Ian Alexander

            On Wednesday morning I finished memorizing “Enregistrement" (Documentation) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. No one has posted them and so I’ll have to work them out. I didn't have time this morning to get very far but I’ve tentatively found the first chord. It’s not a very complicated song so it shouldn’t take long when I work on it on Thursday. 

            There was snow on the ground when I got up and so even if my Oscar Schmidt is fixed today I won’t ride my bike downtown to pick it up. I got through to Harold at Remenyi a little after 11:00 and he told me had yet to hear from the company. He said if he doesn’t hear from them by the end of the day he'd call his rep and hopefully the guitar would be fixed by the weekend. 

            I went out to pay for my January phone service and then I walked to the hardware store to buy a shelf board. I was surprised to find out that they aren’t allowing customers into the store now. Luckily I knew the width of the board I needed and I asked for the longest one they had. That was about 120.5 cm, which I could saw in half and make two shelves. They let me come inside to pay.

            When I got home I measured the halfway point on the board and drew a line. Then I took both my hand saw and my hacksaw out to the deck and slowly sawed it in half. I used the hacksaw because I thought that would be a smoother cut but it took so long that I used the hand saw to make progress. After about twenty minutes it finally came apart, though not as smooth on the inside ends as I’d hoped. Then it took me about ten minutes of washing to get the sticker off. . I made a new spice shelf on top of the others and replaced the warped and peeled bottom board. 

            For lunch I made a little pizza with a slice of bread, tomato sauce, sliced turkey and cheddar.

            I took a siesta at 14:00 and didn’t wake up until almost 16:00 when I was scheduled to get together with my daughter Astrid for a video chat. I didn't connect until five minutes after and Astrid wasn’t ready anyway because she'd lost track of the time. We talked from about 16:10 until 18:10. She ordered a gift for me online while we were chatting and said it would be here in late January or early February. I don’t know what it is. She showed me her banjo. It hadn’t occurred to me before that a banjo is basically just a drum with a neck and strings. 

           I edited and made a movie of the video of my performance of “The Dancing Snake" from July 3, 2020 then I uploaded it to YouTube. That frees me up to start practicing “Je t’aime, Moi non plus" by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation "I Love You, Neither Do I" each every other day; and to also practice “Amsterdam" by Jacques Brel, and my translation of it every seven and eight days; and “Je Suis Snob" by Boris Vian or my translation of it every eight days. I sent the YouTube link to Lao Li, who was by professor last year when I took the fourth year seminar on The Aesthetic and Decadence Movements. Since we’d covered some of Baudelaire in the course I thought that she might be interested in hearing a song made from one of my translations of Baudelaire. She got back to me later and liked it so much that she asked my permission to play it for the class the next time she teaches Decadence. I said she absolutely could as long as she keeps me apprised of student responses to my work. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug." I made another turkey pizza and had it with a beer while watching Star Trek Discovery. 

            Spoiler alert! 

            Since Adira hosts a Trill symbiote she contains the memories of all of the previous hosts, including the Starfleet admiral Senna Tal who sent the message that Discovery needs to access in order to find what remains of the Federation. The problem is that Adira doesn’t remember anything and so Michael and Saru decide to take a Adira to the Trill homeworld. When the Trill first hear that they are bringing a host they are overjoyed because their population was decimated by the Burn. But when the Trill leaders greet Michael and Adira on the surface they are shocked to learn that the host is human. One of them says that they must separate the symbiote from Adira, another says that Adira as a host may be the hope of their kind, but the main leader says that Adira is an aberration and that they must leave. As they are heading for their shuttle they are attacked. Michael fights off the assailants and then the priest who is positive towards Adira as a host comes and secretly takes them to the sacred caves to help Adira connect to her symbiote. Adira steps into a pool and floats while going into a trance. But then Adira sinks into the pool and disappears. She has somehow been transported into the neural network of her symbiote. Michael has to be put into a trance to go after her. 

             Meanwhile on Discovery, Hugh comes to Saru and tells him that he has examined the entire crew and they are physically fine but their stress levels are through the roof. Saru asks for suggestions to help the crew relax and the computer lists activities. But Saru wants something more intimate and suddenly the computer changes voices, speaking in a casual tone about things like Buster Keaton movies. Saru arranges for a dinner for the main crew of officers but it is formal and boring until guests begin reciting fake haiku for amusement as some people seem to do sometimes as a party game. When it is Keila’s turn she makes up a poem about the blood from Stametz’s impalement and then she and Paul begin to argue about him being full of himself because of the spore drive while she actually has to pilot the ship. The party breaks up. But it seems to have broken the ice and the crew members later reach out to one another after that to work things out. Once again it seems a bit too easy. 

            Back on Trill Michael finds Adira. She is trying to get away from tendrils that are trying to grab her but Michael says she has to let them connect. She accesses her memory of how she became a host. She was on a shuttle with her Trill host boyfriend Gray when there is an accident and Gray is dying. The ship’s medical program says that Gray’s symbiote needs a host and Adira volunteers. But the trauma of Grey's death is what repressed Adira's memories. She connects to Gray and to all of the other hosts and now she has all of their memories. The Trill accept Adira as a proper host. 

            Saru orders the entire crew to the shuttle bay and they have popcorn while watching a Buster Keaton movie and laughing together. 

            The last scene shows Adira playing the cello, which was one of Gray’s talents. But Gray is not just a memory but is there beside her. He doesn’t seem to be a ghost either. It looks like he will be part of the story as it unfolds. 

            Gray is played by Ian Alexander, who is the first transgender actor in the history of Star Trek. He also plays Buck Vu on "The OA”.

December 31, 1990: I danced by myself into the New Year

Thirty years ago today

            Tom Smarda and I finished off the beer and talked until 5:00. We got up around 13:00, had coffee and talked some more for a couple of hours before he left to go and busk for some coins. He called after a while little later to give me Marcus's address in case I wanted to come over later. 

            I did a little cleaning and worked on projects and collages. 

            I took a shower and then headed for The Lizard Lounge. There was a $20 cover, which wasn't bad. There were lots of good looking white and East Asian women, but most of them were with someone. That in conjunction with shyness kept me from asking anyone to dance, so I danced by myself into the New Year.

Blu del Barrio

            On Tuesday morning I started translating “Mozart avec nous” (Mozart is With Us) by Boris Vian after struggling with a couple of words in the first line. 

            I memorized the first four verses of “Enregistrement" by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            In the late morning I called Harold at The Remenyi House of Music and told him that I wouldn't be bringing my Washburn in to send back to the company until after New Years. I figure that if I wait until after the holidays it won’t take as long to get it back. But I said I would be bringing in my Oscar Schmidt, which has had a stripped machine for the E string coincidentally since I bought the Washburn back in the late spring. I figure something like that should be covered by the lifetime warranty since I’ve never had it happen to any guitar before. I rode downtown and left the guitar with Harold. He photographed the receipt and said he’d have to see first if the company accepts my problem as covered by the warranty. 

            I rode home and for some reason I felt really wiped out from the ride downtown and back. I had a turkey wing and dressing with cranberry sauce for lunch and then took a siesta. I still felt a bit tired when I got up. 

            I called Harold but the Oscar Schmidt people have yet to get back to him about my guitar. He says he doesn’t have a machine for it so it would have to be ordered. 

            I reviewed all of my performances of “The Dancing Snake" from this summer’s recording project and, as has usually been the case, the best one is the last one. That video is from July 3 and I’ve already synchronized the camera and computer audio for that date, so it shouldn't take long to make a movie and upload it to YouTube.

            I scanned several more negatives from the 80s until the scanner was full and uploaded the photos to the folder I’d created the day before. 

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and gravy for dinner while watching Star Trek Discovery. 

            Spoiler alert! 

