Simple Pleasures

            On Friday at 2:30, I woke up because I had to pee and decided to finish writing in my journal before going back to bed. I laid down again a little after 3:00 but didn’t sleep. 

            It felt like I was coming down with a cold but it could also be pollen. The Weather Network reported the pollen forecast was high for this day.

            I worked out the chords for the fifth and sixth verses of “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian. All that’s left are the last couple of lines of the final chorus.

            I finished memorizing “Epsilon” by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll look for the chords but I doubt anyone has posted any. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I worked a bit on cleaning my wire dishrack. I had time to scrub and wash the frame of the second-largest section. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor and then south to Dundas. 

            I stopped at Best Buy to check out their monitors. The best deals seemed to be the ASUS 69 cm FHD GTG IPS LED Freesync for $240, and the Acer 60.5 cm FHD VA LED for $200. I asked an employee where Future Shop was but she said Best Buy owns Future Shop and a few years ago they closed it down and merged the brands. 

            I went into Samsung and was accosted by a very aggressive and desperate-sounding greeter. They hardly had any prices on anything. I had to ask someone if they sell monitors. The guy said they do but not in the store. 

            At Queen and Gladstone, I stopped at the Queenglad pawn shop. They had some monitors but they weren’t priced. I asked how much they were and the guy said “$1 million!” When he’d recovered from his joke he told me that most of them are about $50 but they are at least ten years old. 

            I think I’ll only check out Staples, Canada Computers, The Source, and Walmart before I decide which monitor to buy. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:30. 

            I tried to import Rosemary’s Baby to my Movie Maker project but I got a message that I needed to download the codec for the file. So I downloaded and installed the K-Lite Codec Pack from Major Geek. After that the import was successful. I put the movie on the end of the timeline and removed the first hour up until just before Rosemary is sexually sacrificed to Satan. I need two clips to replace the ones I lost. The first is when she is laid down for the sacrifice and the other is when her wedding ring is removed. I’ll work on that in the next session.

            I had a potato with gravy and two honey garlic pork chops while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story some gangsters bring the loot from their most recent job back to the mob boss, who is enjoying a private feast. The crooks are hungry and ask for some food but the boss refuses. So the crooks rebel, chase the boss away and then take all the food and money. They steal a police car and then Astro Boy comes after them. They head for a rocket base to steal a rocket and get away. Everyone including Astro Boy falls accidentally inside the rocket and the doors close. The rocket takes off and they learn that the rocket is faulty and can’t be controlled. Astro Boy could escape but it would cause the rocket to blow up and he doesn’t want to kill the criminals. They reach the point of no return as they enter outer space. 

            After drifting for five days with no food they approach a special space station that pulls them in. There is food there but it turns out that the station has been occupied by the Association of Epicurean Spacemen, led by Dr. Snortel. His Association travels the universe looking for delicious food, and they’ve found the food on the station to be the most delicious they have ever tasted. Now they refuse to share. Astro Boy tells them they have to leave but they resist so he has to fight and defeat them first.

            They leave but they steal all the food, so Astro Boy goes after them and has to fight the weaponry of their spaceship. He gets the food and the crooks pig out but then they all end up with tummy pain. Astro Boy finds the aches are caused by space. The aliens say they have the medicine but they want the station’s vinegar and honey drink in exchange. They get the drink but refuse to give the medicine. The vinegar and honey get the aliens drunk and so Astro Boy is able to take the medicine easily. 

            Back at the station, Astro Boy finds that there is a rocket that can take them back to Earth if they don’t eat any more and if they lose weight. They exercise and almost reach their goal but it’s not enough and so Astro Boy decides to stay behind. The crooks however do not want to leave Astro Boy because he has saved them several times. But just before blast off the aliens return and send a robot army to stop them. Astro Boy defeats them. Then Snortel attacks, dressed as a knight in armour on horseback but Astro Boy beats him as well. Then Astro Boy collapses because his energy is used up. But apparently, energy has weight and so now the rocket can make it back to Earth. 

            The popular interpretation of Epicureanism is that it’s about seeking and indulging in pleasure such as exotic foods. But it was really about finding happiness by enjoying the simple pleasures in moderation. 

            In the second story, Astro Boy and Astro Girl are on vacation in the Southwest when they are attacked by robot Apaches. Astro Boy defeats them but they escape with Astro Girl as a captive. They take her back to their leader Dr. Buck and it turns out that Astro Girl looks exactly like Buck’s daughter Kima who went missing fifteen years ago. Buck keeps her prisoner to remind him of his daughter. He thinks she was killed accidentally by a missile and so he is building a robot monster to take revenge on the missile base. 

            Astro Boy goes to get Dr. Elefun to help him search for Astro Girl. In the desert, they meet a young woman on horseback who is searching for her long-lost father. Astro Boy and Elefun are attacked again by the robot Apaches. After beating them again he finds a cave that leads to the secret entrance of Buck’s lab. 

            Meanwhile Buck tells Astro Girl his origin story. He is a full-blooded Apache. But he has a goatee and although Indigenous Americans do have some facial hair it’s not enough for beards unless they are mixed. Buck grew up in the desert and became a scientist, working to develop missiles. His daughter wandered off one day and he never saw her again. He believes a missile that exploded in the desert killed her. Astro Boy and Elefun find a door to Buck’s lab but can’t open it. 

            Buck finishes Titan, his monster robot and unleashes it on the desert. It has a million horsepower to Astro Boy’s 100,000. Astro Boy is injured and so Elefun takes him to a motel to repair him. Titan attacks missile bases. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Girl escapes and meets Kima. She takes her to Buck, who realizes he has done wrong now that he has his daughter back. He calls and warns Astro Boy about Titan. He tells him he has to remove his electronic brain to defeat him. After a long fight Astro Boy is able to remove Titan’s electronic brain and save the world. 

            I found one sick looking bedbug before bed.

April 30, 1992: I paid $1250 of my rent at the courthouse in my battle against eviction

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday Mike Copping left my place at around 6:00. 

            Later I went downtown to pay $1250 of the rent at the courthouse so the landlords couldn’t hold it against me in our eviction battle. I got home shortly before it was time for my driving lesson. I was improving at getting the parallel parking down. Changing lanes was the main focus this time. 

            When I got home, I talked to my daughter on the phone and then watched Star Trek. I also watched the farewell episode of The Cosby Show but it was pretty boring. 

            I worked on cleaning the inside of the fridge. I was constantly cleaning the living room, but no matter how hard I worked it was still a mess, mostly because that was where I both ate and worked on projects.

Goodbye to Frankenstein's Office Chair

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the third and fourth verses and the second chorus of “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian. There are just two verses and one chorus left. 

            I memorized the first two verses of “Epsilon” by Serge Gainsbourg and adjusted my translation. There are only two verses left to learn. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I worked on cleaning my wire dish rack. I finished the largest section and tomorrow I’ll work on the other two smaller parts that hinge on the main one. 

            I copied the rest of my photos from the old computer and moved them to the new one. There might not be much left on the old PC that I need to move over. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I continued my search for an armless office chair. I went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store but there were no office chairs. I rode up to Value Village but their chairs were mostly dining room chairs and nothing on wheels. I went east to the other Sally Ann store on Bloor but there was very little furniture there at all. The Furniture Emporium also was void of office chairs. 

