Linda Henning

            On Thursday morning I memorized the seventh verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. There are a lot of repetitions of verses and so there are only three new verses left to learn. 

            I finished working out the chords to "J'envisage" (I Imagine) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in French and English. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and will probably have it published on the blog tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished reading Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. Unlike the romantic King Arthur stories, this only has descriptions of battles and betrayals. Merlin only appears in the account of Arthur's father Uthur using magic to disguise himself so he could sleep with another man's wife and that's how Arthur was born. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of strawberries, two packs of blueberries, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a sirloin tip beef roast, a jug of orange juice, a jug of limeade, and a bag of kettle chips. I forgot to buy milk but what I have might last until Saturday. 

            I finally got an email back from my TA Alex. I suspect that my message compelled her to finally post a general email to everyone with the links to the sign-up and to Discord. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:55. 

            I finished reading "Yellow Woman" by Leslie Silko. I read "Sautu" by Subramani, Sudesh Mishra's "The Grand Pacific Hotel", and Nalo Hopkinson's "Habit of Waste". The last one is a science fiction story from the point of view of someone who had a body transplant and changed her race. It also has a character who lives off the land in Toronto. 

            I found a bedbug on my shoulder while I was sitting at the computer. It didn't have blood inside but it looked healthy. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode six of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            The story begins with Elly May wearing a ball gown that Jane Hathaway got for her. Her father, Jed tells her she looks like a queen. She goes out to meet boys but comes back all dirty because she thought a ball gown was for playing ball and she joined a bunch of boys in a football game. 

            Granny is homesick and wants to move back to Tennessee. All of the livestock that Jed bought in the previous episode was taken away by the city. Jed sends Jethro out to hunt but he gets arrested and the cops take his shotgun away before he runs away from them and escapes. The main gripe that Granny has is they've made no friends in Beverly Hills. If someone new moved next door back home they would go and visit them with food. 

            Jed decides that maybe the way it's done in Beverly Hills is that the new people visit the neighbours first. So they venture out to ring doorbells even though they aren't supposed to know what a doorbell is since they don't know their own. At the first house they visit, a woman who may be a governess welcomes them in and gives them treats because it turns out that it's Halloween. As they are leaving they see two children in masks asking if they can go out but the governess tells them not until after dark. The Clampetts don't realize that the children are wearing masks and just think they are horribly ugly children who aren't allowed outside except under the cover of night. The Clampetts continue on and every house gives them treats, so now Granny thinks that the neighbours are friendly after all. 

            Meanwhile back in Tennessee, Jed's cousin Pearl and her daughter Jethrine visit the oil tycoon Mr. Brewster at Jed's old place, which he's using as a field office for the oil excavation. Pearl leaves Jethrine in the wagon while she flirts with Mr. Brewster in the house. A flashy hipster named Jazzbo pulls up in a hot rod and starts flirting with Jethrine. He says he likes big girls and adds, "You carry me away!" Jethrine jumps out of the wagon, picks him up and carries him away. Jed talks to Pearl through Brewster's field telephone and tells her and Jethrine to come and visit. 

            I suspect that Pearl was originally supposed to be Jed's sister since her son Jethro is referred to as Jed's nephew. If Pearl is a first cousin then Jethro is Jed's first cousin once removed. Maybe he just calls him "Uncle Jed" out of respect. 

            Jethrine and Jethro were both played by Max Baer but Jethrine's voice was dubbed by Linda Henning. She is the daughter of Paul Henning who created The Beverly Hillbillies. She played Betty Jo on Petticoat Junction for seven years. She played Mrs. Mallory on Sliders. 

            I didn't find any bedbugs in the bedroom but I don't know where the one that I found earlier on my shoulder in the living room came from.

