I Don't Mean to Insult You but ...

            On Monday morning I continued to adjust my translation of “A la pêche des coeurs" (To the Fishing Hole for Hearts) by Boris Vian and to edit the chord positioning of "Lucette et Lucie" by Serge Gainsbourg on my blog. 

            In the late morning I took my guitar back to where I bought it at the Remenyi House of Music to see if they could fix my tuning problem. They don’t let customers deep inside the store during the lockdown and so Harold took the guitar from me near the front and said he’s call me in about an hour. 

            I rode home and had canned chicken breast with salsa for lunch. There’s not a lot of flavour in canned chicken. 

            Harold called me and told me they’d fixed my guitar but before heading back downtown I took a siesta. I left a little after 15:35 and got there at exactly 16:00. Harold said they’d tightened the machine for the B string and changed the string as well. He told me that I should cut a bit off the end of a string before I put it on the guitar because each wind of the string should be touching the post without overlapping. Somehow I didn’t think that was the problem since I’ve been overlapping when winding strings for decades and it hasn't affected the tuning. He admitted that the main problem had been the machine. I was sceptical that the problem was fixed because it’s been so persistent and so I sat down to play. He let me use a tuner and I asked about where the B should register in tune on the device. He said the B should be reading dead on at “B” but I said I've always found that off. He said he didn't want to insult me but maybe it has to do with my hearing. He showed me how on my guitar the saddle is deeper for the B string and that is meant to adjust for the difference. He said I shouldn’t have to tune the B string flat but admitted that people hear differently. He told me that when he was a kid he played drums with no ear protection and so now he can’t tune a guitar without a tuner because it damaged his ear. I played it a bit and it seemed to be in tune but my morning practice will be the big test. 

            Sitting in front of the computer for three months hasn’t been good for my knees but riding my bike downtown and back twice after three months of inactivity doesn’t feel very good either. 

            I worked on defining some more of the key terms for my Canadian Literature exam. 

            The aesthetics of disgust are tied up with the perception of beauty. A flaw like a mole for example on a man’s face would always be considered disgusting but on a woman whose other facial features are attractive it becomes a beauty mark that draws the attention in to her pleasing aspects. I think that also the idea of the uplifting experience that derives from the experience of the fearful elements of nature are also tied with disgust. One is disgusted with oneself for being afraid and that disgust itself is a stepping stone to ecstasy. 

            I grilled four pork chops in the oven but there were two left over so I rubbed them in flour, chili powder and garlic powder and cooked them in a frying pan. I added beer, vinegar and honey and continued cooking until most of it had steamed away, I had one of the stovetop chops with a potato and gravy. The chop turned out pretty good, though a little seared in places on the surface but tender inside and sweet outside.

            I watched part five of Quatermass and the Pit. The technician Sladden, who had experienced something like what an epileptic with telekinetic abilities might experience, runs in terror from the site and takes shelter in the rectory of a church. A priest cares for him and Quatermass and Barbara come to see him. He panics again when Quatermass mentions the hull where is was drilling and a couple of metal objects are sent flying. Quatermass thinks that telekinesis is an ancestral memory that has been awakened in Sladden by the energies or consciousness in the hull. The next day at the site Roney hooks up his optic encephalograph to Barbara since she was there when Sladden had his experience. The machine records a vision of a war on Mars in which the insect creatures are slaughtering one another. They play the film for Colonel Breen and the War Ministry but they dismiss it as having recorded a hallucination. Breen orders the hull opened up to the press. When a TV crew try to film inside there is an explosion and one of the cameramen is killed. In the final shot something seems to be coming to life inside the hull. A female journalist interviewing Breen was played by Anne Blake. 

            I went to bed a half an hour early because I couldn’t stay awake. Probably because of riding my bike downtown and back twice in one day.