            Finally I decided I’d done enough searching and headed for Walmart to buy their armless office chair. When I was there last week I thought they had two kinds: a mesh backed chair and one with a smaller, non-mesh back. I wanted the small one but all they had left was one mesh backed chair, so I took it. I had to pay through the automatic teller if I wanted to use the mall exit. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. After tax it was $73.42. 

            I carried the box through the mall to the back entrance where my bike was locked. There was no way I could ride home with the packed box, so I took my jackknife out of my backpack and opened the box. All of the chair parts fit into my PC reusable shopping bag. But the box wouldn’t fit and so I cut the bottom open and folded it as best as I could. I hung the bag of chair parts on my right handlebar, and carried the folded box under my left arm. Once I figured out the balance my body needed to maintain to keep from falling down it wasn’t that hard to ride the short distance down Brock to Queen and then one block to home. I locked my bike outside my building and carried the chair parts upstairs to my place. 

            I went back downstairs and rode my bike to Freshco. I had my locking cable hanging on my right handlebar and so I couldn’t work the right brakes and had to stop with my feet to avoid rolling through the lights into Dufferin traffic. At the supermarket I bought five bags of grapes, a half-pint of blueberries, a pack of hot Italian sausages, a pack of ground chicken, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a can of peaches, a jug each of orange juice and raspberry lemonade, a bag of kettle chips, a jar of hot salsa, a six-pack of Irish Spring soap, and some petroleum jelly. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 18:30. 

            I got caught up on my journal just before 20:00. 

            It only took me half an hour to put together my new chair. It’s fairly comfortable and now I’m mobile while sitting again. 

            I’ll have to take a picture of my Frankenstein chair before I take it apart and throw the base away. 

            My next project is to look for a new monitor for my new computer. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two small honey garlic pork chops while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story Astro Boy is on an expedition with some botanists on a tropical island when he finds a very rare sample of the Galaxia, the largest flower on Earth. It is taken to a new conservatory for plants that is directed by Dr. Eubank. Eubank’s chief assistant is Nathaniel Pollen who is experimenting with the effects of radiation on plants. But so far Pollen’s experiments have not been fully productive. The isotopes make the plants grow very large but most of them do not produce fruit, and the banana and coconut trees grow fruit with nothing inside. 

            Then the Galaxia begins to move and it travels towards the isotopes, consuming the radiation, which causes it not only to grow but also to talk. It escapes from the conservatory and heads north. Eubank calls Astro Boy because the flower is now radioactive and a danger to everyone. It’s headed for the atomic energy plant. It climbs onto the reactor and Astro Boy tries to pull it off. In the struggle the control device of the reactor is broken. 

            Astro Boy uses his own control device to replace it but that means that he will explode. He flies the Galaxia to dump it in the ocean and then he flies up to the stratosphere so that when he explodes no one will be harmed. He calls Dr. Elefun to say goodbye but Elefun orders another control device and risks his life to fly up in a rocket and deliver the new device to Astro Boy. 

            Later Galaxia emerges from the bottom of the ocean. It boards an atomic powered cruise ship and drains all its energy, then it heads for a uranium processing plant. Astro Boy confronts the plant. It says it doesn’t know where it comes from but all it is doing is following instinct to survive. Dr. Elefun has observed that it seems afraid of fire and so Astro Boy drops a firebomb and destroys it. 

            The second story is unique because it is partially in colour, with mostly red added past the halfway point along with the usual greyscale to create an ominous atmosphere. There is also an interesting incident of cross-dressing. 

            In the story a spaceship from the Planet Norico lands on Earth. A white-haired boy the same size as Astro Boy emerges. 

            The child is carrying what looks like a full-sized refrigerator. The boy’s name is Beamo and he goes to get a job at a bakery, showing the owner that he has extraordinary cake baking skills. Beamo is hired and happy in his job but three white haired men from his planet try to capture him. It turns out that Beamo is a robot. He tries to escape. The combed-back hair on his head expands into wings but the men that pursue him have the same ability. 

           They use an electromagnet to draw Beamo towards them but suddenly Astro Boy arrives and smashes the machine. He lets Beamo come and stay with him and Beamo reveals that the white box he carries is a super powerful bomb, capable of destroying a star. He removed it from Norico because the people that created it plan to use it as a weapon. Beamo has Astro Boy promise to not tell anyone but then Astro Boy decides to tell Dr. Elefun because he can be trusted and can also help. 

            But after Elefun learns about the bomb the three Noricans come and tell him that they are the ones who created Beamo. That means they own him and so Elefun concludes he must go back. Beamo feels betrayed by Astro Boy and no longer trusts him. The Noricans are able to take the bomb from Beamo but then they tell Elefun they are going to experiment with it by using it to explode Earth’s sun. Astro Boy rescues Beamo and the bomb. 

            The Noricans send an asteroid to destroy Earth. As it approaches the only thing that can stop it is Beamo’s bomb but he refuses to help. Astro Boy tries to take the bomb from him but Beamo uses electromagnetic powers to put Astro Boy in a vortex and he falls unconscious to the Earth. Beamo carries Astro Boy and leaves him on the steps of the Institute to be rescued. Meanwhile the asteroid can be seen as a red sphere getting larger as it approaches Earth. 

            This is the beginning of colour in the story at about 18:25 minutes into the half-hour video. But everything else is still in greyscale except the asteroid and the red hue that reflects off other things on Earth. 

            Astro Boy continues to look for Beamo. Many people have run away and tried to escape, leaving their faithful dogs behind. Astro Boy meets an elderly woman who says she and her daughter stayed behind to take care of the doggies. She invites him in for tea and he is shocked to find that her daughter is Beamo the little boy robot cross dressing as a little girl. 

            When he calls her “Beamo” she just says, “Who’s Beamo?” and Astro Boy leaves. But then the old lady and daughter are attacked by giant ants that serve the Noricans. They take the bomb, which is now disguised as a refrigerator, away. Astro Boy stops the ants and the Noricans on their ship. Then Beamo apologizes to Astro Boy and says he will use the bomb to save Earth after all. But afterward he will have to return to Norico. 

            After the asteroid is destroyed the sky is blue again. 

            Apparently in the original Manga comic, Beamo or Bem is naked and has no secondary sex characteristics, so in that case it’s not a case of cross dressing since there is no gender to cross from. But Beamo wears what are traditionally boy’s clothes throughout most of the story and changes them often and so when Beamo wears a dress it is certainly a cross from the usual attire.

April 29, 1992: Mike Copping and I played chess while my daughter crawled under the pool tables

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday after picking up my daughter we went home by way of Now Magazine where I posted an ad. I called Mike Copping and he said to meet him either at 20:00 at a donut shop at Jarvis and Wellesley, or after 20:00 at Domino’s Café on Yonge Street. But Nancy didn’t call until 19:30 and then she asked if I’d take the baby downtown because she was going to a movie and she wanted me to hold onto our daughter until it got out. I told her to meet us at Domino’s. I took the streetcar to Jarvis and then walked up to Wellesley. The baby enjoyed the walk and the traffic, but Mike wasn’t at the donut shop. So, we went to Domino’s and while some guys stopped me to ask for directions, Mike came up and asked them for spare change. At Domino’s Mike and I played chess while the baby crawled around the club, exploring under the pool tables. After Nancy picked my daughter up, Mike and I drove around in his car checking out the hookers. After we got to my place we called up and talked to escorts. He crashed on my couch.

Super Spies of the 60s

            On Wednesday morning I woke up at around 3:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I got up at 4:45. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg. Next, I’ll work on his song “Epsilon.”

