Pemulis woke in relief, there was a chill in the air, he felt beads of sweat, where once there was hair. He looked to the window, all he saw was white blankets, of snow on the ground, and then he heard a loud sound. And Helga was there, on a sleigh in the backyard, hanging lights on the trees.
Pemulis tried to speak but no words came, he adjusted his eyes, and saw the Christmas tree was aflame. I ran to the door, but no one could see me, and then it came to my ears, in a Christmas-time melody. I walked down the stairs, and brewed me a coffee, I was there just in time, to see Nikolaus out from the chimney.
Helga just then burst inside through the door that was ajar, to the living room with a, pet Igel she found, in the snow-covered backyard. How grateful I was that the Igel was still alive, but then I felt worried, when I saw the babies that numbered five. She told me she wanted, to keep them for Christmas, at least she wasn't screaming -- that was a bonus.
The tree was still ablaze, and don't forget Nikolaus was there too, though from some fumes in the kitchen, he looked a little dazed. With the fire and the Igels and Helga covered in snow, Pemulis decided, that it was time for him to go. He put on his jacket and his gloves and his boots, he had a real bad feeling, Helga and Nikolaus were in cahoots.
The Igels began to laugh as Joelle appeared in the room, she was wielding an ash tray, and a rather long broom. They ran for the door only to see that it was closed, Heinrich crawled after them, bouncing off his toes. And Helga was still there and she broke the window quickly, to free all the Igels, and they escaped quite quickly. But the tree was still on fire, so I grabbed a glass of wine, and threw it at the tree, which did the job just fine. The room was full of smoke and a pile of ashes that smelled, like a fine Barolo, and a tree that was just felled. And Nikolaus looked around, at the disaster before his eyes, so he followed the Igels, yelling wait up guys!
Things were finally settled, almost quiet like a whisper, then the neighbor woke up, to make use of his wood chipper. Joelle had had enough, so she stepped aside into the snow, and yelled at the neighbor, TURN THAT OFF YOU EFFING HO!
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Friday, November 29, 2019
Strange Denizens of the Ride Sharing Driver Pool
1. Successful Businessman
P: "Hi, how are you?"
SB: "Doing just fine, thanks."
[...]
SB: "Well obviously they just don't understand market economics. In my successful business #17, I made a bazillion dollars and if I were in charge there they would be making a bazillion dollars too."
P: [internal monologue] "then why are you driving a private taxi for less than minimum wage?"
2. Finds Everything Funny Guy
FEFG: <laughing>
P: "Uh, hello"
FEFG: "Hi, hahaha, how are you? ha ha ha"
P: "Fine, thanks."
FEFG: "Look at that guy in the car ahead of us!"
<P strains his neck around the seat to look>
FEFG: "He's smoking a cigarette while driving!" <laughing hysterically>
P: "Oh, hehe, yes, humorous"
FEFG: "He's still smoking and he's driving! Smoking a cigarette! Look at that!" <more hysterical laughing>
P: [internal monologue] "please let this ride end soon..."
3. Nostalgia Guy
NG: "A couple of years ago, we were making real money"
P: "Oh ya? Not anymore?"
NG: "No, the free ride is over."
P: "You mean for drivers the free ride is over?"
NG: "Oh ya, we made way more money back then. But people who are complaining just don't understand business. It makes sense that we're making less now."
P: "Ok..."
NG: "Ya, I mean, they've got a business to run."
P: "They sure do."
4. Marijuana [sorry, "cannabis"] Business Guy
MBG [talking for most of ride on his phone]: "Ya well we just need to get them back into the meeting ... we can definitely guarantee $100,000 ... blah blah blah ... [I forget] ..."
MBG [35 minutes later turning to me]: "so what kind of business you in?"
P: "Transportation. What about you?"
MBG: "Cannabis."
P: "Sorry?"
MBG: "CANNABIS."
P: "Ah cool. How's that working out?"
MBG: "Great."
P: "Are you worried that it's not legal federally and so there's all sorts of risks, etc, etc?"
MBG: "I like that it's such a grey area. Better to make big plays and take big chances and come out on top."
P: "You said it!"
5. Slick Eminem-Like Rapper Guy With Hat Pulled Way Down Over Eyes Leaving Pemulis to Wonder how he can see the Road
SRG: "Ah jus' moved back to SF after livin' in Las Vegas takin' care of ma' grandmotha'"
P: "Nice"
SRG: "Ah wanna make sure that ah don't fall in with tha same crowd ah was runnin' wit befo'"
P: "Ok."
SRG: "Ah jus' drivin' fo Lyft fo now cause it real low key ya know wadda mean?"
P: "Totally. You're from San Francisco?"
SRG: "Oakland. That the real San Fran."
6. Really, Really Dumb Guy
RRDG: "So where you guys from?"
P: "We're from Munich"
RRDG: "Where's that?"
P: (thinking "seriously??") "Germany"
RRDG: "Germany? Wow! They speak German there?"
P: "Yes."
RRDG: "I'm originally from Pakistan but I've lived here since I was a kid."
PB: "I'm originally from Tunisia"
RRDG: "Sorry, Tunasia? [sic]"
PB: "Yes, Tunisia."
RRDG: "Where's that?"
PB: "It's in Africa"
RRDG: "Wow!!!!!!! So what would you say are the main differences between Germans and Tunasians [sic]? ... It's Tunasians [sic], right?"
PB: "Sure."
RRDG: "Are there, like, lions running around everywhere?"
PB: "No. Maybe there might be some in East Africa, like Kenya or places like that."
RRDG: "Where's Kenya?"
P and PB thinking: "WOW!!!"
7. Guy Who Wouldn't Pick Us Up After San Jose Sharks Game Because He Found Out He Would Have to Drive Us All the way to San Francisco
P [calling the guy]: "Hey, are you coming to get us?"
GWWPUU: "It'll be like an hour because the road you're on is closed"
P [looking at the wide open road on which he finds himself]: "No it's not."
[GWWPUU hangs up]
P: "Hi, how are you?"
SB: "Doing just fine, thanks."
[...]
SB: "Well obviously they just don't understand market economics. In my successful business #17, I made a bazillion dollars and if I were in charge there they would be making a bazillion dollars too."
P: [internal monologue] "then why are you driving a private taxi for less than minimum wage?"
2. Finds Everything Funny Guy
FEFG: <laughing>
P: "Uh, hello"
FEFG: "Hi, hahaha, how are you? ha ha ha"
P: "Fine, thanks."
FEFG: "Look at that guy in the car ahead of us!"
<P strains his neck around the seat to look>
FEFG: "He's smoking a cigarette while driving!" <laughing hysterically>
P: "Oh, hehe, yes, humorous"
FEFG: "He's still smoking and he's driving! Smoking a cigarette! Look at that!" <more hysterical laughing>
P: [internal monologue] "please let this ride end soon..."
3. Nostalgia Guy
NG: "A couple of years ago, we were making real money"
P: "Oh ya? Not anymore?"
NG: "No, the free ride is over."
P: "You mean for drivers the free ride is over?"
NG: "Oh ya, we made way more money back then. But people who are complaining just don't understand business. It makes sense that we're making less now."
P: "Ok..."
NG: "Ya, I mean, they've got a business to run."
P: "They sure do."
4. Marijuana [sorry, "cannabis"] Business Guy
MBG [talking for most of ride on his phone]: "Ya well we just need to get them back into the meeting ... we can definitely guarantee $100,000 ... blah blah blah ... [I forget] ..."
MBG [35 minutes later turning to me]: "so what kind of business you in?"
P: "Transportation. What about you?"
MBG: "Cannabis."
P: "Sorry?"
MBG: "CANNABIS."
P: "Ah cool. How's that working out?"
MBG: "Great."
P: "Are you worried that it's not legal federally and so there's all sorts of risks, etc, etc?"
MBG: "I like that it's such a grey area. Better to make big plays and take big chances and come out on top."
P: "You said it!"
5. Slick Eminem-Like Rapper Guy With Hat Pulled Way Down Over Eyes Leaving Pemulis to Wonder how he can see the Road
SRG: "Ah jus' moved back to SF after livin' in Las Vegas takin' care of ma' grandmotha'"
P: "Nice"
SRG: "Ah wanna make sure that ah don't fall in with tha same crowd ah was runnin' wit befo'"
P: "Ok."
SRG: "Ah jus' drivin' fo Lyft fo now cause it real low key ya know wadda mean?"
P: "Totally. You're from San Francisco?"
SRG: "Oakland. That the real San Fran."
6. Really, Really Dumb Guy
RRDG: "So where you guys from?"
P: "We're from Munich"
RRDG: "Where's that?"
P: (thinking "seriously??") "Germany"
RRDG: "Germany? Wow! They speak German there?"
P: "Yes."
RRDG: "I'm originally from Pakistan but I've lived here since I was a kid."
PB: "I'm originally from Tunisia"
RRDG: "Sorry, Tunasia? [sic]"
PB: "Yes, Tunisia."
RRDG: "Where's that?"
PB: "It's in Africa"
RRDG: "Wow!!!!!!! So what would you say are the main differences between Germans and Tunasians [sic]? ... It's Tunasians [sic], right?"
PB: "Sure."
RRDG: "Are there, like, lions running around everywhere?"
PB: "No. Maybe there might be some in East Africa, like Kenya or places like that."
RRDG: "Where's Kenya?"
P and PB thinking: "WOW!!!"
