Double Double

            On Friday morning I finished translating "J'en ai autant pour toi" (I Feel the Same About You) by Serge Gainsbourg. The title is deceptive because it needs the previous line of the song to convey its meaning. The refrain is basically saying, "I can't keep everything and I feel the same about you." 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning, I filled out my application for the Noah Meltz grant. I was very careful this time to make sure I applied for both Fall and Winter because last year I somehow only applied for assistance for the Fall term. They had a long list of income that I was not supposed to count in my assessment of my gross income. Some of them included benefits I'd submitted to them in the past, so all I sent them were pdfs of what the federal government says will be my pension payments for this year. It took me about an hour. 

            Around 12:30 I dusted off the model of the DNA molecule that my group made for Biology class in adult high school. It could use a little more cleaning as I start washing the area above my southern kitchen window. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before lunch. 

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

            When I was unlocking the building door I saw Sue, who used to volunteer at the food bank and lives around the corner from me. She stopped briefly to chat. I said that I see her running in the morning. She says she tries to keep it up but will be starting work soon and won't be able to do it as much. She commented that I get my exercise from riding my bike. I said I also do yoga. She said, "That's why you look so fresh!" 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:00. That's the lightest I've been in August but maybe also for the last few months. I would have to go into my Year 9 journal to check and I can't be bothered. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:08. 

            I reviewed four more videos of me playing my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". On June 17 my playing was a little off in moments; on June 18 I sometimes didn't hit some chords properly; June 19 was the best so far, and on June 20 I fumbled some chords. I already know that I can't use the video recordings from June 21 and 22 because of crackling in the audio recordings, but I'll review the video tomorrow anyway just to track my progress. 

            I shot about a half an hour of video of me lip-synching Brian Haddon's part of saying the word "No" in our studio recording of my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy." I set the camera on the tripod and aimed it at the burgundy curtains that separate the living room from the bedroom. I replayed the song several times from the end of the slow instrumental so that I could get into position behind the curtains in the bedroom, and just after I sing, "Is all of this making sense?" I opened up the curtain to say "No!" I did it at various distances with and without dark sunglasses about three times each for every change of camera position, gradually closing in on my face until I was very close in the final shots. I'll review the video tomorrow. 

            I started dividing the file folder containing the Gumby Bible group poem, putting the original handwritten pages in one folder and the transcribed pages into another. Fortunately, for a lot of the pages, I had the good sense years ago to indicate the year and the week or the date somewhere on some of the pages. Most of the pages are still in order. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching three Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1957 and one from 1958. The first story is set in the world of King Arthur. The king is addressing his knights of the Round Table about the fact that the Black Knight has stolen the Singing Sword. Arthur wants one of his knights to retrieve the sword but they are all frightened because the Black Knight has a fire-breathing dragon. Bugs Bunny just happens to be the court jester and he says, "Only a fool would go after the Singing Sword!" So Arthur declares that a fool will go after it or else have his head cut off. The Black Knight is Yosemite Sam and in his castle, the dragon has a sneezing problem so that every time he sneezes he breathes fire and runs low on fuel, so the Black Knight has to shovel coal into his mouth. Bugs is able to walk into the castle while the Black Knight and the dragon are sleeping because the drawbridge is down and the gate is wide open. He walks to a chest and takes out the sword but as he is trying to leave, the sword begins singing and wakes up the Black Knight. Bugs escapes the castle but the Black Knight pursues him while riding the dragon. Bugs goes down a hole, which the dragon runs past and by the time the Black Knight gets the dragon turned around, Bugs has run back inside the Black Knight's castle and raised the drawbridge. The Black Knight demands that Bugs open the drawbridge and he does, flattening the Black Knight. The Black Knight tries to catapult himself over the wall but hits it. The Black Knight lassos one of the crenelations of the castle wall and creates a line to climb up, but Bugs steps out with a croquet mallet and knocks the Black Knight out of his armour. Bugs tries to escape but the Black Knight ambushes him. Bugs runs back into the castle with the Black Knight and the dragon close behind. But Bugs tricks them into a room full of explosives and locks the door. As Bugs leaves the castle the dragon sneezes and the castle tower takes off like a rocket. 

            "Knighty Knight Bugs" is the only Looney Toons cartoon to ever win an Academy Award. 

