to get into that cruising flow of a summer-time groove, you had to have gotten it up to the right speed and held it for a good long while. And so though that harsh blow has been felt, and the pain is presenting itself, you also know, as Pemulis does when it strikes him this morning, that the previous while had to have been pretty darn great.

Pemulis showers, eats breakfast, brushes his teeth, puts his shoes on, and even a jacket (despite the calendar claiming the current season to be summer), and arrives at work. Later, as he attends his seventeenth meeting of the day, his mind begins to wander off to a place where he is attended to by Pascal's description of the misery of man without God; because life and reality are so intolerable (like this meeting that he is mentally escaping), and it is therefore impossible to live happily within the present, one must either dream of the future or reminisce to the past. Pemulis has recently used up all of his 2014 vacation days, and so the future option is so far off that he's left with only the possibility of the past. The PowerPoint slide becomes fuzzy, the penumbra of his awareness slowly begins to blur which causes his field of vision to narrow. All of a sudden it is three weeks ago, and Pemulis and Joelle are touching down onto a lush runway at St. Exupéry airport in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lyon, France...

The protagonists step off the plane into a fantasy world of fresh bread and pastries, sunshine, cheese, wines, beautiful women, melodious speaking, freedom, equality, brotherhood, Irish Pubs, mountains, umm Vanessa Paradis? [ed: I'd pick someone more modernly relevant], etc. They arrive in their once-home of Grenoble and sleep as if on a mattress made of rose petals [ed: sorry to intervene again, but do you think that would really be all that comfortable?].

The morning greets our heroes by bathing them in sunshine in the form of warm, glowing, vitality-bringing rays. A look out the window confirms that they find themselves in the luxuriant Rhône valley, surrounded by pristine green mountains near the city centre of Grenoble. They lace up their sneakers and head to the banks of the Isère; the early-morning dew glistens and the birds sing as the two race by at a break-neck pace approaching some 4 minutes per km. Following the run, Pemulis and Joelle continue their pilgrimage to one of Grenoblogism's most holy sites: Maison Floran. This bakery, described previously in this forum, smells of chocolate, warm bread, and the atheistic version of heaven; circuitous reasoning suggests that this very place may in fact be that heaven. Pemulis takes a bite of his pain au chocolat noir and his mouth is filled with flavour. If he is living in a Matrix-like dream world invented by machines to keep his brain occupied while they use his enslaved body as a power source, the machines really got this part right.

Following the bakery, Pemulis and Joelle have some clothes to buy for the wedding that they would be attending that weekend and so they spend the afternoon among the city's many boutiques and shopping centres. Being August, it is somewhat difficult to find shops that aren't away on holiday, but they succeed and even find Joelle a wedding hat. Not half bad. The evening arrives and they dine on fine French food and wine, as is to be expected when one is in France.

The next day arrives and Pemulis and Joelle return to Lyon. They sit amongst the happy few upon the banks of the river enjoying the apéritif hour and soaking in the sun, enjoying the show of life presented to them as the people pass by. The sun begins to set behind the Tour métallique de Fourvière and they set off to choose among one of the many bateau-restaurants for dinner. Having been influenced by what seems to some to have been a little too much Bavarian culture, they opt for the "Burgers and Beer" boat. They can be strange, these ones. But the evening is a success. They eat and drink and as they pedal their Vélo'v's softly along the banks towards their hotel, the night asserts itself as having truly arrived, and the day is put down as a success for the lives of these two happy souls.

The next morning is wedding day. It starts off with a run along the same banks of the river of which they found themselves on the previous evening, and, having changed into their new wedding clothes and checked out of the hotel, pick up a Vélo'v each and head for city hall! Two people in love vow, before the civil government, to remain that way (in love), and we all head to the Parc de la Tête d'Or for lunch and those wedding games that no one likes. The sun shines and the birds sing and all that...

The party then moves to the mountains. Remember the Vercors? Written about and described fondly on many an occasion through the world-famous grenobleWMD blog during Pemulis and Joelle's all-too-brief séjour in Grenoble during those heady days of 2012-2013 when revolution was in the air and everything seemed possible. So they're back. Close to the cycling bastion of Lans-en-Vercors and where you get in trouble from the bride for daring to say that you're going to bed now because it's 3:45 AM and you've got to drive out of here at 7:30 to cover the ~2h stretch to Lyon St. Exupéry for your flight back to Munich to meet your parents who are arriving at the same time but from all the way across the Pond. She acquiesces finally when you agree to do a Tequila shot with her though. Tensions lower, regular heart-beats resume, and as you attempt sleep in a mountain Gîte with the Swedish House Mafia's bass driving so hard that the foundation of the chalet makes microscopic movements to the music, you realize that you've gotten old.

