The Performance

            On Monday I watched the video that Nick Cushing made of my performance at the Smiling Buddha on June 3^rd. It’s odd how he made me look fat when I’m actually a very skinny person but the mirror does that too. All the words were clear but it sounds a little tinny. He titled it “The Acid Trip”, which I’d like to remove, since the piece is called “Temporary Eternity”. I think that I should have taken my watch off before performing as well. Other than that it worked out pretty well and I’d like to put a further edited version up on YouTube.

            I started listening to the Talking Heads first album. I particularly like “Don’t Worry About the Government”. David Byrne has an interesting song writing style and a great voice. It seems to me that the band, at least at that point, weren’t as good as his songs, and yet their simpler style pulled it off.

            It rained a couple of times during the day and so I decided not to take a bike ride even though it had stopped. I envisioned there would have been some big puddles along my way to the east end if I had gone.

            I did some knee exercises at home while listening to an episode of Amos and Andy from 1946 on which Al Jolson guest starred. He sang a medley of his hits, the best of which was “You Made Me Love You” by James Monaco and Joseph McCarthy. Jolson didn’t play a character in the story but at the end when he talked to Amos and Andy, who never spoke out of character, Jolson put on dialect like they did. He used his normal voice to address the audience at the close of the show.

            It turns out that Al Jolson and I have the same birthday, 69 years apart. 

Disarm the Cops

            Early Sunday afternoon Nick Cushing came in from Hamilton and visiting me was one of the rounds he made. He brought with him a copy of the video he shot of my performance at the Smiling Buddha on June 3. He also brought his lunch in the form of a couple of foul smelling slices from 2 4 1 Pizza. I opened the window to let some air in and then opened the fridge and gave him one of the cans of Zywiec that he’d left here on June 3^rd. He said that I could drink the other so I did.

We chatted about various topics. He told me that his grandfather had been a Winnipeg cop and that policemen had to buy their guns and so usually only sergeants had them. That sounds like a better idea to me. I think Toronto fuzz are issued their guns now and don’t have to pay for them but frontline Toronto police officers should be like London Bobbies and not have guns at all. In London, when faced with a situation that requires guns they have to call in a special unit who are experts in firearms and are very stingy about using them. London cops shot and killed one person over a four-year period while during two years of that time Toronto cops killed fifteen.

Nick left a little before 16:30 and so about half an hour later I headed out for my bike ride. This was the day of the Gay Pride parade and though the parade had already passed Bloor Street and probably was finished they still had it closed off from Bay until Church. After asking though I found out that it was okay to ride my bike through, so I did.

Normally I only have to use the washroom on my way back, but the beer I drank with Nick seemed to throw my bladder off balance, so I had to stop at the Court Jester at Pape Avenue to pee on my way out.

Riding up Woodbine was a big boned woman who looked like she was dressed for tennis. Everything she had on was white, including her sun visor. She was coughing when she passed me and really putting a lot of effort into it. I passed her a few times but she jumped back ahead in odd places like when I was putting distance between myself and the back of a bus. She followed me across the bridge over Taylor Creek and passed me again on the other side. She looked like she was going to have a heart attack. There was too much fast traffic on O’Connor for me to edge out and pass her again before she turned right on St. Clair. I went left and rode east along St Clair and then east on Parkview Hill Crescent until Alder Rd and followed that to its inevitable dead end. Every street that turns off Parkview Hill Crescent is a cul de sac.

On the way home I went down Yonge Street. There were still variously rainbow clad stragglers walking around and lots of music on some of the closed off side streets but Yonge street was pretty empty except for one lonely yellow balloon dancing tiredly in the middle of the road. 

I took College home without too much competition.

Riding in the East End

            On Saturday in the late afternoon I took a bike ride and found there weren’t many other cyclists out on Bloor or Danforth. Maybe they just use the streets for commuting and go riding on the trails or the boardwalk on the weekend. I guess there also could have been Pride events that people went to. I actually wasn’t sure if the Pride parade had happened that day or if it was going to be on Sunday. There were a few people walking around decked out in rainbow colours.

            I rode out to Woodbine and then north to where it ends at O’Connor, and then I crossed the bridge over Taylor Creek and started exploring the streets on the other side. The first was Glenwood Crescent, which had a lot of fancy, well to do houses. At the end was a gate, behind which was a driveway leading to a rustic cottage.

            I went back to O’Connor and then up to St Clair. I went east for about four blocks until St Clair is cut off from where I assume it was chopped when they built the Don Valley Parkway. It of course continues on the other side of the expressway and the green spaces that surround that. Where I was this time, St Clair splits into Parkview Hill Crescent, which continues briefly east and Woodbine Heights Boulevard, which if you look at a map lines up perfectly with Woodbine Avenue. It just goes a couple of blocks to the north though until just after Parkview Hill Crescent crosses it again on it’s way back west again.

            On the way home along College a tough looking woman passed me. I think she had a faster bike than I do but she also seemed like a pretty serious fast rider. She had her feet on her pedals in stirrups and she rode hunched over. The first bike I had as an adult had those stirrups but I didn’t like them. I found them confining. I passed her once for a while but she got ahead again. I caught up with her at traffic lights a few times until she finally made it through on a yellow.

            That night I watched an episode of Maverick. One unique thing about the character is that he never drinks. Another is that he always keeps a $1,000 bill pinned on the inside of his coat for emergencies. That would be like carrying $22,709.87 in US currency around in your pocket “for emergencies” today.

            In this story he had just left a poker game and was walking down the street when he saw a woman crying. He went to talk with her and she said that her name was Mary Shane she’d lost her ride home, so he rented a buckboard and drove her out of town. He’d draped his coat over her shoulders so she wouldn’t be cold. At a certain point she warned him that there was a dangerous bridge up ahead and that she would walk ahead to guide him over it but she disappeared in the dark and there turned out to be no bridge. Back in town he asked around for Mary Shane but he was told that she had died nine days before that. The next day he followed the same road in the light and found a graveyard where his coat was draped over the grave of Mary Shane.

            We find out later that there was no ghost. The real Mary Shane was indeed dead but the woman posing as the deceased was part of a larger conspiracy involving a buried strongbox full of stolen bank money.

