Topic 1;
On Saturday March 28 at around 7PM, I went and dined at East Gourmet Buffet in Fort Worth with my friend Jerel. I must have left my sense behind as we left my truck because at the bar (a food bar), I saw uncooked meat and thought "that looks delicious, I'm going to have some of that!". I ate probably a pound of completely raw beef, among other things; sushi, crawfish, skewered teryaki chicken, coffee cake, fruit salad, and soft serve ice cream. As of the time of writing, Monday March 30 1AM, I haven't noticed any averse conditions, but I am prepared for cramps, nausea and diarrhea - symptoms associated with E. Coli contraction. I know it was idiotic to ingest uncooked meat - at the time I let a sense of adventure and trust in the establishment's operators overtake my baseline understanding that raw meat isn't safe to consume. The unrestricted access to the meat - no personnel present there, and no evident area to grill the meat myself - enabled my idiocy to prevail and grab the meat with the tongs sitting in the trays, place it onto my plate and take it directly to my table where I ate it. I even returned for another helping, this time a higher amount as I was attempting to abstain from cleaning out their sushi area.

Topic 2;
David and I held a recorded session on Thursday March 26, and it consisted of a jam that utilized a Roland HPD-15■ , Roland JV-35■, and a Casio AT-3■. This architecture is very simplistic in the grander scheme of the studio environment; at one time (December 2024), we would use an Atari 1040STF■ to drive samplers and synthesizers alongside one another, configuring each device to receive only the desired channel of instruction. (this described orientation involves something to the effect of 15 MIDI cables, a cumbersome computer from the 80s, its life support machines (a display conversion from ACSI to VGA, a VGA display, an Atari serial to USB converter, a USB mouse), around ten distinct synthesizers and samplers (racked in a like enclosure - at the time it would have been ■, ■, ■, ■ (unused), and ■), then the whole monitoring situation, which at the time we did those things was a patchbay with sixteen 6.25mm male to RCA female adaptors, sixteen delicately strewn RCA lines to the 8 track in and 8 track out digital hard disk recorder, then again from the patchbay, eight 6.25mm TS "instrument cables" into a mixer, with a chicken rigged dual 6.25mm TS female to 3.5mm male TRS Y-cable to merge the dry (mixer out) and wet (Digitech Vocal 300 out) signals necessary to complete this acidic quality I desired before the point of capture, a Roland R-1, and monitoring, a Bose Wave III.The configuration of such a precise working condition takes time and mental resources to achieve, and prior attempts to remove the critical thinking component through crafting a narrated setup procedure with durational accuracy of the dictated steps have proved squanderous as the environment has evolved a few times since then. And in response to this grievance, I want to discount the voicing of hardship as an obligatory undertaking each time I commit to modifying the device architectures (simply put - I should automatically re-tool these resources every time I make a change, and quit appealing to tedium through my bitching). But also, I do acknowledge that the editing of dozens of often redundant static webpages, even with singular changes in mere addresses on a patchbay or power allocation apparatus, is laborious. So I resolve here to distill the tools in which I have used to institute changes, and streamline the process of ammendment through a commitment to some regular reappraisal of the setup (will be easier once I get around to labeling all the cables) and following of a concise list of operations.Also, an even more rigorous and difficult era saw us using sidechaining and no input mixers as the compliment of technique and disciplines. As our sensibilities respecting "this thing of ours" (irreverent and juvenile experimentality in sound) evolve as they have since the beginning of bLONDERtONGUE, the aforementioned techniques and disciplines, as well as articles of engagement and their 'structural formula' will cycle through altogether new and mutations of those previously printed, accounting for different sound qualities and effects.