            Michael recounts how she had been working as a courier for the last year, side by side with Book. Saru offers her to be captain of the Discovery but she says he deserves it more. She is not even sure she wants to be his Number One. She also picked up a message from a Starfleet admiral on Earth. Saru decides the Discovery will go to Earth to seek out this admiral. Michael invites Book to come along and when he beams aboard Georgio is waiting for him. She pries as only she can into his relationship with Michael. She calls her his girlfriend and he bristles, saying, “We haven’t even had …” Unless he’s gay that seems unrealistic considering they’ve been together for a year. Because most of the dilithium in the universe was destroyed by The Burn, that will make the dilithium stores on Discovery a target all over the galaxy. Michael proposes that all the dilithium on Discovery be placed in Book’s ship inside the hold and that way it won’t be scanable by outside ships. They use the spore drive to get to Earth in a matter of minutes but find Earth heavily defended. They are confronted by Earth’s defence forces that are no longer part of the federation. They beam inspectors aboard Discovery without permission to determine if they really are who they say they are. One of the inspectors is a sixteen year old genius. The commander of Earth’s forces tells them the admiral they are looking for died two years ago. She also says that Earth is now entirely out for itself to protect its dilithium from pirates. The main pirate is an alien named Wen who arrives with his forces and threatens to destroy them if he doesn’t get their dilithium. The Earth inspectors can’t beam off because the personal transporters have been sabotaged. Michael and Book sneak away to Book’s ship and leave Discovery with the dilithium. They then offer to beam it to Wen if he’ll lower his shields. The Earth commander is about to have her ships blow Book’s ship up to keep Wen from getting the dilithium. Suddenly Michael and Book enter the bridge with Wen as their prisoner. Saru encourages the Earth commander and Wen to communicate with one another. The two argue until Georgio says, “Diplomacy is boring!” and kicks Wen in the shins, knocking him down so his helmet falls off, revealing to the Earth commander’s surprise that he is human. His people are from the Earth research colony on Titan and they have fallen on hard times. When they tried to get help from Earth after the Burn their ships were blown out of the sky. Earth now agrees to help and they also now welcome Discovery. This was way too easy. 

            The interesting thing about this is that it was the sixteen year old Adira who sabotaged the transporters. She confesses to Paul that she needed more time because she wanted to learn more and to go with Discovery. She says she knows the admiral but later when Saru questions her about it she says she actually is the admiral. It turns out he was carrying a Trill symbiote and now it inhabits her. 

            Adira is played by Blu Del Barrio who is the first non binary actor in the history of Star Trek.

            I felt like I had food poisoning before I went to bed. I don’t know if it was the chicken leg I had for dinner or the turkey wing I had for lunch. It was the turkey last year.

December 30, 1990: We discussed my article in Grubb Magazine and the responses. I was getting infamous

Thirty years ago today 

            Tom Smarda fixed my turntable and we were up talking and listening to music until about 4:00. He drank a lot of beer and smoked a lot of cigarettes.  

            We got up around noon and Tom had a beer right away. 

            I shaved and showered and later on we went up to Lansdowne for a couple of beers and then visited his friend Donna on Queen. She lived with a guy named Ed who was a recording artist. He played some of his music and he sounded like John Lennon. 

            We discussed my article in Grubb Magazine and the responses. I was getting infamous. 

            We all argued until well after midnight about the Natives, the Hopi, matriarchal societies, and the fate of the world.

Emily Coutts

            On Monday morning I found the lyrics for “Mozart avec nous” (Mozart is With Us) by Boris Vian and started trying to translate it but got stuck on a couple of words in the first line. “Au temps des dorures et des falbalas” didn't have "dorures" spelled right and "falbalas" was too obscure to find an immediate translation. But it means extravagantly ornamented. So basically the line means “In the time of gold ornaments and frills." But whether my translation of the line stays like this will depend on what it needs to rhyme with. 

            I memorized the first three verses of “Enregistrement” (Documentation) by Serge Gainsbourg and adjusted my translation of the final verse. 

            I’d planned on taking my guitar to Remenyi today but it was pretty wet outside and so I decided to wait for the streets to dry out. 

            Around midday I removed all the spice containers from the lower shelf above my stove and washed the wall from the wall down to the stove, as well as the shelf. The problem is that that old fibre board shelf has suffered from being above the stove and the veneer has peeled off and warped because of the heat. I have to buy another board for the third shelf I’m making so maybe I'll just buy two while everything is clear. 

            I started this chore after taking a shower but usually that doesn’t take all the hot water. Someone else must has used up the rest at the same time because the water was cold and so I had to pour a pot and a kettle of boiling water into the sink and add water from the tap to make it tolerable for washing with. 

            For lunch I had a turkey neck and wing with homemade cranberry sauce. 

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to season four, episode three of The Goon Show: 

            Chapter one: The Ghastly Experiments of Doctor Hans Eidelburger and his sinister Oriental assistant, Yakamoto. “Ha, ha, ha. Just one more cut, here!” “Honourable doctor has completed another ghastly experiment." “Only a few more now." “Only one drawback – we have run out of honourable victims.” “You didn’t order another dozen as I told you?" “Ah, no. Today, early closing.” Secombe takes a taxi to the doctor’s lab. “What’s it say on the clock?” "Quarter to four." “I’ve only got a five past five." “Oh, that’s alright, sir. I’ve got change." “Thank you and here’s a couple of minutes for yourself.” To make the story short the doctor tries to run a steamroller over Secombe's face but the taxi driver returns because he'd been paid in counterfeit time. He helps Secombe defeat the doctor. The next story is “The Mount Everest Project." Lord Harry Seagoon is addressing parliament: “My Lords, Britain we have the world’s largest navy, the world’s largest army and… the world’s finest plums. But one thing we have not got on this island is the world’s highest mountain. But I intend to rectify this geographical discrepancy by bringing Mount Everest here.” "Does the Honourable Member know what he’s talking about?” “I’m not supposed to, I’m a politician.” Crun: "First, the whole mountain will have to be chopped down. Next, it will be sawn into several 12 and ¾ inch blocks.” Bloodnok is surveying the mountain with the help of Eccles. “Now… now we’ll see how tall it is, shall we?” "Hello, down there! I’ve reached 40,000 feet!” “Well, you’d better come down a bit! It’s only 30,000 feet high!” “How far can you see?” “I can see all around the world to the back of a man standing on top of a mountain! Oooh, hey, it’s me! It’s me! I can see the back of me!" “I wish we all could.” Crun asks the black bandleader Ellington "Are you telling me white lies?” "Man, that’s the one kind I couldn’t tell!” Seagoon asks Crun, " Ah. Mister Crun, before I leave for Government House, could you help me check this list of crated stores?” “What’s in crate number 2?” “Crate number 3.” “Well, what’s in crate number 3?” “Nothing.” "What's the idea of that?" "To make it lighter." Everest was chopped down, wrapped in brown paper and shipped to England but the ship sank in a storm and Everest is to this day at the bottom of the sea. Hillary later climbed the tallest empty space in the world. 

            I edited and published a video of my performance of “Le serpent qui danse". Next I'll find which version of my translation I'd like to upload. It would be great if it was one I've already synchronized. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug.” 

            I scanned some more 80s black and white negatives and uploaded the contents of the scanner to a folder. 

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and gravy for dinner while watching the second episode of the third season of Star Trek Discovery. This was more like what I expect from Star Trek that the Star Warsy first episode. 

            Spoiler alert! 

