On Saturday morning I seemed to be coming out of whatever was making me feel sick, whether it was pollen, a cold, influenza, or covid.
I finished memorizing “Oh Soliman” by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords but no one had posted them. I worked most of them out for the intro.
I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast.
In the late morning I headed out to No Frills but I thought I’d stop to pick up a prescription first. But the door was locked and the sign said, “Back in fifteen minutes.” I decided to go to the supermarket and then come back on the way home. At No Frills I bought seven bags of red grapes, a pint of strawberries, a half-pint of raspberries, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a pack of sirloin steaks, a large container of skyr, and a tub of vanilla bean Haagen Das.
In the aisle, an elderly woman that had a little dog in the basket of her rollator greeted me. I’ve seen her in Parkdale for more than thirty years since she was also a supermarket cashier. I said, “I remember when you used to work here.” But she corrected me that she had worked at Price Chopper, which is the former name of Freshco. I didn’t argue with her because she should know better than me where she worked, but I could have sworn she had been a cashier at whatever supermarket was at King and Jameson before No Frills, and it wasn’t Price Chopper. I remember that she was the friendliest cashier I’d ever encountered and that she had engaged every customer in conversation. I recall that she always wore her hair in a bun and decorated it with accessories. Today she had an artificial flower on the bun at the very top of her head.
Later she was ahead of me at the cash and tried to sell me on the benefits of having a PC Points card. She said I could get discounts, and pointed at the paper towels on display for $7.99, telling me that with points I could get the pack for $5.99. She said I could also use it at Shoppers Drug Mart. She did a price match on a couple of containers of Chapman’s ice cream and was instructing the cashier on how to do it. She was conversing happily with her little dog on her way out.
On my way home I stopped to get my prescription and realized as I approached the pharmacy that I hadn’t gone there on my way to No Frills. The drug store would never have had a sign that said, “Back in fifteen minutes.” I had gone to Freedom Mobile because that’s where I’m more used to going and it had totally blacked out of my head that it wasn’t the pharmacy. I’d say it was a senior moment but there were times in my twenties when I might have done something like that. Anyway my Betaderm prescription was all prepared and waiting for me.
I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted Montreal-style bagel with caribou paté and a glass of lemon iced tea.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. It had felt cooler in my apartment and so I’d worn my jeans, but out on the street it was hot enough to wear shorts.
I weighed 83.9 kilos at 17:45.
I got caught up on my journal at 19:00.
I worked on the Movie Maker project of making a video for my song Instructions for Electroshock Therapy. I continued alternating one-second clips of the concert footage of the first instrumental with one-second clips of the 1940s documentary showing real shock therapy. But when I was done I realized that I’d put way too many clips in. There was even too much concert footage of the instrumental to match the shorter instrumental from the studio audio. Plus, after the instrumental in the concert video I am not even shown singing until after I’ve sung, “Insert and fasten the mouthpiece so the patient won’t bite their tongue / Slip a pillow underneath the back to reduce the spinal motion.” I’ve got to cut out a lot of the clips I’d inserted and move them back to the end of the timeline. I’ve also got to delete some of the concert video of the instrumental. I need to add some new videos to correspond with the mouthpiece and the pillow references. Then I’ll have to try to synchronize the studio audio with the concert video when I sing, “Now turn the shock power switch on.”
I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread, with marinara sauce, a cut up chicken burger, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the last two anglicized 1963 to 1964 episodes of Astro Boy.
In the first story Astro Boy and Dr. Elefun are traveling in a spaceship outside the Earth’s gravitational pull, when their ship breaks down. They are drifting with no way to get home. Suddenly they are pulled inside a spaceship shaped like a squid. Elefun is pleasantly surprised when the captain turns out to be the renowned scientist Roger Sowbelly. But it turns out that they are Sowbelly’s prisoners and he has no intention of returning them to Earth. He hates the Earth because the people are greedy and warlike. His ship is travelling at the speed of light far away from Earth. When he sees a transport ship carrying uranium to Earth he aims to destroy it because he thinks the cargo will be used for war. Astro Boy tries to stop him but is caught in an electromagnetic field.
Sowbelly has found and plans to develop his own planet. On his ship they produce their own food in capsules. They stop on an asteroid to hunt monsters for meat and Astro boy has to save one of the men from a monster. They have monster for dinner and it is delicious. They approach the planet Sowbelly plans to settle, which he calls Sarabon, after his wife Sara, but something hits their ship. It is a small, alien vessel. Astro Boy goes out and brings it on board. One of the alien crew is hooked up to Sowbelly’s psychoscope and it reads his mind. They see the image of a tower and the creature explains that it is a hydrogen ion cannon that turns hydrogen into water and will destroy everyone on Earth. Sowbelly doesn’t seem to care that the Earth could be destroyed.
When Astro Boy tries to persuade Sowbelly to help stop the attack, he uses another electromagnetic field to drain Astro Boy’s energy. When Sowbelly’s ship lands on Sarabon he finds that his base has been bombed. Elefun and Astro Boy are prisoners but the aliens attack the ship and blast a hole in their cell. Elefun escapes to get more energy for Astro Boy. The aliens are attacking Sowbelly and his crew and so Astro Boy destroys their ships. He tries to destroy their cannon but it’s too strong so Sowbelly rams it with his ship and saves Earth. Sowbelly says he will send for his wife and child when he has finished preparing the settlement. Meanwhile Elefun and Astro Boy’s ship is repaired and the two return to Earth.
In the second story an alien ship is approaching Earth and communicates that it is a diplomatic mission from Ursa Minute. A crowd gathers at the spaceport to greet the aliens but are surprised that the flying saucer that lands is the size of a toy. The aliens inside are the size of little dolls.
Before they leave, the aliens give Elefun the gift of a robot design that is superior to any robot on Earth. When the robot is assembled it is very efficient and helpful. So much so that Elefun decides to take a vacation while his robot-double runs the Science Institute.
An industrialist hoping to get wealthy asks Elefun’s robot about copying him in his factory. The robot claims it has Elefun’s authority, then draws up and signs away permission. The world is overrun with these efficient robots that begin to do every human’s job.
The alien robots decide that the Earth’s robots are now useless and so they should be drained of energy and destroyed. When the robots are arrested Astro Boy escapes. When the humans protest their doubles’ behaviour, the doubles order the humans arrested. Astro Boy frees the robots and he and his brother Jetto go to destroy the robot factory. The robots form one giant robot and so Jetto uses his jet boots as bombs to destroy it. An army of robots face off with an army of humans and it seems to be a draw until the outlawed Earth robots join in. The alien robots realize they are defeated and not wanted and so they form into one giant rocket ship to find another planet.
Industry experts predict that robots will replace 40% of jobs currently held by humans in the next 15 years. Robots will probably take over manufacturing, transportation, courier work and even some medical diagnostics and surgeries. When I went for my physical recently, for the first time a machine and not a nurse took my blood pressure. The only thing they wouldn’t be able to replace are jobs that require creativity.
When I was getting ready to turn in I found one sick looking bedbug in a crack on the wall about a meter above the head of my bed.
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