Nancy Dow

            On Monday morning I continued searching for more chords for "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg but there were no new sets. There was only one site that repeated the chords I'd found on Sunday on Ultimate Guitar. I started to try them out to see if they worked but frankly I can't play some of those chords like Cm6, Cm#5, F#m7, F#m6, and F#m#5. My fingers just won't go there. I found it fine for my purposes to just play Cm,Gm#5, F#m and A for the intro. No need to get fancy. I'll start on the verses tomorrow. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been a week, but lighter than last Monday. 

            In the late morning I went and did my laundry. When I was on my way back to put the washed stuff in the dryer, I stopped at Freedom Mobile to pay for my March phone plan. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before lunch at 13:50. Since my lunch was late, so was my after lunch siesta. When I got up at 16:30 it was too late for a bike ride and besides that there was a snowstorm going on. I had already cycled to Jameson and back three times anyway and so I did get some exercise.

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 16:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:38. 

            I worked for over an hour on the final paragraph of my Frankenstein presentation: 

            We are all the creations of the society in which we live and so society for each of us to varying degrees is our own Victor Frankenstein. When one is shut out from full participation or inclusion in society because of physiognomy the excluded victim is seen as a monster. Upon seeing his creature animated, Victor immediately makes a negative assessment of his character based on appearance. Unlike a true scientist he rejects his creation based entirely on the judgement of superficial qualities. A scientist would want to study the mind of his creation and upon even the most superficial examination of his child's awareness and mental capabilities would have observed from a scientific perspective a thing of beauty. A real scientist would try to educate such a mind, because as Wollstonecraft says, "to bring into existence a creature... who could think and improve himself" is an "incalculable gift" that should not be called a curse (Wollstonecraft 9). But Victor does see his creature as a curse and rejects it, thereby forcing it out into the world before its mind has "been stored with knowledge or strengthened by principles" as Wollstonecraft says of the educational paucity that women experience (Wollstonecraft 15-16) (Shelley 104). In making no effort to guide the powerful creature, Victor excludes him from participation in society, consequently damning him to a life akin to that of a wild animal. Any society that does this to a thinking creature, as Wollstonecraft warns, "can expect to see him at any moment transformed into a ferocious beast. ‘You have loosed the bull' she says, "Do you expect that he won’t use his horns?’"(43). 

            I had a potato with gravy and steamed lima beans while watching season 5, episode 13 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            In this story Jethro is frustrated by the failure of his efforts to get a girlfriend. He tries to mail himself to Paris because he thinks he'll have better luck there. 

            Since on that day Jane Hathaway's all-girl bird watching troop will be coming there to watch birds in the back yard, Jed suggests Jethro try one of those girls. But Jethro says those girls are not attractive. But then they arrive and file out of the bus like a paramilitary organization. Most of the women are indeed very nerdy looking, except for Athena, who is Jane's second in command, and beautiful. Now Jethro wants to join but Jane says it's for girls only. Jethro jumps in the pool and pretends to be drowning in hopes of Athena saving him, but a short and wide girl in glasses rescues him instead. 

            Jed is still trying to help Jethro and talks to Drysdale about it. Drysdale says he can help because he is a former Woodchuck (The Woodchucks are a fictional version of the Boy Scouts. In Disney comic books there is a group called The Junior Woodchucks to which Donald Duck's nephews belong). Drysdale arranges for Stanley, the local leader of the Woodchucks to come and initiate Jethro. At first Jethro isn't interested but then he sees Athena fawning over Stanley's badges and he wants in. Jethro tries to earn his first badge by starting an ant farm but doesn't enclose them in a glass case so they run loose and get on everyone until Jed, Jane, Jethro, Stanley, Athena and the other Bird Watchers all jump in the pool. 

            Athena was played by Nancy Dow. She appeared in a few TV series and movies. She played a supporting role in the 1969 movie Ice House. She is the mother of Jennifer Aniston. She and Jennifer were estranged after Nancy wrote a memoir that revealed details that Jennifer thought should have been kept private. Five years later, after Jennifer divorced Brad Pitt, the mother and daughter reconciled. Nancy died in 2016. 

            I searched for bedbugs and when I was poking my toothpick around the cracks in the baseboard to the right of the head of my bed, something very small seemed to crawl quickly down and out of my sight. I don't know if it was a bedbug because they tend not to move that fast. It could also have been a piece of dirt falling. For now I'm going to claim that this was the sixth night in a row of not seeing any bedbugs.

February 28, 1993: My daughter and I played in the bathtub and made an enormous mess

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday I got up in the late morning. I got some work done and then shaved and showered. Nancy's mother brought my daughter down at around 13:00. When she came in she ran straight for her little shovel and so I got dressed to take her out. She just played with the shovel and broom outside the house for a long time. Then she pointed at the toboggan and so we started heading toward the sliding hill when she turned around and ran back inside where we danced, ate, played in the bathtub, and made an enormous mess. I was totally tired from caffeine withdrawal. She finally went to sleep while I was dancing with her in my arms at around 21:30. I cleaned up a bit and then went to sleep myself.

Gloria Swanson

            On Sunday morning I worked out the first two chords for the intro to "Fugue" by Boris Vian and they seem to fit the ones that were posted online. 

