Hanging Around the Strip

            On Tuesday morning I woke up with a cold that had been coming on for a couple of days. I was stuffed up and had a sore throat but my energy wasn’t drained and so far it was pretty mild.

When I got up there were people sleeping across the street against the doorway to the Dollarama. It looks like a pretty good place to sleep because the roof extends over to offer shelter in case it rains or snows and there’s shelter from two walls as the door is in the corner. I’d noticed that the couple had their stuff piled up on the sidewalk in front of the store for several hours before it closed on Sunday night. One of the two was in a wheelchair. They were totally bundled up under a white blanket when I got up and I could see the blanket rippling in the wind. During song practice I wondered what was going to happen at 7:00 when the manager arrived to try to get in the door. It turned out that they were able to step around the sleeping couple. Shortly after that the guy got up, got in his wheelchair and rolled down to the alley behind the Dollarama, I assume to pee. About ten minutes later he came back and got under the covers again. At about 7:30 they both got up and I saw that one of them was a woman. They sat in front of the store for a couple of hours with a sign asking for money. Later they were gone but had left their blankets piled up, so I assumed they’d be back again that night.

I finished memorizing “L’Hippopodame” by Serge Gainsbourg. It will be interesting to see if anyone's posted the chords for this one. It wasn't a hit while Gainsbourg was alive but it was one of the songs featured in the 2010 movie “Gainsbourg: Une vie héroïque.”

I washed, brushed and scraped another section of my bedroom floor in the walking area of the room. I was just eleven boards away from the north wall when I’d finished.

I emptied a can of fava beans into the squash and mushroom soup I’d thrown together the night before and had half of it for lunch with a bowl of potato chips.

I did my exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish gets an old washed up racehorse from his brother-in-law and talks Andy into buying it for $300. Then he becomes the horse’s trainer and charges him for that. So far Andy has yet to even see the nag. Kingfish presents Andy with a bill for expenses and one of them is a pair of shoes from Florsheim, meaning Kingfish has bought himself shoes on Andy’s bill. He also says that he bought the horse a chicken for a companion but the bill just says “Chicken breast $3.50”. Finally Andy goes out to the racetrack and insists on seeing the horse. He finds that it has no teeth and it has the mange on its neck. Kingfish insists that those are just scratches from being decorated with roses after winning so many times. Andy fires Kingfish as a trainer and Kingfish has heard that he’s hired someone else and that he’s entered it in a race. Kingfish scoffs at the possibility of it winning but he goes over to Amos’s place to listen to the race. The race starts before Andy gets there and Kingfish is surprised to hear Rover has won and that Andy had just won $1500. When Andy gets there Kingfish asks if he’s been listening to the radio and since he hasn’t heard about his horse’s victory Kingfish says he wants to buy the horse back from him for $450. Andy takes the deal and gives Kingfish the horse’s papers. Kingfish reveals that Andy’s former horse has just won the race. Andy reveals that he had a record made of someone announcing that his horse had won and that’s what Kingfish had heard.

I looked at my rehearsal videos to see which one to edit next. I decided on “Les feuilles mortes” from August 5, 2017. There was another date in August with an okay version but this one is better and more expressive. There’s a lot of traffic noise but hopefully once I mix it with the voice recording from the mic I can minimize that background noise. Since I don’t rehearse this song anymore it’s my only chance to put it on display. Plus I already uploaded my English version, “Dead Autumn Leaves” so it seems appropriate for the French to be up there as well.

I worked on “My Blood in a Bug” and on a couple of translations.

I had three small potatoes, two drumsticks and gravy for dinner while watching Zorro.

In this story Carlos Murietta’s brother Pedro arrives from South America. Just as Carlos is an expert with a whip, Pedro is adept at throwing the bolas. Meanwhile Don Diego is trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the stolen jewels at the tannery. Bernardo had found them in the false bottom of a crate of boots but then he had been knocked out by Jose. Jose had put them in a bag and lowered them on a rope into the well before dying in his fight with Zorro. As Bernardo was unconscious he does not know what happened to the gems. Don Diego sends Bernardo dressed as Zorro back to the tannery to search for them while Diego is obliged to be a guest at a party thrown by Sgt Garcia. Garcia tries to court Dolores and asks Corporal Reyes to dance with her and extol his virtues but Reyes and Dolores are enjoying themselves more than Garcia had anticipated. The brothers go to the tannery to look for the jewels. They are trying to get the mute Bernardo to talk when Zorro arrives. They fight with swords. Bernardo knocks out Pedro with his own bolo. Zorro and Bernardo leave the two locked in the tannery.

Snowrow: a Canadian Hero

            On Monday morning I memorized the first two verses of “L’Hippopodame” by Serge Gainsbourg, which is half the song.

            I washed, brushed and scraped a six board wide section of the west side of my bedroom floor. I’m just eleven boards away from the northwest corner now.

            I want to get back into editing my 2017 rehearsal videos but I had to go back in my diary to find out where I left off in July. Now I know I was almost finished with “Jeunes femmes et les vieux messieurs”.

            I finished reading the chapter on the Inuit and Nunavut in Ways of Knowing by Yale Belanger. I figure that while I’m off from school I might as well get ahead in a relaxed way.

            I think there should be a Canadian version of Zorro called Snowrow. The hero has a canoe that can go in the snow and gives enemies a good paddling. The mark left behind is a yellow "S" in the snow.

