Thomas Browne Henry

            On Tuesday morning I couldn't sleep from when I went to bed at 0:30 to when I got up at 5:00. I had dozed off in front of the computer for about half an hour on Tuesday night and I often find after dozing and waking up that I can't sleep when I go to bed. As I lay in bed I was thinking about the Dickens character Steerforth being a Byronic hero. 

            I listened twice to "Fugue" by Boris Vian. It's kind of a mad avant-garde song with a lot non musical repetitions of sounds that play with the lyrics. I memorized the first six lines. There aren't any actual verses. 

            I memorized the second verse of "Le bonheur c'est malheureux" (Happiness is Very Sad) by Serge Gainsbourg. There is only the third verse left to learn, since the first verse is repeated twice after that. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on my essay but I was very sleepy and kept dozing off. I only got a bit of editing done.

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with old English cheddar and a glass of limeade with orange juice. 

            I took a siesta after lunch and slept half an hour longer than usual. 

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon to Bloor and Ossington and on the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought two packs of five-year-old cheddar and a jug of orange juice. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:47. 

            I worked for a little over an hour on my essay. I jumped around to edit various parts but this is the main paragraph that I made progress on: 

            Jacques Lacan says that in dreams, "the formation of the I is symbolized by a fortress." For Jane Eyre, the Moor House is the fortress that Lacan describes, as she is denied entry and locked out (Brontë 385). In the dream that Lacan shows us, the fortress is "surrounded by marshes." Moor House is named such because it is in the middle of the moorland. Lacan continues to explain that "the subject flounders in quest of the ... remote inner castle." Corresponding with this image, Jane finds the Moor House by staggering through the rain and across the marshes while following a dim but constant light that is sometimes obscured and lost along the way. Lacan would say that the structure of the Moor House symbolizes Jane's Id. She stoops at a small window to observe two young ladies wearing mourning crape. Once again there is an air of death in the background of the reflection of herself that Jane finds, but this time Jane herself is in danger of dying if she cannot be seen by her twin imagos. She does not know their faces but feels that she recognizes them intimately, and like Jane they are not handsome. Completing the initial recognition of her reflection in these others, Jane uses the exact same words to describe the posture of her reflections as when she first sees her reflection in Helen Burns: they are "bent over a book" (Brontë 379-382). 

            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 4, episode 26 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jethro's newest thing is that he wants to become an astronaut and so he has plucked a large number of chickens to make wings, then he has strapped several rockets to his back. His idea is that once he is in the sky he will use the wings to glide back down. Jed cuts his fuse just before blast-off and asks him why he wants to be an astronaut. He says he wants to do it for the glory. Jed reminds him that if he blasts off from their back yard nobody will know that he did it. He suggests that Jethro get some advice from Jane Hathaway on how to get publicity. 

            Jed calls Mr. Drysdale but he tells Jed that Jane quit being his secretary at the bank. We know from the previous episode that she quit because Drysdale fired her and humiliated her based on a misunderstanding. When he realized his mistake and wanted to rehire her, Jane was too angry to return. Now she wants to fulfill her long held secret dream of becoming a folk singer. She brings her guitar and demonstrates a song for Jed. It sounded pretty good to me and I couldn't tell if it was traditional or not. Something about "sand upon a mountain" and "sing to the moon." 

            Jed wants Jane to lure Jethro away from being an astronaut towards a safer kind of glory, like folk singing. Jethro blasts off and splashes down in the pool. 

            Jed has sent Elly May over to the bank to replace Jane as Drysdale's secretary, but she has brought several critters along. When Drysdale's client Harvey Matthews comes by to make a deposit and sees a chimpanzee typing, he takes his business elsewhere. 

            Jane brings talent agent Kingsley Sherman over and Jethro demonstrates his Bodinophone. But he gets electrocuted and what he sings while being shocked is what the agent likes. He tells Jane that she and Jethro need to becomes a duet like Sonny and Cher. We next see Jane and Jethro in wigs and clothes looking like Sonny and Cher. Jethro decides to go back to trying to be an astronaut and Jane lights his fuse because she is done as well. 

            Matthews was played by Thomas Browne Henry, who started out at the Pasadena Playhouse before he broke into films in 1948. He was often typecast as an army officer fighting aliens in science fiction films. When he retired from movies in the 1970s he returned to the Pasadena Playhouse. 

            For the third night in a row I found no bedbugs.