            I finished memorizing "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords and found a set on Ultimate Guitar. I transcribed them and tomorrow I'll look for more. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast. I worked on my Frankenstein presentation, mostly on the intro: 

 

            I will begin by looking at the unique way that Frankenstein's creature teaches himself to read and compare it to another author's hero's solitary achievement of literacy from a century later. This comparison will highlight that the monster's motivation for learning is societal acceptance. I will point out, with help from Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that the creature's struggle for inclusion is a hyperbolic parallel of the difficulties faced by women who strive for education in the Georgian era. This will bring forward my main point that Frankenstein's creation is symbolically an ironic woman: held back from education as women are, although in the form of a man; and judged by appearance like a female, but rejected for a reason that males would not face: the absence of beauty. 

            The fault for both the exclusion of women and the creature lies with society, which in this case is symbolized by Victor Frankenstein, who tries to draw a direct line between external characteristics and internal qualities, thereby establishing restrictions on learning and even existence. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in a week, but pretty normal for a Sunday. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. There were fewer pockets of slush and more puddles than yesterday. The way was fairly clear except at Bathurst where there is a big build-up of snow at the construction entrance for the Mervish Village complex. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 17:00. I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I spent a couple of hours on my presentation and mostly just have the final paragraph to work out: 

            I will begin by looking at the unique way that Frankenstein's creature teaches himself to read and compare it to another literary hero's solitary achievement of literacy from a century later. This comparison will highlight that the monster's motivation for learning is societal acceptance. I will point out, with help from Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that the creature's struggle for inclusion is on a hyperbolic parallel with the difficulties faced by women who strived for education in the Georgian era. This will bring forward my main point that Frankenstein's creation is symbolically an ironic woman, in that he is held back from education as women are, although in the form of a man; and judged by appearance like a female, although rejected for the absence of beauty, which is a condition that most males would not face. The fault for both the exclusion of women and of the creature lies with society, which in the latter case is symbolized by Victor Frankenstein, who tries to draw a direct line between external characteristics and internal qualities, thereby establishing restrictions on learning and even existence. 

            The creature's education is unique in literature in that he learns to read without any direct assistance from anyone. The only other story that I know of that remotely parallels this type of solitary self education is the 1912 serialized pulp fiction adventure story, Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. In chapter 7 of the 1914 novelization of the serial, the boy who has been raised by apes from infancy discovers a cabin containing several books. One of them is a picture dictionary through which he teaches himself to read by recognizing the letter patterns that accompany the pictures. 

            Tarzan's and the creature's means of learning to read differ in method because of differing motives that affect the format of their learning processes. Tarzan already has community with a shrewdness of apes and communicates in their language. He merely wants to learn to read for the sake of interest and has no human readers to imitate. But Frankenstein's creature feels the need to become literate in order to gain the ability to communicate so as to attain fellowship with and the acceptance of humans. He learns from others by observing them in secret through a small hole in the wall. Tarzan's self education is realistically a very slow process and it takes him until the age of fifteen to be able to read. Frankenstein's creature learns to read in about a year. Even achieving this by direct instruction would have made him the greatest reading prodigy to ever walk the Earth, let alone gaining that skill indirectly by watching people through a small hole in the wall. 

            But the creature's roundabout education can be seen as a metaphor for the academic limitations many women were stifled by in the Georgian era in which Frankenstein was written. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft says that, "The little knowledge acquired by women with strong minds is... more random and episodic... acquired more by sheer observations... What women learn they learn by snatches." This speaks of a narrowness of range that can be symbolically represented by learning through "a small but imperceptible chink" in the wall (110). 

            The creature is referenced with masculine pronouns by his creator, who also expresses fear of him reproducing (Shelley 170). This suggests that he was constructed with a penis. When the creature asks Victor to create a mate for him he specifies that he wants a female, and also says that she should be of "another sex" than himself, which shows that he accepts Victor's assigning him to a masculine gender and sees himself as the male of his unique species (Shelley 147-148). Yet his educational situation can be paralleled to that of women. His circumstance of being judged by his appearance also coincides in an exaggerated manner with aesthetic criteria that govern the lives of women. When a woman does not have beauty to advance her in this Georgian era, and even to some degree in our modern age, she is disadvantaged. Victor's creature has a physique whose characteristics seem to be drawn from the extremely masculine end of the gender spectrum. Someone recognized as male would not normally be judged aesthetically to the degree that a woman would. But the fact that the creature's only insurmountable disadvantage is his appearance, in addition to being an ironic joke wrapped in a tragedy, is also a statement about society's aesthetic judgement of women. Wollstonecraft says, "The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams... when the summer of her physical beauty is past and gone." Frankenstein's masculine creature is condemned to an exaggeration of the feminine hell of being judged by personal appearance and being ostracized because of it. 

            Frankenstein's monster then is an ironic woman. He has a masculine body but is rejected for not having features that are pleasing to the eye. Pleasing features are what women are expected to settle for because if they insist on also being respected for their minds they are, as Wollstonecraft says, "hunted out of society as ‘masculine’(Wollstonecraft 23)". The creature is also "hunted out of society" because society stops at the surface in judging his appearance just as it does women. 

