Bobs Watson

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

            I ran through singing "Con c'est con ces conséquences" by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation "Can't Stand This Circumstance. I uploaded them to Christian's Translations and published them on my blog. Tomorrow I'll start learning his song "En rire de peur d'être obligée d'en pleurer" (The Cure for Crying is Always Laughter). 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I swept my bedroom and living room floors just in case the city health inspector comes next week. I don't think my place is unsanitary but I'd better make a good impression to convince him of just how wrong the landlord is. 

            After writing the above, I checked my email and James Forde the health inspector sent me an email saying that he's spoken to my landlord and he will be arranging for pest control to come. It looks like the letter he advised me to send did the trick. It also looks like there will be no inspection after all.

            The rest of our Medieval Literature course will be spent studying the anonymous author known as "The Pearl Poet" or "The Gawain Poet." Before lunch I downloaded several versions of his four poems, but haven't checked yet to see which translations from Middle English I prefer. There's one version that's a prose translation but I don't like the idea of translating poetry as prose. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. Friday drivers are crazy. If you're riding a bike and a driver cuts extremely close to get by because they are in a rush, chances are it's a Friday. I stopped at Freshco again to buy blueberries, raspberries and bananas. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:30. 

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

            It turned out that the books that I downloaded about the Pearl Poet didn't have full poems in them but only analysis of certain samples. I was able to find a translation of "Pearl" in verse. Of the poems "Patience" and "Cleanness" I could found the original Middle English in verse but only prose versions of translated texts. I'll have to make do with those. 

            I started reading "Pearl". As far as I can tell the Pearl being referenced is the speaker's soul which he lost touch with when he was born but will only reunite with when he dies. But then he meets his Pearl in the form of a woman and has a dialogue with her. 

            I roasted three chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching season 2, episode 20 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Elly May's pets are overrunning the house and Jed figures that if he finds Elly a beau then she'll stop obsessing over animals. He calls Milburn Drysdale to say that he wants to look for a son-in-law. Drysdale tasks Jane with finding all of the best men at the bank but she only chooses one. Fred Penrod from the accounting department has just started working that day and hasn't done any work yet, but Drysdale is promising him a vice presidency if he marries Elly. 

            Meanwhile Lafe Crick returns with a pawpaw tree from Tennessee because he wants to use planting it as an excuse to dig for the money that he still thinks Jed keeps buried somewhere in the back yard. Lafe wants to dig the hole they already filled in because they struck oil and didn't want it. Then Lafe hears that a young man named Fred is coming to court Elly. Lafe tells Jed that he should let his son marry Elly. Jed asks if that's the one they call Weasel who is always in jail. Lafe confirms that's the one. Jed thinks Elly can do better. 

            When Fred arrives on his scooter Lafe makes sure he's the first one to greet him. He tells Fred he's Elly's twin brother and that Elly's as big as he is. Fred is about to leave when Elly comes out to meet him. Jethro asks if he can ride Fred's scooter and he says he can, but Jethro thinks its the kind of scooter one rides by pushing on the ground with a foot. Elly and Fred go to the parlour together and hit it off. They dance while Skipper the chimpanzee plays the piano. 

            Lafe calls back home to get his son to come out to Beverly Hills. Granny catches him talking about trying to get Jed's money and she hits him over the head with a big cast iron skillet. It bends the pan out of shape but Lafe barely feels it. 

            Later they find Lafe digging the hole. He says he struck oil four times but plugged up the holes. Lafe doesn't realize that oil is worth money. But plugging up the holes causes the oil to fill the swimming pool.

            Fred was played by Bobs Watson, whose first film appearance was when he was a baby in "The Dawn of Life". He was part of a large family and most of his siblings were also child actors. They became known as "the first family of Hollywood". He played Pee Wee in the movie Boys Town. He had the ability to cry real tears anytime he was asked to. A few years after this episode he gave up acting and studied theology. He became a Methodist minister. He said he was inspired to become a minister by Spencer Tracy while working on Boys Town. He did however make acting appearances from time to time even into the 1990s when he died. 

            

           I searched for bedbugs and caught one crawling on the upper right corner of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed.