Sunday, 15 March 2020

Why No Wifi?



            On Saturday morning I finished posting my translation of “S.S. in Uruguay” by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s the last of the songs from his “Rock Around the Bunker” album. I tried to find the lyrics for his song “La biche aux yeux clairs” but there is not trace of it in any form online. Next I tried finding the music for his "La fille aux claquettes" (The Tap Dancing Girl) for which I already have the lyrics but there is no video posted. It may be on one of Jane Birkin's albums but none that are available for free downloading. I have already done a translation that would be altered if I learned the song but I might post it for now anyway.
            Around noon I went out to the supermarket but stopped at the Vina pharmacy on the way to pick up my prescription.
            At No Frills I bought a pack of grape tomatoes, eight bags of grapes, eighteen avocadoes, three mangoes, two pints of raspberries and three bottles of vegetable cocktail. On my way home I realized that I’d forgotten to buy vine ripened tomatoes as I’d intended. I couldn’t get by without tomatoes and so I took my food home to unload and then headed back out to Freshco. There all of the tomatoes were gone except for a few overripe hothouse tomatoes. I found one gnarly looking one among those that would be firm enough to eat and grabbed seven packs of grape tomatoes. While I was there I also bought two pints of strawberries and two half pints of blackberries.
            I had grape tomatoes and avocadoes for lunch.
            I took a siesta in the early afternoon and didn’t want to get up but told myself, “If you really didn’t want to get up you shouldn’t have woken up!”
            From around 18:30 on I couldn’t connect to the wifi network of the café across the street so I couldn’t make any of my blog posts.
            I finished reading The Federal Indian Day Schools of the Maritimes and then I skimmed Indian School Road, which tells the history of the only residential school in the Maritimes. I preferred the book on day schools because it just offered facts without stuffing them with opinions. The author of Indian Road School uses a lot of loaded language, like when he even refers to former students that had fond memories of the school as “survivors”. That seems extremely condescending. No one that has never experienced trauma is a survivor.
            I had grape tomatoes and avocadoes for dinner while watching the rest of  “Once Upon a Giant” by Wayne and Shuster. The royal wedding between the unwilling Princess Marigold and the evil prince Malokeo is about to take place. Meanwhile Lester and Humphrey are flying a magic carpet to the giant’s castle because the king has decreed that whoever captures the giant can marry his daughter. They are doing this on behalf of Prince Daryl, who has been banished for trying to elope with Marigold. They arrive at the castle and eventually find a curtain, behind which us McDermott the hermit. He admits that he has been projecting his voice and shadow on the town all along and that there actually is no giant. He says that Prince Malokeo made him do it. The good witch appears and tells them the wedding has started. She transports the three of them to wedding ceremony and the good witch helps them prove that Malokeo was behind it all. The stolen royal jewels were found in Malokeo’s castle. Malokeo is sent to the dungeon and Marigold and Daryl can now get married. There’s a final repeat of an earlier song about happy times coming.
            It turns out that Johnny Wayne wrote all the music, the lyrics and the songs.
            I still didn’t have wifi and assumed it wouldn’t come on until the café opened up on Sunday.
            More than two hours before bedtime I started feeling sleepy, probably mostly due to caffeine withdrawal during my second day of fasting but also maybe out of boredom from lack of internet access. I went to bed at 22:39 and conked out right away.

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