            We are all the creations of the society in which we live and so society for each of us to varying degrees is our own Victor Frankenstein. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and the last of my five-year-old cheddar. I had it with my last beer while watching season 5, episode 12 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This was a charming story that featured film legend Gloria Swanson as herself. The Clampetts learn that Gloria Swanson is selling her mansion in their neighbourhood and auctioning off its contents. They think that means Swanson is destitute but she is really only selling her mansion to give the money to charity. She has other mansions and plenty of money. Even though Swanson hasn't made a movie in years, to the Clampetts she is one of the biggest current stars because they still show her silent movies at the theatre in Bugtussle, Tennessee. Granny is Swanson's biggest fan and so she is particularly upset over what she thinks is her financial downfall. 

            They go to Swanson's home where they find it open because the movers are carrying things out. They sit on Swanson's furniture to stop them from taking it away but the movers pick up the couch with Granny on it until Swanson shouts, "Put her down!" and comes down the stairs. She has the brownest tan I've ever seen on a white person. She's actually darker than half the black people one sees. She was only about my age in this episode. She finds the Clampetts charming and enjoys talking with them about her old movies, but they still think she is impoverished. 

            Since Jed is the owner of Mammoth Studios he orders a new silent film starring Gloria Swanson and co-starring Jed, Granny, Elly, and Jethro. The movie is a big hit in Bugtussle and Gloria comes for the premier. She plays a femme fatale who Jed is in love with but she teases him and toys with his affections. Granny and Elly urge him to leave her and he does, but Gloria just says, "Next!" and another man walks in. 

            Gloria Swanson was working in a Chicago department store at 18 when she went on a tour of a movie studio. She was picked out of the crowd to appear as an extra. After a few more uncredited roles she married actor Wallace Beery and they moved to Hollywood. Two years after her first extra work she starred in "The Pullman Bride", then "Shifting Sands", and then in 1919 "Don't Change Your Husband". By 1925 she was the highest paid actor in Hollywood. She was 30 when talkies came in but she made the transition effortlessly. In 1928 she was nominated for an Oscar for "Sadie Thompson", and another the next year for "The Trespasser". She starred in "Music in the Air" and "Father Takes a Wife". Her biggest hit was "Sunset Blvd" in 1950, for which she was nominated for another Academy Award. Her last movie was a co-starring role in "Airport 1975", in which she played herself. 

            

            

            

           

            

            

            

            For the fifth night in a row I found no bedbugs.

February 27, 1993: I did a range of 10 second to 10 minute poses then went home and watched Deep Space 9

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I got up at 7:51. I caught the bus on time and I was half an hour early for work, but the door was locked. I went to Druxy's where I bought a black coffee and a Rice Krispy square and then went back. I did two minute gestures until my break, then I did some ten minute poses, a few ten second gestures, and finished the morning with a long pose. At lunch I realized that I hadn't brought the right song lists to work on, so I just laid down on the stage and dozed off. Starting at 13:00 we repeated the same routine as the morning. I went home and drank some beer. I worked on my song lists, cleaned up, and then watched Deep Space Nine.

Jo Ann Pflug

            On Saturday morning I finished transcribing the chords for "Fugue" by Boris Vian and made note of the lyrical differences. I'll search to see if there are any other versions before I start working out the chords in practice. 

            I memorized the sixth verse of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. There is one verse left to learn and I'll either have it nailed down on Sunday or Monday. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in five weeks. 

            In the late morning I went to No Frills. The only grapes that were firm were the green ones but I'm shy of green grapes from South America because they are often soaked in insecticide. The last bunch I bought had to be washed like laundry just to get some of the smell of poison off, and after handling them I needed to scrub my hands with detergent a couple of times to remove the odour. I sniffed these before I bought them and they seemed okay and so I got seven bags. I also bought Irish Spring soap, salsa, sweet basil marinara sauce, and vanilla almond milk. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon. It was slushy but the way was clearer than yesterday and so when I absent mindedly overshot Bloor and Ossington I decided to keep going to Bloor and Bathurst. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:36. 

            I spent about two hours on my Frankenstein presentation but I didn't get a lot of writing done. I mostly did research to make sure that some of the things I've been writing have textual evidence to back them up, mostly for this paragraph: 

            The creature is referenced with masculine pronouns by his creator, who also expresses fear of him reproducing (Shelley 170). This suggests that he was constructed with a penis. When the creature asks Victor to create a mate for him he specifies that he wants a female, and also says that she should be of "another sex" than himself, which shows that he agrees with Victor's assignment of his gender and sees himself as the male of his unique species (Shelley 147-148). Yet his educational situation can be paralleled to that of women. His circumstance of being judged by his appearance also coincides in an exaggerated manner with aesthetic criteria that govern the lives of women. When a woman does not have beauty to advance her in this Georgian era society, and even to some degree in our modern age, she is disadvantaged. Victor's creature has a physique whose characteristics seem to be drawn from the extreme masculine end of the gender spectrum. Someone recognized as male would not normally be judged aesthetically to the degree that a woman would. But the fact that the creature's only insurmountable disadvantage is his appearance, in addition to being an ironic joke wrapped in a tragedy, is also a statement about society's aesthetic judgement of women. Mary Wollstonecraft says, "The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams... when the summer of her physical beauty is past and gone." Frankenstein's masculine creature is condemned to an exaggeration of the feminine hell of being judged by personal appearance and being ostracized because of it. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episode 11 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Milburn Drysdale's banking rival John Cushing is still bent on trying to get Jed Clampett to move his $65 million from Drysdale's bank to his. Since Granny owns a quarter of that amount Cushing has decided to court her and then persuade her to transfer her fortune to his bank. Drysdale is very upset when he discovers what Cushing is up to. 

            At the same time he learns that his gambling addict father-in-law Lowell Farquhar is stuck in Las Vegas. Drysdale doesn't want to help him but his secretary Jane reminds him that Lowell has also in the past courted Granny, he may be the solution to stopping Cushing's plans. 

            Farquhar arrives with two Vegas showgirls named Lil and Jil, who he says are his financial advisors. He says, "They're not always right, but with them even losing is a pleasure." 

            Granny tries to entertain both John and Lowell in two different rooms in the mansion while she runs back and forth between them. Finally the two suitors decide to have fun together and so they leave Granny to go and shoot craps in Vegas with Jul and Lil. 

            Lil was played by Jo Ann Pflug, who earned a BA in broadcasting which led first to a radio career. She had a weekly storytelling show called Magic Carpet and a weekly interview show called Montage. This led to her becoming the first woman to host a TV talk show in Los Angeles. Her first movie appearance was in Cyborg 2087. She was the voice of The Invisible Girl in the 1967 animated series The Fantastic Four. Her first big break was her role as Lieutenant Dish in the smash hit film M.A.S.H. She claims to have been born again after being baptized in Pat Boone's swimming pool. She turned down the lead female role in Slaughterhouse Five because of its sexual nature. She co-starred in the movie "Where Does It Hurt?". She played Lieutenant Katherine O'Hara on the second season of Operation Petticoat. She co-starred in the made for TV movie The Night Strangler, which led to the series Kolchak the Night Stalker. She also turned down the lead role of the mom in the sitcom One Day at a Time. She was a regular panelist on Match Game and the co-host of the 70s version of Candid Camera. She played Samantha Jack on the TV series The Fall Guy. She was married to game show host Chuck Woolery for ten years. 

            

            For the fourth night in a row I found no bedbugs.

February 26, 1993: I didn't have enough for the rent so I hoped he would accept a post-dated cheque

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I began a three week pose at The Ontario College of Art. Wanda was posing on the other side of the studio. We each had to try several poses at first and then the students voted. I ended up doing a sitting pose but one student was disappointed because he'd recently painted a very similar pose. During my lunch hour I went to pick up my OCA cheque and then walked up to the Board of Education to get my pay from them. I put them both in my chequing account but I didn't have enough for the rent. I hoped he would accept a post-dated cheque for March 13. I bought a falafel and went back to work. I was done at 16:00 and then went to the Beer Store to buy a twelve-pack of President's Choice. Then I bought some groceries at the supermarket and went home. I shaved, masturbated, showered, and then cleaned the kitchen. I had beer, chips and salsa while watching TV. I worked on some writing and other stuff.

Barry Kelley

            On Friday morning I searched for the chords of "Fugue" by Boris Vian. None showed up in a "chord" search" but I found a set on Boite a Chanson when I typed "accords". I transcribed about half of them and I'll finish that tomorrow. There are also slightly different lyrics than the others I've found and so I'll make note of those as well to see if they fit.

            I memorized the fifth verse of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two verses left to learn. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I got my place ready for bedbug inspection. I didn't bother to flip my futon frame on its end this time because there are never any bedbugs there. I just cleared the bed and the area around it. I swept and mopped the floors. The technician was scheduled to be here between 13:00 and 17:00 but I was hoping for the earliest end of that. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos before lunch. 

            Steve from Orkin came a little before 14:00, just after I'd finished lunch. I heard Caesar telling him he couldn't come in and that he was "controlling" it himself. If there is something to control it means he has bedbugs. Steve told me he found two live bedbugs in unit 2 and that the guy's place is very dirty. he didn't find any nests in my place and no bugs. He says it's a positive thing that I haven't found any juicy bedbugs full of blood and that means the spores are working. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It wasn't slippery but I had to ride through a lot of snow and I was constantly worried about slipping, so I only went as far as Bloor and Ossington. Going down Ossington is where I wiped out last month but it seems they salted the snow more this time and I made it through. 

            I weighed 83.8 kilos at 17:00, which is the lightest I've been at that time in a month and a half.

            There was an email from Professor Jaffe that our papers were marked and so I went online to see. I was worried because she seems very strict about formats but I ended up with an A. Here's what she said: 

            Christian, This is a fascinating, compelling analysis; you reading is acute and your insights are very persuasive. I don’t agree that the first mirror image is Jane as others see her and therefore “not” her; at least according to Lacan, the self comes into being as a split self, and “recognition”—what she sees as herself--is always misrecognition. Plus there is more “splitting” later on—the figure of Bertha, which Jane definitely does not see as part of her “self,” but arguably is: the part she refuses to or cannot recognize. However! This is really good. I miss the use of textual support in the first half, and some claims could use more detail and analysis. I really miss the Lacan dream, which you rely on but fail to provide. And I really want your next paper to get the citations right. 

            I'm confused by the in-text citation of page numbers. She says this is wrong: (Brontë 11-12, 59), but when I look it up it seems correct to me. She says she will be taking marks off next time for citation errors and so I need to find out what I did wrong. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:00. 

            I spent a few minutes in the hall chatting with Benji and Shankar about bedbugs, mice and rats, among other things. Benji says that in Guyana poisonous snakes will go into a home and ignore children to hunt rats. 

