May 21, 1992: The dominatrix invited me to fetish night but I didn't have anything to wear

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I went downtown to get a collage copied. 

            Late in the evening, I got a call from SAJ the dominatrix asking me if I wanted to go to fetish night. I reminded her that I had no fetish clothes, but she told me to wear black jeans and a white shirt, then she would jump in the shower and think about what else she could throw on me. I had a bunch of whites soaking in the bathtub and so I wrung them out to find the best one. But she called half an hour later to say that a bunch of friends were on their way up and so she wouldn’t have time to find anything for me and so we would have to do it another time.

Life On Mercury

            On Thursday morning I didn’t feel the effects of pollen as much as I had for the last couple of days, but I felt kind of run down. It made me wonder if I actually have picked up a virus. 

            I tried to memorize the second verse of “Oh Soliman” by Serge Gainsbourg but I kept dozing off. 

            Before song practice, I realized that I’d forgotten to change my high E string that broke on Wednesday morning. There was no time to change it and so I just played all the songs with five strings. Since it was the E string that was missing I could still play all of the chords. They just didn’t sound very full. 

            I had to shorten song practice because I had an appointment to have my teeth cleaned at 8:30. For most of the songs I just played one verse and one chorus. I finished at 7:45 and got ready to leave. There was no time for coffee or breakfast. I left my place at 8:15 and rode down the street to the Toronto West End Community Health Centre. When I got to the bike posts, nearby under the overhang was a homeless guy sitting on his sleeping bag with his pants down. Before I’d finished locking my bike he informed me that the centre was closed because there’d been a fire on the roof. I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was talking about but when I came to the door a guy opened it to tell me that the centre was closed until further notice because of a fire. I would have to reschedule my appointment. 

            I had brought my Kodiaks and my sandals along in a bag because I had intended on going to Sole Survivor to get them fixed. I rode the whole curving length of Noble Street but couldn’t find any place called “Sole Survivor”. I went home and checked the address and the store hours and found out that it wouldn’t be open until 10:00 anyway. 

            I decided that the morning wouldn’t be a total; waste if I were to ride to the main post office and pick up my mail. I started heading east but when I got to Ossington it began to rain, so I turned around and headed back, stopping at Freshco on the way home. I bought some red grapes, some black grapes, and a bag of cherries. I also got three bags of milk, a small container of skyr, a jug of orange juice, a small jug of raspberry lemonade, and another of lemon iced tea; two bags of kettle chips, and some shampoo-conditioner. 

            After I’d put my food away it was after 10:00 and so I headed over to 46 Noble Street. At that address there was no sign saying, “Sole Survivor” but there was one saying, “Shoe and Leather Repair.” But there was also another sign saying, “By appointment only.” That seemed weird but I went home and called them. It was even stranger when I talked to the person. I was told that I needed to make an appointment just to drop off some footwear for repair and on top of that, I couldn’t get an appointment until June 6. In all my life I have never run across a repair business where one is required to make an appointment just to bring something in to be fixed. Maybe this is just a covid thing and their customer service will become normal when the pandemic is over. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before a late breakfast at 10:30. At 11:00 I felt tired and so I took a siesta until 12:30. But when I got up I still felt sleepy and went back to bed until 1:45. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos before a slightly late lunch at 14:00. 

            After lunch, the weather had cleared up and so I decided to ride down to Leslie and Commissioners to get my mail. It was a long trip and I’d forgotten just how far east Leslie is. If one thinks of the east side of Yonge as the beginning of the east end, Leslie is more than halfway to the Beaches. I rode south and I could almost see the entrance to the Leslie Spit by the time I got to Commissioners Street. The postal station was right on the corner. The front door was locked and I pushed a buzzer until I read a sign directing those picking up mail to the west side of the building and around the corner. I found the customer's entrance, went inside, and pushed the loud, red buzzer that sounded more like an alarm. Someone finally came to the window and I showed him something with my address and also my health card. It took him about ten minutes but he came back with about seven pieces of mail. Two of them were junk but the rest were important. One of them was the form I’d been waiting for from the Ministry of Housing and another was my voting card for the Ontario election. 

