Perry Botkin Sr.

            On Sunday morning I sang and played "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian in English and made a few adjustments to my translation. 

            I finished memorizing "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal) by Serge Gainsbourg and searched for the chords. The same set is posted on several sites. I check again tomorrow and maybe also look for the chords for the Bach piece the melody is lifted from.

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I re-read the second peer's essay that I'm supposed to review. I wrote one comment but I got sleepy and goofed off until lunch. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. That's the most I've weighed at that time in four weeks. 

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

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:10, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in 26 days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:41. 

            I completed my peer review assignment at around 19:45. I had hoped on working on my Medieval Literature essay this weekend but the peer review ate up all my time. It's frustrating because it only contributes to the 10% Participation mark, which I've probably already earned anyway, and yet all these participation activities are so time consuming. I had time for a few minutes of research towards my essay on Grendel as a class revolutionary in Beowulf. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Bolognese sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 30 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jed's bloodhound Duke is down in the dumps again and he seems to have lost his sense of smell. Elly suggests that he's pining for the French poodle Colette. Then Jethro brings Jed a letter from Mademoiselle Denise in Paris. It's written in French and so Jed takes it to Jane Hathaway for her to translate. It says she is coming because her dog is having puppies and she is looking forward to seeing Jed as well. Jed asks Jane to teach him French and when she says she can give him a one-hour lesson at noon, he thinks he'll be fluent when they are done. While Jed is downtown Denise arrives at the Clampett mansion. She's been practicing her English but is limited to just saying, "How do you do?" Jed comes back and they are happy to see each other even if they can't understand each other. Jane gives him his lesson and he learns to say, "Bon jour, mon ami". He says it to Denise after she's been spending time with Elly, and Denise responds, "Howdy you furry little varmint". 

            Meanwhile Mrs. Drysdale is excited because Colette has just given birth to quintuplets and she sees herself as a grandmother because she believes her dog Claude is the sire. But she finally has a look at the pups only to discover that they look more like bloodhound puppies than poodle pups. Mildred asks, "How are we going to break this to Claude? He's already in analysis!" Mildred angrily brings Colette and the pups to Denise, saying that Colette is a hussy for mating with that mongrel. Jane points out that bloodhounds are not mongrels and have a much more ancient lineage than poodles. 

            Jed gets Jane to ask Denise to go to dinner with him. Jane thinks she should come along to interpret and invites Jethro for a double date, but Jed and Denise go on a double date with Duke and Collette instead. 

            The music for the first two seasons of The Beverly Hillbillies was composed and sometimes performed by Perry Botkin. He was a music supervisor for Bing Crosby. He played guitar in several orchestras and big bands and also solo in films and television. He played guitar on Hoagy Carmichael's "Hong Kong Blues." He recorded with Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Spike Jones, among many others. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found one on the left side of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed. It fell when I poked at it and I found it on the floor along with another that may not have been alive. Both were dark and unhealthy looking.

October 31, 1992: In a sombrero and with a drawn handlebar moustache my daughter went for her first Halloween

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday morning I picked up my daughter at around 10:30. She fell asleep on the way home and at midday I put her to bed. While she was down, I tried to get stuff done. I cleaned up a bit but not enough. I worked on projects and had something to eat. After she woke up, I didn't take her out because I was waiting for her mother to come, and I didn't know when she'd arrive and so we just played around the house. I actually got some work done for a while, even when she was awake. Her mother didn't show up until after dark when she was already a little bit sleepy again, but we took her out anyway. I put a sombrero on her head, drew a black handlebar moustache on her face, and blackened her eyebrows. At first, she started out on her first Halloween looking a little dazed and shy. But after a few houses she started to catch on and began to come forward with her little basket to receive the treats. Soon she was reaching for the stuff but after a couple of bars she was sleepy, and the hat was getting heavy. Her mother wanted to keep on going because she wanted more candy and finally, she wanted to take a picture. Everyone agreed that my daughter was incredibly cute.

Leo Durocher

            On Saturday morning I sang and played "Sans blague" by Boris Vian in French. I still have to run through my English version, "No Joke" before uploading it to Christian's Translations. 

            I memorized the third and fourth verses of "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal) by Serge Gainsbourg. There's just one more verse left to learn. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I went to No Frills. The grapes were mostly too soft so I only got two bags of green ones. I bought Sunlight dish detergent, three bags of milk, and two small containers of skyr. 

            I had an hour before lunch and so I went on Peer Scholar and re-read the first essay that I'm supposed to peer review. There are several boxes for comments, often required to be at least 75 words. I wrote some positive comments, some constructive criticism, and suggestions for a better thesis. The next box wanted me to comment on the research sources. I clicked on one of them and then clicked the back arrow to return to my review but everything I'd written was gone. There's a "Save and Continue" button but I couldn't click on it. I emailed the professor about the problem. She asked for tech support but so far nothing happened. I tried a different browser but had the same problem. Apparently some students have already successfully completed this assignment and so I don't know what's wrong for me. I also notice that even the "Submit" button does not work and so there doesn't seem to be any point me doing any peer reviewing until the problem is fixed. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with seven-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and woke up at what I thought was 15:30. I sat up in bed and saw a bedbug walking towards me on the floor from the direction of the living room-bedroom passage at the foot of my bed. I think I'm going to have to call the Health Department on my landlord. 

           I got ready for a bike ride but then saw that I'd woken at 14:30, and it was now 15:00 so I went back to bed for half an hour. I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:00. I was caught up on my journal at 18:08. 

            I went back on Peer Scholar and copied my peer's essay and all of the comment prompts into a single document. That way I could write and save my work without having it erased on Peer Scholar. After I'd written all my comments I went back on Peer Scholar and pasted each comment into its corresponding box. Once I'd filled up the last box, suddenly the "Save and Continue" button became clickable. I was able to move to the second peer and download that student's essay. I'll write that review tomorrow. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Bolognese sauce, a halved beef burger, and seven-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 29 of The Beverly Hillbillies.

            Jed and Jethro are getting ready to go hunting with Mr. Drysdale, but it's a misunderstanding. Drysdale has invited them to go golfing with himself and Leo Durocher, the coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But Jed and Jethro think that a golf is some kind of animal that lives in a hole, even though they are birdies. As near as they can figure, to get one they have to be shot, clubbed, and then stomped on with a spiked golf shoe. 

            Drysdale calls to say he has a meeting and can't make it, but Jed and Jethro decide to go to hunt golfs with Durocher. When they arrive at the golf course the guard thinks they are grounds keepers and directs them around the back. Meanwhile Durocher and a prospective pitcher named Walsh Wesson are waiting on the green for their caddies to arrive. When Jed and Jethro walk up, Durocher thinks they're the caddies. Jethro thinks he's helping Durocher out during his putt by stopping the ball from going down the little hole. 

