On Thursday morning I didn't sleep very well because of having drunk coffee for the first time in a month. I must have slept a little because I dreamed of white cake with chocolate frosting. The recipe was somehow connected to my research for the upcoming test and there was a song: "Everybody loves to have a little cake / Everybody loves to have a little fun."
I memorized the third verse of "De velours et de soie" (The Silk and the Velvet) by Boris Vian. That's half the song.
I memorized the chorus and the first verse of "I'm the Boy" by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 83.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in eleven days. It's weird because I felt so heavy.
I worked for over an hour on my essay, just editing bits and pieces here and there. I only have a little more than eight pages and I need at least ten.
I weighed 83.8 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst and I stopped at Freshco on the way home. I bought five bags of grapes, three packs of raspberries, a bunch of bananas, a jug of orange juice, salsa, and a can each of black beans and kidney beans. I looked for salt but all they had on the salt shelf was course sea salt, course kosher salt, and pickling salt. But I checked the international foods section and found some free flowing Greek sea salt. My cashier was new and being trained by another more experienced cashier and so she took a long time on every item. I wasn't in a hurry anyway and she had to learn sometime.
I weighed 83.1 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I've been at that time this year.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:30.
I worked on my essay for over an hour, making mostly minor changes, and I didn't make it more than one line longer. I also did some research for next Tuesday's test but that wasn't very fruitful either.
I had a salad of avocadoes, the last of my tomatoes, cucumber, scallion, mushrooms, sunflower seeds, and balsamic vinaigrette while watching season 6, episode 14 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Colonel Blake comes to visit the Clampetts about Jethro taking his aptitude test before joining the army reserves. Granny confronts him about attacking the Culpepper plantation because she still thinks it was a real battle between the South and the North. Jed doesn't want Blake to tell Granny that it was just a movie rehearsal and so he tells her that General Grant ordered the charge. Granny wants him to prove it and so Blake goes to get the actor who plays Grant. At first the fake Grant doesn't want to do it until he hears about Granny having a quarter of Jed's wealth, which amounts to about $15 million. He comes over to court Granny but then he is distracted by Elly May and so Granny flips him into the pool.
Allowances are made for Jethro's limited education and he passes the reserve test. Blake swears him in. Then the fake General Grant shows up and he and Blake discuss the Civil War movie. Jethro hears them talking about attacking the Culpepper plantation again and he goes home to tell Granny. Granny goes there with a squirrel gun and shoots Grant off his horse again.
On Wednesday I got up at around 6:00 and got to Susana Wald's house at 7:30. She made me an avocado sandwich and after breakfast we loaded a couple of heavy things onto her van. Then we headed for her storage unit and took a load up in the elevator. But then she realized that she'd forgotten her key and so we had to wait until 9:30 for the office to open. We were finished in no time, then she gave me a cheque for $45 and drove me to the Pape subway station. I caught the Don Mills bus to Don Mills Centre to pick up my daughter from Nancy but she was an hour late. My daughter and I explored a toy store for a while and then we headed for my place. We shopped at the fruit market and she picked out some okra and fava beans. I cooked the beans and she ate some of them. Later we went to the Sheppard subway station to meet her mother.
On Wednesday morning I memorized the second verse of "De velours et de soie" (The Silk and the Velvet) by Boris Vian.
I finished posting "The Interview", which is my translation of "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I'll start learning his song, "I'm the Boy".
I discovered yesterday that I didn't have my 1990 and 1991 journal documents on the new computer. I'd thought that I'd transferred all the files but I guess not. I found partial versions of both on an old usb drive but I had to wake up my old computer to get the full versions.
I weighed 84 kilos before breakfast. I had coffee for the first time in a month. I also had my first protein when I put some horrible coconut yogourt on my bananas and blueberries. It was tolerable with honey.
I worked a bit on my essay but I was feeling tired, so I alternated that with going through my lecture notes to harvest the ideas that I voiced during the seminars. I gathered those onto a separate document to give me ideas for what to write on when I do my online test next Tuesday. Before lunch I was able to add a bit to my essay intro:
Society is symbolized by Victor Frankenstein, who tries to draw a direct line between external characteristics and internal qualities, thereby imposing restrictions on learning and existence.
Existence in society depends upon learning and I will begin by pointing out, with the help of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that the creature's secret process of achieving literacy is analogous to the difficulties faced by women who strive for education.
I weighed 83.9 kilos before lunch. I had avocadoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, and barbecue flavoured sunflower seeds in a salad with balsamic vinaigrette.
I tried to take a siesta and I might have dozed off briefly but I was mostly awake for an hour and so I got up half an hour early. When I did it was raining hard outside, then there was thunder and then there was suddenly a snow shower. Early spring always has an identity crisis. The precipitation didn't let up until a little after 16:00, so by then it was too late to get ready and go for a bike ride.
I was caught up on my journal at 16:35.
I weighed 83.7 kilos at 16:40.
I spent more than two hours on my essay and a bit of time on writing down ideas for the test. Here's the rest of a tentative essay outline that I started earlier:
I will show further that the connection between women and the creature goes deeper than their common educational limitations. Both are judged by appearance and rejected when there is an absence of beauty. These aesthetics based criteria are imposed by society, which I will show to be personified by Victor Frankenstein. I will then give evidence that these criteria of aesthetic judgement are based on something akin to the pseudo science of physiognomy, which believes that physical features reflect the inner nature. This judgement as applied to Victor's creation leads to him being called a "monster", which ironically begins the process of the creature becoming a monster. I will then illustrate with the help of Michel Foucault that the conclusion of monstrosity is equivalent in society's determination to criminality. When society creates criminals it plants the means of its own destruction and I will show that this is exactly what Victor does to himself by building a monster out of his creature. I will conclude by returning to the comparison between the monster and women, ending with a warning from Mary Wollstonecraft that society is in danger of making monsters of women by excluding them and is therefore sewing the seeds of its own destruction.