But soldier on you do and suddenly it's Lufthansa straight from Lyon and over the Black Forest and parts of the Alps to Munich. Pemulis and Joelle meet Pemulis's parents right in the baggage claim ares precisely as planned and with perfect timing and those that gave him life are reunited with their at least second-favourite son at last. Dad says "nice to see you Son" and son says "you too Father", or something like that; Pemulis is pretty darn tired at this point and so this scene is all quite a bit of a blur to him and to the author which are obvious to be one and the same but would have been cool to hold that a secret until the very end kind of like in La Peste when you find out that [SPOILER ALERT] Dr. Rieux and the narrator are really one and the same dude, but in a way if you think that the narrator really has to be a person then it had to have been him kind of obviously anyways.

A bunch of fun stuff happens and a whole lot of Munich sites are seen and when they're not eating Bavarian food the dining is at a pretty high level too. The narrator has it on good authority that another chronicle of the events centred around the same time on the very same characters may be forthcoming so a lot will be glossed over due to that very point. Suffice it to say, though, that all in all I think everyone is having a pretty nice time.

But. It is early. Too early. Pemulis stirs in his slumber and briefly becomes aware just long enough to capture a glimpse of the outside world and let the dark night sky soothe him into knowing that there are two, maybe even three more hours of glorious unconsciousness that await him just ahead. He rolls over to his other side, smiles into the dark, and slowly shuts his heavy eyes. But, alas, sleep does not come. He suddenly hears a horrifying noise coming somewhere from within the depths of the apartment. The volume begins to increase. As his breathing accelerates, he starts to be able to just make it out:

Hey, hey! Rise and shine!
It's time to visit Neuschwanstein!
The castle there is very big!
And made by King Ludwig!!!

What on God's green earth is that, Pemulis wonders. Suddenly, somehow, from somewhere behind him, Pemulis hears someone calling his name. "Hello? Are you there? Earth to..." Whoosh! He feels his body flung at warp speed backwards through what seems to be a spinning wormhole of some kind, and all of a sudden he's back in a conference room with a 300 lb. Hungarian asking him, again, "what are your thoughts on the matter?". Pemulis says "I agree", closes his eyes, feels the fabric of space-time passing him by, and once again finds himself waking up in his living room with an incessant noise clanging and rattle-bang-banging throughout his mind:

Hey, hey! Rise and shine!
It's time to visit Neuschwanstein!
The castle there is very big!
And made by King Ludwig!

Well, better than work!, he tells himself, and gets up to have a shower. The four principal personages arrive at the base of the mountain upon which sits the mighty castle. But before making their way up, breakfast must be consumed:

That, my friends, is what is truly known to be The Breakfast of Champions: currywurst with fries and mountain weißbier. Delicious AND nutritious; especially when consumed before 11am. That King Ludwig II was one wild and crazy dude, and his castle helps to prove it. I could put a picture of it here but... well, why not just one?

Just to add to the zaniness of the whole adventure, as they make it back to Munich, Pemulis's German sister Sophie arrives for a weekend visit in the land of Bavaria. For the second night in a row French food is consumed for obvious reasons and it ain't half bad. The relationship is rekindled and all that and everyone is happy yadda yadda yadda [Ed: should you put in a Seinfeld reference here?]

All good things must come to an end, this trip and this blog post included. The parents head back, Sophie heads back, but Pemulis and Joelle are not ready to pack things in so easily. They instead head off to what is essentially Pinelands Austria, the Deluxe version. 

Austria is magical. Pemulis and Joelle step off the train around 1 o'clock in the afternoon after it rolls to a stop in the quaint village of Sankt Johann im Pongau, deep in the Austrian Alps. A beautiful Austrian woman who turns out to be the owner of the hotel picks them up and drives them 25 minutes up to another form of paradise, maybe even one with religious connotations this time. Here they will drink cold beer in the sun, swim in the wellness pond, eat gourmet Austrian dinners, mountain bike in the lush forest of the Alps, etc etc.

At this point something changes. The dream takes on a new quality. Instead of being in the here and now, as if he is living the dream, it now becomes a story that he is remembering. No matter. He remembers hiking in the Alpine meadow with the only sounds being the bells around the necks of the mountain cows as they meander along and the buzzing of the crickets going about whatever it is that they do. Then the meeting ends and Pemulis has to really wake up because the next meeting is in another room.