Ken Russell

            On Tuesday at 0:30 I did my usual search for bedbugs before going to sleep and I was glad to find none. So that's still eight bedbugs I've found since August 13 and the last three have looked sick. I still want Orkin to come to treat the place though and hopefully that will happen soon. 

            I reworked my translation of the second cop dialogue in "La java des chaussettes à clous" (The Tap Dance of the Hobnail Boots) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished posting my translation of "Bébé Polaroid" by Serge Gainsbourg and sang along once with his song "Chavirer la France" (Bowling Over France). 

            I got an email from Albert Moritz saying he still hasn't heard from Exile Editions. He said he wanted to get in touch with George Elliott Clarke to see if he can connect with Michael Callaghan but George is on holiday in Nova Scotia. Albert wondered if we should move on to another publisher. I wrote back that it seems to me that if George is a card in our deck he should be back to teach in Toronto within the next three weeks so we might as well wait until at least then before considering another publisher. 

            I weighed 90.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sawed a small piece of floorboard to make it thinner and then shorter to fit into the hole in the corner of my bedroom floor that I'd filled a couple of weeks ago. The piece of wood I'd glued there back then was slightly lower than the rest of the floor and I thought I could raise it a bit with another piece but I realized after trying to fit the wood that it's not that much lower and so it would be better just to buy some wood filler. So I went to the hardware store with an old dried up tub of Elmer's wood filler that I'd bought ten or more years ago. They didn't have Elmer's in stock so I got a tube of Le Page's tique coloured wood filler. The cashier was having a moment with her teenage son who was having a bad day and gave him a hug. She took the time to explain that to me at the counter. I had put the ten year old Elmer's tub down on the counter and she grabbed and scanned it. It still scanned at $3.59. That was funny. Of course she subtracted it once she knew. I filled the hole and smoothed it to the level of the rest of the floor. It's a bit red, so maybe I should have bought the oak tinted tube. The hole is sealed better now so I can worry about the aesthetics of the floor when I get back to fixing up the bedroom at a future date. 

            In the final twenty minutes before lunch I scraped the last of the black off the bottom of my square baking pan. Now I can move on to cleaning my two muffin pans, which hopefully won't be as time consuming. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos before lunch.

            Before taking my siesta I put my computer to sleep as well. I turned it on when I got up and because of that posting my blog was much quicker. I got away for my bike ride 45 minutes sooner than yesterday. It was hot like an oven outside although the official temperature wasn't any higher than the day before. I stopped at Freshco on the way home because I'd run out of both cereal and milk and I wanted some for breakfast tomorrow. I also grabbed a bag of kettle chips. I weighed 88.7 kilos when I got home. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

            I continued to try to find a video clip relating to shock therapy that could match the line "Undress the patient and then lay them down just like a sacrifice" from my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." So far the closest thing is just when Olivia de Havilland is compelled to lie down for shock therapy in "The Snake Pit." I skimmed through Ken Russell's "The Fall of the Louse of Usher" and it looks like a fun movie to watch but it's too bizarre for my purpose in this project. I think I'll look for clips of human sacrifice to see if there's anything that fits. 

            I worked on making the graffiti clearer in my "Anti Gravity's Rainbow" photo. 

            I had a potato, the last of my gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching two episodes of Gomer Pyle. 

            In the first story Carter's platoon is on war games and Carter is ordered to have one of his men captured in order to feed the enemy false information. Carter figures he will just feed Gomer false information and then send him out to be captured. He figures that Gomer will be tricked into leaking the info he has so he doesn't have to be told the truth. But he doesn't tell Gomer he's to be captured but rather just sends him towards the enemy in hopes that he will be. He tells Gomer he's heading for the ammunition dump but it's really the enemy camp. However Gomer doesn't get captured and comes back to inform Carter where the ammunition dump isn't. Carter sends Gomer back to spy on the enemy camp to find out where the ammunition dump is. Then he sends Duke to follow Gomer and to make sure he gets captured. Gomer does get captured but he tricks the two enemy soldiers by pointing and yelling "Here comes the cavalry" then he grabs their weapons and captures them and ties them up, then he sneaks on a truck and comes back to Carter. But Carter tells him that since he didn't report his two captures to a referee they wouldn't get credit. So Gomer goes back and this time really does get captured. At the prison camp Gomer is bribed with a turkey dinner to spill information. He pretends to give in and gives false information but he ends up giving the right information because Carter had fed the wrong info to him. But Gomer is now sick from eating too much and so he is sent to the doctor. After the doctor leaves the room he finds the captain's uniform in a closet and sneaks out the window, getting away in a jeep. On the road Gomer comes across a whole platoon of the enemy and captures them all, earning both Carter and himself citations. 

            In the second story Gomer is driving Carter nuts with one screw up after another. He decides that he needs a vacation and so he arranges for Gomer to have a one week furlow. But Gomer doesn't want to go and so during his leave he takes a civilian job as a bartender on the base. But while serving Carter beer he spills it all over him. Carter reveals that he was trying to get rid of him and since the last thing Gomer wants to do is to hurt Carter he puts in for a transfer. Carter seems thrilled at first but then the platoon seems empty without Gomer there to screw up. Carter gets irritable because he needs someone to yell at. Finally on the day Gomer is supposed to leave Carter tears up Gomer's transfer papers in front of him, making him very happy. Gomer screws up right away and Carter starts yelling and I guess everyone is happy.