            Discovery has come through the wormhole but everything is offline. They crash onto a planet but manage to get systems up just enough to keep them from dying. There are a lot of injuries and Hugh has to bring Paul out of his induced coma just to have access to his bed to treat the injured. There seems to be some damage to Keyla’s cybernetic implants but she doesn’t mention it. The planet seems to have an artificial atmosphere and they have detected life. Paul has disobeyed Hugh’s orders to rest and has gone to try to try to get the ship back online. Jet injured her back taking on the G forces of entry without shields and she can’t really physically help but she is following Paul around it seems just to bug him because he hates her but she’s really looking out for him. Saru takes Tilly on a recon mission and they see a human figure. They follow and are transported to a building where men draw weapons on them. The men know they came in a Starfleet vessel but want proof they are Starfleet. Tilly proves it by reciting some Starfleet regulations regarding first contact. These men are miners and they have been waiting for Starfleet for a long time. They are forced labour serving a brutal gangster named Zareh who arrives with his men. From the energies emitted by Discovery just before it crashed and from the things that Saru and Tilly don't know, Zareh deduces that they are time travellers. He kills one of the miners and then negotiates with Saru to acquire dilithium from Discovery. He tells Tilly she is going to get it while Saru stays there. The thing is this is an ice planet and night is falling. The ice is parasitic and gets into everything. It is already threatening to crush Discovery. Suddenly Zareh’s men bring in Georgio, whom they found wandering outside. She gives Zareh her natural attitude and he sets his weapon to torture and continuously fires at her. She kicks a barrel and knocks him over and starts kicking ass. Saru goes into predator mode and starts shooting quills from his forehead. Georgio wants to kill Zareh but Saru won’t let her. He lets the miners decide his fate and they send him out into the deadly cold. The miners give Saru, Tilly and Georgio personal transporters and they go back to the ship just as Paul has successfully brought it online by following Jet’s instructions. They are trying to free Discovery from the ice and it's not going smoothly just as a ship comes and catches them in a tractor beam. They can either fire or open a channel and Saru chooses the latter. On the screen is Michael. She says she’s been waiting for them for a year. 

            The Tilly actor Mary Wiseman looks pregnant. She got married in February of 2019 and she had a baby later in the year and so I assume she was actually pregnant during shooting. She definitely looks a lot puffier and considering that it’s only been minutes since we saw her at the end of season 2 it looks a bit weird to see her physically different than before. It would be just as weird if she’d started out bigger and suddenly got skinny. 

            I assume with whatever has secretly happened to Keyla we will see it revealed and see her character develop some more. Emily Coutts is a Canadian actor who didn’t do much besides producing, writing and acting in various web series before Discovery.  

December 29, 1990: She told me R.D. Lang says there's always a second party, in this case the mother, who contributes to schizophrenia

Thirty years ago today

            I met Chris at 7:30 and the job lasted until 18:00. We decided to meet for a drink with his girlfriend Anna at Paupers. Tom Smarda was playing guitar at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor but he couldn't join us because he was barred. I talked for a long time with Anna about Nancy. She said to read R.D. Lang on schizophrenia and that he says that there is always a second party, in this case Nancy's mother, who contributes to it. 

            Anna said that she knew about the commune Dragonfly where Tom lived but what she knew was confidential. 

            I met Tom, we caught the Beer Store before 23:00 and went to my place. I'd had three at the bar and so I only had one at home. He gave me the issue of Grub that came after my submissions were published and the whole issue was full of angry responses to me.

The Future

            On Sunday morning I finished posting my translation of “A la pêche des coeurs" (To the Fishing Hole for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Enregistrement” (Documentation) by Serge Gainsbourg and reworked a lot of my translation to fit a better understanding of the song that comes from singing it.

            Starting in the late morning I spent at least two hours washing all the spice containers from the top shelf above the stove. It will probably take the same amount of time to clean the ones from the bottom shelf as well. 

            I heated up some more of the bacon and eggs that I’d made the day before from liquid eggs and bacon and had it with a piece of toast for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to the Goon Show. Only some of it was funny, especially because there are a lot of references to current events and people that never became historically significant. 

            "Here's my ticket." "This is only a platform ticket." "I'm travelling by platform." In Brighton, "I wish to become a life saver." “Have you ever saved a life?” "Yes." "Whose?" "Mine." "How did you save your life?" "I didn't do anything to stop it." "To become a member of the Brighton Life Guards you pay 100 pounds.” “What do I get?" "A receipt." “A receipt for paying 100 pounds?” "No, we give you a receipt for paying 300 pounds, so you’re saving 200." "Well, that's better!" "I offer you the job of chief life saver at 3 pounds per week.” “Offer me a larger figure.” "40 shillings per week.” "Done … If I die please don’t bury me at sea.” "Why?" "I can't swim." They present the play, "The man who tried to destroy London's monuments.” "Are you the prime minister?" "I'm the foreign secretary." "I thought you looked foreign." The prime minister receives a letter saying that London’s monuments are to be bombed. "Quick, jump on this carrier pigeon and take a message to Whitehall.” “So the news was rushed to Whitehall to Bloodnok Chief of the Army, for all our politicians trusted him, which was proof that the government was barmy." Ray Ellington plays “Any Old Iron." "It's just gone 23:00.” “That means every pub's closed for the night." "There's a light in the window." "I never drink light." At the Imperial War Museum the sentry asks, “What’s the password?" "It's Zanzibar." "Is it? I'd better write that down." "Let us in." "I've got to ask you a few questions. Are you married?” "Yes." "Any children?" "38." "Any money in the bank?" "Are these questions necessary?" "No, I'm just lonely." The bomb explodes and Eccles wakes up in the hospital. The doctor says, “You'll be on your back for three years." "Why?" "I'm a slow worker." 

            I synchronized the camera audio from my July 2 recording session with the computer sound recording. 

            I scanned some black and white negatives of photos I took in the 80s. So far there are some of St Lawrence Market and the neighbourhood just west of it, some shots of perhaps the Gardiner Expressway at night from an overpass and a couple of out of focus images of my ex-girlfriend Brenda. 

            I heated the rest of the bacon and eggs for dinner. There was more than I’m used to eating but I wanted to finish it. I had it with a beer while watching the first episode of season three of Star Trek Discovery. 

            Spoiler Alert! 

            Michael Burnham has used the red angel exoskeleton created by her mother to open a wormhole to the future and to lead Discovery through. When she comes out of the wormhole she crashes into a ship piloted by what seems to be a black Han Solo on the run with some illicit cargo. They both crash onto the nearest planet. Michael has the red angel self destruct. She locates the crashed ship of the thief and he attacks her. They fight for a while and she wins. He says that she destroyed his engine and he needs dilithium. She needs access to communication equipment to contact Discovery. He takes her to the nearest city where she plans to trade some of her thousand year old now antique equipment, such as a tricorder for the things they need. She is shocked and distressed to learn from Book that the Federation of Planets died about 120 years ago. In the city Book betrays her and she is arrested but she is drugged to find out her purpose and she babbles for a while high as a kite but then leads them to Book the smuggler. But then they want to kill them both. Book has a portable teleporter and they jump all over the planet, with Book’s enemies always catching up. Finally they force book to reveal his cloaked but damaged ship. From inside his cargo emerges and it’s a giant wormlike monster that eats several of the bad guys before the rest escape. It then eats Michael but Book talks to it and it spits her out. It turns out that Book is a protector of endangered species who has a connection with all plants and animals. Book’s ship is repaired and they fly his cargo to the sanctuary where others of its kind are just beginning their mating season. In the water they behave more like whales than worms. Book takes Michael to see Aditya Sahil who is a vestige of the federation. His grandfather was a commissioned officer but there is no one left to commission him. It is a dream come true for him to meet Michael. He tries to locate Discovery for her but they are not within range. Michael commissions Sahil to be a communication officer and to keep searching for Discovery. He pulls out a Federation flag from a drawer and says that he has never been authorized to raise it. He asks her to do so and she mounts it on the wall of his office. 

            This episode had lots of action but it felt in many ways more like Star Wars than Star Trek with no science backing what is going on and with the kind of creatures and fighting one might find in Star Wars. Hopefully when Discovery arrives it will be back to a Star Trek flavour.

