Mystery Tool

            On Thursday morning I finished working out the chords to “Calypso Blues” by Boris Vian but I still have to run through it. I also finished the chords for “Betty Jane Rose" by Serge Gainsbourg, went through it in French and English and uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to begin editing it for blog publication. 

            One thing about my old Epi guitar is that my fingers fit it and I have no problem forming an A chord like I do for the Oscar Schmidt and the Washburn. I think that even if I buy a new guitar I’m going to get the Epi repaired when the pandemic is over. I see now when comparing it to the two guitars I’ve bought since that the Epi is too good a guitar to let it turn to garbage. 

            In the late morning I took a bike ride. My neighbour Benji was outside the building when I left. On the way up Brock I found a box containing a few things being thrown out. I took a copy of Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm, a handled crinkle cutter and some kind of hand tool with a hooked blade and a wooden handle. I don’t know what it is but it looks like an antique. I forgot to mention that last week I found Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. 

            I rode to Yonge and Bloor and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. They only had four bags left of the seedless red grapes, so I took those. The green grapes were on sale and so I got four bags of those as well. I also bought a half pint of blueberries, two half pints of raspberries, a bag of naan, two whole chickens for about $10 together, a bag of kettle chips, some five year old cheddar, three bags of milk, two cans of peach slices, hot salsa, two large boxes of baking soda, and a pack of garbage bags. They always have the weirdest deals on Irish Spring soap. They mark a pack of three bars as being on sale for $3 while the regular price of a pack of two bars is $1.50. I took two packs of two and got an extra bar for the sale price. 

            Supposedly I weighed 87.7 kilos before my late lunch. That would be a whole kilo dropped in a day. I had kettle chips, salsa and skyr with a glass of orange juice.

            I laid down for a siesta half an hour later than usual and ended up sleeping for an extra forty five minutes. I felt guilty for sleeping so long but really my body needed the sleep and took it so I shouldn't feel bad. 

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

            At 17:45 I weighed 88.7 kilos. That makes more sense than the weight the scale registered before lunch. 

            I worked on intermixing the lightning and snake videos I edited. I cut bits of snake footage and pasted them between lightning strikes. There is at least one dead space in the lightning parts where there is just horizon and no lightning. I wanted to cut that out but Movie Maker got tired and kept freezing so I had to restart it several times. It would freeze again just as a result of trying to find the section that I wanted to delete. Since I'd already accomplished my main goal of mixing the two videos I gave up on the other thing for today. There are a few seconds of the snake video left that I'll probably intermix with the movie I plan to make of moving electric cords. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos before dinner. I had a potato and two slices of roast beef with gravy while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story tomorrow is Thelma Lou’s birthday and Barney comes across a guy selling things out of his trunk. Newton Monroe has sold Goober a transistor radio and Floyd a watch. He sells Barney a fur that still looks like the animal for $13.50. When Andy hears the price of the gift Barney has given to Thelma Lou he thinks it must be stolen property. Later Goober and Floyd complain that the things they bought are malfunctioning and Thelma Lou says the fur is coming out in bunches. Andy and Barney go to Newton and find out he has a bill of sale for the items he’s selling but that he has no peddler’s license. He is told to clear out but when he is caught selling again he is booked. For the first time on this show, instead of just having the prisoner spend time in a cell, Barney forces Newton to work, but Newton turns out to be very unlucky. When Barney makes him dig a hole to plant a tree he breaks a water main. When he gets him to clean the furnace he makes it worse. Andy tries to help Newton out by giving him a job painting his porch but he does a terrible job. To help build Newton's confidence Andy finishes the job properly and makes Newton believe it’s his work. but then Newton thinks he can be a painter and tries to paint the courthouse for free, making a mess. Finally Andy gets Newton a job a store in another town. Newton sends a pencil sharpener to Barney and an electric razor to Andy in appreciation. Barney tries out Andy’s razor and it grabs his face. 

            Newton was played by the great Don Rickles, who worked as a stand-up comic in nightclubs for twenty years before making his first movie, “Run Silent Run Deep" in 1958. After that he starred in "The Man With the X-Ray Eyes", “Kelly's Heroes" and “Enter Laughing". He became a household name to TV audiences as a stand-up in the seventies when he started appearing on Dean Martin and Johnny Carson. He played Mr Potato Head in Toy Story. 

            In the second story Helen tells Andy that Opie is doing poorly in arithmetic. Andy tries to help him but is not knowledgeable enough. He decides to push Opie to study more and play football less. This causes Opie so much stress that he begins to do worse. Finally Helen sets Andy straight that there’s got to be a balance. Andy eases up on Opie and he begins to get better marks.