I video-recorded about half my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I didn’t have much problem with my songs “Megaphor” and “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” this time but I did with my translation of “L’Accordion” by Serge Gainsbourg. When I sing the line, “In accord with the chords all tune in and turn on” in the chorus I make the transition from “and” to “turn” too fast so it sounds like “andturn”. When I play it that way I make no guitar mistakes, but when I try to force myself to pause a bit so the two words are separated by a beat, it throws me off. I did the song over and over several times before I got it and even then, a couple of times the words were blended again. I’ll keep working on it. It’s just a matter of getting used to doing it a new way.
I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast.
After shaving and showering, and then tidying up a bit, I sat down to research what courses I need to take this Fall and Winter to fulfill my English Specialist requirements. I found that I only need two more credits to complete English Specialist and so since I only do one and a half credits a year, next year I’ll only require half a credit for Specialist but then a couple more credits to complete my degree. My BA might be about three years away. I spent until lunchtime and decided I’ll enroll in a course on Writing About Literature, another on Jonathon Swift, and a fourth-year seminar on Ezra Pound. The single half-course left after those is a specific course on Literary Theory which doesn’t seem to be available this year. I enroll in my courses tomorrow at noon.
I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:00.
I got caught up on my journal at 18:30.
I uploaded the videos of this morning’s song practice. I spent almost twenty minutes of that session on “The Accordion.” Hopefully, it will be less time-consuming when I do it in English again on Tuesday.
In the Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” I edited the clip of Frederick Strickfaden's electrical effects from old movies down to just some artificial lightning playing between two globes. Then I injected that clip into the main video to correspond with my line, “… start at three-tenths of a second at ten or twenty volts.” After that, I injected another clip of Brian Haddon singing “shock therapy” and shaved off some of the electrical-effect clip until the concert footage of Brian was in sync with the studio audio. Then to continue keeping the clips of Brian different each time I added the effect of having it passing through the colour spectrum. It looks good. Next, I need to try to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio when I sing, “But the voltage on the screen is not the voltage in the human being.” If I can’t line them up I’ll have to add another video clip from outside.
I made pizza on a roti with the last of my ricotta sauce, a cut-up beef burger, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching some Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1941 and 1942.
In the first story, a much fatter Elmer Fudd, but with the same voice, goes to Jellostone Park for some rest and relaxation. He pitches his tent on top of Bugs’s hole and the tent gets pulled down inside. When Elmer yanks it back up it’s been tied into knots. Elmer goes to sleep in a hammock but seconds later Bugs puts dark glasses on him and then he resets his alarm clock so it goes off right away. Elmer wakes up thinking it’s nighttime and he should go to bed. But after he goes to sleep in his tent Bugs takes off his dark glasses and imitates a rooster so Elmer wakes up again seconds later, thinking he’s been sleeping all night. Elmer washes his face and reaches for a towel that he’s hung on a limb, but the limb is held by Bugs and so as Elmer walks to the towel Bugs hangs it out over a cliff. Elmer realizes he’s in the air and runs back to the cliff. Then Elmer grabs his gun and goes after Bugs but runs into a bear. Elmer reads the manual that when encountering a bear he should play dead so he does. The bear sniffs him and is repelled by the smell of Elmer’s feet. Bugs gets on top of Elmer and pretends to be a bear. Elmer grabs his gun and swings it like a club but he hits the bear over the head. Elmer runs and the bear chases him. Elmer packs up to leave but before he goes he angrily destroys the Jellostone sign that promises relaxation. But a game warden catches him and he is arrested. Elmer thinks that in jail he will at least get some relaxation but then he sees that Bugs and the bear are his cellmates.
The next Bugs bunny cartoon is just a promotion urging viewers to buy war bonds. Bugs sings a song about it and Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd are in uniform and singing along.
In the second regular cartoon, a mother buzzard sends her four children out to bring home dinner. She tells one to get a horse, another a steer, another a moose, and the fourth a cow. But the fourth one doesn’t want to go. She tells him to at least get a rabbit and then kicks him off the cliff. He sights Bugs and dives, but he crashes. Bugs skates away on the unfrozen desert ground but the buzzard swoops down and grabs him by the ears. Bugs plucks one of the buzzard’s tail feathers and tickles him, causing him to let go. He lands half-buried in the sand beside a cow skeleton and begins to panic because he thinks the exposed ribs are his own. When Bugs recovers and walks away, the buzzard grabs him. Their struggle turns into a swing dance. Then Bugs spins the buzzard and he lands near the skeleton in the same position Bugs was in before. Then the big mother buzzard arrives and asks what Bugs did to her baby. When Bugs shows her that her son is okay she kisses Bugs and says he’s her hero.
In the third story, a magician named Ala Bahma is putting up posters for his show and nails one over the hole in a tree. Bugs breaks through the poster and tells him this is his home. The magician conjures a blackberry pie and throws it in Bugs’s face. Bugs says, “Of course, you realize this means war!” At Ala’s magic show he tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat but Bugs appears from under his collar. Ala says, “You’re ruining my act!” Bugs says he’s helping him. Bugs dives into the hat and then pulls himself back out by the ears. Ala tries to tempt Bugs back out with a carrot so he can hit him with a hammer but Bugs grabs the hammer and hits him on the head. Ala tries to pull Bugs out of the hat but Bugs pulls him in and then climbs out but Ala pulls Bugs back in. Then Ala comes out and nails boards over the hat. Ala tells the audience he needs a small boy from the audience. Bugs steps on stage dressed as Little Lord Fauntleroy. Ala puts him in a basket and begins piercing it with swords. But Bugs is not inside. Ala attacks with a sword and Bugs meets him with a fencing foil. There is a flurry of struggle but then we see Bugs watching the fight from the balcony. Ala fires a shotgun at Bugs but Bugs emerges from the hat and puts an exploding cigar in Ala’s mouth, then hits him with a pie.
The fourth story is meant to be more of a parody of the kind of short travel reel that might have been shown before the main feature film in 1942 than a Bugs Bunny story. It begins on a tobacco plantation where we meet the tobacco bug who talks like a tobacco auctioneer. The tour goes to Havana, crosses the ocean, then to the Alps, then to Egypt, then to the oil fields that fuel the war effort. Then the African jungle where an insect-eating flower spits out a bee because it stung it inside. Then into the Congo to a lake shaped like a woman called Veronica Lake. Then to a region where it is said, there are giant cannibals. Two white hunters with their African guide are there to capture one of the cannibals. But the white guys are rolled up like cigarettes by the giants. Then there are three baby rabbits playing. A vulture with the Japanese flag on its wings dives for the bunnies. But the little rabbits run for the bushes behind which is an anti-aircraft gun. We just see Bugs for a second as he says, “Thumbs up Doc” and his ears form the V for victory.
It turns out that Bugs Bunny is Canadian, as the earliest version of the trickster rabbit was created by Canadian cartoonist and illustrator Charles Thorson who was born in Winnipeg in 1890. Between 1935 and 1945 he designed hundreds of cartoon characters for various studios, including Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Little Hiawatha, Sniffles the Mouse, Snow White, and Inki. He wrote two children’s books, “Keeko” and “Cheechee and Keeko” about a little Indigenous boy. He designed a toy bear named Punkinhead for Eaton’s and also illustrated stories featuring the character. He also created Elmer the Safety Elephant. He never got credit for his designs. He was a founding member of the Winnipeg Falcons hockey club.
I did a search for bedbugs before bed and found a somewhat unhealthy-looking one in one of the old black nests on the edge of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed.
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