December 27, 1990: We made an appointment with a midwife then had an argument and she said she didn't want to see me until January 7

Thirty years ago today

            Nancy and I made love when we got home from Montreal. 

            When I got up I called Wayne and he gave me work for that day at 16:00 and the next day at 7:45.

            Nancy and I made an appointment with Joy the midwife for January 14. We had an argument and she got depressed. She said she didn't want to see me until January 7. 

            Tom Smarda called and told me he'd come by either tomorrow or the day after. 

            Work lasted two and a half hours.

            I called Jennifer and she invited me to her birthday party at the Claremont. 

            I put my laundry away but the place was still a mess. 

            I worked on some projects. I drank a couple of beers. 

            I called Chris and arranged to meet him in the morning for a ride to work.

Kristen Wiig

            On Saturday morning I published both “A la pêche des coeurs" (To the Fishing Hole for Hearts) by Boris Vian and “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian’s Translations. The next Gainsbourg song I learn will be “Enregistrement” and I sang along with it a couple of times to get a feel for it before starting to memorize it. It has a lot of words that end with “ique" such as "magnetique" and “electronique.” 

            During song practice my B string broke and I had a hell of a time changing it because when Remenyi recently changed it they somehow put the peg in the hole so deeply that I couldn’t get a grip on it with pliers like I’ve always been able to. I tried to pry it out and finally did so with a paring knife but ended up slicing the tip of my index finger. The bleeding stopped before I finally got the new string on. I shortened all the songs in my set so I could make up for the delay and finish before 8:30. 

            I didn’t bother going to the food bank this morning because I really didn't want to stand around for an hour in the cold, the damp and the snow. 

            In the late morning I removed everything from the top spice shelf above my stove and washed the wall from the ceiling down. I also washed the shelf and put it back. I still have to clean all the spice bottles and containers before putting them back and then moving on the lower shelf. 

            At midday I went out to the supermarket. Grapes must be out of season even in Chile now so I bought a bag of grapefruit. I also got a strawberry-rhubarb pie, a pork sirloin half, mouthwash, olive oil and vanilla bean ice cream. 

            For lunch I had Triscuits and cheddar. I put the rest of my bacon and one of the cartons of liquid egg I’d frozen last year in a baking pan and made a bacon and egg casserole to have later, maybe for dinner. 

            I did my exercises while listening to episode three, season two of The Goon Show. The sound for this one was again not very clear and they talk very fast, but I found the script on The Goon Show Site. The episode was called The Crazy People and it’s from February 5, 1952. It begins with a North American character named Hern played by Peter Sellers talking to Captain Pureheart played by Bentine. Hern wants to know if the Crystal Palace will make money. Pureheart asks, "Money? What's that?” “Oh, just an old American word.” “I hope the Crystal Palace will help do away with our poverty.” “Poverty? What’s that?” “Oh, just an old English word.” After the Crystal Palace is completed Pureheart tells a workman that they'll have to move the whole thing a few centimetres to the right. “Why?" "Because it's on my foot!" A man and woman are caught wandering around the palace and Pureheart tells them their behaviour is very un-British. The woman says, “We are not amused! Come Albert!" The Stargazers sing "My Liberty Belle.” Later someone sings the aria, “Ridi Pagliaccio”. Later there's a story featuring Sellers as Major Bloodnok. Bloodnok says he’s going to die with his boots on. "Why?" “Because I have holes in my socks." A messenger arrives with a letter and upon reading it Bloodnok cries, "Quick, shut all the lights off!” "Why? What is it?" "An electricity bill!” Bloodnok says, “You see these medals?" "What did you get them for?" "Ten bob the lot." Ray Ellington and his quartet sings Al Jolson's "Sonny Boy.” In a later story a movie is planned. Harry Chalkham played by Sellers says, "The female star has got to be Gladys Laverne." "But she's terrible!" "I know, but my wife says it’s got to be Gladys Laverne." “Who’s your wife?" "Gladys Laverne." "What is this drivel, this rubbish, this utter nonsense?" "This is the BBC Home Service." 

            I went through my notes on my performances of “le serpent qui danse” from my recording project of this last summer and re-listened to the ones that I’d said were not bad. Other than background noise they were all pretty good but I think the one from July 2 is the one I’ll edit and publish. I started a new project in Movie Maker and imported the video and the sound recording. I’ll start synchronizing them on Sunday. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug”. 

            I created an album on Facebook from the photos that I scanned that were taken of my daughter and I at the Don Valley Art Club in the early 1990s. 

            I gathered a bunch of random black and white negatives from my files to start scanning in the near future. 

            I heated some of my bacon and eggs, plus a little stuffing and had it with a beer while watching “Wonder Woman 1984”. Actually the best action segment didn’t involve Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman but it was at the beginning when Diana was a little girl competing in the Amazon Games. 

            So in 1984 Diana works for the Smithsonian as a historian. There she meets another researcher named Barbara Minerva who has so little confidence that no one notices her. Barbara is investigating an artefact that is supposed to grant wishes but she doesn’t believe it. She wishes to become like Diana without thinking it will be granted. Diana wishes she had Steve back who died helping her save the world in 1918. The only person actively seeking the stone is Max Lord. Barbara begins to gain confidence, balance and super strength. Steve wakes up in the body of someone else and finds Diana. Max seduces Barbara and steals the stone from her. His first wish is to become the stone and at that moment the stone turns to dust. The stone is like the monkey’s paw that grants wishes but always takes something of equal value. Max begins to grant wishes and to take more and more power in return until finally even the president is obeying him. When Diana and Steve realize what Max is doing they try to stop him but Diana is getting weaker. She is losing her powers. Barbara has lost her humanity and wishes even further to become like a human cheetah. Barbara stands between Diana and stopping Max. Steve convinces Diana that she has to renounce her wish in order to save the world. Max gains access to technology that allows him to access every TV set in the world. He tells everyone to make a wish and they do but the wishes begin to conflict with one another. Ronald Reagan wished for more nukes and it caused Russia to launch its missiles. The world is on the verge of destruction and Max realizes that he could lose his son. Diana uses her truth lasso to attach to Max and via him to encourage everyone to renounce their wishes. All the bad stuff starts to disappear. Max renounces his own wish to reunite with his son. Barbara doesn’t seem to renounce her wish, probably because the producers probably wanted to keep the window open for her to return. 

            There is mention of a great Amazon warrior who held off the evil forces centuries before while Amazons escaped to Paradise Island. In the end a woman is walking through a crowd and a large, heavy pole is falling on some children. The woman reaches up one hand and stops it to save the kids. When the mother comes to thank her we see that the hero is Linda Carter, the TV Wonder Woman from the late 1970s.

            A couple of Wonder Woman things from the comics that were sort of brought out in this film are her ability to fly, or really, somehow ride the air currents. The other is that she has an invisible plane but in this story she just has the ability to make a plane invisible, which is not the power she’s supposed to have. 

            What they didn’t explain was how Wonder Woman can fly in 1984 but didn’t fly in the present with the Justice League. 

            This sequel was entertaining but not as engaging as the original. The premise of a wishing stone being the foundation of the entire story seems lazy. 

            This was the first time I’d seen Kristin Wiig outside of Saturday Night Live and I thought she handled her more dramatic character quite well.

December 27, 1990: In a little place on St Catherines in Montreal four women took turns stripping and waitressing

Thirty years ago today

            We got to Montreal at about 7:00, went for breakfast and walked around. It was pretty cold and so we ducked in and out of stores to warm up as we headed west along St Catherines. We had lunch at Mexicali Rose on Crescent Street and then I took her up to the Student Ghetto to show her a couple of places where I used to live. 

            We went to a little strip joint on St Catherines where four women took turns stripping on stage, table dancing and waitressing. Nancy enjoyed it. 