            As is usually the case, the trip home felt faster than the journey out. When I got home I noticed that it looked like the landlord had finally gotten the electronic lock fixed so the mail carriers could get in. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, Astro Girl finds a large, beautiful, and strange egg on one of the Mystery Islands. Astro Boy takes it to Dr. Elefun, who experiments on it and finds its shell to be harder than metal. He has the top scientists of the world come to offer their views on the nature of the egg and they begin to argue so passionately that Astro Girl is able to take the egg away without them noticing. She drops it and it keeps rolling away from her while she engages in a comical chase down several flights of stairs until it rolls into an elevator and goes up, so she has to run up the stairs, but then it goes down and she has to run back down. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Boy has decided to return to the island to see if it holds a clue as to the nature of the egg. He discovers a family of Phoenix Birds consisting of a mother, a father, and a son. Astro Boy can hear them speak to one another and although the sounds of their language are not human, he can understand them through telepathy. But when he tries to speak to them they do not understand. An Earthquake causes the mother to become trapped under a large boulder and after Astro Boy rescues her the Phoenixes can now understand his speech because they communicate heart to heart. 

            Now that Astro Boy understands that the egg is their child and they want it back, he returns to the Science Institute. He rescues Astro Girl who is about to be crushed by the elevator and then they return the egg to the room where the scientists are still arguing. Just then the egg cracks open and a baby Phoenix emerges. Astro Boy accompanies it back to its parents and they are grateful. 

            In the second story, Dr. Elefun excavates a meteor impact crater and discovers a spiked bullet-shaped object about half the size of an adult human. He determines that it’s a heat bomb and somehow figures out that it came from the planet Mercury. 

            Astro Boy along with two other robots, Hector and Victor, are sent to investigate Mercury. Hector is an extremely arrogant robot who thinks he is better than everyone else while Victor is humble but appears to be very lazy. On the way, their ship is damaged by space dust and so Astro Boy and Victor go outside to repair it. They both need to wear special glasses to protect their electronic lenses from the sun, but a loose spring knocks Astro Boy’s glasses off and the ultraviolet rays make him blind. Victor says there’s an extra pair of lenses in the cabin and asks Hector to get them but Hector decides that if Astro Boy is blind then he will be in charge and so he hides the lenses. 

           They land in the twilight zone between the cold and hot sides of the planet. They first encounter men from the cold side, which they call the Land of Shivers. They welcome the Earthlings but Hector thinks they are enemies and attacks them, and so they shoot him with a freezing gun. They tell Astro Boy and Victor that Hector will thaw in a minute and meanwhile they invite them to meet their queen. They ski to the palace of Queen Bridget where she tells them that the Shivers’ enemy are the Sizzlers, who sent the heat bomb to Earth. They also sent one to every other planet in the solar system. The Sizzlers attack and destroy the palace. 

            Astro Boy is determined to destroy the factory where the heat bombs are made. They go back to the ship to get heat suits and Victor discovers that Hector stole Astro Boy’s lenses. Astro Boy’s vision is restored. Hector begs forgiveness and asks to go on the mission. Astro Boy says they should forgive him. 

            In Sizzler territory they find a dome but Astro Boy can’t smash through. Hector is able to break it open but doesn’t mention that he’s been damaged. They find a room full of heat bombs protected by the Sizzlers. Hector attacks and defeats them and tells Astro Boy and Victor to leave so he can destroy the bombs. He says that his wound has been affected by the great heat and he will explode soon. Astro Boy and Victor leave as the dome explodes. They are attacked by Sizzler ships but Astro Boy lures them to the cold side and into the icy water where they are destroyed. On the way back to Earth, Astro Boy learns that Victor is only a remote-controlled robot and that he was operated the whole time by Dr. Elefun. 

            I went to bed about half an hour early without updating my journal.

May 20, 1992: We sat on my front steps and I blew bubbles for my daughter

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I picked up my daughter and we spent the day at our place. 

