Demore Barnes

            On Thursday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and only picked up a few bedbugs from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I turned the heat off before going to bed at 1:33. I got up to pee at 4:00, turned the heat back on, went back to sleep until 5:00 and turned the heat off again. After yoga I found quite a few bedbugs stuck to the tape on my mattress and a few hanging out around the baseboards. 

            I memorized the second verse of “C’est ici (It’s Right Here) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for all but the last two lines of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the whole song done on Friday and then I’ll run through singing and playing it. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I ran into Lee at the bike stands. We chatted for about an hour before we realized we were both going into the supermarket and could have talked while shopping. She followed me while I picked up seven bags of grapes, some bananas, a pack of New Zealand beef (ground I assume in Canada), two packs of Full City Dark coffee, marinara, salsa, and a lint roller. Lee was looking for vegan ice cream but they don’t have it anymore at Freshco. I did a price match on the grapes with the Walmart price of $6.48 a kilo. Lee claims she’s developed a body spray to stop bedbugs from biting, made out of alcohol, lavender, and clove oil. I’m skeptical. According to AI, body sprays have limited to zero effect. Bedbugs are attracted to their victim exhaling carbon dioxide. If there’s blood to be drunk under the skin I doubt if they give a fuck what you spray your skin with. Lee went over to Metro to get her vegan ice cream and I went home.

            I weighed 91.1 kilos at 19:55. 

            It was almost 19:45 when I got home so I started cooking supper. 

            I would have gotten caught up in my journal tonight if I hadn’t spent so much time chatting with Lee. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching season 4, episode 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            A Federation probe has shut down and drifted across the demarcation line into Klingon space. Starfleet has tasked the Enterprise to recover it but the ship itself can’t cross the line and so Una commands a secret mission in a shuttle with Dr. M’Benga and Uhura. They are forced to land on Ma’taar where the human-like population is occupied and oppressed by Klingons. 

            Ma’taar orbits a star that inhibits the perception of colour and so the episode is in black and white, enhancing the film noir theme of the story. 

            On the planet there is a resistance movement and there are collaborators with the Klingons. Everyone is dressed in 1940s style and wearing fedoras. 

            While walking in the street Una is mistaken for a boss named Nevette and so she just rolls with it and takes on the role. Nevette is a leader of collaborators but she is really a resistance leader. The Klingon leader is Kor who appeared in the original Star Trek. 

            At a popular bar a woman has been captured and is being beaten for information. Una tells the interrogators to leave her alone with the woman. The resistance fighter gives Una a sequence of numbers just before biting a poison capsule in her mouth and killing herself. 

            Uhura is arrested by the Klingons for not carrying an identification card. Una and M’benga try to find Nevette’s office to get a card to free her. Kor uses a mind probe as a torture device on Uhura. She resists and she also learns the plans of the Klingon overlords because they do not realize that she understands Klingon and many other alien languages. 

            Una and M’Benga find Nevette’s office and Nevette’s dead body in her freezer. Una is able to vouch for Uhura to Kor and she is freed. 

            Una follows through with Nevette’s mission to detonate the barrier that surrounds the city and keeps people from escaping. Before she can use it she is attacked by Nevette’s killer. They fight and he gets away but Una has planted the detonator on him and it goes off. 

            Una, Uhura and M’Benga are able to return to the Enterprise. 

            Kor was played by Canadian actor Demore Barnes, who made his professional and TV debut on the YTV sketch comedy show Squawk Box in 1994. That lasted one season and then he joined the cast of the CBC kids show Street Cents for three years. He made his film debut in White Lies in 1998. He co-starred in The Associates, for which he was nominated for two Gemini Awards. After two years he moved to LA where he studied under acting coach Larry Moss. He co-starred in series The Unit and Law and Order: Special Victims’ Unit. .

October 23, 1996: The Heartbreak of Psoriasis

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I posed again at Northern Secondary School. At 18:00 I had an appointment with the dermatologist at Bloor Medical at Bathurst and Bloor where my GP’s office is . The guy was weird. He asked me why I was looking at him funny and I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He told me I had psoriasis on my elbows and knees and prescribed a steroid cream called Betaderm, so I picked it up on the way home.

Dave Foley

            On Wednesday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and only picked up one bedbug from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I sat down at the computer to finish posting my blog and fell asleep. I woke up and finished it at 1:45, brushed my teeth and turned the heat on before going to bed at 2:05. I got up to pee at 3:45, turned the heat off, and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I found a couple of bedbugs on the baseboards. 