            I finished editing my July 28, 2017 rehearsal video of me singing “Jeunes femmes et vieux messieurs”.

            I did my afternoon exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish announces to Amos and Andy that he and Sapphire are about to have their twenty-fifth anniversary but he’s not happy about it. He recounts how four years ago Sapphire bought a piggy bank and said that they were going to put all their loose change in it every day until their silver anniversary. The only problem is that Kingfish has been robbing the piggy bank every day and replacing the coins with lead washers. Now he’s worried Sapphire will leave him after the bank is opened. Kingfish and Andy go talk to Gabby the former lawyer and now politician. They ask him what made him decide to go into politics. He explains that he noticed a horrible condition in the ward where he lives. All the money was going into the ward boss's pocket. He tells them he decided to do something about it and then says, "Shake hands with the new ward boss!" Kingfish tells Gabby his problem and Gabby advises him to cash a cheque from a far away place like Australia and since it would take two weeks to clear he’d have time to make it good. He goes to the bank pretending to be an Australian sheep rancher and the banker is about to cash the cheque when Andy shows up and tries to help Kingfish out. He says that they raise kangaroos together. The banker says to Kingfish, “I thought you said you were a sheep rancher. Kingfish explains that they cross the sheep with the kangaroos because there'd been a problem of baby kangaroos dying of pneumonia and so now the pouches are lined. The banker says he’ll have to call the Australian bank first. Kingfish and Andy go to see Laguardia the lawyer to ask him for advice. He tells them to get someone to steal the piggy bank and then the problem would be solved. He says he has to go for a court case to defend a guy that was arrested for driving too slow. “How can someone get arrested for driving too slow?” “It was a stolen car and the cops caught up with him!" Kingfish arranges to take Sapphire out to a movie while Andy gets in with the spare key and steals the piggy bank. When they get back they see the bank is stolen but then there is a knock on the door and a cop returns it, saying the thief got away but dropped it. Meanwhile Andy has a bump on his head from going over a fence. He goes to get help from Baldy the druggist who us on the phone with the emergency ward at the hospital. He wants to make sure he gets the ingredients right for their order and asks if they want it on whole wheat or rye. Finally Andy goes to Sapphire and tells her the whole story but explains that each time he took money out it was for her. Sapphire understands. Meanwhile Kingfish has pawned all his best suits and raised two hundred dollars, which he has converted to change and put into the piggy bank. On their anniversary Sapphire announces that she wanted to save Kingfish embarrassment so she took the piggy bank as it was and sold it to a junk man for $2.

            I uploaded “Jeunes femmes et vieux messieurs” to Youtube.

            I’ve wanted to ride up to Topcuts at Yonge and St Clair but it needs to be on a Monday afternoon because that’s when Amy works. I couldn’t go last Monday because of snow and couldn’t go today because of rain. Maybe next Monday it’ll be a dry day.

            I did a French grammar exercise.

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks. I sautéed the mushrooms that I got from the food bank but I’d washed them beforehand and so they’d absorbed a lot of liquid, which came out in the pan. I added the squash soup to it since it was already looking soupy. I was going to have some of the mushrooms with my dinner but now it would be too much so I would save it for lunch on Tuesday. I boiled three little potatoes and steamed the spinach I got from the food bank. I had those with two drumstick and gravy while watching Zorro.

            This story begins with Dolores Bastinado and her younger brother Pogo arriving in Los Angeles on business. She sends Pogo to the tanner to deliver a crate of boots from Argentina. On learning that Dolores is a rich landowner Sgt Garcia tries to court her. Murietta goes to the tanner with further Eagle Brotherhood business. He finds that the tanner Jose allows a homeless man named Pasqual to sleep at the tannery. He says to get rid of him. Pasqual refuses to go because he had been promised a place to sleep. Murietta whips him and he runs away. When Don Diego learns of this he offers Pasqual a place to stay. Diego suspects that the tanner must also be involved with the Eagle Brotherhood. He arranges for Zorro to search Murietta’s room while Bernardo searches the tannery. Zorro finds the cross of the Andes in Murietta’s drawer. When Murietta enters his room Zorro overpowers him and ties him up before leaving. Meanwhile Bernardo discovers at the tannery the crate of boots that Dolores brought and finds that under a false bottom are the rest of the jewels that go with the cross of the Andes. Jose sneaks up and knocks Bernardo out. He sees the jewels and decides to take them. In the middle of the floor of the tannery is a very deep pit. Jose is trying to throw Bernardo down it when Zorro arrives. They fight with staffs until Jose falls back against a sharp point and dies. You can always tell a bad guy is about to die if they find out Zorro's identity.

Rubenesque

                                  

            On Sunday morning I finished posting my translation of “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog. I started memorizing Gainsbourg's “L’Hippopodame”, a song about a Rubenesque woman.

            I worked on updating my journal.

            I washed a six-board section of my kitchen floor on the west side of the room in front of the mantle.

