October 16, 1996: I became enamoured with a dancer named Amanda

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I went to the House of Lancaster where I became enamoured with an Argentinian dancer named Amanda. I spent a lot of money on lap dances.

Gillian Anderson

            On Wednesday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape all around my newly cleaned bottom sheet. Since I’d just done the laundry a few hours before there was no need to lint-roll the curtains and my bed or to shake out my top sheet and comforter. I fell asleep at my computer while posting my blog and didn’t finish it and get to bed until after 2:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and only found a few on the carpet tape and on the wall. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian. On Thursday I’ll run through singing and playing at least the French version and maybe my translation.

            I revised my translation of the third verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s just one verse left. 

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I removed the fresh carpet tape from my mattress to vacuum. I had hoped to just take off the fitted sheet with the tape attached because it’s expensive to keep surrounding it with fresh tape but it got jumbled. I pulled up the old carpet tape from the floor and vacuumed there as well. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and slept longer than usual again. It was too late to take a bike ride downtown so I just went to Ossington and Bloor. On the way home I stopped at Freshco to see if they had any firm grapes but they didn’t so I just bought two bags of oranges and a pack of Sponge Towels. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos at 18:10. I was still a blog post behind and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedges, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore Lager while watching the movie Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma with my daughter Astrid on Discord. It’s one of Astrid’s favourite films and I’m glad she shared it with me because it was great. 

            Kris Williams is a young filmmaker hired to direct the reboot of the Camp Miasma slasher franchise. The killer in the franchise is a transgender character named Little Death (the name is derived from the French “La petite mort”, which refers to orgasm or the moment after). 

            Little Death’s origin story is told to some teenage campers and the teller claims that the child was brought up by hermaphrodite parents who raised him and her as a boy one day and as a girl the next. As a teenager we see the child dressed on one side as a woman and on the other as a man. 

            The transgender teenager was drowned by hateful teenagers at the summer camp and sunk into the bottom of the lake. But then the vengeful killer emerged wearing a wall vent as a mask and carrying a spear to slash and puncture anyone in sight. The victims don’t bleed slowly but rather shoot blood out of their bodies like an ejaculation. 

            Kris Williams has been tasked with making a sequel to the original franchise that makes the transphobic premise of the original films more palatable to modern audiences. Kris is determined with getting the now 60 year old but still beautiful Billy Presley who played the final victim in the first movie to star in her reboot. She is obsessed with the look in her character’s eye at the moment she was killed by Little Death while uncomfortably losing her virginity in the original film and she wants to recapture that moment. She tracks Billy down to the abandoned campground where Camp Miasma was filmed and where she lives alone. Billy tells Kris that during the final scene in Camp Miasma she was actually being sexually assaulted but then she began seeing herself through the eyes of Little Death and at the moment her character was killed she had her first orgasm. Kris admits that she can only enjoy sex if she imagines herself as the final victim in a slasher film. 

            Billy convinces Kris that Little Death actually exists and lives in a hole at the bottom of the lake where all movies come from. Kris pitches this to the studio executives and they humour her but obviously think she has lost her mind. 

            Kris then returns to Camp Miasma where it has suddenly changed from winter to summer. The real Little death begins pursuing her as she runs with her boobs bouncing under her t-shirt feeling and looking alive and sexy, as Little Death slashes everyone she knows. All of the studio executives who arrive to tell her that they will make the move the was she has imagined it and they are also bloodily slashed to death.

            Little Death chases Kris to a cabin where Billy is waiting for her with rose petals scattered on the bed. They make love and Little Death arrives to pierce them both at the same time at the moment they both orgasm before dying. The next morning Kris and Billy come back to life, covered in each other’s blood. The go hand in hand to the gas station to buy movie watching snacks and look forward to the next time they will be killed by Little Death while making love. 

