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# How To: Choose Lunch
## Prelude to 'The Tuna'
Hello, friends. I've been a bit quieter through 2025 than most would except, myself included. But, I got tired of talking all the time and wanted to figure out how to walk. Most things I am trying to say have been said, in better ways than I can say them. Like how Sir Robert Hall III, the artist sometimes known as Logic, opens his 6th studio album (which is technically his 9th studio album, his 13th collected work):
[Narration: Orson Welles & *Logic*]
Good evening, this is *Logic*
And very happy I am to be back in the United States and back on the network
Even for so short a time as this
Back with old friends like *No I.D.* who is tonight's director and
Nobody argued the point, a lot of people asked us to do it again,
So it's gratifying to get the chance- us to do it again
So it's gratifying to get the chance now *(No I.D.)*
Personally, I've never met anybody who didn't like *The Incredible True Story*
Now tonight, what we do have for you is a thriller
If it's half as good as we think it is, you can call it a *classic*
The first time I listened to Orson Welles deliver those words, I thought it was from *War of the Worlds*, since he mentions planets. I was sitting in the parking lot of a out-patient facility around 5am. July 24, 2020. My accounting internship had been reduced by infectious disease to a remote click-book of bullshit (and a few thousand dollars, which was neat). During my final summer as a student, there existed nothing fun to go do and no productive job to work.
So, I bounced around a bit. Amazon paid $17/hr, but I only made it... 4 days? Working the 5pm to 6am shift. I didn't finish that 4th one, and delivered some pizzas for Papa John. But then, my mom's friend said they needed somebody to be the COVID-checker at her healthcare place. It was an amazing job. 5am to 3pm, I got paid $15/hr to sit outside in an air-conditioned tent, waiting for one of the same ~25 patients that came to the facility each day to stroll up. Any symptoms? No, they'd reply. Thermometer gun to forehead, ok see ya, check the box. Check if I had to click on the accounting clickbook. No? Alright... read a book? I finished Durant's *Story of Philosophy* in that tent. I don't recall too much else about the place, besides that I often went through the day without saying more words than those to anybody, as the staff was quarantined and such. But, I do remember listening to *No Pressure* for the first time as the sun rose over the cuckoo's nest. The list of songs I can confidently, wholeheartedly tell you the time, place, and world in which I experienced them for the first time isn't that long - at least, I don't know. Lets see.
For the Big Elementary School Field Trip, my teachers actually approved my 18-year-old half-brother to chaperone (but, only for me and my brother). On the way there in the morning, grinning ear-to-ear that somehow someway they allowed this idiot to come hang out, I remember two songs playing out of our shitty little Dodge Neon, or Geo Prism, or whichever of the 50 hunks of junk I rode in across the tiny rural towns of my youth: the Geto Boys' *Damn I Feel Good To Be A Gangsta*, and Tom Petty's *Two Gunslingers*. No discovery date on those - 2008? To go back any further I'd have to comb through some stuff. I remember I got this shitty mp3 player for Christmas, maybe before then. And it had a song that I still mix up with Blue Öyster Cult's *Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll*, and don't remember... maybe it was that. I remember listening to *Welcome to the Black Parade* in a particular one of the eight buildings I had called home that was released in 2008, but not sure when.
The next scene that seared itself into my brain was in October 2012, when I moved across the country a month or so into my freshman year of high school, from a school that had some ~350 total students to a school that had 600 *freshman*. One building to, I don't remember, more than 10. From a quaint rural monoculture to a melting pot where 50% of students got free or reduced lunch. The guidance counselor who created my schedule for the year was a substitute. He figured it would be best to try to match the names of the classes I was taking in the one month of high school I had attended elsewhere to the classes here. And that's how I ended up in 'Environmental Science', the standard-level science class. The 'pass' grade didn't help my GPA, but I didn't mind having a class that was effectively a free period, once I had filled our the coloring sheet of the day or whatever.
