On Thursday morning I uploaded “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian to Christian’s Translations, but then the Wi-Fi went down for the next twenty minutes and so all I had time to do was put a title on the file.
I finished working out the chords for “Monna Vanna et Miss Duncan.” I’ll run through the song in French and English tomorrow and then upload it to the blog.
I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast.
In the late morning, I uploaded the photos I’d taken of the four pages of the bursary application form to Cloud Convert and changed them to PDFs. Then I emailed them to Yvonne at the Registrar’s office.
I went to the local post office to find out where I can pick up my mail. The mailman hasn’t been able to get into our building for months because of a faulty electronic lock. I’m supposed to be getting the form soon for reapplying for the Toronto Housing Allowance. I forget when the deadline is.
I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. I had the rest of the breakfast sausages with salsa and skyr and a glass of raspberry lemonade.
In the afternoon I went back to Long and McQuade to ask about mics again, but this time I brought my Shure SM58 mic to ask if it needs to be improved for computer recording. The guy listened to my thirty-year-old mic, comparing it to a brand-new Shure SM58, and he didn’t hear much difference. He said that although the Shure SM58 is an industry standard, that’s for kicking around at live shows. They are not considered to be quality mics for recording. He said that my mic’s computer recorded sound could be improved with a sound card, but not a lot. He said the Rode USB mic for $220 would make a better computer voice recording than my mic with a sound card.
On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought six bags of red grapes, an eye of round roast, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a container of skyr, two 1.5-liter containers of orange juice that were cheaper together than the 2.5-liter container, a 1.5-liter container of lime lemonade, and another of raspberry lemonade, and again, together they were cheaper than the larger container that contained less, a jar of hot salsa, a bag of kettle chips, and a can of dark roast coffee. I thought about buying toilet paper but then I thought that I’d already bought a pack recently. But when I got home I saw that I was out of toilet paper. I would have to make do with paper towels until I buy some at No Frills on Saturday.
I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:40.
After posting my blog and catching up on my journal I worked for half an hour on my Movie Maker project of making a video for my song “Instructions For Electroshock Therapy.” By shaving just a touch more off the Rosemary’s Baby sacrifice clip I put the finishing touches on synchronizing the concert video with the studio audio at the point where I sing “sacrifice.” That’s followed by Brian Haddon singing “Shock Therapy” and then I sing, “To avoid any bruises let no metal touch the skin, that’s my advice.” Between the clip of Brian singing “Shock therapy” and me singing “that’s my advice” I inserted the clip from Rosemary’s Baby of Rosemary’s wedding ring being removed. I started cutting out bits of the beginning of that clip and I’ll continue until the concert footage and studio audio of me singing “that’s my advice” are synchronized again. After that, I should be all caught up from where I left off in the project before I screwed it up by deleting the source file of the Rosemary’s Baby clips.
I coated four chicken legs in olive oil, salt, and paprika, and roasted them in the oven. I had one with a potato and gravy while watching two episodes of Astro Boy.
In the first story, a developer named Mr. Heel has built a city called Cassalina on the bottom of the ocean and plans to turn the entire ocean floor into urban development. Astro Boy, Dr. Elefun, and Mr. Pompus are taking a tour of the new city when it is suddenly hit by magnetic waves. A hole is broken through the dome, letting water in, and so Astro Boy swims out to investigate. He finds two large crab robots and fights them off. Then he sees a fleet of strange attack submarines heading toward the city. He intercepts them and says that if they have a message for the city he’ll deliver it. A door opens up and a mechanical arm hands him an artificial seashell, then the ships turn and leave. It contains a message in supersonic waves which Astro Boy is able to translate. It says the development of the city cost many undersea lives, it demands the city be abandoned, and the sea bottom left in peace or they will attack. It says to meet at Point X with an answer.
Heel refuses to take the message seriously but Astro Boy, Elefun, and Pompus decide to rendezvous with the strange messengers at Point X. They meet the Dolphin people and are taken as guests to their city where they meet King Philip of the Dolphin People. Astro Boy makes friends with the king’s little boy Finny. Elefun unilaterally agrees on behalf of the human race to leave the sea bottom alone. They leave as friends but when Heel hears of this he refuses to abandon his city.
When Finny comes playing close to Cassalina, Heel has him abducted to use as a hostage against attack by the Dolphin People. But this causes Philip to declare war on the human race and surface ships are attacked. Astro Boy and Elefun go back to Cassalina where they see it surrounded by Dolphin troops, while inside, Heel holds Finny.
Astro Boy rescues Finny but Heel commands his giant robot Drigger to attack. It has two powerful drills for arms and another for a head. Astro Boy fights it and eventually wins, then he returns Finny to his father. Astro Boy tries to reason with Philip but he still wants war with the surface, so Astro Boy says he’ll have to get through him first. Astro Boy takes out a lot of the Dolphin troops but is eventually overwhelmed. Then Cassalina is suddenly bombed from the surface. Elefun arrives and says the world governments have finally been convinced to leave the sea bottom alone, and peace is restored.
Octopuses are probably smarter than dolphins. They have built-in intelligence and can do amazingly innovative things in a short and solitary lifespan. Dolphins seem smart because they learn from each other but are less clever on their own. Tool use is a strong criterion for intelligence and octopuses have shown the creative ability to use tools to get food in captivity. In their own environment, Octopuses carry shells around to use as armour when they need them. Some also carry the poison tentacles of other creatures to use as weapons. An octopus in a lab was filmed sneaking out of its tank, going to a tank full of fish, opening the lid, eating the fish, closing the lid, and returning to its own tank. Dolphins, which don’t really use tools, are as dumb as dogs.
In the second story, a new city is being developed and the transportation committee is meeting to decide whether to have aircars or a moving beltway for pedestrians. Industrialist Tobias Toggle wants air cars because he sells them but Dr. Elefun argues for a beltway. The mayor says if Elefun will take responsibility for the beltway then it will be developed. Elefun hires the young Cal E. Brate to be his chief engineer. But Cal begins to receive threatening messages to not build the beltway, accompanied by the death card, the ace of spades being placed everywhere he goes and even throughout his home.
Cal's home catches fire and Astro Boy comes to the rescue with the new and ridiculous ability to shoot water from his eyes. Cal is about to back out of the project but his sister Maria tells him not to give in to threats. She is also an engineer and he asks her to help him.
When the beltway is half finished an earthquake destroys it and also the ground opens up and swallows Maria. Natural gas comes from the ground and catches fire around the beltway. Astro Boy digs below the surface and causes a geyser of water to put out the flames. But while digging he hears strange sounds under the surface and digs further to investigate. In a cave, he finds a giant robot that has been causing the quakes. It has a gun that spews cement that nearly buries Astro Boy. It is about to drill him when Astro Boy breaks free and turns the robot’s cement gun on itself.
Cal goes to see his sister and discovers she is gone. Assuming she has been killed, he does what he thinks she would want and continues with the beltway, obsessively driving his workers. Toggle still has robots he plans to use to sabotage the grand opening of the beltway, plus he has a hostage. Maria is alive and his prisoner.
Before the ceremony Toggle has one of his machines cause the beltway to go crazy and start moving out of control, flapping around, and wrapping the belts around buildings. But Toggle is also caught by a belt and he repents. Meanwhile, Astro Boy fights the machine with electricity and it explodes. But the belts are still going crazy and neither Astro Boy nor Cal have the strength to reach the control tower. Suddenly it stops and we see Maria is free and she has taken control.
I got tired at 22:00 and so I went to bed, intending on getting up at 23:00 to finish writing in my journal. I did get up at 23:00 but felt so sleepy that I went back to bed.
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