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.