I steamed the rest of the broccoli and had it in a salad with avocadoes, cucumber, scallions, mushrooms, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, and balsamic vinaigrette. I ate while watching season 6, episode 13 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
This story is a continuation of the previous episode. Granny still believes the Civil War re-enactment is a real resurgence of the war between the states. She, Jethro and Elly go to the Culpepper plantation to help the Confederates fight off the Union soldiers that have the place surrounded. The actor who is supposed to play General Grant is hungover and on top of that he doesn't know how to ride a horse to lead the charge. He keeps falling off his horse and then Granny shoots him off. He doesn't seem hurt and Granny concludes that she must have shot Grant in his liver which has been fortified by 150 years of drinking. He gets up and pulls out his pistol to charge for the plantation house. Granny shoots him in the back with a shotgun barrel full of Elly May's rock hard lady finger cookies. She comes and administers first aid to him by giving him some moonshine. They get drunk together and become the best of friends.
Grant was played by William Mims, who co-starred in The Day Mars Invaded Earth. He performed on stage and had supporting roles in movies and guest appearances on several TV shows. He founded the Hollywood Hackers Celebrity Golf Club.
For the twenty-sixth night in a row I found no bedbugs.
I didn't have to be at Sheridan College in Oakville until 9:00 and so I went for the 7:43 GO Train. But I had to buy a one-way ticket because I didn't have enough on me for the return, there was such a big line-up at the bank machine, and I had three minutes to catch my train. I had to step in front of some people in order to get my ticket on time. The Sheridan campus in Brampton was much more relaxed than the one in Oakville. I went to Oakville Place at lunchtime, cashed my cheque and bought some roast potatoes, some Cool Whip and a McDonald's pie. The teacher split at 14:00 and when I took a break at 14:30 all the students left. So I walked to the GO Station and caught the 15:30 train. I called Mike Copping and met him later on downtown. We talked a while and drove a while.
On Tuesday morning I memorized the first verse of "De velours et de soie" (The Silk and the Velvet) by Boris Vian.
I finished working out the chords for "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it in French and English. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and I should have it published on the blog tomorrow.
I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast.
I left for the final Bildungsroman seminar at 11:15.
There were three presentations. Isabelle and Nicolette spoke on the first half of Never Let Me Go. Nicolette was very hard to hear because she speaks in a quiet voice and on top of that she was wearing a mask.
Hailsham is a memory touchstone.
The story asks if anyone has free will.
I said the situation of the clones moving quietly towards their doom reminds me of World War I in which many young people did the same. There is also the fishing and lumber industries, which have incredibly high on the job death rates. About 100,000 fishermen around the world die at sea every year. People know the risks but they inherit these métiers and just move forward to a possible death anyway. Daisy agreed with my comparison.
I said that what struck me about the novel was the idea of these clones who exist just to provide organs for non-clones nonetheless thinking that certain non-clones such as tramps and sex workers are trash. I find this ironic because to become trash would save their lives by helping them slip under the radar of the society that wants to kill them.
Vera presented on the second half of the novel. She talked about characters like Ruth living in their imagination.
I said that ties in with Peter Pan and a little bit with David Copperfield. Imagination is a form of self defence against growing up. Dora in David Copperfield refuses to be anything more than a child wife and she dies in that state. The clones literally die shortly after growing up but there is a legitimate reason for Peter to fear adulthood because growing up is a kind of death. There is an entire life of living in the imagination that must end when someone becomes an adult.
Professor Jaffe reminded us of how much the character of Morningdale who is mentioned in Never Let Me Go, resembles Victor Frankenstein.
What is human?
When we speak of the other, other to what?
Bertha in Jane Eyre is repressed anger.
What we want from a novel is self recognition.
Bildungsromans are models for living.
Our humanity is found in copying humans in novels which is a clonelike thing to do.
Human envy. Creating the other that envies us. The other is arbitrary but realistic.
She talked about our test. We'll be doing it online next week. No citations are necessary but short quotes are great.
I mentioned that some of us didn't grow up with a keyboard in front of us and so we can't type as fast. She said we have the option of hand-writing our test and then scanning it. I think I might just go ahead and type mine. I just want her to consider that if mine's shorter than others then it's because I couldn't type as fast.
The professor told us that she's taught a lot of seminars on the Bildungsroman but we were exceptionally good. I told her that she was good at drawing us out. She said it doesn't always work but it did this time.
I stopped at Freshco on the way home and bought cilantro, soymilk, soy ice cream, and coffee. I chatted with the cashier Amelia. I observed that she's been there since Price Chopper and she told me that she was there before that when it was Food City. I didn't even know there was ever a Food City at that location. I mentioned how Freshco still has those pneumatic tubes at every cashier's post. She says hardly any stores have those anymore but it's the best system because no one wants to have too much money lying around so this way they can just send it away. I said it reminds me of the movie Brazil in which everything was done with pneumatic tubes. She hadn't seen it.
When I got home I realized that I'd forgotten to buy sea salt. I always seem to forget something at the supermarket these days.
I weighed 83.3 kilos at 15:15 and that's the lightest I've been at that time in three weeks.
I weighed 83.4 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I've been in twelve days.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:44.
I only had fifteen minutes to work on my essay before dinner. I wrote one sentence for my intro:
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the creature's rejection by his creator is a metaphor for the disenfranchisement of women and others who do not enjoy sufficient membership in society.
