Robert Kinoshita

            On Monday morning I dreamed I was in a restaurant waiting for my food for over an hour. I think I was also waiting for a friend who may or may not have showed up but I didn't feel stood up. When I went to leave they explained that they'd thought I'd wanted my food to go. They gave me a giant licorice snow cone in the shape and size of a tuba. I accidentally dropped most of it on the floor and they were disappointed. I still had a regular size serving in my hand and I felt somewhat guilty about the accident but not much. I left and walked down the street where I met some musicians who were self satisfied about being better than me. 

            I finished working out the chords for all the verses and choruses of “Jet Society” by Serge Gainsbourg but there's still an instrumental near the end to figure out. I should have that done tomorrow. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before breakfast. That was a fairly big meal I had last night. 

            I looked behind and under the stove to try to find the source of the horrible smell that is overwhelming the kitchen. There is mouse fur under the stove but no mouse corpse. The odour is most strong in the middle of the floor in front of the stove and there's no stink rising from the stove itself. I'm still pretty sure that what I'm smelling is under my floor. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before lunch. I started lunch a half an hour early because I was feeling very sleepy and needed something to wake me up while I was editing the document that I'd made of the text of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. My weather feed said it was only minus one and so I didn't put sweatpants on under my trousers. My legs felt a little cold while I was riding but it was tolerable. There was a lot more melting but those snowbanks are going to take a long time to recede. We might have another storm before that happens. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00.

            I edited the first two chapters of Heart of Darkness in the document I made from the text.

            I re-read the first part of “Modernism and the Primitive” by David Richards. He quotes Wilhelm Worringer that “the driving compulsion that underpins art is fear. Filled with “cosmic anguish,” the primitive artist seeks escape in the order of abstraction. Abstraction consists of transforming depth relations into plane relations, purifying, separating out, and controlling the environment. Abstraction lies very deep, indeed: it is the primal Kunstwollen, the origin of all art, born out of cosmic anguish and the spiritual dread of the space of nature. The opposite of abstraction, as the binarism of his title indicates, is “empathy”; if abstraction is the product of “cosmic anguish,” then“empathy” gave rise to naturalism in art.” 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching an episode of The Addams Family. 

            In this story Morticia and Gomez decide that Lurch is working too hard so Gomez, Pugsley, and Fester build him a robot assistant. They name the robot “Smiley” and tell Lurch that Smiley will take orders from him. At first Lurch likes the leisure that Smiley affords him. The Addamses find Smiley inadequate because nobody cooks aardvark, massages Gomez or polishes Fester's head like Lurch. Smiley on the other hand is a horrible cook and causes injury with its massages and head polishing. But believing that Lurch needs a rest they all pretend that everything is fine and that they don't need Lurch at all. Lurch begins to feel that he is being replaced but Thing advises him with hand gestures what to do. Lurch takes Smiley apart and announces the robot has retired.

            Smiley was played by Robby the Robot, which first appeared in the 1956 movie The Forbidden Planet and became a science fiction icon, showing up in various other movies and TV shows. Robby was designed by Robert Kinoshita. He became the art director for Lost In Space and also designed the Jupiter 2 spaceship, Tobor the Great robot, and the Robot B9. He was born in the United States and after earning a degree in architecture and design he worked in the 1930s as a screen writer. But he and his wife were interred in a concentration camp for people of Japanese descent and it took several years after the war for him to establish himself in Hollywood again. He lived to the age of 100 and died in 2014.