            Durocher is so mad he throws the ball into a tree. Jethro offers to knock it down for him. Durocher doesn't believe her can do it but gives him a baseball to throw and sure enough Jethro hits the golf ball that neither Durocher nor Walsh can even see. Suddenly Durocher forgets about Walsh and thinks he's found the greatest pitcher off all time in Jethro. But later he learns that Jethro can only throw that well after putting possum fat on his hands. It's apparently illegal to pitch with greased hands so Durocher has to forget about it. He learns that Elly May can throw as well as Jethro without grease, and she proves it by knocking Durocher in the pool. He unfortunately he can't use Elly because she's a girl.

            Durocher was played by himself. His parents were Quebecois and his first language was French so he couldn't speak a word of English until after he started school. He started out as a baseball player and was considered the best fielding shortstop of his era. He made his Major League debut with the New York Yankees in 1925. He became a manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939. He started appearing in movies in 1943, usually as himself. He was notorious for ordering his pitchers to hit batters. He coined the phrase, "Nice guys finish last" in 1946. He married actor Laraine Day in 1947 and they were together for thirteen years. In the 50s he began to appear as himself on TV series and continued through the 60s on shows like The Munsters. 

            I searched for bedbugs and I found one in the same little hole on the upper left side of the frame of the old exit door as the one I'd dug out a few days ago.

October 30, 1992: Marie held my hand and then stopped because she didn't want to be caught

Thirty years ago today

             On Friday I worked at Central Technical School. Somehow, I'd lost the two song sheets that I'd brought with me to work on at lunchtime. So instead of hanging around the classroom I went to do some banking and transferred my rent money to chequing. I called Marie and we arranged to meet around 16:00 at a place called Macaroni. I went for a roti and then back to work. I went to meet Marie and ran into her as she was leaving Market Square and I found out that I had been walking in the wrong direction to get to Macaroni. We ended up going to Pat and Mario's where she had a juice, and I had a beer while we talked. We held hands a bit (her idea) and then we stopped (her idea) because she was paranoid. We hugged (my idea) before we split. I bought some beer and Kentucky Fried Chicken before going home to watch Star Trek.

John Stephenson

            On Friday morning I finished working out the chords for "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I'll run through the whole song in French and English to make sure everything fits. 

            I memorized the chorus of "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I took my laundry to the laundromat. I put my things in the washer at the back as usual but as soon as I closed the door, before I put the quarters in, it started on the rinse cycle. The attendant came back and said the machine might be broken. We waited to see if it would finish the cycle but after the final rinse it just started the first rinse again. The guy put my clothes in the other machine and paid for the wash. My clothes were dry and home at about 12:30. 

            I finished reading Julian of Norwich and started on her Norwich contemporary Margery Kemp. Margery had led a less secluded life, had fourteen kids and only became a total religious nut later in life. She seems like she might be schizophrenic. She couldn't read or write but after twenty years of devotion she dictated her autobiography to some others. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch.

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

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:20. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:23. 

            I finished reading the excerpts from The Book of Margery Kempe that are in the Broadview Anthology. She reminds me of a lot of mentally ill people I've known over my life. She was probably psychotic and schizophrenic. But religious life in Medieval times allowed for a lot of strange and erratic behaviour if one could follow it without being accused of being a heretic, which some considered her to be. 

            I was assigned two essays to review on Peer Scholar and I read the first one. I want to read it twice before I make any comments but this one has an incredible amount of spelling and grammatical errors that suggest that the paper was not proof-read even once. I'll try to think of a gentle way to point out the flaws. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching episode 28 of The Beverly Hillbillies.

            This story consisted mostly of flashbacks to mostly the very first episode. The story begins with Mr. Landman, an agent for the Internal Revenue Service, coming to talk with Jed Clampett. But Granny confronts him with a shotgun because she thinks he is the type of revenuer that investigates moonshiners like herself. She fires her gun and he leaves, going to the Commerce Bank to talk to Mr. Drysdale. Landman doesn't understand why Jed Clampett had an income of millions this year and not a penny for the years before. Drysdale explains the incredible story of how Clampett had been dirt poor up until a few months ago, and that's where all the flashbacks come in, leading to the Clampetts moving to Beverly Hills. After their talk, Drysdale takes Landman back to the Clampett mansion. At first Granny tries to attack again but Jed takes her gun away and invites them in for dinner. Jed tells Landman that back in the hills a taxman would be a lot younger than him because he wouldn't have lived to get that old. 

            Landman was played by John Stephenson, who was an oratory forensics competitor in drama in high school and came second place in the national forensics competition. He earned a master's degree in Speech and Drama and after college he worked in radio and then became an announcer in the early days of television. He announced the commercials on "I Love Lucy". He was the voice of Mr. Slate on "The Flintstones", Fancy Fancy on "Top Cat", and Mr. Peevly on the cartoon series "Help it's the Hair Bear Bunch". 

            I searched for bedbugs and found none.

October 29, 1992: I worked for a sexy teacher at The Etobicoke School of Art

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I worked at Central Technical School, and it was a shortened day for reasons that I didn't catch. I had lunch between 11:20 and 12:20 and called Marie but there was no answer. I read the papers and Now Magazine and I wrote this on a break during the afternoon class, which finished at 14:30. I called Marie again but she still didn't pick up and so I headed home. When I got there, I found a couple of messages from Marie. One said that she would be home at 14:30 and the other informed me that she would be going out at 15:30 to 80 Spadina if I would like to join her there. But it was already almost 16:00 and if I went there, I wouldn't have been able to see her for long if at all, before leaving for work. I worked for a very sexy teacher at The Etobicoke School of Art.

Lola Albright

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the twelfth and final verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. There's just a refrain to finish at the end. 

            I memorized the second verse of "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal) by Serge Gainsbourg. I discovered that in the first draft of the translation that I wrote a few years ago, I'd left out one verse, so I worked on that. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished reading the story "Turning Christian" by Samuel Selvon. There was tension between the freed African slaves and the indentured Indian labourers. The black people felt it was important to make sure the Indians stayed in subservience because otherwise the Africans would be made slaves again. 

            I read "Ruba dub Rhythm in a Regent Park" by Lilian Allen. It's a great performance piece but I've heard her read better poetry. It doesn't really break any literary ground. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. That's the most I've weighed at that time in 25 days. 

            I took a bike ride downtown and on the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought seven bags of grapes, two containers of raspberries, one container of blueberries, some organic bananas because they don't seem to go rotten as quickly as the other kind, and a bag of kettle chips. 

            The landlord seems to have rented a cherry picker and he has a guy finally fixing the roof. So maybe my ceiling will stop leaking when it rains. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:22. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:48. 

            I read the excerpts from the Ancrene Wisse that are in the Broadview Anthology of Medieval Literature. It contains instructions for anchorites, which are religious women, I think usually nuns who have taken their worship beyond the order to the point where they make themselves dead to the world. They live in a cell adjacent to the church and do nothing but worship. I'd boil the main instructions down to "wear comfortable shoes and don't whip yourself unless your confessor tells you to". 

