I reworked parts of my translation of “Shush shush Charlotte” by Serge Gainsbourg and then I looked for the chords to the song. No one had posted them and so I worked them out for the chorus and the first couple of lines of the first verse.
I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I got through some of my translations without a noticeable glitch, but my song “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” continues to be difficult. A restarted it several times and then made it through most of it before screwing up. If I’d practiced guitar more seriously when I was a kid I would probably make very few mistakes now, but then again I probably wouldn’t be the same person I am now, who I am quite fond of.
I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I took my clothing and bedding to the laundrymat. While my stuff was dancing in the machines I went home and washed a pair of shorts in cold water and then put them out on the deck to dry.
I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:00.
I was caught up on my journal at 17:47.
In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” I synchronized the studio audio with the concert video at the first word of the line, “Let’s burn up the temples and raise the church of shock therapy.” It took about 45 minutes to get them lined up because I had to keep matching the frames in the original concert video with those in the project timeline and listen to the concert audio so I would know how much I could safely cut from the timeline. At one point I thought I’d matched them because I had the same facial expression in both frames but then I realized that the camera was a different distance from my face. I found the right match a second or so later. But the concert video after “Let’s …” can’t be synchronized with the rest of the line because I’m singing the words at a different speed. I’ll try to find a video clip that fits in some way with “burn up the temples and raise the church …”
I worked on one of the poems from my series “My Blood in a Bug.”
I had a potato with margarine and a slice of roast pork while watching five more episodes of the Aquaman cartoon from the 1960s.
In story twenty-seven a sea sorcerer wants to rule all the oceans and so he must destroy Aquaman. First he conjures a sandstorm, then Aqualad is shocked by a giant frog’s tongue and then snagged and dragged by it. Aquaman severs it. Then a fire breathing dragon attacks. Two swordfish ram it but it vanishes. Aquaman finds a fallen old man who says he escaped from the Sorcerer’s magic cave. Aquaman tells Aqualad to take the man to Atlantis while he looks for the magic cave. But of course the old man is the sorcerer and he captures Aqualad, taking him to his cave. Then with his crystal ball he watches Aquaman being caught in an undersea storm. Aqualad is bound by vines but he tells Tusky to smash the crystal ball. When he does so it breaks the spell and Aquaman is free. Aqualad kicks the Sorcerer and knocks him down, then has Tusky chew his bonds to free him. Aqualad reunites with Aquaman. The Sorcerer traps them in an ice cube surrounded by fire. But Aquaman calls on two whales to break the ice and free them. Aquaman spins around the fire and puts it out. He throws a water ball at the Sorcerer and knocks him off a cliff.
In story twenty-eight, two Scooba divers plant a timebomb on the ocean floor. Then nearby they hang two invisible curtains at the entrances to the canyon where the bomb has been placed. They return to a ship and report to Captain Sly. He orders them to lure Aquaman into the trap. The bomb goes off and Aquaman investigates, ramming into one of the invisible barriers and stunning himself. Then Aqualad swims into the other barrier and it surrounds and traps him. A globe descends by a cable from Sly’s ship to surround Aqualad and pull him up, but Aquaman throws a clam shell and slices through the cable. He then controls sucker fish to help open the globe and free Aqualad. Sly has his men attack on scooters, shooting ray guns. Aquaman stops the men with water balls and by spinning to create a water wall. Aquaman pursues Sly and his ship takes off but Aquaman fires the ray gun on the scooter and causes Sly’s ship to crash. Sly escapes but Tusky catches him in a paralyzing ray from one of the scooters. Sly will be turned over to mainland authorities.
In story twenty-nine, Dr. Lamprey attacks Aquaman and his sidekick with robot swordfish. Aquaman destroys one with a water ball while Aqualad is on top of another but unable to stop it. Aquaman tells him to cover its robot eyes and when he does it crashes into a rock wall. Meanwhile Lamprey is advancing towards Atlantis in his man o war ship. Aquaman summons torpedo rays to jam the signal from the ship that controls the robots but it has no effect because Lamprey is using a remote signal. Lamprey fires robot torpedo fish at Atlantis. Aquaman stops some but not all. Then Tusky finds the remote and bites into it, breaking the signal and the torpedoes explode before impact. Lamprey escapes.
In story thirty, Mermaid Queen Vassa has her ships drill under Atlantis to attack it from below. Geysers begin to erupt and the population must head for the rooftops. A laser drill ship attacks Aquaman and Aqualad but a shark rams it and it crashes. Mera goes to check on Aquaman but is captured by a controlled vortex and pulled up into Vassa’s ship. Aquaman comes to rescue her but is also caught in a vortex. He spins in the opposite direction and burns the vortex out. They are attacked by four more laser drill ships. One of them is closing in on him but Mera breaks free from her guards and pushes a button to destroy one of the laser drills. Aquaman boards Vassa’s ship and frees Mera, then he captures Vassa. Vassa is forced to do hard labour in Atlantis, pumping out the water out that flooded it.
In story thirty-one, the Brain has invented a computer that has been programmed with all information about Aquaman. He asks it how to destroy Aquaman and the computer says to make a positive-buoyancy ray that will bring Aquaman to the surface where he will die without water. The ray gun requires oxymite that is mined from deep sea emeralds. Aquaman’s ocean surveillance system detects something happening out in the gem depository. He finds the Brain’s Brain Men digging for oxymite. They fire ray guns that trap Aquaman and Aqualad in bubbles of energy. Aquaman has dolphins use high frequency sound waves to free him. The Brain tries to fire the positive buoyancy ray at Aquaman but he swims around and they are unable to hit him. Aquaman commands a cyclops fish to approach The Brain’s ship, then when the Brain fires his ray the fish opens its eye and it is like a mirror that bounces the ray back at the Brain’s ship. Then a whale rams the ship and it explodes.
The Aquaman cartoons and many other Filmation productions were directed by Hal Sutherland, who started out as a Disney animator. Along with Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott, Sutherland was one of the founders of Filmation. He directed the first sixteen episodes of Star Trek the Animated Series, the New Adventures of Flash Gordon, The Adventures of Batman, and The Batman/Superman Hour. He also directed Pinocchio and the Emperor of Night. When he retired he became a fine art painter.
Before bed I used my trusty toothpick to do my usual search for bedbugs. When I poked it into a crack in the plaster above the head of my bed between the upper right-hand corner of the old exit door and the frame, I dug out and killed a baby.
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