            For lunch I had a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire announces that she is going to spend the summer in Philadelphia with her sister. She says that her brother is going to stay with him in New York but Kingfish puts his foot down, even though he hasn’t met her brother. She agrees not to invite him. Later Kingfish is at his office when a man comes in looking for directions to a certain rest home. He explains that he is paying $750 to spend the summer at a quiet place. Kingfish gives him fake directions and says that the rest home is right on top of the subway to convince the man that it would be too noisy for him. Kingfish then tells him that his name is Dr. Stevens and he just happens to also have a rest home that he can stay at. He gets Andy to pose as a nurse. After the patient moves in Sapphire returns home explaining that she had a fight with her sister. Kingfish confesses the situation and Sapphire agrees to help take care of the patient. Kingfish tells the patient to make sure he does everything Sapphire tells him. After Kingfish leaves the room she tells the patient to make sure that he doesn’t tell her husband until the end of the summer that he is really her brother.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I translated a few paragraphs of “Les Enfants du Paradis”.

            I had an egg with toast and a beer for dinner while watching Zorro.

            In this story a man arrives in Los Angeles who shows himself to be very skilled with a whip. He checks into the inn but gives smart aleck answers Sergeant Garcia’s questions about his name and place of origin. He signs the register as Carlos Murietta and goes to his room. Don Diego happens to be in the inn at the time and tells Garcia that Murietta was wearing a gaucho hat, suggesting that he has just come from Argentina,

but he did not have an Argentinean accent. A local tanner named Jose comes to see Murietta. It turns out that they are both part of the Eagle Brotherhood. Murietta shows that he has stolen the cross of the Andes that some of its jewels will be delivered to Jose’s tannery. Meanwhile a young man named Don Rudolfo arrives at the inn and sits at a table, as he apparently does every day, to moon over the barmaid Maria. Rudolfo hast just turned eighteen. Murietta and Jose come down to the inn to drink a bottle of wine but Murietta tries to kiss Maria and Rudolfo comes to her defence. He unwisely challenges a far better swordsman to a duel at dawn. Diego takes him to his place and tries to give him some fencing pointers without revealing he is Zorro but Rudolfo is far too inexperienced. Zorro comes to Murietta’s hotel room to point out the error of his ways in having insulted Maria and challenged someone that is barely a man to a duel. They sword fight and when Murietta’s hat comes off Zorro sees the eagle feather inside. They fight some more until Zorro wounds Murietta’s duelling hand and leaves. The next day Murietta sends an apology to cancel the duel because of his injury.

            I think I got the cloth that I use with the wood soap mixed up with the one I use to wash the dishes. My coffee didn’t taste right.

Demonic Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law

         

