On Tuesday morning I finished working out the chords for "Suicide" by Serge Gainsbourg and then I ran through the song in French. I couldn't play it in English until I worked out a problem with my translation. There's a reference to exploding oneself and sowing all the winds like Larousse. I know that he's talking about Pierre Larousse who created Larousse's French Dictionary, but I had to do a bit of research to find out the significance of sowing to all the winds in relation to Larousse. It turns out to be the slogan of the dictionary which uses a metaphor of sowing to the winds as a way of communicating the purpose of diffusing the language. With that knowledge I was able to change the two lines of my translation that were an issue, run through the song in English, and then upload it to Christian's Translations.
I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. That's the lightest I've been in the morning in at least two weeks.
Around midday I washed the plastic three-drawer storage cabinet that goes on top of my filing cabinet and one of the drawers and its contents. I'll clean the middle drawer where I keep my guitar strings tomorrow. The bottom drawer is where I keep all my receipts, official letters, warranties, and such. It'll take me a while to sort through all that because there's plenty that can be thrown away that's over seven years old.
I weighed 84.4 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I started out on my bike ride but around the corner on Maple Grove, I found a box of stainless-steel cookery being thrown out. There were several sizes of pots all in good condition and one of them was more than twice as big as my 2.5-liter pot. I put it in a bag and took it back home, then I started my bike ride again, having only lost about seven minutes.
I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:00. Again, the lowest at that time in at least two weeks.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:00.
I reviewed the rest of the videos of me playing "Le Temps des Yo-Yo" and "Time of the Yo-Yo" and while I came closer near the end, I still wasn't letting the G minor seventh chord resonate long enough. I'll have to work on this song for another year at least and try recording it again later.
In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I edited the fifteen-minute video that I downloaded yesterday down to about twenty seconds. I just kept the parts that show the shock therapy machine. Tomorrow I'll cut out some more parts and only keep the segment that shows the pointer stick indicating the different sections of the front of the machine.
I sorted through more of the eighth folder of my writing, dividing it mostly between the 1993-1996 folder and the 1996-2000 folder.
I cut up a whole chicken and coated it with olive oil, salt, and chili flakes, and roasted it in the oven. I had a leg with a potato and margarine while watching three Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1956 and one from 1957.
In the first story, Yosemite Sam is Robinson Crusoe and stranded on a tropical island. He's been there for twenty years with nothing to eat but coconuts. The single coconut tree is on a small island that he has to access by stepping across some rocks and risk being eaten by a shark that has been stalking him for twenty years. It's always a close call but he always makes it. The problem is that he hates coconuts. Then he sees Bugs Bunny floating in a carrot crate. He carries Bugs ashore and immediately drops him into a cooking pot. Sam lights the fire but Bugs pours water on it with a ladle. For some dumb reason, Sam only keeps one match at a time on the island and the rest are stored on his wrecked ship, which he also has to jump across stones to get to, risking being eaten by the shark. He makes it across and back but when he gets there the shark is waiting for him inside the cooking pot and half swallows him. He beats the shark off and sends it back to the water. But now he can't find Bugs until he calls to Sam from the ship. Sam tries to cross on a surfboard but surfs right into the shark's mouth. He gets out and surfs back to the island. Sam floats across to the ship on a balloon but as he lands Bugs opens a door to the flooded hold where the shark is waiting. Sam escapes and captures Bugs, then puts him in the pot. Then a tidal wave hits and wipes away the island. Bugs is floating in the cooking pot while Sam is calling for help as he swims around the pot with the shark close behind. Bugs rescues Sam on the condition that he rows the pot and so he agrees.