7. Guy Who Wouldn't Pick Us Up After San Jose Sharks Game Because He Found Out He Would Have to Drive Us All the way to San Francisco
P [calling the guy]: "Hey, are you coming to get us?"
GWWPUU: "It'll be like an hour because the road you're on is closed"
P [looking at the wide open road on which he finds himself]: "No it's not."
[GWWPUU hangs up]
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Thanks for the high life
Following quick on the heels of the wildly popular Oktoberfestlauf 2019 Race Report, here is another race report cleverly disguised as something else due to the title not containing the words "race report". But if you're lucky (and you will be) you will find some further surprise content that might even somehow be tangentially connected to the blog post title. Sort of.
Let's see... a couple of weekends ago it was the Munich Marathon Weekend. The MMW contains, of course, a marathon, but also the "lesser" distances known as the 10 k and the half marathon (or as those in the know call it, simply "the Half"). I was one of the 6891 participants who braved the heat in the Half because I'm just not extreme enough for a full marathon right now (but just wait) and not un-extreme enough to do the 10 k.
I had a goal and I thought it was achievable (it wasn't). The plan was to run at a pace of 4:20 / km for a total time of 1:31:25. I had done the Munich Half 3 times before and on each occasion had improved my time: 1:39:18 (2013); 1:38:10 (2015); and 1:35:17 (2016). It should have been a walk in the park (or a RUN in the park! har har har har har har har har).
Instead, it was a small disaster and right off the bat I could tell that something just wasn't right. I felt weak and tired and a bunch of other stuff and though I'd like to find some particular excuse for what went wrong, I think unfortunately it might just be that I'm getting old and that the glory days are behind me. Hopefully not though. Anyways, I didn't come close to my goal time and instead finished in 1:40:00, making it my worse time of all 4 attempts. Ah well.
In other news, I will be making the great trek across the Atlantic and across the continent in a few weeks' time for another visit to my bohemian friends in Californ-eye-A. I will not make the same mistake that I made last time when I remained for the duration of my stay in the Mississauga of San Francisco and as a result endured a bleak existence for the entirety of my stay. Instead, a colleague and I will cleverly spend our evenings/nights in the big city of SF and only reluctantly commute into the painfulness of Palo Alto for the workdays. Interestingly enough, we will also spend a day and a half with our friends in Bellevue, Washington because... why not, right?
Since there is no other noteworthy news, now is the time for the surprise content that was previously claimed to at least in some faint way have something sort of to do with the blog post title. Well, the high life in some circles refers (I think) to an existence where you're on drugs the whole time and that doesn't sound very healthy for the kids so it's not that. Another meaning might have to do with being a kind of jet-setter, living a lavish lifestyle high above the clouds. It's definitely not that either -- but I guess I could have tied my California trip to that particular definition (I will be flying premium economy, after all). Still yet another similar meaning might be related to experiencing life way up high. And that's what we will do for somewhere around 12 hours or so on June 20th, 2020 (hey that's a lot of twenties!) when both Joelle and Pemulis participate in the Zugspitz Super Trail -- a 64 km jaunt covering nearly 3000 m of elevation change from Leutasch-Weidach in the Austrian alps all the way to Grainau on the other side of the mountain in Germany.
You might ask yourself why someone would do something like this. Unfortunately that's not a question that we asked ourselves before signing up.
Let's see... a couple of weekends ago it was the Munich Marathon Weekend. The MMW contains, of course, a marathon, but also the "lesser" distances known as the 10 k and the half marathon (or as those in the know call it, simply "the Half"). I was one of the 6891 participants who braved the heat in the Half because I'm just not extreme enough for a full marathon right now (but just wait) and not un-extreme enough to do the 10 k.
I had a goal and I thought it was achievable (it wasn't). The plan was to run at a pace of 4:20 / km for a total time of 1:31:25. I had done the Munich Half 3 times before and on each occasion had improved my time: 1:39:18 (2013); 1:38:10 (2015); and 1:35:17 (2016). It should have been a walk in the park (or a RUN in the park! har har har har har har har har).
Instead, it was a small disaster and right off the bat I could tell that something just wasn't right. I felt weak and tired and a bunch of other stuff and though I'd like to find some particular excuse for what went wrong, I think unfortunately it might just be that I'm getting old and that the glory days are behind me. Hopefully not though. Anyways, I didn't come close to my goal time and instead finished in 1:40:00, making it my worse time of all 4 attempts. Ah well.
In other news, I will be making the great trek across the Atlantic and across the continent in a few weeks' time for another visit to my bohemian friends in Californ-eye-A. I will not make the same mistake that I made last time when I remained for the duration of my stay in the Mississauga of San Francisco and as a result endured a bleak existence for the entirety of my stay. Instead, a colleague and I will cleverly spend our evenings/nights in the big city of SF and only reluctantly commute into the painfulness of Palo Alto for the workdays. Interestingly enough, we will also spend a day and a half with our friends in Bellevue, Washington because... why not, right?
Since there is no other noteworthy news, now is the time for the surprise content that was previously claimed to at least in some faint way have something sort of to do with the blog post title. Well, the high life in some circles refers (I think) to an existence where you're on drugs the whole time and that doesn't sound very healthy for the kids so it's not that. Another meaning might have to do with being a kind of jet-setter, living a lavish lifestyle high above the clouds. It's definitely not that either -- but I guess I could have tied my California trip to that particular definition (I will be flying premium economy, after all). Still yet another similar meaning might be related to experiencing life way up high. And that's what we will do for somewhere around 12 hours or so on June 20th, 2020 (hey that's a lot of twenties!) when both Joelle and Pemulis participate in the Zugspitz Super Trail -- a 64 km jaunt covering nearly 3000 m of elevation change from Leutasch-Weidach in the Austrian alps all the way to Grainau on the other side of the mountain in Germany.
You might ask yourself why someone would do something like this. Unfortunately that's not a question that we asked ourselves before signing up.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Oktoberfestlauf 2019 Race Report!
Yes, they're usually pretty boring. They all sound very similar. And the content is normally lacking. But for some reason it's really hard right now to come up with things to write about. I blame having small children which leads to not really being able to do much of anything (besides work, I guess) and therefore not having much to write about (oh ya, and never being able to get a good night sleep which leads to your brain not functioning which leads to... I forget because my brain is not functioning). So maybe things will just naturally equalize themselves as these kiddos grow up and some killer content coming from some mad adventures is lurking just around the corner. But until then, the Oktoberfestlauf 2019 race report will have to do.
It had been two years since our last Oktoberfestlauf bout as Joelle was pregnant and Pemulis was somehow injured one year ago (instead of going to the race we took a 3-hour boat ride on the Starnbergersee which actually sounds like something worth writing about and I have a vague recollection of perhaps having done just that; hmm... if only there were a way to check something like that). So I had something to prove.
On Saturday morning, while most of Munich was still laying in bed nursing their Oktoberfest hangover, I was up at 6:30 in the A.M. making peanut butter and jam toast -- the official Breakfast of Champions (co-official anyways; the other one is white sausage and beer). Heinrich (new German pseudonym for Helga's baby brother -- thanks for the tip loyal reader!) doesn't sleep and so Joelle doesn't really sleep either and Helga has been kind of sick so they all stayed in bed and I, Pemulis of Aragon (or something), made the trip north to Oberscheleißheim on my own.
The clouds were sparse but hung low in the sky and there was a terse [sic] wind blowing out of the south-west. I prepared myself mentally for the upcoming race gazing out of the train's dust-covered window while listening to my new favourite pop star LDR. The S1 pulled into Obschleißheim Central around 8:45 in the morning and I began the long and lonesome walk to the Olympic Regatta -- the site of the fabled race.
I filled out a form and paid my registration. In an ambiguous field with the word "Altersklasse" that roughly translates as "age group" (I think -- and the fact that I only think that's the translation may have a lot to do with what happened later) I wrote my age: 38. I went off to the change area to attach my chip, put on my race number, change my clothes, etc. After some light warm-up exercises and a few sips of water, I made my way to the starting gates. A few more brief moments to settle the nerves and then: BANG! We were off...
I exploded out of the gate, accelerating past many of my sworn enemies, and rather foolishly completed the inaugural kilometre in about 3 minutes and 45 seconds. It was rather exhilarating those first few hundred metres as I found myself in the leading pack of the race! 5, maybe 6 of us, hurtling (not literally as that's a different kind of race) forward at break-neck speed with hundreds of lesser mortals in our wake feebly attempting to catch us. Here I was, after all these years of effort, having pushed myself to mould my body and athletic abilities into one of the greats! Surrounded by the fastest of the fast! The future was ours! Of course, I very obviously faded away about six seconds afterwards, swallowed up by the angry pack of has- and never-beens, but I'd never felt so free and alive as I did last Saturday during those sixty seconds (give or take) at the front [exaggerated for effect].
The next kilometre was not quite as fun. I clearly went WAY too fast for my (current) abilities over the first few minutes and was already suffering in a truly debilitating manner. Not a good thing only 10% into the race. But I gritted my teeth and just kept trucking and completed the second kilometre in 4:07. Total time so far: 7:53, and therefore still holding 7 seconds of buffer time in my epic quest towards a sub-40 minute 10 k. The third kilometre was even harder than the first two, but I had somehow found the power and determination within to have sped up a bit: 4:02. That means 5 seconds of buffer and only 70% of the race to go. 4th km? 4:04. Holding 1 second below that elusive 40 minute 10k barrier. 5th km? 4:09. Official time for 5 km: 20:07. Actually, that's not so bad in my humble opinion. But I was kind of spent at this point so I clearly wasn't going to run the next 5k any faster (or anywhere close to) the first 5.
