Diamond Planets

            On Saturday morning I had the sniffles and I was sneezing a bit. It didn’t feel like a cold so I wonder if I was having an allergic reaction to the Beauveria bassiana spores that pest control sprayed in my place on Wednesday. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Mes idées sales” (My Dirty Thoughts) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through it in French and English and uploaded it to Christian’s Translations. I finished editing it and published it on the blog. There’s only one song left on my 1980 list of Gainsbourg compositions. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning, I went to No Frills where I bought four bags of grapes, a bunch of spinach, a 4.5-kilo bag of red potatoes from Perth-Andover in my home county of Carleton in New Brunswick, a loaf of sliced Bavarian sandwich bread, a loaf of cinnamon swirl raisin bread, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, a jar of white corn and black bean salsa, a jar of roasted garlic pasta sauce, a carton of soymilk, a jug of lemonade, and a bag of kettle chips. An elderly woman, the employee stocking shelves in the personal needs section, and I were the only ones not wearing masks. But I didn’t let loose any water droplets so that should be the same as wearing a mask. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. I had cilantro guacamole with plantain chips. 

            When I got up from my siesta it had been raining and it looked dull outside. I checked the Weather Network and saw that it wasn’t supposed to rain again and so I reluctantly took a bike ride. I went to Yonge and Bloor and on the way home the sun came out. I also didn’t have to pee downtown for the second ride in a row. Maybe it’s because I’m not eating salads for lunch now and so there’s less water in my body. 

            Just after Spadina I was passing another cyclist when a bus passed me on the left, missing me by centimeters. Then, just before Strachan a car making a left turn came right towards me and didn’t look like it was going to stop. I thought for sure it was going to hit me and cause me severe damage, and I shouted, “Jesus!” It stopped a few centimeters before hitting me. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:15. 

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

            I worked on my essay for about an hour. I read some of the essay “Racial Stereotypes in Fictions of Slavery” to find ways to compare Untouchable with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, especially trying to look at the way that Untouchables were bound by Hinduism without being allowed to participate in it. Comparing that with the way that slave owners used Christianity to justify slavery, encouraged slaves to be Christians but didn’t allow them in their churches. 

            I sauteed ginger, garlic, and scallions. I chopped baby Bok choy and mushrooms and added them to the rest. They made a big mound in the pan but as they cooked the Bok choy and mushrooms shrank so there was room to add frozen lima beans. I had about a third of it for dinner while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            In this story, an asteroid named Medusa that is a fifth the size of Earth is on a collision course with our planet. Officials propose the use of the anti-proton bomb but there are only three scientists that know how to use the weapon. The problem is that Doctors Alpha, Beta, and Gamma are all in prison. And so the three criminals are released for this mission. Dr. Elefun is in charge of the mission and of course, Astro Boy comes along as well. The pilot, Suzy Brighteyes is the best space ship flyer in the world. 

            They blast off but as they approach Medusa one of the criminal scientists pulls a ray gun and they try to force the ship to turn around and return to Earth. But then their vessel is caught in the gravitational pull of Medusa and so the convicts have no choice but to fulfill their mission. Two anti-proton bombs are to be planted on Medusa twenty-four kilometers apart. Dr. Elefun and Astro Boy are in one team and the three prisoners are in the other. After setting the three-hour timer for their bomb, Dr. Elefun and Astro Boy experience something strange. Their space car has been moved. Then suddenly Astro Boy begins to sink into the asteroid until he is buried, but he uses his boot rockets to blast his way out. 

            The three criminal scientists discover that Medusa is rich in diamonds. They bring back bags full of them to the ship but Suzy tells them they can’t take them aboard because they will make their ship too heavy to blast off. They pull a gun on Suzy and demand that she takes off without Elefun and Astro Boy so they can bring the diamonds on board. But then the rocks of the asteroid begin to move and surround the rocket, closing in. By the time Astro Boy and Elefun return, their ship is almost buried. Astro Boy knocks the boulders away. They have half an hour before the bombs explode. The criminals still want to bring the diamonds on board but Astro Boy won’t let them. They take off and the asteroid explodes. It is discovered that Dr. Beta has snuck a big diamond on board but Dr. Elefun decides he deserves to keep it. 

            Scientists say that some planets may be made almost entirely of diamonds. 55 Cancri e, forty light years away, may be such a diamond planet. It orbits the star Cancri 55 in the Cancer constellation. Some scientists think the rare black diamond that can be found in Brazil came from beyond the Earth.

            I found one bedbug hiding high up on the old exit door before I went to bed.