The Comedy of Errors

            On Friday after midnight I did my usual search for bedbugs and found one on my bed near where my pillow goes. It was either dead or dying from the poison and dust that was put down on Wednesday. Hopefully I won't find any more. 

            During yoga I was able to put my weight on my elbows to bend back into the fish pose for the first time since my accident two weeks ago. My limitations are now all with my shoulder. I still can't push myself up on my arms from lying on my stomach or bring my torso down to the floor by bending my arms while I'm on my hands and knees.

            I looked for a recording of the song "Papa Nono" by Serge Gainsbourg but no one had posted it. I searched for the film "Je Vous Aime" in which the song appears as sung by Gerard Depardieu and played by the band Bijou but that wasn't up anywhere either. I looked to see if there was a torrent for the movie but there wasn't and so I had to settle for posting my translation of the song without the chords. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and published it. Then I moved on to the Gainsbourg song from 1980 "U.S.S.R./U.S.A." I found a YouTube audio of it being sung by the band Martin Circus and sang along a couple of times. I'll start memorizing it tomorrow. It didn't sound like a Gainsbourg melody and when I checked I saw it isn't. In fact none of the music for any of the rest of Gainsbourg's 1980 songs was written by him. From this time on he wrote melodies for the songs in his own albums, a few songs for other people and music for films but most of the rest of his lyrics before he died in 1991 had other people composing the music. 

            Around midday I finished cleaning the bottom of my muffin pan, although there didn't seem to be anything to remove at the end. I also cleaned the small copper plated saucepan along with its cover. There are just the steamer basket and the deep fry basket left to clean before I wash the storage drawer under the stove and put everything back inside. After that I won't work any more on my kitchen cleaning project until December when I'll tackle the shelves above the sink. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before lunch. It was too hot a day to wear long pants and so I put on my shorts for my bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. I weighed 88.8 kilos when I got home. 

            The black scab on my right elbow is now down to about the size and shape of half a toonie. I now have regained almost full elbow flexibility although it still hurts a bit to bend it all the way. 

            I read a few more scenes of Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors." We're already in scene three of act 4 and the doubles keep being mistaken for each other. The two Dromios come close to meeting as they argue with each other through a door that Dromio of Syracuse was told to lock and not let anyone in while Antipholus of Syracuse is inside flirting with the sister of the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus who is locked out of his own home. Later Antipholus of Ephesus gets arrested for not having paid for a gold chain that was given to Antipholus of Syracuse.

            I read a couple of chapters of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. He tells that slave children are taken away from their mothers at an early age to keep them from becoming attached to one another. The master was also sadistic and generous with the whip. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last chicken leg while watching Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Gomer is supposed to paint the roof of the duty hut but he is afraid of heights and gets dizzy. At one point he falls on top of Sergeat Carter while holding a bucket of paint. Carter is fed up with Gomer and so when he's asked to pick six of his men to go away for a few days and undergo paratrooper training he picks Gomer right away. But before Gomer leaves he gives Carter a document containing a $10,000 insurance policy with Carter as the beneficiary. It's then that Carter starts to worry about Gomer's fear of heights and fears that if something happens to Gomer and he gets the money he will be blamed. He has a dream in which a sinister looking insurance agent comes to give Carter his cheque for $10,000, then talks about murder and laughs maniacally. The insurance salesman is played by Gomer in the dream. Carter tries to stop the jump by telling the sergeant in command of the operation about Gomer's fear of heights and his dizziness. He thinks that will make the sergeant pull Gomer out but the plane goes up anyway with Gomer inside. Carter rushes to stop the jump but sees the plane in the air. Carter watches through binoculars as Gomer jumps and falls like a rock. He and Corporal Boyle see him go down behind a hill and they go after him. Carter can't find Gomer and sits down as he wallows in self recrimination. But then he hears a voice above him and sees that Gomer's shoot did open but it got caught in a tree. The jump cured Gomer of his fear of heights.