October 7, 1992: I stood on my head in a garbage can

Thirty years ago today

            I was very horny on Tuesday morning and so I got up at 7:30 to masturbate. I left for the Ontario College of Art at 8:00. There were no large coffee cups at Cultures and so I just caught the streetcar and got a coffee at the other end. I only had to work for an hour in Experimental Arts. I did thirty one-minute gestures and then the teacher had me pose with some tool props like a screwdriver, a hammer, a saw, and a broom. I made the gestures of hammering the screwdriver into my chest, standing on my head in a garbage can, brushing my teeth and washing my back with the broom, eating my shoe, and smashing my camera with the hammer. I had to go to the office to find the model sign-in sheet. I took the streetcar home and was there long enough to change my developer and process one photo, then I headed back to work.

Sirry Steffen

            On Wednesday morning I worked out most of the chords for "J'envisage" (I Imagine) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the song done tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. As usual, I didn't have time to eat more than a bowl of grapes because I had to leave for English in the World class. I'll leave a little later next time because I had to wait outside the class until 11:00 anyway. 

            Professor Percy had computer problems because there was a new computer in the classroom and she couldn't get it to communicate with her laptop in order to make the projector show her slides. She started the lecture without slides for about half an hour before the technician came. 

            We looked at the story "The Wizard of Khao-I-Dang" by Sharon May. The longest-lived refugee camp was on the Thailand-Cambodia border. It was closed in 1993. It was a camp of people rejected by more than one country and had a lot of well-educated refugees. It was the camp most serviced. 

            I said all translation is wizardry, turning one thing into something else, sometimes more real. 

            I said the character Richard was very arrogant to correct the spelling of the bar the "Bambu Gardin". If he'd seen a bar with that spelling in Australia he would have considered it to be a creative choice rather than something he needed to educate the owner about. 

            Fanta is made by Coke and Miranda is made by Pepsi. 

            I had five-year-old cheddar on Bavarian sandwich bread for lunch with a glass of lemonade. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:05. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:22. 

            I wrote today's Exit Slip survey for my English in the World class. 

            I emailed my Medieval Literature professor to ask her for the email address of Alex, our TA. Professor Walton is a good instructor so far but this is a very shoddily administrated class. So far all I've received has been the syllabus. In any other course I've had, the TA would have sent us her email address and links to any relevant sites. We are supposed to post sign-up dates for our presentations but there has been no link. She said last night that she'd created a multi-channel Discord page for us but there has been no invitation to it. I found Alex's U of T email based on her last name and sent her a message. Hopefully, I'll get some assistance from the Teaching Assistant. 

            I read The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which gives a brief history of the battles that led up to the Norman Conquest and a bit on William the Conqueror's rule. Apparently, he based the law on the ten commandments. 

            We're supposed to read something by William of Malmesbury but the syllabus doesn't say what and he wrote a lot.

            I started reading Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which is full of fiction and magic, including a presentation of King Arthur as if he was an actual historical figure. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode five of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This story takes place directly after the previous one. The Clampetts' neighbour Mrs. Drysdale's fox fur had been shot by Jethro and she fainted. But Jed and Granny still believe that Mrs. Drysdale is a heavy drinker and Granny plans to cure her with her "sobering up mash", which contains coon root, retch weed, sour dod, skunk oil, chimney soot, spider web, horse spit, snake wort, pepper leaves, chicken gizzards, stump worm, coal oil, slippery elm ooze, and turpentine. And the biggest toad you can find. The toad is just a guinea pig to test it on and see how high it jumps. Then Mrs. Drysdale will need goat's milk every half hour to stop the burning. 

            Drysdale's secretary Jane Hathaway comes and rings the doorbell but the family doesn't know what the music means or where it's coming from. Jethro just knows that after it plays for a while somebody always knocks on the door. 

            Jed decides that it's time to take Mr. Drysdale's advice and buy some stock. Jane tells Jethro that they can buy stock over the phone and so Jed picks it up and dials some random numbers. He gets through to the operator, who hands him over to her supervisor, and eventually, he gets to buy the stock he's looking for, which is a pair of goats, three pigs, four cows, a bull, a mule, and a dozen chickens. When they get them they put them all in the tennis court because it has a fence around it. Mr. Drysdale almost cries when he sees them and Jed assumes it's out of happiness. 

