I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast.
In the late morning I cleaned the bottom of the fridge and washed both crisper trays. All that's left is the fridge door which I should be able to finish tomorrow. I already did the butter tray.
I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. When I got home my neighbours Benji and Shankar were hanging out in front of our building and so I stopped to chat for a few minutes. Shankar got his eyebrow and his nose pierced.
I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:00.
I was caught up on my journal at 17:45.
In the Movie Maker project containing the synchronized video and audio of my July 9 song practice, I made a separate project for my song "Megaphor". I removed everything before the second take and the whole session after. I'll render "Megaphor" as a movie tomorrow and probably upload it to YouTube.
In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I removed the ocean lightning video because it has a watermark. Instead I returned to the lightning footage that I downloaded last year and used at the very beginning of the song's video. It has no watermark and it has better shots of lightning anyway. I converted it to AVI and imported it to Movie Maker, then I rendered it as a movie so it would be in the same format as my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" project. Then I imported that movie into my project and copied it to the end of the timeline. I began cutting out the parts I don't need. I only really want the segments of lightning with no people or buildings. I'll edit it some more tomorrow.
I've almost finished dividing the file folder containing my writing from 1993 to 2000 into pages with the Gumby Bible group poem and without it.
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 two Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1953 and two from 1954.
In the first story Bugs is dissatisfied with the wilted carrot crop up north. He reads in the paper that there is a carrot bumper crop in Alabama and so he heads south. But when he reaches the Mason-Dixon line he is stopped by Yosemite Sam in a Confederate uniform guarding the south against Yankee infiltration. Sam chases Bugs back across the border but realizes his boots have touched Yankee soil and so now he has to burn them. Bugs reminds him that the Civil War ended ninety years ago but Sam insists on following his orders until General Lee says otherwise. Then Bugs starts trying to cross in disguise. The first one is a bit racist as he's suddenly brown in colour, playing a banjo, and singing Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home." Sam recognizes the black man as "one of our own" and lets him cross. Sam says, "Hey there boy, how about given out something peppy on that there skin box?" Bugs says, "Yow sah!" and begins singing "Yankee Doodle." Sam confronts him and calls him a traitor. Bugs puts a whip into Sam's hand and then gets down on his knees groveling and saying, "Don't beat me massah! Please don't beat me massah! Don't beat this tired old body! No! No!" then he runs away. Then Bugs comes back disguised as Abraham Lincoln, saying, "What's this I hear about you whipping slaves?" Sam says, "But, but, but ..." Bugs says, "Never mind the buts! Here's my card, look me up at my Gettysburg address." Lincoln walks away but Sam can see from the back his rabbit's tail. Sam chases him into the knot hole of a tree. Sam lights the fuse of a bomb but Bugs pokes his head out and blows it out. Sam goes further away to light the fuse but Bugs extends a long tube and blows it out again. Sam goes even further away and lights the fuse but on the way back to the tree it explodes. Bugs disguises himself as General Brickwall Jackson and gives Sam marching orders that send him down a well. Sam charges and Bugs runs into a plantation mansion. When Sam knocks on the door Bugs answers it in drag as Scarlet O'Hara. Sam apologetically tells her he has to search the house. Scarlet stands in front of a door and says, "He's not in here!" Sam opens the door and a cannon shoots him in the face. Then Bugs rides up disguised as a wounded confederate soldier and tells Sam that the Yankees are in Chattanooga. Sam rides there and it's a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Chattanooga. Sam tells the Yankees that the first one that leaves the dugout gets his head blasted off.
The scenes with Bugs as a slave and as Abraham Lincoln were later cut from television broadcasts of this story.
In the second story, Elmer Fudd is a wealthy collector of rare flowers, While driving in the country he spies a dented blooming hetacollius. He takes it for his collection but it won't survive without its native soil and so he digs up a lot of the ground around it, which includes Bugs Bunny's hole. Bugs wakes up later in Elmer's palatial penthouse. Still half asleep he walks to Elmer's swimming pool and begins bathing, thinking it's his own local stream. Even when he is fully conscious he thinks it's a mirage. Elmer hears singing in his pool and when he realizes it's a rabbit, he gets his gun and begins shooting. Bugs comes up behind Elmer and says, "Ya better plug him again Mac!" Elmer fires into the pool and makes a hole in the bottom, flooding the apartment below and compelling his very large neighbour to wrap the gun around Elmer's neck. When Elmer finds Bugs dancing around his garden he begins shooting again. Bugs asks if he's trying to get rid of him. Elmer says, "Rabbits don't belong in penthouses!" Bugs says, "You think you're better than they are?" Bugs tells Elmer, "If you can prove you're better than me, I'll leave." Bugs sees a barbell and says, "First we'll see who's the strongest." Bugs can't budge the weight. Elmer lifts it but then crashes into the apartment below and gets the barbell wrapped around his neck by his neighbour. Next they have to shoot apples off each other's heads. Elmer is successful but Bugs shoots Elmer in the face. This however makes Elmer happy because it means he is winning. The final test is to jump over a bench. Bugs trips and falls on his face, but before Elmer can jump Bugs puts the bench on its end. Elmer jumps over it but also jumps off the roof of his building. Bugs admits that Elmer won and so he leaves, but takes the flower and the soil with him.
