Brooke Bundy

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the second and third verses of “Made in China” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the whole song nailed down tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished reading The Hobbit. Before the Elves and Dwarves can go to war with each other they are attacked by Goblins. Bilbo remains invisible during the battle and doesn’t fight. The tide is turned when the eagles attack the Goblins as well. Because of his efforts to negotiate peace Bilbo is honoured as a hero. He returns home with a share of the treasure and just in time because there is an auction taking place in which his relatives are selling off his possessions because they think he’s dead. He has to buy back a lot of his things. He nonetheless lives a comfortable life from this time on. At the end of The Hobbit is the first chapter of Lord of the Rings. I started reading it, although I read it fifty years ago. Bilbo has adopted his cousin Frodo and they have the same birthday. So on Frodo’s 33rd birthday Bilbo throws the biggest party the Shire has ever seen with fireworks by Gandalf. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in thirteen days. 

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

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I finished reading the first chapter of Lord of the Rings and that’s all I intend to read. At the climax of the big birthday party Bilbo gives a speech and says he is leaving for good, then he disappears. Later he reluctantly leaves the magic ring and the rest of his wealth with Frodo and travels away with three Dwarves as companions. Gandalf warns Frodo to use the ring sparingly or not at all because it may have powers beyond invisibility. 

            I copied a translation of "Sir Orfeo" and read it. King Orfeo’s wife is taken by the fairy king. In his mourning Orfeo abandons his kingdom to become a wandering minstrel. One day Orfeo sees his wife with some other women and he follows them to the fairy realm. He charms the king with his harp playing and wins back his wife. It reminds me of Pearl. Sort of a pagan version of Pearl but where the mourner can cross over and win back what he lost. Both worlds show similar paradises in form but the elfin story is darker in that the dead don’t live in perfection on the other side. It seems a story in praise of the power of music. 

            I had a bowl of chili with toasted whole grain bread and my first beer in a month while watching episode 8 of Amos Burke: Secret Agent. 

            A peace guru named Harrison Filmore has a plan to force peace on those who wage war by injecting a gaseous form of LSD into the air. Filmore has four of his followers, Suzie, Paul, Emily and Jeff inject each other with an antidote. They hijack an air force fuel truck on the highway and pour the LSD into the tank. There’s a certain type of gas the base has that can be also used to convert the LSD to vapour. When the truck gets to the base they release the gas while they load the truck with the converting chemical. Whoever wrote this story has never done LSD. Their idea is that acid reverts everyone to a childlike state. Not a single person is hallucinating. 

            Meanwhile Burke is on the base investigating an organization called Union Secord Degener which is involved in attaining and selling top secret information. They’ve infiltrated the peace movement so they can use the LSD to incapacitate places that hold state secrets so they can acquire and sell them. Burke pretends he’s stolen vital ballistic missile information to sell to the Union Secord. Meanwhile Burke’s boss has to make it real by telling all agents to arrest or kill Burke. Burke is given a bullet proof vest. Burke contacts Margot, one of the leaders of the Union. While he’s there an MX3 agent attempts to arrest him. Burke ends up killing him. Later his boss explains that he was a double agent and would have been killed anyway. When Margot sees Burke kill the man she is convinced that Burke really is a traitor. Margot introduces Burke to Paul, one of their agents who has infiltrated Filmore’s movement. Their next target with the LSD gas is MX3 in Washington. Burke goes with Paul to Filmore’s rally but some of the members recognize Burke and grab him. Burke informs Fillmore that he is being used by Union Secord. Paul shoots Burke. Filmore tries to peacefully stop Paul but he is killed. Paul leaves with the gas. Burke has been saved by the bullet proof vest. He gets up and sees that Suzie seems sensible and he asks her to come with him. Paul unleashes the gas into the air conditioning system of the MX3 building. Paul, Margot and several other agents enter MX3 when they see the LSD taking effect. But Burke is there with the other MX3 agents who have been given the antidote. They and Suzie stop the Secord agents. Burke helps get Suzie squared with the authorities and then encourages her to continue protesting against war. 

            Suzie was played by Brooke Bundy, who in her teens was a model in New York and then went to Hollywood to act in films. She played Rebecca North on Days of Our Lives and Diana Taylor on General Hospital. She played Elaine Parker in two Nightmare on Elm Street films. She played Chief Engineer Sarah McDougal on the third episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the story “The Naked Now”.