            I memorized the first verse of “C’est ici (It’s Right Here) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the chorus of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. Next is the third verse, which should have the same chords as verses 1 and 2. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since October 10. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune for all but a couple of songs. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before lunch. That’s the kindest I’ve been to the scale in the early afternoon since October 13. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade.

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

            I weighed 90.75 kilos at 18:10. It’s been three months since I was that light in the evening. 

            I was a little behind on my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, potato wedges, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 4, episode 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. This is a silly story. 

            The Enterprise officers are over worked and getting uptight. Scotty and Ortega are at each other’s throats and so everyone is ordered to take shore leave for a week on a resort planet where the atmosphere is literally intoxicating and effects everyone differently. 

            Scotty and Ortegas wake up in her room and Scotty is particularly still stoned. Ortegas is wearing a cast. There is no electronic communication on the resort, so Dendru the manager gives them a letter to deliver to Captain Pike. As they look for Pike they run across the various regular crewmembers involved in each their own wacky activities. Una is singing karaoke “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in Klingon. Uhura has totally let her hair down and is having a continuous wild party in her room. Spock, while not outwardly any different says he is hallucinating that James Kirk is in his room and he also thinks Ortega and Scottie are plants. La’an is picking fights in a yoga class. Chapel is playing bingo. Pike is getting a face tattoo. 

            The letter for Pike is that the alien diplomats the Rodaxians who Pike was on the way to meet have decided to come to him two weeks early. 

            Scottie and Ortegas realize they have lost the shuttle. They could use a tricorder to find it but Scottie left his in the shuttle. They borrow Uhura’s but Scottie breaks it. Spock mind melds with a plant and learns the location of the shuttle, which has been stolen by a gang. They take La’an to get it. She fights with the gang and becomes their leader but now she needs a trophy to show her gang that she is not telling Ortegas and Scottie where the shuttle is for free so she takes Scottie’s favourite shirt. The operating chip for the shuttle is missing but it turns out it’s in Ortega’s cast, which is fake as it turns out she has no broken arm. 

            Then Ortegas and Scottie are kidnapped and wake up tied to chairs with bags over their heads. But it turns out they hired the manager of the resort to kidnap them.

            Scottie discovers a bomb on the shuttle that is slightly bigger than a softball but extremely powerful and if he lets go of it the sphere will explode. He volunteers to travel with it in a shuttle where it will explode harmlessly and Spock will try to beam him out at the moment of explosion. Ortegas insists on going with Scottie. They bond and their made up rivalry dissolves into friendship. 

            Spock discovers that Kirk was not a hallucination and that he’s been telling him his deepest secrets. 

            Pike is forced to meet with the Rodaxian diplomats while still wearing a face tattoo and being still slightly stoned. They are insulted by his behaviour until the shuttle explodes outside the window and they think the Enterprise went to great expense to perform a very special ritual that is sacred in their culture. 

            Dendru was played by Dave Foley, who dropped out of high school to do stand-up comedy. He met Kevin McDonald in an improv class at Toronto Second City Training Centre and they formed a comedy team. In 1984 they merged with another comedy team to form Kids in the Hall. He made his TV debut in Anne of Avonlea in 1985. He co-starred on News Radio, Fargo, How To Be a Gentleman, Dr. Ken, He starred on Kids in the Hall from 1988 to 1995, Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town, Celebrity Poker Showdown, Thank God You’re Here, Spun Out, Prep and Landing, He made his film debut in High Stakes in 1986. He starred in The Wrong Guy, Monster Brawl, Last Call, Freeloaders, Party Central, Revengeance, A Bug’s Life, Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. He co-starred in It’s Pat, Hacks, Dick, Swindle, Intern Academy, Netherbeast, Blast from the Past, Postal, Monsters University,

October 22, 1996: I hosted the launch of Cad's Jizz Magazine

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I posed in the morning at Northern Secondary School. I usually posed nude at that high school but this time I was asked to wear a G-string but I’m not sure why. Maybe it was an exhibition day and there were guests visiting. I wore my leather jock strap for the first time. 

            In the evening as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. Our feature that night was the launch of the first issue of Cad’s Jizz Magazine, put together by Cad Lowlife (who now calls himself Cad Gold Jr.) and Bruce March. In addition to the regular open stage there were readings by Cad and maybe by me from the magazine. It was racist, sexist, and despite all that it was not politically correct, but it was kind of funny.

