Aux Armes Et Caetera

            On Thursday morning when the alarm went off in my half sleep I thought it was a phone ringing and I got up to answer it. I was already walking when I realized that it was time to get up. After washing, when I came back to the living room to start yoga I saw that the my computer was frozen at the Windows icon so it must have tried to do updates, restarted and frozen. Lately my computer freezes like that after a restart and I find that to avoid that I have to fully shut down from the Start menu and then start it. But when it’s frozen like that I have to shut it down with the on-off switch, which causes it to freeze the first time, then again until the computer goes into repair mode. Then it gives me the option to either restart or shut down. I click on “shut down" and then start it up again and everything is usually fine. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Mister Iceberg" by Serge Gainsbourg. That completed the years 1958-1978 in my Gainsbourg project and I moved on to his classic reggae album of 1979, “Aux armes et caetera" (To Arms Etcetera). I memorized the first two verses of the title song, which is his rewording of the French National Anthem in reggae style. It was very controversial at the time because he’d made the lyrics somewhat violent. But later he spent over a million dollars buying the oldest known version of the lyrics and it shows that it was originally very similar to what he wrote. 

            During song practice I only saw one squirrel going west along the wire on the south side of Queen and it got dive bombed by a sparrow protecting its young. It hung on though and made it to go south on the wires above Dunn Avenue, perhaps looking for a nest to steal eggs from. 

            I weighed 88.7 kilos before breakfast.

            Around midday I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. The red seedless grapes were cheap so I got eight or nine bags. The vine tomatoes were on sale and so I got three. I also bought a half pint of raspberries, some ginger root, a bag of kettle chips, a pack of chicken drumsticks, five year old cheese, canned fruit salad, canned peaches, Greek yogourt, spoon size shredded wheat, a jug of orange juice, hot salsa and Folgers coffee was on sale for about $3 less than usual so I got some. 

            I stood in line for the express cash for a long time and then Amelia opened up a cash and called me over. She seems to be a foreman for the other cashiers and she’s worked there since it was Price Chopper. She’s always very friendly. She commented that the glass barriers makes it harder to see if a cash is open. I said it also makes it hard to see the prices as they appear. She agreed with that. I said they probably won’t be taking them down even after the pandemic is over and she said she didn’t think they would. She said one never knows when something else is going to come up, plus they spent a lot of money installing them. I said it’ll be good when it’s all over anyway and then I could see her beautiful face. She agreed that it would be nice to see everyone’s beautiful faces again. She asked if I know anyone that got the covid. I said that I just have my daughter in Montreal and she keeps pretty safe and hardly ever goes out anyway. Amelia said she’s had a few relatives that have gotten covid and right now there are tow who are temporarily on oxygen. I said, “Oh shit!” 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos before lunch. I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos at 18:00. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug.” 

            I imported to Movie Maker the ten videos that I’d converted yesterday from MOV to MP4 to Movie Maker to see which ones I wanted to delete and which ones I wanted to keep for now. In some of them the electrical cords weren’t animated at all and so I got rid of the videos 3-6, 9 and 11. I clipped a couple of the ones I kept but once I start to insert the clips into the main video I’ll have to cut a lot more because I have more footage than there is in the entire song that I’m making the video for. I really only need a few seconds when I have a few minutes. 

            I colourized a bit more of my photo of the skateboarder from the 1980s and edited some other photos from 1987.

            I had a potato, a slice of corned beef brisket and the rest of my gravy while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. In the first story Mayberry’s annual Founders Day celebration is approaching and the governor is going to come. Also a trailer that serves as a mobile museum containing many valuable historical items will be there. Warren is given the task of guarding the museum but he becomes obsessed with Mayberry’s hundred year old cannon. He wants to fire it as part of the ceremony but Andy forbids it. On Founders Day during the celebrations as the Potato Queen hands the ceremonial potato to the governor, a man in a state police uniform approaches Warren and tells him that he’s taking over responsibility for the museum. Warren believes him just as Barney would have and so he gives the man the key and then goes to examine the cannon some more. He sees that there is something stuck inside but he needs a better look. Meanwhile a station wagon driven by a woman drives up to the window of the museum and her partner passes paintings and other valuables out to her. They are just about to drive away with the stolen goods when Warren lights a match to get a better look inside the cannon. The match sets off the residual black gunpowder in the cannon and it fires the cannonball that had been stuck inside. The projectile hits the station wagon. Andy comes over and sees what happened. He tells Warren to arrest the crooks. 

            The thief’s accomplice was played by Sally Mansfield, who co-starred on the TV series “Rocky Jones Space Ranger.” 

            In the second story a Opie has a new friend named Tommy who is rich and has a set of small walkie talkies that he and Opie are playing with. Goober gets a dog which he calls “Spot” because it has no spots. Tommy is bored with small town life and is also spoiled and somewhat mischievous. He slips one of the walkie talkies under Spot’s collar and tricks Goober into believing that his dog can talk. Goober thinks he’s going to be rich and plans on leaving Mayberry. Later when Andy approaches the gas station he hears what Goober hears but he also sees Tommy and Opie in the bushes. He already knows that Tommy has a set of walkie talkies. Andy breaks it to Goober that he’s been tricked but later arranges with Goober to fool the boys. Tommy has been talking about how his father is going to buy him a horse when he gets a good deal. Andy tells him that Goober said he talked to a man who had one for sale. He takes Tommy and Opie to see Goober and Goober says the man with the horse gave him his number but instead of writing it down he told the number to Spot so he could remember it and tell him later. Tommy angrily tells Goober the dog can’t talk and it was a trick. Andy tells the boys they’ve just been tricked as well.