After grabbing a sip of water I head out for lap 2. And what happened next was rather abysmal. The sixth kilometre required a whopping 4:27 and the one after that was even worse: 4:36. I only needed 2000 m of distance to wipe out an entire minute above my goal time and thus ended my quest for everlasting glory. Nevertheless, I refused to go gentle into that good night; that nightmare of a seventh kilometre would prove to be the peak of my failures (when failures are limited to the race track and divided up evenly into 1000 m chunks) and each of the three remaining would palpably improve over the one that came before it: 4:16, then 4:13, and then, finally for the tenth kilometre, a respectable (but still not good enough) 4:04, for a final total time of 41:53.
One day, I shall prevail. But not today. In any case, a 4:10 average pace for 10 km is not the worst result in the entire world and so after consuming a steak sandwich and 3 or 4 flavoured Erdinger Weißbiers I took a casual stroll over to the posted results, or Ergebnisse as we call it in Deutschland. I found my name somewhere near the top of the list (but by no means at the very top) and traced a finger from my name over to the "AK" (age category) column. First place! How about that? The column right next to AK, however, is that fabled German word we discussed above: Altersklasse. Mine should have said M35, but instead? It said M80.
Yes, by writing "38" as the answer to the question "age category", they understood that I had been born way back in the year 1938. A great year, of course. The Niagara Bridge over the Falls in New York collapsed due to an ice jam. There was the annexation of Austria. The Vatican recognized Franco's government in Spain. Italy won the World Cup. Ok, so it was a terrible year. And further, I most definitely was not born during it. I alerted the proper authorities and they made the required corrections. Placed safely back in my true age category, however, my place dropped from the mighty first down to the not-so-mighty seventh. Ah well. Maybe one day.
It had been two years since our last Oktoberfestlauf bout as Joelle was pregnant and Pemulis was somehow injured one year ago (instead of going to the race we took a 3-hour boat ride on the Starnbergersee which actually sounds like something worth writing about and I have a vague recollection of perhaps having done just that; hmm... if only there were a way to check something like that). So I had something to prove.
On Saturday morning, while most of Munich was still laying in bed nursing their Oktoberfest hangover, I was up at 6:30 in the A.M. making peanut butter and jam toast -- the official Breakfast of Champions (co-official anyways; the other one is white sausage and beer). Heinrich (new German pseudonym for Helga's baby brother -- thanks for the tip loyal reader!) doesn't sleep and so Joelle doesn't really sleep either and Helga has been kind of sick so they all stayed in bed and I, Pemulis of Aragon (or something), made the trip north to Oberscheleißheim on my own.
The clouds were sparse but hung low in the sky and there was a terse [sic] wind blowing out of the south-west. I prepared myself mentally for the upcoming race gazing out of the train's dust-covered window while listening to my new favourite pop star LDR. The S1 pulled into Obschleißheim Central around 8:45 in the morning and I began the long and lonesome walk to the Olympic Regatta -- the site of the fabled race.
I filled out a form and paid my registration. In an ambiguous field with the word "Altersklasse" that roughly translates as "age group" (I think -- and the fact that I only think that's the translation may have a lot to do with what happened later) I wrote my age: 38. I went off to the change area to attach my chip, put on my race number, change my clothes, etc. After some light warm-up exercises and a few sips of water, I made my way to the starting gates. A few more brief moments to settle the nerves and then: BANG! We were off...
I exploded out of the gate, accelerating past many of my sworn enemies, and rather foolishly completed the inaugural kilometre in about 3 minutes and 45 seconds. It was rather exhilarating those first few hundred metres as I found myself in the leading pack of the race! 5, maybe 6 of us, hurtling (not literally as that's a different kind of race) forward at break-neck speed with hundreds of lesser mortals in our wake feebly attempting to catch us. Here I was, after all these years of effort, having pushed myself to mould my body and athletic abilities into one of the greats! Surrounded by the fastest of the fast! The future was ours! Of course, I very obviously faded away about six seconds afterwards, swallowed up by the angry pack of has- and never-beens, but I'd never felt so free and alive as I did last Saturday during those sixty seconds (give or take) at the front [exaggerated for effect].
The next kilometre was not quite as fun. I clearly went WAY too fast for my (current) abilities over the first few minutes and was already suffering in a truly debilitating manner. Not a good thing only 10% into the race. But I gritted my teeth and just kept trucking and completed the second kilometre in 4:07. Total time so far: 7:53, and therefore still holding 7 seconds of buffer time in my epic quest towards a sub-40 minute 10 k. The third kilometre was even harder than the first two, but I had somehow found the power and determination within to have sped up a bit: 4:02. That means 5 seconds of buffer and only 70% of the race to go. 4th km? 4:04. Holding 1 second below that elusive 40 minute 10k barrier. 5th km? 4:09. Official time for 5 km: 20:07. Actually, that's not so bad in my humble opinion. But I was kind of spent at this point so I clearly wasn't going to run the next 5k any faster (or anywhere close to) the first 5.
After grabbing a sip of water I head out for lap 2. And what happened next was rather abysmal. The sixth kilometre required a whopping 4:27 and the one after that was even worse: 4:36. I only needed 2000 m of distance to wipe out an entire minute above my goal time and thus ended my quest for everlasting glory. Nevertheless, I refused to go gentle into that good night; that nightmare of a seventh kilometre would prove to be the peak of my failures (when failures are limited to the race track and divided up evenly into 1000 m chunks) and each of the three remaining would palpably improve over the one that came before it: 4:16, then 4:13, and then, finally for the tenth kilometre, a respectable (but still not good enough) 4:04, for a final total time of 41:53.
One day, I shall prevail. But not today. In any case, a 4:10 average pace for 10 km is not the worst result in the entire world and so after consuming a steak sandwich and 3 or 4 flavoured Erdinger Weißbiers I took a casual stroll over to the posted results, or Ergebnisse as we call it in Deutschland. I found my name somewhere near the top of the list (but by no means at the very top) and traced a finger from my name over to the "AK" (age category) column. First place! How about that? The column right next to AK, however, is that fabled German word we discussed above: Altersklasse. Mine should have said M35, but instead? It said M80.
Yes, by writing "38" as the answer to the question "age category", they understood that I had been born way back in the year 1938. A great year, of course. The Niagara Bridge over the Falls in New York collapsed due to an ice jam. There was the annexation of Austria. The Vatican recognized Franco's government in Spain. Italy won the World Cup. Ok, so it was a terrible year. And further, I most definitely was not born during it. I alerted the proper authorities and they made the required corrections. Placed safely back in my true age category, however, my place dropped from the mighty first down to the not-so-mighty seventh. Ah well. Maybe one day.
Half-way point. Me looking pained (top) and me looking like I'm about to fall over (bottom). Only the top picture represents reality.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
The culture is lit and I've had a ball
Working in the computer industry you would think that things like this wouldn't happen to me. Or at least that they wouldn't happen as often as they do. For the first time in probably a decade I was writing a second blog post in the span of a week or so and it was several paragraphs long and it was this whole thing about being a famous [redundant] Instagram Influencer and how these brands paid for us to go on a trip to the Dolomites so I could post pictures of us wearing/using their products and trust me it was gold but then I somehow pushed some strange button that erased the entire thing and then I stupidly pushed another button thinking that would undo the damage but instead it actually just cemented-in the damage thanks to autosave which I think is supposed to make things like this happen less frequently but in this particular case was the very cause of the damage itself. Oh well. I will start again but talk about something else because obviously the universe sent me a sign that nobody wanted to read a semi-fictional account about me being an Instagram Influencer taking an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy (semi-fictional because everything was fictional except for the fact that we actually did go to Italy). Instead, here is a run-down of the top 5 things I got up to this past weekend.
The Isarinselfest (the Isar Island Festival) is a street party/festival organized by the Social Democrats and some labour unions. Unsurprisingly it's not organized very well (ha) but Helga had a ton of fun jumping up and down and up and down in the bouncy castle for what felt like approximately four days. This tired her out a lot and since the festival was pretty crowded and pretty loud we biked up the road a bit to...
1. Built a bed.
Helga is now probably at least a metre tall and her tiny Kinderbett just wasn't cutting it anymore. Plus we wanted to convert it back into a crib for [Helga's baby brother who still doesn't have a German pseudonym]. So after careful-ish deliberation we ordered the cheapest least-expensive child bed that Ikea sells along with some butterfly bedding/sheets so that the new bed could be conveniently played up as a "butterfly bed" and sent a chunk of our hard-earned money to the Stichting INGKA Foundation in the Netherlands and in return they sent us a box with about 74,000 tiny pieces of cheap metal. Since we had nothing better to do on a warm Saturday morning, we turned most of the pieces into a single furniture item: Helga's new bed. I didn't even make that many mistakes.
2. Attended a French party.
Later Saturday evening, although I was fairly wiped-out from the intense bed-constructing (was going to call it bed-making but that seemed too much like I just folded some sheets on to a bed), I made use of Google Maps's new "mixed-mode" feature and rode my bike to the U-bahn station and then took the U-bahn from said station so that I could visit a friend's massive party on the top floor of a swanky downtown apartment overlooking the Munich-famous Hackerbrücke.
