Diana Lynn

            Late Monday morning I had my bi-annual meeting with my social worker. I’ve had the same worker for the last couple of years and she’ll be the last worker I have with Ontario Works because she handles all of the clients that are in their sixties until they start collecting their pensions. It used to be that workers changed every few months so it’s nice now to get to know one person.
             The meeting didn’t last long. We discussed when I should apply for my pension and she said she didn’t know for sure but some apply year before their 65th birthday and others give it six months. I said that I’d call them around the time of my 64th birthday.
            I just checked out the government info site and it looks like applying a year before I want to receive my pension is the earliest I can apply and I will indicate on the application the date when I want to start receiving my pension. It’s probably a good idea then to do it around my 64th birthday just in case there are screw-ups in the year leading up to when I turn 65.
            After my meeting I stopped at the big No Frills at Lansdowne and Dundas where I bought grapes, a tomato, yogourt, ground beef, a small package of sliced corned beef and another of sliced turkey, roasted seaweed, spoon size shredded wheat, Miss Vicky’s chips, hot salsa, and toothpaste.
            When I got home I put my groceries away and rode down to the Parkdale Community Health Centre. I found out there that the dental care they offer is only that which is covered by Ontario Works and so if I also have Green Shield I should go someplace else. She recommended the Parkdale-Queen West Community Health Centre at Bathurst and Queen. I rode down there and while I was locking my bike there was a woman cleaning the street in front of the centre. At one point a woman with rubber gloves and a pair of barbecue tongs came out from the centre to pick up a syringe that the other woman had found and to carefully take it inside.
            The dental office is on the second floor but I was told by the receptionist next to that desk that the entire dental office staff had gone for lunch and wouldn’t be back until between 13:30 and 14:00. At that point it was only 12:20 and so I just went home and decided to call them later.
            I had a can of tuna with salsa and a few potato chips for lunch.
            I called the PQWCHC dental office at 14:10 but had to leave a message. No one got back to me that day.
            I went through my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” a couple of times.
            I looked at the recordings of my song practice from July 24, 2017. It must have been cloudy that morning because there was an odd light as if I were being filmed underwater. This session was in French and I think only one of the songs may be uploadable for public listening.
            I weighed 89.6 kilos before dinner.
            I boiled a purple carrot and a potato, heated a chicken leg and some gravy and watched the latest episode of the Big Bang Theory.
            Spoiler alert!
            In this story it is pointed out to Leonard that he is a people pleaser and so he tries to break the pattern by proposing to the president of the university a plasma physics study that he would head. Penny is worried because he tells her that if he is turned down he will quit. He is turned down but doesn’t quit and instead is offered to co-lead a different study.
            Meanwhile Raj is being teased by his colleagues because he has suggested that some signals he has recorded with his telescope may be evidence of extraterrestrial life.
            I watched the first half of the premier story of the show Playhouse 90, which featured original movie length stories for television cast with Hollywood film stars. This story, “Forbidden Area” was adapted by Rod Serling from a novel and it stars Charlton Heston, Vincent Price and Tab Hunter.
            The story begins in a bar where a sombre bartender is grilling two customers on baseball statistics. No one is smiling and so right away it does not seem like a normal bar scene. Smith gets all of his answers right but the other stumbles. The bartender receives a call and then tells Smith they are ready for him. Next we see Smith being grilled by a group of official sounding unseen men with accents. After answering all of the questions he is told about his mission. It turns out that Smith is a Russian agent being trained to pass as a US citizen so he can become a mole in the US military. He is sent with one other man by submarine to California. They come ashore with scuba gear.
            Meanwhile we see a meeting between members of the forbidden area of the strategic air command. This is a think tank that meets to second guess the Russians. A year later Smith is already a sergeant and working as a cook at the Strategic Air Command.
            I stopped watching for the night just after a B-99 bomber disappears from the sky.
            The secretary of the forbidden area group, Catherine Hume was played by Diana Lynn, who had been a child prodigy at the piano. Her first roles as an adult were as pianists in movies.

Melissa Rauch

            I spent a lot of Sunday writing about my latest food bank adventure. It would have been a nice afternoon for a bike ride but I didn’t finish in time.
            I looked at the U of T website to check my marks and saw that I got an A minus in Romantic Literature and an A plus in the Poetry Master Class. Neither grade was a surprise. I would have gotten at least a solid A if I hadn’t screwed up my first in-class essay in December by not including textual references.
            I had three strips of bacon, an egg, a piece of toast and a beer for dinner while watching two episodes of the Big Bang Theory.
            In the first story Amy and Sheldon are still trying to deal with the problem of the two media savvy scientists who accidentally proved their theory of super asymmetry. Campbell and Pemberton may wind up getting the Nobel Prize even though Sheldon and Amy did all the work. They decide to try to get the Nobel laureates on their side by inviting them to a reception but all of them hate Sheldon because of past insults and they refuse to come. Leonard and Penny go see them all and convince them to change their minds. But at the reception Campbell and Pemberton show up and instead of Sheldon losing control it’s Amy that blows up and calls them impostors.
            Meanwhile, Bernadette and Howard’s daughter Halley is going through an afraid of the dark phase. To comfort her Howard tells the story of his time as an astronaut and how frightened he was but got over it. Bernadette overhears the story and is so touched that she gets the idea for a children’s book called “The Frightened Little Astronaut”. Stewart does the artwork but when Howard sees the manuscript he is embarrassed at how he is portrayed. Bernadette argues that in admitting he was afraid he was being brave and that this is a good thing for children to hear.
            In the second story Amy is called into Human Resources at the university in response to her blow up at the reception. When she is reminded that because she could become only the fourth woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics and so young women everywhere are counting on her she feels too much pressure. Amy and Sheldon decide to try sensory deprivation tanks to relax. Sheldon has an incredible time flying through his own mind while Amy spends the whole time stressed about what is expected of her.
            Meanwhile Howard decides to buy a scooter so he can re-experience the freedom he used to have. He tries to keep it a secret but when Bernadette finds out she makes him sell it.
            Bernadette is played by Melissa Rauch.
            My ex-girlfriend and I went into a sensory deprivation tank. It was very sensual because we were in it together naked. We couldn’t have sex because doing so would have exposed our genitalia to a lot of salt.