            I read most of the writings of Julian of Norwich. She was a nun on her death bed when she had a vision of and a conversation with Jesus and then suddenly wasn't dying anymore. I blame moldy bread for at least her hallucinations but maybe also for her brush with death. She talks of Jesus as a male mother and equates the agony of crucifixion with the pain of giving birth. Jesus also personally taught her the martial art of Jhesu Jitsu and showed her his right cross so she could fight the fiends. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching episode 27 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            The story begins with Granny making her annual batch of spring tonic. Everyone lines up but no one wants to take it because it tastes so bad. Granny tests it on Elly's little terrier and he laps it up but begins barking loudly and deeply like a much bigger dog. 

            Meanwhile at the bank. Jane Hathaway introduces Mr. Drysdale to her prim, shy, conservative, bespectacled assistant, Gloria Buckles. Gloria has just updated Jed Clampett's file and knows all there is to know about Jed and his $34 million. Jane sends her to Jed's house to get him to sign some papers. But on the way she takes off her glasses, lets her hair down and changes into a form-fitting dress to reveal that she's the opposite of what she had appeared to be. As soon as she meets Jed she starts to flirt with him. Granny and Pearl think that Jed had too much spring tonic and they try to stop the love ball from rolling. She takes Jed for a drive in Jane's car and when they stop at a romantic lookout point, Gloria tells Jed that now that she's met him she will be lonely for the rest of her life because she will always compare other men with a rugged mountain man like him. Jed decides he's got what she wants.

            They go back to the mansion and she shows him how to dance the Twist. Elly and Jethro try it too and everyone is having a great time. Pearl calls Drysdale to warn him about Gloria and he rushes over. Gloria tells him to be nice to her or else after her wedding he may lose his largest account. Everyone is surprised when Jed confirms that there will be a wedding, but then he adds that it will be in three or four years when Jethro turns 21. This is obviously not what Gloria had in mind as Jethro picks her up and says, "Hot diggity dog I got me a wife!" and he runs with her out the door as she kicks and screams and Jane chases them shouting, "Bring him back!" Elly asks her father, "Ain't you gonna marry that city woman?" "Naw, us old foxes is trap-shy. Especially when the bait starts to chasing us." 

            Gloria Buckles was played by Lola Albright, who I mentioned a few times a couple of years ago when I was watching Peter Gunn, because she played Gunn's girlfriend, Edie Hart. Both of Lola's parents were gospel singers and she studied piano for twenty years. She worked for a local radio station and later became a model. Her first film appearance was in a small singing part in the 1947 movie "The Unfinished Dance". She starred in "A Cold Wind in August", co-starred in "The Love Cage", "The Good Humour Man", "The Way West", "The Impossible Years", and "Deadly Roulette". As a sultry jazz singer she recorded two albums: "Lola Wants You" and "Dreamsville". She won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for "Lord Love a Duck". She played Constance Mackenzie on "Peyton Place" when Dorothy Malone was sick. 

            

           I started my usual search for bedbugs and immediately say a mature one walking down the old exit door towards my bed. It looked like it had come from the crack in the top right corner of the door, so either there are some living there or there is some sort of pathway inside the door to my apartment from the one above.

October 28, 1992: I developed some photos of my daughter and I

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I posed at Central Technical School again and called Marie at lunch but there was no answer. I got an ice cream after work and went home. I called Nancy but no one picked up there either. I phoned Mike Copping and we arranged to meet after I finished work that night. I called Marie but she was busy, so I told her I'd phone on Thursday. I did some darkroom work and developed a couple of photos of the baby and me, with her naked and me in torn denim shorts. I bought a lottery ticket on my way to work. I did a fairly relaxing reclining pose and was basically ignored by the class. I bought a slice of pizza and met Mike at the donut shop and then we went to cruise the hookers in his car. We stopped at Harvey's and at 23:30 he dropped me off at my place. I stayed up until 2:30 doing dishes and then taking a shower. There were no more responses from Telepersonals.

Sir Walter Raleigh

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the eleventh verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. 

            I published my translation of "Trompe d’érection" (Missed Erection) by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations and Facebook. I memorized the first verse of his 1983 song "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal). The melody felt like Gainsbourg lifted it from a classical source, so I looked it up and found that indeed it uses the melody from Bach’s "Prelude N°4 in C-sharp major", but I couldn't recognize it on most recordings because the Bach piece is played so fast. I did a search for a slowed down version of the Prelude and found that the melody matches. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I left for English in the World class at 10:20. 

            We talked some more about The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream. 

            I said if the mother is open to change and the father is not then he would have reason to fear that she might want to change from him. 

            The mother uses T stopping, using t or d as in "tank you" and "mout". 

            The story is compared to "Araby" by James Joyce, but I don't see it. 

            I said the stream of consciousness works well to reflect Benjy's confusion at the end. In this world he never made in which he's been made to desire something he's never had and fear it at the same time, during his moment of hesitation the object of his desire is accidentally taken away by his father's fear of Benjy's mother's beauty. 

            We looked at "Sprung rhythm" by M NourbeSe Philip she chose the middle name herself.

            Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote the original "Sprung Rhythm". 

            "There" is romanticized in a way that she could not do except from "here". 

            I said a "sprung rhythm" is not synonymous with syncopation. 

            There are images from inside the womb and around pregnancy and birth. 

            The Sir Walter Raleigh reference to him laying his coat down for Queen Elizabeth doesn't feel like a mockery even though she says it is. She's made to feel queenly by the carpet of flowers that she walks on. Her idea that it's a mockery seems like an adult after thought. 

            I dug up some info on Raleigh: Walter Raleigh was a soldier from his teens. He fought in civil wars in France and put down a rebellion in Ireland where he became a mayor of Munster and had 40,000 acres there. . He became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth and she knighted him in 1585. He was sent to explore Virginia. 

           He was arrested for getting the queen's handmaiden pregnant and secretly marrying her without permission. He was released and gradually returned to favour after leading several expeditions for the queen. He went looking for El Dorado in South America. 

           His neighbour and friend in Munster was Edmund Spenser and they traveled together when Spenser presented "The Faerie Queen" to Elizabeth. 

            After Elizabeth died he was arrested for plotting against King James I. He was later pardoned and sent on another expedition to look for El Dorado. Later he was imprisoned again and ultimately beheaded. 

            Raleigh did a lot of writing, especially in the Tower. Lots of poetry, and some scholars believed he was the real author of all of Shakespeare's plays. He was working on a history of the world when he was beheaded. The cover of his book depicts the figure of magistra vitae (the teacher of life) holding aloft a map of the world, crushing the skeletal figure of death and oblivion under her feet. She is flanked either side by a Venus-like figure of Truth, and the withered crone Experience. Between them are four columns, which correspond to the passage from Cicero: "History is indeed the witness of time, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity: by what other voice, than that of the orator, can it be passed into immortality?" 