            On Saturday morning I woke up at about 3:30 and laid in bed for a while before getting up half an hour early. I made use of the extra time to flush the wax out of my ears before starting yoga.
            I finished working out the chords for “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg and started posting it on my Christian’s Translations blog.
            My computer froze at around 8:30 and so I shut down and started again. When I looked at my torrent list everything had disappeared. Some of those files have been there for a year. I looked at some forums and there’s no quick fix. It seems to happen sometimes after crashes, although it’s never happened to me. Anyway all the files are in my downloads and it looks like Bit Torrent recognizes them so it won’t try to download whole files all over from scratch. It makes it difficult to seed files though because I can’t tell right away if I’ve seeded as much as I’ve downloaded so I can feel like I’ve been fair when I remove a file from the list. For instance, the second season of Zorro is about nine gigs but it only shows after re-downloading as four megs. Some incompletely downloaded files with unrecognizable names that couldn’t be searched on Pirate Bay just had to be deleted, but chances are they wouldn’t have fully downloaded anyway.
            I worked on my writing project, “My Blood in a Bug”.
            At 9:30 I started getting ready to go to the food bank for the first time in two months. Back in the summer and early fall it was a simple affair to get dressed for the line-up since I usually only needed a single layer of clothes and I could be there by 9:45. Now I had to put on four layers on top, two layers of scarves, three layers of socks, two layers of pants, plus my winter gloves and my Kodiaks and it took me an extra ten minutes.
            Food bank clients were still lined up from west to east as they started being instructed to do the last time I was there. Veronica was all bundled up with a heavy winter coat with the hood up and with the addition of the surgical mask she wears to filter out the cigarette smoke she looked like a Canadian Egyptian mummy from Jamaica.
            She exclaimed, “Oh my god!” when she first saw me and told me that she'd thought she was hallucinating. I explained that I couldn’t come from the beginning of October on because I had five essays to write and only just handed the last one in on Monday. I said that there would be a pretty heavy assignment workload in the New Year as well and so after the holidays I probably wouldn't be coming much to the food bank until April.
            She updated me by saying nothing has changed at all. As an example she pointed and said, “She’s still angry all the time!” I looked and saw she was indicating Valdene, the food bank manager who was just arriving behind the wheel of the food bank van with a cigarette clamped between her lips while she jerked the van into its parking spot in front of the food bank. I agreed that she did look angry.
            I saw that Robbie was there as usual, and his rollator was a few places ahead of us but Veronica informed me that he'd had a fall a few weeks ago and has been in physiotherapy.
            I asked about Graham and was surprised to hear that he’d been there last week. Apparently he’d only just gotten his job back as it took several weeks for the mistaken identity issue that had come up after the criminal check to be cleared up. He’d had to start all over again with the first paycheque having been held back again for two weeks. Hopefully now everything will be fine for him.
            Veronica told me she wants to start an “Overcomers Group”. She explained that her mother, who died last January, had been an overcomer when she came here from Jamaica and faced all of the obstacles that stood in her way when she settled in Canada. Veronica wants to gather people who make things into a group so they can sell their crafts together.
            Suddenly Veronica told me that I was going to write up the proposal. I insisted that I really don’t have time for something like that. She assured me that it would only take ten or fifteen minutes but I knew that if I got involved it would be much more time consuming than that. She argued that I have lots of time now that school is over until January but I guaranteed her that I still have lots to occupy my time. It was only after telling her that I don’t want to start things that I can’t excel in that she understood.
            Veronica said she’s at a loss to find people that will help her. Everybody just says, “That’s a great idea! Good luck with that!” but no one wants to help her. I'd recalled hearing that she'd worked at a computer before taking medical leave and so I was surprised to find out she’s not computer savvy enough to set up a Facebook page. She said that she’d only worked with Word and Excel to do her job but she isn’t a techie at all.
            I suggested that she talk with a counsellor at a community centre like PARC or the West Neighbourhood House and see if they can advise her on how to approach it.
            A short, late middle aged woman with white hair showing through under her hood walked down the line carrying a stainless steel beverage canister. Veronica called out to her, “Where’s our coffee?” The woman held up her canister and said, “This is for asthma!” "Coffee for asthma? What do you think of that Dr. Christian?” The woman insisted that for some types of asthma coffee is medicine. I said I’d have to look that up.
            It turns out that she’s sort of right. The caffeine in coffee or black and green tea works in a similar way to the asthma medication theophylline in its ability to open up the airways and improve breathing. The only problem is that to match the effect of a dose of theophylline one would have to drink 150 cups of coffee a day.
            Veronica asked the woman how she’s doing and she said that she tries to keep a positive attitude despite the people that want to kill her. She said that she’s been threatened with death by four different people over her life and the first was her sister who wanted to kill the entire family. But really, I would say that any kid that doesn’t want to kill their family or at least one of their parents at some point in their childhood is dangerously abnormal. When asked why her sister wanted to kill her she said that her sibling was possessed by demons. Four of them to be exact and she saw them because she has that ability.
            I suggested that very few people believe in demonic possession any more but she said that in the Orthodox Church in which she was raised a lot of people still believe. I’ve read that in the Catholic Church every diocese has to have one priest that is trained in performing exorcisms but the "possessed" person is required to first undergo thorough medical examination to find out that the person’s behaviour is really a manifestation of mental illness. In the Roman Church the last major case of supposed demonic possession occurred in the mid-70s when a German woman underwent sixty-seven exorcisms. Several years later the German bishops retracted the claim that she was possessed.
            In the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which includes the Greek Orthodox Church demons are still associated with disease and there is an exorcism ritual included in every baptism.
            At 10:30 we all took our places in line but nothing happened. We were still standing out in the cold at 11:00.
            I did some reading about the history of the Inuit people from my Indigenous Studies textbook. There were several displacements of communities by the Canadian government over the years. The feds set up a $10 million compensation fun in 1996 and apologized in 2010. Nunavut makes up 20% of Canada’s land mass.
            There was an eastern European and perhaps Romani couple there but the woman was standing in line with the cart while the man was in the entryway with their two children to keep them warm. Marlena the doorkeeper had the impression that the couple were attempting to shop separately so as to get extra food. She kept on telling the man to go to the back of the line. Later Valdene came up and was also acting like the couple were doing something wrong.
            It was almost 11:30 by the time I got downstairs. Valdene came storming up to the receptionist and wanted him to check the names of the couple waiting on the street and to make sure that they shop as a couple and not separately as she said they’ve done before. She made a comment about, “People trying to steal from us!”
            As Veronica and I were waiting in line for the reception desk she pointed out the shelves to me and said, “You see? There’s nothing there!” Maybe I had the advantage of having not been there for two months and remembering just how bare the shelves had been at the beginning of October. Back then the soup shelves had been almost empty and below that I’d barely seen a can of tuna all summer. Now there were a large variety of soups on two shelves and several stacks of tinned tuna and other kinds of fish underneath.
            The receptionist asked me if I wanted the Christmas turkey or the ham in two weeks when they give them out. I chose the turkey and he gave me a ticket.