            I was exhausted from too little sleep before I started song practice but I woke up a bit by the end. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning, I went to the hardware store and bought a couple of small hard-bristled brushes. One had wire bristles and the other had bristles more like a bottle washer but it was shaped like a number 4. I used them to work on doing more detailed cleaning of my wire dish rack. They worked to some degree but I still had to scrape some of the dirt with a nail file. I think it will take another two sessions to finish the dish rack and then move on to cleaning the shelves and drawers below the kitchen counter. I might be able to finish scrubbing the kitchen floor this summer. 

            I copied some photos from the old computer and deleted forty of them. 

            I tried to start a project in Windows Movie Maker but it wouldn’t let me import any files. 

            I had crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. At Yonge and College, I headed west, looking for furniture stores. All I found was Structube and they did have office chairs, with one of them being armless, but it wasn’t in a style that attracted me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try the Salvation Army store and Value Village. 

            When I got back I went out to the liquor store to buy a six-pack of Creemore. One of the employees was actually working without a mask. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 18:00. 

            It took me an hour and a half but I finally figured out how to get Windows Movie Maker working. An online site had instructions for running programs as an administrator but most of them were for already installed programs. This needed to be run as administrator before installation. Finally, I learned I could do it from the Task Manager where I clicked on “File” and then “Start new task”, browsing to find the Windows Movie Maker rar file and then clicking the box for running it as an administrator. After I did that I clicked on the “command” file and kept clicking “okay” until it said “success”, then when I opened Movie Maker it allowed me to import my Instructions for Electroshock Therapy video and audio. Tomorrow I’ll import Rosemary’s Baby and edit it for the littler clip that I need to insert so I can re-synchronize the audio and video and then pick up on the project from where I left off before I screwed it up by deleting the source file of the Rosemary’s Baby clip. 

            I worked on my Anti-Gravity’s Rainbow” project. 

            I grilled thirty-two breakfast sausages and had four with a poached egg, a loaf of naan, and a beer while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story a scientist develops dinosaurs from cells and gives them electronic brains to make them intelligent and good. But most of them turn out mean. They kidnap a little boy named Disco who speaks Hipster jive talk, like, “I’m makin the scene! Ya dig me?” even though this is not supposed to be taking place in 1964 but in the year 2000. They threaten to hurt the boy if massive amounts of food are not delivered to them. 

            Disco’s father uses several trucks to deliver the food but laces it all with TNT to blow the dinosaurs up. But the lead dinosaur demands that Disco’s school teacher test the food first. Astro Boy knocks it from her hand and it explodes. The dinosaurs take Disco to town as a hostage to demand food but Astro Boy saves him and beats the dinosaurs. The scientist reduces the dinosaurs back to cells and puts them in storage. 

            In the second story, a superspy named Hati Mara rendezvous with another spy and a scientist from her country. The spies are there to help the scientist put together and implement his amnesia machine. A conference will soon be held at the Institute of Science and he wants to make the scientists of the free world forget all their knowledge so his country can invade. Hati says this will be her final mission because she wants to live a normal life. Privately the scientist tells the other spy to make sure it is Hati’s “final” mission. Hati and her partner execute several raids on the Institute to steal parts for the amnesia machine. 

            One day on her way to school Astro Girl looks up at the abandoned clock tower and sees a pretty lady standing in the window and a mean-looking man pushing her away. After school, she and her robot friend Loli go to investigate. But they are caught and their energy cells are removed. It’s hard to understand how Astro Girl is always getting captured considering that she is supposed to have the strength of 50,000 horses. 

            Hati and her partner have a lot of high-tech tricks and they temporarily blind Astro Boy the first time he tries to stop them. But on their last job, which is to take one more component from the safe of the Institute, Hati is knocked out by Astro Boy and captured. When she learns that the scientists of the free world don’t plan on using their knowledge to invade her country, she warns Astro Boy about the amnesia machine and tells Astro Boy were to find her fellow spies and Astro Girl. Astro Boy destroys the machine just in time.

April 28, 1992: I planned to run an ad asking people born on a certain date and year to call me

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday morning it took me less time than I thought to get to Wexford Collegiate and so I was almost an hour early. The teacher, Alex Tavores wanted mostly simple standing poses and so my imagination was constrained but I managed to impress him anyway. I had an eclair for lunch, although that was probably not a wise choice after having been sick the day before. Tavores gave me two more bookings for May. I still felt a bit fuzzy when I got home but after drinking a beer, I was fine. I called Nancy and talked to my daughter. Nancy said she wanted me to take the baby on Wednesday and that she would pick her up from me later on downtown. I watched Star Trek and cleaned up. I continued writing a letter to Tom Smarda. I was planning to run an ad in Now Magazine asking people born on a certain date and year to call me. I still hadn’t found a quality hooker who fit my budget. I called a couple of disappointing phone sex girls.

Evil Toys

            On Tuesday morning I finished working out the chords for the chorus of “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian and the instrumental before the third verse. I think from this point on there are just repetitions of the same chords and it’s just a matter of placing them. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in French. I played and sang the first verse in English but discovered that I need to rework my translation of the second verse. I’ll do that tomorrow and then upload it to Christian’s Translations. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast.   

            At around 11:20 I started doing my taxes. I was able to download all the government tax slips from my Canada Revenue account directly into the return. But I was surprised that there was no refund this time so I kept going back to see if I did something wrong. I know I’ll get the Ontario Trillium refund but I usually get about $200 back on the federal return. I guess it’s not that big a deal. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. I went south to Dundas and then went into Best Buy to check out an armless office chair that was advertised on their website. I found out that they don’t sell any of their furniture in the store. It blows my mind. I rode along Dundas and stopped at a small furniture store past Bathurst but they didn’t have any office chairs. I’ll ride home on College tomorrow and see if there are any furniture places. After that I may need to look into second hand stores like Value Village. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 18:00. 

            I worked on my Anti-Gravity’s Rainbow photo. 

            I grilled pork chops in the oven. I made honey garlic marinade for them but rather than putting it on right away and having the pork chops turn black because of the honey, this time I put the marinade on one side of the chops halfway through. I had two of them with a small potato and gravy while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, pirates are looting any spaceships leaving Earth with valuable cargo. Their leader is the pirate Long John Floater the Viking King but he’s not a Viking. He just likes the name because it makes him a king twice. Commander Delta of the Interspace Police Force Patrol Corps summons Astro Boy and teams him up with a little girl officer named Lieutenant Judy. 

            The pirates attack the SS Gorgeous and so Astro Boy and Judy, along with the rest of the patrol, fly to stop them. The pirate ship sends out small ships to meet them. Astro Boy leaves Judy and goes to destroy the pirate ship, causing Floater to retreat. Judy tells Astro Boy that if he hadn’t chased the pirates they might have caught them. 

            They go to the satellite Magna where there is a control station run by George. But George has a secret. He used to work for Long John but then he found an abandoned baby and decided to go straight and become JoJo’s father. Jojo doesn’t know George isn’t his real father. He also doesn’t want JoJo to know about his criminal past and so he lies that he doesn’t know Long John. Astro Boy is suspicious. After they leave, Long John shows up and forces George to do his bidding by threatening JoJo. 

