Barbara Nichols

            On Friday morning I translated the fifth verse of "J'ai pas d'regret" (I've No Regrets) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished posting my translation of "Norma Jean Baker" by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I'll start learning his song "Haine pour aime" (Literally "Hate for Love" but I'm calling my translation "Hate for Mate" to match his play on words. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast 

            The main fire alarm went off again because David was cooking upstairs, maybe with the door open. Last time we had to wait for the fire department to come and turn it off but now Benji has a key and he can get down to the basement where he's been shown how to switch it off. He just doesn't know how to turn it back on. It's weird that I've never set it off because there have been times when my place was full of smoke and I still had my door open and even my internal alarm was never triggered. 

            I worked for about an hour on my "Grendel is a Rebel" essay and it seems to be shaping up. I'm thinking that I won't have a problem handing it in on Monday, and maybe before that so I can start on the last two essays and be done until January, except for exams. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I've been at that time in nine days. 

            When I got up from my siesta it was still raining and so I couldn't take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 16:15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 16:22. 

            Not taking a bike ride gave me an extra hour to work on my essay and so I spent about three hours on it. All I have left to do is isolate the thesis, provide an outline and then do the citations, so I should be done by Sunday or maybe before. Here are my final paragraphs: 

            Hrothgar's proto-capitalistic gift giving is a motivating factor for Beowulf's actions. If the king had no reputation for paying his warriors well, Beowulf would not have come to help him against Grendel. Proof that Beowulf is fighting for profit is shown in the textual weight that is given to his list of material rewards as opposed to any descriptions of a sense of moral satisfaction over having defeated what is considered to be an immoral enemy. Beowulf relates that Hrothgar "promised me reward … should I do a noble deed." Beowulf is being paid to behave in an honourable manner. The fact that he enjoys his violent métier does not mean that he would do it for nothing. 

            Beowulf is offered payment to kill someone who cares nothing for treasure. This fact about Grendel renders him as Other more than his savagery. Beowulf shows he can match Grendel for ferocity, but Grendel demonstrates a lack of regard for material treasure that sets him apart from everyone in the poem. If he was simply a beast, his indifference to the acquisition of wealth could be dismissed with analogies such as "pearls before swine" but this is not the case. Unlike an animal Grendel shows that he recognizes wealth by only brutalizing the wealthy. Millenia before Jean-Jacques Rousseau allegedly coined the phrase, Grendel is motivated to literally "eat the rich". 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of pork while watching season 2, episode 6 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jethro says he is ready to court a woman but Jed and Granny aren't sure. Jed makes him run 25 kilometers, and swim eight kilometers to see if it takes his edge off. It doesn't and so Jed explains a few things to get him ready. He says he'll know he's found the right one when he hears music. Then Jane Hathaway calls about an envelope that she left at the house. Jed decides to send Jethro over with the envelope because there are lots of pretty girls at the bank. 

            At the bank Milburn Drysdale is going over with Jane the expenses for last night's business dinner and says that they had a guest speaker named CD Lavern who gave a demonstration of the 27.5% depletion allowance benefits. Just then the voluptuous burlesque dancer Chickadee Lavern storms into his office demanding her payment for the dance where she took off everything except for 27.5%. 

            Meanwhile Jethro enters Jane's office and is greeted by Jane's attractive assistant secretary Janet Trego. Janet starts flirting with him and he leans his ear towards her to hear if there's the music Jed talked about but there isn't. Then Jane comes out and he listens to her as well. Janet asks him to try her again but Jane jealously drags her away. 

            Back in Drysdale's office he is paying Chickadee while she tells him about her specialty act where she busts out of a big egg. She demonstrates how she sticks a transistor radio in her bra but Drysdale leads her out of his office. When she walks into Jane's office Jethro sees her and hears the music, so he tells Chickadee she's the one. She thinks he means he's seen her act. He drags her to the car and she thinks he's taking her to perform her act. When they get to the mansion she's impressed and says she's always wanted to do a private engagement in a Beverly Hills mansion and she's ready to get started. But the Clampetts think she means a wedding engagement and they want to get to know her first. She says she's looking forward to working in this beautiful mansion. Jed tells her she'd be working with Granny but Chickadee thinks they mean as part of a strip tease act. 

            Jed has a private talk with Chickadee to find out in a roundabout way how old she is but she's still talking about her act and says she started out 18 years ago in Burlesque in New York when she first broke out of the egg. Jed thinks she comes from a town called Burlesque and that she thinks she came from an egg. 

            Chickadee goes to talk with Elly May and she gets along very well with her critters. When she sees Elly's pet raccoon Elmer take a grape out of her breast pocket, she gets an idea for a new strip tease act where Elmer would untie her bows while sitting on her shoulder. Drysdale and Jane arrive to tell Jed she's the wrong girl for Jethro. Chickadee walks up with Elmer on her shoulder and starts talking about her new act. Drysdale says she's hired for a convention and drives her away. 

            Chickadee was played by the great, sexy and comical scene stealer, Barbara Nichols. She won the Miss Long Island, Miss Dill Pickle, and the Miss Welder beauty contests in 1953. She became a pin-up model and a burlesque dancer. She appeared as eye-candy in a few movies in the late 1950s and then worked mainly on television. She played Ginger on the short-lived sitcom "Love That Jill". She co-starred in the movies "The Human Duplicators", "The King and Four Queens", "The Naked and the Dead", "The Pajama Game", and "Sweet Smell of Success". She lost her spleen in one car accident and damaged her liver in another, causing her to develop liver disease and eventually die at the age of 47. 

           

            

            I searched for bedbugs and almost missed one in a place they wouldn't normally be. It was between the head of my bed and the wall in the corner lying in the bedbug-killing dust that pest control put down months ago. They normally try to get high above that stuff and so this one might have been dead or ill but it was also full of blood.