            There were very few volunteers working, which helped to explain why the line had moved so slowly. A couple of volunteers were discussing Larissa, the older volunteer who usually helps people shop the shelves. They said that she’s probably on a beach right now so I guess she took a holiday.                  Marlena the doorkeeper doubled up her duties to serve me at the shelves.
            From the top of the first set of shelves I took a small bag of Peruvian coffee that is a product of Canada but distributed by a US company. And people say the nations aren’t getting along! The name brand of the coffee is Rykoff Sexton and the package doesn’t look twenty years old but according to Wikipedia, Rykoff Sexton stopped using that label in 1998 when it became US Foodservice.
            I got a can of jellied cranberry sauce with the label upside down. I hope the sauce isn’t upside down as well because then I would have to put the turkey on top of the sauce.
            Marlena said she really likes the Kashi Joi chocolate banana energy bars with almond butter and so I took two of those. Kashi was formed in 1984 by a young married couple named the Taubers and they got the name from a combination of “kashruth” (meaning kosher) and the name of macrobiotics guru Michio Kushi. They sold the company to Kellogg’s in 2000. Early in the 2010s they got sued for using the word "natural" on their products when some of the ingredients were artificial and others genetically modified. I notice that these bars are not labelled the words “natural" or “organic” but I don’t see any chemicals in the ingredients list.
            Marlena also gave me three little bags of chips, one ketchup flavoured, one all-dressed and one bag of nacho Doritos.
            As I was walking away from that set of shelves Marlena asked if I didn’t want some cereal. I’d forgotten about it probably because they don’t normally have any cereal I like. I looked and saw that they had spoon size shredded wheat, which is my favourite. When I grabbed a carton I saw that it was dark chocolate flavoured. I’m not big on sweetened cereals but I shrugged and took it anyway.
            There were a wide variety of canned beans and I grabbed a tin of fava beans. I didn’t notice until I got home that the brand name was Arz and I’d sworn I wouldn’t pick that product again because I got food poisoning once. But I guess one time doesn’t make a trend and so I’ll give them another chance. Arz started out as a Middle Eastern bakery and grocery store in Toronto and it was bought by Loblaws in 2009.
            I picked a can of Ocean’s albacore tuna. Ocean is owned by Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison. He also owns, after paying $4.8 million, the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang happy birthday to JFK. He’s 91 now and still works full time. He says the secret to a happy marriage is to marry someone from Saskatchewan.
            From the soup section I took a carton of golden butternut squash soup.
            As I finally ran out of pasta in November I selected a box of Barilla rotini. Barilla has been run by the Barilla family since 1877. In 2013 after Guido Barilla spoke out against gay couples adopting children and refused to use gay people in advertising, a boycott was threatened. A year or so later the company apologized and became an LGBTQ advocate.
            There was a young woman minding the cool section and Veronica had told me that Angie has been sick lately. I didn’t take any milk or yogourt but I accepted a container of tabouli salad, three eggs and a bag of frozen burgers. The burgers were beige coloured so they couldn’t be beef. Hopefully they aren’t vegan.
            Flash forward briefly to lunch the next day when I was looking forward to that tabouli salad. I noticed that the plastic lid was ballooning out from inside, which suggested that the wrong kinds of gasses were having a party in the tabouli. When I opened it up one little taste told me that the tabouli had gone kablooey and I had to throw it out.
            Sylvia gave me a 2.27-kilo bag of red and yellow mini potatoes and four apples. She said for me to help myself to the stuff by the door and so I got a bag of six tomatoes and a bunch of baby spinach.
            In the hallway between the food bank and the Tool Library there was a table set up. Veronica was sitting there and she called me over to encourage me to take the survey that a young man and woman were doing to help improve the food bank service. I picked up the form but the when the guy said it would take ten or fifteen minutes I put it back down again. I wasn’t going to waste any more time after spending one and a half hours in the cold. They should have invited people an hour before to come in and warm up while taking a fifteen-minute survey.
            It was almost noon by the time I got home. I put my food away and then headed back out to No Frills. I bought two bags of red grapes and a half pint of organic blueberries. I picked up an apple pie and a large wedge of two year old cheddar. I was pretty sure that the cheddar was $10 but I got charged $13. I got a little jar of basil pesto, some mouthwash and some Murphy’s Oil Soap.
            I had a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch. I worked on my journal.
            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This story begins with Sapphire arguing with Kingfish about how she needs new accessories. He says they can’t afford it. Later while Sapphire is out he finds an alligator bag in their home and thinking that Sapphire has spent their money on something extravagant he takes it. Wanting to teach her a lesson he sells it to Andy for $5. He tells him that he’s an importer of alligator handbags from Egypt and that alligators have pouches like kangaroos and so one just cuts them off and has a handbag. Later however he finds out that a delivery man had brought the bag for their upstairs neighbour for their upstairs neighbour and since she wasn’t home he left the alligator handbag with Sapphire. Kingfish tries to get the handbag back from Andy by telling him that the handbag was smuggled and that he'll go to jail unless he sells it back to him. Just then Amos drops by, sees the bag and comments that it’s probably worth $50. Andy realizes Kingfish had been trying to scam him. Andy takes the bag and offers it as a gift to the mother of his girlfriend Carolina as a way of getting in good with her. She accepts the gift and he asks her if she’ll mention to Carolina that he’s not such a bad guy. She says she will. He asks her also to mention to Carolina that he’s thoughtful. She says of course she will. He asks when she’ll tell her. She answers, “As soon as she comes back from her honeymoon. She was married last night!” She won't give back the handbag. Andy and Kingfish go to Laguardia the lawyer and find him with a client. He says to her, "You say you want the marriage annulled?” "Yes it’s been a horrible mistake and it took me ten years to find out!" “With me on the case it’ll be a cinch! Meet me in court tomorrow morning at 9:00." "Thank you very much! Goodbye!" She leaves and Andy asks Laguardia who it was. He says, “My wife!” About the handbag Laguardia suggests that he go to Carolina's mother posing as a secret service agent and then arrest Andy in front of her. He goes there and when she asks for identification he shows her a blank card because secret service agents keep their identity a secret. He hides when Andy comes to the door and then arrests him. He slaps on the handcuffs but accidentally put them on himself. Fortunately Andy has the key in his pocket. Mrs Adams is convinced to sell back the handbag for $40 and Kingfish returns it to Sapphire. It turns out though that the handbag was actually a gift for Sapphire from the Women’s Auxiliary for all her hard work.
            I worked some more on my journal.
            I had an egg, toast and a beer for dinner while watching Zorro.
            In this story, convinced that Sgt. Garcia’s life is still in danger, Diego tries to subliminally warn him about Raquel and Quintana without revealing he is Zorro. He goes to Garcia and tells his fortune with cards. He says that they show his life is threatened by the dark lady, the ten of cups and the single cup or death card. He explains to him that the ten of cups could represent someone that keeps a lot of cups, like an innkeeper. He tells him not to go anywhere alone. The next day Raquel asks him to go somewhere alone but on his way he sees a single cup and rides back to the fort. When Raquel asks why he has returned he says he knows all about the dark lady and the keeper of the cups, Raquel suddenly thinks he is onto them. She goes to pack her things. When Quintana confronts her about it she says she wants out but he forces her to stay. He takes her to a winery where several other Eagle agents tell her that the Eagle had always planned on killing her husband because he is an officer in the king’s army. She had joined them because she thought that it would be a path to her husband’s greatness. Now they plan on killing her. Zorro arrives at the winery and sends his horse with a message for Bernardo. He goes in the winery alone. He fights the men and Raquel helps him. They escape and lock themselves in the storage room but there is no way out. As they are trying to break down the door Zorro reminds them that they are in the room where the gunpowder is being stored he lights a fuse and tells them they have just a few seconds to leave. As they leave the building Zorro stomps out the fuse and the soldiers arrive to arrest the men. Because she has seen the error of her ways Zorro does not expose Raquel.