Surprisingly after not speaking French for six or so years it was difficult to formulate sentences at first (did I mention it was a French party?). However, thanks to time and alcohol, after a little while I was able to express myself and I think convincingly explained that having small children is difficult. Especially without their grandparents around. I also ate about nineteen donuts, nine pieces of cake, and 3.7 million sweet potato chips.
3. Ran a half-marathon.
A full marathon seemed too long so on Sunday morning I only ran half of one. But luckily a half-marathon (with dash) is a recognized official race distance. It was hot and I hadn't slept much and I partied hard in French the night before so it was probably about twice as hard as it should have been so if you look at it that way I more-or-less (with two dashes) ran a marathon. Sort of.
4. Attended the Isarinselfest.
The Isarinselfest (the Isar Island Festival) is a street party/festival organized by the Social Democrats and some labour unions. Unsurprisingly it's not organized very well (ha) but Helga had a ton of fun jumping up and down and up and down in the bouncy castle for what felt like approximately four days. This tired her out a lot and since the festival was pretty crowded and pretty loud we biked up the road a bit to...
5. Visited our 7th-favourite Biergarten.
Up the street from the festival is our 7th-favourite Biergarten. This is actually pretty high (in the top 10 is really good as there are at least 500 of them in Munich) and so everyone was happy that it was only a 10 minute walk or so from the festival. It was a nice reprieve from the loud and rambunctious atmosphere of the Isarinselfest and the fact that we got to finally have a healthy dinner (currywurst with fries and beer) was an added bonus.
6. Bonus sixth item.
We listened to our new best American record: Norman F$%^ing Rockwell about 9 times. Helga loves it.
Up the street from the festival is our 7th-favourite Biergarten. This is actually pretty high (in the top 10 is really good as there are at least 500 of them in Munich) and so everyone was happy that it was only a 10 minute walk or so from the festival. It was a nice reprieve from the loud and rambunctious atmosphere of the Isarinselfest and the fact that we got to finally have a healthy dinner (currywurst with fries and beer) was an added bonus.
6. Bonus sixth item.
We listened to our new best American record: Norman F$%^ing Rockwell about 9 times. Helga loves it.
Friday, September 6, 2019
Before we flew back east, we flew west, and four flew over the cuckoo's nest
They're out there. Consternated older ladies in unflatteringly tight-fitting pacific blue and burgundy uniforms with sewn red maple leaf insignias on the left breast hurrying to install inattentive stupid looking passengers in their 43 cm wide of seat space. I'm used to being smiled at but this particular sub-species of human just glares unhappily in my general direction and more than once asks Mom to clear the space in front of her seat before takeoff. I mentally fist-bump her when she just keeps ignoring them because tear down the old foundation brick by brick and all that. The way up is something new. My ears seem to "pop" and that is something new; I just wish that they would have un-popped too. At a cruising altitude of around 10,000 km I decide to sleep. My older sister has no such allusions, of course, but since I'm sort of like that Chief in that Ken Kesey book that even though I'm only 5 months old I for some strange reason know about, I need to keep up appearances and from what I've been told, babies need to eventually start sleeping at some point.
When the fog clears to where I can see, we've apparently touched down in the capital of Ontari-ari-ari-o. Leaving the aircraft the humidity hits you like a firehose. I had imagined ice, igloos, and eskimos, but this is the Amazon when it still existed [ouch]. Our possessions have magically appeared through an U-bahn system for suitcases and I need a nap. <ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ>
We're back and doing 7 km/h in a BMW M3. The Bavarian firepower is keeping my homesickness at bay but I'm wondering how people live in this place when there are so many cars on the Autobahn at any given moment that the fastest you can take a car designed to go 230 km/h is held to slower than I'm often pushed in the stroller. I show my displeasure by emitting a ca. 160 db scream for the duration of the 3 hour drive.
We come to a farm full of cats. I don't have a well-recognized German pseudonym yet like my older sister Helga so for now people call me The Baby. A bit like that movie Baby Driver but way, way, way less bad. There are cats that live inside as well as out. Cats that allow Helga to pick them up and cats that do not. There are chickens too. But only outdoors. Did I mention how much I hated that car seat sitting in that Beamer moving more slowly than an Australian tourist on Vomit Hill after 5 Maß at Oktoberfest? I sure hope that whole car-travel thing was a one-time event. I've never seen so many cats before. I've also never eaten sushi but I feel like the former is a more extreme never.
We're soon in the car again. I hate it like Donald Trump hates poor people but there's some solace in the fact that it's a red Beamer from the motherland. There is further solace in the destination. It turns out that not all dwellings reside extremely far from bodies of water and I kind of like that. We're at a cottage and while for the most part it's all the same to me, unfamiliar environments give me extra incentive and excuses for just crying like you wouldn't believe. I do like the proximity to the lake too.
I love Helga. She is hands-down the best person I know. Except when she dangerously compresses my windpipe while hugging me. And when she carelessly falls on my face nearly crushing my skull. And when she pulls on my arms so violently that it's a medical miracle that we'll eventually have to look into that not all of my bones get broken. And when she makes that sort-of fart noise with her lips and ends up spitting into my eyes. And when she shoves her hands into my face and nearly deoculates me. Over and over and over again. But overall I really like her and I hope that this trip will help her chill out a bit. But hope is a dangerous thing for a baby like me to have [please read this line in this tune].
In London at one point I'm left completely alone with the grandparents. I'm introduced to Peppa the Pig and though my brain is much too immature to process the colourful fast-moving pictures, and in the years to come I will now suffer an untold number of regressions in my development as my psyche is too fragile at this point to have any exposure whatsoever to television, I thoroughly enjoy the 83 episodes of Peppa that I get to watch with Helga.
Burlington is an interesting place.
I'm still not loving the car but during one ride a song came on the radio that I really enjoyed: I know it sounds funny but I just can't stand the pain. Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow... I think about that song now when Helga swats me in the head. Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow... But seriously I could never do that. What a fun trip this has been.
Canada is a majestic and beautiful place that I hope to return to some day. My time there was a special time in my life and I will cherish these memories and others that I have kept for myself as the years unfold before me. But here a new story begins: the story of a man's gradual renewal and gradual rebirth, of his gradual crossing from one world to another, of his acquaintance with a new, as yet unknown reality. That could be a subject for another tale -- our present one has ended. Sorry for that borrowed ending to my blogpost originally entitled "Hugos 6€ a Dozen, now available in Canada", but is it just me or does anybody else love them some Dostoevsky?
When the fog clears to where I can see, we've apparently touched down in the capital of Ontari-ari-ari-o. Leaving the aircraft the humidity hits you like a firehose. I had imagined ice, igloos, and eskimos, but this is the Amazon when it still existed [ouch]. Our possessions have magically appeared through an U-bahn system for suitcases and I need a nap. <ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ>
We're back and doing 7 km/h in a BMW M3. The Bavarian firepower is keeping my homesickness at bay but I'm wondering how people live in this place when there are so many cars on the Autobahn at any given moment that the fastest you can take a car designed to go 230 km/h is held to slower than I'm often pushed in the stroller. I show my displeasure by emitting a ca. 160 db scream for the duration of the 3 hour drive.
We come to a farm full of cats. I don't have a well-recognized German pseudonym yet like my older sister Helga so for now people call me The Baby. A bit like that movie Baby Driver but way, way, way less bad. There are cats that live inside as well as out. Cats that allow Helga to pick them up and cats that do not. There are chickens too. But only outdoors. Did I mention how much I hated that car seat sitting in that Beamer moving more slowly than an Australian tourist on Vomit Hill after 5 Maß at Oktoberfest? I sure hope that whole car-travel thing was a one-time event. I've never seen so many cats before. I've also never eaten sushi but I feel like the former is a more extreme never.
We're soon in the car again. I hate it like Donald Trump hates poor people but there's some solace in the fact that it's a red Beamer from the motherland. There is further solace in the destination. It turns out that not all dwellings reside extremely far from bodies of water and I kind of like that. We're at a cottage and while for the most part it's all the same to me, unfamiliar environments give me extra incentive and excuses for just crying like you wouldn't believe. I do like the proximity to the lake too.
I love Helga. She is hands-down the best person I know. Except when she dangerously compresses my windpipe while hugging me. And when she carelessly falls on my face nearly crushing my skull. And when she pulls on my arms so violently that it's a medical miracle that we'll eventually have to look into that not all of my bones get broken. And when she makes that sort-of fart noise with her lips and ends up spitting into my eyes. And when she shoves her hands into my face and nearly deoculates me. Over and over and over again. But overall I really like her and I hope that this trip will help her chill out a bit. But hope is a dangerous thing for a baby like me to have [please read this line in this tune].
In London at one point I'm left completely alone with the grandparents. I'm introduced to Peppa the Pig and though my brain is much too immature to process the colourful fast-moving pictures, and in the years to come I will now suffer an untold number of regressions in my development as my psyche is too fragile at this point to have any exposure whatsoever to television, I thoroughly enjoy the 83 episodes of Peppa that I get to watch with Helga.
Burlington is an interesting place.
I'm still not loving the car but during one ride a song came on the radio that I really enjoyed: I know it sounds funny but I just can't stand the pain. Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow... I think about that song now when Helga swats me in the head. Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow... But seriously I could never do that. What a fun trip this has been.
Canada is a majestic and beautiful place that I hope to return to some day. My time there was a special time in my life and I will cherish these memories and others that I have kept for myself as the years unfold before me. But here a new story begins: the story of a man's gradual renewal and gradual rebirth, of his gradual crossing from one world to another, of his acquaintance with a new, as yet unknown reality. That could be a subject for another tale -- our present one has ended. Sorry for that borrowed ending to my blogpost originally entitled "Hugos 6€ a Dozen, now available in Canada", but is it just me or does anybody else love them some Dostoevsky?