I steamed some broccoli and added it to an asparagus, cucumber, scallion, avocado, and grape tomato salad with the last of my raspberry vinaigrette. I ate while watching season 6, episode 12 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Jethro is going for his interview to join the army reserves, but his family thinks he's joining up. Granny still thinks the South won the war and so she makes Jethro wear her grandfather's Confederate uniform and take his squirrel gun. But Colonel Blake at the Reserves office has on the side been put in charge of a Civil War re-enactment. So when Jethro shows up dressed as a rebel, Blake thinks he's one of the actors that's been hired for the fake battle and recognizes his uniform as that of a Tennessee Volunteer. He tells Jethro that next Monday he'll be dug in with other Confederates at Culpepper Plantation and be surrounded by the Union Army. He takes Jethro's 150 year old squirrel gun away and says it's too modern and not authentic because with weapons like that the south would win the war. Jethro runs home to tell Granny that they're starting the Civil War all over again. She dresses up as a southern belle and goes down to the Reserve office with Elly to spy for the South. By that time the other actors have arrived and Granny eavesdrops while Blake goes over the plans with the actors who are dressed as Union soldiers, including the actor playing General Grant. Grant seems drunk to her and so she knows it's really him. Granny runs home, grabs her Confederate flag and heads off to warn the soldiers at Culpepper. This is continued in the next episode.
The sergeant who sits at the front desk at the Reserve office was played by Bobby Pickett, who was an actor and musician whose first backup band was The Beach Boys. He became the singer for Daren Bailes and the Wolf Eaters. He co-wrote the novelty hit "The Monster Mash" after one of his bandmates suggested that they do something to showcase Pickett's dead-on impersonation of Boris Karloff. Mel Taylor of The Ventures played drums, and Leon Russell played piano on the recording. Both Boris Karloff and Bob Dylan loved the song but it was banned by the BBC. Pickett auditioned for The Monkees but was turned down for being too old. He wrote several other parodies including "The Monsters' Holiday" and "Star Drek". He starred in "Monster Mash the Movie", and "It's a Bikini World".
I made it to twenty-five days without seeing a bedbug. That matches January of 2022. The record to beat is forty-nine days from the very beginning of this problem in early June of 2021 until the end of July of that year. I've got to go twenty-four more days before I start feeling a cautious assurance that they are gone from the building.
On Monday I woke up at 6:40 so I knew I was going to be late getting to Sheridan College in Oakville. I was out of the door in five minutes and caught the bus to the subway but, just as I thought, I was too late to catch the GO Train to Oakville that would have gotten me there on time. I had to wait for the 7:43 train and so I left a message on Warren's machine. When I got there I found that they hadn't needed me for the time I'd been absent anyway because they were doing critiques. I worked until 11:00 and then from 12:00 to 14:00 followed by another hour off. During that break I waited to talk with Warren about more bookings but he was too busy before I started my 15:00 to 18:00 class. Homer the instructor seemed either really sick or else he was fasting. He claimed that the class ended at 18:10 but didn't say that until 18:00 and so I missed the 18:30 train back to Toronto and had to wait an hour. When I got back I took the Queen car home.
On Monday morning I finished posting "Fugue State", my translation of "Fugue" by Boris Vian. I listened once to his song "De velours et de soie" (The Silk and the Velvet). Tomorrow I'll start memorizing it. This is a more straightforward song to learn than the Dadaist "Fugue" so it shouldn't take as long.
I worked out the chords to the first three verses of "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it finished tomorrow and ready to upload to Christian's Translations.
I weighed 83.9 kilos before breakfast and that's the lightest I've been in the morning in eight days.
I've been listening to the Tracy Chapman discography. She said she was inspired to play guitar by watching Hee Haw. I'd heard most of the songs from her premier album, but the first things I listened to were her demo tapes and the bootleg of her Montreux Jazz Festival performance, both of which are without a band. A lot of her songs like Fast Car sound better with just her playing guitar,
instead of the band she has on her first official album.
She's got a great voice and guitar style and her lyrics are meaningful but not very creative. In subject matter they are usually either about oppression or repression. Her fourth album is a step above her previous albums production wise and it has better musicians as well.
I worked on my essay:
Victor's rejection of his own invention based on aesthetics is atypical behaviour for the scientist that he purports to be. He has already spent several months gathering the parts of dead animals and humans from slaughterhouses, graves and dissecting tables. These materials are grotesque to him and he turns "in loathing" sometimes but persists in his work. The creature is ugly before animation and yet Victor brings him to life anyway. Victor should be acclimated to the ugly but when his creation gains movement he is now a being with internal nature and facial expressions. The creature then becomes subject to Victor's belief in the pseudoscience of physiognomy. He takes no scientific interest in the mental capabilities of his creation, which upon even the most superficial examination would reveal a mind that is a thing of beauty. But for Victor a mind cannot be beautiful without a beautiful face. The world must be simple with the inside and outside the same. Nothing can be hidden. The world must be literally as it appears. But the creature is proof that Victor's belief in appearances is a lie. It proves that it can reason and develop, and as Wollstonecraft says, "to bring into existence a creature... who could think and improve himself" is an "incalculable gift" that should not be called a curse. But Victor does see his creature as a curse and refuses responsibility for it, thereby forcing it out into the world before its mind has "been stored with knowledge or strengthened by principles" as Wollstonecraft says of the educational paucity that women experience. In making no effort to understand this creation's positive potential and to help him realize it, Victor excludes him from participation in society, making him a monster, and consequently damning him to a life akin to that of a wild animal. Any society that does this to a thinking being, Wollstonecraft warns, "can expect to see him at any moment transformed into a ferocious beast. ‘You have loosed the bull" she says "Do you expect that he won’t use his horns?’.
