Tom Ray

            On Wednesday morning I woke up at 2:00 when I had to pee, and I heard shouting outside. On my way to the bathroom, I looked out the window and saw an older man lying on the street while a middle-aged man had his foot on his head. Then he started kicking him and sometimes bending down to punch him. I shouted for him to stop, and he turned to ask if I wanted rats around my building. He kept kicking him in the head. I said, "You're going to kill him!" and he said, "He tried to kill me!" After he kicked him some more, he walked away while the older guy was lying and twitching on his back. I called 911 and while I was talking to the operator the old guy struggled to his feet. He staggered a few steps to where a garbage bag with his possessions inside was lying in the street and he was slowly picking everything up when the fire truck arrived. I watched for a while and then went back to bed. I don't know if he waited for the ambulance. I assume he had some bad injuries despite being on his feet. I barely slept before the alarm went off at 5:00. 

            I published my translation of "J'en ai autant pour toi" by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian's Translations blog and listened once to his song "C’est comment qu’on freine" (That's How You Slam the Brakes). 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed the outside, the underside, and the inside of the cornice of my southern kitchen window. Tomorrow I'll start cleaning the frame and then the next project will be cleaning the window glass, which hasn't been cleaned for years. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:00. The heaviest I've been at that hour in two weeks. 

            I got a notice from U of T that I hadn't sent my financial information when I applied for the tuition grant. I know I uploaded it the day I applied but when I looked at the application I couldn't see any option for uploading anything. There was an email address in the message they sent and so I attached my information to that. 

            I realized at 18:30 that I'd forgotten to buy beer and so I went out to the liquor store where I was glad to see that the Creemore had finally been delivered after more than a week. I got a six pack. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:42. 

            I reviewed three more videos of me playing my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". July 6 was the day the power went out and I lost the Ableton audio recording, but I fumbled some chords anyway; July 7 wasn't bad but I don't think I used all the right chords for the epilogue; July 8 was okay but I almost switched the order of the last two verses. I recovered without missing a beat but it's still noticeable. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I picked the very first clip of me saying "No" from the 22 minutes of video I'd shot on Friday and placed it into the main video. I inserted it to correspond with Brian Haddon saying "No" in response to me singing, "Is all of this making sense?" The next line of the song is, "Now push the start shock button on and keep your finger there until the shock is done." I'll try to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for that line, but it may not be possible. If I can't, I think that I might already have video clips that I can insert there. 

            I sorted through some more files of my writing, looking for copies of the Gumby Bible. I found a few but didn't look for where they fit chronologically. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a cut up beef burger, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching two Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1962 and two from 1963. 

            In the first story, Yosemite Sam is the chef for a king. But the king is unhappy with the usual fare and demands hasenpfeffer. When Sam is trying figure out what hasenpfeffer is, Bugs Bunny knocks on the kitchen door and asks to borrow a cup of carrots. Sam slams the door in his face and goes back to his research, only to find that the main ingredient of hasenpfeffer is rabbit. He calls Bugs back and tells him that the king wants to have him for dinner. Bugs says he's not prepared but Sam assures him he'll prepare him. He gets Bugs to sit in a pot while he slices the vegetables. But when Bugs learns he has to go into the oven, he declines. Sam won't let Bugs leave and so he gets back in the pot but when the king impatiently calls for his dinner, Sam brings the pan with a live rabbit inside. The king tells him to prepare it right and so Sam puts it in the oven. But while Sam is watching the timer, Bugs steps out of the oven because it's hot in there. When the timer runs out, Sam brings the pan to the king, But when he lifts the lid he gets hit in the face with a cream pie on a spring. Sam is arrested and Bugs Bunny is hired as the king's chef. Bugs serves the king a carrot but the king thinks it's hasenpfeffer. 