            Billy was played by Gillian Anderson, who lived in Britain from the age of 2 to 11. She easily switches between British and US accents. She started acting in high school. As a teenager she was mohawk-haired and nose-pierced punk and a fan of Skinny Puppy and The Dead Kennedys. She was arrested on graduation night for trying to glue the locks shut at her high school. At 19 she studied at the national Theatre of Great Britain Summer Acting Program at Cornell University. She completed her education at the Goodman Theatre School at De Paul University in Chicago with a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree. She made her professional theatrical debut in Absent Friends at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1990. She made her film debut in The Turning in 1992. She made her TV debut in Class of ’96 in 1993. She starred for 11 years as Dana Scully on The X-Files, and for which she won an Emmy Award. She wrote and directed the season 7, episode 17 story “all things” and was the first woman to do so. Her character inspired many young women to enter the studies of medicine and law enforcement. This phenomena is studied academically as The Scully Effect. She starred in the British series The Fall. She co-starred in the series Hannibal. She co-starred in the British series Sex Education, She played Margaret Thatcher in The Crown (for which she won her second Emmy Award). She starred in Playing By Heart, The House of Mirth, The Mighty Celt, Straight Heads, Boogie Woogie, No Pressure, Scoop, UFO, She co-starred in The X-Files: Fight the Future, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, The Last King of Scotland, Shadow dancer, Viceroy’s House, Tron: Ares, Chicago Cab, The Mighty, A Cock and Bull Story, How to Lose friends and Alienate People, Johnny English Reborn, I’ll Follow You Down, Robot Overlords, Sold, Crooked House, White Bird, Robin Robin, Room on the Broom, The Spy Who Dumped me, The Sunlit Night, The Pale Blue Eye, The Julia Set, Animals, She narrated the British documentary series Future Fantastic. She moved to London, England in 2002 where she says it is easier to be oneself and one is less harassed by the press. She made her West End debut in What the Night is For in 2002. She says there is no freedom of speech in the US anymore. She was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2016. She co-wrote the novel A Vision of Fire and two sequels that became The Earthen Saga Trilogy. She co-wrote WE: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, and has stated that by “Women” she includes trans women as well. In 2022 she launched a podcast called What Do I Know?

Donnelly Rhodes

            On Tuesday after midnight I added fresh carpet tape to 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. As usual most of the bedbugs were on the living room side of the bedroom curtains. I shook out my sheet and comforter on the deck and went to bed a little after 1:30. I woke up around 3:30 because I sort of had to pee but drifted back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and found some stuck to the tape but also a few crawling on the walls just above the baseboards. 

            I worked out the chords for the fifth and sixth verses of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian. The fifth verse had the same chords as the first verse but the sixth verse was not musically the same as the second. That’s half the song anyway. 

            I revised my translation of the chorus and some of the third verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 30. 

            In the early afternoon I packed up my laundry and bedding, including the curtains that hang over the bedroom-living room door. Both knobs that go over the bedroom curtains had bedbug nests. I was finished with the laundry a little after 16:00. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos at 16:30. 

            I took a siesta after lunch and slept until 18:30. I always have a good sleep on freshly clean sheets. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos at 18:50. That’s the same as the evening of September 30. 

            I was still one blog post behind and worked on catching up.

            I had a potato with gravy and a heated up wing steak while watching episode 13 of the TV series Custer. 

            The story opens with a stagecoach station under attack by Cheyenne and Custer and his prisoner Colonel Charrington taking shelter behind the overturned wagon. Custer is escorting Charrington to his court martial. Custer manages to kills a couple of Sioux and takes two stage horses and moccasins. He and Charrington escape the attack. 

            The Cheyenne leader War Cloud learns from one of the dying braves that it was Custer that killed him and so the hunt begins. 

            Charrington thinks they’ve lost their hunters but Custer says if he believes that he doesn’t know Cheyenne. Charrington says he fought 400 Cheyenne at Blue Creek. Custer says 250 of them were women and children, Charrington says, “That’s a lie!” “And the rest were weaponless and camped under a flag of truce after turning their weapons in at Fort Lyons.” “I intend to prove that’s a lie!” “You’re going to have to!” Custer tells him to dismount because they are walking from here on. Charrington refuses but Custer tells him War Cloud will be able to track him more easily if he stays mounted. Custer plans to outsmart War Cloud by taking the long way around on foot while wearing the moccasins they took. 