            We caught the bus at 17:30 and didn't transfer or stop all the way to Toronto. We made it back after midnight, stopped for a drink and then went home in a snowstorm.

Margot Robbie

            On Christmas morning I woke up early and since I couldn’t sleep I got up at 3:59. It was a white Christmas outside because of the overnight snow. I did my yoga and worked on revising one of my poems until 6:00, but then I got sleepy again. 

            I went back to bed with the intention of sleeping until 7:00 but I woke up at 7:30. I wanted to stay in bed but I didn’t want to waste all of Christmas sleeping. 

            I got up and did a short song practice, just selecting certain songs that needed more work or others that I particularly liked.

            I did some writing and then in the late morning had breakfast while watching Birds of Prey. 

            It begins with Harley Quinn having just broken up with the Joker. As a means of closure she blows up the chemical plant where they consummated their relationship. But she has always taken advantage of the power that had come along with being the Joker’s girlfriend and she got away with being an asshole to a lot of people. But once word gets out that she is on her own it becomes open season on Harley Quinn. One of the people who has it in for Harley is narcissistic mob boss Roman Sionis, particularly because she has recently broken the legs of his driver. The singer in Roman's club is Dinah Lance, also known as the Black Canary. When he sees her save Harley from two guys taking advantage of her because she is drunk, Roman changes Dinah’s job to being his new driver. Meanwhile Gotham cop Renee Montoya is investigating a mob hit. The hit was performed single handedly by The Huntress. Montoya is also trying to track down the stolen Bertinelli diamond. Roman has acquired the diamond and has sent his sadistic right hand man Zsasz driven by Dinah to pick it up. But after Zsasz gets it a pickpocket named Cassandra Cain who lives in Dinah’s building deftly lifts it from his pocket, not knowing what she has found. When she gets picked up by the cops for her other pickpocketing she swallows the diamond. Roman is in a rage but when Zsasz tells him that they’ve captured Harley and that he can blow off steam torturing her to death he cheers up. Harley convinces him that if he doesn’t kill her she can retrieve the diamond for him. He tells her she has until midnight. Harley breaks into the police station and proceeds to make fools of the cops with her “fun gun” which shoots non lethal but effective projectiles like bean bags, powder bombs and glitter. She frees Cassandra after fighting lots of cops and gangsters. Montoya gets fired. They go shopping for food that will make Cassandra shit and she takes her back to her place above Doc’s restaurant and introduces her to her pet Hyena Bruce, named after Bruce Wayne. But Doc sells Harley out and so one of her enemies slingshots a bomb into her apartment. Harley decides to turn Cassandra over to Roman and tells him to meet her at the amusement park. Dinah drives Zsasz there and the Huntress and Montoya are also on their way. Harley ties Cassandra up in a toilet and leaves. Montoya is drunk and attacks Harley. Harley throws her out of a window. Dinah and Zsasz arrive and Zsasz incapacitates Harley with a drugged dart. Dinah tries to free Cassandra but Zsasz points a gun at her and tells her to cut Cassandra open. The Huntress arrives and kills Zsasz with her crossbow. He is the last one on her list of the ones who killed her mobster family when she was a little girl and she has trained her whole life for this moment. Harley recovers and then Roman and an army of his men converge on the amusement park. Harley suggests she, Montoya, Canary and Huntress team up, so they do. The ensuing battle with Harley fighting on roller skates among the amusement park props seems like a tribute to the camp sets of the old Batman TV show. Roman gets away with Cassandra and Harley goes after him on her roller skates with the help of the Huntress and her motorbike. When she catches up Roman has a knife to Cassandra’s throat but Cassandra has a grenade she stole from Harley, pulls the ring and puts it in Roman's pocket. Harley flips Roman over a railing and he explodes halfway down. The women go to a restaurant and the burrito Cassandra orders finally sends her to the bathroom. She calls to Harley for help and then they steal Dinah’s car and drive away. Harley pawns the diamond, gets rich and makes Cassandra her apprentice. Montoya, Black Canary and Huntress form the Birds of Prey. 

            I have never heard the word “fuck” used in a major motion picture more than in this movie. I think DC has been goody goody for so long they are trying too hard to make up for it. “Fuck" is a beautiful word but anyone that uses it that much certainly doesn't think so. One doesn't overeat because of a love of food but because one has a disorder. It certainly has more F bombs than any other DC film.

            Harley Quinn is not a character I’m familiar with beyond the Suicide Squad movie in which she stole the show. She certainly carried this one too since the story and the other characters were pretty annoying. But Margot Robbie’s Harley is charming and also nuts so it was easier to get through the movie watching her.

            I know more about Black canary and the Huntress because I’ve seen them in many comics. In the original comics they both come from Earth 2, which is where all the original DC characters exist, such as Superman and Batman from the 1930s. Black Canary first appeared in 1947 in Flash Comics. She didn’t have any super powers originally but later when she moved to Earth 1 the dimensional shift affected her voice and made it super powerful. I don’t mind that they made the Black Canary black. That makes sense but this character didn’t seem as light on her feet as the one in the comics. 

            The original Huntress is actually the daughter of the Batman and Catwoman of Earth 2. 

            I didn’t even recognize Ewan McGregor when he played Roman.

            In the afternoon I made stuffing for my turkey. I had a stuffing mix that I got from the food bank but it smelled rancid so I dumped it and made it from scratch with bread, sautéed onions and sage, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper. I stuffed the turkey got it roasting, basting it every half hour. I also made cranberry sauce. 

            I edited some photos that I scanned a couple of months ago of me posing with my daughter Astrid at the Don Valley Art Club. I think the pictures were just so they would have something to make paintings from. 

            The turkey turned out great. I had a drumstick, a potato, gravy and cranberry sauce with a beer but I forgot to have some of the stuffing. I tried to watch Wonder Woman while eating but the torrent that I’d downloaded wanted me to get a code from a website to watch the video. I knew a 695 megabyte file of Wonder Woman seemed too good to be true. I deleted it and downloaded a 1.7 gig version, while watching the one Amos and Andy TV show that I’d managed to download. 

            In this story Andy has just proposed to his girlfriend Loretta and he rushes over to Amos’s place to tell him the news. But when he gets there Amos introduces him to their guest Mary. He falls in love and forgets about Loretta. Now he wants to marry Mary but he has to figure out how to get out of the engagement with Loretta. The plan is to have Loretta come over so he can take her to get the marriage license but when she gets there Kingfish and Calhoon burst in posing as police detectives. They say Andy is the most notorious bank robber in the country. Loretta leaves saying she never wants to see him again. But later she sees Andy’s wedding announcement in the newspaper and her father and brothers go to Andy to force him to buy a marriage license with Loretta. Amos tells Andy that nothing can stop him from marrying Mary if they do it right away and so Andy goes to book a chapel for the next day. He tells Lightning that if his fiancé calls to tell her they are getting married in the morning. But Loretta calls and he tells her instead. Later Andy tells Mary. So on the day of the wedding when the wedding march begins to play, two brides are crowding the aisle to get to the front. When Andy sees them both he runs. Outside is a female taxi driver and he gets a ride. In the end we see Andy and the taxi driver going to pick up a marriage license. 

            While having coffee with chocolate covered raisins and nuts with yogourt I watched the rest of The Sugarcubes Live Zabor from 1989. It hadn’t fully downloaded so it was a bit glitchy but it had been in my torrents for a year and so I figured it was time to watch it and remove it from the list. 

            They certainly were an energetic band and everybody seemed to have fun. There was documentary footage of the band members’ lives in Iceland. The male lead singer Einar was extremely dynamic. One member of the band does a skit in which he poses as a preacher from the southern US and he does a very good accent. The keyboardist Margret Ornolfsdottir takes the viewer on a tour of an Icelandic supermarket. She says the Icelandic people were starving until they realized they were surrounded by fish. Bjork makes a claim that the little pixels on a TV screen are there to control people’s minds. It seems the whole band are also involved in cinema and television and Margret has written several episodes of popular Icelandic shows. Bjork was married to Eldon the guitarist for one year, but they divorced two years before this film was made. 

