Richard Deacon

            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.