I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst and on the way home I stopped at Freshco because I was out of avocadoes. I also got some frozen lima beans.
I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:11.
I worked on my essay for almost two hours:
Denying the creature a mate or any kind of society renders him more monstrous because it makes society his enemy. Victor only begins building a monster in the first moment that he sees the creature as monstrous and excludes him from his own society. His continued separation from responsibility for the creature leads to further exclusions from other societies like that of the De Laceys and the rustic father. These advance the process of monster construction by breaking links that hold him to the world. The raising of a monster is completed when Victor denies him society with even one of his own kind. In making the creature a monster he also renders him a criminal. Criminal status, Michel Foucault writes, was given to monstrosity "as it was a transgression of an entire system of laws, whether natural... or juridical... until the middle of the eighteenth century". Even after that period, monstrosity continued to be "a possible qualifier of criminality". The monstrous are suspicious suspects profiled as criminals, as is clear from Victor's belief that his creation murdered William, even though he has no grounds on which to base that conclusion. This is part of Victor's unconscious construction process of building a criminal and a monster that continues until he denies his creature a mate, which completes the process. Now fully constructed, the monster has no choice but to deconstruct Victor, who is the society that built him.
Victor can be deconstructed because, as he established in his self-introduction, he is society, and society is a construct. He has been constructed by counsellors and syndics, by his father's public life, his mother's mourning, travel, wealth, and by having been given a pre-packaged ready made wife to live in storage as his friend and cousin until he was ready to marry. This last element shows that even Victor's future has been constructed by his parents. He was their plaything and an idol and these can also be taken apart. Victor then is ironically dismantled by the monster that he assembled. The creature does this by destroying Victor's only friend and only real connection to the world outside of his family. Returned to the isolation of his childhood he has nothing left but his family whose deep roots in the past are the foundation of Victor's identity. That too is disassembled by the creature he constructed and then further built into a monster by excluding him from society.
I had a salad with the last of my lettuce, scallion, avocado, asparagus, grape tomatoes, and raspberry vinaigrette. I ate while watching season 6, episode 11 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Since Jethro received his draft notice, tried to join the army, was determined a genius by the army psychiatrist, and recommended for a position in army intelligence, he hasn't heard from them. He's tired of waiting and has decided to become a navy frogman. He's practicing in the pool and wearing a frogman suit while Granny is nearby making a very potent batch of moonshine. Jethro is practicing ambushing people from the water and pulls Granny in twice. She thinks there's a monster with one eye in the pool. Later Jethro sets off a depth charge in the pool and shoots up into the sky but he has a safe landing because he lands on his head.
Jed wants to find something else for Jethro to do so he asks Drysdale who lends Jethro his comic books. But one of the comics is called Moon Maidens and Jethro thinks there must really be maidens on the Moon otherwise they wouldn't print it in a comic book. He buys a rocket but forgets to get fuel so he uses Granny's moonshine instead. He blasts off while straddling the rocket and lands in the ocean near Point Mugu, which is between Malibu and Ventura. When the rescue helicopter picks him up he thinks he's on the Moon.
As this show progresses or digresses from season to season, Jethro gets more stupid and Granny becomes more psychotic.
I didn't find any bedbugs for the twenty-fourth night in a row.
On Sunday my daughter woke up and cried at around 6:00 but went back to sleep. We both got up at 9:00 and she was in a good mood. She ate corn flakes with soymilk and strawberries; and toast with soy lecithin and peanut butter. We painted for a while, then danced, and played with tools. When she wanted to play in the tub, but since I'd just changed her, I persuaded her to want to go outside instead. So we played in the playground and then we went into the nature trail. She seemed to be getting sleepy and my feet were getting wet and so we headed back. But she didn't go to sleep and was still awake at 15:00 when it was time to take her back to her mother, so I started getting her ready. When I called Nancy from the bus stop there was no answer but I headed up there anyway figuring that she had to be home soon. But when I got to Bamburgh Circle and called again there was still no answer. I took her to Playland but she didn't want to stay long. She shit her pants and I had no diaper so I called Nancy again and this time her mother finally answered the phone but she told me that Nancy wouldn't be back for a couple of hours. We got on the bus and rode down to the subway and back. My daughter fell asleep at around 18:30. I went and called again but Nancy still wasn't back, so I got on the same bus and went down and back again with her still sleeping. She woke up just as we returned to Bamburgh. I called and Nancy was home but said she couldn't talk because she had some sort of facial mask on. I carried my daughter over to the house but Nancy still wasn't ready. I went down to her Apolonia's aesthetics office and confronted Nancy there. The baby was scared because her mother didn't move her face. She wanted me to hold her and she was screaming. Then we changed her and she had a big rash from sleeping in her shit for so long, which was causing her pain. I was there until 22:00 and my daughter didn't want me to leave.
On Sunday morning I finished memorizing "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. No one had posted them and so I worked them out for the "Ooh ooh ooh" part at the beginning. Tomorrow I'll tackle the rest of the song.
I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast.
I spent more than an hour on my essay:
Victor can be deconstructed because he is society, as he established in his self-introduction. He has been constructed by counsellors and syndics, by his father's public life, his mother's mourning, travel, wealth, and by having been given a pre-packaged ready made wife to live in storage as his friend and cousin until he was ready to marry. Even Victor's future has been constructed.
I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. I had a salad with raspberry vinaigrette.
