Control

            On Saturday morning my body ached all over during yoga. It was probably protein withdrawal after the first day of my fast. 

            I memorized the first refrain of “Ballade Comestible” (Edible Ballad) by Serge Gainsbourg and then worked on revising my translation. The speaker has been stood up and there are a lot of references to vegetables. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast. I had bananas and strawberries with orange juice.

            Around midday I went to No Frills for my final Saturday of having to shop there with a mask on. When I was looking at the bags of three small ataulfo mangos a guy next me said, “Don’t take those. Those are no good. Trust me, I’m from Trinidad.” He advised me to buy the larger ataulfo mangos and said the bigger they are the better. The small ones aren’t ripe. I appreciated and took his advice and got three of the larger ones. I also bought two Kent mangos, several bags of grapes, two pints of strawberries, several avocadoes, some lemons and limes, a jug of orange juice, a bottle of Garden Cocktail, and a pack of Irish Spring soap. 

            I had to pee very badly again when I got to my door, but I made it this time. 

            I read a bit more of the Geomodernisms essay.

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before lunch. I had avocadoes and tomatoes with lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. I made sure I squeezed my bladder before leaving and nothing wanted to come out. It started raining a tiny bit almost as soon as I was riding. There’s a pet spa called “Holy Shih Tzu” in Koreatown. I told myself if it rained any harder or if I had the urge to pee, I’d turn around, but one of those didn’t happen until I got to Bloor and Huron. It began to rain, but not so hard that I wouldn’t be able to make it home without getting wet, so I went south on Huron, west on Harbord, and south on Spadina. It started to rain harder when I was riding through Chinatown and so I was definitely getting wet. On Queen I started feeling the urge to pee, but I made it to my building. It’s amazing how the urge to pee always increases considerably whenever I’m unlocking my door. I had to run straight to the toilet to avoid disaster. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 17:30. 

            I finished reading the Geomodernisms essay and started reading one on Planetarity. All these essays tend to blend together in my memory because they all seem to be talking about the same thing. 

            I worked a bit on my essay but not enough. 

            For dinner I had avocados, tomatoes, cucumber, a black jalapeno, and lemon juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story begins with Astro Boy and his human friend Specs going into a carnival style haunted house, albeit a very high tech one. Specs is scared but Astro Boy isn’t because he’s a robot. They get kicked out because the people who control the holograms can tell that Astro Boy is a robot. They say he will ruin it for everyone because he doesn’t get scared. Specs asks Astro Boy why he doesn’t get scared, and he says it’s because he doesn’t have a human heart. Suddenly Astro Boy is sad. He asks Dr. Elefun to give him a human heart. Elefun says he’ll give him one temporarily until he learns his lesson that it’s not having a heart that makes him brave so he can help people. Somehow Elefun gives the robot Astro Boy a human heart. Elefun leaves on a cruise ship for a conference. Later Astro Boy meets Astro Girl, who is apparently his robot sister although she hasn’t been mentioned so far. Perhaps these episodes are out of synch with the Japanese ones. She seems to be designed to simulate the same age as Astro Boy, which is about ten. She wants Astro Boy to go flying with her but when they land on an unfinished skyscraper Astro Boy is afraid of heights. Later they overhear some sailors talking about a haunted ship on the Indian ocean. That’s where Dr. Elefun’s ship is sailing so Astro Boy goes to warn him. Since the captain refuses to turn the ship around Dr. Elefun tells Astro Boy he’ll have to go and look for the haunted ship. Astro Boy is scared but he goes anyway. He finds the ship and on it there are glowing gooey things that look like ghosts but try to cover and stick to Astro Boy. While running from them he wishes he no longer had a heart and suddenly he doesn’t. Astro Boy finds a control room and meets Weezzell the captain of the ship. He is smuggling uranium in a submarine underneath the ghost ship. He says the glowing ghosts are actually enlarged radioactive plankton. But Weezzell is a hologram projected from a rocket ship above where he has a fleet of rockets from which he controls the ghost ship and the submarine. Astro Boy tries to attack the ships, but Weezzell projects their images onto clouds to fool him. Astro Boy gets a rope from the ghost ship and lassos all the rockets. After crashing Weezzell decides, “I’d better be honest for a change.” 

            It looks like the North American production skewed the order of the series. This was episode 17 but Astro Girl isn’t created until episode 25.