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made
In the good old days of GWMD, the blog -- for awards purposes and so forth -- could be easily classified into one of the well-known and widely-understood categories which cohesively carve up the Blogosphere. GWMD was an acceptable fit for the "Travel Blog" designation, but better yet, it truly fit(s) the equally popular "Expat Blog" category, where an author typically recounts humorous, strange, or just plain different experiences of everyday life while living abroad. Abroad, in this context, meaning a foreign land with respect to -- crucially -- the expat blog's readers, but of course its author too. It is interesting to inspect some of the meta statistics of these two semantically similar blogging categories. A much-loved travel blog might continue to add enthusiastic subscribers for years as the PPQ (posts per quarter) stat stays high or even increases over a relatively long period of time resulting in a growing set of returning and engaged readers. A highly successful travel blogger might continue traveling and writing about it for years -- decades even -- recounting the cultures, cuisine, and experiences that he or she encounters in all the corners of the world without ever running out of material. The expat blogger, on the other hand, while often able to examine a culture at a higher resolution and recount a deeper understanding and contrast of the experience to his or her readers' everyday experiences of learned norms in their shared culture, has to contend with the well-known phenomenon of the expat blog natural expiration date.
After some finite amount of time living "abroad", a slow but sure process takes place where at some amorphous point that can normally only be identified in hindsight, the author -- though still living away from their onetime home -- is no longer living abroad in a metaphysical sense because his or her normal has adapted to the normal of the adopted country. It may have been strange and amusing for the author to observe and then share stories of colleagues drinking litre-sized beers at lunchtime five years ago, but not when it's become something completely natural that no longer lights up the "out of the ordinary" regions of the amygdala. Even if the expat bloggers' audience (if he indeed has one remaining) would continue to find the slight cultural incongruities worthy of analysis and/or witty remark-worthy, the expat blogger himself no longer has the capability to even notice what might be considered idiosyncrasies of his adopted culture to his original audience because he has adapted to them and the brain no longer has the ability to notice how these might appear to be interesting and/or different to what his viewpoint once was, so many years ago.
But no matter how long one remains abroad, and no matter the level of indoctrination that an expat blog author is bombarded with day-in and day-out as he or she navigates the trials and tribulations of everyday life, there will always continue to be some subset of cultural affectations that continue to grate the baseline senses and that never reduce to a new-found normal. The membership of this particular subset also displays well-understood evolution dynamics of its own. In particular, the cardinality of the subset almost always follows an exponential decay expressed by the well-known differential equation:
Solving the above equation leads to a number of different approaches for measuring and understanding rates of decay and for the phenomenon of the size of cultural affectations that the ego-individual (i.e. the blog author or more generally "person abroad") him/herself sees as never being able to fully identify with, the quantity of the half-life of the cardinality of this set is often most useful for understanding the phenomenon in question. The half-life, of course, is the amount of time required for a population to reduce to half of its current size. And studies (currently in peer review) suggest that the half-life of the number of cultural idiosyncrasies that a person believes he or she will never see as normal is in the range of one year. So, if one could enumerate all of the things that just seem totally right out there in terms of how a culture operates and how the people behave and that one could never envision ever seeing as normal or -- God forbid -- adopting him/herself, and that number was 500 things, after about a year the typical person would only find about 250 of them still belonging to that group (or new ones might have been added and others taken off but the aggregate total still on average comes in at around that number) and another year later only about 125 would remain. Some of the common examples that are faster than others to fall out of the group include eating chocolate for breakfast (France), bathroom taps that don't mix the hot and cold water (UK), or driving 180 km/h on the highway (Germany) [NOTE: the eagle-eyed reader will observe that in the true formulation of cultural normalization I wouldn't have been able to come up with "real" examples because they would have been so deeply internalized that I wouldn't know whether or not they were things that seemed weird at some point or not].
All of the above is to say that the lifespan of your average expat blog is (1) dependent on the initial conditions of the ODE (namely the number of things that seem weird or interesting -- at the very least different -- about a culture to you to begin with: makes sense); and (2) finite as basically its reason for being becomes exponentially less every year (the solution to the equation is
where lambda is the exponential decay constant [bigger means faster vanishing], No is the initial quantity [500 in the above example], and t is of course the time). These are the unfortunate realities of science and the Blogosphere.
However, this does not necessarily imply that GWMD is dead (even though it may well be). There are ways out of the expat blog material Big Crunch. The most obvious might be the popular "expansion into other blog categories" (e.g. Mommy Blogs, Cooking Blogs, Lifestyle Blogs, etc.). This is a page right out of the MBA handbook where the key term is diversification. If you want to maintain the kind of growth that drives stock market indexes, you need to diversify your product portfolio (at some point everyone will have an iPhone and only so many people will buy multiple); the same thing applies to blogging. If you're not exclusively an expat blog, then -- while there are category-specific issues for other types of blogs which include (but are definitely not limited to) the demographics of the standard reader, the growth possibility of the themes typically covered by that category, and the acceptance of the hard-core readers to intersecting blog styles (if you're a serious cycling blog, for example, your readers probably won't stand for an in-depth segment on classic 16th century furniture) -- you have a lot of room to expand into new territory and prolong the blog's life. There is also moving. If you've used up all of the material (in your eyes) for the expat blog with respect to one country/culture, just insert yourself into a new one! The equation's variables reset, you get to keep writing about the types of things that you and your readers are used to, and you've given yourself another few years (or more) of keeping the blog and its associated advertising revenue (ha) alive and strong [it should be noted, however, that previous studies suggest that both the exponential decay constant and the initial quantity of "totally crazy things that you could never imagine seeing as normal" change in a way that is not conducive to making the "just move" strategy a perfect solution. The exponential decay constant tends to increase (the half life lowers) and the initial number tends to be smaller. However, this seems to only hold true in the short term and perhaps if you're moving all the time for many years you're able to avoid the trap altogether because you both never really get all that used to a culture and because you're familiar(-ish) with so many different ones, you're better able to contrast them and bring something to the table from another angle which still fits the expat blogging universe].
We are not moving for now, so instead we will try to branch out. Come back soon for important insights into raising children on a fully vegan/raw diet!
After some finite amount of time living "abroad", a slow but sure process takes place where at some amorphous point that can normally only be identified in hindsight, the author -- though still living away from their onetime home -- is no longer living abroad in a metaphysical sense because his or her normal has adapted to the normal of the adopted country. It may have been strange and amusing for the author to observe and then share stories of colleagues drinking litre-sized beers at lunchtime five years ago, but not when it's become something completely natural that no longer lights up the "out of the ordinary" regions of the amygdala. Even if the expat bloggers' audience (if he indeed has one remaining) would continue to find the slight cultural incongruities worthy of analysis and/or witty remark-worthy, the expat blogger himself no longer has the capability to even notice what might be considered idiosyncrasies of his adopted culture to his original audience because he has adapted to them and the brain no longer has the ability to notice how these might appear to be interesting and/or different to what his viewpoint once was, so many years ago.
But no matter how long one remains abroad, and no matter the level of indoctrination that an expat blog author is bombarded with day-in and day-out as he or she navigates the trials and tribulations of everyday life, there will always continue to be some subset of cultural affectations that continue to grate the baseline senses and that never reduce to a new-found normal. The membership of this particular subset also displays well-understood evolution dynamics of its own. In particular, the cardinality of the subset almost always follows an exponential decay expressed by the well-known differential equation:
Solving the above equation leads to a number of different approaches for measuring and understanding rates of decay and for the phenomenon of the size of cultural affectations that the ego-individual (i.e. the blog author or more generally "person abroad") him/herself sees as never being able to fully identify with, the quantity of the half-life of the cardinality of this set is often most useful for understanding the phenomenon in question. The half-life, of course, is the amount of time required for a population to reduce to half of its current size. And studies (currently in peer review) suggest that the half-life of the number of cultural idiosyncrasies that a person believes he or she will never see as normal is in the range of one year. So, if one could enumerate all of the things that just seem totally right out there in terms of how a culture operates and how the people behave and that one could never envision ever seeing as normal or -- God forbid -- adopting him/herself, and that number was 500 things, after about a year the typical person would only find about 250 of them still belonging to that group (or new ones might have been added and others taken off but the aggregate total still on average comes in at around that number) and another year later only about 125 would remain. Some of the common examples that are faster than others to fall out of the group include eating chocolate for breakfast (France), bathroom taps that don't mix the hot and cold water (UK), or driving 180 km/h on the highway (Germany) [NOTE: the eagle-eyed reader will observe that in the true formulation of cultural normalization I wouldn't have been able to come up with "real" examples because they would have been so deeply internalized that I wouldn't know whether or not they were things that seemed weird at some point or not].