            

Puppy Trainer

            On Saturday I woke up a bit and checked my phone for the time. It showed 2:55, but that seemed off to me because it was 2:44 when I went back to bed after I’d gotten up to pee. Then the alarm went off, which it’s supposed to do at 5:07, but the phone had gone black so I couldn’t see the time. I got up and saw from my computer that it was 5:10, which is the latest I’ve gotten up for several months. The phone display had been freezing for the last couple of days and showing times and battery power percentages that were far behind what they were supposed to be. Once I woke it up it would jump to where it was supposed to be. That meant that I should have restarted the phone earlier to avoid the alarm not going off at the right time. I did reset it later on.

            I was about three minutes behind my usual schedule but I cut some corners and unconsciously counted faster to measure my yoga poses and so I ended up ahead of my regular time. But then I fell several minutes behind again during song practice when the battery in my guitar tuner died and I had to tune my B and E strings by harmonics, which I can do but it takes me a lot more time. Fortunately I only had to do it a couple of times before practice was over but I didn’t want to have to deal with it the next day so that meant I would definitely have to go to the bank later that day to take out my last $20 so I could buy a battery.

            At 9:45 I went to the food bank line-up. The elderly Portuguese lady who’d been just ahead of me last time was in front of me again this time.  The guy who I usually see sucking on the e-cigarette was sans device on this occasion I think, since I didn’t smell his familiar vanilla vapour. He is apparently a dog trainer and I vaguely recall him mentioning it to people in the line-up before. A guy arrived with a golden Lab puppy. The man with the leash was chatting with another guy and standing with his back to the red Canada Post box while the pup was under his legs and behind him it peed on the letter box and almost on the caregiver’s sneakers but he didn’t notice. The vape guy was later patting the dog and assuring the leash holder that with one hour a week he could train their dog in a month. Another person with a much larger young dog arrived and the two dogs took great interest in one another from the front. The vape guy explained that this was just puppy love and nothing to worry about. Then the lab went behind the larger dog and tried to mount her. The vape guy warned that such behaviour would have to be nipped in the bud while he was still young.

            During the wait I continued reading the story “Micromegas” by Voltaire in both French and English, which I only read while I’m in the food bank line-up. The story, written more than 250 years ago, is about a super advanced giant from the Sirius star system. While living on Saturn for a few years, Micromegas makes friends with one of the much smaller Saturnian scientists and they decide to travel together. They ride a comet that’s passing over earth and then climb down the northern lights to the Baltic Sea. They eat two mountains for breakfast and then over the next 36 hours walk around the planet. The ocean comes up to the Saturnian’s calves but barely gets the Sirian’s feet wet. After searching the whole world and feeling around with their gigantic hands they don’t find any evidence that there is life on Earth.

            A semi regular food bank customer was sitting and smoking on the steps of the apartment building next to the food bank and telling another woman in line about her health problems in between moments when she had to stand up to let tenants out because she was blocking the door. She recounted how her doctor keeps telling her that she needs to quit smoking, but she argues that she wants to get everything else fixed first. She pointed out that she’s just starting to eat right and she wants to save tackling smoking for later.

            Someone approached me to ask for a light but I told him that I don’t smoke. His very quick response was, “You could be an arsonist!” I agreed that was a possibility. As he was getting a match from someone else I thought that this probably wasn’t the first time he’d used the “arsonist” line. Then as if reading my mind he told me, “That’s my stock answer!”

            The line started moving about fifteen minutes late. The door person announced that the food bank would be closed for Canada Day and advised us to come on Thursday instead.

            Inside, the volunteer who’d said while minding the door a couple of weeks before that she would be trained to use the computer was working reception this time. I got number 26.

            I saw Angie working in the back but no one was behind the dairy counter that she usually handles. I stood there for a moment and then asked Sylvia if we were supposed to help ourselves. “No!” she responded and came over to give me a half litre of 2% milk, ¾ of a litre of cottage cheese, three small containers of fruit bottom yogourt, five eggs and a package of Luvo steel cut oatmeal with quinoa and mixed fruit. It’s frozen in a pouch that’s supposed to be prepared by steaming.

            From Sylvia’s vegetable section I received a handful of potatoes, four carrots and two small onions.

            At the shelves I was helped by a young man of about thirty whom I hadn’t seen before.

            There was no cereal on offer for the first time that I’ve seen but I didn’t really need cereal anyway.

            I took a bag of multigrain tortilla chips, a jar of Chinese soybean paste with chili paste (it looks like a dark red salsa but slightly thicker and a bit sweeter, but mostly it’s pretty hot), a package of Second Cup Paradiso Dark coffee for machines (I don’t have a machine but I can open the pods and pour out the grounds. The package says it equals twelve cups, so I guess maybe six for me), a can of tuna, a small bag of soybeans, another of oatmeal, three Brookside dark chocolate cranberry almond blood orange bars, one Brookside chocolate fruit and nut bar, a carton of organic chicken broth, a can of white kidney beans and a bottle of mineral water.

            The bread lady, knowing that I tend to pick multi-grain, admitted that there wasn’t any this time. I asked if there was any raisin bread but answered there wasn’t. She tried to sell me on what she said were fresh buns but I let her know that I had enough bread.

            So this trip to the food bank provided no meat at all but the five eggs would be good for two or three meals, the can of tuna for one and the cottage cheese they gave was a sizeable amount. As usual though there was nothing in the way of fresh fruit, so after leaving the food bank I rode directly to the bank machine at King and Dufferin to take out $20. I then went to Freshco where green seedless grapes were on sale, so I bought a couple of bags, but man were they sour! I also picked up a bunch of bananas, a container of zero fat yogourt and a loaf of raisin bread. I still needed to buy a battery for my guitar tuner so that was all I could get at the supermarket.

            When I got home I put my groceries away and then walked over to Young’s Fine Foods to get a CR2032 three-volt battery. That cost me $5.50. On the way home I stopped at the liquor store to buy two cans of Creemore. The guy in front of me asked the cashier if the liquor store employees strike was going to happen. She said they wouldn’t know until the last minute. It doesn’t really matter to me since I could always go to the Beer Store.

