Hall Done

            On Friday morning I continued to translate "On n'est pas là pour se faire engueuler" (We Didn’t Come Here to be Shouted At) by Boris Vian. I’m wondering if this song is a protest about specific real events. The subtitle is “Chanson fringante et démocratique” (Democratic song on the fringes).

            I memorized the second verse of “Rocking Chair” by Serge Gainsbourg and reworked the translation for the first two verses so the end of each line rhymes with “chair”. The translation of the last verse still needs adjustment on that account. It’s not really fair since half the words in the French language rhyme with “chair”.

            I posted my Wednesday blog this morning because I’d forgotten to do it on Thursday night.

            I finished washing the kitchen hallway floor. I won’t tackle the rest of the kitchen floor for a while because there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be cleaned in the hallway area. There’s the floor just outside of my apartment, which is embarrassingly darker than it is around the doors of the other tenants. Most of what I have to do is more vertical, such as my apartment door, which hasn’t been washed in maybe fifteen years. Then I have to put the shelves back onto the set of shelves in the northwest corner and organize all the stuff that’s stored there. Then I’ll wash the mirror over the kitchen mantle and clean the mantle itself.  Finally, before returning to the floor I’ll wash the bookshelf that sits above the radiator against the kitchen table. I might not get back to the floor until school is finished in April.

            For lunch I had a can of chilli with the last of my salt and vinegar kettle chips.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish comes home from a day at the pool hall to find Sapphire all packed and about to leave him. She complains that she’s been supporting him for 22 years. Her mother pays the rent, her aunt buys their clothes and her sister sends money for food. She declares, “I’m ashamed!” Kingfish says, “You oughta be! You’ve got two uncles that ain’t sending us a nickel!” She says she’s going back to Georgia until Kingfish makes something of himself. While Sapphire is gone Kingfish does something desperate. He gets a job. But the only work he could find was cleaning up a vacant lot at the corner of 212^th Street and 10^th Avenue. He finds the work so hard that he works out a scheme to get Andy to do the work for him. He convinces Andy that he’s been made Deputy Dirt Commissioner for New York and that every New York citizen has to help clean it up. While cleaning the lot, Andy moves a rock and finds a tin box containing twenty-five $20 bills. They have a dispute over who gets to keep the money. Kingfish puts it in the safe at the lodge and then later tells Andy that he’s researched the box and found that it was buried by Ponce de Leon as a stake for his marriage to Pocahontas. Kingfish claims that by coincidence he is the descendant of the last surviving member of de Leon’s crew. Andy doesn’t buy it and so Kingfish tells the truth that he desperately needs the money to get Sapphire back. Andy says Kingfish can have his share as long as he pays him back. Kingfish sends the money to Sapphire. Andy and Kingfish decide to take some shovels back to the lot and to see if there’s any more money there. Meanwhile a mobster that has just gotten out of prison is the one that buried the money. He comes to get it and finds Kingfish and Andy there. He forces them to admit that they took the money. Kingfish has to pawn most of his stuff and some of Sapphire’s to pay the gangster off. He gets a call from Sapphire who tells him she won’t be home for a while because the money he sent her was counterfeit and she’s in jail.

            I did some reading from my Indigenous Studies textbook on self-government.

            I had three small potatoes, a chicken leg and some gravy for dinner while watching Zorro. In this story the governor is brought back to Monterrey by Don Alejandro to quell the growing unrest against Rico. But Rico bends the truth and convinces the governor that he has acted fairly and that it is Joaquin Castanada that is agitating the peasants to revolt. The governor proposes that Joaquin come into Monterrey under a flag of truce to speak with him. But Rico plans to ambush Joaquin and to kill him. Diego convinces Joaquin to come in because he believes the governor is honourable and does not think Rico would try anything nasty now that the governor is back in charge. Just in case Zorro watches over the two when Joaquin rides in. This is a good thing because Captain Briones is about to shoot Joaquin when Zorro uses his whip to divert the shot. He then rescues Joaquin and takes him back to the hills. Rico tells the governor that Joaquin ambushed the men and they are lucky to be alive. The governor declares that both Joaquin and Zorro are wanted dead or alive.