April Stewart

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the intro to “Chasseur d'ivoire” (Ivory Hunter) by Serge Gainsbourg. The ones I'm hearing don't fit with either of the three sets of chords for the song I found online. I'll start with the verses tomorrow and find out if my interpretation has anything in common with one of the sets in that context. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before breakfast. After midday, I spent some time going over the rods of my metal dish rack with steel wool but I didn't have time to finish cleaning it before lunch. I think I'll have time tomorrow. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before lunch.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Ossington and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. They had green grapes from Peru that were fairly firm and so I got five bags. I also bought a pint of strawberries, a bunch of bananas, a whole chicken, a pack of five year old cheddar, two containers of Greek yogourt, two boxes of spoon size shredded wheat, two cans of peaches, dark roast coffee, a jar of hot salsa, and a bag of kettle chips.

            As I was walking to my bike I saw Dawn from Bike Pirates going in. I said hi and she responded indifferently until she realized it was me and said, “Christian! I didn't recognize you out of your natural habitat!” I slipped my hood off and said, “This is my natural habitat.” “A man that lives in a hoody!” I said, “It's good to see you.” She said, “It's good to see you too” and then she added, “You know, they've handed us a second hand year. This is the same one we had last year.” I said, “It's no fun being depressed if everybody else is depressed as well.” She said, “I don't get depressed, I get angry!” 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos when I got home. 

            I rubbed a pork roast with olive oil, butter, garlic, onion, rosemary, salt, and pepper and roasted it in the oven. I made a new batch of gravy from a combination of saved chicken drippings, the drippings from the pork I was roasting, butter and flour. I boiled a potato. 

            I downloaded the video of the twinkling stars and imported it into Movie Maker where I cut it down from a minute to a few seconds. I added the effect of it fading to black to match the line in my song Instructions For Electroshock Therapy”: “randomly black out the stars.” I'll insert it into the video tomorrow. I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork while watching the South Park made-for-TV movie, “Post Covid.” 

            This story begins with the covid pandemic being almost over and it's only taken forty years. Stan Marsh is living far away from South Park and working as an online whiskey taster. His partner Alexa complains about his drinking and nags him about his life in general. It turns out though that Alexa is really Alexa the Amazon virtual assistant but now she's been upgraded to a solid hologram although she can still be turned off. Stan gets a call from Kyle Broflovski who he hasn't seen for forty years because they stopped being friends at the beginning of the pandemic. Kyle breaks the news that Kenny McCormick is dead. 

            Stan reluctantly returns to South Park for the funeral. He meets Kyle at a Denny's / Appleby's where all the food is now made from insect protein because no one eats meat anymore. Kenny had become one of the world's most renowned scientists and had been working on a cure for covid when he died. He left certain vital data of his research hidden but left a message that his old friends would know where to find it. 

            At Kenny's wake they meet Eric Cartman, who was always anti-Semitic but has now not only converted to Judaism but he is a rabbi and married to a Jewish woman named Yenta, and the father of three Jewish kids. Cartman is a more observant Jew than Kyle or his family ever were and at first Kyle thinks Cartman is messing with him. Also at the wake are Tweak, who is still partnered with Craig; Wendy Testaburger; Jimmy Volmer, who is now a famous late night talk show host (but now jokes are so politically correct that they just consist of saying very nice things about people and yet audiences laugh anyway); Token Black, who is now a police detective; and Clyde Donovan.

            Later Stan is watching a report on Kenny and we learn he died of the new covid variant “The Delta Plus Rewards Program.” While watching the documentary Stan zeroes in on the blackboard behind Kenny containing a very complex formula, at the centre of which are the words “Tegridy Weed.” Because of the new variant the military come and cordon off South Park, not letting anyone leave because one person remains unvaccinated. It turns out to be Clyde, who refuses but no one can force him because it's his choice even though the military is shooting anyone that tries to leave. 

            Stan moves into a shelter at South Park Elementary and Cartman asks Kyle if he and his family can stay at his house. But Cartman and his wife have extremely loud sex while shouting fantasies about Abraham. 

            Stan goes to see his father Randy in the retirement home. Randy says that Stan murdered his daughter Shelley because she burned to death in the fire that Stan started to burn down his marijuana farm. Stan did burn down the farm but Randy had locked Shelley in the barn to make her do her chores. After Shelley's death Stan's mother committed suicide. Stan busts Randy out of the old folks home and they go to the remains of Tegridy Farms where Randy reveals what we learned over a year ago during the Pandemic Special, that he had caused covid by having sex with a pangolin in China. He had however been working on a marijuana strain that might have served as a cure when the farm was burnt down. 

            The group tries to contact Victor Chouce, who was a close scientific associate of Kenny. Victor is in a mental institution but the director will not let them visit because Clyde refuses to get vaccinated. Wendy asks Clyde if he wants to do some coke and he's totally down with it but then realizes she's trying to get him to snort the covid vaccine and he refuses because, “My body is a temple!” 

            The former friends have to think like kids again in order to uncover the secret hiding place of Kenny's data. They realize when they do that Kenny must have put it up his butt. They go to the morgue and Stan retrieves the data. The flash drive shows a video of Kenny's attempt to travel back in time but he also reveals that the real reason everything went wrong was Stan, Kyle and Cartman for breaking up their broship. 

            Stan and Kyle vow to go back in time and save Kenny but Cartman sneaks away because he does not want the future changed. Meanwhile at the mental hospital we see the name on Victor Chouce's cell is really “Doctor Chaos”, which is the secret identity of Butters Stotch. 

            Wendy is played by April Stewart, who also does many other female voices on South Park, including Stan's mother Sharon Marsh, Stan's sister Shelley, Kenny's alcoholic mother Carol McCormick, and Mayor McDaniels. She also plays Maria Rivera on El Tigre, Raava and Fire Lord Izumi on The Legend of Korra, and Bloody Mary in the video game Infamous. She's been acting since the age of twelve. Her father sang for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.