Joe Conley

            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.