I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I didn’t stress out as much over mistakes. I redid a few songs when I hit the wrong chords but for some of them I just let them go. Often doing them over doesn’t help and if I get it right I get it right. Redoing them just causes frustration and I screw up more. I almost got all the way through my song “Megaphor” without a mistake but hit a wrong chord near the end. I didn’t do it over. It was similar to my song “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” in that I almost got it but then the end fell apart. I’ll try again tomorrow. It could be that those songs are just not going to be ready for YouTube this year, even though I’ve been practicing them every day for more than two years.
I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I went down to No Frills where I bought a watermelon, two bags of grapes, a half-pint of raspberries, a pack of three striploin steaks, a pack of 100 garbage bags, a tub of margarine, a jar of mango and lime salsa, and a container of skyr. When I got to the cash I saw that the half-pint of raspberries had opened up and spilled in the bottom of my basket, and so I went to get another. Lately I’ve been using those larger, two-wheeled baskets to collect my groceries and so at the cash I had to bend down and bring the items up to the belt, rather than putting a smaller basket on the edge of the belt and putting the items down onto the counter. While lifting an item I scraped my second finger on the metal end of the counter and it started bleeding a bit.
I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. I had five-year-old cheddar on spelt bread with a bottle of ginger beer.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It looks like preparations are underway for the Pride Parade tomorrow. There were lots of cops blocking streets, perhaps for some side events that might be happening tonight.
I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:00.
I was caught up on my journal at 17:45.
I spent about an hour searching for video clips that could fit thematically with the line, “Let’s burn up the temples and raise the church of shock therapy.” A few days ago I saw a clip from a TV series in which someone received shock therapy and smoke was coming out of their temporal lobes. That technically fits for the video I’m making for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” but it would look tacky. I think I might settle for the video I already have of 1940s shock therapy and just let burning the temples be implied by the real footage rather than overtly shown.
I worked on the poem “Ragged Sleep” from my series “My Blood in a Bug.”
I made pizza on a roti with a cut-up slice of roast pork, four-cheese sauce, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the last five episodes of the 1960s Aquaman animated series.
In story thirty-two, NASA has discovered planet Q-344 and since it is a world covered entirely by water, they ask Aquaman and Aqualad to explore it. They go there in an interplanetary rocket with a water environment so they won’t dehydrate. The writers throw all credibility out the window with no explanation as to how it doesn’t take years to get there. Shortly after arriving, they are captured by the Quatix, a civilization of fishlike creatures, because they suspect them of being spies for the Bimphabs, with whom they are at war. They are taken to the cave of the Criole, which is the same as a monster squid on Earth. Aquaman is able to bend the bars of their cage but they are grabbed by the tentacles of the Criole before they can swim away. Then the Bimphabs attack them and Aquaman fights them with water balls but the pair are stunned by a ray gun. The Bimphabs capture Aqualad and the Quatix revive Aquaman, now seeing him as an ally. The Bimphabs tell Aqualad that to rescue Aquaman he must help them fight the Quatix. The Quatix say the same thing to Aquaman and he agrees to help. But as the armies advance on one another, Aquaman communicates with Aqualad electronically, telling him to break away. Aquaman spins to create a water wall that keeps the combatants apart. Then he captures one Quatic and one Bimphab and gives them to the Criole. Since the Criole is exactly like an Earth squid, Aquaman is able to control it. He has given it the command to attack if ever the Quatix and the Bimphab make war. They promise to work out an agreement and Aquaman and his sidekick head back to Earth.
