Self Loathing Comes From Outside

            During song practice I’ve been experimenting with smiling when I sing certain songs for which a smile would be appropriate. It does seem to change and improve my singing, or at least provides a handle for focus where sometimes things otherwise become automatic.

I weighed 90.5 on Sunday afternoon.

I finished re-reading Frankenstein and skimmed 203 pages of Umberto Ecco’s “On Ugliness”. Frankenstein’s creature only hated his own appearance because others did.

I had two potatoes and gravy for dinner and watched The Rifleman.

In this story a stage breaks a wheel on the way through North Fork and the passengers have to spend the night in the hotel. One of the passengers is an Italian gentleman named Count Alfredo di Montova, whose fancy clothing incites Groder, the local bully, into picking on the count to the point that he is challenged to a duel. Lucas McCain has already made friends with the count and so he acts as his second for a European style duel at dawn. They are supposed to stand back to back, walk ten paces and then turn to fire but Groder turns a little early. He fires and misses. When the count turns and aims Groder throws down his pistol and surrenders. The rules state that the pistols must be discharged and so the count hands his to Lucas to use at his discretion. Lucas points it and tells Groder to get out of town and so he runs. The count gives Lucas his fancy pistol as a gift.