Monday 10 April 2023

Lisa Todd


            On Easter Sunday morning I finished transcribing the set of chords for "De velours et de soie" (The Silk and the Velvet) by Boris Vian that I'd found when I searched for "Chords", and there were no others under that search. But then when I searched for "Accords" I found another set and transcribed those as well. I'll keep looking tomorrow. 
            I memorized the fifth verse of "Harley David son of a bitch" by Serge Gainsbourg. There is only one verse left to learn and I should have that nailed down tomorrow. 
            This morning the city pickup truck that drives around picking up the garbage that the garbage truck guys don't take took the encyclopaedias that I put out yesterday. 
            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in 24 days.
            I grilled four strips of thick bacon in the oven and broke my fast with two on a slice of toasted seven grain bread with five-year-old cheddar. It was delicious but I couldn't fully enjoy it because the lower left part of my mouth is in pain whenever I eat. As soon as I hand in my essay on Tuesday I need to call the Parkdale Dental Clinic. If I'm not still covered on the Seniors Plan I'll have to go to Smile City. I also need cleaning done. I had planned on getting a haircut before dealing with my teeth but now that the pain is more frequent I've got to get my teeth fixed before anything else. Some foods are worse than others. Fruit just slides down and it's not too bad but anything crumbly like bread or bacon and crumbs end up getting wedged into and irritating the areas where the agony rises. I had to floss, sulka, mouthwash, and brush as soon as breakfast was over just to make sure there was nothing left over to serve as an irritant. 
            Yesterday when I came back from the supermarket my front tire was soft. I pumped it up and it was still hard when I rode to Bathurst and back later that day. But overnight it had gone soft again. Since it was Easter Sunday I didn't know if Metro Cycle would be open today but at noon I leaned out my window and saw their sign board was out on the sidewalk. I knew I wouldn't have the brain energy to work on my essay at that hour but I'd be able to fix my tire and so I walked the five doors up the street to Metro and bought a tube. I went home and took the wheel off but I couldn't pry the tire from the rim. I went back and the owner of Metro got it started. I bought two plastic tire irons from him and was able to get it off. Getting it back on was a lot easier than it usually is and I had it done by 13:15. 
            I weighed 84.8 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of chocolate milk. My mouth wasn't in as much pain during this meal. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. 
            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 16:30, which is the heaviest I've been at that time since the first week of January. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 17:40. 
            I spent over two hours on my essay: 

            Alphonse Frankenstein places so much value on Caroline's grief over her loss of affluence as an enhancement of beauty that he immortalizes it in a portrait that he has commissioned and placed prominently in the Frankenstein home. This painting also serves as a symbol of self-congratulation for him having saved a member of his class from ruin. His class, his society and that of his heir, Victor, values beauty as a sign of merit. Only the beautiful are noble and therefore deserve to be wealthy. The grief of the beautiful elevates that which is grieved over to a higher state of value. The painting that portrays the beautiful Caroline's exquisite lamentation over being deprived of money, mounts capital to a towering status of importance. The poor are meant to be poor but for the rich to fall into poverty is a tragedy. We see this same sense of beauty elevating a source of sorrow while at the same time being enhanced by that tribulation, when Justine is awaiting trial for murder. Justine is of the Swiss servant class but she is beautiful and also deserving of the love of her wealthy masters. Her sorrow is also an enhancement to her beauty as Victor observes that "her countenance... was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful". This sense of the beauty of women enhanced by grief weds itself with the Frankenstein male command of justice to construct Victor. Wealth brings a command over beauty which sadness only enhances. Beautified sadness and bereaved beauty are symbolized by the Frankenstein matriarch mourning over a coffin that may as well be full of dead money. That such melancholy is personified as a cherished member of the Frankenstein family is emphasized by Elizabeth's statement that "misery has come home". She says this to mean that misery had belonged to others before this and now it is hers, but on a deeper level it points to the fact that she is now being called upon as a Frankenstein woman to fulfill the Frankenstein female legacy of decorating grief with beauty. She does not realize that Victor is the actual cause of the grief she is experiencing and so her statement to the recently returned and miserable Victor that, "misery has come home" is rendered poetically more powerful. It points to the societal destiny that she was designed for in relation to Victor.
            Elizabeth was brought into the Frankenstein family as a "pretty present" for Victor because she is a crucial cog in the design of his construction. She serves as a pre-packaged ready made wife meant to live in storage for many years as his friend and cousin until he is ready to marry her. This shows that even Victor's future has been manufactured by his parents as an extension of his function of being their plaything and idol. Victor's status as a plaything and idol; and Elizabeth's function as a pretty present show them both to be toys and dolls. Victor the doll decides to build his own poppet but fails to make it beautiful and so he throws it away. But in discarding his toy he frees it from the Frankenstein legacy and any loyalty it might have had towards it. 
     
            I made pizza on naan with some of the sauce I made yesterday, a little Basilica sauce, two strips of bacon, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 6, episode 24 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 
            Granny has been overcome with sympathy for Jane Hathaway's spinsterhood. She says no one has ever asked Jane to marry them. With the promise of an enormous back home feast, Granny persuades Jethro to propose to Jane while at the same time assuring him that she'll turn him down. Meanwhile Milburn Drysdale has hired a beautiful Swedish woman who doesn't speak a word of English to be his head of security at the bank. He says one look at her and no crook would remember he was there to rob them. All she can say is "Me Ilsa". When Jethro walks in and sees Ilsa he forgets that he's there to propose to Jane. He goes home and tells Jed he's in love with Meilsa. But he forgets Ilsa when he smells Granny's parsnip and squirrel pie. That night he takes Jane to a fancy restaurant and forgets again what he was supposed to ask her. Fortunately Granny is in the next booth disguised as a brown skinned man on a date with Elly. She reminds Jethro and he proposes but is shocked that Jane accepts. She later tells Drysdale that Jethro has been rejected so many times she couldn't turn him down. Drysdale wants her to marry Jethro but when he comes with a ring she turns him down. She thinks he's heart broken but he's clearly overjoyed and the next minute we see him with Ilsa on his lap and kissing up a storm. 
            Ilsa was played by Lisa Todd, and this was her first TV appearance. She was spotted on the Johnathon Winters Show by Hee Haw producers and appeared on Hee Haw for fifteen years as the weather girl Sunshine Cornsilk who hopelessly pursued Junior Samples but also had a segment called "Advice to the Loveworn". She's studied kung fu. She co-starred in The Doll Squad. She was the girlfriend of Buck Owens in the 1970s. 




            


            
            For the thirty-seventh night in a row I found zero bedbugs.



No comments:

Post a Comment