They Should Call it the "Grown Up Pension"

            On Friday morning it was warm and muggy enough to open all the windows and rehearse in my bare feet but too cool to wear shorts.

            I started memorizing “Les filles n'ont aucun dégoût” (The girls are not disgusted) by Serge Gainsbourg. It looks like it was only written to be performed on a TV show. Gainsbourg is flanked by Jane Birkin and Sylvie Vartan and each woman sings a verse mocking how disgusting he is in appearance and behaviour before he responds, singing that women actually like disgusting men.

            I finished applying for my “Old Age” Security Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement. When I signed it I dated it June 26 but realized only after sealing the envelope that I could have just used today’s date since I’d already checked the box for my pension to start when I'm eligible. It’s only if I want it to start at a specific date that makes applying earlier than eleven months beforehand is an issue. Anyway, I’ll mail it on Wednesday. I thought it was weird that the envelope they provided wasn’t addressed and it didn’t have postage paid. I had to look up the address of the closest office and write it in. Maybe they don’t do postage paid because I could be applying from anywhere in the world.

            Old, a. (Anglo Saxon. Eald; Proto Germanic. Aldaz: grown-up; German. Alt; Gothic. Altheas; Icelandic. Alt; Latin. Alere: to nourish; Altus: grown big; Proto- Indo-European.  H2uelt

ós: Grown). I think they should call it the “Grown Up Security Pension” since the real meaning of “old”, that anyone under 65 is still a child, has been lost.

I had cheese whiz and celery for lunch.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I took a bike ride up to Dundas, across to Gladstone, down to Queen and then home.

            I did my afternoon exercises.

            I did a little more work on my poem “The Street Sucks the Sandman’s Bag”.

            I grilled the other pepper sirloin steak that came in a pack with the one I’d cooked the night before. Two for $7 was a great deal. I boiled two small potatoes. I heated the liquid that I always put under the rack to catch the fat when I cook chicken. I mixed it with pieces of dough made from flour and margarine, added pepper and Worcestershire sauce and made gravy.

            I watched another Studio One teleplay. This one was called The Arena and it was also written by Rod Serling. It begins with a young senator named James Norton appointed to the senate by the governor of his state. He is introduced to his seasoned adviser Feeney, who is quite frank at all times. Norton is entering an arena where his father Senator Frank Norton had done battle before being forced into retirement by another senior senator named Rogers. James tries to continue in his father’s adversarial style but like his father he is no match for Rogers. When Feeney is drunk he leaks some information about Rogers to James that could ruin the senior senator. Twenty-five years before he had been a member of an ultra nationalist and anti-immigration organization known as The Vindicators, who basically believed that only the descendents of the original immigrants to the United States deserve to live there. This was apparently a real organization. James seems determined to use the information against Rogers but Feeney and James’s wife beg him not to. He goes to ask his father what he would do, without telling him what the information is. Frank says that politics is about destroying your opponent any way you can. Feeney tips of Rogers that James has the information. The next day in the senate Rogers is about to announce his resignation when James asks him to yield. He is about to read the information but he changes his mind. He decides to be a different kind of senator than his father was.

            Margaret Norton was played by Leora Dana, who won a Tony award in 1973 for “The Last of Mrs Lincoln”.

            Norton’s secretary Betty was played by Frances Sternhagen, who won two Tony awards, first for “The Good Doctor" and again for “The Heiress”.