            Granny makes the mash but the butler won't let them in. Granny and Elly don't know what a butler is and think that Butler must be Mrs. Drysdale's maiden name. But the butler takes the mash and gives it to the maid, Marie, who brings it upstairs. Mrs. Drysdale wakes up to see her poodle eating the stuff and then jumping around on its hind legs. Then they need to deliver the goat's milk but the butler refuses to take it. So Jethro carries the butler away and Elly goes in with the milk and a goat with a chicken on its back because that's the only way it will give milk, and leaves them in Mrs. Drysdale's bedroom. Then Jed hoists Granny up to Mrs. Drysdale's window with a rope. When Mrs. Drysdale sees what she thinks is a witch in her window and the goat in her bathroom she immediately starts packing to go back to Boston because now the doctors there can't possibly deny that she has a nervous condition. 

            Marie was played by Sirry Steffen (born Sigríður Geirsdóttir), who won the Miss Iceland contest in 1959. She entered the first Miss International contest which was held in California and was second runner-up and won Miss Photogenic. She decided to stay in Hollywood and pursue acting. Her first TV role was a small part in the detective series Michael Shayne in 1960. Her first movie was a small part in "Hitler" in 1962. She returned to Iceland in 1971 and became a singer. Her last film part was a major role in "Okkar á milli: Í hita og þunga dagsins" (Between us: In the heat and weight of the day). 

            I searched for bedbugs and found none.

October 6, 1992: Susana and Ludwig had the most beautiful relationship I'd ever seen

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday morning, since I had no money for the train, I couldn't pussyfoot about sleep. I had to get a ride to Sheridan College with Susana Wald, and I was at her place at around 7:00. She gave me toast and tea while she got ready to go. It was always pleasant seeing her and Ludwig Zeller say goodbye. I'd never seen such a beautiful relationship. I would have loved to have a woman like Susana. about twenty-five years younger, fall in love with me the way that she was in love with Ludwig. I worked on her astrological chart during my breaks and discussed it with her while gathering more information. I did a standing pose with a straight posture all morning and normal poses in the afternoon. She gave me $5 for lunch and I bought a grilled chicken sandwich at Harvey's. Susana gave me a ride back to Toronto and I went home to eat. I read from an astrology book and then went to work again. I waited about half an hour at Woodbine Station for Vickie. We discussed the spiritual fate of the world on the way out to the drawing session. When it was over, I finally had cash and so I bought some Häagen-Dazs. When I got home there was a message from the Persian Doll.

Harriet E. MacGibbon

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first three verses of "J'envisage" (I Imagine) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast.

            I tried to do research for my essay but I got tired and decided to take an early siesta at 11:30. I got up at 13:00. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before lunch. 

            I still felt tired after lunch and laid down without sleeping for half an hour. 

            I took a bike ride downtown and back an hour earlier than usual. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 16:00. That's the most I've weighed at that time in over two weeks. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 16:51. 

            I finished copying excerpts from an essay on Chiac. Many francophone students at the University of Moncton find university French too formal and it drives them towards less structured English. 

            I logged on for Medieval Literature class. But my image was labeled as "User" again and so I logged off and logged onto Zoom then logged back into the class. 

            We had a review and we were broken off into groups of two to discuss comparisons between Bede and Beowulf and maybe Judith. I said it can definitely be compared to Judith because they are both Pagan conversion therapy. The professor gave us a poll to ask how similar Bede was to Beowulf. I didn't think they were similar at all and so I picked 1 out of 10 but I misunderstood because it turned out that the professor meant that 1 indicated the most similarity. 

            Etiology means origin, root cause, and origin stories. Why tell an origin story? This course is an origin story. Why take it? There's a politics to it. 

            Celtic literature didn't survive. All we have are stories that the English wrote down. Celtic speakers covered much of Europe. 

