Bad Connection

            On Sunday morning I memorized lines 13 to 16 of “Le bras méchanique” by Serge Gainsbourg and made some more adjustments to my translation.

            I weighed myself before breakfast and I was at 88.3 kilos, which is almost a kilo less than just before I broke my fast. Of course I’m still only eating salads right now.

            I worked on typing the notes from the online lecture I’d listened to the day before.

            I had a salad for lunch and after a siesta I finished typing the lecture notes.

            I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish finds a card in an old suit withy the words “The best in town” and a phone number. He figures he might get something free and so he calls the number from his office at the lodge hall. The person in charge isn’t there and so Kingfish leaves his number. He and Andy go out for lunch and then Sapphire comes to his office to see him. She’s about leave him a note when the phone rings and it’s the owner of The Best In Town Lonely Heart’s Club returning George’s call. Sapphire is very angry but Kingfish manages to explain the situation. Later however Andy is sitting alone in Kingfish’s office when a beautiful woman walks in saying she’s a member of the lonely heart’s club and she’s looking for George Stevens. Andy tells her he's George Stevens. Later at the beauty parlour the young woman that Andy just met happens to be sitting under the dryer next to Sapphire and she says she has a date that night with a man named George. When Sapphire finds out it’s George Stevens she is so mad that she leaves with the dryer still on her head. Sapphire sues for separation and they and their lawyers are meeting. Kingfish says that he’s got squatters rights on the sofa because he’s been sleeping on it for seven years and it reverts to him under the Homestead Act. Later Kingfish notices a number on the back of the card that had gotten him into trouble and he remembers that it was for a hair processing place that he went to a few years before. He goes and explains it to Sapphire and she takes him back but later she calls the number. The hair place had gone out of business and the number was recycled. The woman that answers the phone says, “Lennox Burlesque Palace, Fifi Larue speaking!”

            I tried to listen to part B of the online lecture, “Rename, Reclaim, Reoccupy” but I could only hear five minutes of it here. I decided to go across the street to sit in front of the café but there was a guy standing in the doorway using the wifi for his phone. Then another guy came to talk to him. The first guy left and the other guy stood in the doorway drinking beer for a few minutes. When he left I went over there. The connection was better but it was very hard to hear the lecture with all the sirens, streetcars and traffic. I had to put the speaker right up against my ear and still it was difficult. I managed to listen to a full 20 minutes of the 34 minute lecture but then the video stalled and it was time to go home and cook dinner.

            I think my headphones will fit the laptop so if I have to go over there again it might work better than struggling to hold the laptop to my ear.

            I steamed some broccoli and had it in a salad with raspberry dressing while watching two episodes of Noggin the Nog.

            Noggin and his men are on a ship sailing north to the Land of the Nooks where Noggin plans to ask for the hand of King Nan’s daughter Nooka. He had fallen in love with her when given a knife with her image on the handle. The ship has come up to a small island and one of the men goes onto it to dig a soil sample with a shovel. But suddenly the island rises and it is a giant walrus. The walrus introduces himself as the king of the walruses. Noggin greets him politely and offers him s ship’s biscuit. The walrus eats the whole crate of biscuits in one gulp. When Noggin tells him where he is going the walrus says he is going in that direction anyway and offers to pull the ship there. When the Land of the Nooks is in sight the walrus has another crate of biscuits and leaves. They are greeted by a Nook in a kayak who they are and tells them he will go ashore to let the king know he is coming. When the ship arrives Nan is there to greet them. He takes Noggin into his igloo for a hot drink and then introduces him to his daughter Nooka. Noggin falls in love with her even more upon meeting her in person and she falls for him. He immediately asks her to marry him and she says yes. That was a quick courtship. They are married and then Graculas flies back to the land of the Nogs to let everyone know that Noggin is married do Nogbad the Bad cannot claim the throne. But it’s a long flight and on approaching the land of the Nogs Graculas is very tired and so he lands on a flagpole to have a little sleep before finishing his journey. But the flagpole happens to be that of the castle of Nogbad, who climbs the flagpole, capture Graculas and puts him in the dungeon.