Patton Oswalt

            On Monday, Thanksgiving morning I memorized the first verse of “Au revoir mon enfance” (Goodbye My Childhood) by Boris Vian. There are eight verses left to nail down. 

            I finished importing the images for a photo montage video of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg to Movie Maker. I placed them all in sequence on the video timeline of my “Flashback” project and surprisingly the first several of them fit perfectly with the beginning of the song. Later I had to stretch out a couple of images and shorten some others but it’s almost finished, which is very satisfying because I’d expected it to take a lot longer. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed the top, sides and back of the big bookshelf that I hauled with my bike trailer from Brock and Bloor. There’s still the shelves themselves to wash. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos before lunch.

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

            I weighed 88.35 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:09. 

            I discovered that the cassette tape I tried to digitize yesterday didn’t take. This happened at least once before but all I needed to do then was try again. That worked this time as well. 

            In my “2024-10-07 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I arrived at the final take of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” and deleted everything prior to that song. Then I saved the project as “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” and deleted everything that came after the song. Since there are two voices and both of them are mine, I distinguished them visually by partitioning off each voice and for the emotional one I added the effect of cycling the colour spectrum. At the end when I’m playing my french translation of Alice Cooper’s “I Love the Dead” I put it in sepia tone and also added the effect of cycling the colour spectrum, which resulted in it cycling shades of sepia. I added a fade to black at the end and published the movie. It looks and sounds pretty good but I don’t think I’ll upload it to YouTube because I think I can do better the next time I record. 

            For supper I made savory herb and garlic potatoes with a Knorr mix, plus water and milk. I added a chopped slice of ham, two sliced potatoes, some skyr, and five-year-old cheddar. But after 45 minutes in the oven the potatoes were not cooked in time for supper. So I put them back in the oven and just had barbecue chips with skyr, two chicken wings and a spine with a beer while watching season 3, episode 8 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            The Vulcan High Command contacts the Enterprise about the planet Tezaar. Long before the Vulcans helped to draft the Prime Directive they made contact with the Tezaarans and assisted them with nuclear power system. The system needs to be fixed but there are no Vulcans in the area. As the Tezaarans are still pre-warp, Starfleet cannot help them and so crewmembers from the Enterprise must go there disguised as Vulcans but the Tezaarans have developed advanced scanning technology and so in order to help them the away team must become Vulcan, In a previous season a Kherkovian serum was used to turn Spock from fully human, back to half Vulcan. Now they use it to make use of the serum to render Pike, La’an, Uhura, and Chapel temporarily fully Vulcan. They complete the task on Tezaar but afterward their Vulcan logic tells them that it is illogical to become human again. James Kirk beams aboard to visit. Pike as a Vulcan becomes an obsessive clean freak. La’an now believes the Enterprise must achieve a greater peace through war and the acquisition of space. She is trying to turn the Enterprise into a battle cruiser. Uhura uses a mind meld to brain wash Beto Ortegas into becoming Vulcan-like. Chapel decides to dismiss all friendships and romance so she can focus on science. Una, Pelia, Spock, Scotty and Kirk plot to find a way to get the new Vulcans to submit to changing back. Una reveals that her ex-boyfriend is a Vulcan expert in Vulcan psychology. She and Spock meet with Doug and she warns Spock that Doug has a strong effect on her. The feeling is mutual and even after fifteen years they are extremely attracted to one another. Doug is a short and dumpy figure but he has a strong effect on Una. Scotty rigs a booby trap to electrocute and render La’an unconscious. With Doug’s help Spock is able to convince Pike, Uhura, and Chapel to become human again but La’an still resists because of her ancestral ties to Khan. She and Spock fight but the fight turns into a dance and she finally gives in. But it’s my understanding that Vulcans by nature are highly emotional and that their renowned logic is the result of meditation and discipline. Simply giving someone Vulcan DNA would not make them logical. 

            Doug was played by Patton Oswalt, who made his acting debut on Seinfeld. He was a writer for two seasons of Mad TV. He co-starred in King of Queens, A.P. Bio, and The Sandman. He was narrator for The Goldbergs. He starred in Ratatouille, and Big Fan. He played MODOK in Antman Quantomania. He wrote the book “Silver Screen Fiend”. He’s had six comedy specials. His 2016 comedy special was “Talking for Clapping”. He was nominated for an Emmy for Patton Oswalt: Annihilation. He won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album. He’s released several albums, the first being 222.