            The actor Hugh Grant is a direct descendant of Walter Raleigh. 

            I took my Marie de France books back to Robarts. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought one bag of grapes, a can of Folger's coffee, and a pack of Sponge Towels. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with seven-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:20. 

            I was caught up with my lecture notes at 18:53. 

            I wrote my exit slip survey for today's class. 

            I started reading the story "Turning Christian" by Samuel Selvon, which seems to be set just after slavery was abolished in Trinidad when indentured workers from India replaced the African slaves. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Bolognese sauce, a beef burger sliced in half, and seven-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 26 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Mildred Drysdale and Priscila Standish arrive at the Clampett mansion and ring the doorbell. Jed asks Jethro if he asked his fifth-grade teacher what causes the music just before someone knocks on the door. Jethro says he learned that someone pushes a button and he figures there's a lookout on the roof who sees someone coming to the door and pushes the button. 

            When Priscilla arrives she is excited to learn that Granny is grinding corn. Jed gives Mildred a chitlin and she asks what it is. He says Granny's chitlins are made from possum innards. I can't find any reference to chitlins or chitterlings being made out of possum. I see them served with possum or some biproduct of possum but they are usually made from hog intestines. 

            Mildred tells Jed that her car and chauffeur are at Pearl's disposal. When Pearl comes down he asks her why she's using Mrs. Drysdale's car. She says she can't be seen in the old truck anymore now that they are high society. She explains that the earlier your kinfolk got here, the higher in society you are. Jed says the high society folk must be the Indians since they were here first. Pearl says, "It don't work that way." "How come?" "Let's not try to change the rules. Let's just start enjoying the game." 

            In the kitchen, Mildred and Priscilla are grinding corn. Granny says back home they'd get their corn ground at the gristmill, but since there's no gristmill in Beverly Hills they have to do it like they learned from the Indians. Mildred can't stand it and says she has to meet her husband. Since Pearl has her car she wants to call a cab but Jed insists she ride in the truck. While she's riding, a goat eats her hat. She's so upset and disheveled when she gets to the bank that Milburn Drysdale thinks she's drunk.

            Pearl comes back from the beauty salon looking like Mae West and she has clothes for everyone. Priscilla wants the Clampetts to pose for a portrait and so Pearl, in her warped understanding of high society, has what she considers to be appropriate costumes for everyone. She gets Jed in a polo outfit, Granny as a big game hunter, and Elly May and Jethro as ballet dancers. But she's got them both wearing tutus. 

            The family dances with Priscilla to the Virginia reel when Priscilla gets a phone call from the Women's Federation for the Preservation of the Perpetuation of the First Family Traditions of America. She tells Jed that if his great grandfather was named Ezekiel he will be meeting the president and addressing congress. His name will be in every paper from coast to coast. Jed lies and says his great grandfather was named Jeremiah. When Granny asks why he lied he says he wouldn't know how to live in high society. 

            I searched for bedbugs and dug one out of a crack at the upper left corner of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed.

October 27, 1992: Marie said on my answering machine, "You're intriguing, delectable, exasperating, and frightening"

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I worked at Central Technical School again from 9:00 to 15:15. At lunch I called Marie and we arranged to meet at 16:00 at the Market Lane. I finished my break in the classroom doing astrological charts. After work I did some banking and cashed my cheques. I went to meet Marie and I was there before her. When she came it felt awkward at first because I sensed an emotional distance between us. This was such a plastic situation in which to form a relationship. Anyway, we warmed up after we indulged in our minds and let our hearts go. We asked each other what we wanted with each other, and I guessed we both copped out by saying, "I want to get to know you better." When I got home there was a message from her on my machine saying, "You're intriguing, delectable, exasperating, and frightening."

Rosemary de Camp

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the tenth verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. 

            I almost finished editing "Trompe d’érection" (Missed Erection) by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations to prepare it for blog publication. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I did some more research on Grendel for my essay. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:00. 

            At 18:05 I logged on to Zoom for the Medieval Literature lecture. 

            Alex says Walton is on the way.

            I gave a recap of last week's class and how we had talked on Bisclavret and argued about who is the monster, the werewolf or the wife. 

            Professor Audrey Walton said every time she reads Marie de France she gets something different. 

            How Bisclavret represents the outsider figure, attraction, abuse outside-inside dynamics in Marie's private spaces. 

            Monsters. The man-animal hybrid dynamic. 

            Turning the class over to Alex for 15 minutes. 

            Bisclavret and Yonec. 

            His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, the first of the series being The Golden Compass. A human individual's inner-self manifests itself throughout life as an animal-shaped "dæmon", that almost always stays near its human counterpart. During the childhood of its associated human, a dæmon can change its animal shape at will, but with the onset of adolescence it settles into a fixed, final animal form. We took a demon quiz. 

            In Yonec by Marie de France. How is the hawk guy at parties? He says he will never be late. He thinks ahead. 

            I say that to change is to create and so changing into animals is a metaphor for being an artist.

            The animal for the sneaky person is a ferret. 

            The goshawk is a noble hunting bird. 

            There is a movement in Medieval studies to look at the role of animals in texts. 

            The servants at Royal College are dog demons. 

            Compare the hawk man to Icarus. 

            I said it feels like a New Testament Biblical narrative. The hawk as the angel of the lord coming to Mary and telling her she will have a baby. This story is named for that baby who only appears at the end. 

            Marie messes things up. 

            The Eucharist, Christ, visitation, love story, devotion. 

            Is he her demon? 

            How demons operate in Philip Pullman's text. Flexible when young and solidify at puberty. One's inner companion a glorified pet animal. Reflection of self tied to being. 

            She transformed while in the tower. Beauty as transformation. The king pursues her for beauty. She becomes unbeautiful and then beautiful again. Her beauty will kill her and her lover. Her beauty is described by her captors. She has no privacy because they are watching her. Her beauty comes back and is distrusted. Female appearance as dangerous. 

            I don't think her lover is being accusatory about her beauty when he says it brought about their death. He doesn't regret it. 

            I said she could have jumped out of the tower anyway if she was going to do it. 

            Her agency to jump was ignited by her dying lover. 

            Jenn mentions my gender switch comment from last week. 

            Both stories make a secret public. 

            In The Scarlet Letter Hester owns her letter. 

            Marie's texts are rich with lived experience, realistic, and socially accurate. 

            We took a break and I started dinner. 

            Talking about Halloween. I told the story of how my daughter stopped wearing costumes but still went out for Halloween in her regular clothes. When people asked what she was supposed to be she would say, "Mr. Comfortable". 

            Fables. 

            The Dog and the Cheese. Shadow may just mean reflection. 

            Wolf and lamb. The moral is more about social justice. Messy. 

            Laustic. 

            I said the Nightingale is a metaphor for her love. 

            A metonym is a word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated. For example, Ottawa is a metonym for the federal government of Canada.

            Metonymy the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing. 

