Maura McGiveney

            On Sunday morning I uploaded “Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?” (Arthur, Where’d You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian to Christian’s Translations. But it took half an hour for the document and then for Chrome to open. I kept the blog open while I sang and played my translation of “Malaise en Malaisie” (Malaise in Malaysia) by Serge Gainsbourg. Then I uploaded that to Christian’s Translations as well and began to edit it towards blog publication. 

            I had a good song practice as I usually do on the day after the relief of handing in an essay. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            At around midday I went full Red Green and tried to fix my Frankenstein chair with duct tape so it wouldn’t shift so much and so the legs of the kitchen chair on top would stay off the floor. I taped the blanket and the doubled over pillow together to the old office chair. Then I wanted to tape the two big books on top of those but ran out of tape. I went to Home Hardware but I’d forgotten that in the winter they close on Sundays, so I went to Dollarama where I got two rolls of black duct tape. I tried to use one of their check-out machines and it took my first toonie but not the second. It kept returning it. I asked for help from a human cashier, and she canceled the payment and tried to start again but then it rejected both toonies. Finally, she just handled the transaction herself. I went home and taped the books, then I put the kitchen chair on top of the office chair and ran tape around the seat of the kitchen chair to secure it with the bottom of the office chair. It worked better and more smoothly after that but still shifted a bit forward and backward. 

            I wanted to remove Windows 7 from my system and followed instructions to do so online. I think that all it did though was remove Windows 7 from showing up as an option when the computer starts. I think the older operating system is still in my computer. 

            I tried uninstalling several apps like Cortana and Corel. I didn’t check after a restart whether I was successful. The main thing I wanted to do was remove Word 2000 but I couldn’t do it with Add and Remove. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with cream cheese and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            I tried removing Word 2000 by inserting the CD in my computer’s DVD player but it wouldn’t open. 

            I took a bike ride to Bloor and Ossington. O’Hara was totally clear with solid road under my wheels. Maple Grove however was full of puddles and some of them had ice underneath. Brock, the Bloor bike lane, Ossington and Queen were easy going and quite a contrast to my nerve-wracking ride on Saturday. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos at 17:45. 

            After several tries, I was finally able to uninstall Word 2000 after clicking the icon for setup in the Word folder on the CD. It didn’t seem to make any difference though because everything is still moving slowly on my system.

            I got caught up on my journal at 19:15.

            I read another section of Laura Doyle’s “Inter-imperiality”. She further argues how empires influenced later empires in technology and economics. 

            I made pizza on naan with marinara sauce, a cut-up pork burger, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching an episode of Adam-12.

            In this story someone has been making fake 911 calls to distract the police towards one direction while the caller commits armed robberies elsewhere. 

            Malloy and Reed get called to a ranch where the owner Joanna Slater reports a horse has been stolen. She says the thief is a hippy and describes him as being dirty, having long hair, and wearing beads. She says he took off up the trail, but Malloy realizes they can’t follow him in the car. Joanna offers to lend them two horses, but they don’t want to ride. She asks if they’re chicken. Malloy calls for two park rangers to flush the rider off the trail while they drive up to try to head him off on the road. The plan works and the thief gets thrown when they block his path. The thief’s name is Leroy and he is from Texas. He doesn’t look much like a hippy at all. He says he’d been high and gotten homesick and so he stole the horse to ride it back to Texas. 

            They get called to a motel where a woman named Susan is sitting on the ground in front of the car of a man named Carter. He’s a salesman and he met her in Virginia where he told her he loved her and so to his surprise and dismay she followed him to California. He put her up in a motel but didn’t return her affection and so she tried to stop him from leaving. The cops move Susan and put her in the room where Malloy calls her mother in Virginia. Susan is embarrassed that she’s made a fool of herself.     

            They hear a radio call about seeing a man about a prowler. Malloy thinks it’s possibly fake because most prowler calls are from women. They head instead for an area with a lot of liquor stores where they discover a robbery. They chase the two men in their car and when the men fire at them Malloy tells Reed to fire back. The robbers’ car goes out of control, crashes, and catches fire. They pull the unconscious crooks out of the wreckage. The sergeant reminds them that it’s against policy to fire at a moving vehicle. 

            Joanna was played by British actor Maura McGiveney, who studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before coming to Hollywood at the age of twenty. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in Do Not Disturb. As a comedian she was a member of the cast of a sketch comedy show called “Turn On” that was inspired by. Her character was called “The Body Politic” but only one episode aired in February 1969 because the themes and the jokes were so explicitly sexual that the sponsor pulled its support. On some stations the show was stopped halfway through. Even years later Maura was still surprised that the show was canceled because she and the entire cast had been certain it was going to be as big a hit as “Laugh-In.” She was married briefly to Bill Dana who created the character of Hispanic astronaut Jose Jiminez, who appeared several times on the Ed Sullivan Show.  

             Susan was played by Jo Ann Harris, who co-starred in “Violator”, which was also called “Act of Vengeance”, which was also called “Rape Squad.” She also co-starred in the TV series “Most Wanted.” She had a long love affair with Clint Eastwood who her 17-year-old character seduced in the movie “The Beguiled.” She also co-starred in the film “The Gay Deceivers.”