            War Cloud tells Brave Bull that Custer has the heart of a Sioux and so they need to hunt him like a Sioux. He figures that Custer has gone into the Black Hills, which is true. Brave Bull arrives below where Custer and Charrington are hiding in the rocks. Custer stands up to taunt Brave Bull. Charrington fires his pistol to clear a holding rock that frees a boulder to tumble down and kill Brave Bull. Custer says he’s just endangered their lives by firing his gun. Custer says War Cloud is a brilliant tactician and commands one of the finest light cavalries in the world. Charrington wants to take Brave Bull’s scalp for the $20 bounty but Custer stops him. When Charrington’s canteen is empty he throws it away but Custer says they might find water and besides they could use a canteen as a weapon. 

            They attack two braves that are tracking them because now Custer says they need ponies. Make up your mind. Custer takes an arrow in the shoulder. They kill the riders but the horses get away. Charrington has to cut the arrow barb out of Custer’s wound. 

            They need a weapon to deal with the waiting War Cloud when they clear the mountains and hit the plains. Custer fills the empty canteen with gunpowder and adds two bullets. They arrive above War Cloud’s camp. They light the fuse and throw the canteen and the explosion kills one warrior. 

            In a rainstorm Custer and Charrington take shelter in a cave. While there Charrington argues that while he was top of his class at West Point it was Custer who got the glory. Custer says he got field duty by riding 200 kilometers in a day to get General Winfield Scott the wild strawberries he loved. Custer says he cheated, begged and blackmailed to advance but luck had very little to do with it. Charrington points out that the newspapers singled Custer out as the “Boy General” even though three other young men got the same advancement at the same time. So luck had a lot to do with it. Charrington says when he attacked the Cheyenne at Blue Creek he was trying to emulate Custer’s massacre of the Cheyenne at Washita. Charrington says he did the same thing at Blue Creek but got branded a murderer. 

            The next day they are on the plain. Custer puts his ear to the ground and hears War Cloud’s horses coming. They take shelter in a gulley. War Cloud and two men ride past them. Custer captures a live rattlesnake and puts it in a bag to use as a weapon later. 

            The next day they are climbing a butte when War Cloud and his men spot them. Bent Arm climbs after them. Custer and Charrington push a boulder down at him but he dodges it. Custer tells Charrington to head for Fort Hays on his own while he draws War Cloud away. Custer reaches the top of the butte and far below is water. He’s confronted by Bent Arm and his axe. Custer tosses the rattlesnake at him and Bent Arm falls backward. War Cloud approaches and fires his rifle just as Custer leaps off the cliff to the water. War Cloud smiles in admiration as he sees Custer swim to shore. But Charrington is waiting and has two bullets in his pistol. He seems to think if he kills Custer he’ll come out as the hero. He pulls the trigger but it only clicks. Custer says he removed the bullets last night. Charrington attacks but Custer easily subdues him and they continue back to Fort Hays for Charrington’s court martial. 

            War Cloud was played by Canadian actor Donnelly Rhodes, who was the son of Canadian playwright Ann Henry. He trained as a National Park warden in Manitoba, and was an airman mechanic for the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII. He studied at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and was in the first graduating class of the National Theatre School of Canada. He joined the Stratford Festival in 1963. He became a contract player for Universal Pictures. He starred in The Hard Part Begins, He co-starred in Oh Heavenly Dog, Urban Safari, He starred in the Canadian series Danger Bay and Famous Jury Trials. He co-starred in the Canadian series Sidestreet and Da Vinci’s Inquest (for which he was nominated for four Gemini Awards and won one). He played Phillip Chancellor II on The Young and the Restless from 1974 to 1975. He co-starred in 38 episodes of Soap and 27 episodes of the later version of Battlestar Galactica (as the smoking doctor). He co-starred in the radio series Canadia 2056. He said that if he hadn’t been an actor he would have become a naval architect. He was married five times.