I took a siesta at 14:00 and then got up to get ready for my bike ride. When I was about to put my boots on I looked at the time and saw it was 15:00. I had planned on sleeping until 15:30 and must have gotten up at 14:30 by mistake. Even though I don't set an alarm for my siesta, sometimes if a siren goes by, in my half conscious state I'll think it's the alarm telling me to get up and so I do. So anyway, when I saw it was really 15:00 I went back to bed for half an hour but I didn't sleep.
I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst.
I weighed 83.8 kilos at 16:30.
I spent more than two hours on my essay on Frankenstein but mostly in research to understand why a scientist would reject their invention because it is ugly. A popular science around that time was galvanism which attempted to animate corpses with electricity. It did animate the dead but it just didn't bring them to life. There was one scientist who put on shows by animating corpses and he played to full houses. It was grotesque but everyone in the audience had probably also witnessed public hangings. Here's all I wrote:
Victor's rejection of his own invention based on aesthetics is atypical behaviour for the scientist that he purports to be. He has already spent several months gathering the parts of dead animals and humans from slaughterhouses, graves and dissecting tables (55). These materials are ugly to him and he turns "in loathing" sometimes but persists in his work.
I had a salad with raspberry vinaigrette and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 6, episode 10 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Granny gets a letter from Adaline Ashley the most renowned socialite from back in the hills. Adaline is coming to visit in a month. Jed tells Milburn Drysdale because, since his wife Margaret is also a socialite, he knows they'll hit it off. Milburn knows Margaret won't want to meet Adaline but he says she would love to meet her, however she'll be flying to Siberia on that date.
Adaline shows up that day. She's tall, loud, tough, and dresses flamboyantly in the style of around 1900. Her husband died last week and she's already forgotten about him. She has her intentions set on Jed and his millions. Adaline is Granny's hero and so she does everything she can to bring Jed and Adaline together.
Jed tells Milburn that Adaline is there now. Since he can't make up another lie he has to get Margaret to meet Adaline. Jane figures out a trick to use. She calls Mrs. Travis, the head of Margaret's bridge club and pretends to be from the Beverly Hills News asking Travis if she knows the whereabouts of the style setting socialite Adaline Ashley. Travis lies and says she knows where her "dear friend" Adaline is but she wouldn't tell the news. It takes ten minutes for the news to circulate among the bridge club and then Margaret calls Milburn to ask where Adaline is. When Margaret learns that Adaline is at the Clampetts she goes over and begs Granny to forgive her for being mean and asks to become friends. She wants Adaline to come and stay with her for two weeks.
Meanwhile Adaline is still trying to reel in Jed as a husband but it's not working. She accepts Margaret's invitation but Margaret screams when she sees her.
Adaline was played by Mary Wickes, who was a society debutant and earned a degree in political science. She gave up studying law after performing in stock theatre. She went to New York and won a walk on part in The Farmer Takes a Wife on Broadway and served as understudy to Margaret Hamilton, the future wicked witch of The Wizard of Oz. She performed for two years on Broadway in The Man Who Came to Dinner and then reprised her role when it was adapted as a film. She was a member of Orson Welles's radio troupe Mercury Theatre on the Air. She was a friend and neighbour of Lucille Ball. On television in 1949 she was the first person to play Mary Poppins. She co-starred in the TV series Annette. She earned an Emmy nomination for her role on The Gertrude Berg Show. She played Miss Cathcart on Just Dennis. She was the live action reference model for the animated character Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. She volunteered at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. She was a recurring panelist on Match Game for two years. In later life she lectured and gave seminars on comic acting at various universities.
I made it to twenty-three days without finding a bedbug.
On Saturday I picked up my daughter at around 10:30. It was a really nice day and so I didn't have to dress her up tight. She spent a lot of time shoveling what was left of the snow with her little shovel. She waded in the slush and we went to the playground for quite a while. We climbed the chain ladder together and went down the slide. On the way to the bus, her boot came off and she kept walking in her sock through the mud. She fell asleep on the trip down to my place and slept until 17:30. She wouldn't eat any greens at all. Just dulce, porridge, corn chips, a piece of tofu, and some fruit. She drank from the bottle a lot and went back to sleep at around 22:30. I cleaned up a bit, had a beer, and hand-wrote a list.
On Saturday morning during yoga I had most of my flexibility back, which had gone away while I was fasting.
I published "Fugue State", my translation of "Fugue" by Boris Vian on Christian's Translations. I still have to post it on my Boris Vian Facebook page before moving on to his next song on my list.
I memorized the third verse of "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg. There's just one verse left and then the last two are repeated again so I might have the whole song in my head tomorrow.
I weighed 84.3 kilos before breakfast.
The painters came again today. The guy had told me yesterday they'd be finished then but I guess he underestimated the job. He's sure they'll be done today. I think my door is finished but I'll wait until they're gone before I take the tape off the "Om" symbol on my door.
In the late morning I rode out in the rain to No Frills. The grapes were on sale but they were covered in insecticide. I got seven bags anyway and I'll try to wash them off with detergent. I just read that I can do it with salt and baking soda. I also bought two packs of raspberries, some bananas, two packs of grape tomatoes, a pack of brown mushrooms, some vine tomatoes, a jug of orange juice, plantain chips, a bag of chestnuts, soymilk, two containers of soy yogourt, and a piece of ginger root. I forgot to buy avocadoes. I have a few but if I run out I'll pop over to the fruit market nearby.
I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch. I had a salad with sundried tomato dressing.
The landlord came and reviewed the work of the painters. I heard him say something in his incomprehensible voice and the painter said, "He fixed it". Then the landlord said something else and the painter said, "Okay, I'll take it off". I'm afraid it might have been about the artwork on my door which I so painstakingly covered over with painters tape to protect it. The landlord might have told him to take the tape off and paint it over. I might redo it when school is over.