            The husband is brutal when the nightingale is captured. He kills it in front of her and throws it at her leaving a bloodied stain above her breast where her heart is. I said he is definitely trying to stain her consciousness. 

            Leave a mark of trauma. Violence as publishing. 

            Reliquary for relics. She wraps the bird in an ornate cloth. 

            The lays are the nightingale. In the beginning there is beautiful song of poetry, then lyric poetry, the love message. Witness, public form. Poetry as memorial in the end of Laustic, an elegy. At the very end it becomes the story we're reading. It becomes public in Marie. Laustic shows her general way. 

            I said I think Bisclavret is her best. 

            I asked why France didn't translate the Fox and the Grapes. She thought it was an interesting question but didn't know. I think it was just an accident. 

            During class I grilled some pork chops in the oven and fried two in the skillet. We finished before 20:30 and I had the biggest pork chop with a potato and gravy while watching episode 25 of the Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Pearl is upset that Jed doesn't spend his wealth on getting rid of some of the old things they have like the truck and the antique butter churn so that they can appear more acceptable to high society. Meanwhile Mrs. Mildred Drysdale feels the same way about getting rid of Jed and his family as her neighbours because her society guru Priscilla Ralph Alden Smith Standish, the president of the Women's Federation for the Preservation of the Perpetuation of the First Family Traditions of America, the greatest authority on colonial history, early American genealogical origins, and 17th and 18th Century artifacts, is coming to visit. 

            Mildred goes to the Clampett mansion to ask them to leave and she finds Pearl telling Granny that she and her pile of junk is a disgrace to Beverly Hills as Granny throws ham hocks at her. Mildred agrees with her and says the sooner she leaves the better, but suddenly Pearl tells Mildred she can't talk to Granny that way and chases her away with a barrage of ham hocks. 

            Later however Priscilla Standish knocks on the Clampett door looking for Mrs. Drysdale but she is stricken by the antique loom that is sitting in front of the door. Inside she finds an antique spinning wheel. When she hears those things belong to Granny she says she needs to meet her and so Jed takes her to the kitchen where Priscilla sees her churning butter. The table is full of pewter dishware and Priscilla is in ecstasy. She asks if she can take pictures and Granny thinks she's a revenuer and runs for her gun. But Priscilla is equally impressed with the gun and takes it from her to look at it because it has also been in the family for generations. Jed shows Priscilla an old trunk and inside she finds the family Bible that has a dedication to Queen Elizabeth I and recognizes it as an original Geneva Bible, sometimes called a Puritan Bible and it's 400 years old. 

            When Mrs. Drysdale rushes in thinking that Priscilla is being held captive she demands that the Clampetts be arrested and hanged. Priscilla tells Mildred that she has established that Jed is a descendant of the first man to come ashore at Jamestown, Virginia on May 13, 1607. The leader of that expedition was Captain Christopher Newport. She tells Mildred that when her family and Mildred's family arrived on the Mayflower, Jed's family was already there. 

            Then Priscilla says that Mrs. Drysdale would consider it an honour to wash the Clampetts' pewter dishes for them and she also insists that Mildred allow Granny to teach her how to make lye soap. Mr. Drysdale is getting a sadistic thrill from watching his wife wash dishes. 

            Priscilla was played by Rosemary de Camp, who established a reputation on the stage and on radio before venturing to Hollywood to act in her first movie in 1941. She played Nurse Judy Price on the popular Dr. Christian radio series. She tended to play loving small-town mothers like that of George M Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942 and the mother of Doris Day's character in "On Moonlight Bay" and its sequel, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon." She played Mowgli's mother in The Jungle Book. In 1946 Howard Hughes crashed his plane into her house. She played Peg Riley on the first version of the TV sitcom The Life of Riley. She played the mother of Marlo Thomas's character on That Girl. She played Kate Bradley's sister on Petticoat Junction. She played Shirley's mother on The Partridge Family.

            

            

            For the fifth night in a row I found no bedbugs.

October 26, 1992: I went to vote in the national referendum but changed my mind when I saw the form of ballad

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday I woke up when the clock said 7:43 and started getting ready for work until I realized that I'd forgotten to turn it back. I went back to bed and got up at around 7:50. I caught the bus to the subway and when I got off at Bloor and Bathurst I got a coffee on my way to Central Technical School. I worked all morning in room 307 for Michael Gerry. I called Marie at lunch and then went back to 307 to read the paper. I worked for Chris Farlow in the afternoon, and I knocked him and his class dead. I went home and called Marie. We talked until 17:00 when her husband came home. I went to vote in the referendum but changed my mind when I saw the form of the ballad.

Lester Matthews

            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the ninth verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for "Trompe d’érection" (Missed Erection) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian's Translations to prepare it for blog publication. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in thirteen days. 

            I left for English in the World class at 10:20. There was no one waiting outside the classroom when I got there for several minutes. I peeked inside the empty classroom next door and was surprised to see Tiana sitting there. When I said "Hi" she felt the need to explain that she just wanted a place to sit. 

            Professor Percy talked about accents. Syllable timing has two or more, one more stressed than the other kind. Higher, louder, longer. Most varieties of native English have stressed timing. 

            Listen to Mr. Oxford. 

            Guyanese creole is common. 

            I said I couldn't find the link for Peer Scholar to submit my essay for peer review. She said there is an unassuming text box at the bottom. 

            Olive Senior became a journalist, won a scholarship, and studied journalism in Ottawa. We talked about Senior's story, "The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream". 

            I said ice cream is foreign and hybrid. It is both frozen and not frozen. 

            Rare and temporary. 

            Both Benjy and his dad are separated from Benjy's mom. 

            I say both Benjy and the father have a fear of what they desire. 

            We talked about phonetics. 

            Fricatives have impeding airflow. 

            There is a talking IPA chart.

            Imitating US accents. The "r" in "girl" after the vowel. 

            Better vs bedder. The British say "be(glottal)er". 

            North American English uses the "r" in "park". The UK used to. 

            Wells lexical sets. 

            "Bath" and "trap", only "Bath" is softened in the UK. 

            Microsoft Word has IPA symbols. 

            "Bass" used to be "baers". "Cuss" comes from "curse", "hoss" from "horse", "ass" from "arse". In the 18th century "r" started to disappear first in East Anglia. It was considered a bad thing at the time.

            The first two pronouncing dictionaries were published by former actors. 

            Rhotic accents with "r" and non-rhotic without. Dropping the "r" became upper class. In the US it was the opposite. Dropping the "r" was considered lower class as in New Yawk. If a girl dropped her "r" in a film noir she was likely bad. There is less status in "New Yawk". 

            We took a break. 

            I asked about how "aunt" deteriorated into "ant" and she said she didn't know but there must be studies. 

            A survey online determines your US accent. 

            "Nyooz" vs "news". 

            The English Language in Canada by Boberg. 

            The US uses a softer "a" than Canada. 

