December 23, 1992: Nancy and the baby were sleeping beside me on the bus to Riviere du Loup

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I went to bed at 4:00 and got up around 10:00. I got everything ready for the trip to New Brunswick pretty quickly. I went out to look for presents for my nephews Nicholas and Aaron. I bought them some magnetic balls and Silly Putty, but Nancy didn't think that was enough. I headed downtown around noon to find my daughter's presents. I got her something like Lego at the Bi-Way. I didn't see Nancy at the Eaton Centre McDonald's and so I went to Shoppers Drug Mart to buy the Blue Jays Magazine for the kids. I walked to the bus station and Nancy was already there. We missed the first two buses because they were full, but they sent another. We changed buses in Kingston. My daughter was restless, but her mother and I seemed to be getting along. We arrived in Montreal at around 21:30, put our stuff in lockers and went looking for something to eat, but had to settle for something on the go. We missed a bus and caught another, which was just as well because it was less crowded. We were on our way to Riviere du Loup, with Nancy and the baby sleeping as I was writing this. I got all caught up on my journal, then turned out the light and shut my eyes.

Sophie Aldred

            On Wednesday I worked out the chords for the first verse of "Babe alone in Babylone" by Serge Gainsbourg. It's a pretty complicated song. 

            I weighed 84 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I headed down to St. Lawrence Market to do my annual Christmas shopping. In the deli in the basement I bought two bottles of Curry Ketchup with roasted garlic, one for my daughter and one for me. At Domino Foods I got various candies for my daughter such as chocolate covered cranberries, sour gummi bears, and cashew caramel clusters. I treated myself to a bag of fresh ground French mocha coffee. I also got hot German sausage, hot Mexican salami, some breakfast bacon, a small jerk chicken pie, a small curried chicken pie, a pack of raspberries, and a pack of blackberries. 

            On Queen Street west near Spadina I checked out a store called "Exotic Treats", but it just had a lot of stuff, stuff like boxes of cereal one might find in the supermarket, except with pictures of rappers on the covers. 

            I went into Lush and bought three bath bombs for my daughter. 

            I stopped at Bagels on Fire and got a dozen sesame seed Montreal style bagels. 

            On the way home I went to Freshco where I got two bags of grapes, some bananas, two packs of five-year-old cheddar, and a jug of orange juice. 

            Before going home I went to the post office to get a shipping package so I could send the gifts to my daughter in Montreal. I found out that to get the package to Astrid by Christmas I needed to mail it within the next hour. That wasn't going to be possible and so I resigned myself to try to mail it tomorrow. 

            I went to the Dollarama where I bought some round, coloured tags and some coloured string to tie up the bags of candy. 

            I weighed 83.4 kilos at 16:15. 

            I had a very late lunch of Mexican salami and five-year-old cheddar on a Montreal style bagel with a glass of limeade. 

            I took a late siesta until 18:18 and woke up with a cramp in my left foot, probably because of all the walking I did today. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:43, which was almost time for dinner but I did have time to put together the shipping package and tag and label some of the candies. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce, two slices of hot Mexican salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the most recent episode of Doctor Who. 

            A space train is being penetrated by Cyber Masters, who are Cyber Men cloned by the Master on Gallifrey. The Doctor and her companions Yasmin and Dan manage to save the train but the Cyber Masters escape with their main objective, which appears to be a young child but is really the Qurunx. The Qurunx is tethered above the surface of a cloaked cyber conversion planet orbiting the Earth as another moon in 1916 where the Master is Rasputin. 

            In 2022 a renegade Dalek contacts the Doctor to offer information that will stop a Dalek invasion of Earth. 

            Meanwhile Ace and Tegan, two of the Doctor's companions from over thirty years ago, are investigating the disappearance of the world's leading seismologists and the removal from galleries of some of the world's most famous works of art. The paintings have been taken down because the faces, for instance that of the Mona Lisa, have been replaced with the visage of Rasputin-the Master. 

            The Master has united with the Cyber Men and the Daleks to cause all of the world's volcanoes to erupt at the same time. 

