Some slight pain in my left arm now. That's good. And good thing I took it slowly yesterday. Just did like 15 pound weights. 300 reps. Took about an hour.

I'm having second thoughts about this chicken. I felt really sick yesterday as I was going to sleep. Kept thinking about this chicken that I ate. I enjoyed the taste but something about it just bothered me.

But today, I'm cooking up some more rice. Going to see if I can get it right. Then I'll make the chicken when I'm happy with the rice. It only takes five minutes to cook so just cover the rice to keep it warm.

I'm not sure about defrosting, though. I've looked it up and you can defrost the chicken in the refigerator but I haven't found a clear time for chicken breast. This is why I don't like chicken. Everything is a bacterial concern. I also read that you can just cook it from frozen but again there's probably bacterial problems. I don't want the centre to be uncooked.

So more preparation is needed to defrost shit. Can I do it the night before? Would that be too long? Who knows?

What else? I was talking to my lady friend about It's a Wonderful Life. We saw it twice in the cinema. She didn't like it and was confused why we saw it a second time. So I asked her if the racial components were her reason for not liking it and she said they weren't.

It's weird why she doesn't get it. The film holds up to repeat viewings. It's normal for people to watch it every year.

It's like I was talking to her about how I have to wear sunscreen even in the winter because I burn so easily. I asked her if she's ever had sunburn. She thought about it for a second and said, "Not that I know of."

Obviously, you would know if you had sunburn. But it's so off the radar for her that she doesn't know anything about it.

Similarly, she would often complain that my flat was cold but I was perfectly comfortable. I think it's another physiological issue. Light skin absorbs heat better which also makes sunburns more likely.

So it's not just physical differences but also mental ones. Maybe sociological is a more PC description, though let's not kid ourselves. Black people are more prone to violence, lateness, having children with multiple women, et cetera. The evidence is plain to see.

When I try to point out these differences, my friend will deny them in their entirety. Even stuff that she herself does (e.g. chronic lateness).

For example, she mentioned somebody pushing her in the train station because she was walking behind a woman who was walking on the wrong side of the pavement. The woman in front also got pushed.

I said, "Yeah, that annoys me too. If people would just walk on the right think how much easier things would be. I suspect that there's also a racial element to this." Because in my experience, it's mostly black people (and other non-white people to a lesser extent) who don't get this "walk on the right" rule.

She said, "Yeah, I think there's perhaps a racial element too. The woman in front of me was caucasian as was the man behind me."

When she was in Scotland, I had to correct her at least twice about walking on the right. She was causing problems with people coming towards us. But she can't see this.

Watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was based on the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, of course, but they changed the name for the film because the Vietnam War was going on and Vietnamese people were called "Charlie" based on the Chinese character Charlie Chan. So the Jew producers didn't want this cutting into their profits.

But what always unsettled me about this film is the ambiguous setting. Everybody seems to be English. Except Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Violet, and that cowboy kid. And even they're kind of ambiguous. Charlie has that weird hair. I saw an interview where the guy who played Charlie showed the film to his son and his son asked him why he was wearing a wig.

But certainly the candy shop man seems English, Charlie's teacher seems English, and there are other English-like characters. What's going on?

As it turns out, it was filmed in Germany and the ambiguous setting was intentional.

Also, I think people back then just spoke differently. Like in MASH, I was convinced that Major Charles Emerson Winchester III was English well into my adulthood. But no, that was just an upper class New England accent that he was doing. The actor was actually born in Illinois.