On Tuesday I went
over to Freedom Mobile to pay for my May service. After tax my plan costs
$28.25 but I don’t always have a quarter and for some reason even though they’d
just opened up they didn't have 75 cents change. It seems to me that they should
make a bank run on Monday afternoon to get a roll of quarters so they will have
change on Tuesday. At the same time a guy so drunk he was dripping with the
smell of booze came in to pay his bill. He gave me a quarter perhaps because he
thought that I was short to make my payment. He said, “We help each other out!
If you see somebody on the street that needs something, help them out!”
The Parkdale-Queen West Dental Clinic still hadn’t returned my call so I
called them again but got their voice mail once more. I might have to just go
there again, but this time when they aren't at lunch.
It was a sunny but cool day and since I couldn’t think of an excuse to
not take a bike ride, I took one. At first I thought I’d ride lighter without
my leather jacket and so I just wore my hoody. But after riding up O’Hara and
across Maple Grove I turned right on Brock and right again on Queen to return
home and get my jacket.
I can’t get motivated yet to take a full two hour bike ride and so I
just rode as far as Broadview. While walking across Bloor Street to head back
across the bridge I was trying to switch my bike to my right side. I guess the
back wheel bumped my leg and jerked the bike enough to make me lose my grip.
The bike fell over to the left but at least I wasn’t on it.
I rode down Yonge Street and there were some very enthusiastic college
students handing out coupons for the newly renovated Metro store at College
Park. They were wearing backpacks with vertical flags advertising Metro as
well.
Back in Parkdale I notice that the planet Earth sculpture in front of
the library still has Christmas decorations attached to the frame. They had
been evergreen boughs with red bows tied to them but now the boughs are the
colour of dried straw and the bows have faded to a pale pink.
I weighed 88.9 kilos after my bike ride.
I looked at the July 25, 2017 recording of my song practice and only
“Young Women and Older Men” came out with no mistakes.
I practiced “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. I also went through
“Calendar Girl” because I was supposed to have rehearsed it that morning but I
got mixed up because I thought that either I’d forgotten to do “God Goes to My
Head” the day before or that this was the day I was supposed to do it, but
later remembered that I’d actually done it on Monday. The confusion came from
the fact that I alternate some of my songs every four days so I have time to
practice them all without taking up the time that would be spent if I did them
all every day. Usually I have no problem keeping track but this time I screwed
it up slightly.
I boiled a carrot and a potato and heated my last chicken leg. I had
them with gravy while watching the rest of Forbidden Area.
Smith is a Russian agent trained to talk and act just like a US citizen.
He has somehow managed to become a sergeant in the US military within a year of
coming ashore and been assigned as a cook at Strategic Air Command. He supplies
the coffee in thermoses for the B-99 bombers but the thermoses are really
pressure bombs set to go off at 22,000 feet or when opened. Strategic Air
Command has been ordered to ground the B-99s and to prepare the B-47s to
replace them. The problem is that there would be a two-week window in which the
United States would have no air defences. The forbidden area think tank
concludes that a Russian attack will take place in that window and its
epicentre would be Christmas Eve. The problem is that Simmons, the leader of
the think tank believes the report by the rest of the group is a fantasy.
Meanwhile Smith has a toothache. The head cook at SAC looks in Smith’s mouth
and observes that Smith’s stainless steel filling is unique, since they don’t
do stainless steel fillings in the US. The only place they do them is in
Russia. Smith invites the cook for a swim and then kills him. Then Smith takes
a pair of pliers and with an excruciating effort yanks his stainless steel
filled tooth out. Colonel Price (played by Charlton Heston) is convinced that
the Russians are planning an attack he tries to go over Simmons’s head to stop
the B-99s from being grounded. His last resort is General Keaton and after
insulting him to the point of almost getting demoted and punched, Keaton comes
over to his side. Keaton decides to not ground the B-99s but to fly one himself
with Price in the control tower. There is another bomb disguised as a thermos
on Keaton’s B-99. The men in the tower call down to the kitchen for coffee and
one of the kitchen crew grabs one of Smith’s thermoses. Smith tries to
intercept it in the tower, saying that the coffee is cold but Price becomes
suspicious and tells Smith to hand over the thermos. There is a fight in which
Price beats Smith and then just in time he tells General Keaton to land and to
not open the coffee. The air force attacks the approaching Russian subs and the
United States is saved.
All in all I didn’t find this movie
very engaging. But Catherine quotes William Wordsworth without knowing where
the quote comes from when she says, “The world is too much with us!” The poem
has the same name as the quote and it’s a sonnet: “The world is too much with
us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers / Little we
see in nature that is ours / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon /
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon / The winds that will be howling, at
all hours / and are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers / For this, for
everything, we are out of tune / It moves us not. Great god! I’d rather be / a
pagan suckled in a creed outworn / so might I, standing on this pleasant lea /
have glimpses that would make me less forlorn / Have sight of Proteus rising
from the sea / or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”
But
the reference seems entirely out of context with the scene of frustration over
the possibility that the world is about to end. The poem laments people being
too involved with industry and losing touch with nature.
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