Celia Rose Gooding

            On Sunday morning I played and sang my translation of “Shush Shush Charlotte” by Serge Gainsbourg and then I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations. I should have it published on the blog tomorrow. 

            I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I managed to get through most of the songs without screwing up, sometimes after screwing up a couple of times. I was also doing well while playing my song “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” until almost the very end. There’s no logical reason why it is often near the end where I fumble since the chords aren’t any different. I’ll keep trying. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday, I scrubbed about half of the section of the kitchen floor that extends from the far end of the kitchen counter and under the radiator to the wall. I went over it twice and the water was dirty the second time so I’ll go over that part again tomorrow. Now one would have to walk to the fridge and look to the left to see a black part of the floor. I’ll start washing that final section on Monday. All that’s left after that is what’s covered by the fridge and the tall filing cabinet. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. I had extra old cheddar on spelt bread with a glass of lemon iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and when I reached Yonge and Bloor I got snagged in the Gay Pride Parade. I guess I could have just taken a different route home but I’d never been at the Pride parade so I decided to walk south and check it out. Even though I had to weave through a very thick crowd of spectators I was still faster than the people walking in the parade. At first there wasn’t much to see because I could just view the heads of paraders over the backs of the heads of spectators. There were people in the crowd spraying marchers with water guns to help cool them off. The Liberal Party and Carolyn Bennet had a car in the parade. As I got further down, the parade looked more interesting as there was a section of people in animal fetish costumes. There were other people in colourful fuzzy mascot-style animal heads but I don’t know if that’s a fetish or just for fun. Anyway those people were pretty brave to deal with the heat all covered up like that. There were people on balconies along Yonge Street who had the ideal viewpoint of the parade. Somebody was spraying a hose at participants. It was a festive atmosphere and everyone in the parade and those watching were having a good time. At the Gay Parade, the gay people were not only gay but they were also gay. Even the straight people are gay at the gay parade. Around Gerrard, I saw a sidewalk ambulance making its way through the crowd to an emergency. I wondered if one of the animal people had fainted from the heat. The parade turned at Dundas and I was free to ride my bike again. I was surprised that it was only 17:19 when I got home, after having walked so slowly from Bloor to Dundas. I had expected it to be later. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 17:20. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 18:35. 

            I uploaded the two videos of my song practice that I’d shot this morning. I think I got a pretty good version of my song “Megaphor” but my song “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” fell apart again near the end. It’s funny how that happens since there’s no particular reason why it would. 

            In the Movie Maker project for making a video of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” I cut a clip of electroshock being administered from the 1940s shock therapy documentary. I inserted it into the main timeline to correspond with the line, “Let’s burn up the temples …” Next I’ll see if I can synchronize the concert video of me singing, “… and raise the church of shock therapy” with the studio audio. 

            I started going through the third file folder from the second drawer of the filing cabinet that holds hard copies of my writing. I pulled out and discarded some of the pages that I know have been digitized several times over. 

            I made pizza on a roti with four-cheese sauce, the cut-up last slice of roast pork, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode eight of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. 

            SPOILER ALERT! 

            In this story, Dr. M’Benga continues to be frustrated as he tries to find a cure for his daughter’s terminal illness. He still keeps her suspended in the pattern buffer of a transporter and lets her out for a few minutes every day for storytime. He reads her the same fairy tale every time and has done so a hundred times. She loves the story but wants to change the way it ends. 

            Meanwhile, the Enterprise is studying a nebula and when the data has been collected Pike says to set a course for the nearest star base. But when they try to go to warp the ship does not move. When they try to leave with impulse engines, the ship lurches and Ortega the pilot falls unconscious. M’Benga is called to the bridge. 

            The doctor is feeling dazed and when he arrives on the bridge it has been transformed into a strange combination of the actual futuristic bridge of a starship and a Medieval throne room. The bridge crew is dressed in Medieval robes and M’Benga notices that he is as well. He is addressed as King Riddly. M’Benga recognizes that the crew is dressed as characters from the book he reads to his daughter. Ortega is Sir Adia, and Pike is the Chamberlain Sir Amandroth. M’Benga asks the computer if the readings on the bridge are abnormal and the message on the screen is that all systems are normal.