The Flora on My Floora

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of  “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg and chances are the rest of the song has the same chords.

            I washed another section of my bedroom floor and that makes about three quarters of the unfurnished part of the bedroom floor clean now. Afterwards I mixed some more wood soap and tried out the new mop to go over all the reachable areas that I’ve already washed. Mopping a floor uses back muscles I haven’t used in a while. It’s funny how that is. I bend and twist my back every which way during yoga but swinging a mop from side to side made me ache a bit.

            I had a chicken drumstick and some yogourt for lunch.

            I gathered together all my old journal entries relating to the revisions I made to my book of poems, “Paranoiac Utopia” based on Albert Moritz’s suggestions. I’ve made arrangements to send the edited manuscript back for him to look at again but he wanted me to let him know what I’d changed. I worked on my notes for part of the day and had them half done by 16:00.

            I did my afternoon exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish finds out that Sapphire’s brother Leroy is coming to visit. He says he doesn’t want Leroy to stay in his house. Sapphire says, “Your house? It isn’t any more your house than it is mine!” Kingfish says, “Then who does the landlord send the eviction notices to?” Kingfish tries to convince Andy to take Leroy in as a roommate by telling him that the government just passed the new “Double-up Law”, which says that nobody is allowed to live alone anymore. He said he’s surprised Andy hadn’t heard of it since they made a big announcement last night. Andy said he was listening on his little portable radio but he didn’t hear anything about it. Kingfish explains that it’s such big news that they didn’t broadcast it to the small radios. He says they’re applying the law to penitentiaries too and putting two prisoners in solitary confinement from now on. Andy doesn’t buy it. Then Kingfish intercepts a letter to Leroy from a lock company that says they looked at his design for a lock and they are interested in buying it from him. This touches off a new scheme, as Kingfish wants to try to get the patent for the lock from Leroy. He tells him that he could go to jail because of his invention like the guy that invented the steamboat. The guy that invented the boat and the guy that invented steam teamed up and sued him. Leroy sells Kingfish the lock for $50. The lock company arranges to come and see it and Kingfish asks Andy to pretend to represent a rival lock company in order to make the bid higher. When Andy tells the other company rep about his experience he says he just came back from South America where he was fixing the locks on the Panama Canal. He made two keys for them because he can’t keep going down to South America. The lock has been installed on a door across the hall and Kingfish opens it with the key Leroy gave him. Inside of the room he finds Leroy sleeping. He asks how he got in since he’d given Kingfish the only key. Leroy explains that is what’s special about his lock. It can be opened with a pin.

            Technically, since the Panama Canal is the line between North and South America it’s not in either place.

            I finished the notes on my revisions to my poetry manuscript and sent the manuscript and the notes in two attachments to Albert Moritz. Albert will be featuring in Shab-e She’r at The Tranzac on December 16 but sadly I can’t go because I’ve been told that I’m no longer welcome at Shab-e She’r.

            I had oven heated potato wedges, my last two drumsticks and gravy for dinner while watching Zorro.

            This story begins with a bear having wandered into the courtyard outside the fort. Sgt Garcia and some of the men take muskets outside the gate to kill the bear but their guns do not fire. They discover that their gunpowder has been replaced with charcoal. Garcia tries to investigate but finds the only boxes that left the pueblo were those belonging to Raquel. When asked she says that they are her husband, the commandant’s effects which she put into storage in the basement of the inn. Quintana and Enrique decide they must kill Garcia. Zorro sneaks into the basement to look for the gunpowder but is caught at gunpoint by Raquel. He easily overpowers her and finds out about the plot to kill Garcia. Quintana and Enrique take Garcia to the mountains under the pretence of helping him find the gunpowder. Quintana is about to shoot Garcia in the back when Zorro uses his whip to yank the gun from his hands. Garcia does not realize he is being rescued and tries to capture Zorro. Quintana accidentally kills Enrique. Garcia is about to sneak up behind Zorro but Zorro is about to club Quintana and when he swings backwards he knocks out Garcia too. 

Mop

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg and started looking for the chords. I doubted however that anyone has posted the chords for this song.

            Now that school is over for a month I can return to my floor-cleaning project. I washed, brushed and scraped the plaster and paint from a section of west side of my bedroom floor.

