Replicator

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the third verse of “L'avant-guerre, c'est maintenant” (The Pre-War is Happening) by Serge Gainsbourg. It’s kind of a fun song done in a ska style, and I wouldn’t mind eventually learning it for performance sometime down the road. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I spent the last two hours of the morning working on my essay. I found a parallel between Bakha’s excellence in sports in Untouchable and Uncle Tom’s devout Christianity in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

            It was quite warm in the afternoon for April and so I didn’t need to wear a scarf or gloves for my bike ride. I carried my scarves and gloves in my backpack however just in case. On Bloor Street, there was a cyclist shouting at cars and saying, “Get a fucking life!” Even after she was ahead of me on the bike lane she was still shouting at the cars. I rode to Yonge and Bloor. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 17:20. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 17:45. 

            I worked on my essay for more than an hour. I did some research into the significance of sports in Modernism. Modernism mostly rejected sports but I did find this quote: “… the central feature of sport in the modern world … it would become the first of the great globalizing forces. Sport operates on the scale of the world. It is not just accidentally a world phenomenon; it is a way of inventing the world, bringing the world into being as a world (Connor 20).” 

            I had a potato, lima beans, and spinach while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story begins with a plane crashing into the Bering Sea. Dr. Elefun and several other scientists call for Astro Boy and make him swear a vow of secrecy before being given his mission. Onboard the lost plane is a bomb that turns rocks into water. It would be a great benefit on some other planets but it could cause disaster on the Earth, which is already mostly water. The Institute has received a signal from the bomb that it will go off in fifty hours. Astro Boy is told that he must leave in the morning to locate and defuse the bomb. The reason this must be kept secret is that it would cause worldwide panic. 

            Reporter Scoop Snoop knows that Astro Boy is being sent on a mission but he needs to find out what the mission is. Astro Boy refuses to tell him. The next morning Astro Girl sees Astro Boy sneaking out and she asks to go with him. He says she can’t come and flies away. Scoop has overheard their conversation and offers Astro Girl a jet pack so she can follow Astro Boy. But Astro Girl’s pack runs out of fuel and she splashes into the Arctic Ocean where she is swallowed by a whale. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Boy finds the wrecked plane but finds no trace of the bomb, which is supposed to make a sound like a snoring hippopotamus. Astro Boy rendezvous with a research ship that has learned from an Inuit that he heard a whale making that very sound. Astro Boy now has six hours to find the whale that swallowed the bomb. While Astro Boy is searching through the insides of several whales, the one carrying the bomb and Astro Girl is harpooned by a whaling ship and then hoisted up into a whaling plane. 

            When Astro Girl is discovered the captain thinks the bomb is a mechanism for controlling her. He plans on selling her to a foreign power so they can learn how to make super robots. The plane flies back to its secret warehouse. With two hours left, Astro Boy learns this from the crew of the whaling ship. He lands where the warehouses are and begins searching them all. When he finds the right warehouse he has to fight a giant robot that shoots destructive rays.

            Meanwhile, the captain escapes in a truck carrying Astro girl and the bomb. Astro Boy destroys the robot and goes after the truck. He finds the bomb and his sister with just three minutes to go. He fetches Dr. Elefun to diffuse the bomb. With just thirty seconds left the captain, still misunderstanding what the bomb is, pulls a gun to stop Elefun. Astro Boy blasts the captain with his boot rockets. Elefun finally cuts the right wire in the last second and the world is saved.