Fishing in Toronto

            On Saturday morning as usual I was practicing singing and playing guitar when the late April sky betrayed us and it started to snow for a couple of minutes. Through the blowing crystals I saw in the distance walking up Dunn Avenue someone that looked like they had a big golden brown blanket bunched up on their shoulders and covering their head. As the person got closer I saw that it was a middle-aged woman with the largest head of dreadlocks I had ever seen. If she had stretched her arms out sideways and then swept them up to reach for the sky it would have defined the range of growth and the circumference of her hair. She went into the donut shop beneath me and emerged a few minutes later. She stood at the corner and it looked like she was waiting for the walk signal but when the little white man appeared she did not make a move towards him. The light went back to red. After a while she was gone and I thought she had gotten in the taxi that had stopped near her but a few minutes later she was crossing to the southwest corner by the other walk signal and then she went back down Dunn, sometimes stopping like a bushy statue in the middle of the street for a couple of minutes before continuing on. She must be new to the neighbourhood because I see everyone from my window and I’d never seen her before. An online image search that afternoon found some longer dreadlocks but nothing as big and wild as hers.

            At 9:30 I got ready to go to the food bank and since it looked colder outside than it's been lately I put on an extra shirt, wore a scarf and slipped my hands into my spring gloves. That seemed fine at first but later I wished that I’d gone with my full winter attire.

            The line of carts was much shorter than last week and the only person in line was the tall slim, goateed guy with the long grey woollen coat and the poor boy cap, whom I’ve talked with there before. As I was locking my bike a gust of wind sent three carts rolling away to the west, all in a perfect row. I suggested that maybe the carts know something we don’t and that maybe to the west there was something more rewarding than the food bank line-up. He told me that he’d gone after those carts several times already even though none of them were his. I said that it might be a good lesson for those that leave their carts unattended to just let them blow away.

            We chatted a bit and then I started reading my dual language book, continuing from where I left off in September with Gustav Flaubert’s story, “St Julian the Hospitaler”. Early in the story, after his mother had given birth to Julian, a hermit appeared in her bedroom and told her that her son would be a saint. At the same time a gypsy emerged from the mist outside the castle to inform the father that his son would have an emperor's family but there would be much blood. Years later when Julian had become a merciless hunter, after he’d slaughtered the family of a stag, the stag would not die until it had uttered a curse that Julian would kill his own mother and father. After several close calls in which Julian almost did accidentally kill his parents, he ran away. He became a great warrior and after saving the kingdom of the emperor of Occitania, Julian fell in love with the emperor’s daughter and she with him. He was given her hand in marriage and he lived in opulence in his own castle. After a few years he became restless and decided to go on a hunting trip. While he was away an impoverished and starving elderly couple arrived at his home. They were received by Julian's wife and they revealed to her that they were Julian's parents. That's as far as I got but I'm guessing that Julian comes home, thinks the old couple are intruders and kills them.

            The guy in the woollen coat suddenly decided to leave.

            After a while a guy standing about three places back started chatting with me, beginning with how cold it was. He said he’s spent three winters in Toronto so far and it’s very difficult. I asked him where he’s from and he said that he's originally from Somalia but that he lived in a few African countries like Kenya and Ethiopia before coming here.

            I told him that my upstairs neighbour is from Ethiopia and that he has a farm back there. When he retires from his job as a crane operator at the portlands he plans on moving back to his family’s land. My Somalian companion declared that being a crane operator is the next best thing to being a pilot.

            He said that Somalia was a paradise before the war and if he were there right now he would be fishing on the longest coastline in the world and not standing in the food bank line-up. Actually Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, but not the world. Canada has the longest coastline in the world. If he really likes fishing he could fish right here in Toronto at various locations like the Toronto Islands or the Humber Marsh. It would only cost him $100 to get a licence that would last him three years.

            He went on a long rant about the UN being the most evil organization in the world and that it conspires to kill Africans with malaria, starvation and war. He claimed that the UN has invented the concept of the African dictator and said that Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe did great things for his country. The fact remains that hundreds of thousands were dancing in the street when Mugabe stepped down, though nothing has really changed economically in the year since that happened.

            My Somalian friend’s claims about the UN seem steeped in nutty conspiracy theories. The UN has prevented epidemics, starvation and wars in Africa. The UN eradicated smallpox from the face of the Earth.

            He claimed that the UN sent Somalia rotten corn. I don’t know anything about that but I guess with an organization of that size screw-ups are possible. I doubt very much if they deliberately sent bad food to Somalia.

            I argued that there are African countries in the UN but he said they are just there for show. I think my friend is severely undereducated about the UN. There are 54 African countries in the United Nations and Africa makes up 28% of the UN.

            I think he has certain former colonialist superpowers mixed up with the UN. The primary culprits in screwing up Somalia are impirial Britain and fascist Italy. They divided the country in the 1920s. After World War II the UN allowed Italy to protect their section of Somalia as long as it was given independence in ten years. During that time, under UN supervision a great effort was made to teach the Italian protectorate of Somalia how to govern itself. The problem is that Britain did not do the same with its section and so when the two parts were reunited there was conflict. The wounds have yet to heal.

            He expressed contempt for Canada and said that he is only here because he was forced to come here by the UN’s corruption of Somalia. He declared that even though he is a Muslim he would never pray in Canada because he refuses to touch his forehead to Canadian ground. He said that he wished that he’d been one of the Muslim’s shot in New Zealand so he could see what god would think of all that. But it’s safe to assume that if he were in New Zealand that he would have had the same attitude about praying there and so he would not have had the possibility or being shot in the Christ Church mosque because he never would have gone there to pray.

            Bob Dylan’s “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” comes to mind.

            He said that he feels closer to Jesus in Canada and told me that Jesus is the most mentioned person in the Koran. I had read that but I said that it doesn’t prove that Jesus existed and it certainly doesn’t prove that god exists. He said the fact that he has eyes and breath proves that god exists but I said those things could have just happened. He also claimed that the Qu’ran and the Bible are proof that god exists but that makes even less sense.

I didn’t tell him this but the reason he’s so angry seems to be tied up with a conflict between his faith and his sense of self. Believing he was created by god makes him feel important to the universe but that sense of importance in relation to his own adverse circumstances has made him bitter. I on the other hand don’t think that I need to be important to the universe but only to myself and that liberates me to care about other people because my self is happier when I get along with those around me. If he were to stop believing in god it might free him up to stop being such a whiny little bitch.

To be fair I think my Somalian friend has some kind of a mental illness that enhances delusional thinking. His speech is often accompanied by jerking movements and he does not always appear to be thinking before he speaks, while his eyes seem unfocused. But if he feels the need to self-medicate with religion he’s got to get over this bitterness about being in Canada. If he can’t be in Somalia and he’s stuck here he should accept it and get on with his life. Maybe he’s afraid that if he starts loving Canada he will stop loving Somalia but that’s not how it works. There is a Somalian community in Toronto with many members that can serve as examples for him. One of them, Saron Gebresellassie ran for mayor and I voted for her. Chances are most of them are Muslims and they might be able to teach him to stop pussyfooting around about worshiping here and they can demonstrate what horseshit it is to pretend you can’t touch your forehead to the ground in Canada.