            I mentioned the episode of Star Trek in which the doctor mispronounced Data's name with the other pronunciation of "data". 

            Viet Nam "am" vs "awm". 

            If it's a foreign word we tend to pronounce it as the Brits do. 

            Most say "nooz". "Nooz" is newer and spreading even in England. We still say, "church pew" and not "church poo". "Nyooz" was pronounced just a few generations ago. 

            One person's speech changes over time. Queen Elizabeth's annual speeches changed over the years. 

            "Latin" vs "laten". "City" vs "cidy". Most say "cidy". 

            Some say "ligh" with glottal instead of "light". "Pork" and "port" are said the same with a glottal. 

            "Pew" is not "poo" because it is bilabial. "Duke" is "dook" because it is alveolar. 

            Exonormative standards: Canadians who think they should use British pronunciations. 

            The "fawth flaw" in New Yawk department stores. The higher-class stores pronounce the "r" and the middle class even more. Social stereotypes and values are indexed in pronunciation.

            Professor Percy let it drop that she's 58. 

            In North England, they say "stroot" for "strut". "Youf" for "youth". 

            Perception contextualized. People in England hate Birmingham accents.

            If you know the stereotypes you can appropriate them. 

            Native English is called stress-timed on syllables more stressed than the other but non-native are syllable-timed. Caribbean speech is often syllable-timed. In the Senior story "stan" for "stand". 

            Before she left Professor Percy apologized to me for not having a better answer about "aunt".

            When I got home I tried to find out where I could go to vote. Several websites claimed to have that information but none did. There is no reason why the specific voting station for one's address couldn't be placed on a website but it seems it wasn't. Finally, I just decided to go to Mazaryk-Cowan Community Centre. I looked up who was trying to be mayor and saw that the homeless guy Kevin Clarke was running so I decided to vote for him. 

            At Mazaryk-Cowan it was the wrong place. I was sent to 20 West Lodge and went the wrong way to get there. It took me more than an hour from when I got home from class to finish voting. I was pissed off because I've lived in the same place for twenty-five years and always get a voting card in the mail, but I got none this time, even though my neighbour Benji did. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before a late lunch at 14:45. 

            I took a late siesta from 15:15 to 16:45. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:04. 

            I wrote the Exit Slip survey for todays class. 

            I tried again to go to Peer Scholar to resubmit my essay for peer review but I still could not find a link. I took screen shots of the assignment page that is supposed to show a link and sent them in an email to Professor Percy. She got in touch with a tech helper who suggested that I try a different browser, so I tried Microsoft Edge and it worked. But I did a search to see how to do it with Chrome and found that if I switched to Incognito it worked. 

            I re-read the parts of Beowulf that deal with Grendel to get a handle on him for my essay. It's obvious to me that he's a class revolutionary. I started looking at the passages on Grendel's mother to understand more about Grendel through her. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last piece of roast pork with a beer while watching episode 24 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Milburn Drysdale is approaching the date of a skeet shooting competition between his bank and that of another. With his crack shot vice president Drysdale has won the trophy for the last two years against Billy Hacker and his partner, but suddenly his VP gets sick. Then when he visits the Clampetts and finds Jed and Jethro winging flies off the property wall with rifles at 61 meters, he decides to hire Jed as his new vice president. 

            At the skeet shooting club, Jed and Jethro can shoot each clay plate with a rifle when the traditional firearm is a shotgun. Granny can take down two at a time with a shotgun. Elly doesn't like using guns but she can shatter the flying plates every time with her slingshot. 

            Jed gets the idea that Drysdale hired him to really serve as his vice president and so he goes to work at the bank. Hacker goes to see Jed at the bank and discovers that Jed without knowing it has been hired to be a ringer in the competition. When the bank chain owner Mr. Pendleton finds this out he says Jed has to be let go. He tells Hacker that he can pick any employee he wants to be Drysdale's partner. Granny has come to the bank to bring back the bank jacket that Pearl let out for Jed to wear. But while talking to the vice president's secretary she sees dust on the desk and insists on cleaning it. Just then Hacker walks in and when he sees who looks like an old cleaning lady he thinks he's really won against Drysdale. He chooses Granny to be Drysdale's partner and of course loses on the day of the competition because Granny never misses. 

            The secretary was played by Laura Shelton. After winning a contest to appear on a game show she won a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse where her classmates where Gene Hackman and Rue McClanahan. Another classmate was Carl Monson, who she later married. Together they founded the Curtain Call Theatre co-op. 

            Mr. Pendleton was played by British actor, Lester Matthews, who played Paul Ames in Werewolf of London and Jerry Halden in The Raven in 1935, Sir Ivor in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, and The Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers 1939. He appeared in over 180 films and TV shows. 

            For the fourth night in a row I found no bedbugs.

October 25, 1992: The baby followed her mother naked up the stairs

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I didn't get up until 10:00 or so. I called Nancy and she said she was on her way down. I fed the baby whatever I could until her mother arrived. I shaved and when I was in the shower Nancy passed my daughter to me. She didn't cry and even seemed to like it until the water fell directly on her body. Nancy was getting impatient with how slow I was getting ready. She was about to leave but the baby followed her naked up the stairs and so she stayed. We looked for a place to go for coffee and found one. I had to pay for Nancy's and so I went to the bank machine. I went to the park with my daughter and Nancy came later to feed her before splitting for home. I had to bring my daughter back to her mother's place late that night. She picked her up at the bus stop and cut it close before my bus was leaving. I bought some Häagen-Dazs and pop on the way home.

Jesse White

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the ninth verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for verses three to seven and the chorus of "Trompe d’érection" (Missed Erection) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            A young woman who might have been coming from a party came back to her car in the Dollarama parking lot with a guy but had locked herself out. They waited for the car lock technician for a while but after a while, the guy left. She went away and then after half an hour came back and waited. Finally, the CAA guy came, but when I looked later her car was still in the parking lot. An hour later I saw that a CAA truck had come and she was inside her car, but not driving away. Maybe she lost her keys. Half an hour later a CAA tow truck was there hoisting up her little SUV. She had also changed out of her short party dress into pants. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I did a time-consuming phonetic transcription quiz for my English in the World course. It mostly involved recognizing or writing the correct International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for certain word sounds. On my first try, I scored .97 out of 1.05 because I had one and part of another question wrong. The second time I got .98 because I had one question wrong. I had the wrong symbol for the vowel sound of the word "goose". Logic said the symbol should be "u" but that symbol wasn't listed on the website that the professor linked us to, so I picked one from the choices listed and got it wrong. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. That's the most I've weighed at that time in 13 days. 

            I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was warm and I was overdressed in my hoody and my leather jacket. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 16:38. That's the heaviest I've been at that time in 15 days. 

            I took the quiz again and this time I copied the "u" from another site and my score was 100%. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:14. 

            I noticed that I'd written the wrong course code on the essay that I handed in yesterday. I emailed the professor to make sure I don't have to resubmit it. She got back to me later and said it didn't matter. 