            The control station sends the signals that set the courses for spaceships and so Long John forces George to lure the ships there. Commander Delta tells Astro Boy and Judy that a cargo ship has gone missing near Satellite Magna and so they go to investigate. But the pirates have JoJo tied up and so George has to lie. After Astro Boy and Judy leave Astro Boy tells Judy that his super-hearing picked up the sound of the pirates on Magna so now he wants to go back and surprise them. They find a secret door to the pirate hideout and Judy opens it by saying “Open sesame.” Astro Boy and Judy sword fight the pirates but Astro Boy is caught in an avalanche. By the time he frees himself Judy has been captured and tied up with JoJo. Astro Boy gets caught by pirates while trying to rescue Judy but when George sees JoJo threatened he attacks even though his hands and feet are tied. Astro Boy sends a blast from his boot rockets that burns everybody’s bonds. Astro Boy, Judy, and George fight and beat the pirates.

            In the second story Klaus the toymaker is told by the company that buys his toys that the toys are too nice and that is no longer popular with children. Klaus reluctantly agrees to make nasty toys and gives his last good toy to the store owner. Klaus makes a devil toy and then gives it an electronic brain which causes it to think like a devil. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Boy, Astro Girl, and Dr. Elefun are at a toy fair. But they get separated from Elefun and then Astro Girl begins playing hide and seek. By the time Astro Boy finds her the store has closed and they are stuck inside. Astro Boy hears devilish laughter from a beautiful female mannequin but she doesn’t respond when he investigates. He decides they will spend the night in the store. Astro Girl gives electronic brains to all the toys and they begin to party. Then the fashion mannequins capture Astro Girl and begin their plan of robbing the store. Astro Boy is held at bay by the threat of ray guns, but fires his butt cannons and frees Astro Girl. Then the beautiful lead mannequin shoots and incapacitates Astro Boy. A doctor toy examines him and says he needs a super-powerful electronic brain stronger than the toys have. They plot to trick the beautiful mannequin and then the toy cowboy gets her brain to give to Astro Boy. Then Astro Boy confronts the devil toy that is controlling the mannequins. The devil turns the store furnace into a monster that attacks Astro Boy but Astro Boy beats it and then defeats the devil. Astro Boy returns the good toys to Klaus. 

            I did a search for bedbugs before making my bed and I found a couple of sick-looking ones in a groove in the wall near the foot of my futon.

April 27, 1992: The lawyer was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be evicted

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I wasn’t feeling well because of the chicken I’d gotten from Swiss Chalet the night before. I picked up my daughter at around 9:00 and headed downtown to pay the $150 that was due on my Legal Aid payments. Then I went to East End Legal for my appointment with the lawyer to talk about my eviction problem. I was a little early, so I played with the baby while I waited. The lawyer told me to tell the court that the landlord had tried other means of evicting me and that this was obviously another ploy. She thought I would get off okay and that I wouldn’t be evicted. I wasn’t up to taking my daughter back to Scarborough, so I asked Nancy to come and get her, which she did. I didn’t eat and I went to bed early. I felt almost like puking.

Searching for the No-Armed Office Chair

            On Monday I stayed up until 1:30 and so I got an hour less sleep than usual. When I was about to hit the sack it felt very cold and there was a lot of noise in the hallway. I went out to check if the heat was on and my neighbour Benji was mopping the hall floors and he had the back door propped open letting a cold draft in. He usually mops the floors in the late morning so maybe he had insomnia or something. He was oblivious in his hat and jacket to the fact that the draft would be coming in to other people’s apartments. I hope he doesn’t make a habit out of this new time of mopping. 

            I finished working out the chords for the first verse of “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg and most of the instrumental before the second verse. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I was at my computer in the late morning when I found a bedbug on my mouse hand. That’s the third time that’s happened since last summer. I haven’t found any around my bed for the last couple of days. I’m pretty sure my desk was also sprayed last Wednesday. I’m still waiting for the spores that were sprayed three weeks ago to take effect and start killing off the bedbug population. 

            At 12:15 I left to ride up to Topcuts at Yonge and St Clair to get a haircut from Amy. I got there just in time but she was running a little late with another customer. I was surprised when Amy told me she she’s 48. I told her she looks 35 and she said I made her day. After we were done she put her hand on my shoulder and looked concerned because she noticed that I’d lost weight. I told her I’d been cutting back on desserts. 

            On my way south on Yonge Street I looked for furniture stores but only found one place in Rosedale called In Style. They had some armless office chairs but they were white. The guy said they had others on their website but that means nothing to me. 

            I stopped at Canadian Tire at Davenport but they only sold one white office chair and it had arms. 

            At College Park I went into The Brick and saw they had office chairs but none were armless. The manager, who looked fresh out of high school, said their store at Dufferin and Dupont is bigger and might have some of the armless ones that they offer on their website. 

            At Eaton’s Centre, I walked all around the mall and there was only one furniture store, but the upscale place had no office chairs. 

            I went into the Source to look at monitors. I couldn’t tell the difference between the ones being used to demonstrate other products and the monitors on sale. Their focus seems to be on gaming monitors although I don’t know what the difference is. I looked this up and found that gaming monitors don’t always have the quality of resolution of regular monitors. 

            I stopped at a furniture place in the west end but it was closed. So far I’ve found four places with armless office chairs and Walmart still has the best deal. I’ll check out three more places before I decide. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before a late lunch a little after 16:00. 

            I took a late siesta from 16:40 to 18:10. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was caught up on my journal just before dinner. I had a potato with gravy, and two chicken wings while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, two travelers named Tick and Tock are lost in Transmellvania because when Tock packed for the trip there had been no room for both a map and his comic books. They find a village but no one will let them in and so they sleep in what seems to be an abandoned castle. That night what appears like a vampire emerges from a coffin and Tock runs, leaving Tick behind. 

            Astro Boy and Mr. Pompus are asked to find the missing Tick, so they take a plane to Transmellvania. They go to the castle but the coffin is gone, leaving a coffin-shaped rectangle on a dustless part of the floor. They find a picture of the vampire that Tock saw, standing beside a much younger Dr. Elefun. 

            They spend the night in the castle and the vampire emerges from the lake. It enters the castle and grabs Tock. Astro Boy sees the vampire running away carrying Tock and goes after them. The vampire has a ring that shoots heat blasts. Astro Boy knocks him out and ties him up in his own cape but he recovers, sticks his hand out and uses the ring to melt Astro Boy’s feet. Dr. Elefun has to repair him but it will take two weeks. 

            Elefun says the man in the picture with him is Dr. Ray Sergum, who was an expert on the part of Atlantis called Poseidon. It sank into the ocean 12,000 years ago. Pompus has the lake near the castle drained and finds the coffin, but out of it flies a giant robot bat that shoots rapid-fire bullets out of its eyes. Back at the Institute, a bat delivers a note to Elefun. He goes to a park where he meets Dr. Sergum. Sergum tells him that ten years ago he entered a new volcano and inside the crater he found Poseidon, perfectly preserved. There he learned that after Poseidon sank the super-advanced civilization transformed themselves so they could live without sunlight and also live forever. Sergum had the scientists of Poseidon transform him as well. But the only problem is that their people can’t reproduce and so they need to kidnap young people. 

            Astro Boy is repaired and fights the robot bat ship. He forces it to land and release its captive humans. Astro Boy confronts Sergum in the sewer, then punches a hole in the ceiling causing the sunlight to come in and destroy him. 

            In the second story, three robots escape from slavery in a foreign country and arrive by ship to North America. But three agents from their government are pursuing them. The robots disguise themselves as a human family named Pong, with the father being Mr. Pong, his wife Bibi Pong and their son Pal Pong. They move in next to Astro Boy and become friends. 