            A woman walked by whom I often see panhandling in front of my building and shouting at people in an often sexually provocative manner. Someone in the line-up asked her as she passed how she keeps warm. She answered, “I fuck!” My companion suddenly lost his Somalian accent and assumed one closer to inner cities of the United States when he smiled and said, “Damn!”          

            I asked him his name and he told me, “It’s a secret”. He said that people have to be careful because they can be shot like 50 Cent. He claimed that 50 Cent was shot by the FBI but the main theory of what happened is that Mike Tyson’s bodyguard Darryl Baum was hired to kill 50 Cent, some say by a crack dealer that didn’t like that the details of his operation were mentioned in the 50 Cent song “Ghetto Qu’ran”. Another theory is that Baum shot Fiddy because he had dissed his girlfriend, Lil Kim. It doesn’t make sense that the FBI would want him dead.

            Downstairs my helper at the shelves was the youngest of the regular volunteers, whose mother also sometimes works there. At the first set of shelves he said, “Just one from the top and one from the bottom, so make wise choices!” That seemed pretty condescending to me. I asked, “Why would you think that I wouldn’t choose wisely?” He said, “Well, a lot of people don’t”. I said, “That would be their choice”. If the food bank is presenting choices that he considers unwise he should take it up with them so they can only put “wise” choices on the shelves.

            I took a carton of romano cheese and honey crackers, a box of gourmet oatmeal and raisin cookies, a can of “baked” beans, a tin of tuna and another of tomato sauce.

            In Angie’s section she asked me in a low voice if I wanted some OJ, then she looked both ways and passed me a 1.75 litre carton. I told her I didn’t need milk, eggs or yogourt, but only some meat. She gave me a choice of ham or a large frozen pot roast dinner with potatoes by Kirkland Signature, which I guess is Costco’s version of President’s Choice. I took the pot roast dinner because I’d just finished eating the ham I’d gotten from her last week and I was all hammed out.

            While waiting for vegetables from Sylvia I grabbed a loaf of roasted garlic bread.

            I heard arguing behind me and turned to see my Somalian friend at the reception desk refusing to give his name and birth date. It occurred to me later that maybe his reason for both not wanting to give his name to me or to the food bank is that he’s here illegally. That would also flounder his chances of getting a fishing licence.

            Sylvia gave me a bag of rainbow carrots, a red pepper, a seedless cucumber and five apples. She let me know that there was another box of items that I could choose from on the way out and so I grabbed a small bag of baby spinach and a one-kilogram container of strawberries.

             As I was unlocking my bike a Tibetan man who was still waiting to go in asked me if it was any good this time. I told him it was much more satisfying than the previous week. He agreed that last week hadn’t been very good and wished me a great day.

            Since I’d already gone to the supermarket on Friday I just went straight home with my items. Our entryway smells like urine because the front door doesn’t lock unless we pull it shut and some tenants forget to do so, which allowed someone to come in recently and take a pee.

It turned out that so many of the strawberries were rotten that after cutting out all the bad parts I only ended up with little more than half a pint. Despite that the food bank was still a better haul this time.

I had a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch.

That night I grilled a couple of burgers and had one in a sandwich made from one slice of toasted bread with tomato, cucumber, ketchup, mustard, relish and a beer while watching the season finale of Star Trek Discovery.

Spoiler alert!

This story is a continuation of the previous episode. The Discovery and the Enterprise are preparing to do battle with Leland’s Section 31 ships. They are to provide cover for Michael as her red angel suit is prepared and for her to open a wormhole through which Discovery can follow her into the future to protect the Sphere data from Leland. It turns out that Leland is the only life form aboard any of the Section 31 vessels and as he is simply a human embodiment of the Control computer system, his ships and their thousands of drones are all coordinated with one mind. When the battle begins there is a lot of boring CGI of the drones flying around and firing. As the engineering crew is making the final additions to the Red Angel suit Stametz is severely injured and in the understandably busy sick bay, Culber puts him in a coma, but as he is going under tells him that he’s decided that his life is with him after all. A timed photon torpedo has breached the hull of the Enterprise and the admiral goes down to try to disable it, but can’t. The blast door to contain the explosion can only be closed from the inside and so she sacrifices herself. Spock runs point for Michael in a shuttle as she runs and jumps from the Discovery. The defensive ships cover them and make a path to the perimeter of the battle where Spock and Michael land and she prepares to jump. Suddenly at the battle site several Kelpian battle cruisers including one piloted by Saru’s sister Siranna come out of warp. It seems implausible that she would go from being a gardener priest a few weeks ago to a space warrior. Also arriving at the same time is a Klingon warbird commanded by L’Rell, with Ash also on board and several other Klingon vessels. They all join in the fight against Control.

Meanwhile Michael cannot get the suit to allow her to create a wormhole into the future. Spock figures out that it’s because she has yet to leave the previous five red signals in space that we have seen throughout this season. So she has to first go to the past to the dark matter asteroid; then to the Earth colony on Terralisium that her mother had transported there centuries before; then to Kaminar; then to Boras where Pike acquired the time crystal and finally to Zahia where Po showed them how to power the crystal. With all of those signals set in the past she is able to return to where Spock is to prepare for the jump to Terralisium 930 years into the future.

Meanwhile Leland beams onto Discovery to get the Sphere data but finds it is not in the location he’d expected. Philippa and Nahn confront him and Philippa teases him with the fact that she’s put the data in a small hidden device. There are some very long hand-to-hand battle scenes between Leland and the two women and of course he is almost indestructible. They lead him away and he finally figures out that the Sphere data is in the spore drive console of engineering. But it is a trap and as he arrives there Philippa contains him in the spore console. 

Michael sets the coordinates and is ready to jump but Spock reveals that he won’t be going with her because his shuttle has been damaged and he can’t get back to Discovery. They can’t lower their shields to beam him aboard because the battle is still going on. So Michael has to say goodbye to Spock and jump to open the wormhole. Discovery follows her.

            Leland tries to break out of the spore console but Philippa releases the spores, which begin to slowly eat him while Philippa stands there laughing sadistically at his torture. When Leland dies all of the Control ships go dead as well. Pike orders them destroyed anyway.

            Michael opens the wormhole and Discovery follows her through.

            The closing scenes show the basic cleanup of the Star Trek information regarding Discovery and Michael Burnham. In interviews with Star Fleet Command all of the crew of The Enterprise tell the same story that Discovery was destroyed and Michael Burnham is dead. Star Fleet makes Ash the head of Section 31. Spock advises Star Fleet to wipe all data of Discovery and the time suit because it could have catastrophic results in the future.