            Just after noon I rode down to Freshco where I bought three bags of black grapes, a half pint of raspberries, a loaf of Bavarian sandwich bread, a brick of cheap cheddar for cooking, some soft cream cheese, some Greek yogourt that was cheaper than I’ve ever seen it, perhaps because the containers are dented and finally I got a jug of vinegar.

            On the way home I stopped at Home Hardware to look at mops. I’ve found that now that we have winter weather I’ve been tracking dirt all over the sections of my floors that I’ve meticulously cleaned on my hands and knees. Since I can't get out of the habit of keeping my boots on for the first few minutes when I come home I need to start quickly mopping my floor to keep it clean in between scrub sessions. I bought a couple of old fashioned cotton mops, one for mopping and one for drying. The store calls them yacht mops. We called them mops. They are the cheapest kind and I got both for under $15.

            As I was unlocking my bike a woman said hi to me and it was poet and dancer Naomi, who I used to see a lot at The Yellow Door open stage and sometimes at Fat Albert’s. She said she was going to the Common Sort second hand clothing store. She reminded me that Fat Albert’s would be having its potluck dinner on December 19. I told her that I would start going out to perform again once I’ve published my book.

            I had a chicken drumstick and some yogourt for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire is upset about Kingfish not having a job and never looking for one. They go on a radio show for couples with marital problems but the argument they have on the air makes Sapphire decide it's over. They also both say that Andy Brown is a bum on the radio and so Andy wants to sue Kingfish until he finds out that it wasn’t a national broadcast and he’s okay with just being a local bum. They try a marriage vacation and Sapphire even tells Kingfish he can go on dates with other women so as to learn to appreciate her. Kingfish can't get a date from many of his old girlfriends and doesn’t want one with other s when he finds out one has a son bigger than him now. Andy tells Kingfish about a marriage counsellor by mail named Professor Hotchkiss and he gives him the post office box. A few days later Andy is at the Stevens household for dinner and the atmosphere is peaceful and happy. Sapphire confesses that she found the address of Professor Hotchkiss in Kingfish’s pocket and wrote to him. Everything has been fine since she took his advice. Kingfish confesses that he let the address in his pocket because he knew Sapphire was going to find it. Andy confesses that he is Professor Hotchkiss. 

            The Delta Rhythm Boys sang “Managua Nicaragua”.

                                       

            I got caught up on my journal.

            When I started making dinner I realized that I’d forgotten to buy potatoes at the supermarket but I had some frozen potato wedges and so I had a few of those with two drumsticks and gravy while watching Zorro.

            This story begins with Raquel going to the inn and presenting an eagle feather to Quintana. She tells him that from now on he will be taking orders from her. She asks for the whereabouts of the gunpowder that was smuggled into the pueblo. Quintano confesses that it was intercepted and stolen by Zorro. She convinces Sgt Garcia to comb the hills looking for Zorro without telling him about the gunpowder. Zorro and Bernardo are just hiding the kegs in the bushes when they see the soldiers. Zorro instructs his horse Tornado to lead Garcia away. Garcia captures Tornado and brings him back to the pueblo. Don Diego comes to chat with Garcia and when he is not looking gives Tornado some hand signals to instruct him to not behave as if he knows him. But from the window of the commandant’s office Enrique, the bartender at the inn and another Eagle agent, sees Diego using the hand gestures. Raquel is at her husband’s desk going through his records to try to figure out who Zorro could be. She dismisses Enrique’s suggestion that Don Diego might be Zorro. She agrees on a plan however to use Diego to capture Zorro and if Zorro does not come then Diego must be him. Diego is knocked out, dressed in a bad Zorro costume and put in a cell. The soldiers are on the roof waiting for Zorro to arrive. Garcia is guarding the cell but has fallen asleep. Diego calls for Tornado and instructs him to lift the keys from Garcia’s belt and pass them to him. Diego puts on the Zorro costume, takes Garcia’s swords and then wakes him up from behind with the sword poking his back. He tells him that he has already released Diego and now instructs Garcia to open the gate for him. But a soldier lassos him from the roof and only Tornado gets out through the gate. Zorro has to fight his way to the roof and then go over the wall. 

Joan Plowright

            On Wednesday morning I had the chords for the first verse of  “Le complainte du progrès" by Boris Vian worked out. I also had memorized all but the last verse of “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg.  

            I worked on getting caught up on my journal.

            In the afternoon I rode to my last Aesthetic and Decadence Movements class.

            Rhonda, Elizabeth and Marco, the students closest to my age, some older and some younger were already there. Rhonda commented that the old students are always there early. I said I prefer “ripe”.

            Elizabeth asked if anyone had seen “The Importance of Being Earnest" film before. I said I'd seen the play at Stratford and read it several times and had written an essay on it during Academic Bridging. Elizabeth said she’d taken the play in Academic Bridging as well. I asked if she’d had Theresa Moritz for an instructor but hers had been Barbara Rose, who is also very nice.

            Professor Li arrived earlier than usual and wondered if we all always come this early. I said that I come early for everything and might have gotten the habit because my mother was a schoolteacher and I used to ride to school early with her rather than take the school bus.

            I asked her if she teaches other courses. She said that teaches a four-year graduate course on Victorian Literature.

            She is also writing a book on Ethos as a moral concept. Elizabeth said it’s cool that she’s writing a book but Professor Li said that writing books is what one is required to do as an academic.

