Fourth Dimensional Beings

            On Friday morning my left leg was a little less uncomfortable and a bit more flexible than the day before. During yoga, I mostly felt a tightness in my shin. 

            I published “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian on my blog, Christian’s Translations. I still need to post my translation on my Boris Vian Facebook page before I move on to his next song. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Souviens-toi de m'oublier” (Remember to Forget Me) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French and English, adjusting my translation of the last verse. Then I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations. I’ll probably have it published on the blog on Saturday. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning, I went over to the post office where I bought their smallest and next smallest shipping boxes, just in case the gifts I planned to send to my daughter fit one better than the other. I kept checking Facebook for a return message from Astrid to find out if she is leaving for Toronto soon, in which case I won’t send a package. I finally got a message from Astrid’s partner Loren, asking if I’d received Astrid’s text messages. I hadn’t thought to check my phone before, but when I did there was a message. I texted her and she responded fairly quickly. She’ll be leaving Montreal tomorrow and going to Ottawa for a couple of days and then she’ll be in Toronto from May 16 to May 19. So I’ll just hold onto the gifts and it’ll be good to have those shipping boxes for Christmas and her next birthday. 

            I washed the top shelf behind the left door under the kitchen counter. 

            It got very warm and so I dug through my drawer for some shorts. I was surprised to only have one pair that isn’t ripped too close to the crotch, and those have big holes in both front pockets. I’d thought for sure that I’d had a couple of good pairs of shorts but I guess I didn’t. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I decided that instead of riding downtown and back I would go up to the Dufferin Mall to shop for a couple of new pairs of shorts. I first went to Marks Work Warehouse where all they seemed to have were cargo shorts. I went to the Gap, where they had every colour of shorts but black ones. I went to Tommy Hilfiger but they didn’t have my size or black shorts. At H&M the shorts didn’t have measured waist sizes but were just small, medium, and large. They didn’t have large shorts. I tried the medium but they were way too small. 

            At Walmart, I found one pair of Wrangler cargo shorts with a 36 waist but when I took it to the fitting rooms there were only two, and Fitting-Room-Two was out of order. How does a fitting room go out of order? It has no mechanical or electrical parts, so I assume someone must have done something in the room that made it unsafe. There was one other person waiting ahead of me for Fitting-Room-One. I commented that every other store at the mall has about seven fitting rooms while this so-called superstore has only one. The guy told me he’d been waiting fifteen minutes, so I decided to hang up the Wranglers and go back to Marks. 

            There I found two kinds of cargo shorts in my size and also a pair of chinos. I didn’t like the cut of either but the Denver Hayes cargo shorts were the lesser of the three evils. I tried size 38 just in case they looked better but they didn’t, so I bought the Denver Hayes cargo shorts in size 36. 

            But I had come to the mall to buy two pairs and so I decided to go back to Walmart. The Wranglers were still where I’d left them and this time I didn’t have to wait long for the one fitting room. The Wranglers actually had a better cut than the Denver Hayes. I also bought three packs of summer socks. I’m starting to get used to the automated cashiers and almost prefer them now, depending on the quality of human cashiers one gets. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 18:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal just before dinner. I had a small potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            The first story is the second season’s Christmas episode. Astro Boy and his family are going to spend the holidays in a cabin on Mount Snowcone. The holiday doesn’t include his brother Jetto. So far, in the two episodes in which he’s appeared, Jetto has had no contact with any family other than Astro Boy. So on this vacation, it’s Astro Boy, Astro Girl, and their robot parents. 

            Before leaving, they invite Dr. Elefun to join them but he says he has to stay and wait for a special safe to open because it contains the last will and testament of Professor Demur. But security seems to be very low at the Institute of Science. since there’s a manhole cover in the room with the safe under which there are two crooks named Willy and Nilly waiting for 21:00 so they can emerge from the sewer to rob the safe. At 21:00, all Elefun has a chance to read is that Mure’s greatest invention is on Snowcone Mountain before Willy and Nilly steal the will. 

            Astro Boy and his family arrive at the cabin and Astro Girl goes out to cut a Christmas tree. In the woods, she meets a little boy named Mio who has made friends with all the animals. When Mio goes home we see that he lives alone in a robot house that speaks with a maternal voice, takes care of his every need like a parent, and has done so since he was a baby. 

            The next day Mio, Astro Girl, and Astro Boy go skiing and Astro Girl loses control on her way down the mountain, becoming covered in a large snowball that forces Willy and Nilly into a tree. When Astro Boy goes to see if they are all right he meets Dr. Elefun and Mr. Pompus who tell him that Willy and Nilly are crooks. 

            Willy and Nilly go to Mio’s house to try to force him to give up his father’s inventions. The robot house tries to throw them out and then Astro Boy arrives to finish the job. Mio gives Elefun all of his father’s blueprints, which was his wish. Willy and Nilly attack the house with their armoured tank but Astro Boy destroys it and takes them to justice. Mio agrees to return to the city with Elefun so he can go to school, and the robot house will become a nursery school for orphaned children. 

            In the second story, Astro Boy is assigned to help Inspector Gumshoe protect the young Prince Priceless of Bologna while he is visiting. But the prince is a bit of a brat and likes to play practical jokes on people. His governess is very amused by all of the prince’s jokes and she helps him to sneak away from the guest house where he is staying. But while they are walking, the prince literally vanishes. 

            Dr. Elefun thinks the prince has gone into the fourth dimension and gives Astro Boy a special fourth dimension detector that looks like a flashlight so he can locate the entrance to the fourth-dimensional world and find the prince. Astro Boy does find it and also disappears. 

            On the other side, the world is foggy and even the ground Astro Boy walks on is like fog. The laws of physics are topsy turvy as Astro Boy falls down, up, and down again until he lands in a forest where he is attacked by a mammoth, which he defeats. Then he meets the captain and passengers of the Marianne, a ship that was found deserted over a hundred years ago. The Marianne seems to be based on the real historical ghost ship the Mary Celeste. There are other people in the group from other parts of the world and earlier periods of history. The captain welcomes Astro Boy to the Valley of the Spirits.

            Meanwhile the prince is wandering alone in the woods when he finds Astro Boy’s fourth dimension detector but also is attacked by the mammoth. Astro Boy rescues him but when the prince learns that what he’s found is a fourth-dimension detector he uses it for himself, leaving Astro Boy stranded. But when the prince arrives in his own world he faces an armed gangster who had intended to kidnap him in the first place. 

            The prince runs back into the fourth dimension and the crook follows him. The prince runs to Astro Boy for protection but Astro Boy is low on energy. The captain and the other castaways help to fight the gangster but he has a powerful heat gun. Then the mammoth grabs the gun with his trunk and the gangster is no longer dangerous. 

            They all get back to the third dimension and the castaways are returned to their places of origin, although not their own times. There is no explanation for how they could adjust to that kind of extreme displacement which for all of them is more than a century off and for some of them several centuries. I can’t imagine it not being a devastating and psychologically damaging culture shock. 

            As for how this story represented the fourth dimension, it’s possible that the way that Astro Boy experienced falling up and down might be a plausible circumstance for a three-dimensional being in the fourth dimension. But one of us entering the fourth dimension is as likely as a cartoon stepping out of a page and walking around in the world of the cartoonist. There were no four-dimensional beings in the story but supposedly a four-dimensional being would be able to see, for example, all sides of a sphere at the same time. They could also be like Kurt Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians who can see spans of time as we know them all in one moment. 

            I was very sleepy after watching those shows and so I went to bed from 22:00 to 23:00. Then I got up and updated my journal. I did the dishes and got ready to really go to bed. I hit the sack at around 1:00.