            Spock shaves his beard and reassumes his role as science officer on the Enterprise with Pike as the captain. From the Enterprise they see the seventh red signal left by Michael 51,000 light years away.

            In the closing music they nicely combine the Discovery theme music with the music from the original Star Trek show.

The Yellow Door

            I spent quite a bit of time on Friday completing the online membership registration for Green Shield health insurance although technically I've been a member for years. I thought that the website could show me dental offices that are covered by the plan. I had to jump through quite a few hoops, including providing my direct deposit information (even though I can’t think of what they would be depositing) before I was finally registered. Once all that was though the map showing the dental offices in Toronto didn’t seem like what I was looking for.

            Instead I just did a search for dentists for poor people and discovered that there might be a dentist I can use right here in Parkdale at the Parkdale Community Health Centre. The website said they were open till 17:00 on Friday and it was about 16:15 so I rode down there. The receptionist said the dental clinic closes at 16:00 on Friday, so they must have changed their schedule without changing their website. I would have to come back on Monday. I was also told that I have to be on some kind of social assistance and under 65 to get treatment there. It seems that next year I’ll have to make a few adjustments like finding an entirely different dentist of I settle on this one for now, plus at U of T I will not be charged for health insurance and so if I want it I will have to opt in.

            Since I was out I decided to ride down to No Frills and save myself the Saturday trip. I bought a few bags of grapes, two tomatoes, some yogourt, mouthwash and a small chicken.

            I finished a first draft of a long poem about the Yellow Door open stage.

In the sky were small puffs

far apart and estranged

as I pedaled up a hill and huffed

to the Yellow Door open stage

Eastern clouds had cohered

and blowing north had more length

They were kind of grayish pink coloured

and they had the smoothness of clay

But looking closer I could see

they were twisted at their waists

as I rode east along Bloor Street

to the Yellow Door open stage

At Avenue Road a cloud

had a Starship Enterprise shape

that disrupted as I turned down

toward the Yellow Door open stage

There was watermelon

and soup with pork and sage

I ate with some senior women

at the Yellow Door open stage

There was a nice atmosphere

A woman that used a cane

asked if I’d tune her guitar for her

before the Yellow Door open stage

At 19:45

pulling his equipage

Ernest the earnest host arrived

for the Yellow Door open stage

Amp, guitar, two mics, stands,

and a Karaoke device

He hauls it all from the east end

On a trailer behind his bike

At about twenty o’clock

Ernest was the first to play

and sang “The Gambler” to kick off

the Yellow Door open stage

Then an instrumentalist

picked up his guitar and played

but with a bad percussionist

on the Yellow Door open stage

A Slavic guy got up

and told us if we believe

with all our hearts then no matter what

then what we asked we would receive

When my turn came I argued

if the faithful get more things

it could very easily be proved

with no doubt in a laboratory

I sang “Please Bulimia”

and “Love in Remission”

and the audience seemed pleased with them

according to their reaction

Three women sang while backed up

by Eddy playing the bass

but the first stopped cause she was nervous

on the Yellow Door open stage

One sang Willie Nelson’s "Crazy"

and Helen led a sing along

of the old ballad "Red River Valley"

and only I get tired of that song

Another Jesus disciple

stood up and after he prayed

he read a poem entitled

“Don’t Make Texting Your Idol, Read the Bible"

at the Yellow Door open stage

The last player was Anthony

a dynamic guitar player

who has a strong voice when he’s singing

though his lyrics do not inspire

Terrell and Eddy backed him up

On piano and on bass

while Naomi did her dancing stuff

at the Yellow Door open stage

Her moves are like a parody

of the dance of a Hippy chick

hand gestures and steps not fitting the beat

of music she’s trying to interpret

But all shared something from within

and until midnight they were engaged

so a good time was had once again

at the Yellow Door open stage

I had a carrot, a potato, a chicken leg and some gravy for dinner and watched an episode of Star Trek Discovery.

            Spoiler alert!

            Since they are surrounded by Control ships, all with the mission of taking the Sphere data from the Discovery, it has been decided to destroy Discovery and the data. They rendezvous with the Enterprise and everyone from Discovery evacuates to the Enterprise. Just before leaving, Michael touches the time crystal and has visions of the future. They initiate self-destruct of Discovery but nothing happens. They try to destroy Discovery with Enterprise’s weapons but Discovery puts up its shields. The only conclusion is that the Sphere data is protecting itself. Suddenly Leland arrives and kills everybody on the bridge. Just as Leland kills Michael she wakes from her future vision just before the point when Pike is about to have Enterprise fire on Discovery. She tells him to stop. The only solution now is to take Discovery and the Sphere data into the future, out of reach of Control. Since Discovery is in possession of the design of the Red Angel suit and the time crystal it is decided to build another Red Angel suit but since it is geared to the DNA of Dr. Burnham the only possible pilot is Michael. Spock concludes that since Dr. Burnham has not been creating the signals they’ve been following then it must be Michael that is creating the signals. It is also calculated that in opening a wormhole to lead Enterprise into the future the process will burn the time crystal out and Michael will not be able to return. No one mentions that if Michael is leaving the signals then she must find a way to return for the signals to be left. There is also the problem of needing the power of a star going supernova to power the crystal.

            Another signal appears and it turns out to lead Discovery to the planet Zahia, of which Tilly's friend Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po is the 17-year-old queen. Po appeared as a stowaway on the Discovery in one of the Short Treks episodes when she was reluctant to assume her role of queen. No one else but Tilly saw her and Tilly convinced her to face her responsibilities and go home. Po is also a scientific genius and she has figured out how to recrystalize dilithium, an element that her planet is rich with. There is an ecstatic reunion with Tilly and then Po begins to offer solutions for the problems of charging the time crystal. She also tells Tilly she is coming with them to the future. The rest of story is spent on annoyingly sentimental goodbyes as the suit is prepared for Michael. Pike and Ash beam over to Enterprise. Ash plans on trying to fight Control from within Section 31. All other members of the bridge crew and Stametz and Reno decide to go into the future with Michael. Leland’s control ships arrive and the suit is not yet ready and so Discovery and Enterprise prepare for battle.

Triple Orgasm

            On Thursday morning I planned on going downtown to renew my health card but first I thought I’d call up St George Dental to see if I could combine my student Green Shield dental insurance with my coverage from Ontario Works. The receptionist didn’t even know what Ontario Works is. When I asked to speak with someone more knowledgeable I was on hold for ten minutes. I got someone that spoke better English but she didn’t know what Ontario Works is either. After I explained that it was social assistance she told me that this was a private clinic and they didn’t really help people on welfare. She named Smile City as an alternative for me but that’s my old dentist and I don’t want to go to them because they had originally treated me for two years and allowed me to pay entirely through my insurance. But when they told me that I would have to suddenly start paying on top of my insurance it didn’t seem fair. Even if I can’t find a dentist that’s entirely free anymore I would rather pay someone else than Smile City.