In the third story, a very tall man in a trench coat and hat robs a bank. After leaving with the satchel of money, with the cops in pursuit, he drops the money in a baby carriage, and removes the trench coat to reveal that he is a baby-sized man on stilts. He puts on baby clothes and climbs into the stroller, undetected as the cops run past. He gets out to make sure they are gone but the stroller starts rolling away. He chases it but the money goes down Bugs Bunny's hole before he can catch it. Bugs is counting his windfall when he hears crying outside. He finds a baby with a note pinned to it from a mother asking him to take care of her baby, whose name is Finster. Bugs takes the baby in. Finster immediately tries to get the money. Bugs says he mustn't play with the money because it is very dirty. Finster holds his breath till he turns blue and so Bugs lets him have the money in his crib. Finster tries to escape with the money but Bugs brings him back, Finster pulls a gun on Bugs, who thinks it's a toy until a bullet puts a crease between his ears. Bugs puts Finster to bed, but every time he switches off the light Bugs gets beaten by a baseball bat. Bugs sits down to watch TV and hears buzzing in the bathroom. Through a crack he sees Finster shaving, smoking a cigar, and on his arm is a tattoo that says, "Maisie Singapore 1932." Then Bugs sees the wanted-criminal report on the news for Anthill Harry, AKA Baby Face Finster. Bugs realizes he is dealing with an adult so when he next catches Finster going for the money he grabs him and tosses him into the washing machine. Finster attacks Bugs with a knife and so Bugs gives him a spanking. Bugs leaves Finster tied up in a bassinette in front of the police station.
The 2006 live-action comedy "Little Man" blatantly ripped off several elements of the "Baby Buggy Bunny" story.
In the fourth story, Bugs is reading "Hansel and Gretel" and when he reaches the first words that the witch says, he hears her say them in reality as he sees the witch nearby tempting the children. She says, "Come into my house and I will give you candy and ice cream and pickled herring and sweet and sour upside-down cake and hard-boiled all-day suckers. The children consent. After seeing the kids enter the house, Bugs decides to save them. The children are sitting in a cooking pot stuffing their faces with treats when there is a knock on the door. Bugs is disguised as a truant officer and wants to know why the children aren't in school. He finds them in the pot and tells them to run for their lives. The witch wonders what she will do now for supper until she realizes the truant officer is a rabbit. She gets on her broom to chase him and says, "Notice how I ride side saddle. It proves I am a lady of quality." She fills a hollow carrot with sleeping potion and Bugs can't resist. After he's unconscious she puts him in a pot. Prince Charming arrives and his kiss on Bugs's hand revives him. Bugs thanks him but tells him he's in the wrong fairy tale. The witch chases Bugs and he grabs some magic powder to throw at her. She turns into a sexy female rabbit. She and Bugs walk away together arm in arm but the female bunny lets out a cackle. Bugs says something sexist to the fourth wall, "Oh sure I know, but aren't they all witches inside?" That line was first attacked as misogynistic in Canada and changed to, "Oh sure, I know but who wants to be alone on Halloween." After that it was changed in the US as well. The original line has aired in Canada recently.
This was the first appearance of the character Witch Hazel, who has been in several cartoons since then, gradually being made less evil and finally helpful over the years. In 2011 she was renamed Witch Lezah and given an African American accent.
Bugs Bunny behaving like a hero and only playing tricks on villains didn't really start until the 1950s. In the 1940s Bugs played horrible tricks on people who had no harmful intent. There was something more charming about Bugs as a pure Trickster figure.
I did a search for bedbugs and found none for the fourth night in a row. But at 2:00 when I got up to pee I came back and looked under my pillow where I found a black, unhealthy-looking bedbug that didn't have my blood inside of it.
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