           Meanwhile, Dr. Elefun needs Astro Boy to investigate the eruption of volcanoes under the south Pacific. 

            The agents once again find the Pongs so they escape to a lighthouse where they hide. Astro Boy discovers that a tidal wave is on its way and so evacuations are ordered and people begin putting up barriers on the coast. It’s also approaching the lighthouse and the agents are waiting outside for the Pongs to come out. Astro Boy rescues several people. 

            Elefun invents a freezer bomb that has to be detonated offshore but while carrying it Astro Boy collapses because his activator tube wore out. Mr. Pong sacrifices his own activator tube to save Astro Boy. Once recovered Astro Boy delivers the freezer bomb and the wave freezes just before reaching land. The Pongs surrender to the agents but on the boat, the leader realizes that he and the other agents would be dead if not for Pong and so he pushes the Pongs overboard so Astro Boy can collect them. I went to bed an hour late again.

April 26, 1992: I learned how to parallel park

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday night I had my first driving lesson. It was amazing how much I’d forgotten since I passed the written test, and how much I thought I knew but didn’t. The instructor was very good I thought but maybe he was a little impatient and talked too much. I learned parallel parking.

Robot Bees

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first few lines of “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg, the melody for which is lifted from Chopin’s “Étude Opus 10, No. 9 in F minor. I’ve deviated somewhat from the chords that were posted online as I try to follow Jane Birkin’s voice. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I copied the movie that I’d made of the half-finished video for my song “Instructions For Electroshock Therapy” and brought it over to the new computer. I played it and was glad to see that the choppy sound glitches that would come up in the playback while making the video were all gone and everything so far looks and sounds good. I just have to replace the clip from Rosemary’s Baby that I’d had to delete because it had gone black after I mistakenly deleted the source film. I redownloaded Rosemary’s Baby and a version of Windows Movie Maker 6 from Pirate Bay. At first I couldn’t figure out how to get Movie Maker up and running because I thought that I hadn’t followed the instructions properly of running it as an administrator, but Windows required that I run it as administrator automatically when I moved it to Program Files. I finally figured that I had to move the whole folder and it seems to work now. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. I had crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was a warm day for April and the people on the streets were in a good mood. I rode to Yonge and Bloor, south to College, west to University and then south to Stapes to check out their office chairs. They’ve moved their furniture section to the front after many years of it being at the back. I was walking around in the back for a while before I asked an employee where it was. They only have one armless office chair and it was high up on a shelf. I decided to punish them for being so inefficient and so I asked an employee to take it down. He went to get a ladder but came back saying that all their ladders were in use. It seems really dumb that they sell chairs that people can’t try out. Maybe it’s a modern trend that comes from people being used to taking chances by buying things online. I wonder if stores will do the same thing with clothes soon. Anyway, the chair was their Radnor mesh-backed chair and it was $170. Walmart has a mesh-backed chair for half that price. On the way home I stopped at CB2. They have some very stylish furniture but nothing that I was looking for. I’ll be going up to Yonge and St Clair to get my hair cut tomorrow and I’ll check out some more furniture stores on my way back. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 18:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 19:20. 

            I copied the folders of photos from the old computer that had names from A to J. and pasted them into the Photos folder of my new computer. 

            I returned to my Anti Gravity’s Rainbow photo and worked on making the graffiti on the brick wall more legible. 

            I had the last of my bacon with an egg, sunny side up, a slice of toasted Bavarian sandwich bread, and a beer while watching the first two episodes from the second season of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, the underground kingdom of Antillia is being ruled by a tyrant named King El Doobie with his super troopers enforcing his dictatorship. After the king orders human children ten years old and up to become slave workers, two robots, Donald and Ronald, who look similar to C3P0 and R2D2 decide they must go and ask for help from Astro Boy. I wonder if George Lucas watched Astro Boy in 1964. 

           So Ronald flies to North America to fetch Astro Boy. Astro Boy agrees to come and he flies as a passenger inside of Ronald. But shortly after Astro Boy arrives and learns the situation, the super troopers raid Donald and Ronald’s hideout. Astro Boy captures a troop of super troopers. He ties their hands together and makes them walk as a chain back to their king. A little boy sees them and sings, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” 

            Astro Boy wants to go to the king’s Dogma Palace but it is guarded by three giant insect robots named, Scratchious, Scorpius, and Ugly. Astro Boy defeats Scratchious and Scorpius but by the time he gets to Ugly he is out of power and subdued. He is taken to the palace and tied up crucifixion style to a disk. Doobie reveals to Astro Boy his plan to conquer the world. His swarm of robot bees each carries a hypnotic poison in their stingers that will make anyone that is stung his slave. 

            Astro Boy has no energy to break his bonds but he sees a robot bee and attracts it into his chest. From the bee he gains just enough power to break free and then nearby he finds a power charger to renew his strength. At the heart of the palace Astro Boy finds the robot beehive and smashes it. Doobie releases the giant robot queen bee to attack Astro Boy. After a tough fight, he defeats the queen with his buttock guns. 

            Doobie attacks Astro Boy with his sword but Astro Boy connects Doobie’s blade to high voltage. The electrical shock wakes Doobie up, at first not knowing who he is. He was a good king with a bee-keeping hobby. His favourite bee was a very large one from outer space. It stung him and then began to control his mind. Doobie realizes he must destroy the robot bees and so he orders the population to evacuate to the surface and then sets off a bomb. Doobie plans now to build a peaceful Antillia on the surface. 

            In the second story, Astro Boy is flying home from a robot conference in the north when he sees an iceberg behaving strangely and moving much too fast. He goes down to investigate but is attacked by Dr. Harold Hart. But then Hart recognizes Astro Boy and apologizes. He explains that inside the iceberg is his laboratory. He shows Astro Boy his artificial sun project that would save the kingdom of Icelandia that is too frozen to grow vegetables. He says the device is now finished. 

            But two spies, Willy and Nilly, in a submarine disguised as a whale, have been listening and they report back to their boss, Dr, Cheddar. Cheddar plans to steal the heat generator and claim it as his own invention. He goes to see King Feebo and tells him of the device. As payment he wants to be made Minister of Industry and he wants to marry Feebo’s daughter Rosanna. If these demands are not met Cheddar will destroy the machine. To save his people, King Feebo agrees. 

            Cheddar goes to propose to Rosanna but she says her heart is pledged to Harold Hart. While pushing Cheddar away Rosanna accidentally loses a bracelet given to her by Harold. Astro Boy finds it and sees that it contains Harold’s picture. Astro Boy goes back to Harold and sees Willie and Nilly attacking Hart’s iceberg in their giant whale, which can also fly. Astro Boy causes the whale to crash. Harold asks Astro Boy to return the bracelet to Rosanna along with a note. On the way, Astro Boy is attacked by a helicopter flown by Cheddar. Astro Boy punches the chopper and Cheddar falls out. He saves him from falling but it turns out to be a robot version of Cheddar that is also a bomb. The bomb goes off and Astro Boy falls to the Earth incapacitated. 

