Famous Teddy Bear

            On Friday morning I worked on editing my upload of “Le bras mécanique” (The Mechanical Arm) by Serge Gainsbourg to Christian’s Translations. I got about a third of it done but I had connectivity problems.

            I still haven’t heard back from my TA or the Indigenous Studies course instructor about finding a way to write my exam. Somehow I think they are just hoping I will go away. Maybe they already read my assessments of their performances in the course assessment. It was anonymous but probably obvious that it was my review.

            I had three falafel balls and some French fries for lunch.

            I worked on researching some of the practice essays for Monday’s exam. I looked into the difference between Indian status in the United States and Canada. In the States it was strictly by blood quantum whereas in Canada it was patrilineal and a white woman could gain status by marrying an Indian man. But in Canada it was also gender discriminatory because Indian women lost their status if they married non-Indian men. Bill C-31 was supposed to correct that but it caused the second generation cut off whereby if a family married non=status people for two generations then status would disappear. Now Bill S-3 is hoping to correct that and just have each First Nation decide who has status and who doesn't of course that would probably cause even more problems but at least it would be out of the government’s hands except with all the court cases that would arise with disputes within each band.

            I heated the rest of the chilli that I’d made the night before and had it with potato chips while watching two episodes of The Sooty Show.

            The Sooty Show was a British television show for small children. The main characters are Matthew, who is a live human and three puppets named Sooty, Sweeps and Soo. Soo the panda bear is the only one that talks out loud. Sweeps is a dog that communicates through squeaking noises that everyone understands. Sooty is a teddy bear that only communicates by whispering in Matthew’s ear.

            In the first story they are all having lunch together but Sweeps refuses to eat his runner beans. Matthew tries several tricks that don’t work until he tells Sweeps that eating runner beans makes one run faster. Sweeps eats all his runner beans and then starts to run all over the place, twice as fast as usual. Later Matthew tells Sweeps that if he eats spring greens it will make him bounce around like he’s on springs. He eats them and begins to bounce. When he finds out that Matthew was fibbing he Sweeps gets his revenge. He serves him bangers and mash with gunpowder mustard for tea and the meal explodes in his face. Matthew apologizes for tricking him and Sweeps promises to eat his vegetables.

            In the second story it is discovered that Sweeps’s nose has suddenly begun to honk whenever it is pressed and his ears ring like a bicycle bell whenever they are pulled. They go out later and discover that it has happened to all the people in the town too, although they can’t hear it. Later Matthew finds Sue’s magic wand lying on the lawn. Sweeps admits that he had been playing with it that morning. Matthew uses the wand to take away Sweeps’s honk but winds up with his own honk.

            I had expected a 1950s show but this one was in the 1990s. In the 1950s the show host was Matthew’s father Harry Corbett. At the time Matthew was a child actor on the show but he bought the rights after his father retired. The show ended in 1992 but there were sequels, merchandizing and DVD releases after that.