Thursday, 20 June 2019

Gremlins



            On Wednesday I finished working out the chords for Serge Gainsbourg’s “Les petits ballons” and started posting it on my translation blog.
            I registered with Services Canada and applied for my Canada Pension. I was a little confused because I hadn’t realized that the Old Age Pension is a separate application. I’ll have to tackle that next but I was surprised that they still call it “Old Age Pension”. Why not “Senior's Pension"?
            I had a cheese, cucumber and lettuce sandwich for lunch.
            I got caught up on my journal.
            I took a bike ride around the neighbourhood. I think I’ll start extending the rides just a little more. Although my hip muscles still bother me in the morning it hasn't been any worse for having ridden my bike twenty blocks every day for the last couple of weeks.
            I did my afternoon exercises.
            Maybe there’s a simple logic to this that I’m not wrapping my head around. I use two yoga mats. I have a blue one on the bottom and a red one on top with the smooth side of the red mat against the blue one. When I roll them up the blue one is on the outside and it should have the smooth side still against the blue. But sometimes when I unravel them the red mat has somehow gotten flipped so that the rough side is against the blue. How is that possible? Gremlins?
            I reworked the second and the last stanzas of my poem “Random Discipline”. I’d left off a couple of days ago with:

Invasion of constables last night
and Parkdale was swept over
by an angry wave of nervous cops
Invasion of constables last night

In the drug raid’s aftermath today
the nervous streets are speechless
still quite distracted but cool and dead
in the drug raid’s aftermath today

I changed them to:

Invasion of constables last night
and Parkdale was swept over
by splenetic waves of pensive dicks
Invasion of constables last night

In the drug raid’s aftermath today
the troubled streets a whisper
only mistakenly left for dead
in the drug raid’s aftermath today

I had a fried egg and toast with a beer for dinner while watching the only episode I’ve been able to completely download of Tales of Wells Fargo.
This story was from the final and sixth season and it begins with a substitute schoolteacher named Axton who's just finished an assignment at a school where he’s endeared himself to the students and their parents. He’s now moving on to teach for a month in Glory Be, which is the town in which most of the events of this series take place. As Axton is packing to leave we see him pick up a wanted poster with his picture on it and the notice “Brad Trenton, wanted for questioning concerning bond theft". There are also two men that follow him to Glory Be. In Glory Be he immediately shows himself to be a great teacher, sensitive to every child’s needs including the troublemakers.
The hero of this series is Wells Fargo agent Jim Hardie. While investigating some stagecoach pickpockets he is about to be ambushed when Axton intervenes and saves his life. Meeting a schoolteacher that can fight and shoot strikes Hardie as odd. He begins to look at old wanted posters until he discovers who Axton really is. He served two stints in prison but after getting out he stole $100,000 in territorial bonds. The thing is that the bonds still have not been cashed and in just a few days they will be worthless. Axton goes into a saloon where he is confronted by a drunken father who punches him and says that Johnny’s been telling him how hard the teacher is on him. Axton punches him back and tells him his son is smart but he was a cheat. Simmons punches Axton back and says that's no reason to be so hard on him. Axton punches Simmons and says, “I said he was a cheat but with a little extra work and school chores Johnny’s gonna turn out just fine.” Simmons says he’s glad to hear it, bows and leaves. Hardie confronts Axton about the bonds but Axton says he has his reasons to hold onto them. Meanwhile the two men that have been following Axton finally approach him. Axton has a daughter in the care of his sister. The men threaten to kill her if he doesn’t turn over the bonds to them. He agrees but he is approached again by Hardie. After Hardie beats him in a fight Axton tells him about the threat and Hardie helps him stop the two men. Axton had held onto the bonds to prove something to himself. He wanted to have them in case he needed them but no longer did. He passed his daughter into the care of his sister when he first went to prison and told her to tell her that her father died a respectable man. He agrees in the end to hand in the bonds.

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