I ran through my translation of "Strike" by Serge Gainsbourg and then uploaded it to Christian's Translations. I edited it and published it. This was the last Gainsbourg song from 1981, and so tomorrow I'll start learning the first of his ten songs from 1982.
I weighed 86.3 kilos before breakfast.
That's the lightest I've been in the morning in a week.
Around midday, I pulled my fridge out and washed and scrubbed the wall behind it. Tomorrow I'll pull it out again and scrub the floor underneath it. That might be hard because there is some paint splattered there. After that, I'll pull it out again so I can wash the sides of the fridge.
I weighed 85.9 kilos before lunch.
I took a siesta and slept more than twenty minutes longer than I'd intended.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:30.
I reviewed five more videos of me playing my song "Megaphor". July 8 was mostly pretty good and can go to the next round. July 9 was definitely one of the best. July 10 was pretty good but the B was a little off in a couple of places. Compared to some of the others it doesn't make the cut. July 11 was not perfect but I'll let this one squeeze through to see how it compares with the others in the third round. On July 12, the last try that begins 6:30 minutes in is pretty good but maybe a little off a time or two. I'll let it through to the third round to be sure. There are just two more videos of this song to review in this round.
In the Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I cut the hallucinatory images from Ken Russell's "Altered States" down from a minute and fifteen seconds to five seconds. I only kept the part where a red eyeball is being zoomed in on. I inserted it into the main video to correspond with the line, "Let's meditate on the golden mean of shock therapy" and placed it between "Let's" and "golden mean" because I think I can synchronize the concert video of me singing "golden mean" with the studio audio. I'll try to do that tomorrow.
I sorted through about half the fourth file folder of writing from the big filing cabinet. I found quite a few pages that were written before or after the Gumby Bible. I put those in one pile but I'll eventually have to put them in two separate folders.
I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching four Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1950.
The first story takes place during the American Revolution, but there are only two combatants. Bugs Bunny occupies a wooden fort with one cannon to defend the revolutionaries while a Hessian mercenary named Sam von Schmamm is in charge of and the only soldier inside of a heavily armed stone fortress. Sam charges and is shot by Bugs's cannon. Then Sam and Bugs both charge past each other to occupy the other fortress. Then they charge again to re-occupy each their own stronghold. Then Sam charges again and suddenly Bugs has a much bigger cannon which Sam runs inside of before it fires. Sam throws a spherical bomb and it becomes a baseball game, as Bugs hits it with a bat and Sam snags it with a catcher's mitt just before it explodes. Sam fires a cannonball and Bugs catches it in his cannon and shoots it into Sam's cannon, which he fires back. This goes back and forth until Bugs shoots it into Sam's cannon and then shoots a plug which Sam pulls out just before getting shot by his own cannon. Sam tunnels into Bugs's fort but winds up in the explosives hut in the dark. He lights a match and the obvious happens. Sam carries a barrel of gunpowder to the front of Bugs's fortress but the powder is leaking into the trap door of his underwear and also leaving a trail behind him. Sam lights the fuse to the barrel but Bugs puts it out and then lights the powder trail to Sam's behind. After the explosion, Sam gives up and joins the revolution.
In the second story, Bugs is in the park in San Francisco when a large man selling balloons asks him to hold them while he ties his shoelace. Bugs holds the strings but he is too light and the balloons carry him into the air. Days pass and Bugs floats over Hawaii. Bugs sails into a cloud just as a stork flies in carrying a baby kangaroo. Inside the cloud, there is a mix-up and the baby kangaroo winds up holding the balloons while Bugs is in the stork's bundle bound for Australia. Bugs is delivered to the mother kangaroo but when he tells her he's not her baby and walks away she starts to cry, so he decides to let her be his mother. A screaming Aboriginal, portrayed in a racist way, begins to attack with a boomerang, a spear, and then a blowgun. Bugs frustrates the hunter's efforts for a while but then the hunter chases Bugs up a mountain where the mother kangaroo is at the top. Bugs jumps in her pouch and then she kicks the hunter off the mountain. Just then the baby kangaroo, still holding the balloons floats into his mother's pouch. Next we see Bugs and the baby in the pouch while the mother has a motor attached to her tail and her feet act as water-skis while they take Bugs back to San Francisco.
