Jim Backus

            On Monday I got up at 4:00 to pee and when I came back I saw a small bedbug on my bed, then another on my pillow. They looked healthy. I've got to call the landlord and see if I can get the urgency of this matter through his thick skull. 

            I uploaded "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian to Christian's Translations and began preparing it for blog publication. 

            I looked for the chords for "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal) by Serge Gainsbourg, and all the ones posted are the same. The ones I've found fit the song, except that for me the chord changes are at the end of each line rather than at the beginning of the next. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            It was raining a bit when I left for class but let up when I was halfway there. 

            I talked about the peer review assignment with Chuanqi and Frank outside the classroom. I said that I suspect that U of T is using Peer Scholar as a sneaky way of getting free scab labour from students so it doesn't have to pay T.As. Frank thought it was very possible because there is a TA shortage. When I talked about the Peer Scholar problem of not being able to save work, he said that one can paste any text into all the boxes to act as place holders if one wants to save and take a break. Then the stupid program just thinks you are done and you can come back later and edit. 

            In the lecture:

            Susan Ferguson coined the term "ficto linguistics". Dialect in dialogue doesn't have to be realistic. In Wuthering Heights Joseph has a thick Yorkshire accent and is deeply judgmental and religious. Joseph is made to be an outlier. Nelly the narrator speaks in standard English. No one knows where Heathcliff comes from. 

            We looked at Sam Selvon's "Turning Christian." He was a janitor and writer in residence at the University of Calgary. He died in 1994. He wrote about encounters between people who have been through a lot. 

            Tanty resists the mob. 

            I said the potential connecting factor between the two warring cultures is Christianity. The former slaves are already Christian and if the Hindus convert, much of the tension will be averted. The name "Cross Crossing" is symbolic of Christianity and of a clash and any encounter. The common factor between the former slaves and the indentured labourers can't be labour, because the slaves never had a choice. 

            The story can be compared to "Duty" by Mulk Raj Anand. 

            Professor Carol Percy tells a student that in a Percy class coherence is not essential. 

            We took a break. 

            Grammar: new English vs old. The multiple meanings of grammar. 

            "Mistakes were made" shows the usefulness of the passive voice. 

            Prescriptivism terms of correctness. Lay vs lie as a dig against women novelists. 

            "Person of colour" is considered appropriate, while "coloured person" is not. 

            The difference between spoken and written language. 

            Whom vs who. 

            In the supermarket, the sign reading "ten items or less" is incorrect. 

            We use "who" when it's the subject and "whom" when it's the object. 

            Her favourite usage manual is Miriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage.

            "Heteronormative" is only used in academic circles. 

            "Whom" is disappearing.

            Prescriptive grammar is the secret handshake of the hyper educated. 

            Creoles contain less redundancy than old languages. 

            There is not much difference between standard British and Canadian. 

            "At the weekend." Australia uses "different to" instead of "different from". 

            Got vs gotten. "Gotten" went away and then returned in the US. 

            The corpus of web-based English is better for grammar searches. 

            "Snuck" or "sneak" is less codified and more variable. 

            Multiple negation is common in non-standard English. 

            Creoles and pidgins are becoming similar. 

            She showed a map of where creoles are prominent but it seemed to be only of former English colonies. I asked if other languages have creoles and she said they do but this was just focused on English. 

            When I got home I called my landlord to ask him when he is going to deal with the bedbugs. I expected to be argued with and blamed and was determined that if that happened I was finished with those games and would immediately opt for calling the Board of Health. But he surprised me by immediately saying he would call pest control. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 16:05. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:36. 

            I wrote my Exit Slip comments on today's class: 

            I've always been confused about when to use "lay" or "laid", "sneaked" or "snuck", and "who" or "whom". Knowing that we use "who" when it's the subject and "whom" when it's the object doesn't immediately help because then I have to stop and try to remember the difference between subject and object. In a way it's a relief to hear that "whom" is disappearing. But I wouldn't be comfortable saying "To who do you refer?" Then again I would more naturally just ask, "Who are you referring to?" which I guess is also bad grammar. There is also "brang" versus "brought". I would normally say "brought" but in a song I translated called "Boomerang" I needed "love I brang" to rhyme with "boomerang". 