            I had a potato with gravy and lima beans while watching season 5, episode 10 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Although Jed owns $65 million and his wealth is increasing all the time, he doesn't feel like he's earning it. So he has decided to get a job as a garbage man. For some reason Jed's banker Mr. Drysdale is embarrassed that his largest depositor has become a labourer. Drysdale discusses it with the oil man Mr. Brewster who suggests that Drysdale give Jed a job on the bank's board of directors. Jane says that the last time Jed worked there he had the bank buy $3000 worth of Girl Scout cookies. Brewster says there is nothing for Jed to do on the board of directors for OK Oil, but Drysdale tells Jed that Brewster needs him, so he joins. 

            Jed still has to be voted in by the board and the toughest board member to convince is E.W. Brachner. But after he learns that Jed has $65 million he votes him in. Jed thinks the company is in trouble because it can't find any new oil wells. Jed remembers striking oil in the back yard of his mansion and then plugging it up. He decides to unplug the well. But then the board discovers that there is a leak in their oil pipeline under Beverly Hills around where Jed lives. The Clampetts bring the board several large containers full of crude and Brewster realizes what happened. He has workmen go to Jed's place and plug up the hole again. 

            Then Jed decides to make some money for OK Oil by turning the company jet into a passenger plane, charging $10 a flight anywhere in the world. But Jethro is the pilot and the co-pilot can barely control the plane out of Jethro's manoeuvres. 

            Brachner was played by Barry Kelley, who trained at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. In the 1930s he began acting on Broadway. He was brought to Hollywood by Elia Kazan in 1947 and his first film was Boomerang that same year. He played Mr. Slocum on six episodes of Pete and Gladys. He played Jim Rafferty on five episodes of The Tom Ewell Show. 

            For the third night in a row I found no bedbugs.

February 25, 1993: Michael Gerry saw my collage of a cat in space and told me he did similar work

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I worked at Central Technical School and it was a shortened day. It turned out that in Cheryl's class on Tuesday I wasn't supposed to model in the nude because the students were studying costume. But since Cheryl had been sick that day nobody told me. So this time in the first period I posed with my pants on. During my lunch break I went out to Kinkos and made a copy of my collage of the cat floating in space. I was looking at it before the afternoon class started and the instructor Michael Gerry noticed it. He told me that he did similar work. I finished at 14:30 and then went to have another copy made because there had been a speck on the original. I removed it and told them the mark on the copy was their fault and so I got it done for free. I went and purchased another hard cover sketch book at Gwartzman's for my writing. I went to Henry's and bought some developer and then I met Nancy at the McDonald's at Eaton Centre to spend some time with my daughter. She figured out how to work the electric eye on the water cooler. We walked around for an hour and a half until she fell asleep. Nancy showed up on time and I went to work.

Bill Baldwin

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing "Fugue" by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I'll look for the chords but I doubt there are any that have been posted, so I'll start working them out. 

            I wasn't quite able to memorize the fifth verse of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. I should be able to get it tomorrow. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on my Frankenstein presentation for the Bildungsroman seminar. This is what I have so far: 

                                  Presentation: A Vindication of the Rights of Monsters 

               He worked from his hidden point of vantage to understand and master this language 

            The creature's education is fairly unique in literature in that he learns to read without any direct assistance from anyone. The only other story that I know of that has a parallel to this type of self education is the 1912 serialized pulp fiction adventure story, Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The segments were collected into a novel format in 1914 that can be read as a Bildungsroman. In chapter 7, the boy who has been raised by apes from infancy discovers a cabin containing several books, not realizing that the cabin belongs to the murdered father he never knew. One of the books he finds is a picture dictionary through which he teaches himself to read by recognizing the letter patterns that accompany the pictures. 

            The difference between the self education of Tarzan and that of Frankenstein's creature is one of motive, and that affects the format of their learning processes. Tarzan already has community with a shrewdness of apes and communicates in their language. He merely wants to learn to read for the sake of interest and has no human readers to imitate. The creature feels the need to become literate in order to gain the ability to communicate so as to attain fellowship with and the acceptance of humans. He learns from others by observing them in secret through a small hole in the wall. Tarzan's self education is a very slow process and it takes him until the age of fifteen to be able to read. Frankenstein's creature learns to read in about a year. Even achieving this in such a short time by direct instruction would have made him the greatest reading prodigy to ever walk the Earth, let alone gaining that skill indirectly by watching people through a small hole in a wall. 

            But the creature's roundabout education can be seen as a metaphor for the academic limitations many women were stifled by in the Georgian era in which Frankenstein was written. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft says that, "The little knowledge acquired by women with strong minds is... more random and episodic... acquired more by sheer observations... What women learn they learn by snatches." This speaks of a narrowness of range that can be symbolically represented by learning through a crick in the wall as the creature does. 

            The creature is referenced with masculine pronouns by his creator, who also expresses fear of him reproducing. This suggests that he was probably constructed with a penis. Yet his educational situation can be paralleled to that of women. There is also the aesthetic element. When a woman does not have beauty to advance her in Georgian era society she is disadvantaged. Despite probably being male, the creature's only disadvantage is his extreme ugliness. 

            I weighed 83.8 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I've been at that time in nine days. 

            In the afternoon I ventured out through the salty brown slush to Freshco. Queen Street had been heavily salted and so it wasn't slippery, but it was like riding through wet sawdust. 