            While looking online for a discount dentist I found the site of the U of T Dental Clinic. This clinic uses student dentists so I figured it must be cheap, free or at least covered by my insurance and so I thought I’d check them out after finishing at Service Ontario.

            I headed out a little after 11:00. After locking my bike in front of 777 Bay Street I was walking towards the building when a Native woman approached me and asked, “Did you know that there's such a thing as a triple orgasm?” I answered that I hadn’t personally experienced one. She said, “I just had one today, and he gave it to me!” She pointed at the smiling Black guy who had been walking but stopped about five meters south of us to wait for her. I raised my arm towards him in an informal salute and called out, "Congratulations!" He toasted me with his tall can of beer and we went our separate ways.

            I was only thinking of my own orgasms when I said I’d never experienced a triple orgasm. I guess I could say just as well as him that I have “given” different women triple orgasms or more at one time or another.

            There was a line-up of about ten people for the reception at Services Ontario but the line moved fairly quickly. I’d brought the letter that OHIP had sent me and indicated that when he asked me for something with my address on it. He said, “We don’t accept our own mail”. I had anticipated that possibility and brought a couple of other envelopes along. I showed him my deposit statement from Ontario Works but hadn’t opened it. He told me I’d have to, open it and tell him what’s inside. He gave me a small slip of paper with C1045 printed on it and told me that it would be about an hour and fifteen minute wait. I found a seat in the crowded waiting area.

            I did a French grammar exercise that I’d brought with me on distinguishing between futur simple and futur proche. After that I wrote about my encounter with the multi-orgasmic indigenous woman. I'd brought a book but I was too tired to read and so I just sat and watched the slip numbers and their corresponding booth numbers appear on the screens as the pleasant automatic female voice announced them.

            After about an hour an elderly woman who I think had just renewed her drivers licence came over to my bench, gave me a pleasant hello and put her purse down on the seat beside me. She stood there for a couple of minutes getting her things together and then she said to me, “I hope you don’t have much longer to wait”. I assured her that I thought my number was coming up soon. She said, “Jolly good! Well, have a very nice rest of your day!” I returned the wish to her.

            After another fifteen minutes my ass was getting sore and I had to get up and pace a bit for ten minutes. My total wait was a little over an hour and a half. It didn’t take long to get my picture taken. I’m surprised that my old picture from five years ago has me still wearing a ponytail. It seems much longer that I’ve had short hair.

            I rode north to Elm Street until I realized that Elm Street is not north of College and then I turned around to go to Elm Street just north of Dundas. The U of T Dental Clinic is at 101 Elm. They have a big waiting area and a very long reception area. The woman that I asked about the price of services seemed annoyed and indicated that such things were usually done on the phone. I was shocked and disappointed that they don't take insurance and that they charge $80 for initial x-rays and screening and then at the next appointment it costs $51 for oral diagnosis. Subsequent fees depend upon the treatment. I protested that that did not seem cheap at all to me. She said they are 30% cheaper than regular clinics. Regular rich people’s clinics maybe! I've never paid anything for dental x-rays except for maybe in the late 90s when I had my inheritance from my father and I didn’t think about money. But in the last 25 years any x-rays I’ve had were covered by insurance. The receptionist advised me that if I could get it cheaper somewhere I should go there. What an asshole attitude. Here is an institution that depends on the University of Toronto for its very existence and yet it does not even acknowledge a responsibility to provide a service for the community that gives it life. They should at least accept the insurance that U of T students pay for along with their student fees.

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought two pints of strawberries and a pack of ground beef.

            I had a slice of ham with mustard for lunch and took a late siesta.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I roasted four frozen chicken legs and after an hour and a half the kitchen filled up with smoke so I had to open all the windows. They turned out fine though and I had one with a potato, half a carrot and some gravy while watching an episode of Star Trek Discovery.

            Spoiler alert!
            Discovery detects another signal, which usually indicates the eventual brief appearance of the Red Angel. Dr. Burnham, who is the Red Angel, said last episode that she has nothing to do with the signals. It is possible that they are caused by another unknown time travelling entity. The signal is coming from the Klingon monastery planet where Ash left the albino Klingon son he had with L’Rell. It turns out that the monastery is also the place where the Klingons protect the time crystals. Since either L’Rell or Ash going to the planet would endanger the Klingon Empire, Captain Pike volunteers to go because they need a time crystal to fight Control.

            Meanwhile Discovery has detected a Section 31 ship that reported its position to Star Fleet ten minutes late when they tend to do it every hour precisely. Michael goes to investigate but Spock insists on coming with her. Around the Section 31 ship they find the dead bodies of its crew floating in space, but one of them is alive. They beam him aboard and it turns out to be Gant, who served on the same ship as Michael before Discovery. Gant recounts how Control took over the ship and caused all living crewmembers to be sucked into space. Michael and Spock want to investigate and Gant reluctantly agrees to help them. Once on the ship though it turns out that Gant has been taken over by Control and this is all a trap to take control of Michael. Gant is almost impossible to kill and from his bodies a stream of Control nanobytes come crawling towards Michael. At the last minute Spock manages to stop them by magnetizing the floor.

            Pike arrives on the monastery planet and convinces the guardians to let him try to take one of the crystals. His guide turns out to be the son of Ash and L’Rell, who was just a baby a few weeks ago but is now an adult. Time works differently for those that guard the time crystals. Pike touches one of the crystals and is shown a horrible future. His guide warns him that if he takes the crystal the future that he saw will be set. He takes it anyway.

            I find the concept of time crystals added to Star Trek annoying. Usually Star Trek has plausible science behind its plots but time crystals seem more like something one might find in a fantasy story.

           

Spadina Man

            On Wednesday I thought it might be a good day to go downtown to renew my health card but my morning went kind of slow and so it didn’t happen this time. I still have a month before the old card runs out of juice anyway. I also need to find a dentist to see if there’s a solution to my periodontal pocket problem. It’s very annoying to keep having food get caught down there.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. I just wore an undershirt with my leather jacket on top and most of the time that wasn’t too hot, especially on the way back when the sky clouded over a bit and the air cooled down. I rode as far as the Bloor Viaduct and then I turned around. I went down Yonge Street to Queen and then headed west. The Hunny Pot cannabis store still has a line-up but it’s much smaller than it was in its first week. Now there were only about five people waiting outside.

            When I rode by Spadina and Queen on Monday the skateboarding Spiderman was standing on top of a fire hydrant and greeting people. He has at least two costumes. One is the traditional red costume but this time he had on the black one that in the comic was from the time when the costume was an alien symbiote. The guy had strung several cords from poles to look like webs. He really gets into the role and he also has a good body for a Spiderman. He’s slim and in good shape but not overly muscular. But he wasn’t there this time.