           Then Willy and Nilly blast Harold and knock him out. Harold is strapped to a table and a time bomb is set for two hours. But then Cheddar ambushes Willy and Nilly and then straps them to tables beside the bomb as well. Then Rosanna suddenly notices she’s missing her bracelet. She goes back to the coast where she finds the bracelet beside Astro Boy along with a note for her from Harold. She takes Astro Boy to the best robot doctor in Icelandia. Astro Boy is revived and then battles Cheddar and his giant robot whale. After destroying the whale he saves Harold, Willy and Nilly from the bomb. Harold has a fistfight with Cheddar, beating him, and then he turns on his artificial sun to heat and save Icelandia.

April 25, 1992: I found a young woman offering $40 blowjobs but she had nowhere for us to go since I didn’t have a car

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I picked up my daughter at around 9:30 and she fell asleep on the way home. I stopped to buy a six pack of Formosa Springs draft. The baby slept for a couple of hours while I got some work done. We played games of imitation and we sat on the front steps. She didn’t eat much today. Nancy called at 15:30 to ask me to bring her back, so I did. But when I got there Nancy wasn’t home and so I headed with her to Bamburgh Plaza. Nancy caught up with us with her mother in the car just as I got there.    

            Nancy had the negatives and slides from some pictures I took of the baby. I asked for them back but she hadn’t done anything yet and so I threatened to take her to small claims court. She seemed to think she owned the world. 

            When I got home, I watched Neon Rider and Counter Strike, then I did some cleaning. 

            I went out that night looking for a cheap hooker. I walked up River Street, across Dundas, and all around Wellesley from Church to Ontario and back. There was an older woman on Bleeker Street who had blowjobs for $40, and I said I’d think about it. But when I decided to come back and take her up on it, I couldn’t find her. I wandered around back and forth until late and only found one young woman with the same price, but she had nowhere for us to go if I didn’t have a car.

Snow Lion

            On Saturday morning I finished working out the chords for the first two verses of “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian and part of the chorus. Once that’s done the whole song should fall together. 

            I finished memorizing “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg and found a set of chords for the song online. I’ll try them out tomorrow. 

            I had a good song practice probably because I’m feeling relaxed now that school is over until September. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went to No Frills, where I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of pork chops, dental floss, cayenne-scotch bonnet sauce, spoon sized shredded wheat, extra virgin olive oil, and a tube of hair conditioner. 

            I copied about half my videos from the old computer into a USB drive. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted five-year-old cheddar and tomato sandwich with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. All along Bloor I was on the lookout for stores that might sell office chairs, but there was nothing all the way to Yonge Street. I went into the Hudson’s Bay Centre and was surprised to find that the store at that location is closing and everything is being sold, including the fixtures, and shelves. They had furniture, but nothing on wheels. I rode south on Yonge and there are no furniture stores until the Eaton Centre. I’ll check that out later but today I went into Home Sense where they only had two chairs on wheels. I tried them out but only one of them felt comfortable. I didn’t really like the light colours either and the store models were already stained a bit. So far, I would pick the $60 chair at Walmart, but I’ll check out five more stores. I’ll probably visit Staples tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 18:20. 

            I copied the rest of the video files from my old computer, but not my Movie Maker project. That’s half done but I can’t finish it on the old computer and I’ll have to download Movie Maker to the new one. I don’t think I can copy the unfinished project and start from where I left off on the new computer. So I’ll have to make it into a movie as it is, then copy it and bring it to the new computer. Then make it part of a new project in order to finish it. 

            I started making dinner and then went back to the old computer to look at my Movie Maker project. It was as I feared. I had used a clip from Rosemary’s Baby and then deleted the original movie, thinking that the clip was a copy. But it wasn’t. Until the project is rendered it draws from the source files. So when I tried to make my project into a movie the program told me I had to either remove or replace the missing file. I removed the clip and rendered the movie but now I will have to copy it to the new computer and start the project again. Then I will have to re-download Rosemary’s Baby and edit out the clip to repaste it into the project., then I’ll need to resynchronize the video and audio after the clip in order to get caught up so I can continue the project on the new computer from where I left off on the old computer. 

            I had three strips of bacon, a fried egg sunny side up, toasted Bavarian sandwich bread, and a beer while watching the final episode of the first season of Astro Boy. 

            In this story it’s Christmastime and snow is falling on the city but an old man who looks like a wizard is standing on a rooftop with a white lion. The old man is cackling and saying that the snow is living snow from the star Risel and it will bury Earth so his own people can take over. It turns out the snow really is alive and it’s drawn to anything powered by electricity, draining it of its power. All of the robots and machines of the Earth are incapacitated except for Astro Boy, whose power cell is too powerful. 

            Astro Boy looks for the source of the snow and finds ships high in the sky that are producing and dropping the snow. As he approaches the ships he is attacked by the snow lion. He realizes while fighting it that it is also made of the living snow. The snow lion is draining Astro Boy’s energy and gathering his strength in itself. Astro Boy crashes to the Earth. The lion attacks the Institute of Science and Astro Boy has just enough strength to get there. He pushes over a vat of hot wax and traps the lion. But then the police arrive and try to destroy it with ray guns but the lion absorbs the energy and now can break free of the wax. Astro Boy tries again to attack the lion but now his strength is drained and he collapses. 

            Then Mr. Pompus is abducted and placed under glass on one of the invading spaceships. The invading force arrives from Risel and Earth is powerless to stop it. Dr. Elefun carries Astro Boy to place him among the other robots who stand forever as monuments to heroism. But then Elefun hears Astro Boy’s voice in his head telling him not to give up. Elefun starts working on ways to create electricity and shovels away the living snow when it tries to break in. 

            Meanwhile, when the old man leaves to inspect the other ships Pompus escapes from the glass. He finds a room where there are files that outline the invasion plans while also warning that the snow is not immune to x-rays. Pompus drops the file from the ship and returns to pretend to still be a prisoner. Elefun finds the file and develops a super fuel that is also laced with x-rays. Astro Boy is revived with the new fuel and flies to fight the lion. Now with the help of x-rays, he easily beats the lion. Then Pompus escapes again and beats up the old alien, who was also made of snow. Then Astro Boy destroys the spaceships and the Earth is saved. 

            I tried to watch the first episode of the second season of Astro Boy but its download was still only at less than 80% and the sound wouldn’t work. There was an extra file that was above 80%. The sound didn’t work on that either but there were subtitles. It was a colourized version of the Moon Monsters episode and the English translation used the Japanese names of the characters, plus Astro Boy was called “Atom.” Also, the words “bastards” and “damn” were used, which wouldn’t have been accepted in a 1963 children’s cartoon. 

            The snow lion is the emblem of Tibet and a celestial animal. It was believed that they lived high in the mountains. There is no evidence of any prehistoric lions in Tibet but there are snow leopards and the oldest bones of prehistoric big cats similar to snow leopards. There is a small wild feline called the Pallas’s cat in Tibet whose face looks something like the snow lion.

April 24, 1992: While I carried my daughter in Bargain Harold's she grabbed a red t-shirt, so I bought it for her

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I picked up my daughter at around 9:30. I’d promised Nancy I’d buy some diapers but first I went down Coxwell and enrolled in the Lucky Driving School. My first lesson would be on Sunday night. As I carried my daughter south on Coxwell I went into Bargain Harold’s, which was having a closing sale. I was looking for diapers but there weren’t any. As I carried the baby down an aisle she reached out and grabbed a red t-shirt that looked like it would fit her, so I bought it. I bought some strawberries before we caught the bus, and the baby stained my jacket with them. She fell asleep before we got to Shoppers Drug Mart where I bought the diapers. She slept a couple of hours at my place while I got some cleaning done. We left my place fairly late, at around 20:00 I guess. It was nice that I finally had the money to buy beer but by the time I’d dropped her off at her mother’s place the Beer Store was closed.