All of the above is to say that the lifespan of your average expat blog is (1) dependent on the initial conditions of the ODE (namely the number of things that seem weird or interesting -- at the very least different -- about a culture to you to begin with: makes sense); and (2) finite as basically its reason for being becomes exponentially less every year (the solution to the equation is
where lambda is the exponential decay constant [bigger means faster vanishing], No is the initial quantity [500 in the above example], and t is of course the time). These are the unfortunate realities of science and the Blogosphere. However, this does not necessarily imply that GWMD is dead (even though it may well be). There are ways out of the expat blog material Big Crunch. The most obvious might be the popular "expansion into other blog categories" (e.g. Mommy Blogs, Cooking Blogs, Lifestyle Blogs, etc.). This is a page right out of the MBA handbook where the key term is diversification. If you want to maintain the kind of growth that drives stock market indexes, you need to diversify your product portfolio (at some point everyone will have an iPhone and only so many people will buy multiple); the same thing applies to blogging. If you're not exclusively an expat blog, then -- while there are category-specific issues for other types of blogs which include (but are definitely not limited to) the demographics of the standard reader, the growth possibility of the themes typically covered by that category, and the acceptance of the hard-core readers to intersecting blog styles (if you're a serious cycling blog, for example, your readers probably won't stand for an in-depth segment on classic 16th century furniture) -- you have a lot of room to expand into new territory and prolong the blog's life. There is also moving. If you've used up all of the material (in your eyes) for the expat blog with respect to one country/culture, just insert yourself into a new one! The equation's variables reset, you get to keep writing about the types of things that you and your readers are used to, and you've given yourself another few years (or more) of keeping the blog and its associated advertising revenue (ha) alive and strong [it should be noted, however, that previous studies suggest that both the exponential decay constant and the initial quantity of "totally crazy things that you could never imagine seeing as normal" change in a way that is not conducive to making the "just move" strategy a perfect solution. The exponential decay constant tends to increase (the half life lowers) and the initial number tends to be smaller. However, this seems to only hold true in the short term and perhaps if you're moving all the time for many years you're able to avoid the trap altogether because you both never really get all that used to a culture and because you're familiar(-ish) with so many different ones, you're better able to contrast them and bring something to the table from another angle which still fits the expat blogging universe].
We are not moving for now, so instead we will try to branch out. Come back soon for important insights into raising children on a fully vegan/raw diet!
Thursday, April 18, 2019
The Schubecks and autonomous flight
Not many people know this but our upstairs neighbours are very famous people in Germany. Like American-style celebrities. We don't talk about it too much because it's the kind of thing where you sort of feel famous -- or at least important -- yourself by knowing that all the people in the building have this secret that we hold together and we could talk about it but generally we don't because for us it's just normal living in the same building as the German equivalent of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir circa 1960 or so.
Sometimes they have parties. And all the neighbours are invited (well, not the Karrenbauers down in unit 5 because come on). You want to show up early to soak up as much fame as possible in the little time that you're there but you don't want to seem to eager either and so it's really quite difficult to find the right balance between keeping a cool air about the whole thing and just really soaking in that feeling of famousness (even though we're totally used to it).
The parties are typically on Saturday nights and really get going around 10 o'clock in the evening. To make sure we don't seem too boring or lacking energy compared to the actors and actresses and politicians and musicians, etc. that are there, we usually sleep for about 4 hours in the afternoon before visiting one of the more upscale clothing boutiques on the Maximilianstraße, choosing some very expensive clothes for the evening, and ultimately returning them promptly on Monday morning because a belt costs 4000 Euros if you can believe it.
Despite the fact that we don't normally talk about our connection to the upper echelons of German society, I'm talking about it now because something very peculiar happened at the most recent get-together last Saturday. After arriving around 10:20 (it's important to not show up too close to the top of the hour or on a 30 because then your arrival seems too planned -- better to seem like you decided to show up just after you finished some important other social event that finished when it finished) we had been standing by the oyster bar gossiping with a young photographer and his model girlfriend about the latest concessions made by the mayor to the developers re-building the Werksviertel when all of the sudden a very, very loud BANG!!!!!!! It was so loud that the entire room jumped simultaneously and somehow (maybe it knocked the record arm right off track) the music stopped at that instant.
No one really knew what to do and the following few moments were quite awkward in that we all looked at each other with confused faces not really knowing what action should be taken next. After what must have been 2 or 3 full minutes of complete silence, Mr. Schubeck arrived in the living room very casually from his closed bedroom door. Everyone looked to him expectantly. "I've killed my wife", is what I'm sure most of us expected him to blurt out. Instead, he said "my son has arrived!". Indeed, Mr. Schuhbeck's son walked out from behind him wearing a very expensive suit (as usual) but with a quite peculiar helmet upon his head.
Young Schubeck took advantage of the silent stunned room and began an announcement. "I'm so glad you're all here tonight", he began, "so that I may present to you something that is ready to change the world truly for the better." The mood of the room finally began to thaw a bit after I'm sure not a small number of people were getting ready to call 112 on Mr. Schubeck not 3 minutes earlier. Young Schubeck continued. "I have been perfecting a personal autonomous flight system and tonight was its maiden voyage." He stepped forward and showed off what looked exactly like a flying skateboard from the Back to the Future 2 movie. As he moved forward the incredible damage in the bedroom (that neither Schubeck seemed particularly concerned about) became apparent. But the crowd was mesmerised by the small flying machine.
We don't make it to every party upstairs. But I'm especially thankful that we happened to be at this particular one. Mr. Schubeck's son then proceeded to hand out autonomous flying skateboards to all the attendees and we spent the rest of the night flying high in the sky above Munich and headed towards the alps.
It's been 5 days now since that fateful night and I've since quit my job and scarcely slept for I spend all my time flying at break-neck speed (without having to steer) on a tiny skateboard, high above the clouds.
Sometimes they have parties. And all the neighbours are invited (well, not the Karrenbauers down in unit 5 because come on). You want to show up early to soak up as much fame as possible in the little time that you're there but you don't want to seem to eager either and so it's really quite difficult to find the right balance between keeping a cool air about the whole thing and just really soaking in that feeling of famousness (even though we're totally used to it).
The parties are typically on Saturday nights and really get going around 10 o'clock in the evening. To make sure we don't seem too boring or lacking energy compared to the actors and actresses and politicians and musicians, etc. that are there, we usually sleep for about 4 hours in the afternoon before visiting one of the more upscale clothing boutiques on the Maximilianstraße, choosing some very expensive clothes for the evening, and ultimately returning them promptly on Monday morning because a belt costs 4000 Euros if you can believe it.
Despite the fact that we don't normally talk about our connection to the upper echelons of German society, I'm talking about it now because something very peculiar happened at the most recent get-together last Saturday. After arriving around 10:20 (it's important to not show up too close to the top of the hour or on a 30 because then your arrival seems too planned -- better to seem like you decided to show up just after you finished some important other social event that finished when it finished) we had been standing by the oyster bar gossiping with a young photographer and his model girlfriend about the latest concessions made by the mayor to the developers re-building the Werksviertel when all of the sudden a very, very loud BANG!!!!!!! It was so loud that the entire room jumped simultaneously and somehow (maybe it knocked the record arm right off track) the music stopped at that instant.
No one really knew what to do and the following few moments were quite awkward in that we all looked at each other with confused faces not really knowing what action should be taken next. After what must have been 2 or 3 full minutes of complete silence, Mr. Schubeck arrived in the living room very casually from his closed bedroom door. Everyone looked to him expectantly. "I've killed my wife", is what I'm sure most of us expected him to blurt out. Instead, he said "my son has arrived!". Indeed, Mr. Schuhbeck's son walked out from behind him wearing a very expensive suit (as usual) but with a quite peculiar helmet upon his head.
Young Schubeck took advantage of the silent stunned room and began an announcement. "I'm so glad you're all here tonight", he began, "so that I may present to you something that is ready to change the world truly for the better." The mood of the room finally began to thaw a bit after I'm sure not a small number of people were getting ready to call 112 on Mr. Schubeck not 3 minutes earlier. Young Schubeck continued. "I have been perfecting a personal autonomous flight system and tonight was its maiden voyage." He stepped forward and showed off what looked exactly like a flying skateboard from the Back to the Future 2 movie. As he moved forward the incredible damage in the bedroom (that neither Schubeck seemed particularly concerned about) became apparent. But the crowd was mesmerised by the small flying machine.
We don't make it to every party upstairs. But I'm especially thankful that we happened to be at this particular one. Mr. Schubeck's son then proceeded to hand out autonomous flying skateboards to all the attendees and we spent the rest of the night flying high in the sky above Munich and headed towards the alps.
It's been 5 days now since that fateful night and I've since quit my job and scarcely slept for I spend all my time flying at break-neck speed (without having to steer) on a tiny skateboard, high above the clouds.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Canadian Christmas Vacation v. 6
Yup, version 6. It's almost too hard to believe. But there have been five Canadian Christmas Vacation trips before (there would have been six but Helga showed up a little too close to Christmas 2015 for calm and comfort), and so this one really was the sixth. And you'd think that with a number like 6 (greatest number ever) it would have been grand -- the best ever, even. I'll let you decide for yourself...
Pemulis had recently started a new job in map making for Gerardus Mercator and his Christian, Dutch cronies and in particular he was working on a method to properly project sea monsters reported by trustworthy sailors on to the probably approximately correct (PAC) location on the map in the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. Some glitches were cropping up, however, and despite some serious tinkering in the map-making process the sea monsters were actually in many cases showing up in even more incorrect positions than before. Unfortunate, to say the least, but if you want to discover more direct routes to plunder the best spices from unsuspecting indigenous populations, you've got to be willing to live just a little on the edge.
So with the lack of success in the sea monster project up to this date, Pemulis was naturally eagerly awaiting a break from the grind and a 3-week no-expenses-paid trip to the New World for him and his family. Finally, Dies Martis arrived and the Pemulis's made their way to the aerodrome for a something like 200 hour flight to the Dominion of Canada (the timelines here are a little confusing). The 8+ days airborne were surprisingly uneventful and you would think that spending that long traveling across timezones might help with the eventual onslaught of circadian dysrhythmia but no.