           The Doctor meets with the renegade Dalek to get the information but the Daleks arrive to kill the traitor and to capture the Doctor. The Doctor is delivered to the Master in 1916. In celebration for his victory he dances to the disco song Ra Ra Rasputin by Bony M. 

           He uses the energy of the Qurunx to do a forced regeneration, which causes the Doctor to regenerate as the Master. Now disembodied, the Doctor finds herself in a place on the edge of existence where she meets several of the earlier incarnations of the Doctor, such as the ones played by Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker, but also an actor named David Bradley does a flawless impersonation of the original Doctor as played by William Hartnel. 

            Anticipating her death, the Doctor had programmed a hologram of herself and the other Doctors to help her friends defeat the Master, the Cybermen and the Daleks. The forced regeneration is reversed but the Master uses the Qurunx's energy to mortally wound the Doctor. As she begins regenerating she takes Yasmin home and goes off by herself. After the regeneration she finds herself back in the body of the Tenth Doctor as played by David Tennant. I know from reading about this that Tennant as the Doctor will be very temporary because he will soon regenerate into the first black Doctor, not counting the Fugitive Doctor as played by Jo Martin. 

            Ace was played by Sophie Aldred, who was the final companion of the last Doctor in the original Doctor Who series that ended with the 80s. After Doctor Who she appeared as Sophie Socket on children's educational programs. She was the host of Tiny and Crew, Words and Pictures and It's a Mystery. She played Minnie the Mini Magician on ZZZap! She has done a lot of voice work for animated series. 

 I searched for bedbugs and found one on the baseboard just to the right of the head of my bed.

December 22, 1992: Nancy was more concerned about getting presents for my family Down East than I was

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I called Humber College at noon, and they said I could come to get my cheque. I had to pick up my daughter from Nancy at 14:30 or so. I changed her, then went to the bank to withdraw my money. We took the subway to Wilson Station and then caught the bus to Humber College. I picked up my cheque, bought my daughter some food and then we got back on the same bus. I cashed my cheque while she was sleeping in my arms. I bought the tickets to New Brunswick with her still asleep and carried her to Eaton Centre. Nancy found us and then we went to Black's Cameras to develop the film and the negs. I told Nancy that I was taking the baby to the Hudson's Bay toy department, but she didn't hear me. I waited there for an hour while my daughter played. I went back to the Eaton Centre to look for Nancy. We argued when we finally met later, and she started crying. Anyway, we reconciled and went to The Papaya Hut. Nancy was more concerned about getting presents for my family Down East than I was. The film we developed was from Halloween and we printed some to take to New Brunswick. I went home to get ready for the trip.

Code Weaving with Chiac

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the eighth verse of "J'ai pas d'regret" (I've No Regrets) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to learn. 

            I finished transcribing the set of chords that I found for "Babe alone in Babylone" by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for more but other sites just repeated the same one. I worked out the chords for the intro. 

            I was nervous this morning because I was worried about not finishing my essay by midnight. I would still have three grace days left if I don't but I really want to get on with my holiday and be free of academic assignments for a few weeks. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on my essay for two hours and have the first two and a half pages of six and a half pages organized. Most of it will consist of the body of my draft essay from earlier in the term, so I really don't need much more than a fine-tuned conclusion and an outline. I think that I might even have it done before dinner. 

            I weighed 83.7 kilos before lunch. 

            I tried to take a siesta but I couldn't sleep and so I only stayed in bed for half an hour. 

            I took an early bike ride at 14:45. I saw a dead rat on the Bloor bike lane just after Avenue Rd. I think it was on its way to shop at Tiffany's when it died. As usual when I take an early bike ride, I had to pee for most of my trip and so it was not very enjoyable. 

            I weighed 83.7 kilos at 16:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 16:39. 