            Grendel's hand being ripped off makes it a very old story. 

            I said Beowulf fights Grendel on his own level by fighting unarmed but shows himself to be more of a savage. Also, it's a hand, not a paw and a hand makes Grendel human. In losing his hand he's kept from being human. Manuscript means handwritten and hands write manuscripts. 

            If one loses one's head the story is over. Symbolic violence of beheading in Judith. The blemmya was a medieval fictional creature with no head but a face on its torso. There are various spellings: blemmye, blemmyae, blemmyes. There were legends from ancient Greece to Africa. The earliest legends are from Libya and Ethiopia. 

            Maybe ninety percent of the beginning of the manuscript is missing. It is a headless manuscript. Acephalous means not or no head. Judith is a headless poem but is also about headlessness. 

            We broke off into groups to discuss how many ways there is the loss of a head in Judith. 

            The general loses his head but also a general is the head of an army and he is lost. 

            I pointed out this line, about losing one's head to drunkenness, "Then the king collapsed in midst of bed so drunk on wine that his wit-locker was of sense empty." 

            The general's corpse also loses its head as it is another degree of headlessness to not have your body buried with its head. 

            I say the poem moves from multiple heads to one head, that of god. Unity of the god figure.

            Pagan through a Christian lens. There's a hymn at the end. 

            I think elements of the battle scene come from an oral pagan tradition. 

            Elegies: cycle, the natural world, pastoral. Realistic accounts of bereavement. Elements found in human grief. Searching behaviour. A sense that the lost person is about to come home. The impulse to answer the door. Scanning the horizon, wandering around. John Bowlby writes about attachment theory and the deep desire to find the other that is lost. In "The Seafarer" thoughts are a bird. 

            The professor found her dog had 11 pups before she got her from the Humane Society. Animals search too when they grieve. The Elegy poems talk of animal cognition. 

            I said, "The Wanderer" reminds me of "Un Canadian errant" by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie. 

            Greed comes up in the poems with longing. Eaten by longing. 

            Our TA Alex started a Discord page for our course with multiple channels. Sign up for a date and write what you want from topics covered in class before that date. 

            Class went right up until 21:00. 

            I started food cooking during the break and so I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg with a beer while watching the fourth episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This story begins with Granny setting up her still outside by the swimming pool. Jed says that their neighbour Mr. Drysdale told him that he'd better not let Mrs. Drysdale see it. They assume it means that she's an alcoholic and she'll be tempted. From then on they interpret everything they hear about Mrs. Drysdale in terms of alcoholism. The fact is that she is a hypochondriac and is always drinking things to cure her imagined illnesses. 

            Mrs. Drysdale is in a spa in Boston and she tells her husband she wants to come home and meet her new neighbours in order to find out if they are the right kind of people. Mrs. Drysdale thinks that anyone that didn't arrive on the Mayflower is a foreigner. Mr. Drysdale wants her to stay in Boston.

            Meanwhile, Jed and his family discover the telephone. They get a call from Mrs. Drysdale but she faints as soon as she talks to them. 

            Mrs. Drysdale catches the next plane and comes to the Clampett house. Mr. Drysdale tries to get her back in the car and they are each pulling on an end of her fox fur. Jethro thinks they are fighting with a real fox and aims his shotgun. Mrs. Drysdale throws her fur up in the air and Jethro shoots it. Mrs. Drysdale faints and is unconscious in the limo. Jed and Granny think she's juiced again. 

            Mrs. Drysdale was played by Harriet E. MacGibbon, who had a long career on Broadway before acting regularly on the screen. Her first movie was a supporting role in WC Fields's first talky, The Golf Specialist. From 1934 to 1937 she played Lucy Kent on the radio soap opera Home Sweet Home. Her theatrical roles were diverse but on the screen, she was typecast as a snooty society lady. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found one on the old exit door just above the floor at the head of my bed. It left a black smear when I killed it and so it definitely wasn't healthy.