Robot Elephant

            On Friday morning I finished posting my translation of “Digital Delay” by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden). There are only two verses, so I’ll probably have it finished tomorrow. I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. I called Topcuts and made an appointment for a haircut with Amy on Monday. 

            I called my doctor’s office and found out that he’s finally doing in-person physicals after two years, so I made an appointment for May 11. 

            I copied a lot of files from the old computer to the new one, but I still have a lot more to do. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had McCain’s Superfries with salsa, yogourt, ketchup, and piri-piri sauce. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride up to The Dufferin Mall and went to Walmart to see what they had for office chairs. They have the same kind as mine, which broke after several years, for $60. I’ll look at six more places before I decide where I’m going to buy a new one, but I need one soon. Upstairs at Walmart, I bought a six-pack of black tank tops. 

             I looked around the mall for other furniture stores but there was nothing. I went into Marshal's and if someone had blindfolded me and taken the blindfold off inside, I would have thought I was in a Winners store. It's the same basic concept of clothing, home items, and gourmet food. 

            I rode up to Bloor and east to Dovercourt and then south. I found some good books: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Great Wall of China by Franz Kafka, Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, and Létranger by Albert Camus in French. The person also had a lot of books about Hitler and Nazis but I didn’t take any of those. 

            I went to Freshco where I bought five bags of grapes, two half-pints of raspberries, a pint of strawberries, two jars of apple sauce, a container of skyr, a bag of kettle chips, and a pack of Sponge Towels. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:40.

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

            I copied all the eBooks and music files from my old computer to the new one. I still have the videos and pictures to copy. The pictures will be a big job. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, a scientist asks for Dr. Elefun’s help because his son, Heck Ben is so obsessed with the wild west that he took his father’s time machine 150 years into the past. The time machine returned empty and so the father wants Elefun, Mr. Pompus, and Astro Boy to go back to the past to find his son. 

            When they arrive in the past they see some robbers chasing a stagecoach but Astro Boy stops the bad guys. When they run away they leave their bag of loot behind. Elefun, Pompus, and Astro Boy use some of the money to buy clothing so they will blend in. 

            Pompus is having a drink in a saloon when a bad guy named Patch tells him to leave because his boss wants to drink alone. Pompus refuses and so he is challenged to a shootout at high noon. Since Pompus can’t shoot straight Astro Boy hides while Pompus pretends to demonstrate his shooting skills. Astro Boy does the shooting but Patch thinks it’s Pompus and backs down. 

            Then a man says his boy is sick but the doctor’s in the next town and the town is surrounded by Indigenous warriors on the warpath. Astro Boy says he’ll go so he takes a horse and heads out of town. Some warriors attack but Astro Boy takes care of them. He successfully returns with a doctor and the boy is saved. 

            Then Pompus falls and unknowingly breaks off a spur from his boot. Patch finds it and the next day it is discovered that the bank has been robbed and Pompus’s spur is found at the scene of the crime. A lynch mob mounts Elefun, Pompus, and Astro Boy on horses, each under a noose and prepares to hang them. Astro Boy asks for two hours to find the real crooks and so the leader of the mob lets him go while keeping the other two. 

            Astro Boy finds a hideout in a box canyon but there is only one gang member there because the rest are in town. Astro Boy finds a radio transmitter from his time and is told it belongs to their boss. Meanwhile the boss, Patch and the rest of the gang are threatening to burn down the town if they don’t give them all their money. The town pays up and the gang escapes but Astro Boy stops them. Then he confronts the leader and surprises him by knowing his name is Heck Ben. He makes Heck Ben feel bad about leaving his father and so he agrees to go back to the year 2000. 

            The second story is the penultimate episode of the first season. It begins with a mother elephant and her baby trying to escape from hunters but the mother is killed. The baby wanders and is attacked by a big snake but is saved by Astro Boy.

            Meanwhile, Dr. Elefun is visiting Dr. Marzipan who caused trouble in an earlier episode. Marzipan has developed several robot versions of African animals such as a rhinoceros that is also a barbecue and a gorilla that serves as a fruit vending machine. He has also created Rabby the robot rabbit that can imitate the voices of eighty African animals. His greatest creation is a robot elephant named Mack, but Mack malfunctions and goes on a rampage. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Boy has named the baby elephant Jimbo and is trying to help him find the elephant herd. But when Jimbo sees Mack he thinks it’s his mama and goes up to it. Mack is about to step on Jimbo when Astro Boy saves him. Mack has a very powerful suction force in its trunk that almost pulls Astro Boy and Jimbo in but they escape. 

            Astro Boy leaves Jimbo alone on a mountainside while he goes to look for the herd and he finds it. But Jimbo is captured by the hunters that killed his mother. They tell Astro Boy that they will shoot Jimbo if he doesn’t lead them to the elephant herd. He does so because they promise not to shoot the elephants but once they find the herd they take aim. Astro Boy stops them but then Mack attacks and so Astro Boy has to battle it. But even after he breaks it into pieces some parts can still fight such as the top of its head and its ears become a flying thing that shoots lasers. Finally, Mack is destroyed and Astro Boy turns it into a water fountain. Jimbo is adopted by a new mama and siblings.

April 23, 1992: I dreamed my daughter pointed at a photo of my father and said, "Daddy!"

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I got up fairly early and called to talk to my daughter before leaving for work. On the way to Central Tech, I stopped to pick up my negs, but they still couldn’t find them. All I got was the slides that I’d dropped off the day before, but there were some interesting shots. I worked from 15:30 to 17:30 and then headed home, stopping for some groceries on the way. After watching Star Trek, I talked to my daughter. Her mother asked if I wanted to see the baby on Friday since she had to go to the dentist. I said as long as I could take her on Saturday as well, and she said okay. I watched TV. I’d gotten three Venus collages done and lots of cleaning. I’d finished washing the kitchen ceiling and all the floors were mopped. Next, I would start on the fridge. 

            I heard that my daughter stood for fifteen seconds today and then I had a dream that she walked. I also dreamed that she was looking at a photo of my father, pointed at it, and said, “Daddy!”

Usefulness is Invisibility

            On Thursday morning after yoga, I didn’t work out any chords for the songs I’ve been working on. I got my journal and Twitter postings out of the way so that after song practice I could start working right away on my essay. I did a shortened song practice of doing only one verse and one chorus of most of my songs and started working on my essay just before 8:00. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked until 11:00 gathering quotes about existence, birth, and childlikeness from Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, and then I took a siesta until 12:30. 

            I worked on the essay until 17:45. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:50. 

            There were just over six hours to go before my essay needed to be handed in. I wasn’t fully satisfied with my essay. I had actually been working on a previous version of it for more than a month but then Apala told me I was getting too far away from the novel and I needed to focus on close reading of that. I think I was supposed to engage with a secondary text in relation to the novel but after changing the format of the essay with two days to go I didn’t have time. It would have been much better if I’d started in this direction weeks ago and I could have probably brought in other texts. 