It was an isolating first few months adjusting. The only person I would so much as stand next to was my brother. At some point, maybe after Christmas, I don't know. I got out of coloring class and I had basketball class, which I hadn't known was a thing, after lunch. As we stood in the hallway outside the locker room for attendance, *Love Sosa* played on the PA system inside the gym, leaking through the walls. Ralik and Shaqeel pestered Coach to hurry it up and make the teams. *Dreams and Nightmares* played loudly as I realized that, yes, apparently there are normal human beings who will never ever play anywhere near the NBA who can dunk a basketball on a 10-foot rim.
## Set Menus and Chef's Way
Oh, that's a good one - in the summer of 2014, I flew north for the summer to spend a few weeks with my father (edit: actually, I think we drove). A friend from elementary school's older brother showed me the *Because the Internet* screenplay that came with the vinyl. He read it out loud as we listened along, and, when we were finished, explained how the boy that gets off the bus is the same boy from the end of *That Power*.
We drove to the corner store, late, dark, and I listened to the screenwriter known as Donald Glover, or the rapper known as Childish Gambino, or the boy in the *Because the Internet* screenplay (who's father is, if I remember correctly, Rick Ross, for some reason?) tell a story about trust and betrayal and embarrassment and vulnerability. I'd never heard of him before, or seen *30 Rock*, or any of his 'controversial' skit videos. And I couldn't say at all whether the story had happened. But, somewhere between the clash of the song and the dizzying acceleration of the beat under the spoken word, I understood what he was saying. Even though I can't much tell you the correct interpretation of it today.
Somewhere between winter '12 and summer '14, I had my first girlfriend. A lovely, shy, deeply kind tumblr girl with many books on her shelf and a taste for alt-rock and bands and movies I hadn't ever seen or heard. Only years later did I think, huh, I should have gone with her to see the Glass Animals, and the Arctic Monkeys. But her friends were kinda weird and I'd only ever been to a concert my mom dropped me off at and waited around the corner for, some years before. The relationship was as surface-level as possible for 16-year-olds. Besides unproductive small talk, we didn't really learn much about the other.
Regardless, the only thing I remember about the end of the relationship (which would later revive, with little more substance, before it parted for college) was my inability to locate a half-full glass for a month or two, or three? afterwards. It was the first time I sulked around in the drudges of despair, and I couldn't even articulate why. The only pieces of art I can tell you I experienced during that specific break are *Her*, the 20-somethingth (more?) video directed by the person known mostly as Spike Jonze. I think I knew he was the director when I watched it. But I mean I was 16 and living vicariously as a sad man with Scarlett Johnason's voice in my ear, so, I don't know. And *Breaking Bad*, which I started watching between Season 4 and 5 and yelled about enough to get my mom and my brother watching. Looking back on that with a full understanding of the greatness of that show, I'm really glad I heard *Crystal Blue Persuasion* for the first time underneath the sounds of me shhhhing my question-that-the-show-is-going-to-answer-for-us-asking mother.
That does remind me - my first CD was *Ill Communication*, which also evidently describes the effectiveness of me telling my older brother I wanted The Beastie Boys CD, because I was fucking pissed it had next to no words in it. At some point before, he had played *Brass Monkey*. I wanted that funky monkey. But, I did get *Sabotage*. My second CD was *An Honest Mistake* by The Bravery, which honestly holds up shockingly well to this day (likely because it's benchmark was established as the contradiction to experimental-nearly-instrumental hip-hop I did not comprehend directly before it).
We got those at the small FYE, which was worse than the big FYE. But, to get to the big FYE, you had to drive past the Volkswagen dealership, and that meant getting punched really hard repeatedly while somebody yelled PUNCH BUGGY PUNCH BUGGY as many times as there were buggies - with precision. And the small FYE was next to the GameStop with the manager who knew me and my brother. We were always in there trading things in and tossing our allowance on top for something different. When we saw him working at FYE a few months later, we were confused. Older brother explained - when we traded in our games and ran away without the receipt, Mr. Manager filled out the reviews with 5 Stars across the board. Evidently, GameStop noticed. And, evidently, FYE didn't mind.
