George Clinton

            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing "Lemon incest" by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords and found a set at Boite a Chanson (Song Box). I transcribed those and I'll look some more tomorrow. 

            I weighed 83.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I've been listening to George Clinton's Parliament and Funkadelic discography from 1970 and working my way up through Maggot Brain and America Eats Its Young. In the song "What is Soul" he says, "I am Funkadelic. I am not of your world. But fear me not. I will do you no harm. Loan me your funky mind, and I shall play with it. For nothing is good, unless you play with it. And all that is good is nasty! What is soul? I don't know, huh! Soul is a ham hock in your cornflakes ...." . Clinton was part owner of a barbershop in New Jersey that was staffed by the members of Parliament-Funkadelic. They combined elements of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Zappa. They honed their performance skills while living in Toronto from 1971 to 1973. 

            

            In the late morning I went down to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of strawberries, a pack of seven-year-old cheddar, a pack of chicken drumsticks, mouthwash, dental floss, Sunlight dish detergent, salsa, Basilica sauce, and a container of skyr. 

            At 13:00 I met my upstairs neighbour David in front of our building and he took me to lunch at the Shambala, the Tibetan place next to our building. I had the chili garlic fries and the chili beef shapta. The fries were quite good but if I'd known the shapta came with rice I wouldn't have ordered them because it made the meal a little too big. The shapta was delicious and very spicy with lots of ginger. I had two cans of Himalayan Lager. We were there for about an hour and a half. The place is a lot busier than it was last time we went there in December or early January. David says the aloe vera shoot that I planted in a pot for him before he came back from Africa has grown really big and he seems to be happy with it. I suggested that he sell some of the things that he's accumulated at a flea market. I said I would help him. He actually has a nice place that's just covered up by junk. Directly above my mantle in the kitchen where a fireplace used to be there's one in his place as well but he has it all covered up with the things he's collected. I told him that I want to start a tenants collective and he's interested. I still have to talk with some of the other tenants. Benji says he would attend a meeting if I have one. 

            I took a siesta and got up at 16:20. I immediately went for a bike ride downtown and back to work off the big lunch I'd had. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:00. I reviewed the last three videos of me singing and playing "Joanna". On July 14 I played my translation of the song and it was one of the best versions. Maybe I looked a little too friendly to the point of being scary. On July 15 I did one of the best of the French versions. The lighting was good and I was friendly. There are five of the English recordings that stand out and six of the French. Next I'll go through those again and narrow them down some more. I re-reviewed the English versions from June 18 and July 2 and I think June 18 wins. There are three more to compare with June 18. 

            I started searching for some kind of vintage video footage that might fit the line, "If unconsciousness follows the charge a delayed attack will come" from my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy". So far nothing that fits has turned up. 

            I cooked two strips of thick bacon. I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, the bacon, and seven-year old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 26, episodes 4 and 5 of South Park.

            Bebe has been getting amazingly romantic texts from Clyde, proving that he's a wonderful boyfriend. He always texts the right thing. Now Wendy is depressed because she only gets thumbs ups from Stan in response to her texts. After she voices her concerns about their relationship perhaps being over, Stan asks Clyde his secret. He says he uses Chat GPT. He says he takes whatever latest dumb thing Bebe texts to him, copies it, opens GPT, clicks "respond to", pastes in her text, the AI app thinks, then responds with for example, "You would look great with any length of hair. Trying a new look could be fun", copy that into messages, send it. Just don't tell anybody." Stan tries the app and it saves his relationship with Wendy. At school Clyde, Butters, Cartman, and Stan all turn in very advanced essays that impress Mr. Garrison. Cartman for instance has written a paper called "A Feminist Neoliberal Perspective of Post War Afghanistan". The boys have a meeting in the washroom because Cartman wants to know who blabbed to Stan about Chat GPT. It turns out that Butters was the first one who knew, then he told Cartman, who told Clyde. Cartman doesn't think the app should be used for texting girls because once you bring girls into things they'll ruin it like they did slavery. Butters asks how women ruined slavery. Cartman says he'd have to use Chat GPT to find out. Later Garrison is marking papers and complains to his boyfriend Rick that some of the students have suddenly started writing advanced essays and now they take more work to read. Rick tells him about Chat GPT to suggest that some students are cheating but all Garrison hears is that there's an app that he can use to respond to the papers without having to read them. The next day Mr. Mackie announces that someone at the school is using open AI tech to do their work. The school board has called in a company that can detect AI in schoolwork. A guy arrives dressed as a shaman with a staff wrapped in talismans in his left hand and a falcon named Shadowbane on his right arm. This is the technician. He sends Shadowbane to fly and look for the cheater. The falcon finds chatbot writing on Wendy's phone so she has been caught for what Stan wrote to her. Stan can't think of a way out of this and so he writes the scenario to Chat GPT and asks it to finish the story with a positive outcome. Stan then acts out his part in the story as the hero. He stops the police from arresting Wendy and says the fault is with the AI companies for pushing it onto the users. Somehow that makes everything fine and Wendy is released. The technician goes to deal with the AI companies. Stan tells Wendy that sometimes a thumbs up from a human is better than a machine generated lie. 

            In the second story Butters gets a job and has just gotten his first paycheque. The other boys didn't know kids could get jobs. Cartman says he wants a job too. The other kids tell Cartman he wouldn't last four hours in a job. Cartman asks his mother for permission to get a job. She says he wouldn't last four hours. He bugs her and she finally decides that it will teach him a lesson to try. Cartman shows up at the ice cream parlour where Butters works and asks when he starts. Mr. Sullivan decides to hire Cartman and asks Butters to train him. But Cartman doesn't want to do anything. He finally decides to work from home but is told he can't work at an ice cream parlour from home. When Eric is asked to cook a hot dog it finally dawns on him that he lives in a hot dog shaped building. Cartman and his mother live in a hot dog stand but it has never occurred to him until now that it could be used as a hot dog stand. He quits and goes to talk to Kenney about going into business with him. He convinces Butters to finance the renovations. Cartman puts in a big slide and a mermaid lagoon while Butters works his ass off and money keeps getting drained from his bank account. Cartman and Kenney try to hire help but they can't find anyone and so they give up. Finally Butters takes over. He starts cooking and serving and suddenly the place becomes such a big success that Butters sells it to a foreign investor. The banker tells him he can't sell the business if tenants are living in the building but Butters has already made a deal with Mrs. Cartman. He buys her back her old house that she'd lost because Eric insisted she should not work and she drags Cartman out of the hot dog stand kicking and screaming even though he's been complaining for a year about having to live in a hot dog. 

            It's now been 43 days since I've found a bedbug. If I make it for one more week I'll stop my detailed searches every night before bed.