            I worked on my essay for the next two and a half hours and then started proof reading it. I uploaded it at 19:45. If I'd had more time and fewer assignments I could have done better, but this one is okay considering the restraints: 

                                                                     Code Weaving: 

              How the Chiac dialect assimilates and transforms English words in shape and meaning 

                I hate you but it is not in English / I love you but it is not in French - Leonard Cohen 

            Chiac is a contact language spoken among Francophones who live in Moncton and the suburbs of Shediac, Dieppe and Memramcook, in southeastern New Brunswick, Canada. The dialect of Chiac allows into its vocabulary many elements of the dominant English language, but then takes control of those words by transforming them structurally and contextually into distinctive locutions. These reconstructions of English words have evolved and continue to do so from the organic process of spontaneously repeated speech in every day conversations between Acadians. 

            I will first show how the choices between French or English that a Chiac speaker makes often correspond respectively to the internal and the external. For example, the way that English is often used for swearing. Next, I will demonstrate with several examples that from which language to take a word often depends on which one provides the most comfort of pronunciation. As the ease of speaking a language goes hand in hand with the lack of fear of its expression, the subsequent stage of my paper will show how Chiac has progressed over time in literature, using examples of three generations of writers. I will conclude by analyzing the unconscious play of power that is revealed in Chiac's alterations of English words. In converting English verbs that invade the Acadian consciousness from outside, the Chiac speaker is symbolically dominating the dominant language, surgically altering English to remove some of its vestigial organs of repression. 

            Almost any French or English word can be knitted into Chiac, making it a very unique kind of super language. Acadian French word choices in Chiac tend to draw from history, tradition, and family, while many English adaptations come from mainstream pop culture and swearing. For example, "mere" is naturally chosen over "mother" mostly because of familial sentiment and because on a deeper emotional level Chiac speakers remain Acadian French. But "mother" might be used as the prefix in the popular vulgarism, "motherfucker". As French-English hybridity is part of the surface consciousness of Chiac speakers, English swear words can be used with less guilt than some of the French religious words like "sacrament" (Merkle 81). And so for a Chiac speaker to swear in English can be a liberating experience as the Acadian poet Raymond Guy LeBlanc expresses in his poem "Je Suis Acadian" (I Am Acadian): 

"Je jure en anglais tous mes goddams de bâtard 

et souvent les fuck it me remontent à la gorge 

Avec des Jesus-Christ projetés contre le windshield" (Laparra 8). 

            This translates as, 

"I swear in English all my bastardly 'goddamns' 

and often cough my 'fuck its' from the back of my throat 

Throwing 'Jesus Christs' against the inside of the windshield" (my translation). 

            The choice of which word to harvest from French or English while a Chiac speaker is communicating is often based on the one that is the easiest to say. An example of this can be found from Acadian novelist France Daigle, who points out that saying some French words like "parquigne" would feel like a pretentious performance for Chiac speakers, and so they more comfortably and simply use the English word "parking" (Cormier 12). 

            Chiac tends to avoid long expressions and so English words are frequently chosen over their Acadian French equivalents. English verbs like "back" and "cross" are conjugated like French verbs, as in, "J'ai backé mon car dans la driveway” or “j’ai crossé la street”. It is interesting that English nouns like "driveway" and "street" are made feminine by preceding them with the article "la". In standard French, anglicisms tend to receive the masculine gender and are articled with the more subtle sounding "le". But as "la" sounds more like "the" it becomes the easier choice. In another example, “J’ai wiré ma satellite dish avec mes own mains, "ma" is used with "satellite dish" because it is easier, while a speaker of standard French would say "mon satellite dish." This is further evidence that Chiac makes its lexical choices based on comfort. 

            Sometimes the easier choice of verb will come from French but with English prepositions. The Chiac speaking superhero Acadieman says, "Chu pas fou about faire de l'exercice (LeBlanc)." This means, "I'm not crazy about doing exercise" (my translation). The use of the French adjective "fou" with the English preposition "about" imitates the English expression "crazy about" but also relaxes it because it is easier to say "fou about" than "crazy about". Chiac is not only about relaxation but also enjoyment because it is “right le fun.” The English adverb "right" is used uniquely as an intensifier in Chiac to mean something like a combination of "truly very". 