I was really sick, and living in that raised ranch where we had the extra den that was de facto Video Game City, Utah, unable to sleep, half-watching MTV in the middle of the night when I saw Kanye's *Heartless* video for the first time - thats 2009. I didn't dig through any of Kanye's work with care until... 2014, in Spanish class. That's one of the first memories I have of intentionally setting out to familiarize myself with an artist's body of work as a whole. I couldn't tell you why I was allowed to listen to Kanye for all of Spanish class, but its probably related to why I don't know Spanish.
Past here, it gets harder for me to really pin things down. I listened to *Blue Slide Park* when it released, so I know I knew Mac Miller before then. But the only mixtape I can actually remember putting on my iPod myself during this time was Kid Cudi's *A Kid Named Cudi*. Oh, right, and every single Chris Webby mixtape. *Bars on Me* came out right as I moved. I remember wishing for Webby to blow up - not because it mattered much to me, but because I listened to his words so many times, I innately understood that he wasn't rapping to get famous. He was just rapping because that's what he does. Which reminds me, I may have bumped into Mac for the first time on *I Need A Dollar*:
See it don't matter nationwide, everybody heard of me
Cuz my wallet still lacks American currency
Dudes be like, "Yo, you're not broke, son, you're famous!"
Huh, and I'm still unsigned, you ignoramus
...
But it's straight, yo, I'm havin' a great time
And I realize some of these things take time
Don't have the money, but I have the skills
And respect is worth more, on the real
I listened to *The Underclassmen* on the bus up to the ski mountain the one year I did ski club, and my friend who lived down the road from me gave me an earbud to educate me of *The 10 Crack Commandments* for the first time while on the ski lift. Asher Roth's *Asleep In The Bread Aisle*, also, had more good songs on it than just *I Love College*. If anyone cares.
That's early 2009, by which time I knew all of Lupe Fiasco's songs. I can confirm one memory of listening to *Heat Under The Baby Seat* in my middle school, but I can also tell you with certainty that I knew Lupe before that, because Lupe was my older brother's favorite. My clan tag on MW2 was 'FNF', which I remember vividly, because thats what my clan tag was on Christmas Day when my mother walked into my father's house without my brother and I hearing, and opened our door to discover us with **Mature-rated video games** (shoutout FYE manager)- this was the first time I experienced the feeling you get when you have flashing lights in your rear-view. The lockbox that once secured older brother's PS2, where all the good shit was hidden, wasn't even locked. So she took those too. But, we were both *terrible* at MW2 anyway.
## Tervo Dreams of Lunch
Thinking about how I learned the words to *Go Go Gadget Flow* feels like thinking about how I learned to speak. I don't know. But by the time *Lasers* released, I knew every word of, if not all, just about all of his tracks. I said above that Kanye was the first artist I had ever consciously acknowledged the discography of and set out to conquer it, and that's true. I didn't do that with Lupe, not at all. He's like my primary language of rap, music in general, really. The music on the radio in the car with my mom was just pop, and with my dad it was classic rock and such, so I feel like I have always known *The Steve Miller Band*'s greatest hits. But nothing had ever pulled me into the self-directed devotional loop that starts when you enjoy something enough that you don't realize you are actively enjoying it. When there are no double-entendres, no familiar-yet-fresh samples, no content to the words that are being said, and no shoutouts at the end, I'm like... alright that was a song. Not doing that much for me.
Ask me what mixtapes I had downloaded between the time I'd absorded the essence of *Kick, Push* and 2014, and I can tell you, but not with much detail. G-Eazy before he became aware of the Audience's Gaze (although, really, not sure if there is a before that). *Waspy* allowed me a four-minute dream of being able to afford a new controller as soon as my brother smashed the good one. I don't remember listening to *Macadelic* start-to-finish, but *Thoughts from a Balcony* is written down somewhere on the back of my hand. My first time through *WMWTSO* made me sad, and I didn't revisit for years. *Faces*, though. The variety. The movie snippets that straddle songs, negating the use of the shuffle button. The range and authenticity of emotion - the fact he ***DID IT ALL WITHOUT A DRAKE FEATURE!*** It pushes me to dig through the crates. What is Bill Murray yelling about? Meatballs, or something, I believe.