            I went south on Ossington but the road was closed south of Queen. I went down Shaw but that didn’t go much further. I ended up weaving around CAMH but since I couldn’t find a western exit I ended up where Shaw continues south to King. I rode to No Frills and bought grapes, and then I came home.

            I practiced “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”.

            I looked at the recordings of my song practice from July 21, 2017 but the top of my head was cut off that time. Not a lot but enough to be annoying.

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before dinner.

            I had bacon and eggs with toast and a beer and watched an episode of Star Trek Discovery.

            Spoiler alert!

            While Michael recovers from having been dead and having her heart restarted by tachyon radiation from her mother’s red angel suit, Dr. Burnham and the suit are contained in a stasis field. Dr. Burnham wants to see Captain Pike and she tells him that he must delete the 3000-year rich sphere database that the sphere had uploaded into their computer system. She says that it is that database that gives the computer system called Control the ability to wipe out all sentient life in the future. But when they try to delete it the database puts up firewalls to prevent its own destruction. They decide to transfer the sphere data into Dr Burnham's red angel suit and to send it so far into the future that Control won’t be able to reach it. They would at the same time beam Dr. Burnham into our time line.

Meanwhile on the Section 31 ship Leland is taken over by Control. He tells Ash and Philippa that they are to intercept the sphere data as it is being transferred to the suit. Philippa sneaks a small device near the containment field to intercept the data. But in talking with Dr Burnham she hears her quote Control’s agenda and she uses the exact same words that Philippa had recently heard Leland say. She realizes that Leland has been compromised. She sends a message to Ash and tells him to check on Leland. He discovers him being injected with chemicals by Control. Leland wakes up and attacks Ash, stabbing him. Leland appears at the facility where Dr Burnham is being held to complete the data transfer. Philippa tries to hold him back but he is enhanced now. Michael’s only option is to destroy the containment field and let her mother go again. Dr. Burnham and the red angel suit fly through a wormhole that the suit has made in the ceiling. Michael, Philippa, Stametz, and Nahn beam to Discovery. They destroy the base but Leland beams back to Section 31. Ash is found alive in an escape pod.

Time Travel

            On Tuesday morning the donut shop beneath me changed its password so I had to go downstairs and buy a coffee to find out what the new one was. It turns out that they’d just changed the first letter of the old password to upper case, which they’ve done before and so I guess I could have figured that out.

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of ham with mustard and some yogourt for lunch.

            I had planned on riding down the street to Parkdale Community Legal Services to have them check out my new rental increase notice, but just before I would have gone it started raining so I took a siesta instead. When I got up I checked out the PCLS website to see if they were open on Wednesday and they aren’t. Thursday would have been fine for me but then I noticed that they would not have a drop-in until May 2. I called to ask if I could still see someone before May 1 and the receptionist told me I could come down and fill out a form to see if someone could see me. So I rode down there. Instead of going along Queen to take a left turn on Noble I decided it would be less difficult to go up O’Hara, across Maple Grove, down Brock, and east on Noble because Noble curves south to Queen right to where PCLS is located. I filled out the form and a woman named Ruth saw me. She told me that they are in transition now because they are training new student intake workers and they only have intake workers available for emergencies. Since my case was not an emergency they couldn’t assess my rent increase notice until May 2. I asked how that would work then if I have to pay my rent increase and then later find that it’s not legal. She said that I could just deduct the extra money from my June rent, so that sounded okay. I made an appointment for 15:00 on May 2.

            I looked at the rest of the recording of my song practice for July 20, 2017. A lot of the French songs could potentially be videos for uploading to YouTube but the Thursday morning traffic was pretty noisy and since it was a warm day I had all the windows open. Maybe some of the weekend recordings are better. A couple that I already uploaded from that time were recorded on the following Sunday.

            I worked a little more on my story “The Infidelity of the Fiddler”.

            I’ve been trying to turn the journal entries that I made during my bedbug infestation into a story.

            I worked on a long poem about a night at the now defunct Yellow Door open stage.

            I boiled a carrot and a potato, heated up the last of my steaks and some gravy and had them for dinner while watching an episode of Star Trek Discovery.

            This story was loaded big plot lines. The writers are good with those but less so with character development.

            Spoiler alert!

            It begins with Airiam’s funeral and the launching of her body into space. Somehow I suspect her cyborg body will serve as the beginnings in the future of the Borg race.

            Tilly, while analyzing data from Airiam’s memory banks, discovers that the bio-neural signature of the red angel is the same as that of Michael Burnham. They conclude that Michael is the red angel acting from the future.

            Captain Leland and Georgiou arrive from Section 31 and propose that they try to capture the red angel. Later Georgiou flirts with Stametz and says that in her universe he was pansexual and they had lots of fun together along with Dr. Culber. Stametz insists that he is gay in every universe. Burnham goes to see Leland and he reveals to her that he is responsible for the deaths of her parents because they had been doing research in time travel for Section 31 when the Klingons attacked and killed them. They’re research had been in the development of the suit that is worn by the red angel.

            Michael decides that the only way to capture her future self is to put her present life in danger because the red angel always shows up to save her since she would cease to exist if Michael were to die. Burnham is strapped to a chair in a building on a planet with a toxic atmosphere. The roof is opened to expose Michael to the poison air and she begins to die. Some of the crew try to save her but Spock pulls a phaser to stop them. Michael dies and then the Red Angel arrives, shooting a beam that restarts Michael’s heart. The Discovery crew spring their trap and capture the Red Angel in a stasis field. The red Angel emerges from her exoskeleton to reveal that she is Michael’s mother.

            It wouldn’t have made sense that Michael was the Red Angel since she would have remembered the plan to capture her and would have figured out a way to circumvent the trap.

             Michael’s mother, Dr Gabrielle Burnham is played by Sonja Sohn, who started out as a slam poet.

            This story made me curious if there have been any stories of time travel that predated The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. A lot of stories are of people either going to sleep or going someplace where time passes more slowly and then coming home to find a lot of time has passed. To me that doesn’t really count as time travel because to some extent we’ve all experienced it. I think being able to control one’s journey through time is more legitimately time travel. The earliest example of something like that seems to have been in Samuel Madden’s “Memoirs of the 20^th Century" which was written in 1733. In the story a man receives a series of letters written in 1997 and 1998 from a future in which Catholicism has taken over the world. In this case the time traveller is a guardian angel that delivers the letters from the future. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol could be seen as an example of time travel except that we don't know if Scrooge's dream really depicts the future. In the 1861 novel Paris Avant Les Hommes by Pierre Boitard a man is transported by magic to the prehistoric past of the area that became Paris and encounters dinosaurs. 