I laid down for a siesta but I couldn't sleep. Maybe because of dread about my art being covered and maybe it was also caffeine. I stayed in bed for an hour and got up at 15:00. It was raining and so I didn't go for a bike ride.
I weighed 84.8 kilos at 16:45, which is the heaviest I've been in thirteen days, basically since I started my fast.
I worked on my essay. I did some fruitless research and a bit of writing:
Denying the creature a mate or any kind of society renders him more monstrous because it makes society his enemy. Victor only begins building a monster in the first moment that he sees the creature as monstrous and excludes him from his own society. His continued distancing from responsibility for the creature leads to further exclusions from other societies that advance the process of monster construction by breaking links that hold him to the world (Shelley 138, 140, 143). The raising of a monster is completed when Victor denies him society with even one of his own kind. Now fully constructed, the monster has no choice but to deconstruct the society that built him, which is Victor.
I went out in the hall and saw that the painters were gone. The tape had been taken off the number three on my door but not the design I added to make it look like the Om symbol. I took it all off and saw that there was a thin broken outline the colour of the old paintjob around my symbol between the violet outline and the new colour. I got a brush and some violet paint to fill that part in. It looks better now.
I had a salad with the last of the sundried tomato dressing and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 6, episode 9 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Granny has a corn patch out back and she poses as a scarecrow herself because that way she can use her shotgun whenever Elly's pet crow Elmer lands on her hat. When he does she reaches for her gun but destroys her hat and not the bird. Granny is upset that they can't farm in Beverly Hills so with Granny's birthday coming up Jed wants to buy her a plot of land to grow things on. Jethro tells him that he drove past a place called Happy Valley the other day that had a sign that read, "Buy your loved one a plot". They don't realize that Happy Valley is a cemetery. Jed calls the owner Mr. Mortimer and when Mortimer finds out that Jed's a multi millionaire he falls all over himself for him. He sends his salesman Brubaker to the Clampett house to make the deal. But when Brubaker comes there and hears Jed ask if he's from the police about the shooting, and about keeping it quiet he's suspicious. "There's been a shooting?" "Just Granny". Brubaker offers a hillside plot but Jed doesn't want that. He said they planted greens on a hill back home and then after a cloudburst the greens got washed out. Brubaker thinks they are talking about people with the surname Green, which is his real last name. Brubaker says he has a chill and Jed offers him some moonshine. He says two snorts of that and Granny didn't feel a thing. They show her Granny in the corn patch and she's just standing there stiff so Brubaker is sure she's dead. Brubaker goes back to tell Mortimer but he doesn't really care because he's had no business since he went from selling beer to plots and he wants Jed's business. Brubaker wants to quit but Mortimer threatens to tell Clampett his name is really Green.
Elly makes a marble cake for Granny out of marble.
Mortimer and Brubaker come to Jed with the contracts. There are more misunderstandings that make them think Granny's dead. Brubaker gets another chill and Jed offers them a snort of moonshine. Mortimer takes a glass and it hits him hard. Then Granny comes out of the house singing. The idea of Jed being a murderer doesn't creep Mortimer out but raising the dead is too much and so he leaves. He says he's going to subdivide Happy Valley because when they market that moonshine nobody will die.
Brubaker was played by Richard Deacon, whose first film role was a small part in Désirée which he said was his favourite movie to work in. He was told by Helen Hayes at the beginning of his career that he would never be a leading man and so he should become a character actor. That advice helped his career last for decades. He played Semu in Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy. He played Fred Rutherford on Leave it to Beaver. His most famous role was his five seasons as Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He co-starred in the short-lived sitcom The Mothers In Law. He played Horace Vandergelder in a long running version of Hello Dolly on Broadway with Phyllis Diller as Dolly. He was a gourmet chef and in the 80s he hosted a Canadian show on microwave cooking. He also wrote a cookbook on the subject.
I have reached twenty-two nights without seeing a bedbug. The last time I went that long was almost exactly a year ago. If I make it to three more days I'll match the run of 25 days I had in January of last year.
On Friday I posed from noon to 15:00 at George Brown College. After work I called Nancy but she didn't need me to take care of my daughter and so I went to the Beer Store and bought a twelve of President's Choice. I went shopping and bought chips, salsa, and pizza. I did some darkroom work and I was almost finished printing the nude shots that Nancy's sister Susan took of my daughter and I. I drank beer, watched TV and ate the chips with salsa. I got the place cleaned up, went through some papers and did a bit of writing.
On Friday morning I memorized the second verse of "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 84.5 kilos before breakfast. I had the usual bananas and berries but now that my fast was over I added maple syrup. I also had caffeinated tea for the first time in two weeks.
I continued to skim through Abnormal by Michel Foucault to research for my essay on Frankenstein. I found an interesting reference to convulsion becoming an indicator of mental illness in the 18th Century. When Frankenstein's creature came to life, "A convulsive motion agitated its limbs". That could tie in with why Victor was horrified by his appearance.
I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. I had a salad with sundried tomato dressing.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst.
I weighed 84.6 kilos at 16:45, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in twelve days.
I was caught up with my journal at 17:32.
I finished skimming the Foucault writings I downloaded and found a couple of things I might be able to incorporate into my essay. I inserted a quote and some paraphrasing of what he says about convulsions:
Just as he believes that he can discern the internal characteristics of Elizabeth, Krempe and Waldman by visually observing their physical features, Victor also does the same with his creature, who he sees to be a monster as soon as he is animated. He observes that "a convulsive motion agitated its limbs (Shelley 58). Convulsion in the eighteenth century was seen as "the automatic and violent release of basic and instinctual mechanisms of the human organism". Convulsion was determined to be the primary physical symptom of madness (Foucault 224).