There are many others, obviously probably hundreds of others. Digging through the crates in my head while writing this, I can see different songs and their associated place and time in varying levels of lucidity. The most vivid of them all had the least going on. I was standing in the dark on a blatantly undesigned sidewalk of a divided highway, next to my brother, waiting for the bus, pressing play on *Welcome to Forever*. It was the end of the school year, and we had made it through. Before we moved, my mother asked us many a time if we were okay with it. The final ask was in my friend's driveway as she picked us up from a day of being stupid 12 year old. I had never had a group of friends I had genuinely connected with up to then - too much bouncing about, not enough to say to try that hard. I choked on my words, and said, "but wha-", and I was just, terrified of not knowing. She put her hand on my knee and said, "we'll come back."
And then I was standing there, in the middle of what was very recently my nightmare, and I was... good. I had made a few friends. Had begun talking to first girlfriend. As the outro began, the places I expected to hear Logic wear filled by the Greats that he had studied with mythological reverence. It gave me an uncanny feeling of joy, that kind where you are containing a full-faced grin and a teary eye at the same time and you don't know why but if you utter a sound they will both materialize. I had never really had a dream before, one that I felt pushed to chase. The closest thing I could think of in my life up to that point was when me and my brother saw Infamous at E3 2007. We had to play it, and to do so, we had to get a PS3. So, we locked up the vault and shoved $5 each into it every week. Stopped buying and trading so many games, started playing Crossfire on the shitty PC. Ran around getting wallhacked and aimbotted by Brazilians, because that was what you could do on this PC for free. Or pinball. Or solitaire.
And when May 26, 2009 arrived, we did it. We had saved up the infinite amount of allowances and forgone endless snacks at the gas station, and were the owners of a PS3, an HDTV, and a video game where you are lightning-spider-man. And it was amazing.
## There Is No Free Lunch
When my father first brought us to "go see the new apartment" in which we achieved the Infamous dream, some 75% of its total volume was occupied. The owner was most literally a hoarding slum-lord. Instead of filling this unit with somebody on Section 8, he filled it with, well, anything and everything. Cabinets, fridges, stoves. A commercial-size Xerox printer. No dishwashers, though. We walked through the store-aisle size paths of the apartment, and my dad explained he would be hauling all the shit out and repairing the apartment progressively while we lived there in exchange for free rent. Some few months later, we moved in - this time, only some 30% of total volume occupied by purchases from estate sales and auctions and other assorted shit.
Without all the stuff in it, you could actually see it. The walls needed to be painted. The countertops in the kitchen and bathroom needed to be redone. A couple windows sealed up, in need of replacement. Two of the five rooms still functionally inaccessible, filled with fridges and stoves and a Xerox printer. Every once in a while, the stove would break, and my dad would shuffle it back there, drag out a different one. The floors needed to be refinished in the entire apartment. I creaked across the room my brother and I would sleep in every forthcoming Wednesday, every Thursday, and every other weekend. The window had a lovely view of the as-despondent building 8 feet away from it, owned and maintained by the same packrack. Walking back towards the living room, I realized the entire room was slanted. Enough so that a ball on the living room side always returns to its safe place next to the closet and the window.
Still, sitting around, playing Infamous, drinking Mountain Dew, watching Chappelle Show reruns on Comedy Central. Every Wednesday, our older brother and his friend came over to play Halo 3, I didn't need anything more than that, not then. You don't notice that the TV stand is a shitty kitchen cabinet with a piece of plywood on top when you are trying to find the fucking energy sword where the fuck is it on this map. We'd go to the pizza shop after and play pool while my dad told us how John Lennon was a really good guy. The old Greek bartender would show us a 'magic trick,' like how to get all the water on a plate into the cup without moving the plate, and only an olive and a match. Get home, shoot some more thunderbolts out of your arm and run around the most realistic virtual city ever. What's not to like?