October 15, 1996: Our feature poet was Marjorie Rebeiro

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of The Gladstone Hotel. Our featured poet was my landlady Marjorie Rebeiro whose writing I always liked.

October 14, 1996: My landlady cooked a turkey

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday it was Thanksgiving and I think my daughter was there that day too. My landlady Marjorie roasted a turkey and I made something as well. Cad, Anna, and Raven came.

Adam Williams

            On Monday after midnight I added fresh carpet tape to 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. As usual most of the bedbugs were on the living room side of the bedroom curtains. I couldn’t shake out my sheet and comforter because the deck was wet. I turned the heat on and went to bed just before 2:00. I woke up just before 4:00 to pee and turn the heat off. I went back to bed until 5:00. After yoga there were quite a few bedbugs stuck to the tape and a few crawling freely. 

            I worked out the chords for the fourth verse of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian. I think the fourth verse completes the pattern and verses 5 to 8 and 9 to 12 will have the same chords as 1 to 4. But I’ll find out for sure on Tuesday. 

            I finished memorizing “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll finish revising my translation and start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since October 3. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the second of four sessions and it went out of tune most of the time. 

            I weighed 92.25 kilos before lunch. That’s the hardest I’ve been on the scale in the early afternoon since October 1. 

            I took a siesta and slept until 16:40 so by the time I brushed my teeth it was too late for a bike ride downtown and almost too tardy for a ride to Ossington and Bloor but I went there. 

            I weighed 91.2 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was still a blog post behind and worked on catching up. 

            I grilled two wing steaks and had one with potato wedges and gravy while watching episode 12 of the TV series Custer. 

            Custer and Sergeant Bustard are escorting John Glixton of the railroad, scouting the area that’s going to be surveyed before the tracks are laid down. They reach the border of Fredonia, which is in the path of the railroad. Custer is surprised to learn that Glixton already sent his crew into Fredonia. Fredonia is an area staked out by ex-Confederates trying to set up their own country (This is fiction. There was a Republic of Fredonia attempted in Texas when Mexico still controlled it. It was a first attempt by settlers to declare independence from Mexico. There were communities of Confederates established in Brazil and some of their descendants are still there). 

           They find the survey crew but they are immediately surrounded and disarmed by the leader of Fredonia, Zebediah Jackson and his men. After disarming the crew, Jackson allows them to leave on foot and unarmed. Glixton tells Jackson a special act of the United States Congress gives him the right to be there. Jackson tells him he is no longer in the United States and they are his prisoners. He lets them mount up and escorts them into the settlement of Fredonia. They have their own army made up of the male citizens. When they are not drilling they are working the field or building the town. Jackson orders Bustard and Glixton locked up in the grainery. 

           Sergeant Carhew of Fredonia confronts Custer about cutting his men to pieces at Appomattox during the Civil War. Carhew pulls a knife and says the war isn’t over while Custer is still living. Jackson stops him and says there’s no room for private vengeance in Fredonia.

            Jackson takes Custer to his house and introduces him to his wife Annie. She is cold towards Custer because Union troops burned her house and killed her father during the war. 

            Jackson says after the war he was in a prison camp for a year, then they let him go home but home was gone. There was a plantation that had been in his family for five generations but when he returned it now belonged to a Yankee carpetbagger (Carpetbaggers were northerners who took advantage of the devastation in the south after the war and profited from it). Jackson says in all the time they owned that plantation they never once had a slave (It’s not possible that a southerner would have owned a plantation without slaves and not likely that they would have had a competitive large farm without some amount of enslaved workforce. If Jackson’s family had a farm without slaves it would have needed to be a relatively small property). 

            Custer reminds Jackson that this is Crow territory but Jackson says they get along with the Crow better than the US army does. They trade them hard goods in exchange for meat. 