            Wonder Woman finished downloading and it works, so I’ll watch it tomorrow.

December 26, 1990: Dad came in my bedroom at 3:00 wanting to know where he was. I told him "New Denmark." He asked "How do you know?"

Thirty years ago today

            Dad turned on all the lights at 3:00 and was walking around with a flashlight. He came into the guest bedroom and asked me to tell him where he was. I said, "You're in New Denmark." He argued, "How do you know?" Then he called and woke my Aunt Pearl to inform her that I didn't know where I was. Later in the morning he remembered the whole thing but didn't have an explanation. 

            Nancy and I went next door to visit Aunt Pearl and she gave me some genealogical information about the Rasmussen family. 

            At about 20:00 Dad drove us to Grand Falls. We were early and so we waited a long time for the bus. When we got off in Edmundston there was also a tedious stretch of time before the next one. When it came we took the back seat again but it was a mistake this time because it was freezing back there.

December 25, 1990: Nicholas and Aaron were drowning in Ninja Turtles toys but spent half an hour with a $1 toy Nancy gave them

Thirty years ago today

            I was already in bed by 23:00 the night before. Dad had said we would leave for my sister's place at 13:00 but at 5:00 he switched on our bedroom light and told Nancy and I that he'd changed his mind and that he'd be leaving as soon as we were ready. By the time he'd unfrozen the car doors and we'd had breakfast it was already 6:15. We arrived at Sibyl's place at around 8:00 and had breakfast again. At 15:00 we had dinner. 

            I talked with my ex-sister in law Ann and my niece Kelly long distance. Kelly invited Nancy and I to her wedding in Peterborough on August 10. I'd already met Sibyl's son Nicholas on an earlier trip but this time I encountered my newest Nephew Aaron and he was cute. He and Nicholas were drowning in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys but they spent half an hour playing with a $1 toy that Nancy gave them.

Maisie Williams

            On Thursday morning I ran through “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg in French and English and uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to begin editing it for publishing online. Now with “A la pêche des coeurs" (To the Fishing Hole for Hearts) by Boris Vian I have two draft files on that blog. I should be done posting the latter on Christmas Day. 

            Around midday I scrubbed the rest of the section of my kitchen floor that goes just east of my stove and north to the stove. It will probably take the rest of the holiday just washing the wall and the shelves above the stove, putting in a new shelf at the top and cleaning the stove itself inside and out.

            Around 12:30 I decided to beat the Christmas eve rush and go early to Freshco. There was a line-up outside I guess because of covid. 

           Once again the red grapes were too soft and so I bought five bags of the more expensive black ones. I also got a mini watermelon, a pint of strawberries, a half pint of raspberries, a small bag of organic cranberries, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, three bags of milk, bacon, two containers of yogourt, a bag of Old Dutch kettle chips, a can of peaches and a can of fruit salad. 

            I had jalapeno chips and yogourt for lunch. 

            I took a siesta and slept for an extra hour and a quarter. I finished reading “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by André Gide in my dual language book. In the end, while trying to convince his younger sibling not to go away like he did, the prodigal realizes his own return was a failure. He decides to stay to console his mother but guides his little brother to the door. 

            I edited and published my song “Love Song” on Movie Maker. This was easy to do because it was from my July 3, 2020 song practice recording and I’d already synchronized the audio from the camera with that from the voice recorder for that session. On my description of the video I wrote that it was “formally called The Penis Song.” I had meant to say “formerly” but even though I changed it in the editor after publication it still pasted as “formally.” It looks like I would have to delete the whole video and re-upload just to change one annoying word, which doesn’t seem worth the trouble. I can only write a note showing what it is supposed to say. 

            Publishing this song frees it from my rehearsals and so instead of practicing “Love Song” every four days I’ll have an extra day to practice “Megaphor.” So now I’ll do “Megaphor” as the second song in my set for two days in a row and then do “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” as the second song for two days, then start over with “Megaphor” and so on. Neither of these songs turned out very well in last summer’s recording project but I think they will be ready next summer as long as I can get my guitar fixed. 

            I worked some more on my poem series, “My Blood In A Bug.” 

            I rubbed three chicken legs with olive oil, salt and curry powder and roasted them in the oven.

            I made a new batch of chicken gravy. 

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and gravy with a beer while watching “The New Mutants.” This movie was better than the reviews that I’ve read. I have the first few New Mutants comics and this was actually more interesting than those. 

            It begins with Daniel Moonstar being woken by her father as the reservation is in flames. He takes her to safety in the woods but runs back to save people. Daniel is chased by something, loses consciousness and wakes up in a facility for teaching new mutants how to control their powers. The doctor in charge is Cecilia Reyes and the rest of the hospital is fully animated, obeying her commands. The building looks like an old seminary or school that one might find in Quebec. There is a force field around it that none of the teenagers can penetrate with any of their powers. The other kids are Rahne, who can turn into a wolf. Or at least it’s a wolf in the comics. It looks more like a German Shepherd in the film; Ilyana is the most rebellious and she seems to have a bunch of strong powers, such as teleportation and extending her arm into an energy sword. She makes herself unlikeable at first. She has already killed eighteen men. She’s the only character that isn’t in any of the comics that I have; Sam is kind of a human rocket who is there because he blasted off in a coal mine and killed his father as well as several other miners; Roberto has the power to burst into flames and looks like a skeleton under the fire. Daniel does not know her power. There are therapy sessions in which Reyes tries to teach the teens self control and since they are teenagers they rebel when they think she’s not looking. Daniel and Rahne hit it off well and show a lesbian attraction for one another. Things start to happen to everybody. They begin to re-live some of their earlier traumatic experiences. A priest that branded Rahne as a with a real branding iron comes and does it again. There are rapists in smiley face masks coming for Ilyana. Sam relives the killing of his father. Creepy looking laughing creatures attack Ilyana and Sam. Roberto sees Ilyana turn into the monster that is actually him. The kids are told that when they are ready they will be transferred to a special school for mutants. They all believe that it is the X-Men but it’s really an organization called Essex that wants the new mutants to become assassins. Reyes gets an order from her superiors that Daniel is too powerful and must be killed. Under the pretence of treatment she tries to administer a gas like one would use to put down an animal but Rahne saves her and wounds Reyes. Reyes explains that Daniel’s power is to bring everyone’s worst fear to life. Reyes seems to also be a mutant and with a gesture covers them all in force fields. She begins to shrink Daniel’s force field to kill her. But Daniel’s spirit animal, a giant demon bear breaks through the wall and eats Reyes. The force fields disappear but Daniel is unconscious and the bear is out of control. They all fight the bear until Daniel’s father comes to her in a dream and tells her to wake up. Daniel wakes up, approaches the bear and calmly tells it to go to sleep, then it disappears. The forcefield is gone and the new mutants begin to leave at the end. 

             The only actor’s name I recognize since her name and photos are all over the internet because she was one of the stars of Game of Thrones is Maisie Williams, who played Rahne. Game of Thrones was her professional debut and she won several awards because of it. 

             Daniel was played by Blu Hunt who is actually Lakota. The guy who played her father is Manitoba Cree.

Howard McNear

            On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords for “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            During song practice the persistent discordance of my B string got suddenly worse to an intolerable degree so I could barely stand to hear myself play. On one song I stopped and retuned at the beginning of each verse. But then I realized that the E string was way out of tune and after I tuned that the B string was only normally out of tune and therefore within my pain threshold. 