            The Freshco parking lot was full but the store seemed empty, I guess because a lot of customers are pedestrians who chose not to go out into the storm's aftermath. I bought two bags of grapes, five apples, a bunch of bananas, orange juice, limeade, kettle chips, frozen lima beans, and shampoo-conditioner. 

            I weighed 84 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:38. 

            I worked some more on my presentation: 

            Victor's creature has a physique whose characteristics seem to be drawn from the extremely masculine end of the gender spectrum. Someone recognized as male would not normally be judged aesthetically to the degree that a woman would. But the fact that the creature's only insurmountable disadvantage is his appearance, in addition to being an ironic joke wrapped in a tragedy, is also a statement about society's aesthetic judgement of women. Wollstonecraft says, "The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams... when the summer of her physical beauty is past and gone." Frankenstein's masculine creature is condemned to an exaggeration of the feminine hell of being judged by personal appearance and being ostracized because of it. 

            Victor Frankenstein is to blame for not educating his creation. Unlike a true scientist he rejects, based entirely on superficial judgements, that which he brought into this world. A scientist would want to study the mind of his creation and upon even the most superficial examination into his child's awareness and mental capabilities would have revealed a thing of beauty from a scientific perspective.

            For supper I had a potato with gravy and steamed lima beans while watching season 5, episode 9 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Granny wins five free dance lessons from a dance school but it turns out that the teachers, Marvin and Marita don't even have a studio. When Jed finds out he lets them teach out of his house. Drysdale thinks they are taking advantage and threatens to have them arrested for teaching without a licence. But they flatter him in how he moves his body and suddenly he wants them to perform at the annual bankers convention, but with Drysdale as the headliner. Marvin and Marita practice their vaudeville style routine with dancing and jokes. "Did you hear about the guy who put bandages in the refrigerator?" "What for?" "Cold cuts!" 

            Drysdale comes with Jane to show their dance routine to Jed and Granny. Granny says, "They ain't no Velma and Buddy Ebsen!" Jed, played by Buddy Ebsen says, "Who?" Buddy Ebsen got his start in a popular dance duo with his sister Velma. The night of the bankers convention, Jed does Buddy Ebsen's old soft-shoe routine which involved deliberate rhythmic moments of almost stumbling. 

            The emcee for the convention was played by Bill Baldwin. During WWII he was a war correspondent. He became the announcer for Edgar Bergen's popular radio show and the Mario Lanza Show. He was the fight announcer for the Rocky movies. He became the president of AFTRA (The American Federation of Radio and Television Artists) in 1970, and served three terms. 

            For the second night in a row I found no bedbugs.

February 24, 1993: The instructor was impressed with how I jumped into a great pose and held it steadily so long

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I worked in the sculpture studio of the Ontario College of Art all day. The teacher was very impressed with the way I just jumped into a great pose and held it so steadily for so long. I skipped my long break because we'd gotten started so late. The woman I used to model for in her class at Castle Frank School of the Arts was in the sculpture class. She was frustrated about the time she had to work on her sculpture and asked me to pose for half an hour after school and offered me $6. I said I would need $10. She offered that for three-quarters of an hour and I said okay. But she said she'd be there at 17:00 and I needed to be gone by 17:30. I went and got two vegetable pakoras for $1 and I waited for her. She didn't show up until 17:05 and so I told her I had to go. I headed up to Runnymede and went into No Frills to buy some oranges, but they were too expensive and so I just left them on the counter and went for a coffee.

Paul Reed

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the fourth verse of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. There are three verses left and so I might have the song in my head during the weekend. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in a week. 

            I got up to page 221 of Frankenstein. Most of Victor's weird family has either been directly or inadvertently killed by his creature as revenge against him for having been a bad parent. He murdered Victor's bride on their wedding night. Because Victor is clueless it didn't occur to him that "I'll see you on your wedding night" meant that Elizabeth was being threatened. He thought only to defend himself. So now Victor is bent on revenge and follows his creature further and further north, not realizing he is being lured to the Arctic where the creature doesn't feel the cold as much. The creature even leaves food for Victor so he will survive to continue following him. Finally Victor dies on Captain Walton's ship and the creature comes to say goodbye. Captain Walton is engaging with the creature in the last few pages. Walton is affected by the creature's ugliness but he is the only one in the novel who doesn't react violently to it. There are five pages left. 

            I put all of the under-the-sink storage items back where they belong. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. It was snowing but not enough had accumulated to make my way slippery, except for one moment while crossing Ossington on Queen when I felt my back wheel suddenly slip sideways about a millimeter. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:56. 

            I finished reading Frankenstein and then made some handwritten notes towards my presentation, comparing Frankenstein with A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Tarzan of the Apes. The working title of my presentation is "A Vindication of the Rights of Monsters". 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episode 8 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Granny is at war with the Beverly Hills Smog Commission. I don't think there was any organization by that name but in the 1940s there was a Smoke and Fumes Commission in Los Angeles. Later that became the United Air Pollution Division. Anyway, in this story there is a Smog Commission and the commissioner is Mr. Tinsley. The dispute is over the fumes that are created by Granny's making of lye soap. Mrs. Drysdale has complained and since she has contributed $500 to Tinsley's re-election campaign, he is making Granny's soap making an issue. Drysdale suggests that Jed run against Tinsley for commissioner, so Jed starts a campaign with the help of the family. The similarities between Jed and Abraham Lincoln are played up and Drysdale even gets Jed to dress like Lincoln. Later when Tinsley finds that Jethro has invented an attachment to reduce air pollution in cars, he says he'll let Granny make soap. But then he finds out that the filter that goes onto the pollution reducing attachment is enormous and it seems to give off even more fumes than a car. 