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

            On Friday morning during song practice there were some drug addicts out on Queen Street that I hadn’t seen in the neighbourhood before. They looked like they were desperately trying to make a score. The middler was a woman who didn’t seem in much better shape than they were. It didn’t look like one of them was very happy with the how the deal did or didn’t go down. One of them was standing across the street confronting the woman while shouting and gesticulating violently. I thought he might hit her but he didn’t and she didn’t seem upset at all. She just told him that he got the best deal she could offer him because they are friends.

I spent quite a bit of time working on my book cover. I typed some of a short story that I wrote in long hand a couple of years ago. I did some translations of parts of Les Enfants du Paradis and Les Ramparts du Sud.

            There was a 70% to 80% chance of rain during the time I normally take my bike ride, so I didn’t go. It didn’t rain here in Parkdale but it could very well have rained somewhere along my route. Instead of riding I did some knee exercises while listening to an episode of Amos and Andy. The shows are usually funny but this one was only mildly amusing.

            I watched the third episode of Maverick. This one stood out above the first two for its complexity. It was based on a story by Horace McCoy, who wrote “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” and many other hard boiled crime novels that actually had an influence on the film noire genre of France. This show introduced Samantha Crawford, who would be a recurring character as a charming con artist. She was played by Diane Brewster. Her appearance here is an interesting coincidence to me because I just finished watching the complete Leave It to Beaver series and she played Beaver’s 2^nd Grade teacher in the first season. She also played the doomed wife of Dr. Kimble in the TV series The Fugitive. 

Attractive Middle Aged Woman

            There’s an attractive middle-aged woman who I see from my window every weekday morning as she walks east on the south side of Queen. Sometimes she looks up as I’m singing and playing my guitar. I try to sing louder as she passes by.

            Thursday was a cloudy day and it rained for a while in the morning. Even though the sky didn’t clear in the afternoon it wasn’t scheduled to rain, so I took my bike ride. I passed everybody as I pedalled east on Bloor and Danforth but nobody passed me. I finished exploring all the streets north of Danforth to O’Connor and east to Woodbine. O’Connor is a pretty fast street, at least in the late afternoon and not as bike friendly as the Danforth. Next I guess I’ll cross Taylor Creek and roll my bike on all the streets to the left of O’Connor until Don Mills Road and up to Eglinton.

            I didn’t stop at the first Starbucks to pee this time because punching in the key code to get in the washroom door is too much of a hassle. I stopped at the next Starbucks a few blocks west of there where they don’t lock the washroom doors. It feels more like home to just open a door and walk in.

            That night I rubbed a pork loin sirloin half with a mixture of gargarine, sage, rosemary, paprika and thyme and roasted it on a rack in the oven. It turned out deliciously and now for less than $8 I have meat to last me a week.

            I watched the second episode of Maverick, which was apparently written to be the first episode. It was nothing special but it did reveal that Maverick drifts because he’s looking for a man and that he’s afraid of finding him because it would mean he’d have to settle down. 

Maverick

            I woke up without the alarm on Wednesday, but I felt like I’d been cheated out of continuing a good sleep anyway. I felt groggy through yoga but it went away once I started singing.

            It was quite a bit cooler outside than it has been lately. I had all of the windows open but closed some of them halfway through song practice.

            I spent quite a bit of time running quickly through the movie War Machine before deleting it because I wanted to screen-capture some images of Meg Tilly.

            I took a siesta in the early afternoon and slept half an hour longer than usual again. This time it didn’t cut into my bike ride because I went to bed earlier.

            The clouds were beautiful and spread out evenly to the north in an endless array.

            I rode to Glebemount and then north to explore and eight-block grid from Glebemount to Woodbine and from Holborne to Plains Road.

            On the way back I stopped to pee at the Starbucks where one has to punch the key code for the washroom doors. As I was unlocking my bike a saw a woman walking and saying to her dog, “Do you think we’re going to stop for cappuccino and ice cream every day? I don’t think so!”

 I went down Yonge Street to College and took that west all the way to Brock. In little Italy a little brown cat with black stripes was out on College rubbing itself against the left front tire of a parked car. I assume it was lost.

            When I got home I went back out to the liquor store. The guy in front of me paid for his items from debit with his phone. It was the first time I’d seen someone do that. I wonder if there’s an extra charge by the bank for that.

            I watched the first episode of the western series, Maverick. I remember watching it as a kid but nothing really stood out in my memory other than that James Garner’s character was a charming and good-hearted gambler. The first episode showed that he was also very clever but there was nothing particularly interesting about the story. Bret Maverick arrived in a mining town and that night defeated Phineas King, the owner of the town in a poker game, even though the owner cheated. After that the tycoon wanted Maverick run out of town. He had him beaten up but that just made Maverick want to stay and defeat him. He got all the miners in town to form a company with him to compete with King. The only thing interesting about the story was that Maverick profited from a law which had yet to be changed, which stated that if a vein of ore starts on your property you are allowed to mine that vein until it is broken, even if it continues into someone else’s mine. 

Antibirth

            On Tuesday during my early afternoon siesta I got a call from a guy who had a few days before that contacted me by email about the Minolta Hi-Matic F camera that I was selling for my upstairs neighbour, David. He asked if he could come by in the next hour and pick it up. I tried to go back to sleep for a while but it didn’t feel like it was going to happen. I was contemplating getting up when the phone rang again. I assumed that Jeremy had arrived but it turned out to be a guy from Toronto Water responding to my complaint about the chemical taste of the tap water. I told him it was only really bad for one day. I drank some while talking with him to confirm that it was okay right now. He explained what I knew already, that in the summer sometimes they have to put more chlorine in the water to counteract the increase of algae. He also suggested that if I live in an older apartment building the pipes could be affecting the taste of the water. I don’t think the latter is the case in this situation.

            I had a can of tuna with some tomato basil bruschetta for lunch. It was quite tasty.

The phone rang again and it was Jeremy. He was a tall guy in his early thirties with his long hair in a bun. I showed him the camera and asked if he’d brought batteries. He told me that he’d ordered some but that the Type 640 batteries that the camera needs are no longer widely available except in a specialist factory in the States. He’d learned on You Tube of a workaround using two SR44/A76 1.5 volt button cells and a folded paper clip. He couldn’t make it work that way but he trusted that it would be alright with the batteries he’d ordered and he paid me $40 for it anyway.