            As for time machines, the one that beats H. G. Wells by just a few years is The Anacronopete by Enrique Rimbau, published in 1887.

The Nyctalope

            I had a slow wi-fi connection all day on Monday. I had better luck with the signal from the espresso place across the street than from the donut shop beneath me. Coffeetime was totally down in the afternoon.

            I went through a recording that I made from July 20, 2017 to see which songs I could make videos from. I screwed up my own song that morning but some of the French songs are okay.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. It was quite warm out and I was overdressed with my leather jacket on my hoody on a button shirt on a tank top. I only went as far as Yonge Street this time. Before going south I put my hoody in my backpack. I headed home along Queen and stopped at Loblaws. I took some money from the bank machine and before locking my bike I took my button shirt off so I just had my leather jacket on top of my undershirt. Loblaws didn’t have any black sable grapes so I rode to No Frills in Parkdale where I bought five bags. I also got a loaf of bread, a bottle of mouthwash and some deodorant. In the express line the guy ahead of me only had a twelve pack of bottled water but I guess he found it too heavy so he set it down where the peppers were and left a three-meter space between himself and the customer in front of him until he could put it on the belt.

            In the early afternoon I weighed 90.1 kilos but after my bike ride I was back down to 89.4.

            I made gravy from steak drippings. I boiled a small potato and a carrot and heated up a steak for dinner. I watched an episode of Star Trek Discovery.

            Spoiler alert!
            In this story Admiral Cornwell boards the fugitive Discovery in a mission unknown to Star Fleet. She says something has gone wrong with the black ops Star Fleet unit called Section 31. The Discovery approaches the planet where Section 31 has its headquarters. They are attacked by mines that seem to anticipate their every evasive manoeuvre. The viewer can see that it is Lieutenant Airiam that is controlling them. I had thought that Airiam was a robot but she is really a cybernetically enhanced human. Most of her human body had been destroyed in a shuttle accident when she was on her honeymoon. The crew make it through the mines by flying in a random manner that cannot be anticipated.

            They are confronted by a communication from Admiral Pitar who says they are all traitors and will be arrested.

            Burnham, Airiam and the security officer Commander Nhan beam down to the Section 31 base where they find everyone has been dead for two weeks. Saru figures out that the message from Pitar had been a hologram and so had the video of Spock killing people to escape the psychiatric facility. We learn that the Section 31 base and Airiam have been taken over by a computer system that is trying to destroy all sentient life. It wants to download all of the information on artificial intelligence that Discovery had gotten from the sphere. Airiam begins to fight Burnham and Nhan and she is winning but Burnham temporarily locks her in an airlock. Airiam is able to communicate how she can be defeated at the same time as she is attacking her friends. She tells Burnham to open the airlock. Burnham resists but finally does so and kills Airiam.

            Throughout this episode Airiam had been uploading her memories to Discovery so they would not be lost when the computer fully controlled her. A lot of these memories were of her close friendship with the other members of the crew. But she had never been shown as having any kind of friendship with anyone in these two seasons. This is one of the flaws of Discovery. Star Trek TNG established the friendships between the members of the crew from the start of the series and so they all made sense. Very few of the bridge crew on Discovery besides Tilly, Stametz and Saru are shown to be more than two-dimensional.

            The first cyborg hero in literature was The Nyctalope in the French pulp novels by Jean de La Hire, first published in 1911. He had an artificial heart and enhanced night vision.

Surfin Sea Jazz and His Invisible Board

            On Wester Sunday we commemorate the day that Sea Jazz the sin surfer was southern fried by the Hodaddies on Valley Girl Hill. Except that he really wasn't southern fried but rather a thousand of his time clones were crucifried on surfboards during the last midnight snack at the Whoadaddy Drive-in where Sea Jazz turned axel grease into chocolate milkshakes and Mary the time travelling prostitute, who was also the mother of Sea Jazz, phased herself back and forth in time a thousand times in ten minutes to give birth to a thousand baby Sea Jazzes with which to feed the multidudes. But it was the vampire Hodaddies and their queen Salome that had it in for Sea Jazz and his surfin safari rebels because they were taking over the beach with their aggro tude towards shooting curls, especially by Sea Jazz with his invisible surfboard that made him look like he was walking on the waves. The jazzciples had to go because the beach was for dune buggie dudes and chicks and not surfers with wahinis in bikinis.

            On Easter Sunday I had three strips of bacon, an egg and a piece of toast for breakfast while watching an episode of The Rifleman. This story begins with John Hamilton the banker (now suddenly with an Irish accent) foreclosing on the farm of the alcoholic Sam Elder. He's given Sam lots of chances and tells him he still has the option of getting his farm back if he stops drinking and blowing all his money. Sam promises he will kill anyone that tries to take his farm away. He storms out of the bank and immediately has a heart attack and dies in the middle of the street. Sam’s 18-year-old son, Tim is given a job by Lucas McCain. Lucas also persuades Hamilton to give Tim a chance to buy back the farm. Meanwhile, although Tim is working hard for Lucas, he blames Hamilton for his father’s death and with some of his pay he buys two rifles. He tries to give one of them to Hamilton and challenges him to fight but Hamilton refuses. Tim is going to shoot Hamilton anyway when Lucas shoots the gun from his hands. He then gets Hamilton to demonstrate what a good shot he is and shows Tim that he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Tim realizes the error of his ways and gets his father’s ranch back.

            I was disappointed because this episode was called “Boomerang” and yet there were no boomerangs in the story. I guess it was metaphorical.

            I had old cheddar on toast for lunch.

            I got caught up on my journal and posted my first Food Bank Adventure in three months to newz4u.ca.

            I grilled three strip loin steaks and had one of them for dinner with a beer while watching the final episode of the first season of The Rifleman. This story begins with a man named Hallager being murdered by an unknown assassin firing a shotgun from an alley. The next day Lucas and Mark are on their way to town when they encounter the wagon of James Barrow McBride, who is on his way to North Fork to perform a mind reading act. Lucas goes to the jail to talk with Billy, who has been arrested for the murder of Hallager. The sheriff considers Billy the most likely murderer because the fact that Hallager forbade his daughter Lucy from seeing him gives Billy a motive and because it was Billy’s gun that killed Hallager. In McBride’s mind reading act he answers several questions that audience members wrote on pieces of paper, without reading them. One of the questions he answers suggests that he has information about the Hallager murder. The sheriff and Lucas come to question him after the show but McBride says he’s too tired and will talk with them the next day, But McBride sneaks out of North Fork early in the morning. Lucy brings lunch to Billy in jail and pulls a gun on the sheriff to bust Billy out of jail. Billy reluctantly rides away. Meanwhile there has been a salesman named Fogerty at the hotel playing poker with a local man named Joe with a reputation for cheating. Lucas tells the salesman that he’s figured out a possible way that McBride does his mind reading tricks. He has a man ride ahead for a few days to talk with people and gather gossip. Fogerty admits that that man is he. He says the best way to get information is from the town drunk. The drunk is Vic Perrin and he did indeed witness the murder. He tells Lucas that he didn’t see the man but heard the jingling of change in the man’s pockets as he ran away. Lucas figures that could only be someone who’s just won a poker game. Suddenly Joe is there with a gun. He tells Lucas to turn over his rifle but Lucas does the fancy spin that cocks his gun and he fires.