            I had a bit of a scare at 23:30, as Shankar’s wifi was down but it’s been going off periodically for a few minutes at a time since I bought the new computer, which doesn’t need an adaptor for the internet like the old one does. It came back on in time to submit the paper and I handed it in at 23:43, with 17 minutes before the extended deadline. Here it is: 

                              To Be Useful is to Be Invisible in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable 

                                   There is no man or woman can be touched – Leonard Cohen 

            Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable demonstrates that the perceivability of people as individuals is inversely proportional to their functionality. To understand that another group exists, they must be seen, heard, and touched outside of their assigned labour role in society. This is also true and perhaps more so in regard to self-perception and can be seen in this Bildungsroman of a day in the life of Bakha the sweeper. The beginning of this day of development is symbolically a birth and I will show how birth followed by aspects of childhood reflect Bakha’s hopes for his existence. Then I will expose the forces that resist the emergence of Untouchables like Bakha as individuals, namely those attached to the benefits they derive from caste division. I will then present the ways in which usefulness works directly at odds with self-development. I will conclude by questioning whether Bakha really does emerge as an adult individual in any substantial way after resolving to return to his assigned function with nothing more than a resolution to refuse bad food and hope for changes from outside. 

            Bakha is “a child of modern India (Anand 10).” Although eighteen years of age and a young adult, Bakha is a child in the sense that his story is one of approaching existence. But in India, he is considered “illegally begotten”, ironically even by his own father, and therefore he is an illegitimate child (Anand 13) while his father sees members of the upper castes as his own “father and mother (Anand 67).” The phrase “illegally begotten” speaks to the Untouchable’s lack of legitimate existence, but also to the injustice of their enforced subaltern state. 

            Bakha is symbolically “a child,” born upon waking at the beginning of this one-day Bildungsroman (Anand 10). Throughout the story, there are references to his childlike state of being. He views the world around him with the “open, hopeful, astonished eyes of the child (Anand 64).” He feels a childlike wonder while watching the proficient labourers in the marketplace perform their crafts, such as “the skill of a woodcutter and … the manipulation of a sewing-machine by a tailor.” (Anand 37).” His ingenuous admiration of the work of tradespeople who are considered to be above the sub-caste to which he belongs causes his own people to be equated with being in a state of comparative infancy. 

            As Bakha cannot read and is not allowed the opportunity to do so because of his low status, this situation keeps him in a perpetual state of childhood. Independently of the education system that excludes him, he plans to learn to read for the empowerment that it would give him (Anand 33). But part of his education is also the realization of the powerlessness that his position affords. His coming into being through education must happen independently of his spiritual subsistence as a sweeper. 

            The emergence of Bakha’s sense of self is resisted by those whose high-born status makes them justify their belief that they are above him. The higher castes stand between and eclipse the Untouchables’ access to the idealized sky of religion (Anand 59). While requiring him to clean their dirt, they reject and resist his right to “float in the sea of existence (Anand 59)!” He wonders why he has to do what he does while being mistreated for doing it. It is only through such questions of purpose that self perception emerges. 

            The outcastes only come into being when they are useless. We see this as they rest in the sun and “their insides” are “… concentrated in the act of emergence, of a new birth ... (Anand 30)” The Untouchables cannot be made into more than a faceless hive as long as they remain focused on executing the necessary quotidian tasks that are considered unclean by the upper castes. When Bakha performs his assigned utility, he falls into the background and becomes blended with that function. That he is only noticed when he fails to be useful can be seen when the Havildar calls for him after finding that he has not cleaned the latrines (Anand 14). His failure to perform his duty has made him exist to the Havildar. Then, after the Havildar uses the cleaned latrine, he again no longer needs Bakha and therefore perceives him once again. But what Havildar sees are Bakha’s European clothes, which stand drastically apart from the traditional habit of his function, thereby making him visible (Anand 15). This is also shown in the marketplace when Bakha is not performing his duties and not announcing the name of his profession by calling out “sweeper coming.” This makes him both visible and ironically touchable as he is slapped after touching an upper caste man (Anand 39-42). 

            That work conceals the self is further illustrated in another conversation with Havildar: “Where do you keep yourself hidden?” he asks, with the answer being, “I have to work … (Anand 86).” Bakha loses himself in his work, without realizing his actions, and ends up “completely oblivious” (Anand 17). 

            Succumbing to his function impedes even Bakha’s own self-awareness when he is not engaged with work, limiting him to merely superficial contemplation. In his almost Wordsworthian pastoral mo-ment outside of town, Bakha observes “each little stem of plant becoming a big leaf, distinct and im-portant (Anand 78).” But it escapes him that these stems emerging as individuals are a metaphor for his own potential awakening and that of his fellow Untouchables. His emergence is inhibited by his frustrated contemplativeness, and his “unenlightened will.” He is missing “the force and vivacity of thought to transmute his vague sense into the superior instinct ... (Anand 77)” Without having the time to develop an ability to explore his own interior, he has no self and therefore no being. This illusive contemplative existence that could crown Bakha’s life remains out of reach, and like the coveted solar to-pee that hangs teasingly on the wall at the regiment, “there is no way of getting it” (Anand 84). 

            The Untouchables cannot do anything to elevate their status until they come into existence. Slaves who cannot be seen performing invisible slavery cannot be liberated from enslavement. A sense of needing to exist to one’s own perception can only develop from the understanding that such a self-perception is not there. It is only after being abused in the marketplace that Bakha becomes fully conscious of his own state of non-being. At that moment he is almost swallowed by the reality of his life as an untouchable handler of dung. The self-realization of his own untouchability is more accurately a revelation that he is not Bakha, and cannot fully be Bakha as long as he is an Untouchable. This is emphasized with the ironic imagery of pregnancy. The shock of recognition that he is an Untouchable had “sent a quiver into his being.” It had penetrated him and instantaneously developed to a “quickening” which is the moment halfway through pregnancy when the fetus begins to kick at the walls of the womb. Bakha has become pregnant with his own untouchability while at the same time the Untouchable that he suddenly understands himself to be is pregnant with the unborn and unfulfilled Bakha waiting to come into being (Anand 43). 

            The end of the novel leaves Bakha still flirting with existence, with more understanding of his social status, some hope for emancipation from outside, and a “queer kind of strength” drawn from Gandhi’s wish that the Untouchables have “the strength to work out” their “soul’s salvation to the end.” He has learned from Gandhi that he must take control over what he eats, by accepting the offering of “good, sound grain (Anand 121).” Bakha likes this advice because he is already disgusted by the eating of the half-finished meals of others (Anand 70), and he understands that this small act of resistance may afford him the passive empowerment of dignity. Gandhi however does not explain how the Untouchables are going to cook the fresh grain they may receive if no one will give them water from the well (Anand 20). 

            At the end of the day, Bakha emerges from his childlike state to the threshold of a more mature understanding of his downtrodden situation and how to exist in spite of it. He resolves to continue doing the work of a scavenger and puts hope in a vague future when modern developments might liberate him from cleaning latrines (Anand 126-127). However, these three solutions: the “soul’s salvation”, the action of being choosy beggars, and the hope of being liberated in an undetermined future by flush toilets, are very internal and passive. There is nothing in them that would emancipate the Untouchables from being outcasts of the caste system. Bakha takes heart from quietly knowing that his people are objectively equal to the members of the other castes of India, but he shows no determination to stand up to the system and demand equal rights. He seems to be content with some degree of realization but there is no clear indication of what Bakha will do with this newfound sense of being, and what he will use it to become. But it does not read as a self-awareness but rather as a status awareness that may not carry him to any degree of presence. 

                                                           Work Cited 

 Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable, Hutchinson International Authors Limited, 1947, PDF.