I went upstairs to give half the money to David, but for the second time in a row he wouldn’t take the money. He complained that a lot of people take advantage of him but that I’m a very honourable and honest person. He did suggest though that he had a guitar and some rare coins that he would like me to sell online for him and that he would split the money with me. He wanted to make sure that I understood that the things he acquires are not stolen.

I did some work on my book cover for half an hour and then I took a bike ride. The sky was full of large islands of big beautiful sun-haloed dark clouds that looked like they could drop a quick heavy rain at any moment on whatever place they were directly above.

I rode to Glebemount and north to the alley behind Mortimer which I followed across to Woodbine, then back and north to do the same along Dunkirk and Barker.

On the way home I stopped at a Starbucks to take a pee. I noticed a sign saying they sell draft now, but it turns out that it’s not beer but rather something called Nitro Cold Brew that is coffee infused with nitrogen. The washroom doors all have key code systems for unlocking them now. The woman behind the counter, after seeing me try the door, anticipated my question and told me the code was “147#”.

As I was ravelling my cable after unlocking my bike, a woman in an electric wheelchair and wearing a nasal cannula stopped to look at the price of some grapes on display outside of the vegetable stand. She looked in the doorway and then she moved on, looking at me and explaining, “I can’t get in!” I looked and saw that there were some boxes piled up just inside the entrance. It looked like me that she could have made it but she probably knows what she can do better than me.

While I was crossing the Bloor Viaduct I was passed by two big middle-aged guys that were riding together. I assume they were riding fast bikes since they didn’t look like they could pass me with an equal machine. I came up behind them several times at traffic lights all along Bloor Street but never got past them. They were pretty aggressive riders with one guy taking the lead who shouted, “Move!” to a car that was turning in his path. Despite their hurry they only went through one red light, but that time the intersection was not on the south side. One of them went on ahead by himself though so maybe the other veered off to do the shopping.

On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, bananas, Fuji apples, a pork sirloin half, some cheddar and lots of yogourt.

That night I watched the rest of the indie horror film, “Antibirth”, starring Natasha Lyonne, Chloe Sevigny and Meg Tilly. Lyonne plays a drug addict named Lou in a small town in Michigan. Her dealer though is mixed up with a secret government organization that is using female addicts as guinea pigs in order to find one that will serve as a compatible host for an alien foetus. The atmosphere of the alien home world is extremely poisonous and so in order for one of their foetuses to survive in a human womb it has to be that of a woman who has severely abused her body with toxins. One night when she is very high at a party that’s being thrown at a remote location Lou is drugged, strapped down and inseminated with alien sperm. Afterwards she doesn’t remember what happened but then becomes pregnant, even though she didn’t have sex. She starts having strange flashes and visions.

Then Meg Tilly’s character, Lorna shows up. Lorna is former military but she was also one of the early guinea pigs for this project. An alien growth was removed from her arm but the process of having the alien briefly inside of her caused her to become psychically sensitive and so she was able to track down Lou to try to help her. Lorna serves as the midwife for the alien birth just as the bad guys arrive in SWAT gear to take it away. What comes out of Lou is an adult sized living alien head. The feds place the head in a special atmospheric tank. When Lou is told they intend to use her again and again for the same purpose she grabs a knife. When she’s struggling with one of the bad guys a pair of adult alien arms and hands reach out of her vagina to strangle him. Then Lou collapses like a deflated sex doll and a fully-grown headless alien body emerges and kills everybody in the room.

It was a very low budget film but the story was certainly unique. Lyonne’s character was kind of a disgusting person in her habits, but I guess it was necessary to depict that in order to show why she was a compatible host for the alien. Pretty much everyone in the film was gross except for Meg Tilly until she delivered the alien, had extraterrestrial afterbirth splattered all over her face and was in ecstasy about how beautiful the creature was.

The film ends with the alien standing there with its own head in one hand in a kitchen that made me feel much better about my own housekeeping. The moral may be that one should always have one’s head on straight before killing everybody. That way the place won’t be as hard to tidy up for the next time you have company.

Feeling Flexible

            I’ve noticed lately that I’m more flexible during yoga than I’ve been for the last few years. I wonder if it has something to do with losing weight.

            On Monday while I was playing guitar and singing, a convoy of tractor-trailers parked in a line on Dunn Avenue. Big orange hoses were unravelled from the backs of the trucks and they all seemed to keep their engines on, which caused the smell of exhaust fumes to make my singing less of a pleasant experience.

            In the afternoon I took a siesta but ended up sleeping more thirty minutes longer than the usual hour and a half. I woke up five minutes after the time that I would normally leave for my bike ride. By the time I got ready I was 42 minutes later than I tend to be so to avoid cutting too deeply into my evening I decided to only ride for about half an hour. It was a nice day for riding with a variety of interestingly shaped clouds and plus the temperature was pleasant without being too hot. By the time my thirty minutes were up I was already past Broadview and Danforth was stretched out in front of me in such a long, even path that I figured I might as well pedal out to where I left off and explore two more blocks. I went up to Mortimer and across to Woodbine. Woodbine just north of Danforth seems to be the drag of a poor neighbourhood with small, inexpensive looking and diversely designed houses that are run down in the way that houses where the owners do not live tend to be.

            I passed the Linsmore Tavern and saw on the marquee out of the corner of my eye “The Ramones”. The Ramones never did much for me. They sound like a middle class bubble gum version of garage rock. Anyway, it turns out that it was a Ramones tribute band playing along with a punk rock tribute to Tom Jones. It seems that the only live acts the Linsmore hires are tribute bands.

            On the way home, after Yonge Street and on the Bloor bike lane I stuck behind a guy that I could have easily passed if not for the barriers but he was a little too fast to get by on his left before obstacles loomed ahead. He was singing and whistling along with whatever was bleeding out of his headphones and he went through every red light that he could. I passed him once by going outside the posts but then he went through another red light. I passed him again before Dovercourt and then I went south.

            That night I watched the last half of War Machine. Brad Pitt is interesting here because he performs as a character actor but plays the lead. The role he plays of General McMahon is the war machine of the title because his military discipline is almost mechanical. Contrasting with this is the father-like love that he has for his team, and they for him. It was also interesting to see Meg Tilly in her first Hollywood film since 1994’s Sleep With Me. 

"Poppies ... Poppies will put them to sleep!"