Topic 3;
So, to provide a base upon which to understand my conflict and the resolution to which I will also divulge here, I must provide some internal desires. I want to become a competent technician. I realized years ago that my chief reverences in life are for electronics, and to never attain some familiarity or ability in repairing, modifying or building electronic devices would be to commit myself to a life that will (continue )feel(ing) so impotent. So when Peter made a second attempt to recruit me to work at Tech Experts, I felt a duty to make it happen. I upsold my abilities, I admit. But despite being a little less competent than perhaps Peter expected me to be, he has continued investing in me, and for that I am grateful. But my 9 weeks in the employ there have not been easy - Friday and Saturday have become the center of dread of my week, where I can work essentially passively between Monday and Thursday at a job which I have familiarized myself to such a height. I know that its not sustainable / >fulfilling<, without feeling any duty to apologize to my cousins for telling me this four years ago when I was an 18 year old workforce newbie. I think its been a completely appropriate allocation of the last five years, in the time I discovered what it is I want to do with my time on the planet. In 2021, when I graduated high school, I didn't have any inkling as to what I wanted to do professionally. I had already experienced the bursting of balloons of ambition, in being discouraged from prospect after prospect through the betrayal of inner expectation (physics, high academia) as well as punctures made from the outside (absorption of environmental realities relating to types/races/ilks of people and their monopolies on things ranging from engineering to literature). I know I paint a Hitlerian art school reject portrait here, but its so apt to my experiences. Moving on however, the 'dead air' between my promised and anticipated exit from institution in 2021 and, say, 2023 was very necessary. In 2023, I began hatching tadpoles of durable investment in technology, and electrical subjects. Through 2024 and 2025, I raised these into tiny amphibians of ambition, ready to be deployed into a becoming direction. I thought through 2024 and 2025 that I was going to be able to keep my profession separate from my interests, but through the excruciating but useful lectures that were equally enlightening as they were crushing (let me not give the impression that Ben's opinionated prickery 'enlightened' or motivated me - it was my reviledness to what he was saying, about the requisites for working the jobs that I had planned to work, and my becoming hip to the impossibility of coping with the omnidirectional animosities toward me that I was sure to begin experiencing more acutely with time that lit the fire in my ass) I assumed a sense of urgency about pivoting to pursue those things in a real capacity.
But the state at which I am now is suspended. I am coming up on a scheduling conflict that jeopardizes my employment at both establishments. In the now, I present well - I have lied to my mentor about securing the days off of work at the other locale. And adjacently, I have hidden the disintegration of the plan I proposed and was granted by/from my comfort job boss, in taking off the 7th, 8th and 9th of April. Let me begin the second wave of pretext; Peter had been saying since my second/third week of work that April would pose a challenge. He is a pastor at a local church with presences abroad and in limitation domestically. So I would imagine he is instrumental in the coordination of events with his fellow subscribers to theology (Jesus Christ and Lord God, refreshingly). That doesn't matter to the reality that a critical misunderstanding resulted from our interactions in the center of this month of March, when he brought up the issue of April again, and tacked a call to action onto it, asserting that I need to secure the 7th, 8th and 9th. Well, in my tunnel vision about that three day cluster, I bargained with my comfort job boss to allow me to trade the Friday and Saturday slot, for those preceding three days. Man I wish I hadn't done that! He very jovially accepted my request to work Monday, Friday and Saturday of that week, and to have my coworker who I've already slandered in this piece, Ben, fill in those three days. And for the sake of thoroughness, I'll include the information from our phone call which lasted something like thirty minutes on or around the 19th of March; having had the April commitment on my mind as far back as February, I brought up to Ben that I may need him at some point to take up one more day (as of now and as has been the balance since it was reached, I work four days out of the week, and Ben works two - I recall how Joan Helmick thought this was cruel to him, that I was oppressing him. How wide old fucks miss the target with their idiot penny tossings); he protested, classically. He said that the continuous nine hour shift "kicks his ass" and that he, as opposed to me, has a life outside of work. Outside of the job he told me I'm not good enough for. This is a vent into the cavity which embitters me about the boomers - I recall Donald Trump's quote, that there's "..nothing worse than a good employee. They're "just" good, not excellent. Which means you can't fire them, but you'll also never get what you want from them, which is greatness" or something closely adhering to that sentiment. I am a believer in sustainability in both frequency bands; I don't "just" humour what the employee or laborer wants or says, and