In story thirty-three, Aqualad and Mera play a prank on Aquaman. They build a fake alien submarine and pretend they are being menaced by a death ray. When Aquaman arrives he realizes it is a prank but then the boulder that Aqualad pushes off the cliff bounces and really threatens Mera. Aquaman blocks it with his own body. Meanwhile, Stick Men from the Planet Stygia plan on capturing Aquaman and making him their slave. They use an eye-shaped weapon to hit him with an immobilizer ray, but Aquaman commands a giant octopus to knock the eye weapon out of the way and he is freed. Then a swordfish severs the eye’s power source. The Stygians try to blast off but Aquaman ties their ship down with seaweed so they can’t take off. The Stygians fire their torpor torpedo guns. Aquaman has sharks, whales, and dolphins destroy the guns. The Stygians leave their ship, armed with force guns, and confront Aquaman. He says they must surrender or face his reverse force beam. A beam from Aqualad and Mira’s fake ship shines on boulders that fall on top of the Stygian ship. The stick men believe Aquaman possesses a powerful ray but it’s only a flashlight and the boulders are pushed by hidden dolphins. The Stygians blast off in fear.
In story thirty-four, Aqualad finds an ancient bottle in an undersea junkyard and when he opens it a genie comes out. It grants him three wishes. He wishes for a powerful robot and when it appears he tells it to clean up the junkyard. It creates suction to pull everything into its mouth but doesn’t stop with the junk. Everything is being sucked in, including coral but Aqualad can’t stop it. He wishes for a robot smasher, which crushes the robot. Aqualad tries to get the genie to go back in the bottle but the genie reminds him that he still has one more wish. He wishes to have sea creature controlling powers like Aquaman. But the sea creatures he summons are all large mutants from a dark hole in the sea floor. Aquaman commands his own native fish to attack the mutants and shove them below. Then he has a puffer fish suck the genie inside its body and then blows it back into the bottle.
In story thirty-five, from a crevice that divides the lands of the Lizard People and the Tortoids emerges a silver sphere. It has the ability to stimulate rich plant growth. Both the Lizard People and the Tortoids claim it as their own. They begin to fight over the sphere and declare war. Aquaman intervenes and stops the fighting with his hard water balls. Aquaman suggests a peaceful competition for possession of the sphere. He tells each side to select their best athlete to compete in a series of tasks. The winner gets the sphere for their people for a year and then there will be another competition, and so on. But at the beginning of the competition Mantamen attack and steal the sphere. In the attack, the Tortoid athlete is injured and so Aqualad takes his place. Aquaman steals the sphere back from the Black Manta. Manta and his men attack and the Lizard People and the Tortoids join forces to fight him. The Black Manta escapes in his ship down a hole. The Lizard People and the Tortoids agree to share the sphere.
In story thirty-six, Tusky is hit by a ray and vanishes. Aquaman goes to see Oceanis the Old Man of the Sea to ask if he knows Tusky’s whereabouts. The old man lives inside an oyster shell. Oceanis says to find Tusky they must go to where the sea burns. Aquaman goes to a place where an underwater volcano makes it appear like the sea is on fire. They find Tusky trapped in a rock but when they free him he turns out to be a toy. The trap was set by the Fisherman who shoots a harpoon that pulls the lava and then weaves a cocoon of lava around Aquaman and his sidekick. But there is a hole at the top that Aqualad fits through. The Fisherman fires depth charges and Aqualad appears to be stunned. But he only pretends to be injured to fool the Fisherman. Aqualad goes to Oceanis and finds him tied up with Tusky. He frees Tusky but Oceanis tells him to go help Aquaman and that a two-legged fish can only be captured by a two-legged bait. Aquaman has two whales ram his lava cocoon and he breaks free. The Fisherman holds them off with a bomb until Tusky drops the toy-Tusky on his head and knocks him out.
This was a very weak series. It’s weird that in these stories Aquaman is the king of Atlantis and yet Atlantis is populated by air breathers. How is it that Aquaman, Aqualad, and Mera can breathe water?
The co-creator and artist who created the image of Aquaman was Paul Norris, who quit college to try to become a comic strip artist. In 1940 he created the comic book “Yank and Doodle” about two young twins who are super strong and invulnerable but only when they are together. In 1941 he began collaborating with Mort Weisinger and they revamped the original Sandman into a superhero. The same year they created the character of Aquaman. In 1952 he took over the comic strip “Brick Bradford” and drew it for 35 years. Later he created the Jungle Twins comic and drew Magnus Robot Fighter for Gold Key Comics.
Before bed I did a search for bedbugs and didn’t find any.
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