            The tap water was back to normal on Sunday morning and so it didn’t taste like iodine, or whatever the chemical actually was, anymore.

            I spent a lot of the day writing about my Saturday trip to the food bank.

            In the late afternoon as I started getting ready for my bike ride, it started raining, but not enough to make puddles and it stopped after a few minutes. There was a 40% chance of showers and the wind was coming from the southwest where I could see the clouds were darker. I prepared to leave anyway, but then I had this thought that it really would rain and so I decided to stay home. It started pouring about half an hour later.

            Since I didn’t ride I did some knee exercises in my living room while listening to an episode of Amos and Andy. In the story, Kingfish’s wife Sapphire was threatening to do something desperate if he didn’t buy her some new clothes. She meant that she would get a job but didn’t say so. Kingfish went out and Sadie came over with $300 that had been collected in a charity drive and gave it to Sapphire to hold on to since she was the treasurer of their women’s group. Sapphire hid the money between some sheets in the linen closet. The next day Kingfish heard from Andy that a local jewellery store had been robbed by a woman who’d gotten away with $300, and then he invited Andy back to his place for a bite. Since there was nothing in the icebox he remembered that Sapphire sometimes hides a dollar or two in the linen closet, so he thought he’d check and if there was some there they could go out for a burger. He found the $300, remembered Sapphire saying she was going to do something desperate and automatically concluded that she had been the jewel thief.

            Kingfish went to Gabby the lawyer for some advice and asked him what he thought of female criminals. He answered that they are very considerate. Kingfish asked how they were considerate and Gabby responded that he’d heard of a woman who stabbed her husband instead of shooting him because she didn’t want to wake up the children.

            Kingfish decided that in order to save his wife from going to jail he needed to find someone that would be willing to take the rap for Sapphire and he’d heard that Shorty the barber was currently homeless. He and Andy went to see Shorty and Kingfish told him that he could get him a place to live with free meals. Shorty declared, “That’s the sweetest thing I heard since Truman’s speech last night!” The show was broadcast on October 15^th, 1946. The headline in the papers that day referred to President Harry Truman announcing in an address to the nation the night before that he would be lifting the controls on meat prices that had been enforced during the war. Andy made the point that the president had just made a million horses very happy.

            That night I watched the first half of the Netflix film, War Machine. It’s a fictionalized satirical account of the story of General Stanley McChrystal’s appointment as the leader of the coalition forces in Afghanistan and his firing a year later. Brad Pitt plays General Glen McMahon and Meg Tilly plays his lonely wife. Ben Kingsley is great as Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The plot covers the general’s attempts to win a war that is impossible to win in a country whose population does not want the occupying armies to be there. It’s well acted and sort of funny but the story unfolds way too slowly.

            The most humorous parts are the ones that are sad but true. In one scene the general, while touring Afghanistan is shown a poppy field the harvest of which would serve the heroin industry. He asks why the farmers can’t grow something else but he is told that although the land would be excellent for growing cotton the United States would not allow them to grow any crops that could compete with U.S.markets.

            

A Cross-Examination of a Man with a Cross at the Crossing

After the food bank on Saturday I went to the bank machine at King and Dufferin to take out $20, then I went to Freshco to buy some grapes, bananas and yogourt. I set aside $2.50 because I wanted to go to the café across the street and find out their correct wi-fi password. I figured that when I’d gone there on Thursday I must have misunderstood what they’d told me because what I’d written down hadn’t worked as a network key.

            When I got home I put the groceries away, grabbed my laptop, went across to the café and stood in line. I was all ready to spend $2.50 plus a tip for a coffee but when I saw the very obvious password written on the blackboard in capital letters underneath the name of their network I decided that I was too poor to spend that much on a small cup of coffee. I went to the liquor store instead to buy a couple of cans of Creemore. Back home after a couple of tries I was able to log onto a much less slippery signal than the café’s other network. I finally got some of my regular internet dependant tasks accomplished that had been so difficult for the last three days.

            There was a chance of thunderstorms but the sky didn’t look that way in the late afternoon so I took my bike ride. I made sure before I left though, in case of another handlebar slippage situation, to fish from my tool drawer the set of Allen keys that Nick Cushing had given me. It seemed kind of dumb for me not to have had them with me in the first place, seeing as how they don’t take up much space in my backpack. Since it was Saturday there was a lot less competition from other cyclists at that hour. I passed several musical ensembles of various genres as I travelled along Bloor. Some were busking and some seemed to be part of little festivals.

            Just after Broadview on the Danforth the cops were diverting the cars off the main drag, but I signalled to the policeman to ask if that meant me and he waved me forward. I was worried that they were setting up for the annual Taste of the Danforth, or as I call it, “The Taste of Hades”, but it turned out that they were just unloading the barriers to close off a block or two on Saturday for the sixth annual Taste of the Grill festival.

            I rode to Glebemount and then north to explore the four block grid from Queensdale to Frater and from Glebemount to Woodbine. On the way back, I stopped at the Broadview traffic light and on the corner there was an evangelist, with a sign that read “Sacrifice”, being debated forcefully by a young man on a bicycle. Together they made for an interesting image and I stayed to take a few pictures of them but they were backlit by the sun so it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.

            I rode all the way to Brock on Bloor Street and then home. It had been a satisfying ride that made me feel healthy and strong. On top of that I discovered that Coffeetime had repaired its wi-fi, so I had my most dependable connection back.

            That night I watched the last two of the five Jungle Jim episodes that I’d found on Pirate Bay. In the first one, Jim got shanghaied by a group that wanted him to guide them to a giant pearl in the jungle of an island in the south seas that was forbidden to white people. His motivation was that they’d sent one of their crew, who happened to be a former member of the Gestapo, to Jim’s place, with orders to kill his son if he didn’t obey them. They found the natives of the island about to sacrifice a beautiful young woman to their oyster god.

            In the second episode, Jim, because of a clerical error on the part of education officials back in the States, had received a letter that his son Skipper had been showing poor test results on his lessons. Because of this Jim hired a very prim, middle-aged tutor for Skipper named Mrs. Haddock. Despite the fact that she was working for an expert in the jungle she considered Jim’s knowledge to be inferior to a certain Dr. Flugle who’d written a book about Africa that she always carried with her. It turned out though that Flugle was a proven fraud that’d never even been to Africa. Since Flugle’s book talked about the elephants graveyard she insisted that it really existed and took Jim’s son with her to look for it. They found poachers and trouble.

