Julie Bennett

            On Thursday morning I memorized the first verse and the chorus of "C’est comment qu’on freine" (That's How You Slam the Brakes) by Serge Gainsbourg, and made some adjustments to my translation. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before breakfast. That's the heaviest I've been in the morning this August.

            Around midday I cleaned the mouldings around my southern kitchen window. Next I'll wash the frame that holds the glass and then start on the glass. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I bought five bags of grapes, a pint of strawberries, a large pack of blueberries, a bunch of bananas, a small container of skyr, a jug of orange juice, a jug of limeade, a bag of tandoori powder, and a pack of Sponge Towels. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            I reviewed three more videos of me playing my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". On July 9 I hit the wrong chords in the epilogue; July 10 was one of the best, such as they are; on July 11 I stopped during the epilogue to try to work out the right chords. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio when I sing, "Now push the start shock button on", but when I sang "and keep your finger there until the shock is done" it goes out of synch again. So for that line I added a clip from the 1940s of the shock switch being turned on. Next, I'll see if I can synchronize the concert video with the studio audio when I sing, "Secure the jaw and force the shoulders down." 

            I sorted through some more files of my writing and put the pages in the folders where they most seemed to fit. I cut up a whole small chicken and coated the pieces with olive oil, salt, and tandoori powder. I roasted them in the oven and had a leg with a potato and gravy while watching four Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1963. 

            In the first story, Marvin the Martian is looking at the Earth through his telescope and commenting about what interesting insects human beings are. He says it's absurd to think of mankind as rational. Then he observes a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral and thinks that a new form of life has just left its nest. But then it hits Marvin's observatory before landing. Marvin doesn't appreciate his world being contaminated by Earthlings. The astronaut inside is Bugs Bunny, who has been forced by the US to be an astronaut and sent to Mars. Mission Control tells him to leave the ship and claim Mars for Earth, but he refuses. He is tempted outside with a carrot, but when he catches it, it turns out to be metal. Marvin confronts Bugs with his ray gun and tells him to prepare to be disintegrated. Bugs treats Marvin like a child and takes the gun away from him. The gun goes off and Marvin is partially disintegrated and so he has to go to the re-integrator chamber. Now Marvin confronts Bugs with his time-space gun to project him forward in time when he will be his slave. Marvin fires but Bugs is transformed into a large and monstrous rabbit because Marvin had the gun set in reverse and so Bugs went back to the time of Neanderthal rabbits. He scrunches Marvin, who runs away to repair himself. Bugs says that Elmer Fudd and the other hunters are in for a big surprise when he gets back to Earth. Then Bugs eats the metal carrot and says it's delicious. 

            In the second story, Daffy Duck is vacationing in Bugs's home but all he wants to do is watch TV. His favourite show is a contest called Beat Your Buddy. Two buddies are named and they have to race to the studio to win a million bucks. It turns out that Bugs and Daffy's names are called and so Daffy is immediately gone. Daffy starts out in a motorboat but loses the boat. He tries to fly with the motor but hits a tree. Bugs bounces past him on springs. Daffy takes a shortcut and gets ahead in the mountains but when he tries to get Bugs buried in an avalanche, he gets caught instead. Daffy catapults himself into a wall but winds up ahead. However, in trying to stay ahead he runs off a cliff. Bugs wonders if Daffy will remember that he is a duck that can fly, but he doesn't. Bugs is standing in front of a "bridge under construction" sign and tries to stop Daffy but Daffy thinks it's a trick. He falls off the unfinished bridge into the water and Bugs wonders if Daffy will remember that he's a duck and can swim, but he doesn't. Bugs reaches the TV station first but Daffy uses a jet pack to fly to the top floor, then loses control and flies out the other side of the building while carrying Bugs Bunny. They crash and wind up in the hospital. Daffy limps out wearing several casts, while Bugs is in a wheelchair. Daffy makes it across the finishing line first and is awarded the prize of a million box. It's a box containing one million boxes. Daffy tells the announcer that Bugs can have his prize. The host is impressed, since each box in the big box contains a dollar, amounting to a total of $1 million. 

            The third story is set in the roaring 20s and there is a gangster problem that the federal government wants to deal with. Bugs Bunny is familiar with the underground and so he is hired as a federal agent and given the name Elegant Mess. Bugs is immediately captured by gangsters and his feet are set in cement. He is tossed into Lake Michigan but manages to hop along the bottom until he reaches shore. The leader of the gang is Rocky, who we have seen in two previous stories. The gang has gathered for Rocky's birthday. A big cake is presented and out of it jumps Bugs Bunny in drag as a flapper. Rocky approaches Bugs as he is dancing but keeps getting kicked. Rocky starts firing his guns and Bugs's disguise comes off. Bugs tells Rocky and Mugsy they are under arrest. But Bugs's carrot gun is only good once and so he has to run. After a long chase in a breakfast cereal company, Rocky and Mugsy fall into the machinery and are processed and boxed. Bugs handcuffs Rocky and Mugsy and they are sentenced to twenty years of hard labour. But Bugs has to spend the time with them because he never found the key to his handcuffs. 

            The fourth story is another one where Bugs goes on vacation and takes a wrong turn to end up far away from his original destination. This time he winds up in Transylvania. His first encounter is with a two-headed buzzard and the heads are sisters named Emily and Agatha. They think Bugs looks sweet and crunchy. Bugs thinks he's in Pennsylvania and that the castle on the hill is a hotel. He knocks on the door and the vampire invites him in. He introduces himself as Count Bloodcount. Bugs just wants to use the telephone but the count leads him to a bedroom and says he can rest tonight and use the phone tomorrow. Bugs can't sleep and so he picks a book from the shelf called "Magic Words and Phrases". The count is about to sneak up on Bugs from behind when Bugs reads from the book out loud that the most powerful magic word is "Abracadabra". Suddenly the count turns into a bat. Bugs thinks it's a big mosquito and swats it. The bat flies out the window as Bugs reads that another magic word is "Hocus Pocus". Suddenly the bat becomes the count again and he falls into the moat. Bugs is trying to find the restaurant in what he still thinks is a hotel when the count tries to sneak up again. Bugs is singing and says "Abracadabra". He thinks again the bat is a mosquito and sprays it with poison. Then he says "hocus pocus" again. The count confronts Bugs and tells him he's a vampire. Bugs says he's an umpire. The count says he's a bat, then Bugs says abracadabra and turns into a baseball bat and hits him. They keep going back and forth with the magic words turning the count from vampire to bat and back, until Bugs mixes it up and says abracapocus and the count becomes half and half. Then he says, Walla Walla Washington, and the count turns into a male two-headed buzzard. Bugs calls out the window to Agatha and Emily and when they see the count they begin chasing him for a mate as he flies away to escape. Then Bugs says abracapocus and his ears become bat wings so he decides to fly home.

            The voices of Agatha and Emily were done by Julie Bennet, who worked as a character actor on stage, screen and radio. She worked as a voice actor from 1950 to 2000 on various animated series. She was in great demand in radio because of her ability to master accents and dialects. She was Cindy Bear in the Yogi Bear cartoons and also Aunt May in the Spiderman animated series. Under a pseudonym she also worked as a talent agent and a realtor. 

            I searched for bedbugs and my toothpick killed another one inside of a crack in the old exit door at the head of my bed.