New Old Desktop

            On Monday morning I uploaded “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly) by Serge Gainsbourg to Christian’s Translations and almost finished the editing process before publishing it on the blog. I should have it done on Tuesday since my new computer is so much faster than the old one. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning, I gathered my laundry together to take to the laundromat. After leaving my building I realized that I’d forgotten to bring a mask besides the one that was with the laundry. I had to lock my bike and carry my two bags back upstairs to get another mask. I hoped this was the last time I’d need to wear one at the laundromat. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before lunch. 

            It was raining in the afternoon and so I didn’t take a bike ride.

            I did some research into the initial positive effect of stereotypes as a catalyst against groups being separated from the mainstream. Later when the blending of cultures initializes the positive effect of the stereotype turns to a negative one.

            As I was typing the above, suddenly some letters disappeared from the keyboard that I got from Tom with my new computer. The letters “dghstuvxy” would no longer function, not only in Word but everywhere I tried to type them. I had to switch to my old keyboard.

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

            I worked on my essay proposal. I went back into my old computer and copied my ebook of the complete works of Oscar Wilde into a flash drive so I could have his essay “The Decay of Lying” on my new computer to reference in my essay. I also brought over Astro Boy episodes 1, 6, 7, and 8. Here is what I have so far for my proposal: 

            The statement in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable that the protagonist Bakha is a child of mod-ern India inspires the question of why this is true. I will propose in my essay that he is not only a child of modern India but more accurately the offspring of Modernist India, and because the novel was writ-ten in English and internationally published it also makes Bakha the foster child of Global Modernism. The novel made the untouchable a poetic figure in collective human consciousness and therefore this class of outcasts did not effectively exist before Anand created them. To support my argument, I will use examples from Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying”, such as the observation that the London fog did not exist as a romantic notion until after appearing in poetry: “people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects (Wilde).” I will support this with texts that explore the global history of the colour blue and the fact that it did not enter human consciousness until the Egyptians invented blue dye and began using the colour in their artwork. Obviously, the colour and the untouchables were there already, but they needed to be expressed in art for the world to notice that they were there. I will also explore scholarship that compares Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Mulk Raj Anand’s novel to show that initial positive stereotypes of disenfranchised peoples help to catalyze their acceptance into mainstream society. 

            I found some interesting history on the colour blue: 

            “Lazarus Geiger studied Icelandic sagas, the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, and an ancient Hebrew version of the Bible. Of Hindu Vedic hymns, he wrote: “… there is one thing no one would ever learn from these ancient songs… and that is that the sky is blue.” 

            Jules Davidoff traveled to Namibia to investigate this, where he conducted an experiment with the Himba tribe, who speak a language that has no word for blue or distinction between blue and green. When shown a circle with 11 green squares and one blue, they couldn’t pick out which one was different from the others — or those who could see a difference took much longer and made more mistakes than would make sense to us, who can clearly spot the blue square. Without a word for a colour, without a way of identifying it as different, it’s much harder for us to notice what’s unique about it … before blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they didn’t know they were seeing it. If you see something yet can’t see it, does it exist? Did colours come into existence over time? Not technically, but our ability to notice them may have…” 

            I had a potato with steamed frozen peas and gravy while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            In this story Astro Boy and Dr. Elefun are on Cross Island where the doctor is performing maintenance on the robots that mine the precious minerals and jewels that are there. Also on the island is a boy robot named Bobo, who was left there by his creator/father I. M. Sinister before he went to prison. Bobo is a bit of a brat, and he wishes he had Astro Boy’s power so nobody could tell him what to do. Sinister escapes from prison along with his henchmen Rat and Mouse and comes to the island. He also wishes for his son to be as powerful as Astro Boy, and that is phase one of his plan. Phase two is to steal all of the precious gems and minerals from the island. Sinister and his men make it to Dr. Elefun disguised as robots. Then Sinister points a laser pistol at Elefun’s head and forces Astro Boy to open his chest plate. In the lab, a special power tube is removed from Astro Boy and placed in Bobo. Bobo gains the ability to change shape into various robot animals. Sinister’s remote-controlled spaceship arrives, and they begin loading the treasure. Meanwhile, Dr. Elefun, although tied up. Manages to find Astro Boy and uses his nose to do the work of his hands, to replace his missing component. Astro Boy defeats Sinister and his men and then has a battle with Bobo. After he defeats him, Bobo becomes stuck in the shape of several different animals. Elefun says he’ll fix him. In this series, it seems that no one stays evil for long. Both Sinister and Bobo recognize they have been wrong and promise to be nice from now on. The English voice of Elefun was done by Ray Owens, who did the voice of Jesus in the Flying House time travel TV series and the voice of the enchanted Bible in the show Superbook.