October 5, 1992: The job was canceled and I was pissed off because I needed the cash

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday I woke up late at 8:10 because I'd been talking with Judy quite a while after midnight. I rushed to get ready and made it to the Ontario College of Art just in time. It was an all day pose and I chose to stand. At lunch, I went to the bank and took out $3 so I could buy a falafel. I wrote this while I was on my afternoon break. My hip was uncomfortable because it was a difficult pose and I was very sore by the end of the day. I got a booking for Wednesday. I went home, had something to eat, turned my answering machine on, and then left for Parkdale. I was about five minutes late but when I got there, I found that the job had been canceled. The woman said they'd tried to get in touch with me. I was really pissed off because I needed the cash. I went home and found several messages from Tom Hendry. He'd called just after I left. 

            I called Mistress Judy. She seemed to be into everything but bisexuality.

Max Baer

            On Monday morning I had the first six verses of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian memorized. 

            I finished memorizing "J'envisage" (I Imagine) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but no one had posted them. Tomorrow I'll start working them out. 

            Pepsi delivered two new coolers to Dollarama this morning and took the old ones away. 

            The power must have gone out briefly during my song practice because when I'd finished playing, my computer was off. 

            I got a call from the Parkdale Dental Clinic telling me that I had an appointment for cleaning on Friday. I was surprised because the Ontario government had told me I no longer qualify for the Senior's plan. I thought that meant as of July, but maybe it's for next year, or maybe the clinic hasn't gotten the news. Anyway, my appointment is for 11:30 on Friday and I'm not going to mention not qualifying. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. That's the heaviest I've been in the morning in two weeks.

            I had time for breakfast this morning because I left half an hour later than I did on the first day of class. But since I took the Bloor bike lane to St George instead of riding on College, I should have left ten minutes earlier because I didn't get to class until everyone else had arrived. 

            A tech helper for the Sidney Smith building approached me after I arrived to ask if I needed help setting up. I said, "You thought that I was the professor because I'm old. She should be along any time now." 

            Professor Percy gave us an update on the class survey because now 38 of the 43 students have filled it out. Only one student is in linguistics. She quoted some of our answers to "The meaning of life" and listed mine, "It's better to be interested than happy." 

            We looked at Arthur Yap's poem, "2 Mothers in a HDB Playground." HDB stands for Housing Development Board. 

            Singapore is an outer circle country but Singlish is entrenched and part of a government negative language policy. 

            There are videos inspired by the poem. 

            "Beng" is a stereotypical name. Looking up the stereotype, "Ah Beng" is a pejorative term applied to describe an anti-social lower-class youth in Singapore who displays common characteristics such as having dyed hair, wearing loud fashion, playing loud music in public and being less educated." But one literal meaning of "Beng" is "smart". The professor says it's like "Kevin". 

            I pointed out that only the children have identity in the poem as the mothers have no names. I added that the mothers are further humbled by the use of only lowercase to depict their conversation.

            Competitive exams. Someone said that in Pakistan they post the test scores in the newspapers and so families look for the results. 

            Ah Beng is defined by consumption. 

            Kim Cheong is a Korean name and he's the child who doesn't eat. 

            Singapore English is defined by acronyms and loan words. 

            A lot of Canadianisms are also product related, like "double-double". 

            Kiasu is fear of missing out. 

            Of the new couch, the mother says, "I dare not sit ... too soft". This goes back to the mother's humility I mentioned earlier. 

            HDB was new at the time. 

            It's hard to get a car in Singapore. 

            A tuition teacher is a paid tutor. 

            There is a parallel between food and learning. Also consumption of tv and ads. Cheong refusing a brand-name vitamin. 

            The mothers are using Singlish because they each have a different mother tongue. 

            The poem inspired the movie "Gone Kimmy Gone". 

            Edgar Schneider argues that Singapore English is the main marker of national identity because English is what the diverse groups there have in common. By contrast, in India, English is a class marker. 

            Singlish is entrenched. The government had a "speak good English" policy but the people resisted. Now the government uses Singlish for public service alerts. 

