Alternative Reality

            On Tuesday morning I had food poisoning from having accidentally eaten raw chicken at the Korean Grill House. It was covered in marinade and unrecognizable as chicken. They really should label the servings so people know what they are eating. I’ve also been stuffed up since last night. I notice the pollen count is very high today from all the trees on the list. 

            I finished working out the chords for “What tu dis qu'est-ce que tu say?” by Serge Gainsbourg. I decided to not bother with the instrumental. How one plays that is an individual choice and this particular instrumental is not essential to the character of the lyrics. I ran through the song in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian’s Translations where I began the editing process to prepare it for publication on the blog. 

           The food poisoning wasn’t as bad after song practice but my pollen reaction continued all day. It was the worst it’s ever been. It’s weird because growing up on a farm I never had any reaction to pollen, nor did anyone I knew. My only experience of it was as something characters experience in sitcoms and movies. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. Around midday, I washed all the toy figures that are leftover from my daughter’s childhood, which I keep on display in the living room window. They weren’t that dirty but the part of the window where they sit was filthy, so cleaning that was the main chore. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. The plan was to go to Yonge and Bloor but it started sprinkling on the way. I decided to play it safe and head south on Palmerston and then home. The rain stopped before I even got to Queen. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:00. 

            I returned to my Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song Instructions for Electroshock Therapy. After having previously inserted clips from documentary footage of shock therapy from the 1940s, my playback of the video in the editor near the insertion points has been choppy, with the video stalling as the sound continues. I was pretty sure it was a compatibility issue between the format of the main video and of that of the inserted clip. So I decided to publish the movie, including the documentary that was sitting at the end of the timeline. The rendered movie came out smooth, with no freezing. So I imported the new movie into the project and deleted the old one. Since the publishing process put everything in AVI, there was no problem after that when I cut pieces of the documentary and inserted them into the main video. I continued to alternate one-second segments of the first instrumental from the concert video with the same size clips from the documentary. But that instrumental in the studio audio is much shorter than in the concert, and so I will have to shorten the concert footage/documentary combination to match. 

            I worked on the first poem of my series My Blood in a Bug. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, a wicked storm is approaching. Dr. Elefun has developed a little bomb that he thinks will alter the pressure and end the storm but he needs government approval. While he has gone to seek it, Astro Boy learns that the storm is approaching a dam that is under construction. In order to save many lives, Astro Boy decides to use the bomb without permission. He is successful but now Elefun and his parents are mad at him for disobeying orders. Astro Boy feels bad and he is moping near the dam when the crew resumes blasting. He gets caught in an explosion and loses consciousness. When he comes to he begins to fly and is surprised that there is no trace of the dam. He goes home but discovers that his house is gone. He goes to see Dr. Elefun but his mentor does not know him. 

            Suddenly some identical giant metal men appear at Elefun’s door and one of them says he is the head of the Institute of Science. Astro Boy knows that Elefun is the head of the Institute. When he argues, the metal men attack and say all robots must be turned in and drained of energy. But Astro Boy defeats them easily and flies away. 

           Then he sees some metal men bullying Mr. Pompus because he refuses to obey their orders. Astro Boy comes to the rescue and he appreciates the help, even though he also has no idea who Astro Boy is. Astro Boy flies Pompus away but they are blasted by one of the metal men’s ships. They fall, but a door slides open in the ground and they disappear below. The metal men ask a little boy (who looks exactly like Astro Boy) which way they went and he points them in the wrong direction. Astro Boy wakes up and sees Pompus, Elefun, and Dr. Boynton. But Boynton explains that he is not the Boynton who created him. While Astro Boy was unconscious, Boynton read the information in his electronic brain and learned that Astro Boy is from an alternative universe. 

            But in this world, there is no Astro Boy because Boynton’s son Astor did not die and so his father was not motivated to build a robot replacement. Also in this world, the metal men have invaded from outer space, scrapped all the robots, and conquered the Earth. Suddenly the metal men have discovered their hideout and give them one minute to surrender before they are blasted. But after the explosion, we find that the hideout has the ability to move. Elefun explains that he has discovered that although there are thousands of metal men, they only have one mind. They are controlled by a single electronic brain in a tower, but the brain is regularly moved from tower to tower throughout the world. Today the brain is in their city and they only have two hours to destroy it before it is moved elsewhere. Astro Boy is given the task of repowering the robots so they can attack and distract the metal men while the brain is destroyed. Elefun and Boynton's secret weapon approaches the tower but magnetic rays stop the vehicle. 

            Astro Boy invades the tower, finds the brain, and attacks it, but it is very powerful and seemingly indestructible. When the metal men discover that the brain is in danger and begin to head for the tower, they are stopped by Astor, who pretends to be Astro Boy and causes them to hesitate. Astro Boy lifts the brain through the top of the tower and flies it high in the sky. Then he uses the full force of his jets to push the brain downward so it will be destroyed on impact. After the explosion, the metal men collapse and Astro Boy disappears. He wakes up back in his own world. 

            In the second story a rocket is heading towards Earth and Dr. Arden signals to it with his car headlights. Astro Boy just happens to be flying overhead at the time. Emerging from the rocket are three superhuman beings. Arden wants revenge on Dr. Elefun for firing him from the Institute, but the super-powered trio, Isan, Gretchen, and Carl also have a grudge against Elefun. They all have the power to fly, great strength, and the power to survive in space without a suit. But they also each have unique powers of their own. One can spin so fast as to create hurricane-force winds, another can pass through walls, and Gretchen has power over gravity. They want revenge on Elefun because they believe he made them superhuman, which prevents them from living normal lives. Astro Boy fights with them for a while but then leaves to warn Elefun. 

            Elefun does not believe superhuman beings are out to get him until his car blows up when he leaves it to help a puppy off the road. That night the beings invade Elefun’s home and he recognizes the trio by name. Astro Boy comes to the rescue. He lures them up into the sky to fight. Gretchen uses her gravity power and Astro Boy feels heavy. They all knock Astro Boy around until his impact creates a hole in the ground. They once again attack Elefun’s home. He locks himself in the safe but one of them can pass through. They beat up Elefun and carry him away. 

            Another scientist revives Astro Boy. Elefun is taken to Arden’s hideout. Astro Boy receives a call telling him to go to Mystery Island. There the trio fight with him again and once again Gretchen uses her gravity power. But Astro Boy reverses his electronic force, sending boulders flying at Gretchen, which knocks her out. The other two take Gretchen to Arden for treatment and Astro Boy follows. He runs out of jet fuel and falls into the prison where Elefun is being held. Arden opens the cell with a blaster in his hand. He talks about having convinced the trio that Elefun gave them powers when it was really Arden that did it. Gretchen happens to be listening at the door. She stops Arden and then tries to convince her friends but she is kicked into a power line. The electrical shock causes her to lose her powers. Astro Boy now has to lure the other two into the electrical field. After a fight, he manages to do it and they lose their powers as well.

            I went to bed at 22:00 and slept until 23:00, then I got up, washed the dishes, brushed my teeth, looked for bedbugs without finding any, made my bed, wrote in my journal until about 1:00, then went to bed again.