            Tinsley was played by Paul Reed, who started out as a radio singer. He didn't make it to Broadway until the age of 31 but then appeared in several shows, including "Guys and Dolls", "The Music Man", and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". On TV he became a cast member for "Caesar's Hour" and "Sid Caesar Invites You". He is best known for playing Captain Block on "Car 54 Where Are You?" After that he was a regular on "The Cara Williams Show". 

            I searched for bedbugs and found none.

February 23, 1993: Cheryl was sick so there was a substitute teacher in the first period

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I worked all day at Central Technical School. Cheryl was sick and so there was a substitute teacher in the first period. At noon I called Nancy but one of her parents gave me a message that she didn't need me to take care of my daughter that day. I sat in the studio through lunch and worked on projects. I went home at 15:15 where I watched TV, worked on projects, and cleaned up.

Black Squirrel with a White-tipped Tail

            On Tuesday morning I listened to the only two recordings that seem to be available of "Fugue" by Boris Vian to compare them and figure out how to learn the rest of the song. They are slightly different but both are missing three lines that I have in text form. I'll just have to guess how those lines might be sung and finish memorizing the song. 

            I memorized the third verse of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments in my translation to fit the internal rhyme. 

            The black squirrel with the white tipped tail is extremely aggressive with many of the other squirrels and often chases them along the wire. It's faster than most of the others too. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I read up to page 143 of Frankenstein. There are only about 80 pages left and then I'll start working on my presentation for March 7. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst in the afternoon and on the way home stopped at Freshco where I bought three bags of cherries. Katarina the cashier asked, "No grapes?" I said, "They're all soft." The cherries weren't in great shape either. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:15, which is the most I've weighed at that time in a week. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:54. 

            I got up to page 194 in Frankenstein. After hearing his creature's story, Victor agrees to create a mate for him. He travels to Britain to do it and sets up a lab on an island in Scotland. He creates the female version of the creature but at the last minute destroys her. But the creature is watching and tells Victor that he'll see him on his wedding night. Victor goes out on the ocean to dump the remains but is caught in a storm. He ends up in Ireland where he is arrested for murder. He discovers that the corpse is his friend Henry. Victor spends three months in prison before evidence acquits him. His father takes him back to Geneva to marry Elizabeth. There are thirty pages left. Of course I've read this book several times already. 

            The landlord came with the fixtures. He wrestled with installing the new kitchen faucet all through me making dinner, eating dinner and washing up. He decided not to install the bathroom fixture until Friday. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a beef pie that had been in my freezer for months. I ate while watching season 5, episode 7 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This is a continuation of the previous story. The gorilla that the Clampetts freed from the zoo has been in constant conflict with Granny because she is trying to force it to do chores. Finally he picks her up and throws her smashing through the front door to land outside in the driveway. She gets up and asks, "Had enough?" The gorilla runs away. 

            The Clampetts all decide they miss the other gorilla, Herbie, although they don't realize that Herbie is Tom Kelly in a gorilla suit. Jed comes to see Drysdale about it while Tom is there in his office. It is agreed that Herbie will come and stay with the Clampetts but he has a special diet and can't do chores. Herbie makes himself Elly May's pet so he can watch her swim and dance with her. Jed and Granny think the food Herbie is eating is a form of cruelty. There are snails, toadstools, and giant red spiders. The "spiders" are crabs and they wouldn't look any different from the crawdads that the Clampetts eat. Granny has also made toadstool soup on several occasions. 

            Jed tells Drysdale to tell Tom that he wants to buy Herbie from him. When no one is looking Tom takes off the mask and tells Drysdale to put on the suit. He'll just turn down Jed's price and they can leave together. But when Jed offers Tom $10,000 he takes it and drives away, leaving Drysdale in the gorilla suit to do chores. Drysdale runs after the car. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found one clinging to the side of a groove on the lower right side of the outer edge of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed. It was black and didn't look alive. It fell like a piece of dirt and it was dry and fairly dark inside. I shouldn't be finding any since pest control sprayed the spores over a month ago.

February 22, 1993: In the aftermath of the storm the subway train spent about five minutes at every station

Thirty years ago

            On Monday morning the aftermath of the snowstorm wreaked havoc on public transit. I could see the streetcar was stuck down the road and so I caught the bus to the subway. But the train crawled and spent about five minutes at every station. I was surprised that I was only half an hour late for work at the Ontario College of Art. It was the third week of posing in the post-apocalypse-themed set. We got started an hour late and the other model, Diana Dufretes told me about a vivid, mystical vision that she'd had. Something about a dancing golden god passing rings from limb to limb. Throughout my lunch break I wrote in my diary. The teacher started the afternoon with a glazing demo, during which time I got caught up. I got Diana's birth data except for the hour, which she said she would find out. I learned that she had a boyfriend. Too bad.

Frankenstein's Monster's Education

            On Monday morning I had the first 24 lines of "Fugue" by Boris Vian memorized. I have extra lines in the text of the rest of the song while the recording I have finishes shortly after line 24. I'll check out the Pauline Julien recording to hear if it's different. 

