I finished working out the chords for “La nostalgie camarade” (Only Nostalgia My Friend) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through it in French and uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to begin editing it before blog publication. I forgot to play and sing my translation to make sure everything’s okay, so I’ll do that tomorrow.
I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I made it through all the main verses of Sixteen Tons of Dogma but then screwed up the epilogue again. I’ve gotten it right before so I’ll keep trying to finish it every time.
I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast.
In the late morning, I cleaned the outside of the eastern window in my kitchen as best as I could. At the top, the glass goes inside the outer wall and so it’s impossible to reach the upper cor-ners. Also, the glass has been cracked since before I moved in twenty-five years ago and it’s a double-plated window. The cracks are wide enough to allow dirt inside and so the inner pane can’t be cleaned.
At noon I went online to enroll in this term’s courses, but none of the ones I’d chosen yesterday were available this year. I had to scramble for some other courses that fit the requirements for an English Specialist program. I settled on "The English Language in the World" and "Medieval Literature" this fall and a fourth-year seminar on the Bildungsroman for the winter term.
After selecting my courses I returned to my window cleaning project. I washed the grooves in which the lower windows slide, but there was still some dirt in the inside grooves when lunch was approaching. I cleaned the outer sliding window and put it back in place so that I won’t have to remove it tomorrow when I finish cleaning the grooves.
I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I forgot to mention that on yesterday’s bike ride I found a bunch of stuff that had been put out to the curb. There was a copper lamp but I just took the light bulb. There were several Sharpies and highlighters of various colours thrown out and so I took them all. They all seem to work fine.
Today as I passed Yonge and Dundas I heard a preacher claim that Jesus can cure all diseases. Christians would have to be disease-free to prove that.
I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:00.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:00.
I uploaded my song practice videos from this morning and skimmed through them. I’m only going to record four more sessions and then start reviewing all of the videos to see if anything is good enough to upload for public viewing. Whatever isn’t performed well after a month of sessions is just not ready and I’ll need to keep practicing.
I worked on trying to synchronize the concert video of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” with the studio audio at the point where I begin singing, “But the voltage on the screen is not the voltage in the human being.” The project video in Movie Maker was at that point cluttered up with a long clip of the electrical cords that I’d animated last year, so I had to remove all that. Also around the point where I start singing that line, the video freezes for a second. I’m going to have to change the format of the concert video and then re-insert it at that point to make sure everything is moving properly before I try to synchronize it. I’ll work on that tomorrow.
I started going through the file folders of my writing in order to separate the pages chronologically. I began a pile of just the stuff I wrote during my relationship with Dorita and put everything else in another pile for now. This may take a long time.
I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching four Bugs Bunny cartoons.
In the first story, Elmer Fudd is a Mountie tracking Bugs Bunny for a long list of crimes that we’ve witnessed in previous stories. He finds his rabbit hole and puts out a carrot for bait. When an arm reaches out, Elmer slaps the handcuffs on it. But when he pulls the cuffs out of the hole the other end is attached to a bomb. He searches for his keys but Bugs has them. By the time Bugs sorts through all the keys to find the ones for the cuffs, the bomb explodes. While Elmer is reading Bugs’s list of crimes, Bugs takes Elmer’s hat and calls him to attention. He says he’s a disgrace to the regiment and he’s going to drum him out of the service, then he strips him of his uniform. Elmer gets dressed again and chases Bugs through the snow. Elmer comes behind Bugs as he’s talking to a snowman in Elmer’s likeness. Bugs tells it, “I’m gonna punch you in the nose” but then Bugs suddenly turns and punches the real Elmer. There is another chase but when Elmer fails again he starts crying. Bugs tells him he gives up and next we see Bugs in front of a firing squad of Mounties. Elmer says he can have one last wish. Bugs starts singing “I Wish I Was In Dixie” by Dan Emmet and suddenly Bugs, Elmer, and the firing squad are black, on a plantation in the south and singing “Camptown Races”.
In the second story, all the animals of the jungle are laughing at Leo the Lion and saying he’s all washed up and that he couldn’t even catch a rabbit. Leo aims to prove them wrong. He goes looking for a rabbit. He finds a sign that looks like a railway crossing sign but it reads “rabbit tracks.” He chases Bugs until Bugs puts up a door. Leo knocks and Bugs answers to start laughing because Leo is wearing the wide-brimmed lady’s hat that Bugs had on earlier. Bugs show Leo his reflection and he starts to laugh as well. Then Bugs moves the door to the other side and closes it. Leo says let me out of here. Leo charges the door and Bugs opens it so that Leo rushes through to hit a wall. Leo catches Bugs and is about to kill him when the phone rings. Bugs answers it and it’s Leo’s wife telling him to come home right away. Leo protests weakly but gives in and leaves. Bugs says that wouldn’t happen to him because he wears the pants in his family. Then we see Mrs. Bugs Bunny come out to confront Bugs and he slinks into the hole while Mrs. Bunny lifts up her dress to show she wears the pants.
In the third story, Elmer is reading that hunters can use hypnotism instead of guns to catch animals. He encounters a ferocious bear and tries it out. He puts the bear to sleep and then convinces the bear it is a bird. The bear goes flying and tweeting. Then Elmer tries to hypnotize Bugs but he’s resistant. Elmer grabs his gun but still fails to catch Bugs. Then Elmer starts to cry. Bugs says he'll let Elmer hypnotize him but then Bugs hypnotizes Elmer and makes him think he’s a rabbit. But this backfires because suddenly Elmer becomes the trickster and is outsmarting Bugs. They have another hypnotism duel and Elmer runs away. Bugs says he can’t be hypnotized but then we see he now thinks he’s an airplane and takes off.
While I was typing this I suddenly hit something that caused the text to turn red and be under-lined. I wasted fifteen minutes trying to correct the problem. I looked it up and saw I needed to go to Review and then unclick Track Changes. Word is so annoying sometimes.
In the fourth story, Elmer is hunting Bugs when he gets a telegram from his Uncle Louie announcing that he will inherit $3 million if he stops harming animals. Elmer goes home to find Bugs living there. He wants to kick Bugs out but Bugs keeps reminding him about Uncle Louie’s condition. Finally, Louie dies and Elmer receives a bill that says after a $2 million inheritance tax, various other taxes, and the lawyer’s fee, Elmer gets nothing and owes the lawyer $1.98. Elmer chases Bugs away but then receives a big Easter egg full of bunnies.
There is no one writer or director that can be specifically credited for the creation of the character of Bugs Bunny. But Tex Avery was the director who steered Warner Brothers away from Disney sentimentality, and towards sarcasm, irony, and surrealism. Bugs Bunny represented, more than any other character, the direction that Avery established for Looney Tunes. Avery started out as a cartoonist for newspapers but then he got jobs inking cells for various animation studios. He got hired by Leon Schlesinger Productions (the future Warner Brothers) after lying that he was an experienced director. With Porky’s Duck Hunt, Avery established the degree of lunacy that Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies became famous for. Avery expanded the hunted character of Bugs Bunny into a Groucho Marx-type trickster with a Brooklyn accent. Avery moved on to MGM in 1941 where his most famous character was Droopy Dog. After MGM he returned to Lantz Studios where he created Chilly Willy.
I searched for bedbugs before bed and found none.
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