            

The Only Thing He Said That Wasn't Bullshit Was About Cow Piss

            I struggled with the internet again on Saturday morning, so for the third day in a row I wasn’t able to edit and publish one of my translation blog entries.

            I went to the food bank about five minutes earlier than usual on Saturday. As I was locking my bike in a front of the door, a volunteer was smoking a cigarette and chatting with some of the women in the front row. The volunteer, who when asked said her first name was Samantha, was complaining about people who are especially nice to her because of her family name. I think her surname must have been mentioned before I got there so I have no idea what’s so special about it.

            I went to the back of the line and, as usual, asked who the last person was. An elderly woman spoke up that it was she and I found out that the middle-aged man nearby was ahead of her. There were a few bags and carts lined up behind us and I wondered to whom they belonged. The man said that they’d been there when he’d arrived and as far as he was concerned their absent owners had forfeited their places in line. My Guyanese acquaintance arrived and suggested that we throw them in the garbage.

            At 10:00 we were surprised to see that the food bank had let in the first five clients. The official starting time is 10:30 and I haven’t seen them even start that early since they moved up to Queen Street at the beginning of April. My Guyanese friend suggested that they started early because it looks like rain or because it looked like it was going to be a hot day. I told him that I didn’t think either of those was the case. We’ve lined up in all kinds of weather and they didn’t care. He offered that it might be because they were understaffed. I accepted that as a possibility. He said that anyway we couldn’t complain one way or another, since they are volunteers. I disagreed, saying that the food bank has as much right to ask for quality work from volunteers as employers of their workers. I argued that we as food bank customers are quality control inspectors. He responded with, “You read too many books!”

            One of the busses went by that are replacing the Queen Streetcars until September and he offered the view that Queen Street is so much better with the busses because it’s faster. I told him that I disagreed that it’s an improvement. As a cyclist I find that the buses slow me down because they occupy my lane. He dismissed my complaint with, “Go around them!” I countered that it’s not always possible to go around them. He came back with, “Go on the sidewalk then!” I assured him that I was not going to ride my bike on the sidewalk.

            Another reason that I gave him as to why the busses are not good on Queen Street is the pollution. He declared, “There’s no pollution!” I asked why there’s no pollution and he explained that they are hybrid and that they run on a combination of hydrogen and electricity. I know that many of the busses are hybrid but I was very sceptical that hydrogen was part of the mix. He insisted that he knows about this stuff because he’s a mechanic. Then he asserted that hydrogen is a natural gas, but I responded that hydrogen is not a natural gas. His reaction was to shake his head in dismissal of my ignorance and then to look away. Finally he admitted that some of the TTC hybrid busses use diesel but contended that they still don’t cause any pollution because they use a converter that uses cow piss to help turn harmful pollutants into carbon dioxide and oxygen. He said that he bought a big bottle of the cow urine for a friend. I inquired as to why he hadn’t just eaten a whole bunch of grass and then peed in the bottle himself. He answered that human urine doesn’t work.

            Of course I did some research on my food bank companion’s claims. First of all, the hybrid buses only cut 30% to 50% of the pollution of the previous diesel buses. Secondly, the hybrid buses do not use hydrogen fuel cells. Thirdly, hydrogen is not a natural gas. Hydrogen sulphide (or rotten egg gas) is sometimes a component in natural gas but natural gas is mostly methane, a lot of which (appropriately in this discussion) comes from out of the butts of cows and bulls along with manure. Interestingly, it turns out that the only thing my companion said that wasn’t bullshit was about cow urine.

            The line began to move. Out doorkeeper, who normally works reception on a different food bank day, looking sleep deprived, let five more people in and said, “Good morning” to the rest. My Guyanese buddy asked her, “Is it good?” She grumbled, “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” and went back inside.

            Behind my Guyanese line-mate was an elderly man in an electric wheelchair. He had a full salt and pepper beard and longish hair that looked like he’d dyed it black. He was smoking a lot and in between puffs he let out deep and loud, liquid coughs. My know-it-all pal told him that he could get a bag of special tar filters that will remove most of the tar from his cigarettes. I don’t know if it removes “most” of the tar, but I guess every little bit helps.

            When I got inside and downstairs I could see that they were severely understaffed this time around. The woman who’d let the five of us in must have had the elevator all ready to take her downstairs ahead of us since she was sitting alone at the front desk when I walked into the shopping room. While she was looking up my information someone mentioned that the public pools were opening for the season on that day. She expressed the hope that her son wouldn’t find out or he’d be bugging her to take him every day.

            My Guyanese friend behind me had a conversation with the very short septuagenarian Filipino woman who volunteers there. He said he’d seen her out jogging earlier. She said she’d been swimming too and he asked if she wore a bikini. She declared, “That would be something!”

            The computer person didn’t bother with handing out numbers written on the little pieces of arborite that were sitting in a box on the desk. Instead she just wrote down “1A” for “one adult” on a little piece of paper and gave that to me. I approached the dairy counter but I didn’t see Angie this time, which was strange because I’d seen her from my window walking up Dunn Avenue with another food bank volunteer earlier that morning. Replacing her was the new person who’d managed the door on the previous Saturday.

            She gave me one half-litre carton of 2% milk, five eggs and a choice between a package of frozen chicken wieners and four honey garlic sausages. I took the sausages. She also gave me a tub of garlic margarine. How come no one calls it “Gargarine”? I can’t find the name anywhere online so I’m copyrighting it right here and now! Oh, and two tiny bottles of Danactive drinkable yogourt with 10 billion bacteria inside. Do we really need ten billion more bacteria in our bodies when it already outnumbers our cells? This is the only kind of immigration that I find questionable, but I took them anyway. I very carefully placed my eggs in a separate pocket in my backpack so they wouldn’t get crushed by other items.

            I moved on to Sylvia’s vegetable section. She gave me six yellow plum tomatoes, six potatoes and a seedless cucumber. I should have treated the tomatoes with the same consideration as the eggs, but I put them on the bottom and so I discovered when I got home that the skin had broken on a couple, causing tomato juice to bleed into the bottom of my pack.

