Rachael Harris

            On Friday 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 and a couple of babies from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I turned the heat on before going to bed at 1:50. I got up to pee at 3:30, turned the heat back on and went back to sleep. I peed again at 4:30 and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the tape on my mattress but a lot more than usual were crawling around the baseboards. 

            I finished working out the chords for “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing it in French. On Saturday I’ll run through singing and playing my translation and then I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 90.4 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two sessions and as usual it went out of tune all the time. 

            I got rid of several images on paper that I’d been saving for collages. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 90.9 kilos at 18:05. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:44. 

            I digitized the cassette tape of a Christian and the Lions performance at the Rivoli for a U of T Bookstore event. The band that night consisted of me on vocals, Tom Smarda on electric guitar, Steve Lowe on acoustic guitar, Arjan (as Doctor Chicago) on bass, and Jim Bravo on drums. We did “Hungry Hippunk Goes to Work”, “Calendar Girl”, “Me and Gravity”, “Thin Red Line”, “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”, “The Next State of Grace”, “Tropic of Ulcer” and “Angeline”. The Rivoli sound system only recorded the show on one track. The next tape is of an El Mocambo concert and that’s on two tracks. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching season 4, episode 5 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            Scottie is working on improving the range of the transporter. He thinks he can beat the current record by 2000 kilometers. The current record is held by his academy rival and so to make his triumph even more sweet he plans to transport his own childhood puppet doll Little Ricky directly into his rival’s quarters. 

            Spock has been feeling disconnected ever since the incident on the USS Griffin when he hallucinated that his former fiancé T’Pring cut off the points of his ears when in fact he actually did it himself. He has the urge now to return to Vulcan logic and so he connects with the very logical T’Pring and arranges for her to come aboard to talk in exchange for passage back to Vulcan, which is where the Enterprise is headed. 

            Scottie has Spock go out in a shuttle to deploy relay buoys for his transporter experiment. When he tries to transport Little Ricky the entire crew, including Scottie begins to transport and from Spock’s view the Enterprise itself transports but then rematerializes moments later. When he returns to the Enterprise he finds that everyone has been transformed into a puppet version of themselves. The entire crew is mostly useless now because their puppet hands cannot work the consoles or handle tools. Spock has no choice but to do everything himself. 

            The Enterprise is confronted by an Orion pirate ship from which Captain Ch’rol hails them seeing that they seem to be dead in space and that they detect only one life sign on their ship. Captain Pike assures her that everything is fine but when Uhura tries to close the channel with her puppet hands she accidentally opens for Ch’rol a visual view of the bridge. She seems more amused than shocked that the Enterprise crew are all puppets except for Spock. 

            The Orions board the Enterprise and easily overwhelm the soft bodied puppets who escape to Pike’s quarters. Pike has recently acquired a new chair that responds only to his body but now he can’t use it, however neither can Ch’rol. 

            Spock is captured but he refuses to give them the command codes. They capture Pike and eject him into space in front of Spock. From Pike’s window the other puppets see Pike outside but see that since he is only a puppet, he is still alive. They get Pike back into the ship and begin to realize that as puppets they have some advantages over the Orions. They begin to plot to regain control of the ship with those advantages in mind. They gang up on one of the pirates. 

            Ejachi, the pirate who has been interrogating Spock captures T’Pring without knowing she has allowed him to do so. He sets T’Pring’s puppet hand on fire to persuade Spock to give him the codes, but T’Pring sets Ejachi’s clothing on fire with her burning hand. 

            The puppets and Spock return to the bridge and attack the Orions. Spock throws Pike at Ch’rol and in struggling to disengage him she gets up from Pike’s chair. Spock seats himself there and Ch’rol commands him to get up but he just silently looks at her. She is confused by his not speaking and points her phaser at him. Pike informs her that Spock is conserving his energy since during the fight he turned off life support, which only impedes the Orions and Spock. Ch’rol and the rest of the Orions collapse. Spock also loses consciousness but wakes up in sickbay. The crew are still puppets but they tell him that Scottie has figured out a way to reverse the transporter accident. However, they all just want to experience floating freely in space without fear of death before they are transformed back to their organic selves. All except T’Pring, who remains with Spock. They share an intimate moment and they kiss while she’s still a puppet. But then Spock wakes up to find the non puppet T’Pring with him. She says he’s been unconscious since the transporter accident and he realizes this whole adventure was only a dream. 

            Ch’rol was played by Rachael Harris, who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1989. She made her professional acting debut in The Sound of Music on The Showboat Majestic in Cincinnati, Ohio. She auditioned in New York from 1990 to 1993 before landing her first TV commercial. She made her film debut in The Treehouse Trolls in 1992. She made her TV debut in Seaquest DSV in 1993. She joined the Groundlings improv and sketch comedy troupe in 2000 and now teaches at their school in Los Angeles. She was a The Daily Show correspondent front from 2002 to 2003. She co-starred on Fat Actress, Surviving Jack, Matters of Love and Dating, and Suits. She co-starred in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Mother of the Bride, Notes from the Underbelly, Surviving Jack, Lucifer, and Goosebumps. She starred in Natural Selection.

October 24, 1996: I posed for artists day and night

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I posed at Northern Secondary School and went home for a while. That night I worked for a Design class in room 235 of The Ontario College of Art.

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.