Cathy Cavadini

            On Tuesday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few bedbugs from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck, turned the heat on, and went to bed around 1:40. I got up to pee just before 3:00 and turned the heat off. That way it wasn’t so obnoxiously hot when I got up at 5:00. 

            I published “I Find it Super Chic”, my translation of “Je trouve ça coperchic” by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. The next Vian song on my list is “C’est ici” (It’s Right Here) and there’s audio for that one so I’ll start memorizing it tomorrow.

            I worked out the chords for the second verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. I established the first chord for the chorus. 

            I weighed 90.55 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since October 11.

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it went out of tune about half the time.

            I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and my pillow. I shook out my sheet and comforter. 

            I have three storage containers full of images I’ve collected for collage. I went through one of the containers and got rid of about half. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I picked through their grapes and managed to get two bags of red ones and one of the green that were relatively firm. I also bought two bags of oranges. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos at 18:25. October 4 was the last evening when I was so easy on the scale. 

            I was a bit behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made a fresh batch of gravy from roast beef drippings and had some with a potato and a slice of roast beef while watching season 4, episode 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. This was a spooky story. 

            Spock and La’an are in a shuttle bringing Kirk back from a leadership conference when they discover the long lost USS Griffin floating dead in space. They beam aboard to investigate. There are no life signs, no life support, and there is no power and yet Kirk hears a baby crying. Power and life support comes on. La’an sees a woman who calls her by name and says she’s been waiting for her, before disappearing. 

            Spock detects negatively charged ions, which in pseudo science indicates the presence of ghosts.

            Spock investigates sick bay while La’an and Kirk head for the bridge. Kirk is scheduled to meet his newborn son David and tells La’an that his relationship with the boy’s mother Carol didn’t work out because she’s afraid he’ll die in space. 

            They access the ships computer and learn that the woman La’an encountered was Security Chief Rose Harper. She reported erratic and violent behaviour among the crew and beamed all the officers off the ship. 

            Meanwhile in sick bay, while at first it was empty, suddenly there are bodies covered in sheets on all of the tables and one of them sits up. It’s his fiancé T’Pring who is as surprised to be there as Spock is to see her. She says moments ago she was on Vulcan. He tells her she is not real but a projection of his mind. She pulls a phaser and shoots him. 

            Outside the ship they see that their shuttlecraft has been destroyed. 

            Kirk thinks his son David is inside the communications equipment and begins tearing through wires to try to reach him. 

            La’an is surrounded by zombies that used to be the crew and they tell her she’s one of them.

            T’Pring has strapped Spock to a biobed and and tells him he needs to come closer to his human half and so she cuts off the pointed tips of his ears. Then she plans to move Spock’s heart to where a human heart should be but Captain Pike, Una, Uhura, Ortegas, and Kirk’s brother Sam beam aboard the ship and stop her. 

            La’an tries to take the turbolift to the bridge but it keeps taking her to deck 17 where she finds Harper’s quarters and while watching her video log entry she turns into La’an. La’an breaks the screen. Uhura and La’an try to beam Ortegas back to the Enterprise but something goes wrong. Uhura accuses La’an of beaming Ortegas into herself. She says she put her in the buffer for her own safety. 

            Una takes a scalpel and begins cutting open her own stomach. 

            There is a crack in the window and Sam is sucked out into space, blood first. 

            Spock seems to transport himself back to the Enterprise simply by repeating a Vulcan mantra.

            Pike starts chopping off his own fingers with a kitchen knife. 

            La’an stabs Kirk and then they are both beamed back to the Enterprise. Pike, Uhura, Una, Ortegas and Sam were never on the Griffin. Spock’s ears are fixed. It seems he cut them off himself in momentary madness. 

            La’an watches the Griffin being towed away and thinks she sees Harper in a window gesturing towards her. 

            The voice of the Griffin computer was done by Cathy Cavadini, who made her film debut in Starchaser: The legend of Orin in 1985. She did the voice of Blossom in The Powerpuff Girls TV series and the movie. She sang “Dreams to Dream” in An American Tale: Feivel Goes West, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Song. She was the speaking and singing voice of Mary in the animated feature Babes in Toyland.

October 21, 1996: I posed all day at Northern Secondary

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday I posed from 10:30 to 15:20 at Northern Secondary School. It was my first time back there since the spring.

