John de Lancie

            On Wednesday morning I finished posting my translation of “Overseas Telegram” by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man). It’s another reggae song and the lyrics have Gainsbourg referring to his own alter ego “Gainsbarre” in the third person. “Ecce Homo” is a reference to the Roman arrest of Jesus and Gainsbourg uses other imagery in the song to indirectly compare himself to Christ. 

            I did the first video recording of my song practice in two years. It was the first ever time I’ve tried to record a session with my mic through the Scarlett interface and the first time I’ve used Audacity to record the audio. It turned out with extreme clipping so I don’t know if it’s a matter of too much mic volume or too much recording volume. I don’t know if this recording can be repaired. I tried Clip Fix but that didn’t help. I’ll have to experiment a bit next time. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finally got through to the Parkdale Community Health Centre and found that the fire that canceled my dental hygienist's appointment caused more damage than I’d thought. A lot of the electrical system was affected by the fire and so the clinic won’t be open for at least another three weeks. The receptionist offered to transfer me to the clinic at Bloor and Dundas but he said they are booking for August now. I figured I would just wait for my local clinic to open up. 

            Because of the time spent trying to figure out my recording problem and then shaving and showering, I didn’t have as much time to finish sorting out the items from my bottom kitchen drawer. I should get it done on Thursday though. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted Montreal-style bagel with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            I tried to upload the video I’d shot this morning but my computer wouldn’t recognize the memory card adaptor that Nick Cushing had given me to go with the Nikon camera he gave me for video recording. I remember last year when I shot some video for my Movie Maker project, my old computer had also rejected the device, but I was able then to upload it to my laptop and then transfer it to my computer with a USB stick. But this time my laptop rejected it as well. I’d thought for sure I had a memory card adaptor in a bedroom drawer but after checking twice I couldn’t find any. 

            So when I went out for my bike ride I stopped at the Dufferin Mall and went to the Source to buy an adaptor. The employee who helped me was really heavy into social distancing. He stood back from me so far that a little bit more and he would have needed to communicate by phone. The multiple-size memory card adaptor cost about $28. I continued my bike ride downtown and it was almost raining all the way. As I went south on Yonge the sprinkling increased and I was dreading getting wet, but once I was on Queen it eased off to just a tease of rain for the rest of the way home. 

            When I got home I looked at the adaptor I’d bought and it seemed familiar so I did a third search in the same drawer and this time I found that I already had one. I remember now that I bought it from Staples before the pandemic. Oh well, now I have two. 

            I uploaded the video and had to figure out how to flip it. I could do it in Windows Photo Viewer on my old computer but it’s not on the new one and Windows doesn’t support it anymore. I found out I could do it in Movie Maker through one of the effects but then I had to publish it as a movie. I guess that’s fine because that way the format gets converted from the problematic MOV. But I’d shot the video vertically for some dumb reason and it was too narrow from side to side. Every two years when I return to recording, I seem to forget everything I learned before. 

            I went to pay my rent and found that BMO had changed their sign-in page. The password Google had remembered for me was no longer popping up and for some reason, I didn’t have a printed record of the password as I do for most of them. So I had to change it, but it didn’t take long. 

            I was caught up on my journal at dinner time. 

            I tried to solve my recording problem and was able to eliminate clipping on some songs where I don’t sing as loud by turning down the recording volume. But there was still some clipping on a shoutier song. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread, with roasted garlic sauce, hot Italian sausage, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first episode of the second season of Star Trek Picard. 

            This story started off pretty slow. Picard is in his vineyard at harvest time. He has feelings for Laris his Romulan assistant but doesn’t follow through. Picard gives an address at the Starfleet Academy graduation ceremony and Elnor is the first fully Romulan cadet. Cristobel Rios is now captain of the USS Stargazer. Dr. Agnes Jurati beams up to the ship and seems to be part of the crew without being an officer of Starfleet, perhaps as a science advisor, but with considerable power as if she were a science officer. Seven of Nine beams aboard from her ship the La Sirena, which used to be Rios’s ship.

            They encounter a rift in space-time and from it, there is a transmission in many languages, all of which translate as “Help us, Picard!” Picard goes to see Guinan who seems to own a bar in Los Angeles now. He talks about it being too late for love but she says Picard and not time is the problem. Picard is notified of the message for him and beams onto the Stargazer. A ship emerges in the rift that Seven recognizes as Borg. The Stargazer raises shields but the Borg queen manages to beam onto the bridge anyway. She says she wants peace but first needs power and sends out cables from her body to connect with parts of the ship. They fire on her but it has no effect. The beams that come from her are set to stun. Picard orders the computer to self-destruct the ship. 

            After the explosion, Picard finds himself back in his home in France. He calls for Laris but an android servant named Harvey appears that he does not recognize. Harvey behaves as if he has been a servant of Picard for a long time and has no idea who Laris is. Picard in frustration asks, “What is happening?” A familiar voice answers, “An excellent question, Jean Luc.” It’s Q. Picard says, “Goddamn Q!” Q tells Picard, “The Trial never ends” and “Welcome to the very end of the road not taken.” 

            Q is played by John de Lancie. After graduating from Juilliard he did a lot of theatre acting until he landed the role of Eugene Bradford on Days of Our Lives. He first appeared as Q in Star Trek The Next Generation and reprised the role on Deep Space Nine and Star Trek Voyager. He says of Q that he is “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” which was famously said of Lord Byron. 

            For the sixth night in a row I haven’t found any bedbugs when I searched before retiring.