            I discovered that I’d screwed up and that Wings of Desire would not be playing that night but on June 3. I called Mike Copping to tell him and said it was just as well because he had to finish a chess match that he’d started the night before. 

            So, I got to spend more time with my daughter. She played with the bead maze that I’d bought for her first birthday. I blew bubbles for her on the front steps until her mother came to pick her up.

Deadly Casa Loma

            I was still stuffed up and sniffling on Wednesday morning. It felt like a cold but I’m pretty sure it was an extreme pollen reaction. 

            I translated the second verse of “Valse Dingue” (Mad Waltz) by Boris Vian. The lyrics are surrealist and perhaps inspired by the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" (Little Viennese Waltz) by Frederico Garcia Lorca. 

            I finished posting my translation of “What tu dis qu'est-ce que tu say?” by Serge Gainsbourg and then memorized the first verse of his song “Oh Soliman”. 

            During song practice, I had the longest sneezing fit of my life. I notice the pollen count is very high again. It’s forecast to be slightly lower tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. I was scheduled to meet my daughter and her boyfriend at Casa Loma at 14:00 and I knew I would be wiped out if I didn’t sleep first and so I took a siesta from 11:00 to 12:45. When I got up I rushed to get ready to go because I figured it might take an hour to ride my bike there. But I checked my phone and there was a text from Astrid saying they slept late and went for brunch and so now she wanted to meet at 14:30 instead. That was a relief because it gave me time to have lunch. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before lunch. I had a Montreal-style bagel with caribou paté and a glass of limeade. 

            I headed out, but halfway along Maple Grove, I realized I’d forgotten to put my denture in. I didn’t want to go to a public place looking like a hockey player and so I went back and got it. 

            I rode along Bloor to Bathurst and then north. Bathurst is always jammed for some reason. I turned right on Davenport and rode to Walmer Rd, then north to Casa Loma. That hill north of Davenport is the steepest hill I’ve pedaled up for years. It turned out that it only took me half an hour to get there. I locked my bike outside the gate and sat on the edge of a fountain for half an hour. 

            Astrid and Adam came pretty much on time and we went inside. There was one person in front of us finalizing her tickets. She’d bought four tickets online, and one would think that doing so would make getting into the building less complicated, but we waited behind her for ten minutes. 

            Since my neighbour David gave me $100 to spend on Astrid, I paid for our tickets. I told the ticket seller I wanted three tickets “to see the fake castle.” It cost me $115 and took less than a minute to have the tickets in my hand. We went downstairs and got audio devices that looked like mobile phones from the mid-1980s. I just carried mine and wasn’t interested in using it, but Astrid and Adam used theirs to hear the trivia about each room we visited. 

            The big feature this time was a Princess Diana exhibit, which really seemed out of place since I don’t think Diana ever even visited Casa Loma. She only came to Toronto once and her sons went to the CN Tower and the ROM. Casa Loma would be pretty unimpressive for a royal who lives in real castles. 

            I noticed that Casa Loma was built in 1911, which makes it fifty years younger than the place where I live. 

            We’d taken Astrid to Casa Loma a few times when she was a kid and she’d found the secret stairways and other features of the place exciting. But on none of those previous occasions had we explored every centimeter of the building like we did this time. It was very tiring and there really weren’t a lot of rewards offered for all the work of walking around. There were a few interesting art deco pieces and a couple of the rooms were nicely decorated. But it was worth it to see my daughter enjoy it. For me, the most interesting thing and the only thing I photographed was a graveyard of dead ladybugs on a window ledge of one of the towers. 

            We were there for two and a half hours until closing time. We left the building and rested for a while near where I’d locked my bike. We decided to walk down to the Annex to look for a restaurant. We finally settled on Insomnia near Bloor and Bathurst. I had the jalapeno burger with fries, Adam had the Insomnia burger with fries, and Astrid had an enormous plate of nachos that was meant to be eaten by two or three people. Even with Adam’s help, she couldn’t finish it and so she took the rest away in a box. The fries were very good and the burger wasn’t bad. I had it with a Sapporo. 