Lightning, actually. I can't even tell you with confident accuracy what got bolted, but one night, the sky flashed, and so did the lights, and so didn't my dream of shooting fucking lightning bolts. I think the TV blew out its input ports or some shit. One way or another, we had a PS3-sized paperweight and a renewed interest in the trade-in value check on GameStopdotcom. And, for the first time, that terrible, empty feeling that accompanies a lived dream to sleep. Back to trying to convince our father that we should actually get $5 at the gas station for snacks *and* $5 of allowance every week. That worked eventually, and we got $10 of allowance each week. Halo 3 ODST came out, that held us over until we unbricked the PS3. That one was my personal favorite. Firefight mode, good hours spent there. I don't remember how exactly we ended up beating Infamous. The spot for that memory is occupied by the unfairness of dreams deferred.
## Lunch Announcement: The Tuna
# "How" "To": "Choose" "Lunch" II
# Intro: Juice
Now, where was I. Ah, right - what to eat for lunch, and how I know it. Well, if you would like to lend me your senses, I will show you, with nothing but simple little 'tokens' - tiny little words, bite-sized for you to swallow, just like spoonfeeding a goldfish. Unfortunately, it is a long walk. But, what else is there to do?
Anyway. I was at Infamous, right? Great game. The first game I remember playing is a PS2 called *The Bouncer*. I don't remember anything about the game, really, but my 9-year-senior half-brother was the one who was tasked with refining my motor skills via joystick, and he tells me its true. That came out in 2000, but I think I was probably 3 when I played it. That was in the basement of the big green house on the hill - the biggest house I've ever lived in, and the only one in which I only had one Home. We moved there shortly after I was born, and my dad spent his free time fixing it up, making it nice. Added a garage, pavement, big fence for the dogs - boxer Sam and springer spaniel Prince - and then painted it green. I remember that happening, vaguely. I also remember the time my brother threw a rock at the window from outside, and my dad was like 'why the fuck did you do that,' and my brother was like, 'I wanted to see what happened', and he was like, alright whatever. Older bro was always playing Everquest on the dial-up. We were always sneaking around trying to get a life in on GTA3 without my mom noticing.
One day, I was up early on a Saturday, playing *The Simpson: Hit & Run* - basically Simpsons GTA, it was sick - and again, TV goes dark, lights go dark... don't come back on. Get up - what happened? Dad - don't know. He checks it out. Turns out some guy had fallen asleep while driving - that sounds unlikely to me now - and crashed into a telephone pole right outside our house. I remember standing at the end of the driveway on the big hill looking at the crash. And I remember the day that Prince sprang so high, right over the 5-foot fence we built for him to spring and span in, and ADHD-dogged his way right into the road... That was one of the first really sad days I remember. Older brother was around most here - he went to school where his mom lived, so time disappated as we grew older. But he stuck us in the back of the Dodge Neon to do donuts in the dirt, and tried to show me how to ollie over the doorstop of the garage. I never got very good at it. Kept falling. Couldn't slide my foot in the way necessary, and kept smashing into the doorstop. It didn't seem like a rewarding activity when I had Luigi's Mansion inside.
Lots of games in early memory. My first daycare was the only place I played N64 - the yellow *Donkey Kong 64* cartridge sticks out. It was also where I first played Halo and Halo 2, which is hilarious. I was like 5 lol why was there Halo as a toy. I'm glad there was, though. So many different games in so many different house - *Sonic The Hedgehog* on Xbox 360 felt like a revolutionary innovation, and so did playing *Star Wars: Battlefield* on PSP. *Sly Cooper*, *Jak and Daxter*, *Ratchet and Clank*, just golden eras. The first game I can remember being just absolutely over-the-top exhilirated to play was *Gears of War 3*. I made my mom go pick it up while we were at 8th grade football practice, September 20, 2011 (note - that was the only year I played football; stuck to soccer). *Uncharted: Drake's Fortune*, we rented like right before Christmas, and I remember playing through to the part where it goes out of the box and introduces fucking zombie something out of nowhere - that was great - and then I got it for Christmas like days later lol. But, *Gears* was doing something for me that *Uncharted* hadn't yet - I was emotionally invested in the story. I didn't just want to chainsaw baddies in half and shit - I wanted to know what was happening. One night, when I was playing it and my brother and friend were hanging out - this was same room as the Kanye *Heartless* video - and they looked up the ending and spoiled it for me. And I was *enraged*, like throwing shit punching people screaming, waking up my mom, getting screamed at. It was fucking terrible, and there was no going back. Since then, I have worked hard not to spoil things for people - or myself. This is why I don't watch movie trailers.