            The shelf shopping was only being guided by two volunteers rather than the usual three and so my helper, the little Filipino woman kept going back and forth from assisting the person in front of me to helping me with my selections.

The cereal being offered, though diverse, was all kid’s cereal, so I skipped it. Another shelf had a variety of crackers and cookies. I took a box of Triscuits but next time I will probably pass on that stuff because I have more crackers at home than I can eat.

            I selected a box containing six packages of instant miso soup, a carton of chicken broth, a jar of raisin and onion couscous sauce, a can each of tomato paste, tuna and chickpeas. I selected a watermelon drink and she gave me another. She offered me some fruit roll-ups but I find them too sticky and sweet and told her I preferred the bars on the other side, which are usually healthier. She laughed and grabbed me a handful, which turned out to be a small Weightwatchers chocolate marshmallow crunch bar and three Star Wars themed chocolate cake flavoured granola bars. Don’t they make granola flavoured granola bars anymore?

            As usual, from the bread section we were allowed to take as much as we wanted. I waited for a few minutes behind the elderly woman in front of me while she was bent with a pair of tongs over a bin of Portuguese buns. She very carefully went through them and each bun that she fished out seemed to have finality to it but every time she put one in her bag she bent back down for another.

            When it was my turn I took a loaf of multigrain bread and another with raisins, nuts and cranberries. On my way to the stairs I saw the old lady with her big bag of buns waiting for the elevator. There must have been at least twenty. I thought it would be both funny and sad if she’d gotten all those buns just to feed the birds.

            As I was unlocking my bike there were only two people waiting outside to go in and the few carts and bags that some people had used to mark their places in line were still there alone on the sidewalk.

            I left the food bank at about 10:30, which was nice, because it was an hour and a quarter sooner than the week before.

Toronto Tap-water

            Every morning during song practice I drink two tall glasses of tap water. Every now and then the water tastes a bit chemically but it’s bearable. On Friday though it tasted like iodine. I had to drink some just to keep my throat from drying out but I could only force down at the most about a third of a glass. It was the absolute worst tap water I’ve tasted in the 36 years that I’ve lived in Toronto. That afternoon I left a message of complaint to the city’s water filtration service.

            My internet connection continued to be sporadic. The Coffeetime network still hadn’t been repaired but since it allows users to go on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter I wonder how many complaints the staff get about it. Maybe most people don’t use free wi-fi for much besides social media. In the late morning I was able to connect to the Capital network and got some stuff done.

            In the late afternoon I’m took a bike ride, but as I was rolling through the heat and the Annex I felt my handlebars slip a little forward. I ignored it but then they tilted again. Just before Spadina they went all the way forward and I had to stop to avoid wiping out. The Allen nut in the quill stem that locks the handlebars must have gotten loose. I straddled the cross bar and pulled the handlebars back up, then I crossed Bloor and very carefully rode back the way I came because I knew that eastbound there wasn’t a bike shop until somewhere out on the Danforth. While pulling up on my handlebars I pedaled a few blocks until I saw Sweet Pete’s. I went in and asked if I could borrow an Allen key. The mechanic said that they don’t let people use their tools but he’d tighten for me. I told him that I couldn’t afford to pay him. He assured me that he’d do it for free but they have a very strict policy against lending tools. It’s actually a very sensible rule, so I had no problem with it, especially since I didn’t have to pay for his help.

            He tightened the stem but warned me that if it happens again I should change both the stem and the handlebars. He explained that where the stem meets the bars there are supposed to be little teeth for gripping. If I have another slippage of the handlebars then it means that the teeth inside the stem are too worn to grasp the handlebars properly. That made sense but I don’t understand why I would need to change the handlebars as well.

            Going into Sweet Pete’s I hadn’t been sure if it was going to use up too much of my bike ride time, but when I left I felt still gung ho for a ride and so I went for it. There was less cyclists riding east than usual and I wondered if it was just a matter of those fifteen or so minutes that I’d lost putting me behind the bicycle rush hour.

            I went to Glebemount and then north to explore the six block grid from Glebeholme to Queensdale and from Glebemount to Woodbine. Just after turning the corner of Queensdale and Woodbine to head south I saw a little slip-on crock so tiny that it was probably kicked off by a pre-walking child in a stroller.

            On Woodbine just north of Danforth is a Chinese Mennonite church. If someone asked me to name the whitest religion I think the Mennonite faith would only be second to the Amish. I turns out though that they are pretty diverse these days.

            After turning west on Danforth a seagull that had just taken off came within a meter of slamming into my head. It veered off of its collision course just in time.

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home and they had a good deal on grapes prominently displayed so that it was the first thing most customers would see. I wanted some, even though it would have been more practical to buy bananas. I had $3.70 but I needed yogourt, so I got a container of zero fat and then went back to the grapes. All the bags of grapes were approximately one kilogram each but I could only afford half that so I removed a bunch from one bag and put it into another and then bought the lighter one.

            After my ride, when I removed my denture it was extremely salty.

            That night I watched two episodes of Jungle Jim. The first went the fantasy route as Jim, his son Skipper and a female botanist went to look for a famous scientist who’d gone missing on a mysterious mountain. The mountain turned out to have been inhabited by giant lizards. No one referred to them as dinosaurs but they did call their habitat a “lost world” and said that it was “out of the past”. To depict the giant lizards the producers just used blown up film footage of normal sized lizards in rocky environments.

            The next episode took Jim, his son and Tamba to the Amazon jungle with a couple of men they think are archaeologists but are really treasure hunters. Hey find a lost city with a map drawn by Sir Walter Scott. The bad guys get killed by Natives. Well, he IS called “Jungle” Jim, so I guess he’s an expert on every jungle.