            In the late morning I took my bedding and clothes to the laundry. I was about to get on my bike when I realized I hadn’t brought my mask and so I took my bike and laundry back upstairs. On my way out again Benji came out of his door and informed me that my upstairs neighbour Cesar says that he has bedbugs and he’s killed thousands of them. I found this alarming because they could come down through the inside of the walls to my place. This week was the fifth anniversary of me getting rid of the last infestation and I really don’t want to go through that again. I hope he's been in touch with the landlord and the problem will be dealt with. 

            I was a quarter short to do my drying and so I went out to Fullworth to buy batteries for my tuner. But after buying five CR2032 batteries the change was only ten cents. I had twenty so I asked to trade two dimes and a nickel for a quarter. She was reluctant because she’d already closed the register but she gave me the quarter. 

            While my stuff was drying I went to the liquor store and bought twelve cans of Creemore just in case I drink a little more over the holidays. It normally would take me a month to drink twelve beers.

            I had a toasted tomato and cheddar sandwich for lunch. 

            At 16:00 I had a video chat with my daughter on Facebook. There were some technical glitches and it took a while to get connected, maybe because we were both calling each other at the same time. After we were chatting for a while my wifi went off for a few seconds and we had to reconnect all over and then later on my receiver turned off like it does once a day and when I turned it back on I couldn’t hear Astrid, even though she could hear me. I had to restart the chat again and after that everything was fine. We talked about my university life and her life in Montreal. I mentioned that this was the thirtieth anniversary of her first trip to Montreal and she figured out that she must have been in the womb at the time. She said she prefers the way that I used to totally cover Christmas trees with tinsel to the mi nimalist way that other people decorate. We ended up chatting for two and a half hours and are going to do it again next week. 

            I edited some more photographs that I’d made from scanned negatives. Three of them are black and whites from the mid 1980s and I corrected some damage marks so I can post them online. 

            I made a mini pizza from a slice of bread, tomato sauce and cheese and had it with a beer while watching two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. 

            The first one was another lame one. The town has decided to get rid of the old cannon that’s been there for a long time and has gotten rusty. But they don't know what to do with it. Ellie suggests they should donate it to a museum but it’s decided that a museum wouldn't want it. Barney comes up with the idea to sell it and so the mayor appoints Barney and Andy to find a buyer. But they can’t find anyone until an antique dealer comes to town. Andy lies that the weapon was with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill and the dealer offers $175 for it. But later when Andy sees Opie with a pair of roller skates and he learns that he traded an old pair off cuff links for them while claiming they had belonged to George Washington, Andy chastises Opie for breaking the golden rule. When Opie says he was just following his example Andy realizes that he has done wrong. He confesses to the dealer but he still wants to buy it. Andy lowers the price to $20. Later the person that had planned on paying for a plaque to replace the cannon tells Andy that he got something better. A cannon that had belonged to Teddy Roosevelt. 

            In the second story Bee, Emma and Clara gossip the news that Barney has cut his finger while cleaning his gun into Barney shooting himself in the chest and dying. After Andy makes fun of them for gossiping Bee decides to prove that men are just as gossipy as women. When a shoe salesman comes to town, says he’s staying for a while but doesn't try very hard to pitch his wares, Bee plants that information to Andy and Barney. Barney wonders why a shoe salesman from New York would come to Mayberry. Andy asks the hotel owner Jason to keep an eye on his tenant. When the salesman asks for a TV and says TV is important to him Jason passes that info around. It finally builds up to the man being a big TV producer for the Manhattan Talent Show, but posing as a salesman while he scouts for talent. Wilber Finch has made no sales and is about to leave town when the men of town and their children line up in front of his door to buy shoes and to audition. Wilber makes a record number of sales and when he is leaving the men all discover that he really was just a shoe salesman. Bee waves at Andy and he realizes what happened. 

            One of the gossiping women was played by Sara Seegar, who started out in theatre and on the London stage. She played ten different roles on Bewitched. She played Mrs Wilson on Dennis the Menace. She married radio star Ezra Stone who she met while they were together in a failed show on Broadway. He played the teenager Henry Aldrich on the radio sitcom “The Aldritch Family". 

            Howard McNear played Floyd the nervous barber on the show for many years. My late friend Mike always thought that of all the characters on the show Floyd seemed like the one most likely to be a psycho killer.

December 24, 1990: We changed buses in Edmundston got a back seat and fucked until St Leonard

Thirty years ago today

            Nancy slept most of the way. We changed buses in Edmundston and got a back seat where we fucked and sucked until St Leonard. It was starting to storm when we got to Grand Falls around 9:00. I called Dad and asked how he was. He answered that he had cancer of the bladder. I told him we were in Grand Falls but he didn't want to drive out in the snowstorm to pick us up. We took a taxi which cost $15, plus a $3 tip. At Dad's place we looked at old photographs of Mom, Dad and me. We watched a bit of TV, slept, chatted with Dad, ate, and I cuddled with Nancy. I talked on the phone with a couple of my aunts. Later Nancy and I went for a walk but she didn't want to ruin her boots in the deep snow and so she put plastic bread bags over them. One of the redneck New Denmark children shouted sarcastically, "Nice boots!"

Josie Lloyd

 

           On Tuesday morning after yoga I continued going through my lecture notes and the corresponding slides in preparation for my Canadian Literature exam. I was surprised to find one slide about Residential Schools that had the same misinformation that I’d seen last year when I took Indigenous Studies. The slide stated that starting in 1920 Residential Schools were mandatory for all First Nations children between the ages of 7-15. This is incorrect, since the Indian Act at that time clearly states that “Indian" children must attend either a Day School, an Industrial School, or a Residential School. It fell on the Indian Affairs minister to decide which kind of school they should attend. I think out west the Residential Schools were more dominant but the fact is that only for a couple of years in the 1940s did more than half the Native students go to Residential Schools. The rest either went to Indian Day Schools or regular schools. 

            Perhaps because I was pumped up with anxiety over my assessment later that morning but I was extra perturbed over the misinformation. I made a point that I would email Professor Kamboureli about it after my exam.

            I decided that I needed to relax before the test and so I did a song practice, but I shortened some of the songs so I would be done by 8:30. That way I could have breakfast and coffee before my exam. 

            I did a bit more studying after breakfast and then logged on at 9:01 to take the assessment. I had three hours from then and it didn’t look like there was a place for me to write on the site. I had been given the impression that we would download a document to write the test on but I didn’t see any. So I created a document with Word and wrote in it offline while the clock was ticking on the site. There were two questions, each with three essay choices. I took the poetry choices and started writing. Like I’ve said before I don't type quickly and so if I get low marks writing short essays I will protest to the full extent of the possibilities for doing so. 

            Here are my two essays: 

            In Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language” she deals with the sense of being alienated from one’s own language. It is the speaker in a main, verse formed, first person section of the poem who personally addresses this abjection. The other sections take different forms to communicate the primary feeling of being cast out as a speaker. The gloss on the left is turned on its side in relation to the rest of the poem, but as it presents a deeper, unencumbered reality of speech, its positioning actually reveals that it is the other texts of the poem that are sideways. The gloss on the immediate right of the first person poem is presented as a historical edict in the voice of authority enforcing the abjection of discourse and of speaking any tongue other than that which the authority enforces. This text serves as the hard counterpoint to the sideways text of free use of the tongue. Separate from those three texts, on an opposite page is a fourth voice, presenting pseudo scientific declaration about the nature of speech in the brain. Finally, a fifth voice below the scientific voice presents a multiple choice test, meant to poke fun at ideas about the tongue and to soften the impact of the more extreme authoritarian voice. 

            Using five distinct voices in a poem about the suppression of language serves to create irony, humour and a way of resisting the forces that would limit multilingualism. Also the fact that all of the voices are speaking English adds to this irony, while also communicating that there are multiple languages contained within a given tongue, as well as many forms of speech.