            I saw Astrid and Adam onto the Bathurst car and we said our final goodbyes for this trip because she would be leaving for Montreal the next day. She promised she wouldn’t take five years before returning next time. 

            At home, I was very tired and kept dozing off while writing in my journal. I posted my blog and went to bed an hour earlier than usual.

May 19, 1992: I'd completed twelve collages but hadn't developed any photos for a long time

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I went downtown to copy a collage and then had a beer. 

            My place was fairly clean now. I’d completed about twelve collages, but I hadn’t developed any photos in a long time. 

            I called Mike Copping to confirm that we were still on to see Wings of Desire on Wednesday. He was looking forward to it and wanted to show me a Time Magazine article about Wim Wenders.

Alternative Reality

            On Tuesday morning I had food poisoning from having accidentally eaten raw chicken at the Korean Grill House. It was covered in marinade and unrecognizable as chicken. They really should label the servings so people know what they are eating. I’ve also been stuffed up since last night. I notice the pollen count is very high today from all the trees on the list. 

            I finished working out the chords for “What tu dis qu'est-ce que tu say?” by Serge Gainsbourg. I decided to not bother with the instrumental. How one plays that is an individual choice and this particular instrumental is not essential to the character of the lyrics. I ran through the song in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian’s Translations where I began the editing process to prepare it for publication on the blog. 

           The food poisoning wasn’t as bad after song practice but my pollen reaction continued all day. It was the worst it’s ever been. It’s weird because growing up on a farm I never had any reaction to pollen, nor did anyone I knew. My only experience of it was as something characters experience in sitcoms and movies. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. Around midday, I washed all the toy figures that are leftover from my daughter’s childhood, which I keep on display in the living room window. They weren’t that dirty but the part of the window where they sit was filthy, so cleaning that was the main chore. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. The plan was to go to Yonge and Bloor but it started sprinkling on the way. I decided to play it safe and head south on Palmerston and then home. The rain stopped before I even got to Queen. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:00. 

            I returned to my Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song Instructions for Electroshock Therapy. After having previously inserted clips from documentary footage of shock therapy from the 1940s, my playback of the video in the editor near the insertion points has been choppy, with the video stalling as the sound continues. I was pretty sure it was a compatibility issue between the format of the main video and of that of the inserted clip. So I decided to publish the movie, including the documentary that was sitting at the end of the timeline. The rendered movie came out smooth, with no freezing. So I imported the new movie into the project and deleted the old one. Since the publishing process put everything in AVI, there was no problem after that when I cut pieces of the documentary and inserted them into the main video. I continued to alternate one-second segments of the first instrumental from the concert video with the same size clips from the documentary. But that instrumental in the studio audio is much shorter than in the concert, and so I will have to shorten the concert footage/documentary combination to match. 

            I worked on the first poem of my series My Blood in a Bug. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, a wicked storm is approaching. Dr. Elefun has developed a little bomb that he thinks will alter the pressure and end the storm but he needs government approval. While he has gone to seek it, Astro Boy learns that the storm is approaching a dam that is under construction. In order to save many lives, Astro Boy decides to use the bomb without permission. He is successful but now Elefun and his parents are mad at him for disobeying orders. Astro Boy feels bad and he is moping near the dam when the crew resumes blasting. He gets caught in an explosion and loses consciousness. When he comes to he begins to fly and is surprised that there is no trace of the dam. He goes home but discovers that his house is gone. He goes to see Dr. Elefun but his mentor does not know him. 

            Suddenly some identical giant metal men appear at Elefun’s door and one of them says he is the head of the Institute of Science. Astro Boy knows that Elefun is the head of the Institute. When he argues, the metal men attack and say all robots must be turned in and drained of energy. But Astro Boy defeats them easily and flies away. 