            I’m not going to bother downloading the second season of The Rifleman. The first season had its moments but it was a little too sentimental for me.

            I had a thin slice of pie with yogourt for dessert and watched the second half of a Saturday Night Live show from five years ago with guest host Jim Parsons and musical guest, Beck. Jim Parsons’s skits were not very funny and Beck has gotten less entertaining the more interesting he’s become. The only funny segment was Weekend Update, especially the part with the 19^th Century film reviewer who has seen every movie ever made and hates every one of them.

Splashurday

            On Saturday morning I almost finished memorizing Serge Gainsbourg’s 1972 song “Les Bleus” as sung by Zizi Jeanmaire, from the point of view of someone on the receiving end of a violently abusive relationship. This one has taken me several days to learn because though the eight verses are in iambic tetrameter, the end of every line rhymes with “oo” and so it’s less mnemonic than it would be if the rhymes alternated.

            I worked on a story I’ve been writing for a couple of years called “Infidelity and the Fiddler”.

            At 9:30 I got ready to go to the food bank for the first time in exactly three months. I hadn't gone since January 21 because I was busy with my Romantic Literature and my Poetry Master classes. I wrote an essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for one course and several poems for the other, so I couldn’t spare the time to stand in line.

            It was raining when I rode over to 1499 Queen Street West to take my place in line and it only stopped for about two minutes for the entire hour and a half I was standing there. I had brought an umbrella but I didn’t bother with it because it wasn’t an extremely heavy rain, except when passing cars recycled it from curbside puddles and splashed it sideways into the line. Even though I was standing the full width of the sidewalk away from the street, one wave soaked me on the left side from the knee down.

            Because of the rain I couldn’t read the book I’d brought with me.

            The food bank did not open until twenty minutes later than it is supposed to and even when it did the line moved very slowly. I found the wait particularly difficult due to the weather and because my standing in line muscles have lost their development. I don’t know if those muscles are in my legs or my brain but for whatever reason this was not a very tolerable ninety minutes of my life.

            It was after 11:00 by the time I was downstairs.

            The food bank has a much newer reception desk. The big guy that took my membership card was rocking out and humming along to a heavy metal band whose tune I did not recognize. He looked up and said to me, “This is the best break up song!” I asked him what song it was and I think he said, “You Walked Away” by The Ground Up.

            There were only two volunteers at the shelves and the first set of shelves was pretty close to bare.

            I took a jar of organic pumpkin seed butter that was nine months past its “best before” date, a squeezable jar of sweet pickle relish that was a year over its expiry time, two small bags of coffee, a can of chick peas, a can of curried cauliflower and lentil soup and a can of tuna.

            Angie commented that she hadn’t seen me in a while and I told her I’d been busy with my Romantic Literature course. She asked, “Is that what you like to read?” I nodded but later I wondered if she’d been thinking of modern romance novels rather than literature from the Romantic period, which lasted from around 1785 to 1832.

            I told Angie that I didn’t need any eggs or milk this time around and that I’d just take some meat. She gave me a choice between a turkey and a ham. Although the turkeys were not as large as the one I got at Christmas time, I can only handle turkey a couple of times a year and I’m still turkeyed out from the end of December. I associate Easter more with ham and so I got a little Black Forest ham.

            I didn’t find any of the bread they were offering very attractive, as it was all just plain white loaves.

            The only vegetables I took from Sylvia were three and a half carrots and a bag of small potatoes. She wished me a Happy Easter and I returned the gesture.

            All in all I would say that this particular food bank haul was not worth the hour and a half wait in the rain.

            I rode home, put my food bank items away and then rode back out in the rain to No Frills. I grabbed three bags of grapes and then went to the meat section. In the meat section there were three strip loin steaks on sale but there was no best before date. I asked a young woman stocking another part of the meat section and she looked puzzled until she finally said, “Well, they just came in today”. It sounded like she was guessing but I took the steaks anyway. I also got three chicken legs that were dated for next week. I bought a frozen apple pie, three bags of skim milk and two containers of strawberry Greek yogourt.

            When I got home I went back out to the liquor store and bought a small case of Creemore lager. Creemore comes from Creemore Springs, north of Toronto. I doubted if the name had anything to do with the Cree tribe, since they’re originally from the north. It turns out the name is derived from the Irish “croi moi” which means “big heart”.

            I had a piece of toast with sliced tomato for lunch and another piece with chocolate date spread for dessert.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I worked on a poem set during a summer six years ago when I was living on mostly rice and not feeling very healthy.

            I weighed 89.4 kilos in the evening, so my weight seems to be slowly climbing back up as my fast Lenten diet is about to end. It’s still not back into the slightly overweight range though and I think I weighed a lot more last year at this time.

            I had the rest of the can of beans I’d opened on Wednesday with two pieces of toast and a beer for dinner while watching The Rifleman. This story begins with a man named Britton who is representing a town called Centre City, which is in competition with North Fork to have a railroad spur run off the main line to one of the two towns. The negotiations with the railroad by the representatives of the two towns will take place in a few months. Britton hires a conman named Dave Stafford to go to North Fork and gain the people’s trust enough that he will be the one chosen to represent North Fork and then to blow the deal in favour of Centre City.

            Dave does indeed ingratiate himself with everyone in North Fork, including Lucas. To Dave’s disappointment the town counsel decides after all on Lucas being North Fork’s representative. Shortly after that however it is learned that a notorious train robber named Wade Joyner has died and left Lucas $500. Lucas never knew the man but the town counsel decides that if Lucas is associated with a criminal then it might hurt their chances of winning the spur. They choose Dave to represent the town instead. Lucas tells Dave the story of a stormy night when he helped a stranger out who swore he would repay him someday. He says that must have been Wade Joyner. Later when Lucas’s inheritance arrives it comes with a letter that refers to that stormy night. The thing is that Lucas had made up that story as a trap for Dave and so the letter proves that Dave has been conning them all. Dave gives himself up without a fight because he is a talker and not a fighter.