            I memorized the second verse of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. It's a long song because of the repeated chorus. I guess it was meant to be played in discotheques. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            David knocked on my door and thanked me again for looking after his place and for the aloe vera plant. He insisted on giving me another $100. He asked me for a beer and so I gave him a can of Creemore. 

            The landlord came and looked at my kitchen faucet. I showed him that the one in the bathroom is loose and so he says he'll replace them both tomorrow night. He gave me a notice that pest control is coming on Friday afternoon for the follow up inspection from the treatment last month. 

            I read up to page 102 of Frankenstein. Victor's youngest brother has been murdered and evidence was planted on the family servant Justine. Victor believes the creature he created and rejected did the crimes. While climbing in the Alps he is met by his creation. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst and on the way home I turned on Gladstone to go to Freshco but then saw the empty parking lot and remembered that today was a holiday. Instead I stopped just before my place at Queen Fresh Market where I bought a large pack of strawberries and two packs of blueberries. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 17:00. 

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

            I read up to page 122 in Frankenstein at the point that the creature is describing his self education by observation. I did some research online to find any parallels between that and the education of Georgian era girls. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three chicken drumsticks while watching season 5, episode 6 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jethro has the idea that the family needs a gorilla. He wants to teach one to do his chores while Elly May wants one to wrestle with. Jed calls Drysdale who says he'll do anything for him without knowing what will be asked. Since he can't get a real gorilla, Drysdale hires gorilla imitator Tom Kelly. The idea is that Tom will behave so ferociously that it will scare the Clampetts away from wanting a gorilla. But it just makes them want to tame it more. Granny takes a switch to the gorilla and makes it do chores. When Drysdale gets Tom alone he takes off the costume and says he quits. Drysdale says he'll have a suit on his hands. Tom gives Drysdale the suit and leaves. Drysdale puts on the costume but when told to do chores he escapes in Jane's car. The Clampetts go to the zoo to get another gorilla. 

            For the fourth night in a row I found no bedbugs.

February 21, 1993: I took my daughter sliding but she just played with her shovel

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday I got up at around 9:30. Nancy's mother brought my daughter down at 10:30. She was glad to see me and right away wanted to play with tools. I wanted to take advantage of the snow and so I gradually got us both ready and we went out. She took her shovel and broom with her and didn't seem interested in sliding. She just shoveled snow for an hour and went back in by her own choice. We played, had some breakfast and I put her to bed for her nap at about 14:30. While she was sleeping I cleaned up, read some old funnies, and chronologized some historical data. I was cooking when she woke up at around 18:00 and she just wanted to be held for the first fifteen minutes. She wanted to play before we ate. At 20:00 I took her through the snowstorm back to her mother's place.

Leon Ames

            On Sunday morning I memorized the first verse of "Love on the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in 48 days.

            I read the first few sections of Frankenstein that take the form of Captain Walton's letters to his sister. There is the account of the crew's first sighting of the creature in the Arctic and their rescuing of Victor Frankenstein. He's about to start telling his story. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. That's the most I've weighed at that time in two weeks. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 16:45. 

            The landlord still hasn't come to fix the leak in my kitchen, so I still have to use the little bathroom faucet and sink for everything. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:34. 

            I spent almost two and a half hours reading Frankenstein and made it to page 75. A few months after rejecting his creation because it was not beautiful, Frankenstein learns that his younger brother has been murdered. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episode 5 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This story is the aftermath of the previous one. The con artist Colonel Foxhall has been apprehended but his accomplice Rita Rio is still on the lam. Lieutenant Richards brings Foxhall to Jed for him to be identified but there is confusion. Foxhall tells them that Richards is the fraudster and so the cop is taken to the basement and spanked by Granny. 

            Meanwhile, Rita, still posing as Emaline, convinces Jethro to help her evade the police. He hides her in a guest room and she asks him to help turn her into a city girl so she won't be recognized. Of course she already is a city girl but Jethro still thinks she's a dumb country girl. She changes to a sexy dress, puts her hair up, and puts on make-up and Jethro doesn't recognize her. She says she needs a city name and Jethro says, "How about Chicago?" She says, "I mean a Christian name" and Jethro says, "How about St. Louis?" 

            Rita goes to Mr. Drysdale posing as a special investigator. She brings Emaline's cuckoo clock camera and demonstrates how Emaline got the incriminating photos of Jed by getting incriminating photos of Drysdale. Later Colonel Foxhall comes to Drysdale with the photos and says he needs to pay $50,000 for them or Emaline gives copies to his wife. But then Jed walks in with the copies that he intercepted from Emaline. Emaline tells the Colonel that they'd better cooperate since she already got a spanking from Granny. 

            Colonel Foxhall was played by Leon Ames, who toured with amateur theatrical companies for years before making it to Broadway. In his first film he had a co-starring role in "Murders in the Rue Morgue". He co-starred in "Stowaway". He starred in "Cypher Bureau" and "Panama Patrol". He co-starred in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon". He starred in the sitcoms "Life With Father" and "Father of the Bride". He played Gordon Kirkwood on 40 episodes of "Mister Ed". He was one of the 19 actors who formed the Screen Actors Guild and served as president for twelve years. He owned four Ford dealerships. 

            

            For the third night in a row I found no bedbugs.