Peter Leeds

            On Saturday morning I skipped French memorizations and cut song practice short so I could try to complete the two assignments that were due today. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked steadily from 7:45 finishing copying text from my lecture slides. I was done that at around 11:15 and then I started separating all of the text relating to Outer Circle English countries and putting it in a separate document. Outer Circle countries are former British colonies that have now returned to their native languages but tend to retain English as an official secondary language. Once I'd done that I started another document in which to create a five-item listicle out of the information. I managed to throw a sloppy one together and hand it in fifteen minutes before the deadline. Here's what I did: 

                             Listicle of English Hybrid Languages in the Outer Circle of English 

            1. I list Jamaica first only because it is not widely considered to be an outer circle country, but rather an inner circle country because it was fully colonized by England and the Indigenous languages were displaced. But because of Jamaica's prominent population of African descendants, its African roots prevail linguistically in the form of an English-African creole called Jamaican Patois. 

            2. Nigeria and Ghana, as well as many other African countries come second on this list because the use of Pidgin English serves as a bridge between the many tribes that populate all of these countries. As many tribes have rudimentary English as their common language but very different native languages, Pidgin English allows for communication that ironically may not have occurred if not for the initial dominance of English during colonization. These countries follow Jamaica's creole on my list because some scholars think that pidgins eventually become creoles upon standardization. 

            3. Hinglish is common in cities of northern India and the diaspora. Both India and Pakistan use English as their secondary official language, linked to class and paid schools. Hindi dominates as the first language of India and even if English were fully displaced it would probably take over as the language of class, displacing the provincial languages on a national level. English speakers are considered elitist by the lower classes because English is required for university, leaving poorer communities in limbo. Except for the Dalit who consider English at least symbolically to aid them in resisting their untouchable status. 

            4. Singapore both embraces and officially resists Singlish, which is important culturally but not good for business interactions internationally. But businesses within Singapore recognize the value of Singlish. Most Singaporeans consider international English to be vital. Immigrants from diverse nations with diverse languages find themselves packed into Housing Development Board apartment complexes where their only way of communicating is with Singlish, because English as a common base has leant itself to the evolution of Singlish. The government acknowledges the value of using Singlish for public service ads and alerts to communicate quickly with the masses. Singlish is probably the most codified of all the English hybrid languages in the world. 

            5. I list Bangladesh last because it has uniquely broken free of calling English an official language. However, English continues to be important in Bangladesh for success in finance and education. Also the hybrid Bengali-English dialect of Banglish is also commonly spoken, especially among the educated. 

            The other assignment was also due at 14:00 but it was impossible for me to meet that deadline. We get ten free grace days and I haven't used any yet, so I'll take one extra day for that assignment. 

            I weighed 84 kilos before lunch. That's the least I've weighed in the early afternoon in a long time. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I came home to pee and then went out again to pay for my phone plan. I had to wait behind three people and one of them took half an hour to buy a new phone. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of red grapes, a bunch of organic bananas, spoon size shredded wheat, a large and a small container of skyr, and a bag of kettle chips. 

            I weighed 83.9 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:28. 

            I went on the U of T website and made my first try at the other assignment that was due today. It's an exercise on usage and citation. There were a lot of questions about sentence structure and I thought I'd just answer all of them based on what I think I recognize as a good or bad sentence. I only got 67% right. I'm allowed as many tries as I want so I'll give it another few shots tomorrow before 14:00. Next time I'll follow the links and read the examples. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 28 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This story is a continuation of the previous one when Mr. Drysdale's partners Lucas and Pendleton first meet Jed Clampett and believe he is a financial wizard. When they hear him tell someone to buy "crawdad" they think it's the name of a stock and try to get it. 

            This episode begins with an express truck delivering a large crate from cousin Pearl in Tennessee to the Clampett mansion. The driver, Harry Ledge can hardly budge the crate but Jethro easily lifts it off the truck. Harry is surprised to hear the crate is full of food and tells them they can get anything they want in Beverly Hills. Granny tells him to try to get possum livers. When he sees Skipper the chimp come out of the house riding a goat, he decides it's time to leave because he's afraid of what might come out next. Among the items in the crate are four buckets of live crawdads in crick water.

            Meanwhile Lucas and Pendleton go to ask Drysdale to let them in on the Crawdad market. Drysdale keeps telling them that crawdads are just food but they just think he's being secretive. 

            Jethro takes a bucket of crawdads to give to the Drysdales from Granny, but when their chef says, "Must be a crab" Jethro thinks he's insulting Granny and he hits him. Jed calls Drysdale's office to clear up the matter. Lucas and Pendleton are passing his secretary Jane as she says, "Yes Mr. Clampett, you are splitting your crawdad stock with Drysdale. Four tin cans from Pearl. Keep the crawdads in crick water until needed." The two men sneak away, thinking they've just gained valuable top-secret information. 

            Meanwhile Jed is reading one of the newspapers that Pearl used to wrap the food she sent. One of them reads, "Government puts three men on the moon" and it's a reference to stopping local stills.

            Granny asks Jethro to work out mathematically how to make their supply of crawdads last the month until the next crate arrives. 

            Lucas and Pendleton now think that Crawdad is a top-secret military project. They think Jed has developed and is manufacturing an armoured amphibious fighting machine. Lucas is a former military intelligence officer and he's worked out that "Crawdad" is an acronym for "Classified, Reconnaissance, and Weapon-capable, Deep-sea, Amphibious Dredge." He also thinks that "four tin cans from Pearl" means four battleships from Pearl Harbour. Lucas and Pendleton want in on the ground floor. Lucas thinks Jed's crawdad factory is in a place called Crick Water. 

            Lucas has found out that Harry Ledge delivered a package to Jed and he has him come to his office. Harry says he's an amateur detective and since he needs to go back to the Clampett house to get a signature for the delivery, he can bring them back more information. Harry goes around to the back door to the kitchen where he sees Granny mixing chemicals and Jethro doing figures. Granny tells Harry about putting men on the moon and Harry steals one of Jethro's pages of ciphers. On his way out he meets Elly May with her bobcat and a possum. He thinks it's a regular cat and a rat and that Elly has developed a feed that turns animals into giants. He goes back to tell Lucas and Pendleton. They think Jethro has developed a new system of mathematics in which 2+2 = 5. The three men decide that this is all too big for them and they swear not to breathe a word of it to anyone.

            Harry was played by Peter Leeds, who accompanied Bob Hope on 14 USO tours and appeared on television more than 8000 times. He played George Colton on the sitcom Pete and Gladys. He worked with Stan Freberg in performing several song parodies, as well as on Freberg's radio show. He played Tenner Smith on the western series Trackdown. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found none.