Saffron Burrows

            On Monday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and didn’t pick up many bedbugs. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck, turned the heat on, and went to bed around 1:40. I slept right through to the 5:00 alarm and turned the heat off. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and there were a few below the baseboards and some stuck to the carpet tape. 

            I revised my translation of “Je trouve ça coperchic” (I Find it Super Chic) by Boris Vian and since there’s no audio for the song I didn’t bother to memorize it. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog and tomorrow I’ll publish it. 

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. The second verse should have the same chords and then I’ll need to work out the chorus. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.65 kilos at 18:10. 

            I was a little behind in my journal and worked on catching up. I roasted an Australian beef eye of round and had a slice with a potato and the last of my gravy while watching season 4, episode 1 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. 

            The Enterprise is sent on a mission to observe a category 10 interplanetary squall. Commander Pelia is the only member of the crew who has seen one before and she says she was in the police box at the time (She is implying that she was once a companion of the Doctor. This is the second time there’s been a hint that Star Trek and Doctor Who are in the same universe. In the last season of Doctor Who someone comments that that the Tardis is like Star Trek and the Doctor says, “We should visit them sometime”). They receive a distress signal from inside the storm and attempt a rescue. The Enterprise gets caught in a vortex and gets thrown to an unknown location. The Enterprise is without power and their warp drive needs iridium to be restarted. They detect some on a nearby planet and so Una, Singh, and Ortega take a shuttle to the planet. But their path to the iridium is blocked by a large life sign they haven’t seen yet. 

            Meanwhile The Enterprise is snagged in an energy field by an alien spacecraft. Pike invites the alien commander aboard the Enterprise. Spock discovers that the phenomenon actually sent them 65, million years in the past and that the planet the shuttle crew landed on is Earth. The large life form the away team detected is a tyrannosaurus rex. The aliens that have captured the Enterprise are Martians.

            Una stuns the T-Rex with her phaser by shooting it in the mouth. They are able to collect the iridium. 

            The Martian commander and her entourage do not have transporters but the Martians have developed the technology of phasing and board the Enterprise by passing through the hull. Commander Cassell says the Martians are at war with the Dol’drm who are insect-like creatures impossible to communicate with. Pike asks for a chance to try to get through to them. It seems that Cassell agrees but later she and her entourage phase into engineering and steal an antimatter storage pod, which she plans to use as a weapon against the Dol’drm. 

            Before the away team can leave prehistoric Earth they are threatened by a large dinosaur but Laan instinctively punches it with incredible strength and it runs away. She breaks her hand but feels no pain. 

           The Enterprise is repaired and pursues Cassell to the fifth planet in the solar system, which is the Dol’drm homeworld between Mars and Jupiter. Cassell fires the antimatter at the planet and Pike is prepared to destroy it but then stops and allows it to be blown up so it won’t exist in our time. 

           The explosion is what they need in order to return to their own time and so the Enterprise enters the blast. 

            Spock calculates that it is the destruction of the Dol’drm homeworld that created the asteroid belt. It is a piece of Dol’drm that hit the Earth and killed off the dinosaurs. Cassell’s actions also shifted the orbit of Mars to take away its ability to support life. In defeating the Dol’drm she doomed her planet. But M’Benga says some of Cassell’s DNA has spread throughout the galaxy. 

            Pike picks up the book A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs from his library. In the story John Carter is also transported to the distant past when Mars was thriving with life. 

            The distress signal the Enterprise investigated was their own from 65 million years ago. They created the storm that they were investigating and that both sent them back and later forward in time.

            Una is promoted to commander. 

            Cassell was played by Saffron Burrows, who was raised by socialists. She sold the Socialist Worker Newsletter for pocket money. She studied drama since she was a child. At 15 she became a successful model. She made her TV debut in Les cinq dernières minutes in 1992. She made her film debut in In the Name of the Father in 1993. He starred in The Loss of Sexual Innocence, Miss Julie, Perfect Creature, The Galindez File, and The Guitar. She co-starred in Circle of Friends, Hotel de Love, Lovelife, Nevada, Timecode, Wing Commander, Deep Blue Sea, Gangster no. 1, Enigma, Tempted, Klimt, Reign Over Me, Shrink, Dangerous Parking, Dangerous Waters, and Canary Black. She co-starred on Boston Legal, My Own Worst Enemy, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Mozart in the Jungle, and You.