            In the central, first person poem, Philip breaks down language with a stuttering effect when she has the speaker say, “A mother tongue is not / not a foreign lan lan lang / language.” The stuttering creates another moment of irony as it works against the lines own statement. The breaking up of the words renders the declaration about the mother tongue foreign. It expresses lack of confidence in the truism that is being expressed. This effect is accentuated in the next line when “language” is slant rhymed with “l/anguish”, to communicate confusion about the speaker’s relationship with their mother tongue. There is another instance of irony as Philip manages to once again break free from the limits of speech by using one word “l/anguish” constructed with a slash to make it exist as two words in the same space: “languish” and “anguish”. She both defeats abjection through this trick of syntax and communicates frustration with feeling defeated by it at the same time. 

            The turned sideways gloss on the left presents an idealized reality of the use of the tongue in a world where the speaker is the authority. The use of the tongue to not only clean a baby by licking but also to unoppressively silence the infant’s own tongue stands counter to the threat of the edict to the right. The threat of cutting out the tongue of slaves that speak their forbidden language pulls upon the right side of the first person poem while the account of the mother using her tongue to nurture pulls on the left. But the mother’s world of nurturing with the tongue is flipped and harder to read to accentuate that it exists in a world that must be accessed by way of effort. The right side is representing authority and ultraconservatism that enforces the abjection of language while the left represents a liberal but secret world where mothers have power and use their tongues to give life and language. It is the opposite of abjection. 

 Question 2 

            Margaret Atwood’s “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” uses time differently than Robert Kroetsch’s “Stone Hammer Poem.” Atwood is presenting an unfolding history of a surreal situation in which a faceless pioneer finds himself. Kroetsch, on the other hand moves backward and forward in time as he presents the real situation of an object having existed longer than the speaker's experience, or that of his father or grandfather who found it. Kroetsch’s method of putting some verses in the past and some in the present but eventually ending in the present serves to convey better the idea of time, either past or present as that which is remembered. 

            But Atwood is less concerned with time in her poem as she is with conveying a sense of wilderness as emptiness. Kroetsch’s poem is actually not about wilderness at all but rather about its timeless absence as is conveyed by the stone hammer. The stone hammer is the opposite of wilderness because it represents the civilization that created its technology connecting through time with the speaker creating a poem. The stone hammer is never alone in any verses of the poem. It always has human companionship while Atwood’s pioneer is thoroughly isolated from mankind and untouched by anyone. Kroetsch’s verses show that the hammer has been touched by its creator, by the Indigenous people that made use of it, by the imagined First Nations child who might have lost it, by the speaker’s grandfather who found it and lost it, by the speaker’s father who found it again and by the speaker poet who connects all of these people together through the hammer. The placing of the hammer in the present for the first two verses, then in its farthest past, followed by it being found by the speaker’s grandfather, then back to its far past and forward again serves to crowd all of the people that have touched it together. This sense of communion would not be created if Kroetsch were to have used time in a linear manner. This sense of community is infused in the hammer and therefore it civilizes it’s environment even when it is lost. By its existence into the past it renders the land where it exists as having never been wilderness. 

            Atwood’s pioneer however is continuously lost even though he is at the centre of a map. Unlike the hammer he is not found and he is not touched by human hands. He craves the enclosure that the hammer has of being surrounded by timeless community. As line six of the poem suggests he is not only “Unenclosed" but he is "un-" before "enclosed". He is detached from the very concept of enclosure. His plea at the end of the first verse suggests that his situation in this wilderness is a type of purgatory outside of his own making. There is an empty space before the last line of the verse. The space is presented as the space in which he is trapped and from which he shouts, “Let me out!" Atwood uses the irony of a victim being contained in a lack of enclosure. 

            In the third verse of Atwood’s poem the pioneer’s house has more containment than the pioneer as it is “in the middle of nowhere” with the word "middle" being in the middle of the last line of the stanza. But inside of the house the pioneer’s mind is "in the middle / of nowhere" with the word "middle" on the edge of the middle of the stanza, about to be pushed off into the end “of nowhere". She conveys here that although the enclosure that is the house has enclosure, the pioneer’s mind continues to exist in the wilderness. 

            And so these two poems convey opposite ideas. Robert Kroetsch’s Stone Hammer exists in a world where there is not and never has been a wilderness as long as it has existed. Because it is a technology created by civilization and later found by a speaker creating art, the hammer connects the past civilization with the current one with no wilderness being wherever it is. Margaret Atwood’s “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” creates a situation where nothing can exist but wilderness even though it is occupied. The pioneer needs community but only has himself. The hammer civilizes by existing while the pioneer de-civilizes by resisting the environment that surrounds him. 

            I enjoyed writing the essays but I don’t like being tested. Whether I get a high mark or not I was glad that horrible Canadian Literature course was over. There was no reason why it should have been such a trial since I’ve enjoyed all the other “Canadian” themed courses I’ve had before, but this one had such a social agenda that it just got under my skin. I also didn’t think I was marked fairly and so I don’t have high hopes for a great final grade. 

            After I’d finished I emailed the professor to tell her the information she’d used on Residential Schools was incorrect. I also explained why. She got back to me later saying, “Thanks for this, but I got my information from the Native Healing Foundation. I’ll look into it though.” Unbelievable! It’s right there in the Indian Act and people ignore it. 

            I had jalapeno kettle chips and yogourt for lunch. 

            I took a siesta but didn’t sleep very long and got up by 14:35. I posted my blog and then had time for a bike ride. 

            On Bloor Street at around Ossington a young redhead thundered past me while riding standing up. She was wearing a short black ruffled skirt over fashionably torn panty hose with knee length black and purple horizontal striped socks. Almost at every red light she reached down to adjust her panty house and at least once while riding. I passed her around Bathurst. 

            At Bay Street two guys passed me at the red light and crept out to the other side of the crosswalk to be ahead. The camouflage pants of one of the guys was way down over his underwear in 80s hip hop style. 

            I rode down Yonge Street. At Dundas the Chinese guy who’s always there with the sign was shouting, “Merry Santa Clause! Ho Ho Ho! Santa Clause not real!” 

            At Queen and Bay there is a new homeless guy on the vent where the guy with the tent used to live. This guy has no tent. In front of the Sheridan, over another vent was someone lying in a sleeping bag. 

            When I got home Benji was standing in front of our building so I chatted with him for a while. He doesn’t understand why there’s a pandemic after all these years. I pointed out that I grew up on a farm and he was close to nature in Guyana, but now people are living so close together that it creates more chance for the spread of disease. He went to the Skyline to get a strawberry strudel they make that he likes. He says right now they only serve one customer at a time and so he had to wait. 

            I checked online and found that I only got a B + for my revised essay but that’s a lot better than the D – that I received for the one it replaced. 

            I downloaded all the superhero movies that came out this year, which weren’t very many. I got The New Mutants, Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman but it turned out that the Torrent for New Mutants contained a couple of Trojan viruses. Windows Defender caught them right away and I got rid of them and deleted the file. I’ll try another New Mutants torrent later. 

            I edited some photos from the negatives I scanned a couple of months ago. 

            I had two small potatoes, a pork chop and the last of my gravy while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This story was pretty empty of plot. A Hollywood movie producer is charmed by Mayberry and wants to shoot a picture there. But when everybody hears about it they start to change their clothes, and their stores to make them showy. The only one who doesn’t change is Andy who knows this is not going to go well. When the producer arrives the mayor's daughter Juanita sings "Flow Gently Sweet Afton” in a horrible voice. The mayor orders the old oak tree in the middle of the square to be cut down and that's when the producer speaks up and says that he doesn’t want the tree cut down and he wants everybody to go back to their normal lives and their normal ways of dressing. So they do and that’s the story.

            Juanita was played by Josie Lloyd, who was the daughter Norman Lloyd who worked as a director for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Julie returned once more as Juanita but later played the eccentric character Lydia Crosswaithe.