Food

            On Friday morning I searched for more chords for "On n'est pas la pour se faire engueuler" (We Didn’t Come Here to Be Shouted At) by Boris Vian and found a couple of music sheets that I copied.

            I memorized lines five to eight of “Le bras méchanique” (The Mechanical Arm) by Serge Gainsbourg and made adjustments to my translation as I went along.

I weighed 89.1 kilos just before breaking my fast with a bowl of mangoes, raspberries and gooseberries with honey on top.

I also had black tea for the first time in two weeks and so I was buzzing in the late morning.

The wifi connection was very weak and so there wasn’t any chance of getting off Twitter before the morning was over.

I had a lettuce, cucumber, tomato and avocado salad with balsamic dressing for lunch.

I tried to take a siesta in the early afternoon but I was still high from the cup of tea I’d had that morning and so I couldn’t sleep. I got up after 48 minutes.

            I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire’s mother moves in with her and Kingfish. Sapphire tells him it’s his fault because he is the one that caused her mother’s marriage to the wealthy Mr Smithers to be broken off. Kingfish decides that the only way to get rid of his mother-in-law is to try to patch things up with Smithers. He sends a telegram to Smithers and signs with Sapphire’s mother’s name, telling him to come back to New York so they can get married. We learn that Smithers considers this a golden opportunity because he is in fact not a millionaire at all but a con artist who poses as a wealthy man. Smithers comes to New York and shortly after that they leave for Connecticut because Sapphire’s mother wants to get married in the church where she married Sapphire’s father. After they leave Amos comes to Kingfish with a detective magazine. In the back among the “Wanted” notices he has found a picture of Smithers, with “Smithers” listed as one of his aliases. Kingfish has to try to stop the wedding and so he borrows his lawyer’s car and they head out in a snowstorm to try to beat Smithers’s train to Connecticut. But the road is blocked by a car with a flat tire. Kingfish and Andy fix the tire by giving the man their spare, but as soon as he leaves their tire blows out. A few minutes later at the church the minister is about to perform the ceremony. He tells Sapphire’s mother that he wouldn’t have made it if not for two nice men that leant him their spare tire.

I restarted eight more torrents that I’d lost in the power outage, plus a few new ones.

I tried for the third day in a row to download the .pdf file “Reclaim, Rename, Reoccupy”. After it failed on the U of T site I found it on other scholarly sites, but I had the same problem. My connection was not strong enough to download a 16-megabyte .pdf file without it failing. If it had been in a torrent there would have been no problem because as long as someone is seeding a torrent it won’t fail. If one’s computer stop or if the wifi goes down it will just stop and then pick up from the same place when things are working again.

Finally I got dressed, grabbed my laptop and went across the street to sit with my back to the door of the café. I logged on with a strong signal and downloaded the file in five minutes.

I went home and downloaded one more, smaller pdf, then I tried to look at one of Gomer White’s lecture videos, but it didn’t even load. I might have to watch those while sitting in front of the café as well.

The note on the café door reads, “We love you. See you again soon.”

I had a salad for dinner while watching the season finale of Star Trek Picard.

Spoiler alert!

The story left off with the synthetics, under the leadership of Sutra, preparing to transmit a signal to the distant, advanced civilization of synthetics to summon them against the threat of humanity. Picard is under house arrest. Angela is helping Dr Soong. Narek has escaped after apparently killing one of the synths. He goes to the crashed Borg cube where he finds his sister. I had thought that she would have been assimilated when the Borg drones overwhelmed her but I guess when Seven of Nine disconnected herself from the cube they stopped being part of a collective again. Narek gathers some high-powered grenades and Narissa says she is going to get the weapons of the cube on line. On the La Sirena Rios and Raffi are trying to figure out how to use the device that the murdered synth had given them to repair the ship. All she said was “Use your imagination.” Rios is holding the gadget, which has no switches to trigger its activity. Raffi suggests that he imagine the ship fixed. He does so and the device begins to send energy out to effect the repairs. Later Narek comes to them to ask to join forces against the synths. Rios, Raffi and Elnor approach the synthetics’ city while pretending to hold Narek prisoner. They are disarmed but Rios is carrying a football that they allow through the gate. The soccer ball contains the grenade they plan top use to blow up the transmitter but when Rios throws it Soji intercepts it and explodes it in the sky. Meanwhile Angela has only been posing as an ally of the synths and now she frees Picard from his room. They go to the La Sirena to try to delay the approaching Romulan attack force. Soong, while examining the body of the murdered synth sees a projection of what she saw before she was killed and we see that Sutra was actually the killer. He uses a device to shut Sutra off and begins helping the humans. On the cube Seven interrupts Narissa as she's starting to power up the weapons. They fight for a while until Seven knocks Narissa over a very high precipice. One assumes she dies. Picard pilots the La Sirena by himself. The Romulans, commanded by the Starfleet traitor Oh, come out of warp over the planet and prepare to exterminate the synths. Angela finds a way to create hundreds of holograms of the La Sirena to distract the Romulans. On the planet Soji opens the transmitter. Picard is trying reason with her when he suddenly has an attack of the terminal brain illness that he was told by his doctor would soon end his life. He asks for a stimulant to keep him going, even though it will speed up his death. The Romulans are about to attack when suddenly between them and the planet hundreds of Starfleet warships come out of warp, commanded by Will Riker. He tells Oh that he’d like nothing better than to kick her ass but she's outgunned and she'd better stand down. Picard is temporarily recovered from his brain attack just as the advanced race of synths is following the beacon through a wormhole. Either they or their ships look like creepy caterpillars. Picard appeals to Soji one more time and she finally shuts off the transmitter. The alien synths are sucked back through the wormhole. The Romulans stand down. Picard thanks Riker and the fleet leaves just before Picard begins to die. Soji beams him down to the planet and Picard dies surrounded by the crew of the La Sirena.

Picard wakes up in a comfortable old-fashioned study and data is sitting there. Picard asks if he’s dreaming. Data says that it’s a simulation. Data explains that they have successfully put Picard's consciousness into a synthetic body and so he would be leaving soon but he asks Picard a favour. Data’s consciousness has been kept alive for all of these years in a disembodied simulation. He asks for Picard to allow that consciousness to die. Picard leaves Data and wakes in a synthetic body exactly like his own but without the brain disease. He keeps his promise to data and ends his life forever. When they leave on the La Sirena Soji and Seven go with them.

Commodore Oh was played by Tamlyn Tomita, who co-starred in “The Joy Luck Club” and the bizarre and very funny “Four Rooms”.