Whit Bissell

            On Tuesday morning I finished editing "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (We Are So Impatient for Death) by Boris Vian in Christian's Translations. All that's left before publishing it on the blog is finding a video to accompany it. 

            I memorized the first verse of "Ouvertures éclair" (Wounds That Zip Open) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only three verses, with all three repeated again as Gainsbourg tended to write fewer verses in later years. There's no chorus and so learning this song shouldn't take very long. 

            I had my first full song practice in French while playing my Kramer electric guitar. I hadn't sung all of the French songs in my current repertoire completely for a month and a half because my recording project forced me to shorten some of the ones from the second half of each session. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. Around midday I finished scrubbing and scraping the glue from where I'd ripped up the fifth floor tile in front of the kitchen counter. That took care of the area in front of the counter and then I started on the space where the sixth tile had been in front of the stove. I got most of that off and might get the rest on Wednesday. Both my steel and my copper brush are worn down so there are only a quarter of the bristles left. I need to go back to the hardware store to get another brush. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 17:00. I spent half an hour chiseling slate and came close to freeing up two pencil-thick green fossils that I assume are million year old roots. 

            My neighbour Benji came out to the hall and complained that I was making too much noise. I said it was only for a half an hour and really there were only ten minutes left. He said that was a long time so I closed the door to the deck so he wouldn't hear it as much and then opened it again when I was finished. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:09. 

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Megaphor" from June 8 to June 10 of this year. On June 8 and 9 I played the acoustic guitar and the take at 4:45 was the best yet. On June 9 I did several takes but I think the one on June 8 is better. On June 10 I played the electric and the last take at 5:45 was okay. 

            In Audacity I tried again to mute a section of the drum track from the instrumental but still couldn't do it. But when I highlighted it and used the "Amplify" effect to a negative number it lowered the volume. I could lower the volume until it's muted anyway but I'll experiment with how simply deamplifying it sounds. This might be the solution to the problem. It may take quite a while to lower the volume on all the drum parts I don't want but when I get something that works I can then synchronize it with a copy of the master track and hear if it works over all. 

            I scanned some negatives, including some shots I took of an accident on May 21, 1988. I thought it was newsworthy and so I took the film to The Toronto Star and they developed it for me but they said it wasn't a big enough smash up to print. I got free developing anyway. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching season 3, episodes 12 and 13 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story an old boyfriend of Kate is coming to visit but he arrives with his controlling spinster sister Mabel. Kate cooks all of the things she remembers that he likes but Mabel claims he has health problems and can't eat any of it. She also makes him go to bed early. The girls and Joe are trying to help Kate have some alone time with Ralph. With a the help of Charlie and Floyd, Joe and Mabel get stranded far from Kate and Ralph and have to walk back. After a few days of this Ralph asks Joe how he would feel about a marriage. Joe says he approves and so at dinnertime Ralph announces that Mabel and Joe are getting married. Mabel seems thrilled but when Joe tries to sneak away to go to Guatemala he finds Mabel has the same idea. 

            Ralph was played by Whit Bissell, who started acting in university and then made his way to Broadway. His first film was Holy Matrimony in 1943. He played mad scientists in both "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" and "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein". He co-starred in Creature from the Black Lagoon. On television he played Bert Loomis on "Bachelor Father" and Heywood Kirk on "The Time Tunnel". He played station manager Lurry in the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles". He was a member of the Screen Actors Guild board of directors and the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

            In the second story after an argument with Joe over a stamp, Sam gives Joe the post office. Joe sets it up in the lobby of the hotel along with all the wanted posters. Kate won't let him use her kitchen scale and so he transports the very inaccurate coin operated scale from Hooterville Station. His plan for measuring the weight of envelopes is to have the customers state their weight then hold the envelope while stepping on the scale. But it's so far off when Oliver Douglas steps on that Joe wants to charge him $900 for a stamp. Customers are so used to getting groceries where they buy stamps that they ask for things like butter and eggs and Joe lends food to them until the cupboards are empty. Kate begs Sam to take the post office back but he refuses. He does however lend Kate the post office book of regulations. One rule Joe has broken is that a post office is not allowed to be within fifteen meters of a kitchen. Joe moves the post office into Kate's bedroom because his is within fifteen meters. Joe gets Charlie and Floyd to deliver the mail with the Cannonball but it's costing them too much fuel so they quit. That's odd because they always delivered the mail in previous episodes. As an alternative Joe aims a rocket at Fred Ziffle's farm with the mail attached and launches it but it is intercepted by the briefcase of a post office official coming to see about the post office. Sam takes the post office back.