I made a lettuce, cucumber, scallion, tomato, avocado, and mushroom salad with sundried tomato and oregano dressing. I had it with a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 6, episode 8 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Milburn Drysdale's rival John Cushing has arranged for Elly May to have a date with the singer Troy Apollo. When Drysdale hears about it he knows it's another attempt by Cushing to steal Jed Clampett's $65 million account from him. He immediately finds an alternative date for Elly and brings Dave Draper, the reining Mr. Universe to the Clampett house. He tells the Clampetts that Dave is her date but he tells Dave that he's there to train Elly for the Miss Universe competition. With Dave already in the house, when Troy Apollo arrives Drysdale convinces him that Jane Hathaway is Elly May, so Troy drives away in fear. When Dave meets the Clampetts, Drysdale introduces Dave as Mr. Universe and he says, "Call me Dave" so they think his name is Dave Universe. They have never seen muscles so big and so they think that the big bumps on his body are the symptoms of a condition. Granny asks Dave how long he's been like that and he says, "Ever since I got the barbells." They think the barbells is a disease and Granny starts looking for a cure. Dave goes to the back by the pool with Elly and tells her that he's only got today but he wants to make her the next Miss Universe. Elly thinks Dave is saying he's only got a day to live and that he wants to marry her.
Meanwhile Cushing tells Troy to go back because he didn't really meet Elly. He goes back but this time he sees Granny and he drives away again. Then he goes back and thinks Bessie the chimp is Elly and leaves for the last time.
Elly sees Dave lifting a very heavy set of barbells and she tells him he shouldn't strain himself in his condition. She takes them away from him with one hand. He's amazed at her strength and asks her how she got so strong. She says it's from Granny's cooking so he runs to the kitchen and asks for three helpings of hog jowls, collard greens, and grits.
Dave Draper was the star of the Dave the Gladiator Show on a local Los Angeles TV channel. He wore a gladiator costume and announced various old movies that featured muscle men like Steve Reeves. He won the Mr. America bodybuilding title in 1965, Mr. Universe in 1966, and Mr. World in 1970. He co-starred in the movie Don't Make Waves in 1967. He started using steroids sparingly under a doctor's supervision after he won Mr. America, and found they improved his muscularity with no ill effects. He was however an alcoholic for several years but kicked it in 1983. He returned to bodybuilding in his forties and continued to train into his seventies. He wrote countless articles and books on training and bodybuilding. In later life he ran the World Gym in Santa Cruz, California. I remember this episode and recognized Draper from his ads for bodybuilding products in the back of comic books I had when I was a kid.
For the twenty-first night in a row I found no bedbugs.
I felt almost back on top on Thursday after being sick on Wednesday. Nancy was supposed to bring my daughter down for a couple of hours but she didn't. I did some darkroom developing before work. I called Mike Copping and he was feeling pretty emotional because his father just had another heart attack. After work I called that dominant crossdresser but he wasn't home. I phoned Crystal, who had a personal ad in Now Magazine. She kept telling me to call back in a few minutes and I did that a few times from a donut shop until she finally invited me over. I arrived there at 20:00 and found her to be tall and quite attractive. She massaged me and jerked me off for quite a while, took a couple of pictures of my cock and then sucked up all the after-cum.
On Thursday morning I memorized the chorus and the first verse of "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg. There are a lot of repetitions and so it probably won't take me long to learn this song.
This was the last day of my fourteen day fast.
I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in 16 days.
The painters arrived at around 10:00 and I decided to put masking tape over the "Om" symbol that I made out of the number 3 on my door. But the masking tape I have is old and the tape seems to have mostly fused together so I can't pull off any decent strips. I told the guy I was going to go out to buy some more but he told me I could use his painter's tape. That worked much better because one can shape it somewhat to fit, but it took me an hour to cover the symbol.
I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch and it's been a week and a half since I was that heavy.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of blueberries, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, lettuce, cucumber, scallions, two bags of avocadoes, white and brown mushrooms, broccoli, asparagus, balsamic vinaigrette, raspberry vinaigrette, hair conditioner, shaving gel, and a pack of paper towels.
I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:45.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:30.
I worked on doing research for my essay. I skimmed through Herculine Barbin by Michel Foucault and the first hundred pages of his collection of lectures entitled Abnormal. The first is interesting because it's about hermaphroditism and how society sees it, but it doesn't really help my essay. In Abnormal he talks about the difference between how lepers and plague victims were treated. Lepers were fully exiled and even given funerals while they were fully alive before they were cast out. Plague victims were kept in society but separated into closely watched communities. I assume lepers were exiled because they were unsightly but Foucault doesn't get into that.
I had the final dinner of my fourteen day fast, which consisted of the usual avocadoes, tomatoes, scallion, and lime juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail. I ate while watching season 6, episode 7 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Granny and Elly May return from the hills and Jethro picks them up at the airport in his tank.
