Joan Caulfield

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for the third verse of “Mon Légionnaire” by Raymond Asso. I think it will be smooth sailing for the rest of the song. I’m pretty sure the fourth verse repeats the chords of the first and so on. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the third session of four. 

            This was the sixth day of my fourteen day fast but I had a lot more energy as is usual near the halfway point. I was also more flexible during yoga than I have been for the last couple of days.

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on my Critical Summary. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I’ve been at midday in 19 days.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. When I looked out my window before leaving I saw a lot of people dressed for spring. My weather feed said it was seven degrees and so I wore one scarf and my spring gloves but took my winter gloves and an extra scarf in my pack just in case. It was a lot colder than what people were dressed for. It’s always that way when people have experienced a couple of warm days and are desperately anticipating spring. It’s as if they think dressing light is a magic spell that will evoke the end of winter. I was uncomfortable in what little I’d put on. I had to stop at the McDonald’s just north of College to pee and when I came back to my bike I put on my winter gloves and my extra scarf. 

            Yonge Street from College to Gerrard for the last few years has been fenced off on the west side leaving a narrow corridor on the east side for two way traffic because of construction of the new subway concourse. For the last few months as I’ve ridden past the fence it hasn’t looked like there was any hole in the street, suggesting that maybe construction was finished. But today suddenly the fence was on the east side and the corridor was on the west. It was disorienting at first because I always go into the middle lane at the corner so I can better access the corridor. But from now on it will be a lot less scary riding south from that corner. Construction is supposed to be finished at the end of 2025.

            I weighed 85.9 kilos at 17:45. That’s the least I’ve registered on the scale in 36 days. 

            I was behind on my journal because I kept dozing off last night while working on it. I got caught up at 19:30. I only had half an hour to work on my Critical Summary before dinner. 

            I had a tomato, avocado, cucumber, and scallion salad with lemon and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 2, episode 18 of Burke’s Law. 

            These stories are getting more and more ridiculous. The owner of a toy company called Granny Grabber is verbally abusive to his late working secretary Melissa Hammer. Then he goes in his office and lights a cigar on a toy soldier lighter which explodes and sends him through the ceiling. When Burke’s team arrives Melissa takes them through the secret door to the workshop. She also shows them that Granny had a hidden camera that snapped anyone who entered his office. She gives Burke the film and says, “Here’s your murderer”. They look at the photos and the suspects are: Retired General Hector Harder. He advised Granny on all toy weaponry. Psyche Jones head of the School for Very Special Boys. She’s Granny’s psychological consultant. Dr. Serena Standish of the Go Go Jet Propulsion Corporation. James Stock, an industrial spy specializing in toy designs. Granny hired him to steal from other companies. Burke goes to see Harder on his estate where he is dictating his war memoirs to his beautiful secretary. He tells Burke that Grabber was a corruptor of youth because he wasn’t interested in exclusively making war toys. He says he could have killed him. Tim and Les go to the School for Special Boys where the boys are all teenage punks who immediately surround the two cops. Les threatens them and then Jones comes out and accuses him of damaging the boys’ development. She tells the boys to play ring around the rosy while she talks with the police. The classroom is full of rocking horses and stuffed animals. She says her boys never were children so she has to reinstitute the childhood play period to attenuate the regressive mechanism and by progressive retroaction sever the oedipal bonds and smash the encapsulated non-relationships so they can mature. She thinks the cops are there about the dynamite the boys stole from the construction site. She says she went to Granny to get him to stop making war toys. He laughed and she told him she would kill him if she had to. She forgets what she was talking about. Tim catches the students planting a dynamite bomb under his police car. Burke and Tim go back to the toy company and look around. Then a life size gorilla suit comes to life and knocks Tim out. It escapes in a convertible but Burke takes down the license number. The car was a rental and the dealer says the renter looked like he was wearing a disguise. Burke figures it must be James Stock, so he goes to see him. Stock is blackmailing a lover, breaking up with her and stealing plans he got her to steal from her father when Burke arrives. Burke is very provocative with Stock, accuses him right away of wearing the ape suit and challenges him to a judo throw. Stock attacks and Burke throws him. He denies wearing the gorilla suit but Les finds it. Tim finds microfilm of Granny Grabber’s plans. Burke doesn’t arrest him because he wants to give him enough rope to hang himself. As Burke is leaving he sees Melissa coming in and she immediately turns and leaves. He sends Tim after her while he goes to see Dr. Standish. Standish is very absent minded and thinks Burke is an exterminator. She doesn’t know when she saw Granny because she doesn’t keep track of Earth time. She went to Grabber to tell him she quit being his space toy consultant because his other associates seemed unsavory. Burke learns that Melissa is Grabber’s sole beneficiary in his will. Burke goes to see Melissa who lives in an expensive beach house despite being a secretary. She says she went to see Stock because she wanted the plans back that he stole. The plan was for a toy that Grabber had told her he was going to make a million from by not making it. Les finds Stock dead. Burke has Harder brought in but he says he would never have used a silencer like the murder weapon has. They bring in Jones but she seems to have lost her mind. Les thinks she’s faking because he heard her talking to her lawyer earlier. She leaves and Tim follows her. Burke says he knows who the killer is. He calls a friend at the newspaper and has him print a headline that Granny Grabber is coming out with a new line that just consists of one toy. Then Burke goes back to the toy company. He goes into the toy safe and wanders around, casually picking up the remote for the life sized robot. Then a pistol is placed against his neck. Standish removes his gun and then goes to a table where she pulls a switch and a small missile aims itself at Burke. He knows now that Standish had absent mindedly sold a real miniature anti-anti-anti missile to Granny and so she killed him to destroy him and the plans. She also killed Stock. Burke clicks the remote control he’s holding and the robot comes to life behind her making noise and startling her. She turns and shoots at it. Burke jumps aside as the missile fires. Burke is making his way across the other side of the room hiding behind furniture as she fires at him. He sends three tiny wind up mice skittering towards her on the floor and she screams and faints. That’s the silliest ending ever. 

            Psyche Jones was played by Joan Caulfield, who before she started acting professionally became a top model. This led to her being cast in the Broadway shows Beat the Band and Kiss and Tell. She became a Broadway star and was with the latter show for 480 performances. She then turned to movies and her first film was a starring role in Miss Susie Slagle’s. She co-starred in Blue Skies, Monsieur Beaucaire, Welcome Stranger, The Sainted Sisters, The Unsuspected, Larceny, Dear Wife, The Petty Girl, and Girl of the Year. She starred in Dear Ruth and The Lady Says No. She starred in the sitcom Sally for one season. She became the vice president of Lustre Shine which made and installed floor polishers for hotels and airports. She preferred acting for television over movies because in TV productions there was no time to be temperamental. She’s Joss Whedon’s favourite actress.