           Then he sees some metal men bullying Mr. Pompus because he refuses to obey their orders. Astro Boy comes to the rescue and he appreciates the help, even though he also has no idea who Astro Boy is. Astro Boy flies Pompus away but they are blasted by one of the metal men’s ships. They fall, but a door slides open in the ground and they disappear below. The metal men ask a little boy (who looks exactly like Astro Boy) which way they went and he points them in the wrong direction. Astro Boy wakes up and sees Pompus, Elefun, and Dr. Boynton. But Boynton explains that he is not the Boynton who created him. While Astro Boy was unconscious, Boynton read the information in his electronic brain and learned that Astro Boy is from an alternative universe. 

            But in this world, there is no Astro Boy because Boynton’s son Astor did not die and so his father was not motivated to build a robot replacement. Also in this world, the metal men have invaded from outer space, scrapped all the robots, and conquered the Earth. Suddenly the metal men have discovered their hideout and give them one minute to surrender before they are blasted. But after the explosion, we find that the hideout has the ability to move. Elefun explains that he has discovered that although there are thousands of metal men, they only have one mind. They are controlled by a single electronic brain in a tower, but the brain is regularly moved from tower to tower throughout the world. Today the brain is in their city and they only have two hours to destroy it before it is moved elsewhere. Astro Boy is given the task of repowering the robots so they can attack and distract the metal men while the brain is destroyed. Elefun and Boynton's secret weapon approaches the tower but magnetic rays stop the vehicle. 

            Astro Boy invades the tower, finds the brain, and attacks it, but it is very powerful and seemingly indestructible. When the metal men discover that the brain is in danger and begin to head for the tower, they are stopped by Astor, who pretends to be Astro Boy and causes them to hesitate. Astro Boy lifts the brain through the top of the tower and flies it high in the sky. Then he uses the full force of his jets to push the brain downward so it will be destroyed on impact. After the explosion, the metal men collapse and Astro Boy disappears. He wakes up back in his own world. 

            In the second story a rocket is heading towards Earth and Dr. Arden signals to it with his car headlights. Astro Boy just happens to be flying overhead at the time. Emerging from the rocket are three superhuman beings. Arden wants revenge on Dr. Elefun for firing him from the Institute, but the super-powered trio, Isan, Gretchen, and Carl also have a grudge against Elefun. They all have the power to fly, great strength, and the power to survive in space without a suit. But they also each have unique powers of their own. One can spin so fast as to create hurricane-force winds, another can pass through walls, and Gretchen has power over gravity. They want revenge on Elefun because they believe he made them superhuman, which prevents them from living normal lives. Astro Boy fights with them for a while but then leaves to warn Elefun. 

            Elefun does not believe superhuman beings are out to get him until his car blows up when he leaves it to help a puppy off the road. That night the beings invade Elefun’s home and he recognizes the trio by name. Astro Boy comes to the rescue. He lures them up into the sky to fight. Gretchen uses her gravity power and Astro Boy feels heavy. They all knock Astro Boy around until his impact creates a hole in the ground. They once again attack Elefun’s home. He locks himself in the safe but one of them can pass through. They beat up Elefun and carry him away. 

            Another scientist revives Astro Boy. Elefun is taken to Arden’s hideout. Astro Boy receives a call telling him to go to Mystery Island. There the trio fight with him again and once again Gretchen uses her gravity power. But Astro Boy reverses his electronic force, sending boulders flying at Gretchen, which knocks her out. The other two take Gretchen to Arden for treatment and Astro Boy follows. He runs out of jet fuel and falls into the prison where Elefun is being held. Arden opens the cell with a blaster in his hand. He talks about having convinced the trio that Elefun gave them powers when it was really Arden that did it. Gretchen happens to be listening at the door. She stops Arden and then tries to convince her friends but she is kicked into a power line. The electrical shock causes her to lose her powers. Astro Boy now has to lure the other two into the electrical field. After a fight, he manages to do it and they lose their powers as well.

            I went to bed at 22:00 and slept until 23:00, then I got up, washed the dishes, brushed my teeth, looked for bedbugs without finding any, made my bed, wrote in my journal until about 1:00, then went to bed again.

May 18, 1992: I was preparing to be broke on my upcoming birthday

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I didn’t see my daughter. 

            I was running out of money and was prepared to be broke on my birthday in eight days.