Well, actually, I don't want movie trailers because of Sasha Baron Cohen. I watched *Borat* with my dad when I was like 9, and then we saw the trailed for *Bruno* on TV. We went to see it on my 9th birthday - every single funny moment had been in the trailer, and the only thing I remember about the rest of the movie is that it was very gay. I didn't get it, and didn't think too much about it. I saw *The Dark Knight* in theaters with brothers on my birthday the year before, which rocked. After, we went to McDonald's, and I ate a Big Mac for the first time. It made me too full. Still today, I prefer the quarter pounder. The other day I got a Big Mac to try to get some Monopoly tickets and I said 'no Big Mac bun', as in, just normal buns. No third bun. No need for that. They gave me *no bun at all*, **IN A SALAD DISH**. So I didn't even get Monopoly tickets. Fucking bullshit I threw it away.
# Bussing Tables
My first job was bussing tables at Panera Bread when I was a sophomore, I think. 2013? Bus the tables, fill the coffee, vacuum the rug. Do the bathrooms blah blah. Eventually I got to move back to dishwasher - that's where I wanted to be. Panera Bread is like, oh you can do dining room, dishes, bakery/cash, or food line. But you all get paid the same. So, naturally, I was like yeah gimme the dishes dude I don't need to talk to Grandma all day, or do any more work than required for my $8/hr. Super chill, besides Sundays at post-Church time. Go hang out back there toss the phone in a can use that as a speaker. Only every once in a while did they tell me to turn it off. I worked there all through high school, earning lunch money and car money and everything else money. Not much, but, enough. My coworkers were fellow plebs. They were alright. Sometimes they'd get drunk on the clock - I never partook. Just stick me in the dish pit and fuck off, thank you.
That was a generally-consistent attitude, honestly. I didn't socialize much besides soccer and a small group of friends, never went to parties and such in high school. Got so many gold guns on CoD, though. Got really good at FIFA. Never much studied for any of my classes - there was no need. Listen in class, or don't, take the test, do well enough, continue. Which isn't to say I didn't try in school - just that, I only tried once while I was there. I was never studying fastidiously. I took the SAT one time, without studying, got a 2000, and fucked off. My senior year, I took seven AP classes, studied for none of them, and got 5's on all of them. Social studies and writing areas were my area of excellence, and my teachers could see that - but I didn't *get it* when they prodded me to try more. Why? My Eeyore-esque US History teacher once woke me up after I had fallen asleep in the back row, and asked me what he had been talking about. I told him, and he Eeyore-puffed and turned back to the class - I assume he was once did exactly the same. It was he, my Lit/Lang teacher, and my World History/Art History teacher that I actually felt any kind of teacher-student bond with. My senior year, when the Academic Club needed an extra because somebody had dropped out, Eeyore begrudingly asked me to fill in. I agreed, and did that a few times. It was fun, and made me wish I had participated in more things like it before.
The only thing I had ever *really tried* to accomplish by the time I got through high school was making the varsity soccer team. Our coach was a hard-ass Manc who was not really a teacher in the traditional sense, but more of a Last Hope. He ran the school's credit-repair program, or, the last door before you drop out. It was he who enlisted to reduce attrition in education, and he did it with the same full force he adminstered the soccer team, the school's only respected sports team locally, with. To be so much as noticed, you had to run a 6-minute mile, or be good enough that you shouldn't be playing for our school. My sophomore year, I just showed and tried once, like usual, and made JV. By the end of the season, I was committed not to do that again. Not for myself as much as just because jesus christ JV is just unserious. The coach was unserious, the teammates were unserious. I was unserious. After the season ended in some failure some place, I started running for the first time. And I hated it.