            Marie-Jo Thério’s song “À Moncton” illustrates how Chiac uses the English word "go" as a noun but not a verb. Thério’s speaker is calling Gisèle just to talk because "... rien qui va on (Thériault 3)" meaning "there's nothing going on". She uses the French indicative present word "va" instead of "going" with the English preposition "on" to match the English phrase "going on" because "va on" is more relaxed than "going on." But later when the speaker is talking about making a change in her life she says, "Pis watch-moi ben quand j'aurai pris la go (Thériault 34)", meaning "then just watch me when I've made the go" (my translation). While a Chiac speaker would choose "va" as a verb, over "go", they would use "go" as a noun the way an English speaker might say "make a go of it". But while in English our use of "go" as a noun is usually similar to the word "try", the Chiac word "go" has more weight and implies an emphatic leap towards a goal. 

            Thério’s Chiac lyrics and the writing of other Acadian artists of her generation, such as Dano LeBlanc, reflect a braver approach to using Chiac in literature than previous generations. Baby Boomer France Daigle, for example, although she is said to have introduced the literary world to Chiac, seems to restrain herself from conjugating English verbs with French syntax as it is actually done in speech. This example from her 2011 novel Pour sûr illustrates her cautious approach to writing in Chiac: “Si que je switch la light back on pis que la maison explode, expect pas d’aouère ever again d’autres outils pour Father’s Day” (Cormier 12). This translates as, "If I switch the light back on and the house explodes, don't ever again expect any more tools for Father’s Day" (my translation). In this sentence, Daigle uses the three English verbs, "switch", "expect", and "explode". As her character is using the conditional tense in the first and second person singular, as a Chiac speaker they would probably conjugate an English verb with an "-ais" stem to say for example, "switchais". Regarding her use of the verb "explode" to convey "explodes", I suspect that a Chiac speaker would choose instead to simply use the French word "explose" because the voiced "z" sound of the "s" is more pleasant to pronounce. 

            It seems that Daigle has deliberately fallen short of having her Chiac speaking characters use French conjugations of English verbs, out of fear of alienating her Francophone readers. She admits in an interview that she is conflicted about the use of Chiac: "I’m faced with a dilemma I haven’t necessarily resolved. I was raised … to think that … Chiac … was laziness or failure" (Cabajsky 19). It is clear that she struggles between disapproval and grudging acceptance of Chiac. 

            The Silent Generation non-Chiac poems of Raymond Guy LeBlanc, through the timid expressions of Chiac in the novels of Baby Boomer France Daigle, to the unabashed use of Chiac by Gen-Xer Marie-Jo Thério, shows a progressive generational opening up of the dialect. This same progression can be seen as well outside of the world of art. In 1991, Chiac speaking students being interviewed for a documentary film, listed their spoken languages as French and English. But ten years later, when another group of the same age was asked what language they spoke, they answered “Chiac” (LeClerc 7). 

            To be unafraid of speaking Chiac is a newfound defiant freedom that emerged with the beginning of the 21st Century. It is very appropriate then that Marie-Jo Thério's contemporary Dano LeBlanc would consider the courage to speak Chiac as being a super power, and create a matching hero to wield that force. Three of LeBlanc's comic strips from his Acadieman website (with the Chiac text translated by me), will give examples of English borrowings that have been transformed by this Acadian vernacular. Each humorous interaction also offers a metaphor of how Chiac stands in relation to the dominant French and English languages that surround it. 

            In the Acadieman cartoon strip "La piscine" (The Swimming Pool) by Daniel LeBlanc, Acadieman is told at a public pool that he has to stop urinating in the pool. His surprised response is that everyone pisses in the pool. But he is told, "Yes, but not off the diving board (LeBlanc)." "Pissing in the pool" is a metaphor for using English in French, which every Francophone does to some degree, but mostly with English nouns such as "weekend". However, unlike most forms of Franglais, the Acadian vernacular of Chiac goes deeper than the usual code-switching. It also threads English verbs into the structure of French grammar and conjugates them as if they were French verbs. This can be understood as urinating off the diving board because it splashes and mixes English into the pool of French from an elevation. It raises both French and English to a new language that is neither. When an English word like "walk" is used as "walker", "walké", or "walkont" it is no longer merely a visitor in French but has taken up residence in the language and been made into an element of a creole. 

