Friendly Aliens

            On Monday morning while tuning my guitar the G string broke while I was tuning the B. It was definitely due to be changed months ago. This morning I didn’t have time to put a new one on right away because I just wanted to work out the first few chords for my song “Our Less Than Solid Dude of Solitude.” So I pulled out the Rocker electric to quickly tune it and use it without amplification. But when I put the clip-on tuner at the end of the neck the clamp broke. Fortunately, I have another clip-on tuner that I haven’t used in over a year but the battery still had some juice and I was able to tune the Rocker. I had to tear off the duct tape that I’d put along the edge of the neck to protect my fingers from its sharp fret ends and it made my hands sticky. I had to listen hard without amplification but I was able to work out a few chords. 

            Next I put the chords in place that I’d found yesterday for “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts” by Boris Vian, but didn’t have time to try them out. 

            I found a few G strings in my drawer and picked the oldest one, but it was still a good one. The guitar sounded a lot better because the G had been twangy for a while. Because of the loss of time I did a shortened song practice, by just singing one verse and one chorus for most of the songs. By the end I was on schedule. 

            I started and finished memorizing “Digital delay” by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only eight lines besides the refrain that repeats “Digital delay.” I did a quick search for the chords but so far couldn’t find any. I’ll look again tomorrow but I probably won’t find any. The album “Souviens-toi de m'oublier” (Remember to Forget Me) that Gainsbourg wrote for Catherine Deneuve was a commercial failure. The lyrics are good of course and Deneuve has a sexy talky-singing voice but the music doesn’t particularly grab the attention. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had an appointment for 14:00 with my Global Modernisms instructor and so I decided to take an early siesta. I went to bed at 11:15 and got up at around 12:20. Before leaving I double checked where the Robarts Café is and got confused because there seems to be a Robarts Library Café at 130 St George but there is also a Robarts Cafeteria in the Robarts building. 

            I took the Bloor bike lane and went south on St George to Robarts. Inside I had to show security that I’d done my self covid check on my phone and I also had to scan my student card. I asked about the café and was told it’s on the second floor. But all that was there was the food court. I asked somebody in an office and he said the food court is the café. I had envisioned an actual relaxing café and not a smelly food court. I walked around the eating area but there wasn’t a single wall outlet for my laptop. Outside the food court was a more open area where people could still eat. There I found a wall outlet and set up my laptop. Just after 14:00, I decided to walk around to make myself visible for Apala and I saw her right away. 

            I told her that my essay had a lot of moving parts and I was in the process of getting them to work as part of one smooth-running machine. She said that’s the way essays work. I showed her my essay and she read a few paragraphs. I had hoped she would say that I was on the right track and have a few small suggestions. She saw a lot of ideas but she said I have to get onto one single track of an argument that draws its evidence from my close reading of the novel. Then I can bring in secondary texts as proof of my argument. I think I can see what she means. I have some evidence from close reading and a lot of evidence from outside sources. She had an appointment for 14:30 and was impatient to get away. 

            I rode home. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. I had the rest of my chili with kettle chips and a glass of soymilk.

            I took another siesta at 16:15 and got up at around 17:30. It was snowing heavily in big flakes that were melting as they hit the street. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos at 17:40. 

            I cut up a whole chicken and marinated the parts with the rest of the chipotle taco sauce, salsa, Piri Piri sauce, and honey that I’d mixed a couple of days before. I added olive oil, salt and cayenne and roasted it in the oven. 

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

            I worked for about an hour on my essay and started moving everything that I can prove with the text of the novel into the foreground. The idea of Bakha being a child has lots of evidence. I only have three days until the deadline. 

            I had a chicken leg with a potato and margarine while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story wasn’t very complicated. A meteor hurtling towards Earth turns out to be a space ship. The strange-looking people inside are very friendly. They are from the Planet Jip-Jip and have come to collect unusual animals for their zoo. They will trade precious jewels and rare space metals in exchange. 

            As a gift, they also give the Earthlings a talking baby dinosaur named Tiny which is already bigger than the largest creatures on Earth. A circus owner named Trickem wants to get the dinosaur for himself but he is told he can’t have it. When the Jip-Jip cook is out shopping for tons of vegetables Trickem offers him a pig in exchange for any large creature he can display in his show. The cook thinks the pig is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and gives Trickem one of the giant ten-ton crabs that they eat on the ship. 

            The crab eats one whale a day, is bulletproof and its claws can snap a rocket ship in two. Trickem has the crab chained but when he unchains one claw so it can demonstrate cutting a tank in two it uses that claw to snap the other chains and escapes. The army’s weapons are ineffectual against it. Astro Boy fights it and with great difficulty manages to tear off one of its claws. It escapes in the ocean. 

            Meanwhile Tiny proves to be a great addition to the zoo and everyone loves it. But the problem is that it needs to constantly eat and when it is an adult will consume all the food in the world. Tiny and Astro Boy have become very good friends and they go into the ocean together to look for the crab. The crab has been attacking and destroying boats. They follow it to Hawaii where Astro Boy and Tiny fight it. Finally it falls into a volcano and dies. 

            Then the Jip-Jips return to ask for medicine to treat the cold they caught from the pig that Trickem gave to the cook. Dr. Elefun gives them cold medicine and the Jip-Jips take Tiny home where there is more to eat.