The first several days of CCV v.6 were even more uneventful than the aeroplane flight. Each day consisted primarily of staring at a wall and sulphur and pitch fumigations that were naturally administered to aid in the travel-induced sleep modifications. But by day 5 (or somewhere around there) Pemulis and Joelle were ready to leave little Helga along with her grandmother for a trip into the deep North with Pemulis's siblings and their spouses. A chariot met them bright and early according to the sundial at the north forty and they began a journey through fields of snow to a remote cabin for some serious sibling bonding.
Gin and Crokinole were naturally the primary activities for all involved and both helped lead to an evening of high spirits and few (perhaps zero) trips to the apothecary a short 90 miles down the Roman-built path. Team Pemulis was even victorious in the end following an unsuccessful and highly controversial carom attempted by his enemies (/brother and sister-in-law). After a meal of thick pottage in the dining quarters, the attendees retired to the parlour for a round of cigars and Napoleon brandy.
Shortly following their return to the north forty, it was suddenly Christmas Day and the home filled with visitors. There was Caliban, the towne drunk; Petruchio, Joelle's mother's sister's husband; Shylock, the half-mad gardener; Herne the Hunter (Joelle's brother) along with his wife Gertrude and their children Titania and Nick Bottom; Joelle's parents Heathcliffe and Catherine; her sister Portia; Puck, the farm-hand; and many more. The house was loud that day, my friends. Like a Limp Bizkit concert where the locals had forgotten to pay off the sound engineer to sabotage the sound board. A good man was lost in the commotion of gift unwrapping and at one point we feared dearly for Portia's life but in the end we all breathed a heavy sigh of relief when she only lost an eye.
In a bid to escape the pandemonium that was twirling all around them with their lives, Pemulis, Joelle, and Helga soon after climbed aboard the Ultimate Driving Machine and roared down the motorway to Pemulis's parents' grand palace, also-known-as The Willows. My memory escapes me with respect to the precise time of our arrival, but Pemulis and co passed through the doorway of The Willows somewhere in the environs of 11 pm (or at least it felt that way due to the length of the morning). In contrast to the north forty, The Willows was surprisingly quiet. Pemulis's brother's children -- who historically were classified as "potentially dangerous contributors to acoustic neuroma" -- seemed polite, reserved, and very, well, grown up when Pemulis compared them to Titania and Nick Bottom and their frighteningly loud and out-of-control interactions with Helga. Even Pemulis's sister's daughter Saldana was a joy to have around.
Pemulis sat himself down on one of the two Vincenzo De Cotiis down-filled, kangaroo twine stitched living room settees and the butler promptly fetched him an Old Fashioned served in a Baccarat crystal. The children quietly amused themselves in the games room and the adults discussed the year that was while partaking in a spirited game of backgammon. Pemulis's luck had run out, however, and was thoroughly swatted when he doubled at a point when clearly should have simply accepted a double. He won't be making that mistake again.
When it was time to open the gifts delivered by Kris Kringle, there was an orderly procession of youngest-to-oldest and following each unwrapping Father Pemulis captured a photograph on the Leica M3. The highlight of the afternoon was undoubtedly the white gold Patek Philippe Calatrava gifted from Pemulis to his older brother. It was all the more humorous when later Pemulis opened the identical gift from Joelle. Great minds, and all that.
Several days later, Pemulis and Joelle set out for a night away, a generous gift from Pemulis's parents that included full babysitting service for the apple of their eye Helga. They again boarded the Ultimate Driving Machine and thundered to the South Bank of the Thames where a dinner awaited them. They strolled the streets through the glistening snow post-meal and planned a very comfortable life in the area for Pemulis's baby sister including her future banker, tax advisor, gym, and of course guitar teacher.
Returning to the north forty, Pemulis encountered some health problems. Nothing a timely administered Carbolic Smoke Ball couldn't cure, however, and our heroes were back to the races. The next event on their itinerary involved a trip to the local mountain where little Helga could participate in some much-deserved mountaineering. Helga took to this rather impressively and was soon climbing circles around the other adventurers. There were zero problems with her wanting to participate in said activity and the whole family felt 100% confident that they had got their money's worth and vowed to return when the opportunity again presented itself.
Like all good things, eventually the CCV v.6 had to come to a close. Pemulis, Joelle, and Helga, after a relaxing chariot ride to the aerodrome, boarded the TWA Dreamliner and were whisked into the clouds for a return to a more civilised version of life. Diesel automobiles, beer for breakfast, the expectation to only bathe monthly, and most served food based on a process that involved force feeding a helpless animal in some manner. It was good to be back on the continent.
Pemulis had recently started a new job in map making for Gerardus Mercator and his Christian, Dutch cronies and in particular he was working on a method to properly project sea monsters reported by trustworthy sailors on to the probably approximately correct (PAC) location on the map in the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. Some glitches were cropping up, however, and despite some serious tinkering in the map-making process the sea monsters were actually in many cases showing up in even more incorrect positions than before. Unfortunate, to say the least, but if you want to discover more direct routes to plunder the best spices from unsuspecting indigenous populations, you've got to be willing to live just a little on the edge.
So with the lack of success in the sea monster project up to this date, Pemulis was naturally eagerly awaiting a break from the grind and a 3-week no-expenses-paid trip to the New World for him and his family. Finally, Dies Martis arrived and the Pemulis's made their way to the aerodrome for a something like 200 hour flight to the Dominion of Canada (the timelines here are a little confusing). The 8+ days airborne were surprisingly uneventful and you would think that spending that long traveling across timezones might help with the eventual onslaught of circadian dysrhythmia but no.
The first several days of CCV v.6 were even more uneventful than the aeroplane flight. Each day consisted primarily of staring at a wall and sulphur and pitch fumigations that were naturally administered to aid in the travel-induced sleep modifications. But by day 5 (or somewhere around there) Pemulis and Joelle were ready to leave little Helga along with her grandmother for a trip into the deep North with Pemulis's siblings and their spouses. A chariot met them bright and early according to the sundial at the north forty and they began a journey through fields of snow to a remote cabin for some serious sibling bonding.
Gin and Crokinole were naturally the primary activities for all involved and both helped lead to an evening of high spirits and few (perhaps zero) trips to the apothecary a short 90 miles down the Roman-built path. Team Pemulis was even victorious in the end following an unsuccessful and highly controversial carom attempted by his enemies (/brother and sister-in-law). After a meal of thick pottage in the dining quarters, the attendees retired to the parlour for a round of cigars and Napoleon brandy.
Shortly following their return to the north forty, it was suddenly Christmas Day and the home filled with visitors. There was Caliban, the towne drunk; Petruchio, Joelle's mother's sister's husband; Shylock, the half-mad gardener; Herne the Hunter (Joelle's brother) along with his wife Gertrude and their children Titania and Nick Bottom; Joelle's parents Heathcliffe and Catherine; her sister Portia; Puck, the farm-hand; and many more. The house was loud that day, my friends. Like a Limp Bizkit concert where the locals had forgotten to pay off the sound engineer to sabotage the sound board. A good man was lost in the commotion of gift unwrapping and at one point we feared dearly for Portia's life but in the end we all breathed a heavy sigh of relief when she only lost an eye.
In a bid to escape the pandemonium that was twirling all around them with their lives, Pemulis, Joelle, and Helga soon after climbed aboard the Ultimate Driving Machine and roared down the motorway to Pemulis's parents' grand palace, also-known-as The Willows. My memory escapes me with respect to the precise time of our arrival, but Pemulis and co passed through the doorway of The Willows somewhere in the environs of 11 pm (or at least it felt that way due to the length of the morning). In contrast to the north forty, The Willows was surprisingly quiet. Pemulis's brother's children -- who historically were classified as "potentially dangerous contributors to acoustic neuroma" -- seemed polite, reserved, and very, well, grown up when Pemulis compared them to Titania and Nick Bottom and their frighteningly loud and out-of-control interactions with Helga. Even Pemulis's sister's daughter Saldana was a joy to have around.
Pemulis sat himself down on one of the two Vincenzo De Cotiis down-filled, kangaroo twine stitched living room settees and the butler promptly fetched him an Old Fashioned served in a Baccarat crystal. The children quietly amused themselves in the games room and the adults discussed the year that was while partaking in a spirited game of backgammon. Pemulis's luck had run out, however, and was thoroughly swatted when he doubled at a point when clearly should have simply accepted a double. He won't be making that mistake again.
When it was time to open the gifts delivered by Kris Kringle, there was an orderly procession of youngest-to-oldest and following each unwrapping Father Pemulis captured a photograph on the Leica M3. The highlight of the afternoon was undoubtedly the white gold Patek Philippe Calatrava gifted from Pemulis to his older brother. It was all the more humorous when later Pemulis opened the identical gift from Joelle. Great minds, and all that.
Several days later, Pemulis and Joelle set out for a night away, a generous gift from Pemulis's parents that included full babysitting service for the apple of their eye Helga. They again boarded the Ultimate Driving Machine and thundered to the South Bank of the Thames where a dinner awaited them. They strolled the streets through the glistening snow post-meal and planned a very comfortable life in the area for Pemulis's baby sister including her future banker, tax advisor, gym, and of course guitar teacher.