            In the second story, Big Bad Wolf wears a bowler hat and talks like a tough guy from Brooklyn. From his house he spies Bugs Bunny and tries to sneak up on him, but Bugs's built in radar warns him that there is a wolf nearby. Bugs goes down a hole and every time Big Bad reaches down, Bugs pokes his head out of the other hole. Big Bad goes from hole to hole and comes up short until Bugs finally advises him that if he wants to catch him he has to out-clever him. Big Bad is sitting on his front steps when his nephew comes up and asks him to tell him the story of "Little Red Riding Hood". That gives Big Bad an idea of how to catch the rabbit. He gets his nephew to dress as Little Red Riding Hood. He thinks Bugs will feel sorry for Red and change places so that he'll go to Grandma's house where Big Bad will be waiting. Bugs knows the story but decides to do it anyway. Bugs arrives and comments what cold feet grandma has and puts a pan of hot coals from the fireplace into bed with Big Bad. Big Bad shoots through the roof and down the well. Bugs pulls him up from the well and tells him there is only one way he can have him for dinner. Big Bad tells Bugs he doesn't want any advice from him and he'll do it himself. Next Big Bad tries to catch Bugs with the Three Bears story. He gets his nephew to pretend to be the baby bear and he'll be the mama bear. They stand over Bugs's hole and discuss the porridge being too hot and going for a walk while it cools off. When they walk away Bugs pops out of his hole in a blonde wig and says, "So now I'm Goldilocks!" On the sign above Grandma's house the word "Grandma's" has been crossed out and replaced with "The Three Bears". Bugs plays along and goes through the routine until getting into the baby bear's bed. Big Bad comes in and sticks a pan full of hot coals into the baby bear's bed but then sees that there are just some rabbit ears protruding from a stick of dynamite and it explodes. Then Bugs tells Big Bad, "Like I said, there's only one way to have a rabbit for dinner." Big Bad gives up and asks "How?" Next we see Big Bad, his nephew, and Bugs all sitting at the dinner table and eating. Big Bad looks unhappy but Bugs says, "If you can't eat 'em, join 'em." 

            The third story begins with the very standard hunting scene of Elmer Fudd chasing and shooting at Bugs Bunny. But then Bugs steps on some weak ground and falls down into a prehistoric cave. There he finds a film reel from 10.000 BC and so he takes it home and plays it. It's a documentary made by cavemen featuring one of their hunters, Elmer Fuddstone. Elmer says he is hunting saber-toothed rabbits. We see the rabbit come out of his hole and except for the fact that his front teeth are five times longer, he looks identical to Bugs Bunny. Bugs wonders if he's his ancestor and the cave rabbit says, "Could be!" Elmer climbs a tree and makes a snare for the rabbit but the rabbit pulls the vine and Elmer falls to the ground. Elmer confronts him and asks how he can provide for his family if he can't catch him. The rabbit says he'll help him. He says if Elmer invents gunpowder then someone will have to invent the gun. So Elmer does it and of course, it explodes in his face when he tries to light it. Bugs says, "It's up to me to invent the gun." Bugs uses a hollow bamboo stick with a taro root for a stock. He puts in the powder and some pebbles and then gives it to Elmer, but then does the old gag of switching the stock to the other end so that Elmer shoots himself. Back in our time, suddenly Elmer shows up in Bugs's den with a gun, but the stock is also on the wrong end and so he shoots himself too. 

            The fourth story seems to be set in Shakespeare's time and we see someone who looks like Shakespeare hanging around outside of MacBeth's castle and taking notes. Then he hears and then sees Witch Hazel on a hill in the mist stirring a big cauldron and reciting the first lines of the three witches from Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." She says, "Now for the most important ingredient" and she lifts a cover to reveal Bugs Bunny sleeping on a platter. She wakes him up and he walks to the pot thinking it's a bath and gets in. Later he realizes otherwise and gets out and runs away to the castle. She follows him on her broomstick. He calls to her from a tower window but when she flies up there he hands her an anvil and she falls to crash and her broomstick breaks. She runs upstairs to the balcony but then Bugs is on the ground dressed as Romeo and reciting "What light through yonder window breaks?" She dresses as Juliet and recites her lines from the play. Bugs tells her to jump and he'll catch her but he doesn't. Bugs runs from the castle. All this time the guy who looks like Shakespeare has been taking notes but now Bugs finds him crying and saying, "I'll never be a writer!" Bugs says, "Yes you will! You're William Shakespeare!" But he says, "I'm not William Shakespeare! I'm Sam Crubish!" Witch Hazel recognizes the name and then they recognize each other. She asks, "Why didn't you show up that night to meet my folks?" He says he came to apartment 2B. She says, "I never said 2B!" "Yes, you did!" They walk away arm in arm arguing about it. Bugs says, "2B or not 2B, that is the question!" 

            I did a search for bedbugs and found none. 

            I felt very sleepy and couldn't finish writing in my journal, so I went to bed at about 23:45, much earlier than usual.