In the third story, Bugs is on vacation in the Ozarks, singing "I Like Mountain Music" by James Cavanaugh and Frank Weldon, when he is confronted by a hillbilly named Curt Martin with a very long rifle. Curt asks Bugs if he is a Martin or a Coy. Bugs says his friends say he is very coy. Since the Martins and Coys are feuding, Curt sees Bugs as his enemy. He pulls his trigger but the gun takes a long time to fire and so Bugs ties it in a knot. Bugs walks away but finds another rifle pointed at him, this one by Curt's brother Punkinhead. Punkinhead fires but Bugs has time to walk around and remove the stock end of the gun and place it at the barrel end so it shoots Punkinhead. Then both Martins join forces to hunt Bugs. They chase him into an explosives hut but it's dark and so Bugs lends them his lighter and leaves before the hut explodes. They continue to pursue Bugs past a square dance hall where Bugs is in drag as a hillbilly woman and calls them in to dance. The square dance begins as normal until Bugs grabs a fiddle and begins to do the calling, which guides the Martin brothers through ridiculous instructions:
"Promenade across the floor, sashay right on out the door, out the door and into the glade, and everybody promenade. Step right up you're doin' fine, I'll pull your beard you pull mine; yank it again like you did before, break it up with a tug of war. Now into the creek and fish for the trout, dive right in and splash about; trout trout pretty little trout, one more splash and come right out. Shake like a hound dog shake again, wallow around in the old pig pen; wallow some more you all know how, roll around like an old fat sow. Allemande left with your left hand, follow through with a right and left grand; now lead your partner the dirty old thing, follow through with an elbow swing. Grab a fencepost hold it tight, whomp your partner with all your might; hit him in the shin hit him in the head, hit him again, the critter ain't dead. Whop him low and whop him high, stick your finger in his eye; purty little rhythm, purty little sound, bang your heads against the ground. Promenade all around the room, promenade like a bride and groom" This leads them to a hay bailer and Bugs continues: "open up the door and step right in, close the door and into a spin. Whirl whirl twist and twirl, jump all around like a flying squirrel; now don't you cuss and don't you swear, just come right out and form a square" at this point they come out of the bailer, each inside a bound square bail. "Now right hand over and left hand under, both join hands and run like thunder; over the hill and over the dale, duck your head and lift your tail. Don't you stray and don't you roam, turn around and promenade home; corn in the crib and wheat in the sack, turn your partner promenade back. And now you're home; bow to your partner, bow to the gent across the hall, and that is all." This episode has always been one of my very favourite Bugs Bunny cartoons and since childhood I've remembered that song as hilariously clever.
The voice of Punkinhead Martin was done by Stan Freberg. He started out on radio in 1943 doing impressions on Cliffie Stone's show. In 1944 he was hired as a voice actor by Warner Brothers cartoons. He voiced many characters and was often paired with Mel Blanc for characters that played off one another like Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier.
He starred in The Three Little Bops, voicing all the characters and singing the song.
For Disney, he played Busy the Beaver in Lady and the Tramp. He sang the part of the Jabberwock in Disney's Alice in Wonderland. In the 1950s he was hired by Capitol Records to produce satirical recordings. He had hits with parodies of several popular records. His St George and the Dragonet was a number one hit for four weeks in 1953.
The popularity of his recordings led to him being given The Stan Freberg Show on CBS radio but he had trouble getting a sponsor because he refused to advertize tobacco or alcohol and so the show did not last. In the late 40s, he was a puppeteer and did voices for the hit show Time For Beany. He made many guest appearances on Ed Sullivan. He later formed his own advertizing company, making several successful TV commercials.
The fourth story begins with a steam shovel at the construction site of a skyscraper digging up Bugs's home. Bugs asks him to put him back but the man drops Bugs and his home on a dump truck. Bugs drops a brick with a note on the man's head and it reads, "You asked for it." Then a girder falls on the worker's head. The man gets in the elevator but Bugs causes it to rise and drop suddenly at incredible speeds until he is finally catapulted high above the buildings to fall from a great height. Then Bugs poses as the man's boss and gives him a bunch of instructions that lead to him having built himself onto a plank that is teetering on a small point at a great height with only a few bricks keeping the balance. Bugs comes out and removes the bricks so the man falls. Then the man swings a girder into Bugs's head and Bugs wanders in a daze along the top of the unfinished building, stepping off onto girders and pipes hoisted by cranes in a complicated but very lucky journey. Bugs sends a hot coal down a series of pipes that eventually cause a trailer to fall on the man's head and he gives up. Bugs's home is made part of the building.
Before bed I searched for bedbugs and for the second night in a row I found none.
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