Jethro is told that he has to get a physical before joining the army. Granny insists on giving the examination. She puts a big house thermometer in his mouth and his temperature is 140 degrees, which is normal if you sterilize the thermometer in boiling water first. She tests his reflexes with a steel hammer and injures his knee. She puts him in splints. She puts a candle near his left ear, blows in his right ear and puts the candle out. She puts corks in his ears so the wind won't blow into his brain. He shows up for his army induction limping and hard of hearing and when the sergeant brings him to Colonel Stark he is impressed that a disabled young man still wants to serve his country. But after the psychiatrist examines Jethro he comes to see Stark and tells him that Jethro is the most ingenious draft dodger in history. After he removed his corks and the splint he is no longer disabled. He says the fact that his family is rich and yet he still wears poor clothes is further evidence. He says, "He wants us to think that he's stupid enough to think that we're stupid enough to think that he is stupid enough ..." At that point Stark interrupts him, saying that Jethro came recommended by Milburn Drysdale, the president of the Commerce Bank. The psychiatrist shows him a picture of Drysdale in jail and wearing the WWI uniform of a Prussian general. Jethro comes in and the psychiatrist thinks Jethro is trying to claim to have an eating disorder when he shows him some ink blots and everything he sees looks like some kind of food. They want Jethro to bring his family in. The psychiatrist predicts that his family will be actors composing the wildest fake family you've ever seen. They arrive and to their eyes they are wild. The psychiatrist bets that Jethro will fake hostility to his mother. They ask him how he feels about Pearl and he says she's a pig. But Granny and Elly brought back a pig from the hills and named it Pearl after Jethro's mother. The colonel admits to the psychiatrist that Jethro is the draft dodging champion. Stark wonders what to do with him and the psychiatrist says to put him in army intelligence because he's a genius.
The sergeant was played by Joe Conley, who ran real estate companies on the side when he started acting, kept it up throughout his performance career and became rich because of it. After twenty years of small parts he did an AT&T educational film with Pat Harrington called "How to Lose Your Best Customer Without Even Trying". After that he got the job playing the storekeeper Ike Godsey on The Waltons and later titled his autobiography "Ike Godsey of Walton Mountain".
For the twentieth night in a row I found no bedbugs.
On Wednesday I woke up at 4:30 and puked up a whole bunch of tofu. I slept until 7:45 and still felt like shit. I got to work at 8:50, went downstairs and threw up again. I managed to work until noon and got home at 13:00. I slept for an hour before leaving to work at George Brown College. Carole Christmas was there and we had a nice chat. June Handera gave me a week of bookings in April, which made me feel better. I only ate oranges all day but I still didn't feel that great when I went to bed.
On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords to "Kiss Me Hardy" by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through playing and singing the song in French and English and then I uploaded it to Christian's Translations to prepare it for publication on the blog. I should have that finished tomorrow and then I'll start learning his song "No Comment".
I weighed 84.4 kilos before breakfast.
The guys the landlord hired to paint the hallways started today. I asked the head guy if he was going to paint my door and he said he was. I told him I'm hoping he won't paint over my "Om" symbol that I made out of the number 3 on my door. He wasn't sure if he could avoid it but finally said he'd try to go around it. I'm not entirely convinced since I see they've spattered paint all over the place. I guess if I have to I'll do it over.
I worked a bit on my essay. I need another secondary source for my research and so I downloaded Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman. It's not very scholarly and it's also very personal about being ugly and fat. So far the only paraphrase I have from it is, "Those who fail at female beauty are less than human".
I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in nine days.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst.
I weighed 84.4 kilos at 16:45.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:07.
I spend almost two hours researching for my essay. I skimmed all of Women and Other Monsters but there was nothing worth using. It's mostly self indulgence with a lot of stuff about the male gaze. I looked at a couple other essays but they didn't really say anything I haven't said. Some wrote about Foucault writing about monsters but I couldn't find the original essay or even its title. I'll look again tomorrow.
I had the usual avocadoes, tomatoes, cucumber, scallion and lime juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail at the end of the thirteenth day of my fast. Tomorrow is the final day. I ate while watching season 6, episode 6 of The Beverly Hillbillies.
The Clampetts are getting ready to drive back to Tennessee for the fall festival at Silver Dollar City, but before they can leave, Jethro gets a draft notice. Jed stays behind and sends Granny and Elly back home by plane. Jed has heard how much it costs to train a soldier and so he takes out $50,000 to pay the military for Jethro's room and board. Jethro hasn't decided which branch of the military he'll join and so he gets a bunch of uniforms from the movie studio. One of them is a Prussian field marshal's uniform from WWI and the other is an imitation of General Patton's combat uniform from WWII. Jethro decides to try out Patton's branch of the military but needs a tank to practice with so Jed takes out another $50.000 to buy one. Jethro gets a tank and enlists Drysdale to be his crew. He makes him wear the Prussian uniform and they head for Griffith Park.
Jed gets a call from his cousin Pearl from back home. It's the first time we've seen Pear for a few seasons since at this time the actor Bea Benaderet who plays her has her own show called Petticoat Junction.
In Griffith Park Jethro fires the big tank gun a few times and the park ranger calls the police. One of the cops is the same as the one who tried to arrest Drysdale last episode. The other's name is Charlie. They find Drysdale alone in the tank and Charlie recognizes him from WWII when Drysdale was a sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps and leant money with a daily interest of 40%. His fight with Drysdale at that time inadvertently caused Charlie to be shipped behind enemy lines in Germany. Drysdale is arrested and Jed has to come and pay his bail and the amount Charlie lost from Drysdale in the war.
Charlie was played by Henry Corden, who was born in Montreal but his family moved to New York when he was a child. His first movie role was a supporting part in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He played Jeannie's father on I Dream of Jeannie and Mr. Babbitt the landlord on The Monkees. He started doing the voice of Fred Flintstone sometimes while Alan Reed was still voicing the character when Fred had to sing, which Reed couldn't do. He took over Flintstone's voice when Reed died and continued for 25 years until just before his own death. He was good friends with Buster Keaton.
For the nineteenth night in a row I found no bedbugs.