            Professor Li brought two boxes of donuts for us. She said she usually takes students out somewhere after the movie but she knows we’re busy. I think she means she found it too expensive.

            We watched the made for TV adaptation from 1986 that Professor Li says is closest to the play.

            I wrote down several choice lines:

Not a quote but an observation. Bunbury is to the country what Earnest is to the city.

            “If the lower orders don’t set us a moral example, what on Earth is the use of them?”

            “Girls never marry men they flirt with.”

            “The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous."

            “More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read."

            “The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

            “Behaving very well and feeling very well rarely go together.”

            “Her hair has turned quite gold from grief" is a line in both this play and in Dorian Gray.

            “If one plays good music people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk."

            On smoking: “A man should always have an occupation.”

            “A man who desires to get married should either know everything or nothing ... I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance."

            “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

            “To be bred in a handbag reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.”

            “She is a monster without being a myth, which is rather unfair."

            “Hearing my relations abused is the only thing that makes me put up with them."

            “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his."

            “The truth isn’t the sort of thing one would not tell to a nice, sweet, refined girl."

            “Women only call each other sister when they have called each other a lot of other things first."

            “The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means."

            “I’d sooner die than go to Australia.”

            “I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about."

            “A desire to be buried in Paris hardly points to any very serious state of mind.”

            “No gentleman ever has any money."

            “If I am occasionally overdressed I make up for it by being always immensely overeducated."

            “A man much talked about is always very attractive."

            “Half of the chaps who get into the bankruptcy court are called Algernon."

            “He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows."

            “I don’t quite like women who are interested in philanthropic work. I think it is so forward of them.”

            “Once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate."

            “Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say one should always be quite candid."

            “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.”

            “When I see a spade I call it a spade" "I am glad to say I have never seen a spade".

            “My first impressions of people are invariably right.” This line is funny because Gwendolyn said it twice about two opposite first impressions of Cecily.

            “One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement."

            “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing."

            “Where questions of self sacrifice are concerned men are infinitely beyond us."

            “Three addresses always inspire confidence.”

            “Only people who can’t get into society speak disrespectfully of it.”

            “I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character.”

            “No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”

            “The idea of being baptized as an adult is irreligious.”

            “If you are not too long I will wait here for you all my life.”

            “It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking the truth.”

            I noticed that Earnest was played by Paul McGann, who was in “Withnail and I”, one of my favourite movies and he was also the eighth Doctor in Doctor Who.

            Lady Bracknell was played by Joan Plowright and Professor Li pointed out that she was Lawrence Olivier’s second wife.

            We got our essays back and first off made the mistake of not putting the name of the authors or the works in my clever title of “The Artist is an Outlaw”. She noted that one of my paragraphs had not been developed to clarity. But she liked my transition between paragraphs about Satan and about Lord Henry as a satanic figure.  She thought I took one paragraph a little too far when I declared that Dorian Grey was the father of humankind. But she thought that my final line, stating that, “Dorian becomes the very thing that outlaw artists like Baudelaire and Wilde need to kill” was an excellent conclusion. I had been worried that she might find that too harsh. In my citations I guess I didn’t cite my own translations properly. Her final comment was, “Excellent work! Highly thoughtful, full of good points here and there. I was particularly impressed with the ending conclusion of the essay. Well done!” I got an A on my paper!

            I told professor Li how much I enjoyed the course and told her that she was a very good monitor for seminars and should be in the United Nations. She said she enjoyed having me in the class and she learned a lot. She admitted that I had been right when I corrected her about the name of a painting by William Morris. I said that’s what I like about literature courses. The professors like to learn from their students. I told her about being pushed down for asking questions in Indigenous Studies.

            I stopped at Loblaws on the way home where I bought a couple of bags of grapes. The cashiers are older and far more ethnically diverse at the Queen Street West Loblaws compared to Freshco in Parkdale and No Frills at Lansdowne and Dundas, which has almost all young women of Portuguese descent.

            I had a late lunch of a salami and cheese sandwich.

            I had taken a siesta in the late morning but I felt very sleepy around 19:00 and went to sleep until 20:00.

            I had beans and toast with a beer for dinner and watched Zorro.

            In this story we finally see the Eagle, the leader of the Brotherhood of the Eagle Feather. The Eagle’s headquarters is in Monterrey and he holds a meeting there of his agents. He announces that he has removed the gunpowder from almost all of the pueblos in California, leaving all but Los Angeles defenceless. Commandant Toledano is called away to San Diego to help protect it. He leaves his wife behind in Los Angeles and puts Sgt Garcia in charge of intercepting the gunpowder. It turns out that Raquel is also an agent of the Eagle and she writes a fake letter commanding Garcia that the gunpowder is no longer a problem. Don Diego hears this from Garcia and is suspicious and so as Zorro he watches the road leading to Los Angeles. He intercepts a load of hay that suspiciously has an armed guard. He stops the wagon and finds the gunpowder but suddenly the soldiers arrive and Zorro escapes. Garcia is told by the driver of the wagon, Salvador Quintana that the barrels under hay are kegs of wine and that he is the new owner of the in n. Of course that endears Quintana to Garcia and he escorts him to Los Angeles. Quintana’s plan is to store the gunpowder in the wine cellar but Zorro had anticipated this. He knocks out Quintana’s man in the basement and as each keg of gunpowder is slid down the stairs Zorro intercepts it and passes it out the window to Bernardo.