Future Memories of Parkdale

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for all but the final line of “Le moi et le je” (The Me and the I) by Serge Gainsbourg. I’ll have that done on Friday and I’ll upload it to Christian’s Translations to prepare it for publication on the blog. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. On Friday I’ll begin a four session stretch with my Kramer electric guitar. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished cutting the Masonite and then swept the floor where I plan to glue it down. I might try it on Friday. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in ten days. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. All the grapes were too soft and so I bought two bags of grapefruits and a bag of oranges instead. I also got two packs of raspberries, two packs of blackberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a jug of orange juice, a jug of limeade, Full City Dark coffee, and shaving gel. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:43. 

            I compared the videos of my acoustic song practice performances of “Le temps des yé-yé” on August 9 and 11. They both have a lot of traffic noise but I think August 11 is better. I compared August 15 to August 11 and August 15 has bad light, plus it’s not as good in expression and sound. I compared August 27 to August 11 and August 27 is very good and quiet in terms of traffic noise but I still prefer the look of August 11. If it comes down to these two, which one I choose will depend on whether I can remove the traffic noise from August 11. I compared August 31 to August 11 and 27. August 31 is similar to August 27 but I think August 27 is a little better. I compared September 6 to August 11. They are close but I still think I prefer August 11. I compared September 10 to August 11 and August 11 is definitely better. Tomorrow I’ll open the August 11 Audacity project and see if I can get rid of the traffic noise. 

            In the Movie Maker project to make a video for the studio audio of my song "Megaphor" I finished editing the train track bondage scenes of the silent films Race for a Life and Teddy at the Throttle. I inserted into the main video the clips of Mabel Normand being chained to the tracks in Race for a Life followed by the train bearing down on Gloria Swanson in Teddy at the Throttle. Then I deleted about four seconds of the concert video until it was synchronized with the studio audio for the half line, “But from beyond that orbit…” But then it goes out of synch for the rest of the line, “an invisible thread”. Since the concert video is slightly behind I might only need to remove a little bit from the concert video to line them up again. I’ll work on that on Friday. 

            I cleaned and scanned another strip of uncut colour negatives. These were all street shots, mostly of people but I didn’t recognize the neighbourhood. Maybe I’ll see it better when I upload the shots to my computer. I did that later and saw that a lot of the shots were taken just across the street with my current place in view. The bench in the photo is one where I wrote hundreds of poems back in the late 80s. 

            I grilled three chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching season 1, episodes 28 and 29 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Eb shows a talent for nursing animals back to health. It’s decided that he would make a good veterinarian and so Oliver and Lisa decide to pay his way. A big deal is made of him going away to the county college. But a few hours later he returns because it turns out that he never went to high school and so he can’t go to college until he does that. 

            In the second story Oliver is hoeing in the field when a white horse with black spots comes up and nudges him. It follows him back to the house but when he tries to show it to Lisa it isn’t there. This happens several times and Lisa thinks Oliver is under so much stress that he’s seeing things. Doc Stuart comes and prescribes a sedative. He gives her some pills to give him before bedtime. That night she pours two glasses of milk and puts a pill in one of them. But then she forgets which glass she put the pill in. She drinks some from each one to see but can’t tell and so she plays it safe and puts a pill in each glass. Eb asks if Oliver will be able to taste it and Lisa tries some from each glass. In bed Lisa conks out and Oliver knows why. Then he sees a zebra looking at him through the window and decides to drink the milk after all. The next day Oliver sees a camel and Hank Kimball sees a chimpanzee. It turns out that the animals escaped from a circus.