Returning to the north forty, Pemulis encountered some health problems. Nothing a timely administered Carbolic Smoke Ball couldn't cure, however, and our heroes were back to the races. The next event on their itinerary involved a trip to the local mountain where little Helga could participate in some much-deserved mountaineering. Helga took to this rather impressively and was soon climbing circles around the other adventurers. There were zero problems with her wanting to participate in said activity and the whole family felt 100% confident that they had got their money's worth and vowed to return when the opportunity again presented itself.
Like all good things, eventually the CCV v.6 had to come to a close. Pemulis, Joelle, and Helga, after a relaxing chariot ride to the aerodrome, boarded the TWA Dreamliner and were whisked into the clouds for a return to a more civilised version of life. Diesel automobiles, beer for breakfast, the expectation to only bathe monthly, and most served food based on a process that involved force feeding a helpless animal in some manner. It was good to be back on the continent.
Monday, January 21, 2019
What do people care about, think about, and, most importantly, write about?
In ancienter times than now, when looking for inspiration or arguing an important point in a pressing matter, or exploring answers and guidance through life's often turbulent, trying, and confusing happenings, one might have turned to Shakespeare: there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. One might just as usefully have turned to Socrates: the only true wisdom is to know that you know nothing. Today, however, we shall turn to a wisdom (of sorts) imparted from the inimitable superhero film Deadpool 2. And the topic of that wisdom is: luck.
In Deadpool 2, Deadpool has to go on a mission to save a fat New Zealand mutant child (as you do) and to do so he puts together a team of superheroes to aid in said mission. The most important member of this team turns out to be Domino, whose super power is... "being lucky". Seems kind of lame, right? But, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that being lucky is one of the most powerful of all the super powers. Anyways, it goes without saying (but I'll say it) that a powerful super power will also have a powerful anti super power and in this case it's pretty obviously "being unlucky".
Now I won't argue that I'm an overall unlucky person (more like a bad decision maker) but my present trip to the largest sub-national economy in the world has been decidedly afflicted with a case of the unluckys. First: one of the people I was supposed to be meeting with concurrently booked a trip in the other direction and so they are currently sitting in Bavaria while I sit here. Second: I'm meant to be meeting all week with "remote colleagues" but sitting here in the office kitchen with no one around it's very clear that one should not show up to work on a holiday Monday! Whoops. (and yes I'm aware that one could just as easily characterize point number two as being lucky -- kind of a free holiday -- but I'm pretending to be a hard worker right now).
Back to the other side of unlucky, though. You know what's lucky? Knowing what to care about, think about, and then I guess by extension, write about. But the former two hold the bulk of importance, of course. Now I don't mean that I don't know about to care about, ad litteram. Obviously Joelle and Helga share the number one spot in that particular competition (but they better start getting ready to shove a little bit over on said pedestal for when little Dinosaur or whatever we'll end up calling him arrives in a few short weeks). What I mean is more like passion in work or hobbies -- the things that push you to work or at least work hard and that excite you. Now I know that I'm lucky because I even have the luxury to be able to think about this kind of thing (though thinking in many contexts is decidedly an unlucky thing to have to do) but if (to take a wild example) one believes that technology -- while promising an improvement in life and by extension happiness -- is actually making our lives less fulfilling, more stressful, and onerous, then maybe that's even worse working in that area than if you were working as some kind of labourer "just" for the paycheque.
But now, the sun is shining outside, there's literally no one else in this office, and so I will go for a walk and see if clarity may arrive through the warm healing rays of the sun.
In Deadpool 2, Deadpool has to go on a mission to save a fat New Zealand mutant child (as you do) and to do so he puts together a team of superheroes to aid in said mission. The most important member of this team turns out to be Domino, whose super power is... "being lucky". Seems kind of lame, right? But, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that being lucky is one of the most powerful of all the super powers. Anyways, it goes without saying (but I'll say it) that a powerful super power will also have a powerful anti super power and in this case it's pretty obviously "being unlucky".
Now I won't argue that I'm an overall unlucky person (more like a bad decision maker) but my present trip to the largest sub-national economy in the world has been decidedly afflicted with a case of the unluckys. First: one of the people I was supposed to be meeting with concurrently booked a trip in the other direction and so they are currently sitting in Bavaria while I sit here. Second: I'm meant to be meeting all week with "remote colleagues" but sitting here in the office kitchen with no one around it's very clear that one should not show up to work on a holiday Monday! Whoops. (and yes I'm aware that one could just as easily characterize point number two as being lucky -- kind of a free holiday -- but I'm pretending to be a hard worker right now).
Back to the other side of unlucky, though. You know what's lucky? Knowing what to care about, think about, and then I guess by extension, write about. But the former two hold the bulk of importance, of course. Now I don't mean that I don't know about to care about, ad litteram. Obviously Joelle and Helga share the number one spot in that particular competition (but they better start getting ready to shove a little bit over on said pedestal for when little Dinosaur or whatever we'll end up calling him arrives in a few short weeks). What I mean is more like passion in work or hobbies -- the things that push you to work or at least work hard and that excite you. Now I know that I'm lucky because I even have the luxury to be able to think about this kind of thing (though thinking in many contexts is decidedly an unlucky thing to have to do) but if (to take a wild example) one believes that technology -- while promising an improvement in life and by extension happiness -- is actually making our lives less fulfilling, more stressful, and onerous, then maybe that's even worse working in that area than if you were working as some kind of labourer "just" for the paycheque.
But now, the sun is shining outside, there's literally no one else in this office, and so I will go for a walk and see if clarity may arrive through the warm healing rays of the sun.
California Redux
It's been a quarter of a year since pixel was put to screen on this blog but Pemulis is back and he's back in California. After never having been here till last Fall, it's now Pemulis's number #1 travel destination for the key Fall 2018 / Winter 2019 time segment. It's not exactly clear why Pemulis is in California right now but the prevailing understanding -- some call it a narrative -- is that he's here now so that he won't have to go later in the year, we believe. It's a mystery that A&E will surely one day make a series about: how do these technology companies make any money at all when you see what goes on behind the scenes? Modern Mysteries, premiering next Fall, after Parking Wars and before Hoarders: Motorhome Edition, only on A&E.
What is Pemulis doing here? Pemulis feels like he could probably get a real benefit out of some personal counselling from Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, maybe Albert Camus, somebody, anybody, because he really has no idea. It kind of seems like he's not doing anything for any purpose and these guys and gal might agree / have agreed. Didn't people used to spend a summer in Europe after college to find themselves before entering the real world having everything figured out? Well, if you haven't been keeping track, Pemulis has spent seven years there now and he probably feels more lost than ever, we imagine. Ostensibly, he's here -- here, being Californ I.A. -- for "meetings". Now don't go telling the CFO, but are these meetings really going to change anything about anything for anyone? (purely rhetorical question for anyone looking for the "contact" button).
In the back of your mind, you can always go home. But eventually, after seven years for example, home isn't what you remember it to be. And your new place sure isn't your new home either. Poor Pemulis; destined to be running away from something forever and ever, amen. Pemulis does have two important reasons for being here, however: number one, tonight's total lunar eclipse will not be visible in Europe (the land of demystifying one's dreams) and the Bay Area should be a prime spot for viewing (unfortunately, however, the forecast calls for 100% chance of cloudy conditions most probably negating reason number one); and, number two, helping to treat (though one can't be so optimistic as to imagine "curing") a serious case of the wintertime blues. While tonight's "super blood wolf moon" will in all likelihood be rained out, the rest of the week calls for a whole lotta warm California sun of which one should be out there having fun in and while Pemulis will be "working" during the day, he will also be 200% sure to get out there even if ever so briefly for some key targeted lunchtime sun exposure.
One thing that being in California seems good at accomplishing is creating a fake nostalgia drenched feeling of one-time bliss felt through music created and played during the 1990's. Did Third Eye Blind do anything after that first album? Doesn't matter. Did Jewel eventually start making dance music and give in to the evil temptation that is autotune? Pemulis hopes not, but even if she did, it doesn't matter either. Did Counting Crows become cringingly, embarrassingly terrible? Yes. But all that music that helped form Pemulis's psyche when he was around 14 years old is now forever tied up in some very complicated and very messy tangled-up knots of neurons that are somehow tied to California and once thinking that he might have had an idea of what he wanted to get out of life. And no, the San Jose Sharks are again on a road trip this week.
There's a wide wall that Pemulis can't see over now. It's a good thing that Pemulis is a fictional character by the way (emphasis added). One thing that this fictional character in particular really quite likes is warm(er) (always warmer) weather and California seems to have that more or less in spades. It's really nice to get away from the cold but then when you head back to it it seems even colder than before. Wow this writer is some kind of philosopher king. And so you find yourself on a "business trip" tired, jet-lagged, and alone, wishing for it to end but also dreading the end of it and the return to dark mornings and afternoons, grey skies, and freezing rain.
I have to say I'm a little bit jealous of Pemulis. And in fact I find it kind of irritating that he sometimes seems so glum, because from my view up here at around 10,000 feet he seems like a pretty lucky dude. Why, I heard that just today he spent a couple of hours at a Baron Barista sipping some very fine caffeinated products while reading Jonathan Franzen's seven hundred and eighty-fourth consecutive essay saying the same thing about the same birds (OK, maybe that part was the more irritating in all this). So therein perhaps lies the problem? Maybe he's reading the wrong stuff.
It was a long December and there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last. And it's one more day up in the canyons. And it's one more night in Hollywood. If you think you might come to California, I think you should (but don't go alone).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)