            'Lah' is the simplest and most iconic word in Singlish - think 'yeah mate' in Australia or 'eh' in Canada. But it has no meaning. 'Lah' is an expression after a statement as a mere emphasis. How to use it: "What's for lunch today?" "Chicken rice sounds good lah!" 

            We took a break. 

            Is English a passport or a barrier to dreams? 

            Expanded circumstances. 

            No popular base. 

            No status. 

            No national significance. 

            Prestige from instrumental value. 

            Linguistic influence in anglicisms. 

            Iceland needs more English speakers for tourism. 

            Reporting the same news in English rather than Hebrew conveys an altered meaning. 

            Kongish is both outer and inner circle. 

            Deliberately bad English is used for advertizing in Japan. 

            Ornamental English is like when people get Chinese tattoos without really knowing what they mean. 

            I pointed out that "EF" means English Fluency. The professor said a Swedish company does the EF test. 

            English is used in China for learning Chinese. In China, they are teaching English less but making it more important in exams. 

            There are English villages in Korea. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before a late lunch at 14:00. That's the lightest I've been at that time in a week. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:00. 

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

            I completed today's Exit Slip survey for English in the World. 

            I worked for almost two hours doing research on Chiac. One interesting quote from an Acadian author named France Daigle explains how Chiac uses English. I translated this from French: "A Frenchman can say 'parquigne,' but the Acadian will feel like he is doing theater if he has to say it that way. He will therefore quite naturally pronounce ‘parking,’ as he hears it from the mouths of the thousands of English speakers who surround him”. 

            I coated three chicken legs in olive oil and salt and roasted them in the oven. I had one with a potato and gravy while watching the third episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            So far Jed Clampett and his family have yet to learn that their mansion has internal plumbing and running water. So Granny does the laundry at the swimming pool which they call the cement pond. She also carries water in buckets from the pool into the house for Elly May's bath. 

           The banker Mr. Drysdale's secretary Miss Jane Hathaway has been shopping for Elly May and arrives with several boxes of clothes for her. Jed tells Jethro to carry the parcels into the house but he says he can't because Granny says the men have to stay outside while Elly is bathing. Jane asks, "But isn't Elly May bathing in the privacy of her own bedroom suite?" Jethro thinks Jane has just called him "Sweet" and so he calls her "Darling." 

            Jane goes inside to find Elly bathing in a wooden tub. Jane explains that Elly has a beautiful bathroom in her suite upstairs. Up to this point, no one in the family has been upstairs because they thought it must belong to another family. Jane says the whole house is theirs and offers to show them. Granny says it's enough trouble to carry the water from the cement pond, let alone lugging it upstairs too. Jane leads Elly upstairs to show her what she bought. She says she got everything from chapeau to pumps. Granny thinks Jane brought pumps for the water. 

            Later Jane comes to Jed and says that Elly ran away from her. Jed finds Elly in a tree where Elly explains she didn't run away. She just wanted to try out the new double-barreled slingshot that Jane brought her. Elly has whittled a slingshot frame and tied it with the brassiere since she can't think of any other purpose it would serve. 

            Meanwhile back in Tennessee, Jed's cousin Pearl has a visit from the oil company president Mr. Brewster, who drives her to the nearest town so she can call Jed and ask if she can come and take care of her son Jethro. 

            Jethro was played by Max Baer Jr. who is the only member of the cast that is still alive. He is the son of heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration, with a minor in Philosophy. He was close friends with Elvis Presley. After "The Beverly Hillbillies" went off the air he couldn't find work as an actor for three years. So he gave himself a job by co-writing, co-producing, and starring in the movie "Macon County Line" which cost $100,000 but earned $35 million. He bought the film rights to Bobby Gentry's song "Ode to Billy Joe", then produced and directed the movie. It cost $1 million and made $27 million. He also owns a chain of casinos. 

            For the third night in a row, I didn't find any bedbugs.