But it *had to be done*. I had to hit 6 minutes. I knew this, because I *wasn't actually good at soccer*. I was fast, I knew where to be if told, but I didn't know how to kick the ball well, or understand tactics enough to think about them myself. I had never played a club sport, practiced on my own, or otherwise. So, there was nothing I could but *run faster than everyone else, for longer than they can.* And that is how we end up where we started, back in the mind of Logic. The Young Sinatra mixtape series, along with a few other remembered high notes - R. Kelly's *My Story*, god damnit why's he so cancelled it's so good - carried my mind past where my legs wanted to go. I wasn't just running against myself - I was aggrandizing a dream alongside the *presence and execution* embodied within music. When the fall came, I beat the fuck out of myself on that track, finished the fourth lap, vomited violently, and laid down on the ground. 5:15. Tryouts moved to the field. I remained laying in the grass. I couldn't fucking breathe for like 15 minutes. Finally, I walked over to go meekly kick a shot into the woods with what was left of me.
# A Life of Logical Lunches
Still, somehow, I made it out of JV and got to be taken seriously. Coach didn't expect us to be better than the teams we played. Our school sat on the border between a few towns, all of which had their own schools, all of which were much nicer than mine, with better ratings, better teachers, more serious JV coaches, and more daddy's money to use on lunch, and club sports in off seasons, and such. We were never going to be better than them - our captain was the only one who played on the club all the best kids around played on, and the only other club players on my team were the Puerta Ricans who had juggled long enough in their childhood to do around-the-worlds for fun while we sat around (they got on the clubs for free - no money). Most of my team was Puerta Ricans and other Hispanics, couple white boys like me. It was a tight cohort. There was lots of ourselves in each other - none of us came from shit, had shit, expected shit. But Coach expected us to *try*. To *give more* in the final third of the game than the other team was willing to. To *want* to get to that ball first, **more than they wanted it**. By then I had begun to see: that is what ""The Measure"" truly Is.
# Outro: Juice
I didn't understand how to tell people that. I didn't have the words. I know that because I didn't know how to tell myself that - still working on it, most every day. Some days, I don't work on it, and I do absolutely nothing. At some points over the last year of unemployment and meditation, I felt like ''The Measure'' might no longer exist like it used to. But, that is fundamentally untrue. It's simple logic of a tetralemma - a paradoxical problem that can be correctly answer with: Yes, No, Both AND Neither. That is not a spherical decision metrix - that is just a plane to be understood using topology.
I dragged this understanding along with me in bits and pieces. The main piece is titled *Juice*, the 16th track off Logic's sophomore mixtape, *Young Sinatra*, released in 2011, produced by Charlie Brown Beatz. Those words, that flow - SEARED itself in my brain. I listened to that song on repeat before every single exam I took in college - as I said some years ago on Twitter. Read this, go listen - you'll see why:
[Verse 2]
Ha, I'm heaven sent and spittin' fire like a demon
As the internet I let my flow to get to streamin', I'm beamin'
Flawlessly listen in that women in yo head while you dreamin'
Leo Dicaprio flow all up in that bitch schemin'
Tryna' get you to buy that album, tryna get you feenin'
See my vision as I commentate it
You wanna see naked rerun of the bait but the hater ate it
Success is truly overrated
I've seen caster with a blow up to pop and get deflated
See yeah, you made it but all your fans hate it
And it's kinda lookin' like you and Satan negotiated
When it comes down to the rap game you see I'm integrated
Half-white, half-black I had it incorporated
Get the money
(Whoever did this is a real pro)
...
[Verse 3]
You're probably wondering why a label has not found me
It's not that easy, I gotta work from the ground
Be the center of attention, look at the people around me
Black on the inside, my outside Ritz
What's a cracker without the cheese?
I gotta stack chips
[Outro]
(Dave Chappelle)
"Would you care for a glass of grape juice?"
"Nigga, what the fuck is juice?"
(Count Douku)
"You have interfered with our affairs for the last time."
Fuck Blockworks, and any other Professional interfering with Our affairs.
More Lunch, soon. Blessings to you and yours.
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