I certainly don't exclusively entertain what the authority has to contribute or desires. As both components are, in theory (and not in a direction favoring the administrator), necessary in order for propulsion forward, the engine propellers should be considered in addition to the vessel's seal. Ah, yes, another bad metaphor from Jesse. The thought behind this was that the "work" is being done by the engine, and mechanically, it is the propellers which are most important as they are what interface with the water and propel the boat forward when driven. Well, you may think this implies the engine power to embody the boss, but I don't think it does (though it would still make sense to the metaphor - an engine with no kinetic transferrence is kindof exactly what a boss is, in the capacity in which they aren't there). I think the boat itself is the business, its seal is the margins for profit, and the maintainer/owner of the boat is the owner. There's agency to owning a business which is more dynamic than just the driving of the workforce. The wage is the engine, the propellers are the employees; together they are the facilitative unit. The propulsion/speed will suffer if the blades are underpowered (underpaid). The boat will sink if the seal is not preserved (the company will fail if the profit margins are too thin). And lastly but still quite crucially, the captain is the one with jurisdiction over the replacement of the engine, or patching of the hull, avoiding collisions - this metaphor now seems to be quite the intuitive representation of the employee-boss dynamic. And I find Trump's take on it so disingenuous, and to a more acute degree, I find former alcoholic forever asshole Ben to be such a hypocrite in his humility-void expressions at me, to seek work elsewhere, to sign onto this job where I clearly have everything under control, to inhibit me ridiculously in the absurd limit to his utility being 14 hours a week. That's all bellybulge can muster. To quickly tie off the thorax of this section, I erroneously traded Friday and Saturday for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when my mentor wanted all five days reserved. And the existence of a coworker does anything but offer me flexibility - just agitation.
I'm going to get paid Wednesday; it'll be close to $830 for two weeks of work at comfort job. I will take $400 from it and save it, for the car I need to obtain realistically in like two months. The rest I will withdraw as cash ($430) on Friday, during the thirty minute window I have for obtaining the car for my return home and cashing my paycheck from my mentor (statically $165 per week, not bad but I do earn it every time) and present it to budgeless booger Ben at the end of work Friday, or Saturday before or after the nightmare continues. This is the best option I have, to effect the desired condition after being botched by miscommunication or just my own stupidity. If I can bribe Ben into satisfying what I would consider "the bare minimum" (to quote the ignorant sluts of the human race), $430 is a miniscule tribute. I will be able to make it back, whereas if Ben continues jamming the door, I'll have a difficult decision to make - to quit one job or the other, or quit both. Before the fatal exception occurs.

Topic 4;
Lawrence Cenotto is a mailbox renter of the establishment at which I work. In passing months ago, he enlisted me to record a song which he already had penned lyrics for, called "True North". I now have two days to complete it, having procrastinated all this time as its a situation so schizophrenic to me. With a simplistic worldview, it would make little sense why I am complaining - you ask a baker to bake you a cake, he will. You ask a musician to produce music for you, he does. But this particular situation is more akin to asking a chocolatier to make a beef wellington - its anachronistic, this request for me, on top of being altogether bizarre. I am, after all, an odd duck when it pertains to music making - I simultaneously dodge characterization in my sharp deviations from "bedroom-metal-guitarist" driven by extraneous affinities, so it becomes very ill-explicable what the parameters are for my music when none of it has seen release, and my studio looks like an Apollo spacecraft's control panel. And the suggestion of ego in this self portrait is not lost upon me - nowhere have I meant through defining myself as I have that I am superior - just identifiably apart from contemporaries, in presentation, patience, and predicament. I do like Lawrence as a guy though, so I'm inclined to squeeze this out of my cock in the 48 hours I have remaining.

Topic 5;
In my possession are some tribal hand drums I accrued during 2025, one of which is a large double ended conga that I don't use much. The drum frame is like wood and the heads are clearly skin tightly tied to themselves by sinew to create sufficient tension on both ends - there was a length of excess in this natural twine that curled stiffly to the side of the frame, but either before or only shortly after I came into possession of the drum, it separated and for months I'd had a curved piece of sinew I didn't know what to do with but still didn't want to discard. Well, I ended up finding a purpose for it in straightening it out into something resembling a 7' twig, and using it as a discreet drumstick, something with little abraision. I prefer it to anything else I've attempted using; a sharpie body, a plastic pen, a screwdriver, a conventional drumstick, and the mallet which came with the conga I mentioned, which is leather; too soft and pillowy.