            He goes to sickbay which is full of plants and candles and is greeted by Nurse Chapel but she is also living like a character from the book. Sickbay is her sanctuary and she is more of a healing witch. M’Benga uses the tricorder on Chapel and finds her dopamine levels are highly elevated. 

            Then M’benga encounters Singh, who is now an over-the-top flighty and feminine character named Princess Talia. Talia is carrying a little dog that is dressed in the same sparkly fairy tale dress that she is wearing (and apparently it really is the actor Christina Chong’s dog). Talia talks of Queen Nev, who is seeking the Mercury Stone to harness its power. Everyone thinks that King Riddly is in possession of the stone, and so he says he is. 

            Then they see Queen Nev’s Red Guard arresting Chief Engineer Hemmer, who M’Benga recognizes as the sorcerer Castor from the book. But it turns out that despite the change of clothing, Hemmer is unaffected by whatever spell everyone else besides M’Benga is under. M’Benga says they must rescue Castor because he knows where the Mercury Stone is. On the way to do that they meet Spock, who thinks he is Castor’s brother, the wizard Pollux. He says he will lead them to Castor but he betrays them and leads them to the clutches of Queen Nez, who is Uhura. 

            They are placed in the dungeon with Castor where Hemmer explains to M’Benga that he felt a consciousness try to invade his mind but his telepathic training allowed him to block it. Hemmer suggests the consciousness pulled the story from M’Benga’s mind. He senses that the entity is part of the nebula. 

            Hemmer uses a device to cut the lock on their cell and they go to engineering. They fight the red guard on the way out with Ortega engaging in swordplay. But what turns the tables is the sudden appearance of Una as a master archer known as Sir Mira the Huntress who is also apparently Sir Adia’s lover. This is a deviation from the story that M’Benga knows because Adia and Mira are not supposed to know each other. He remembers that their being together was his daughter’s wish for a change in the story. Hemmer suggests then that the scenario in which they are all trapped has been drawn from Rukiya’s mind rather than from his. 

            M’Benga goes to take his daughter from the pattern buffer but discovers that she has been transported out. He figures that she must be in the place she most wanted to go, which is her father’s quarters. Meanwhile, Pollux has been eavesdropping and figures out that Rukiya is the Mercury Stone. Queen Nev and her entourage, including a traitorous Sir Amondroth are stopping M’Benga from reaching his daughter. Hemmer has the lot of them transported away. 

            Inside his quarters M’Benga finds Rukiya and also discovers she is fully cured of her disease. Hemmer offers to use his telepathic abilities to communicate with the entity. The consciousness says M’Benga must not take Rukiya because they are alike and have bonded. If the entity leaves, Rukiya’s disease will return. In the story, King Riddly learns that the Mercury Stone has a soul and it will lose its magic if he does not let it go. He says he will let Rukiya go if she wants. Rukiya is enveloped by energy and disappears. A few seconds later the energy returns and a young woman appears. Seconds have passed but it has been years for Rukiya, She says she is happy and promises they will meet again. 

            The Enterprise returns to normal and the crew, including Hemmer, has no memory of the five hours that have passed. They just know that there are five hours missing. Only M’Benga remembers and he begins telling it to Una as the story ends. 

            I was particularly impressed with the performance of Christina Chong as Princess Talia. She really fell back on her Shakespearean theatrical training. 

            Uhura is played by Celia Rose Gooding, whose father Calvin died in the 9-11 attack when she was one and a half years old. Her mother LaChanze won the Tony Award for her role in the Colour Purple on Broadway. Celia originated the role of Frankie in the musical Jagged Little Pill and reprised that part on Broadway. For this performance, she won the Atonyo award and was nominated for a Tony. There’s no doubt that Gooding is a good actor, but she’s not the same body type as Nichele Nichols, who played the original Uhura. The other cast members fit the characters they portray in that way and so her casting as Uhura feels off. 

            Before bed I did a search for bedbugs and found none.