A French Press is Better than a Coffee Bar

On Thursday my connection to the internet from Coffee Time was still limited, so later that morning I went over to the Capital Espresso with my laptop and spent $2.75 on a small cup of coffee that really wasn’t as tasty as what I make with my French press only to find out that my laptop still has the right password. While I was there I renewed some OISE library books that re due that day. The Capital has another network called CAP_WEB_2G and the guy behind the counter claimed the name was the password too but when I tried it at home it wouldn’t work.
            After that I went to Coffee Time where I splurged on a tea. I asked about the wi-fi and a counter person said that a customer had complained about the network. I sat by the window and had the same problem connecting as I’d had upstairs. I walked back to the counter to tell them when I saw Dennis, from Bike Pirates in the line-up. He asked if I’d be coming by the shop later but I said that fortunately I had nothing that needed to be done. He affirmed that was a very good thing. I checked my watch, saw that it was 10:30 and since Bike Pirates opens at noon on Thursdays I wondered why Dennis was there so early. He said he needed to saw up some bike frames for the scrap guy. I told the other counter person that the wi-fi wasn’t working properly. She responded apologetically in a British accent that it was indeed not working “propahly”. For some reason I found it very charming that an attractive young Black woman was speaking like Lady Di and she was so nice that it put me in a good mood. She told me that the “managah” would be coming in the afternoon and hopefully he would deal with the problem. At least now I knew that it was a hopefully temporary glitch on their part.

At home I was able to sporadically connect to the internet through the Capital network, though I had to constantly retry over and over throughout the rest of the day in order to complete tasks like posting on my blog and accessing my OCADU pay statement that would have normally taken me just a few minutes.

My day got kind of screwed and skewed around my internet limitations. I had expected it to rain because I’d heard there would be a 60% chance and so I didn’t take a bike ride to the east end. I might have been tempted to chance it though if my web connectivity problems hadn’t eaten up so much time. I did ride over to the mailbox to send my income statement to social services and while I was out I decided to ride a little further. I thought I’d go up to College, east to Dovercourt, south to Queen and then on the way back stop into Freshco, but I realized that I’d left my $3.70 at my place so I just went around the block to home. I thought about about grabbing my money and going back out but nature was calling and by the time I’d shut it up I felt like it was too late to go out again.

That night I watched the final episode of Leave It To Beaver. Rather than going out with a bang they opted for an excuse to show flashbacks of previous episodes. The premise was that they were looking at a family scrapbook and each picture was a still from a different situation, which was zoomed in on for the flashback. The thing was there wouldn’t have been anyone there with a camera to capture any of those moments. The whole series was entertaining and interesting but there was only one outstanding episode in the whole six years. That was the one where Beaver and Wally played with the two sons of the garbage man and learned from them how to appreciate their lives.

I watched the first episode of Jungle Jim, starring Johnny Weismuller. It was a TV show in the mid 50s that carried on after a series of films that he started after he was no longer buff enough to swing around half naked as Tarzan but still looked good enough with his clothes on to play the comic strip hero. The premise was that Jungle Jim was a legendary guide who lived in the jungle in some unnamed part of Africa with his son Skipper, his assistant Kaseem and their chimpanzee Tamba. The original newspaper-strip character’s adventures started in 1934 and were set in southern Asia. In the first television story Jim was on his way home to his house in the jungle by riverboat, but also on the vessel was a big game hunter who Jim diverted from shooting a lion that was on the shore but for some illogical reason the wild shot inadvertently caused the beast to turn into a man eater. Jim had to fight and kill both the lion and earlier a crocodile with only a knife. Skipper is shown to be an expert archer who used his arrows to scare away animals that the hunter was trying to bag. Kaseem is a very good knife thrower. Tamba was comic relief, though he did help save the day. He almost killed everyone with a rifle in the end though but they thought it was hilarious. They’d probably give a monkey a gun license in the United States. 

Back in the Back Alleys on the Backside of Town

            On Wednesday I heard the megaphonic mating call of a protest march and looked outside to see that there were 40 or 50 seniors marching against elder abuse. It was a very slow march and one of the old ladies had to stop to fetch her blue sunhat after it blew into Queen Street. “Elder abuse” is an awkward couple of words to wrap a chant around. “Stop elder abuse!” and “Elder abuse has got to go!” just didn’t have good rings to them but “There’s no excuse for elder abuse!” was quite good and so they should have just stuck to that one. There were a small group of teenage girls marching in the middle of the line and one of them was the one with the megaphone. It would be ironic if the girls beat all the seniors in order to motivate them to march for the cause.

That afternoon I decided that my knee was in good enough shape to continue my explorations by bicycle of the east end of town. I had to look into my journal from last September though while checking a map so I could figure out where I’d left off. I’d thought that I’d ended my long rides last summer around Donlands and Danforth, but I’d actually gone all the way to Glebemount (halfway between Coxwell and Woodbine) and had finished my final trip at the end of the first week of September after weaving around the ritzy new streets just north of where Glebemount ends at O’Connor.

I rode out to Glebemount and then north to explore the alley going east past Woodmount to Woodbine. The graffiti was interesting enough that I made a mental note to return to the lane to take some pictures before going home. I went back to Glebemount, then north to cover a six-block grid that ended at Glebeholme and Woodbine. Then I rolled down Woodbine and went back to the alley. In addition to what looked like mostly student graffiti, what also brightened up the alley was a little garden of hanging and potted plants outside of the back of an apartment. A depressed looking middle-aged woman and a slim but tough looking shaved headed man were sitting outside. I asked the woman if I could take a picture of her garden. She looked up from where she was bent over in her chair and indifferently said, “Go ahead”. I spent about fifteen minutes taking photos and then headed home.

I noticed that the art deco Bus Terminal Restaurant has reopened at Coxwell and Danforth.

There was a lot less bike traffic going west until I got to Yonge Street. On the westbound Bloor bike lane there was a woman driving fairly aggressively. I wanted to get past her but she was in the middle of the land. I called out, “Passing on your left!” but she just looked sideways without edging to the right. I calmly added, “But you’ll have to move over for me to do that.” She still didn’t really move much but a space opened up between the barriers and I got ahead. I thanked her anyway.

I went south on Ossington to College and then across the Dovercourt, south to Queen and then home. Including the photography, my ride had taken two hours and I felt pretty good.

I went over to the liquor store to buy a can of Creemore.

That evening I was having trouble connecting to the internet, but then discovered that it was only websites that I couldn’t reach. I could go on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube (actually I could only go to the You Tube site but couldn’t play videos. I could see the frames of the videos though by running the curser along the timeline), Google Translate but not to any websites. I could do Google search or go to Google news but I couldn’t connect to any of the links. I turned on my laptop but had the same problem so I assume the problem is with the server of the Coffee Time below my apartment. I doubt if they are blocking me specifically though I guess it’s possible, so it’s probably a glitch.