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.