In the Year 2000 ...

            On Wednesday morning I finished translating for “Le régiment des mal-aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian: 

You know my love I’m off to war 

with my hope slung on my shoulder 

My heart fights just like a soldier 

to survive so I can hold you 

The flag I carry is your kiss 

my army is your happiness 

Our love’s the drumbeat 

that transports me towards 

the song of victory 

            I think now that the song is about the army of people who are mourning loved ones in war, and it’s telling them to open up and let someone else in. I’ll have to redo the first verse, but I’ll finish the rest first so I have a better idea of how to proceed. 

            I tried to work out the chords for “Ballade Comestible” (Edible Ballad) by Serge Gainsbourg based on the “do-re-mi” notation that someone posted but I found it too confusing. I just worked them out by ear, but sometimes I used the suggested variations on the chords posted, such as “sus4” or “minor 7”. I think I’ve got the chords for the first verse, but I’ll double-check tomorrow. Since each verse is the same and there don’t seem to be many changes, I should have them worked out tomorrow.

            I weighed 86.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on my essay. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was already starting to rain a small amount when I was underway. As I was heading east on the Bloor bike lane the rain increased to a steady icy cold mist. It wasn’t heavy enough to make me wet but by the time I got to Ossington, it felt like I would get too damp if I ventured all the way downtown. I headed south and it started to freezing rain. I made it home before getting soaked. 

            When I got home, I went back out to buy an avocado, but the nearest store at O’Hara and Queen didn’t have them. The woman said they are too expensive. I went to the Lucky Supermarket and bought two. 

            According to the three times, I weighed myself on my digital scale, I weighed either 87.3 kilos, 85.9 kilos, or 86.8 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal at around 18:30. 

            I worked on my essay. 

            I finished reading “Planetarity”, which I think is the last of the required texts for the Global Modernisms course. I guess Spivak is talking about seeing all the planet’s modernisms as a whole. 

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

            In this story, we learn that in Astro Boy’s era of the year 2000 there is a space station so massive orbiting the Earth that it is as big as a city and has its own president and police force. But station R-45 is plagued with pirate attacks on ships bringing in goods from the rest of the universe. The captain of the space patrol is Cronipuss Goodheart and his father is President Cronipuss. The owner of the Galaxy Hotel onboard is named Trickem. He continuously demands that the president do something about the pirates. He says Cronipuss should retire and let him become president. Astro Boy is sent to the station as a secret agent to investigate. Captain Cronipuss sees his father carrying an adult-sized human-appearing robot. He follows him and sees him ejecting it into space. Astro Boy helps the space patrol when another ship is attacked by the pirates. But when they get there, the ship is wrecked and the pirates are gone. Astro Boy looks for clues on the wrecked ship and finds a magnetic tape camera. Looking at the footage he discovers that the leader of the pirates is Trickem. Trickem and his pirates find the robot that President Cronipuss ejected into space and see that it is a robot replica of Captain Cronipuss. Trickem sends his gigantic right-hand man Grimm to kill President Cronipuss. But Astro Boy sees Grimm and follows him. The captain comes home again, sees his father carrying another robot, and confronts him. The president reveals that the captain is a robot that the president raised from a baby to an adult by continuously reinstalling his brain into a slightly older-looking robot body so that he would think that he was a real human growing older. Astro Baby confronts Grimm and they fight in space until Astro Boy arrests him. Astro Boy tells the captain that Trickem is the leader of the pirates. The captain is in shock and ashamed after learning he is a robot and he asks Astro Boy for advice. Astro Boy tells him he should be proud. The captain confronts Trickem, who has already learned the captain is a robot. Trickem tries to blackmail the captain by threatening to reveal his secret. The captain says he’ll arrest him anyway. Trickem has three big robot thugs beat the captain up. He is on the floor and nearly defeated when Astro Boy crashes through the wall and tells him to do his duty. The captain finds new strength and defeats Trickem and his thugs single-handedly. Trickem escapes in a rocket and the captain pursues him with his patrol. But both ships are caught in a violent meteor shower. Astro Boy comes and knocks away the meteors. The captain later learns that everyone still respects him even though he is a robot. 

            It’s amusing to see how the writers of Astro Boy envisioned the year 2000. It’s not implausible to have thought in 1963 that we would have a city-sized space station orbiting the Earth at the beginning of the 21st Century. The station looks similar to the one in 2001 a Space Odyssey and predates it by five years. I found some other speculations about the year 2000 by French artists in the year 1900.