Tracy Chapman

            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.