            In the first panel of an Acadieman cartoon entitled "La peur" (The Fear), Acadieman's friend Coquille talks in French about the common occurrence of the fear of heights. Then in the second panel we see Acadieman squatting in front of Coquille's open refrigerator with the crack of his wide buttocks shown to the viewer above his pants, and saying to Coquille, "As-tu d'la "grub"? Chu starvé. (LeBlanc) ", meaning "You got any grub? I'm starving." The English verb "to starve" is conjugated here as if it were a French verb. In the punchline, Coquille tells the viewer in French that what he is afraid of is widths. This has a double meaning, the most obvious being that the widths feared by Coquille are those of the wide buttocks of moochers like Acadieman, which are getting wider from eating his food. But the deeper sense is that Acadieman is feeding from a fridge full of Anglicisms. His incorporation of such words into the verb structure of French is feared to be widening the English influence on the dialect of Chiac. 

            In the first panel of a strip entitled "La skirt", Acadieman calls to a strange woman on the street, "Hey mademoiselle, j'aime ta skirt. J'aime la way qu'a hang (LeBlanc)." This translates as, "Hey miss, I like your skirt. I like the way it hangs." The English verb "hang" is changed here into something that is uniquely Chiac. In English one would not say, "I like the way it hang" because in the third person singular present tense there is always an "s" on the end of a verb. "Hang" in this case is treated like a French verb, most of which would not end with an "s" in the third person present tense, and even if it did, the "s" would not be pronounced. Also, the meaning of the English verb "hang" is changed here into a synonym for "fit", which has become common in Chiac but is rare in English. 

            In panel two, in response to the words he spoke in panel one, Acadieman is hit hard in the face by a swung purse. In panel three he is on his back and in pain as he says, "J'ai notice que rien que j'ai jamais dit m'a ever fait mal", which translates as, "I notice that nothing I ever say ever hurts me." Again, there is one meaning of this cartoon on the basic level and another as a metaphor about Chiac. Acadieman has committed what is considered to be a faux pas in approaching a strange woman on the street and singling out her appearance as the subject of initial communication, and he is punished for that. But in the Chiac related metaphor, Acadieman is being punished by a Francophone purist for speaking a language that is promiscuous with English. He tells us that what he says does not hurt him because Chiac is harmless among its speakers. But it is also a careless and natural speech that does not worry about propriety or grammatical correctness. 

            Acadieman is an irreverent representative of a vernacular that has a punk sensibility or rebelliousness that comes from being a language of the young. A creole formed from casual speech between consumers of media who live on the threshold between the French and English worlds cannot help but be somewhat irreverent. Acadieman is a superhero because he fearlessly or carelessly speaks Chiac. His vernacular is relaxed and one might even say that it is as lazy as Acadieman, because it is developed while spoken and while letting go of grammatical propriety. 

            Chiac's conjugation of English verbs with the kinbaku of French inflections, takes this interaction of languages beyond code-switching. It can be seen as a type of code weaving. In altering and fashioning words into a vocabulary that does not exist in English or French, Chiac effectively takes the language that is on top, and puts it on the bottom in the neighbourhood setting. "Chiac inscribes the linguistic conflict inside the dominated language, inversing in its very form the relationship between the two languages” (LeClerc 3). 

            The kind of code weaving that gives Chiac its power requires that the speaker be fluent in both French and English. It is also necessary that English be the outside language and Acadian French be the internal. That is how English words can be rendered more emotional by the conjugation factory of the Acadian mind, and be made to laugh and cry in new ways. 

