Democracy

            After the food bank on Saturday I went home and put stuff away, and then I headed out to No Frills to get some fruit. I noticed on the way that Young’s Fine Foods, a variety store that's been at the corner of Queen and West Lodge for at least twenty years, has closed. I guess they couldn’t compete with the Lucky Supermarket a few doors up.

            At No Frills they had extremely cheap grapes and they were firm. I find that although No Frills is not always cheaper than Freshco, their fruit tends to be of a better quality, except that sometimes the grapes have hard to wash off insecticide on them. These ones didn’t though. I got bananas. I don’t mean I went bananas. I had enough meat and bread but Maxwell House coffee was on sale so I took a can of that. I bought three litres of milk and some yogourt.

            Later in the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was pretty quiet as far as other cyclists go. I was sweaty on the way east but not on the way back. I went up Victoria Park to Bassett, took that to Delwood, which I followed down to Karnwood, curved up to Knightsbridge, right to Pharmacy and then home.

            I had eggs and toast with a beer for dinner and watched two episodes of Dobie. Both of them were kind of silly and that seems to be the trend in the second season or whenever any show runs out of ideas they become increasingly more absurd.

            In the first, Dobie accidentally knocks a man over in the park that turns out to be on the way to spend the weekend with Dobie’s father to see if he is qualified to be the leader of the local Bison lodge. Since the man wants to meet Herbert’s son as part of his assessment, Herbert decides he is doomed if the man discovers his son is Dobie. He gets Dobie and Maynard to switch places. Dobie becomes the beatnik Maynard G Krebs while Maynard shaves his beard and poses as Dobie Gillis. When the switch is finally discovered it is decided that anyone that would go to such lengths to be the lodge leader should be the lodge leader.

            The second was even more absurd. Maynard reveals that he has ESP but he doesn’t always use it because it makes life boring. He proves it on a TV show by telling experts what they have in their pockets and on their minds. It is decided to have Maynard reveal on national television the outcome of the upcoming presidential election between Nixon and Kennedy. Maynard already knows and at first he is tempted to reveal the answer because he’s never been treated as such an important person before but Dobie convinces him telepathically at the last minute, that it would ruin US democracy if he were to tell everyone the outcome before they voted. He tells everyone he doesn’t know. This is the most absurd episode yet in that they presented the United States as if it were ever a democracy.