            I wrote down some stream-of-consciousness ideas on Grendel from Beowulf towards my Medieval Literature essay: 

            Grendel is a political, economic, and class revolutionary. He could have chosen any number of peasants, farmers, fishermen, and tradespeople to attack and kill easily in their non-fortified homes. But he only attacked the nobles in the mead hall, which was the gathering place of the king's elite warriors. He only attacked the very best of Hrothgar's men and never the women. He made a deliberate choice to attack the upper class of Danish society. In Viking society, the warriors were the highest class. His was a revolution against the wealthy and those who rule. Whatever species of man Grendel was he was also serving the human poor by attacking those who ruled over them. Grendel's choice to not use weapons against armed warriors was an act of austerity. We know that he had access to weapons through his mother. We know that she could use a knife and had at least one sword, and yet Grendel chose not to use it. He was making a statement. He was fighting civilization despite being at least somewhat civilized. He chose to only fight the wealthy. If all he'd needed to do was to eat humans he could have done so without going anywhere near the mead hall. He was punishing the wealthy revelers. He was terrorizing those in power. Perhaps it was revenge against the warriors that killed off his own people. He clearly had no problem with humans or he would have simply slaughtered any humans that he could find. He targeted the elite warriors who knew how to fight. He was challenging himself as Beowulf did.

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce, a beef burger sliced in two lengthwise, and seven-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 23 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            In this story, a con artist named Harry Jones comes to see Jed. He's already wanted by the police under various names. His mode of operation is to target rural types, to claim to be from their neck of the woods, and then try to sell them some large piece of property that he doesn't own, like the Hollywood Bowl. That's just what Jones tries to do. He says he's from just across the ridge from Jed's old place in Tennessee. He also flatters Pearl and makes her believe she can give yodeling concerts at the bowl. He tells Jed that he can fill the bowl with wild game and hunt or fill it with water for fishing. The family travels with Harry out to the Bowl to look at it. Jed recognizes that it would be a good place for Pearl to sing but not to hunt or fish. Harry says he'll sell them Griffith Park as well so he can hunt there. He takes them to the Griffith Park Zoo and on the way Elly is angry about the idea of hunting critters. 

            I'm pretty sure Elly's not vegan and in the first episode, she is introduced after having nearly crippled a wildcat in a wrestling match. She ate meat on the show and used products made from animals. 

            She doesn't like it when she sees the animals in cages and so she warns Harry that he has to let them go after Jed has a look at them. She goes down into a bear cage and is talking to and affectionately hugs a bear. 

           On the freeway, a lot of drivers are shouting rude things at the Clampetts and so Harry offers to sell the freeway to Jed as well so he can force everybody to be polite. They drop Pearl off at the Hollywood Bowl so she can dream some more about her future yodeling stardom. After they get home, Granny, Elly, and Jethro get guns and go back out to the freeway. They set up a roadblock and stop cars at gunpoint, making each driver promise to be nice from now on. 

            Mr. Drysdale rushes to Jed to warn him about Jones but Jed says he already knows that Jones is not a mountain man, since he got drunk on only half a jug of moonshine. 

            Harry Jones was played by Jesse White, who started out in theatre and made it to Broadway in 1943, becoming famous for his role as Wilson the asylum attendant in Harvey. He reprised the part in the film version with Jimmy Stewart. On television, he played Mickey Calhoun on Private Secretary and Jesse Leeds on the Danny Thomas Show at the same time. He was best known for his role in a long-running series of appliance commercials in which he played the lonely Maytag repairman from 1968 to 1989. 

            For the third night in a row, I found no bedbugs.

October 24, 1992: My daughter hit the balls with the hammer for 20 minutes and started crying when I tried to give the hammer to another kid

Thirty years ago today

            I picked up my daughter at 10:00 on Saturday and paid $5 to take her to the festival they were having in the church on Wineva. She played in the Lego room but especially liked a game where she got to hammer through four holes, four balls that came out at the bottom. She played that game for twenty minutes and started crying when I tried to give the hammer to another kid. A woman told me that my daughter and I looked so much alike. I went to buy some groceries and got juice for my daughter. She slept from 17:00 to 20:00. Nancy called and said she was going to the Skydome and so maybe I should keep the baby overnight. We played around the house, turning the lights off and on until 23:00 and then I put her to bed. I watched Star Trek and Monty Python until the station kicked in with the baseball game and I went to bed. 

Narda Onyx

            On Saturday morning I skipped working out chords for new songs and I shortened my song practice so I could try to finish my essay today. I got started a little before 8:00. I took a siesta at 10:12 and got up at 11:42. I was finished at around 15:00. The citations are usually time-consuming but this was a primary source paper and so all I needed to cite was one website. Since I was hours ahead of the deadline I didn't turn it in right away so I could give it another read-through just in case I had any more ideas. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of raspberries, a pack of blueberries, a sack of potatoes, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of ground beef, a bag of kettle chips, a jug of orange juice, and two containers of skyr. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 15:00. 

            I had a late lunch at 16:30. I had saltines with seven-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a short bike ride to Bloor and Dovercourt, then south and home along Queen. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:45. 

            I went over my essay and made a few small changes, then I uploaded it at around 18:30. 

            Here it is: 

            Code Bondage: How Chiac dominates the structure and meaning of English verbs 

            you are fools to speak French ... you are fools to speak English - Leonard Cohen 

           The dialect of Chiac allows into its vocabulary many elements of the dominant English language, but then takes control of those words by transforming them structurally and contextually into locutions unique to Chiac. These reconstructions of English words have evolved and continue to do so from the organic process of spontaneously repeated speech in everyday conversations between Acadians of southeastern New Brunswick, Canada. The ease of quotidian interplay that has resulted in this new language with new English words is sometimes simulated in Acadian literature in the form of communication between fictional characters, such as in the adventures of Acadieman as written by cartoonist and author Daniel LeBlanc. 

            Three of LeBlanc's comic strips from his Acadieman website (with the Chiac text translated by me), will give examples of English borrowings that have been transformed by this Acadian vernacular. Each humorous interaction also offers a metaphor for how Chiac stands in relation to the dominant French and English languages that surround it. The first, "La piscine" (The Swimming Pool), illustrates that to create new words from English is to elevate them but it also comes along with accusations of corrupting the purity of the French language with anglicisms. The second cartoon, "La peur" (The Fear), demonstrates an English verb being altered with French conjugation and also mocks the fear of the widening of the use of English-based verbs in the Chiac vocabulary. The third strip, "La skirt" (The Skirt) shows the French conjugation of another English verb and how its meaning becomes slightly changed in Chiac. The story in the cartoon also testifies to the power that a spoken language has to evoke a reaction, especially when the meanings of the borrowed English words are modified to convey a somewhat more vulgar nuance. 

            I will conclude by analyzing the unconscious power play that is revealed in Chiac's alterations of English words. In converting English verbs that invade the Acadian consciousness from outside, the Chiac speaker is symbolically dominating the dominant language. 

            In the Acadieman cartoon strip "La piscine" (The Swimming Pool) by Daniel LeBlanc, Acadieman is told at a public swimming pool that he has to stop urinating in the pool. His surprised response is that everyone pisses in the pool. But he is told, "Yes, but not off the diving board (LeBlanc)." "Pissing in the pool" is a metaphor for using English in French, which every Francophone does to some degree, but mostly with English nouns such as "weekend". However, unlike most forms of Franglais, the Acadian vernacular of Chiac goes deeper than the usual code-switching. It also threads English verbs into the structure of French grammar and conjugates them as if they were French verbs. This can be understood as urinating off the diving board because it splashes and mixes English into the pool of French from an elevation. It raises both French and English to a new language that is neither. When an English word like "walk" is used as "walker", "walké", or "walkont" it is no longer merely a visitor in French but has taken up residence in the language and been made into an element of a creole.

            In the first panel of an Acadieman cartoon entitled "La peur" (The Fear), Acadieman's friend Coquille talks in French about the common occurrence of the fear of heights. Then in the second panel, we see Acadieman squatting in front of Coquille's open refrigerator with the crack of his wide buttocks shown to the viewer above his pants, and saying to Coquille, "As-tu d'la "grub"? Chu starvé. (LeBlanc) ", meaning "You got any grub? I'm starving." The English verb "to starve" is conjugated here as if it were a French verb. In the punchline, Coquille tells the viewer in French that what he is afraid of is widths. This has a double meaning, the most obvious being that the widths feared by Coquille are those of the wide buttocks of moochers like Acadieman, which are getting wider from eating his food. But the deeper sense is that Acadieman is feeding from a fridge full of Anglicisms. His incorporation of such words into the verb structure of French is feared to be widening the English influence on the dialect of Chiac.

            In the first panel of a strip entitled "La skirt", Acadieman calls to a strange woman on the street, "Hey mademoiselle, j'aime ta skirt. J'aime la way qu'a hang (LeBlanc)." This translates as, "Hey miss, I like your skirt. I like the way it hangs." The English verb "hang" is changed here into something that is uniquely Chiac. In English one would not say, "I like the way it hang" because in the third person singular present tense there is always an "s" at the end of a verb. "Hang" in this case is treated like a French verb, most of which would not end with an "s" in the third person present tense, and even if it did, the "s" would not be pronounced. Also, the meaning of the English verb "hang" is changed here into a synonym for "fit", which has become common in Chiac but is rare in English. 

            In panel two, in response to the words he spoke in panel one, Acadieman is hit hard in the face by a swung purse. In panel three he is on his back and in pain, as he says, "J'ai notice que rien que j'ai jamais dit m'a ever fait mal", which translates as, "I notice that nothing I ever say ever hurts me." Again, there is one meaning of this cartoon on the basic level and another as a metaphor about Chiac. Acadieman has committed what is considered to be a faux pas in approaching a strange woman on the street and singling out her appearance as the subject of initial communication, and he is punished for that. But in the Chiac-related metaphor, Acadieman is being punished by a Francophone purist for speaking a language that is promiscuous with English. He tells us that what he says does not hurt him because Chiac is harmless among its speakers. But it is also a careless and natural speech that does not worry about the propriety or grammatical correctness. 

            Acadieman is an irreverent representative of a vernacular that has a punk sensibility or rebelliousness that comes from being a language of the young. A creole formed from casual speech between consumers of media who live on the threshold between the French and English worlds cannot help but be somewhat irreverent. Acadieman is a superhero because he fearlessly or carelessly speaks Chiac. His vernacular is relaxed and one might even say that it is as lazy as Acadieman, because it is developed while spoken and while letting go of grammatical propriety. 

            The irreverent romance between French and English in Chiac can be analogized with a dominant-submissive variation on the story of Romeo and Juliet. French and English are two families in conflict while the speech of the children of both clans comes together in a forbidden romance. Taking this interaction beyond code-switching, in conjugating English verbs with the kinbaku of French inflections, Chiac engages in code-bondage between French and English. In altering and fashioning words into a vocabulary that does not exist in English or French, Chiac effectively takes the language that is on top and puts it on the bottom in the neighbourhood setting. Thus English verbs are dominated and branded by the lashing tongue of Chiac, which is also a surfboard that is punting freely while barrelled by the waves of language that flow from the two solitudes of French and English. 

            Because it is constantly changing, Chiac is not going away. It can be argued that Chiac is corrupting French, and that claim can be countered with the debate that Chiac is saving French because without it the youth of southeastern Acadia would be speaking English. But perhaps neither is true. If Chiac is a new language it bears no responsibility whatsoever towards either French or English. 

                                                                     Work Cited 

LeBlanc, Daniel Omer (Dano). “Acadieman.” Acadieman.com, Productions Mudworld, 2011, https://acadieman.com/les-bd. 

            I made four ground beef patties and grilled them in the oven. I had one on toasted Bavarian sandwich bread with ketchup, barbecue sauce, mustard, salsa, and sliced dill pickle. I had my burger with a beer while watching episode 22 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jed asks Granny for some spring tonic for him and his dog Duke because they are feeling low in spirits. Granny says that what both of them need is female companionship. Meanwhile, Mrs. Drysdale is preparing to mate her poodle Claude with a poodle from Paris named Colette. Colette's owner, Mademoiselle Denise stops at the Clampett mansion looking for the Drysdale residence. While Jed is showing Denise the way to the Drysdales, Duke and Colette run off together. Denise drives away, not realizing that Colette is not in the car. Later she comes back for her and she gives Jed kisses on the cheek in gratitude for taking care of her. After that Jed shaves and puts on hair tonic and it's not even Sunday. At the Drysdale's Mrs. Drysdale has turned her husband's den into a bridal suite for the dogs but the dog that shows up is Duke. Denise drives Duke back to Jed and gives him more cheek kisses. Then she goes back to the Drysdale's but before the "wedding" ceremony can commence, Colette hears Duke howling next door and jumps out the window to run to him. Jed shines his shoes, puts on a 19th Century suit and a bowler hat, and says he's going to take both Colette and Duke back to the Drysdales so Colette and Denise can decide who they want to be with. 

            Denise was played by Narda Onyx, who was a child actor in 1944 in Estonia when she and her family took to the sea to escape the Russians. They were picked up by a German boat and since they spoke German the sailors thought they were German. They were taken to Danzig and from there they went to Bonn which the Allies had already occupied. They applied for refugee status and went to Sweden and then England where Narda began to act again. She moved to Canada where she acted on many Canadian TV shows before moving to the US. She played Gretl Braun in Hitler and Maria Frankenstein in Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. She wrote a biography of Johnny Weismuller called "Water, World, and Weismuller". 

            

            I didn't find any bedbugs for the second night in a row.