                                                                  Works Cited 

Cabajsky, Andrea. “The Vivid Feeling of Creating: An Interview with France Daigle." Journals: Centre              for Digital Scholarship, UNB Libraries,    

            https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/scl/article/view/23054/26757 

Cormier, Matthew. "Complicating World Literature in the “Minor” Context: Translation and the 

             Acadian Literary Ecosphere." Journals: Centre for Digital Scholarship, UNB Libraries,

            https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/SCL/article/view/31528/1882526751 

Laparra, Manon. "Parole Manifeste: le Cas de la Littérature Acadienne Moderne." Revue de littérature

            comparée, Klincksieck, 2006, https://www.cairn.info/revue-de- litterature- comparee-2006-1- 

            page-71.html 

LeBlanc, Daniel Omer (Dano). “Acadieman.” Acadieman.com, Productions Mudworld, 2011, pdf, p8,

            https://acadieman.com/les-bd. 

LeClerc, Catherine. "Between French and English, Between Ethnography and Assimilation: Strategies

            for Translating Moncton’s Acadian Vernacular." Érudit, 2004,

            file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/Leclerc-2005-TTR___traduction,_terminologie,_r- daction.pdf Merkle, Denise. Francophone Dynamics in a Translated Canada: From the Margins to the Centre and

            Back, chrome-

            extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ntm.org.in/download/ttvol/Volume 7/Arti

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            %20M argins%20to%20the%20Centre%20and%20Back%20-%20Denise%20Merkle.pdf Thériault, Marie Josée. "À Moncton." Edited by Champs de Bacon les Editions du and Gestion son

            Image Ed, La Boîte aux paroles, https://laboiteauxparoles.com/titre/8624/a- moncton, lines 3, 34.

            It's nice to finally be free. Tomorrow I'll make my trip to St Lawrence Market to get some candy for my daughter. I'll see if I can get a haircut on Thursday and afterward maybe buy a new backpack. Mine's getting worn out. I'm hoping that maybe on Friday I can get an appointment with Parkdale Community Legal Services to discuss my landlord and the bedbug situation. I suspect however that I won't be able to get an appointment until after Christmas. 

            I grilled nine chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy and a beer while watching season 3, episode 9 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Granny has secretly sent the plane fare to the widow Poke to come out to LA and see her son Johnny. But Granny's extra secret agenda is to matchmake between Jed and the widow. But Jed figures out her plan. He also has a great line: "A widow knows all about men, but the only man who knows about her is dead." 

            Mr. Drysdale, Jane and Elly May go to pick up the widow at the airport. The widow Poke is obsessed with her son Johnny. He makes $1 million a year but he only sends her $5 a month, which she uses to pay off the life size picture she has of him. Whenever he puts out a record she sells a pig so she can buy it. 

            Later Jed has a talk with Emma and it's actually the same talk she wanted to have with him. She doesn't want to marry him. But Granny's been trying to matchmake Emma for twenty years and Jed for fifteen. So Jed and Emma agree on a plan to put a stop to it. They begin to behave like surfers and it upsets Granny terribly. Making her regret matching them up. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found none for the second night in a row. 

            I started going through my journal from June 7, 2020, on to pull out references to bedbugs and create a timeline for legal purposes to demonstrate my landlord's neglect.

December 21, 1992: I was very depressed over Christmas and money

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday morning there was no work at Canada Post. I called Marie to find her phone was disconnected and so I was depending on her to get in touch with me. I still couldn't unravel those Christmas lights. I finally got it done later only to find that they didn't work. I felt very depressed over my phone, money, and Christmas. It was so bad for a while that I couldn't function. I felt better later on but not much. I called Humber College about picking up my paycheque on Tuesday. I got a message from Lawrence Roberts that my new driving test would be on January 15. Mike Copping came by with two presents for my daughter, a comic book for me, and a Toblerone for Nancy. He went to bed early while I stayed up with a drink of brandy and read the comic.

Alan Reed

            On Monday morning I got up to pee at around 4:00 and saw a bedbug crawling in the top right corner of the old exit door at the head of my bed. It seems that the full-grown adults love that area while the smaller ones tend to hide themselves in cracks on the lower left side of the door. 

            I finished memorizing "Babe alone in Babylone" by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. I found one set on Ultimate Guitar and started transcribing them. I'll have that done tomorrow and look for some more. 