            In the second story, Bugs is enjoying a waterfall shower when the water stops. He climbs to the top of the cliff to see if the beavers are at it again, but this time it's been dammed by a French lumberjack named Jacques. I think that Jacques is supposed to be French Canadian but shows in the US always lump the two distinct accents together and make French Canadians sound like they are from France. Bugs tricks Jacques into removing one small rock from his dam and the whole thing collapses so that Bugs gets his water back. But then Jacques builds a stronger dam. Jacques sees a shark fin in the water but since he knows there are no freshwater sharks, he thinks it's Bugs in disguise. He jumps in the water to confront him only to find that it's really a shark. Then Bugs paddles a log into the dam and breaks through. Next Jacques builds a concrete dam. Jacques expects Bugs to try to blow up the dam and he intercepts a floating dynamite stick. It blows up on Jacques but he thinks he's saved his dam, but then he sees a whole raft of dynamite sticks that float up and destroy the dam. Jacques next builds a dam out of steel but then he sees upstream that Bugs has built his own dam. Jacques gets a cannon and destroys Bugs's dam, but then upstream there is another, and another, and another. Jacques keeps destroying dams until he reaches the Grand Cooler Dam. When Jacques tries to blast that one he is arrested. 

            The third story combines three previous encounters between Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam into one tale. The first part uses the story of Bugs on a plane at the airport pretending to fly it when Sam steps on after robbing a bank and forces Bugs to take off. Later Sam jumps out with the only parachute. In the original story and in all the stories, Sam never dies from situations that would kill anyone, but this time Sam dies because his chute doesn't open. Sam ends up in Hell with the Devil looking up his file. He says, "Ooohhh! You're a mean one aren't you?" The Devil offers Sam a deal. There's a certain rabbit on Earth that he's always wanted in Hell. If Sam can catch Bugs Bunny, the Devil will let Sam go free. Sam agrees and so he returns to Earth in front of a theatre showing a production of Ben Hare, with live lions and starring Bugs Bunny. Sam gets a Roman soldier's costume from a store and joins the play. This is from the story in which Sam was Nero's captain of the guard. Sam gets chased by lions over a cliff and winds up back in Hell. He begs the devil for one more chance. The last of the recycled segments has Sam riding a camel in the Sahara Desert and following rabbit tracks to a fortress. After Sam gets shot in the face by a cannon, he returns to Hell. The Devil says he'll give him one more chance but Sam dons a devil suit and grabs a pitchfork, then says he's staying right there. 

           The fourth story begins with Wile E Coyote chasing what appears at first to be the Roadrunner, but then we see it's Bugs Bunny. Bugs explains to the fourth wall that the Roadrunner sprained a giblet turning a corner and so he's serving as a stand-in. He is running extremely fast but he says that he can't really run that quickly and has to take super speed vitamins. Bugs runs low on power and Wile E approaches. Bugs draws a chalk line across the road and steps back. Then he draws another line and when Wile E steps between the lines the space between them collapses and Wile E falls. Wile E goes to the top of a cliff above Bugs's path and lowers a carrot on a fishing line, but he ends up pulling up a shark that swallows him. Wile E tries to catapult himself after Bugs but winds up slamming into a rock. Wile E tries to shoot at Bugs with a rifle as he passes but the bullet travels through a system of pipes to eventually shoot Wile E in the face. Wile E drops an anvil on Bugs when he steps on a target far below. But Bugs comes up behind Wile E and puts the target over his head, causing the anvil to absurdly fall on Wile E from above where it had been previously dropped. Then Wile E gets run over by a bus. Bugs puts glue on the road and Wile E gets suddenly stopped at high speed. He stretches forward to hang onto a phone booth but the phone rings and Bugs says it's for him. Wile E lets go to take the phone and winds up snapping back to take part of the cliff with him while he slams into the side of a mountain. Wile E falls but is stopped by the telephone line. But Bugs calls and says he hasn't paid his bill so they have to cut him off. He cuts the line and Wile E falls. Bugs says, "Never get cut off in the middle of a long-distance fall." 

            This last story was animated by Tom Ray, who started out at Warner Brothers in 1937 but left to enlist when the war started. Afterward he joined John Sutherland Productions where he worked on Destination Earth. He rejoined Warner Brothers in 1958 and became a master animator. He co-directed Adventures of the Roadrunner and several Bugs Bunny cartoons. He did animation for Ralph Bakshi's Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, as well as for "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." 

            I searched for bedbugs and the tip of the toothpick might have killed a bedbug in a crack. It seemed to be stained and smelled a bit like fresh bedbug death.