Willoughby the Dog

            On Saturday morning I finished posting my translation of "Valse Dingue" (Mad Waltz) by Boris Vian and sang along a couple of times with his song "Sermonette". I'll start translating it tomorrow. 

            I finished working out the chords to "Moi j'te connais comme si j' t'avais défaite" (My translated title: I Know You as if I'm the Sky That Snowed You) by Serge Gainsbourg, but I still have to position them on the last two verses. I'll probably have the song uploaded to Christian's Translations tomorrow. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. All of the milk was sour and so I threw it out and opened a can of coconut milk that I found in a box a few months ago. It was just enough for my coffee and cereal but very rich. 

            Around midday, I went to Freedom Mobile and paid for my August phone plan. Then I headed down to No Frills where I bought five bags of cherries, a basket of peaches, some bananas, a toothbrush (because the one the dental assistant gave me a few weeks ago started losing its bristles within two days), mild salsa, three bags of milk (after checking and finding that the best-before date this time is August 18), a bag of kettle chips, and a container of skyr. 

            On the way home a pretty young woman, scantily clad in a gold Caribana costume, smiled at me.

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:50. 

            I reviewed the six remaining videos of me playing my song "Megaphor" as I tried to find the best of a month of sessions. I flushed the wax out of my ears so I could listen better. I took June 23, June 28, and July 13 out of the running. So July 9, 11, and 12 are all that are left. I should be able to pick the best of those three tomorrow. 

            I continued to sort through the fifth folder of my writing and divided the pages mostly into writing before and after the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy, the pages that contain the Gumby Bible and pages that just have commentaries on the Gumby Bible. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching four Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1951 and 1952. 

            In the first story, Bugs is enjoying his life in an underground den on the prairie when suddenly a house is built on top of it. Inside the house, Yosemite Sam is playing banjo and singing, "Oh I can't get a long little dogie, I can't even get one that's small, I can't get a long little dogie, I can't get a dogie at all." Bugs comes up through a hole in the floor to tell Sam that he's on his property. Sam kicks him out, so Bugs takes it to court. The judge rules that they have to share the property equally until one of them dies. They share the same bedroom with separate beds. Sam keeps sneaking across the room to try to kill Bugs in his sleep. Then Sam tries to poison Bugs's carrot juice but Bugs spins the table and Sam drinks the poisoned stuff. He ends up blasting off. When Sam comes back, Bugs jumps down in his hole. Sam fills it with dynamite and lights the fuse. The house soars in the air while Bugs's home beneath it is still intact. 

            The second story takes place in the Klondike where the character we know as Yosemite Sam is now Chilkoot Sam, the claim jumper. While Sam is cashing in a small amount of stolen gold he sees Bugs Bunny walk in carrying a boulder of solid gold. Bugs asks the clerk for two carrots and tells him to keep the change. After Bugs leaves, the clerk tells Sam that Bugs has a funny feeling whenever there is gold nearby. Sam decides to take advantage of that ability. He goes after Bugs and offers to make him a partner. They go into the mountains and suddenly Bugs goes into convulsions and points at the ground, telling Sam, "That's the spot." Sam begins digging and says the partnership is dissolved. But he's digging on a jutting cliff and so Sam breaks through and falls from a great height. When Sam climbs back up he finds Bugs digging a hole and grabs the shovel from him to get the gold for himself. But the dirt where Sam's digging is in a dump truck, which Bugs drives and dumps over the cliff. Sam chases Bugs while shooting at him from Alaska, down through Canada, and across several states until Bugs gets that feeling again. Sam begins to dig and comes up with several golf bars, not seeing the sign behind him that reads "Fort Knox". The authorities grab Sam and arrest him. 

            In the third story a fox hunt is underway and when the dogs are released a big, dumb dog is the last one in the chase. We don't see the fox but Bugs Bunny decides it would be fun to put on a fox costume and get chased by the dogs. He calls to them and they come after him but he goes behind a tree and they run off in the wrong direction. When the big dog stops to ask the disguised Bugs for directions, Bugs asks if he's sure he knows what a fox looks like. The dog chases Bugs but then he takes the costume off and the dog is confused. Bugs lays down fake fox tracks with a stamp kit. The dog follows them until they turn into train tracks. The dog follows them to the opening of a tunnel where Bugs is standing in costume. The dog grabs him but Bugs asks what kind of tracks he was following. He says, "train tracks" so Bugs says, "You must be trying to catch a train. It went that way." The dog runs into the tunnel and gets hit by the train. Bugs gets cornered by the other dogs and so he reveals that he's a rabbit. But the dogs decide then that they are now hunting rabbits. They chase him through a hollow log and Bugs does the old spinning log trick, sending the dogs over a cliff. While Bugs is watching them fall the big dog comes up behind him and cuts off his tail. 

            The big dog first appeared as Willoughby the Dog in "Of Fox and Hounds" in 1940. He is based on the character of Willie from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. He originated the catchphrase, "Which way did he go?" Willoughby's last appearance was in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" 

            In the fourth story, Bugs has a hole in the ground at the airport and a new, giant plane parks on it. Bugs goes inside to look around. Meanwhile, Yosemite Sam has just robbed a bank and escapes to the airport. Bugs has just put on a captain's hat and is pretending to fly the plane when Sam comes in, and thinking that Bugs is a pilot, forces him to take off. Bugs has no idea how to fly the plane but manages to avoid hitting a skyscraper by going straight up. They are almost at the Moon by the time Bugs is able to turn it around. Now the plane is on a crash course with the Earth while Bugs is casually reading a book on learning to fly. He manages to avoid crashing at the last second and says he's going to radio the authorities. But Sam says to give him the book. Bugs drops it and kicks it outside the plane and Sam runs after it. He treads air, drops the book, and gets back on the plane. Sam confronts Bugs with his guns but Bugs opens a bomb bay door and Sam falls. He climbs back up through the air and tells Bugs to give him the steering wheel so Bugs rips it out of the controls and throws it out the window. The plane begins to crash again. Sam pushes the robot pilot button but the robot grabs a parachute and jumps out of the plane. There is one parachute left and Sam takes it along with the stolen loot but he lands in a police car. Meanwhile, the plane is coming closer to crashing when Bugs pulls on the brake and it stops just before it hits the ground. He says he pulled the air brakes. 

            Before bed, I searched for bedbugs and found one sick looking one with dark guts in one of the old nests halfway up the left side of the door frame at the head of my bed. I smeared another perhaps already dead one out of a crack in the plaster just to the left of the bottom of the right side of the frame.