In the second story, Wile E. Coyote is once again trying to catch Bugs. He places a collapsible elevator over Bug's hole, descends, and comes back up with Bugs in a sack. But Bugs gets out of the bag leaving a bomb behind. Bugs goes back in the elevator and Wile E follows him but finds more dynamite inside the car that explodes again. Wile E sends for a UNIVAC electronic brain. Bugs now has a hatch with a combination lock over his hole. Wile E's computer somehow gives him the combination. Bugs hears Wile E above while he is reading in bed. On the wall there is a case with a sign saying, "In case of coyote, break glass." Bugs breaks it and pulls out a banana peel, which he tosses casually to the bottom of the ladder and goes back to reading. Wile E comes down the ladder, slips on the peel, goes flying into a chute marked "Coyote Disposal" and winds up coming out from the side of the cliff and falling. The computer next advises Wile E to drop hand grenades down the hole and into Bugs's carrot toaster, but it pops the grenades back up to explode in Wile E's face. Wile E is next told to use a plunger to create suction and pull Bugs out. But Bugs extends a tube from the other hole and Wile E's own suction pulls him into the pipe, down the hole and back up into the plunger. Wile E is told to put a stick of dynamite into the nozzle of Bugs's vacuum cleaner, but Bugs empties the bag into the garbage can where Wile E is hiding. The computer tells Wile E to booby trap Bugs's carrot patch. He rigs a string to a carrot which when pulled should trigger the boulder that is suspended above. But when Bugs harvests the carrot, nothing happens. Wile E investigates but realizes his mistake and consults the computer, which tells him to take his lumps and so he goes back to get hit by the boulder. It turns out that inside the computer there is only Bugs Bunny.
The above was animated by Abe Levitow, who began as an assistant animator at Warner Brothers at the age of 17. He was drafted during WWII and worked on training films, which is how he met Stan Lee who became a lifelong friend. He became an animator in 1950 and worked at Warner Brothers throughout that decade. He animated Pepe le Pew and Wile E Coyote. In 1958 he joined UPA and worked on animating Mr. Magoo. He directed Gay Purree with the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet and The Phantom Tollbooth. In 1972 he and Dave Hanson formed the Levitow/Hanson studio which animated segments for Sesame Street.
In the third story, Bugs answers an ad for a rabbit to appear on TV. Bugs is placed at the top of a ladder near a mechanism that reads "10,000 volts". Above is a hole leading to a stage set for Elmer Fudd's hunting show. The shock is administered, Bugs shoots out of the hole and Elmer aims his gun, but Bugs jumps over the shot. Elmer fires twice more and Bugs dodges again then runs off the set. Elmer follows him through various doors leading to other shows that are being shot. One is a parody of Groucho Marx's show "You Bet Your Life" but this is called "You Beat Your Wife." Bugs is disguised as Groucho and he asks, "For $50, have you stopped beating your wife. Yes or no." Elmer says, "Yes, I mean no ... That is, I've never ..." Groucho leaves and Elmer sees his rabbit tail. At the next door Elmer gets a pie in the face. Through the next door Elmer finds Bugs posing as a parody of Liberace named "Liverace". Liverace calls Elmer, "George" (because Liberace's producer brother George was always on his show" and tells him to take a certain candelabra to mother. But the candelabra is filled with dynamite, which explodes. Behind another door is a realistic re-enactment of Custer's last stand and Elmer emerges with three arrows in his back and a tomahawk on his head. Then a disguised Bugs leads him into a dressing room where he is dressed in a bunny suit and is led back to the hunting set to play Bugs's role at the beginning of the story while Bugs has the gun and shoots Elmer.
In the fourth story Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck tunnel accidentally to Arabia and into the hideout of Ali Baba where Daffy finds the treasure stash and thinks he's struck it rich. Ali's guard Hassan tries to get in to stop him but has forgotten the magic password. Among the many he tries is "Open Saskatchewan". The guard gets in and Daffy is attacked, so he hides and says Bugs is behind the whole thing. Bugs poses as a genie in a bottle and offers Hassan all of the treasure, which he accepts. Daffy steals a diamond and Hassan comes after him. Bugs sends Hassan up a magic rope, and he disappears. Daffy takes all the treasure and then finds a lamp but when he rubs it a real genie comes out. Daffy thinks the genie wants the treasure and so he tries to beat him back into the lamp. Daffy is punished for defiling the lamp. Bugs makes it to Pismo Beach and finds a pearl, but a tiny Daffy who has been cursed by being shrunk to the size of a mouse with a high voice comes out shouting "Mine mine mine!"
Before bed I searched and found two bedbugs in different places above the head of my bed. They were both black and sick looking and neither had my blood inside.
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