            It's interesting that creoles and pidgins are becoming similar. 

            There are some extremely clever moments of writing in "Turning Christian". Raman's misreading of "The Lord's Prayer" line "hallowed be thy name" as "hollowed be thy name" is even funnier than the old joke that god's name must be "Howard" because in "The Lord's Prayer" it says, "Howard be thy name." But the very act of Raman learning the prayer by rote already illustrates the hollowness of the name. Then that hollowness is taken to a much deeper level when we see that Jaggernath taught Raman to say the prayer that way, without understanding it either. Outside the story, adding further to to the hollowness of the lord's name is that "The Lord's Prayer" is empty of the actual Judeo-Christian name of the lord. 

            The high brown girl is the mystical hinge of the story. She's a visitation from outside. She floats between the two cultures. It is possible that she is actually half Indian and half African, although from Norbert's reaction to her she probably looks more African, but with lighter skin. In the early 20th Century the term for half white and half black was "high yellow". To call someone "brown" would usually mean they were of South Asian descent, especially to someone like Selvon. At first the reader thinks she is on the side of the mob but then Norbert picks up that she represents something above the mob. The fact that she chases the trail of an ellipsis to follow Changoo and Raman renders her mysterious and even otherworldly. 

            I spent about an hour doing research for my essay on Beowulf's Grendel as a class revolutionary. I think I have enough information from searching on line and now I'm going to start drawing evidence from the text. Grendel does literally eat the rich. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching episode 31 of The Beverly Hillbillies.

            This story begins with Granny in the doldrums. Her family observes that she's been that way since Pearl left. This is the first we've heard that Pearl is gone. She does disappear from The Beverly Hillbillies when she begins starring in Petticoat Junction. But she is back with the Clampetts in a later episode than this, so either the order of airing has clashed with the order of writing or Pearl is just away somewhere. 

            Finally Jed perks Granny up when he decides to throw a party. He goes to invite Mr. Drysdale and Jane Hathaway and the party is that night. But then Drysdale receives a visit from his boss Marty Van Ransohoff, who promotes him to the board of directors for having landed the Clampett account. He invites Drysdale to dinner on his yacht but also wants Jed Clampett to come. Drysdale doesn't want Ransohoff to meet Jed because he lied that Jed was sophisticated and got rich from being a financial wizard. Ransohoff despises liars and so Drysdale wants to keep him from the truth because he is afraid of being demoted to running one of his banks in Alaska. Drysdale tells Ransohoff that Clampett can't go on a yacht because he gets seasick. 

            Ransohoff hears the Clampetts are having a party and he wants an invitation. Drysdale says he'll go talk to Jed about it but his real purpose is to get him to call off the party. But while Drysdale is gone Jane tells Ransohoff that she has an invitation and so he could come as her date. Drysdale avoids the party because he is certain he will be doomed when Ransohoff meets Clampett. But when Ransohoff arrives at the Clampett mansion with Jane and meets the Clampetts, he thinks that they are throwing a hillbilly theme party and he is delighted. He gets them to give Jane and himself some hillbilly clothes to wear and they have a great time square dancing. Ransohoff thinks that the stuffed crow and buzzard eggs are really stuffed pheasant and quail eggs. 

            Ransohoff was played by Jim Backus, who studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. He worked first in radio and then in movies. He was the narrator of A Dangerous Profession. He co-starred in Deadline USA, Pat and Mike, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, His first big part was as James Dean's father in Rebel Without a Cause. He became the voice of Mr. Magoo and his most famous part was as Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island. He had a minor hit with the comedy recording "Delicious" in 1958 in which he plays someone getting increasingly more drunk. He co-starred in the film, The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County. He said, "Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success." On television he also co-starred in the sitcom I Married Joan. 

            I searched for bedbugs and didn't find any.