Donna Douglas

            On Saturday morning I skipped memorizing French songs and shortened my song practice so I could get my journal postings out of the way and work on my English in the World assignment. I started at 7:55. I finished at around 10:30 and here it is: 

            Sweden currently ranks eighth place globally in the EF English Proficiency Index of non-native English-speaking countries. This shows that Swedes are highly conversant English speakers. But despite Sweden's widespread competence in the language, English words that are considered to be "swear" words, have a less emotional impact than they would for native anglophones, and therefore they are considered to be less offensive. In Sweden, English swear words are used less for meaning and more for exclamatory punctuation. There is far less chance of someone swearing in Swedish on a Swedish prime-time television show than in English. Besides the emotional distancing from the subjective impact of these words on listeners' sensibilities, there are other aspects of Swedish society that provide a perfect storm for swearing in English on television. One major factor is that there is no censorship of artistic expression on Swedish electronic media, so choices of strong language are not officially suppressed. Another difference between Sweden and most countries, including Canada, is that Sweden has no broadcasting watershed. The watershed is the time of day before which profanity is not allowed in television broadcasts because children may be listening. For example, in Canada that time is 17:30. 

            The Swedish annual Melodifestivalen (Melfest) competition, which determines every year what Sweden's entry in the annual Eurovision Song Contest will be, is a prime-time show. One of the hosts this year was the comedian Johanna Nordström, who performed a song-skit in which she shouted “fuck you” to her former classmates in high school. 

            When Sweden hosted Eurovision in 2013, the green room host, Eric Saade referred to the master of ceremonies, Petra Mede as "hashtag MILF". Since "MILF" is an acronym for "Mother I'd Like to Fuck", many were surprised, but Saade's line was written into the script of the show, even though Eurovision has strict rules against the use of profanity. 

            Linda Bengtzing's song entry for this year's Melfest expressed in Swedish the desire to break free from restrictions, and in a dramatic moment, when she performs the song live, she raises her middle finger and switches to English to say, “I don’t give a shit.” On Melfest, Bentzing censored herself because children were watching, however, she did not censor the line "I don't give a shit" but rather the globally recognized gesture of raising the middle finger. 

            Professor Kristy Beers Fägersten, who teaches English Linguistics at the School of Culture and Education, at Södertörn University tells us that swearing in English is a particularly Swedish phenomenon. She says, “English swear words are used by Swedes with impunity ... but there are few to no social consequences or formal sanctions to face. There is also a certain delight in getting away with using English in a way that its native speakers are not free to do ...” 

            The Swedish mastery of English shows that they know what they are saying when they swear in the language. But since it is not their mother tongue, Swedes have no childhood memories of their mothers washing their mouths out with soap for saying English dirty words, so they are less repressed in their expression. 

            https://www.thelocal.se/20220219/why-the-swedish-like-to-use-vulgarity-at-melfest/ 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the least I've weighed in the morning for a week.

            I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my phone plan. There's an old phone booth outside Freedom Mobile that is shaped like an old telephone headset from the landline days. The phone and the wires are long gone but I asked the clerk how much the big phone outside would cost me. I had to explain the joke to him. My plan costs $39.55 a month and I use the phone about once a month. I said to the clerk, "$39.55 is a good deal for one phone call, right?" He nodded and smiled. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of red grapes, two packs of raspberries, Basilica pasta sauce, a bag of kettle chips, and some freezer bags. The cashier was surprised at how many grapes I was buying. She said they are good for you but also said they are expensive. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in a week. It's weird how this morning I was the lightest in a week and at midday the heaviest. I had a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. Yonge Street was closed to traffic south of Dundas, and so was Queen Street west of Yonge to University. I went west on Dundas to Bay and then south, which was also closed, but I was able to ride my bike on Bay and on Queen. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. I finished reading branches three and four of the Mabinogi. It has lots of magic and counter-magic and trickery and the turning of people into animals. Two men are turned into a stag and a hind and have to mate to bring the conjurer their offspring, which he makes human and baptizes. Then he turns them into a hog and a sow and the same thing happens. Then he turns them into a wolf and a wolf bitch and the same thing happens. After the two transformed men have mated three times as three kinds of animals of the opposite sex and produced three sons they are turned back into men. 

            I started trying to compose an argument to Professor Percy for my English in the World essay on the Acadian hybrid vernacular of Chiac to get her to approve of the topic. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and four-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            I'm pretty sure I've seen most of the stories, but I've never seen them in order, and I don't think I ever saw the very first one. Widower Jed Clampett lives in a small shack in the mountains of Tennessee with his daughter Elly May and his mother-in-law Daisy Moses, who everyone calls Granny. 

            Granny is repairing Elly's clothes after she got into a fight with and crippled a bobcat. Granny complains that Elly is getting too big for men's clothes and she's popped the buttons on her shirt again. Jed says Elly walks with her shoulders back but Granny says, "It ain't her shoulders that's poppin these buttons!" Granny says Elly should be doing woman's work like helping her with the still. 

            Then Elly comes in carrying an unconscious man that she knocked out with a rock because she caught him snooping around the swamp. She asks her pa if she can keep him. Granny says she met him earlier and he's from the peetroleum company, although none of them know what petroleum is. The man comes to and tells Jed he's a rich man. Jed asks Elly how big the rock was that she hit him with. The man asks for a telephone but they don't know what that is. When he tries to explain they think he's crazy and when he asks where the nearest airfield is they think he's even crazier because they think he's talking about a field in the air. 

            The man goes away and comes back in a helicopter with Mr. Brewster, the president of OK Oil. While the man is being lowered from the helicopter, Granny thinks it's a big bird that's made off with a man so she shoots at it and cuts the cable. 

            Later Jed's cousin Pearl and her son Jethro arrive in their old truck that crashes into the chicken coop. Pearl tells Jethro she'd told him to get rid of the worn-out brakes and he says he did, and that's why there aren't any. She tells Jed she'd heard he sold the swamp and wants to know how much he got for it. He says Brewster told him he'll get between 25 and 100, but it's in some new kind of dollars called million dollars. Pearl tells Jed he's rich and he should move to Beverly Hills, California. They saw a movie once and she tells him the actors live there. He likes the idea of living near Tom Mix. When Mr. Brewster comes he breaks the news that Tom Mix is dead. Jed remembers now that he got shot at the end of the movie. 

            As Jed, Elly and Jethro are getting ready to leave for California, Jed hears that Granny refuses to go. But finally, he puts her in her rocking chair on top of the truck. 

            In Beverly Hills, the banker Mr. Drysdale has gotten Jed Clampett the estate next door to his, but he's gotten word that it's been invaded by outlaws. Jed arrives at the gated mansion and thinks it's a prison. He and Jethro are holding the uniformed groundskeepers at gunpoint because they think they've just escaped. The police arrive and arrest Jed and his family. Drysdale comes and gets them out then drives them back to the mansion. But they still think it's a prison and start running with Drysdale chasing them and that's the end of the first episode. 

            Elly May was played by Donna Douglas, who first got married at 16 and had a son. Then she entered and won several beauty contests, including Miss Baton Rouge and Miss New Orleans, and headed for New York where she studied acting. She worked as a Billboard Girl on the Steve Allen Show. Her first movie was a supporting role in "Career" in 1959. She starred in one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, called "Eye of the Beholder" about a woman undergoing plastic surgery on a planet where ugliness is beautiful and beauty is ugly. She played Barbara Simmons on Checkmate. After the Beverly Hillbillies ended she continued to make appearances as Elly May, and she also became a gospel singer and a writer of rural Christian-themed children's books.

            

I searched for bedbugs and found none.