            Jackson and some of his men escort Custer, Bustard, and Glixton to the Fredonia border. The see some young Crow on the hill and while Jackson doesn’t think they’ll attack he plays it safe and they take cover behind some rocks. Custer says they are just boys testing their courage. They’ll charge one at a time and whoever places his lance in the ground closest to the enemy has the most courage. Jackson tells his men to hold their fire. One teenager comes, then another, each closer than the other. But when the third gets closer still Carhew fires his rifle and kills him. Custer warns Jackson that now he might have found himself in one of the bloodiest Crow wars ever seen. 

            Jackson tells Custer he can leave now but warns that he will be killed if he returns. 

            That night at Fort Hays General Terry tells Custer that the survey crew are going back to Fredonia tomorrow with Custer and ten of his men to protect them. 

            That night in Fredonia Jackson tells Carhew that he wants him to leave the settlement because he can’t have a hothead in his command who can’t follow orders. The Crow chief Brave Dog comes to see Jackson and demands to be given Carhew in exchange for his son who he killed. Jackson says he can’t give him Carhew but Brave Dog says he will come for him in one day. 

            Sergeant Bustard, being an ex-Confederate soldier, sympathizes with the dream of Jackson and the other members of Fredonia. He approaches Glixton and suggests they just run the railroad 50 kilometers south of Fredonia. Glixton tells Bustard he shouldn’t concern himself with a bunch of redneck crackers. Bustard grabs him but then lets go and says he wouldn’t dirty his hands on him. Bustard turns to walk away but Glixton hits him in the back of the head with a whisky bottle. They fight and Bustard is winning until they are broken up. Glixton says he attacked him without provocation. Custer asks Bustard for his side but he says he’s got nothing to say that would make a difference.

            Bustard’s punishment is to march for six hours with ten cannonballs in his backpack and he’s demoted to corporal. 

            Custer, his ten men and the survey crew head out and stop to camp for the night. Brave Dog comes to talk to Custer. He asks Custer to rest his horses for one day at this campsite where the grass is high. Then he leaves. 

            Custer tells his men they are going to take Fredonia in a silent raid at daybreak. Four men will secure the armoury while Custer will take four men to capture Jackson. Custer is sure it can be done without killing anyone but Bustard says he knows these people better than Custer and they will fight to the death. Later Bustard is seen heading for Fredonia. Glixton says bustard will warn Jackson so they’ll be ready for them. Custer changes his plan. Now he’ll take Jackson alone while the rest of the men are to lock up everyone in Fredonia in the grainery. At dawn, one by one citizens going about their business are quietly grabbed, gagged and locked in the grain shed. Bustard approaches Custer and says he didn’t desert. he just went ahead to make sure taking the town could be done without harm. Custer goes to Jackson’s house and tries to get him to make sure his men cooperate. They fight until Custer wins. The Crow are about to attack. Custer tells Jackson if he gives his word that his men won’t cause trouble he’ll arm them. Jackson promises. The Crow attack and they fight them to their first retreat. Carhew points his rifle at Custer and says he’s going to shoot him and watch him slowly die. But Carhew trips and when he gets up he runs from the town where the Crow are waiting outside and he is immediately killed. With Carhew dead, Brave Dog calls off the attack. Jackson, a little too quickly accepts that he’s a citizen of the United States of America. Custer plans to get Fredonia officially declared as a town have it assigned a US Marshal. He promotes Bustard back to sergeant. Carhew was played by Adam Williams, who was a decorated Navy pilot during WWII. He later served as an examiner for The Federal Aviation Administration. He made his film debut in Queen for a Day in 1951. He starred in Without Warning, after which he was type cast as a villain and a psycho. He co-starred in the Twilight Zone episodes “The Hitch Hiker” and “A Most Unusual Camera”.

October 13, 1996: My daughter and I played Doom

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday it was raining a bit so my daughter and I stayed inside and played Doom on my computer.