            I weighed 84 kilos before breakfast. 

            I spent two hours on my final English in the World essay and made some progress. I have four research sources of the minimum six and I'm only 300 words short of the minimum word count. I'm starting to think that I might be able to finish the paper by the end of Tuesday and then get on with my holiday. 

            I weighed 83.7 kilos before lunch and that seems to be a record low for that time. 

            I took a siesta from 14:00 to 15:30 and while lying in bed I had some good ideas for organizing my essay. 

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

            I weighed 83.4 kilos at 17:00, which matches the record low from five days ago. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:06. 

            I spent about two hours on my essay. I've now got quotes from five sources and my word count, without including the citations, is about 1800. I'm still hoping to finish it by the end of tomorrow. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and my last pork chop while watching season 3, episode 8 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jed gets a call from the Widow Poke back home and she says her son Johnny is on his way to Los Angeles. This puts Granny in a bad mood because she considers Johnny Poke to be one of the laziest no-accounts there is. She starts whooping Jethro in advance to prepare for when Johnny gets there to become a bad influence. She's lecturing Jethro in the kitchen but when her back is turned he sneaks out. Granny starts telling god that Jethro should be punished. A puppy comes in and sits in the chair where Jethro had been. Then a jet breaks the sound barrier and Granny turns around to see the puppy and thinks god has transformed Jethro. 

            Jed thinks Johnny Poke will be coming in on a box car and so he has Jethro drive him down to the freight yards to pick him up. Meanwhile Johnny is riding an expensive private train and signing autographs. It turns out that Johnny is an Elvis type teen idol with hit records. The main difference between him and Elvis is that Johnny needs an echo chamber because he can't sing. His train is approaching LA for his concert that night at The Hollywood Bowl, but so Johnny won't be torn apart by teenage girls at the station, Johnny's manager makes him put on hobo clothes and get off the train at the freight yard. 

            When Jed and Jethro find Johnny in old clothes at the freight yard they don't believe his talk about being rich and famous. They make him come back to the mansion and write a letter to his mother. When they get there Johnny doesn't want to stay. He says, "What I need is a good stiff belt!" Jed misunderstands but he thinks it's a good idea, so he takes off his belt. Johnny says he'll stay. Once he sees how Elly May has grown up and out he wants to stay even more. He tells Elly he wants some action and so Jed makes him chop wood. Johnny tries to sing and play guitar to prove to the Clampetts he's a star but he's horrible. Granny says Johnny needs punishing, then while Granny's back is turned Elly's pet skunk comes in and Johnny runs out. Granny's jug of moonshine pops and she turns and thinks she's turned Johnny into a skunk. 

            Johnny was played by Jesse Pearson who played a similar character in the hit musical Bye Bye Birdie. 

            Johnny's manager Eddie Colton was played by Alan Reed, who majored in journalism at Columbia and then got into acting. He became a master of dialects and worked steadily on Broadway. He was a frequent guest on the top shows of the radio era. He played Pancho Villa in Viva Zapata. He played J.B. Hafter on Mr. Adams and Eve and on The Bob Cummings Show. In 1960 he created the voice of Fred Flintstone and invented the catch phrase "Yabba dabba doo" when he was only asked to say "Yahoo!" 

            I searched for bedbugs and didn't find any. 

            I worked on my essay before bed. I've got the required minimum six research sources and the required minimum word count. All that's left to do is use my writing skills to combine my first essay with my presentation, and the new sources into an argument and hopefully have it done before the end of Tuesday.

December 20, 1992: The nature trail was even more slippery than the day before

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday the baby whined to get up long before I finally agreed to. I warmed up Saturday's oatmeal and made some toast with peanut butter. I took her for a walk along the nature trail in daylight this time and it was even more slippery than the day before. I put her to bed at around 15:30. Nancy called at 18:00 and said she would meet me at Main Station. I dressed my daughter in her sleep again. I lost $20 on the way and so I got another $20 from the Royal Bank machine and bought some Haagen-Dazs. I stayed up until hours after midnight.