Annie Wersching

            On Thursday morning I memorized the second verse of “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man) by Serge Gainsbourg. I tried another video and audio recording session. This time I put the recording volume a lot lower and I also stood about a meter from the microphone. But in the playback, the clipping is still there. Even when I turn away from the mic it still clips. The problem isn’t Audacity because using my mic through the Scarlett Interface with Windows Voice Recorder I still get clipping, even though everything is turned down on the interface. Tomorrow I think I’ll try going back to recording with the mic in the mic jack but I’ll record with Audacity and see what happens. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Again, my recording problems ate up more of my time than usual and so I didn’t get out to do my laundry until noon. When I got to the laundrymat there were two bikes parked in front where I usually lean mind. One of the cyclists asked where he could get change for a $20 because there was no attendant inside. I suggested the bank where they would give him rolls of quarters. He sent his friend to get the change and he went inside. I usually have the two back vertical washers to myself but he’d put his clothes in one of them and so I had to use one in the back and one in the front. I washed one load in cold water because it included my new jeans and shorts. I forgot to turn them inside out though and they came out all linty. 

            While my stuff was in the wash I went home to research the candidates running in Parkdale. I was looking for an interesting alternative to the mainstream but most of the small parties are either communist or right-wing. There was one however called The Peoples Political Party, which is almost the opposite of the People’s Party of Canada. There was some legal conflict between the two over the similarity of name. They tend to shorten the name to “The People.” It was founded by a homeless man named Kevin Clarke, but he is no longer the leader. The platform is about helping the unemployed, the homeless, artists, prisoners, etc. So after I put my laundry in the dryer I headed up to Parkdale Public School and I voted for The People. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before lunch which is evidence that voting causes weight loss. In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. On the way home I stopped at Steve’s Music and talked to Connor about the Scarlett interface. He found my problem puzzling and suggested that I try recording with the interface on my laptop. If the same clipping occurs then I could make an appointment with him to troubleshoot the problem and he would cancel any customers coming to him for half an hour or so. That sounded good. 

            I stopped at Freshco where I bought seven bags of grapes, a half-pint of raspberries, a can of peaches, a can of Folgers Black Silk coffee that was on sale, and some shaving gel. Katerina the cashier said, "You sure love your black grapes!" The guy behind me was leaving after his purchase and he said, "They must be really great grapes!" I said, "I like to eat grapes." He said, "They're delicious!"

            When I got home it took me a while to find the Sound Recorder on my laptop. I tried to download Audacity for Windows 7 on the laptop but there seems to be an incompatibility. The message was that a certain file was missing. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 18:30. 

            I got caught up on my journal just before dinner. 

            I made a 43 second recording with the sound recorder on my laptop but I couldn’t hear it when I tried to play it. I put the file in a USB drive. It appeared in the drive as a WMA file. Later I was able to convert it to both MP3 and WAV. Both played but produced no sound. Maybe I have to set the USB mic as the default for it to record. I don’t need to do that on my PC. 

            I coated ten frozen chicken drumsticks with olive oil, salt and paprika and grilled them in the oven. I had two with a potato and gravy while watching episode 2 of season 2 of Star Trek Picard. 

            Q has placed Picard in a kind of worst-case scenario of possibilities. Picard observes that Q does not appear well. Q slaps him and tells him that this situation is penance. In this reality Picard is a great general of the human empire called the Confederation. Humans have conquered all of the species of sentient beings we have encountered in the Star Trek universe, including the Romulans, two of which are slaves in Picard’s own home. His android butler Harvey reminds him that today is Eradication Day and he is being summoned to the Presidential Palace. 

            Next, Seven of Nine wakes up to learn that she is the president of the Confederation. She seems to assess the situation of suddenly being in an alternate reality much better than Picard. Her Borg implants are gone and she is wearing a wedding ring. She immediately performs a psychological assessment of cognition, sensory parameters, and pain receptors. She knows she’s not dreaming because she can smell. Her husband arrives to outline her Eradication Day agenda. He tells her about the situation in the Vulcan war. She says she wants an unfiltered perspective from the field and locates the file of Colonel Cristobel Rios. She wants to talk to him on a secure channel. 

            After the explosion on the Stargazer Captain Rios’s reality has also shifted. He is in command of a fleet attacking Vulcan. He also handles this change more quickly than Picard. Seven, as president contacts him and says they need to meet face to face to figure this out. She tells him to return to Earth on presidential authority. 

            In Okinawa on Earth, Elnor comes to awareness while under fire as a rebel. He is caught but rescued by Raffi who is a police chief. Neither have any idea what is going on. She tells her officers to keep him alive for questioning. 

            Seven’s husband reminds the president of the fact that on Eradication Day the last of the enemies of the Confederation will be executed. He takes her to Dr. Jurati’s lab. Agnes Jurati wakes up in the lab while being addressed by a cartoon hologram cat named Spot 73 who says he is her very best friend and she made him. The president and her husband arrives. Agnes calls her Seven and the First Husband asks why she called her that. She quickly covers that it’s a nickname from a drinking game they used to play. The husband demands that the prisoner be displayed. 

            Agnes figures out how to bring the prisoner forward and it turns out to be the Borg queen, but more like the original Borg queen rather than the one we saw last episode. She is caught in stasis. She recognizes Seven and Agnes. The Borg queen can be aware of several chronological periods at once while she is caught in this one. The queen says, “Time is broken.” 

            Picard arrives to meet the president and outside sees Raffi trying to take custody of Elnor but she is asked by the security guards by what authority she is taking the prisoner. Picard says by his. The three go together to meet the president. Picard says Elnor has information for the president and her husband is dismissed. 

            Picard had thought this was an alternate reality but Seven tells him that the Borg queen says that time has been changed. Picard understands now that Q changed a certain moment in their own time to make this happen. The four go to Jurati’s lab. The Borg queen says the time change occurred in Los Angeles in 2024 and tells Picard to seek the Watcher there. Picard says Kirk achieved time travel and Agnes says he had Spock. Seven says they have the Borg queen. She asks the queen if she’ll help them and she agrees. 

            They contact Rios and tell him to beam them up but it doesn’t work. Eradication Day security is high and transport has been shut down. The queen is taken away for the ceremony in which she is scheduled to be executed onstage by Picard. They have to pretend that he is going to perform the execution while Agnes tries to figure a way to poke a hole in security that will allow them to beam onto Rios’s ship. 

            Raffi also has to override something and so she pretends to hand Elnor over to some guards in a computer master room while she says she is going to remove a virus. The guards begin beating Elnor up until Raffi has shut down the shields, then she tells Elnor he can fight. He takes down several guards with his martial arts skills. 

            Picard is now onstage and has a gun pointed at the Borg queen’s head but now still they need to stall for more time as the crowd becomes impatient for a killing. Picard has no choice but to start shooting the guards. Finally, Agnes comes through and they are all beamed up. Agnes hooks the Borg queen to Rios’s ship against Rios’s protests. But before they can escape, the president’s husband and two of his men board the ship and shoot Elnor. He’s about to kill Picard at the end of the episode. I’ll bet the Borg queen saves them with her control over the ship. 

           This was an exciting episode and exactly what one expects from a Star Trek story. It was a pleasant relief from the extended therapy session that was the fourth season of Star Trek Discovery. 

            The Borg Queen is played by Annie Wersching, who played Amelia Joffe on General Hospital and FBI agent Renee Walker on seasons 7 and 8 of 24. 

            Before bed I did my usual search for bedbugs, and I was hoping that I could say it’d been a week since I’d seen one, but unfortunately I found one under the head of my mattress.