Joseph Depew

            On Friday morning I started memorizing "J'ai pas d'regrets" (I've no regrets) by Boris Vian. 

            I ran through singing and playing my English adaptation of "Haine pour aime" (Hate For Mate) by Serge Gainsbourg and published it on my Christian's Translations blog. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on organizing the notes for my Chiac essay. It's interesting that English nouns are presented as feminine in Chiac in the way that they are preceded by the article "la" while in formal French an Anglicism would tend to be masculine and fronted by "le". "La" is easier to say and sounds more like "the" and so it furthers the idea that Chiac speaking is about convenience and comfort. But then when choosing the equivalent of the English indefinite article "a", Chiac speakers seem to choose the masculine "un" rather than the feminine "une" for English nouns. Again it's a matter of convenience. "Un" sounds more like "a" while "une" takes more work to say. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. The Bloor bike lane had been salted and so I wasn't assaulted by any treacherous ice. There were some slippery patches of frozen snow along the edge of Queen Street when I was trying to ease past cars that were waiting too close to the curb at traffic lights. 

            I stopped at Freshco again because yesterday I'd forgotten to buy berries and mouthwash. I got two packs of blueberries and a double pack of raspberries. The strawberries were extremely expensive and looked rotten already. Since I had so few items I didn't use a basket and carried the berries to the personal items section. But when I bent over to get the mouthwash one of the packs of blueberries fell and spilled. I tried to pick them up but several were strewn far under the shelf and so I gave up on that and went back to the fruit section to replace it. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I've been at that time in three weeks. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:10. 

            I worked for another hour or so on my essay. I observed that in Chiac, "à cause" is used exactly like "because" whereas in French it would be "à cause de" (because of). But "à cause" is easier to say than "because". 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 2, episode 13 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Miss Potts brings Jethro home from his Grade 6 class and tells Jed and Granny that he is expelled from her school because he's ruining it. Granny starts yelling and chases her away. 

            Meanwhile Elly's animals keep wandering over to the Drysdale property and Mrs. Mildred Drysdale threatens to call the police and have all of them taken away. Then Elly's dog starts barking at her and she backs away, falling into the pool. 

            The Clampetts feel they don't fit in and decide to go back to Tennessee, so they go to Drysdale's bank with four sacks to take out Jed's $40 million. They find Drysdale being fitted for a suit by his Italian tailor. When the Clampetts come into his office and say they are leaving, Jethro and Elly head for the vault to get the money. Drysdale chases after them and tells the tailor to measure Jed for a suit. But when he puts the tape around Jed, he thinks he's trying to tie him up and hangs him on a coat hook.

            Drysdale promises to fix the problems caused by his wife and Potts. He threatens both women financially, telling Mildred she'll get nothing for Christmas and reminds Potts that he holds the mortgage on her school. Potts is forced to tell Jed that she expelled Jethro so she could come to the Clampett home and tutor him privately so she could be nearer to Jed, because he's captured her fancy. Mildred, Potts, and Jane are going to teach Granny to play bridge so she can join Mildred's bridge club. But when they ask to see Granny's cards because she's the dummy, Granny gets mad and wrecks the game. 

            Drysdale invites Jed and Jethro to play golf at his country club. He shows them lockers containing their golf clothes and tells them he'll meet them in the steam room before they play. But Jethro finds the locker too small to change in and they think the locker room is a hallway, so they go with their clothes on into the steam room, which they think is a very hot theatre. They come home with their clothing shrunk. 

            The whole family is very unhappy and start getting ready to head back to Tennessee when Drysdale, Jane, Janet, Mildred, and Potts walk in singing, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". It changes the mood and the Clampetts join in. 

            This episode was directed by Joseph Depew, who started out as a child actor and at the age of ten starred in the silent movie "Timothy's Quest". He began working as an assistant director in his early thirties. He directed 144 episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found one adult on the wall above the head of my bed, another on the wall at the foot of my bed and a baby in small hole in the wall above the side of the bed. The landlord said weeks ago he would call pest control but he still hasn't.