Orla Brady

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the chorus and the first verse of “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            The heat came on this morning because the temperature went down to 9 degrees. I had to manually turn it off for a while because it was very warm inside. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday, I went to the supermarket. There are two bike post rings in front of the No Frills on King near Jameson and one of them has been severely tilted for years, probably as a result of a motor vehicle having smashed into it. Despite the tilt, it has always still been firmly in place, but today when I went to lock my bike to the tilted one it was wobbly. I lifted it and pulled it right out of the sidewalk. I put it back down in the hole and then locked my bike beside the one that was locked to the upright one. Before going inside I pulled the loose one out and laid it down on its side so no one would make the mistake of locking their bike to it. 

            Inside there were hardly any grapes and the few they had were soft. I bought a bag of navel oranges, a pint of strawberries, a pack of three chicken legs, white corn and black bean salsa, four-cheese pasta sauce, a container of skyr, and a jug of orange juice. 

            When I got home I finally did the poop cancer screening test. It arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago and has been sitting on my kitchen table ever since. I’d been waiting for a good-sized bowel movement because my stool has been coming out in disappointing little pinballs lately. This time it was substantial and I think I got a pretty good sample on the stick to send to Life Labs. I put it in the container, the zip bag, and then the envelope and sealed it. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted Montreal-style bagel with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I took the poop test envelope with me and put it in a mailbox on Bloor. On the bike lane, one of the flimsy barrier posts had been knocked over as they often are and it was blocking half the lane. As I often do while passing I reached my left foot down from the pedal and kicked the post out of the way. At the next light, the cyclist behind me pushing a Bakfiet front trailer called out to me, “Hey buddy! Nice footwork back there!” I said, “Thanks!” 

            At Queen and Bathurst I was behind the back doors of the streetcar as it unloaded. After everyone was off before the doors had a chance to close a guy ran on. I called to him that it was the last stop. For a second it didn’t register but then he stuck his head back out and said, “What?” I repeated that it was the last stop. He sighed, “After all that!” and got off. 

            My back tire has been wobbling for the last couple of weeks and so before going home I stopped by Metro Cycle a few doors up from my place to ask if I needed a new rim. The guy just thought it needed a little adjustment because there was a side-to-side give in the wheel, so I agreed to have him fix it for $20. I also asked for a tube so I can have a spare. After he adjusted it he pointed out that my back brake pads had worn down and were ripping into the back tire, so I asked for a new tire that I’ll put on myself, but I also asked for new brake pads for him to install. Then I requested that he adjust the front brakes as well because they hadn’t been catching very well. Altogether the repairs and parts cost $159. If Bike Pirates was still in the neighbourhood I might have gone there but I would have been there for at least four hours. This took less than half an hour. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 17:20. 

            My friend Martin Heavisides has been arguing against a comment I made on Facebook a week or so ago that went “Most followers of the Bible-based religions refer to “god” as “He” but say that it has no genitalia. It’s ironic that the same people insist that human gender is defined by whether or not one has a penis.” He argues that not everyone thinks god is masculine and not everyone thinks god is without a body. He goes on and on and on, with long meandering arguments about what scholars say on the matter, ignoring the simple fact that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all generally see god as incorporeal and as masculine. He seems alarmingly obsessed with just arguing for argument's sake, not just on this topic but in response to many comments that I’ve made over the years. I think he’s got a lot of free time on his hands and maybe he’s a little bit lonely. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 19:20. 

            I tried to figure out how to use Ableton for recording but it is extremely complicated, like using a flight simulator. It’s expert-user-friendly but not Joe-Schmo-user-friendly. Even the YouTube tutorial I found was confusing, as was the in-program tutorial. In both cases, I got as far as being told to open the Arrangement View. I was told to press “tab” but that didn’t seem to help. Later I found that I hadn't pressed the tab but rather the space bar. But tab didn't get me much further. I needed to make dinner so I had to put my efforts on pause. 

            I made pizza on my last slice of Bavarian sandwich bread, with roasted garlic sauce, my last hot Italian sausage, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 4 of Star Trek Picard. 

            Seven and Raffi track Rios’s com badge to the clinic where they learn that he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. They go to the police but learn that the LAPD is the wrong agency. They leave the station and then Raffi uses a phaser to break a police car window and to hack into the police computer. She finds Rios on the system. 

            Picard and Agnes go to Chateau Picard, which is abandoned at this point in history as Picard’s ancestors are living in England. Picard observes that Agnes moves fifteen beads on the abacas, she takes the 15th volume of the Britannica from the bookshelf and selects a bottle of Pinot Noir from 1915. Agnes says, “Look at you, Dixon Hill!” Dixon Hill is Picard’s favourite fictional detective from a series of novels set in the 1930s and published in the Star Trek universe. Picard used to pretend to be Dixon Hill in holodeck programs on the Enterprise. Picard thinks that with the repetitions of the number 15 Agnes’s subconscious is communicating some information she gained from the Borg queen. They arrived there on April 12, 2024, and he concludes that the message is that they only have three days to stop the timeline from changing. 

            Picard transports to the coordinates that Agnes got from the Borg queen. It turns out to be Guinan’s bar. This is a much younger Guinan and so she is not played by Whoopie Goldberg. She does not know Picard because she won’t meet him for another 400 years, even though she actually did meet him in 1899 in a previous Star Trek time travel story. This Guinan is hostile, bitter, and fed up with humanity. When Picard refers to her as an El- Aurian she points a shotgun at him. 

            Seven and Raffi contact Agnes for transport but the system is down and so Agnes has to cozy up to the Borg queen in order to get her to help her. Meanwhile, with Seven driving and Raffi trying to track Rios through the ICE files, they steal the police car. Seven learns to drive a 21st Century road vehicle as she goes and leads the cops on a wild chase until Agnes fixes the transporter and gets them out just as the cops move in on them to see them disappear. Rios has been loaded on a bus bound for Mexico and so now Seven and Raffi need to hijack it somehow. 

            Guinan is just about to close down the bar for good and leave the planet when Picard finds her. He urges her to wait. He thinks that she is the Watcher but she says she isn’t and reluctantly takes him to meet her, because the Watcher and Guinan do not get along. The Watcher temporarily takes control of people to guide Picard to her, but she makes it clear through them that she wants Guinan to leave. When Picard meets the Watcher she looks just like Laris, his housekeeper in his own time, and the woman he has strong romantic feelings for. She grabs his shoulder and they teleport away. 

            On a café patio in 2024 Los Angeles, Q is reading the paper and a young woman walks out while reading a book called The Pallid Son. This is a made-up detective novel featuring Dixon Hill. Q begins speaking to her and says, “You can’t do it … the fear is choking you … People are gonna die … and now your doubt is the loudest voice in your head …” All this time she has ignored him and read her book but then Q dramatically snaps his fingers to alter reality and when nothing happens the woman begins to laugh. 

            Laris and the Watcher are played by Irish actor Orla Brady who has had a solid career in British and Irish theatre. She won the Golden Nymph Award at the Monte Carlo Television Festival for her performance in “A Love Divided”. She co-starred in the BBC series “Mistresses”. After moving to California, she played Dr. Jordon on “Nip Tuck”, she co-starred in “Shark”, she played Elizabeth Bishop in “Fringe”, she co-starred in “Strike Back”, she played Tasha Lem in the 2013 Doctor Who special “The Time of the Doctor”, she played Lydia in “Into The Badlands”, and she played Dr. Hopple in “American Horror Story: 1984”. 

            For the second night in a row I didn’t find any bedbugs before I turned in.