Isa Briones

            On Monday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Valse Dingue” (Mad Waltz) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man) by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of his song “Mickey maousse” and reworked my translation. “Mickey” is a slang word for “penis” and “maousse” is a Yiddish derived word that means “massive”. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had an appointment for noon to drop off some footwear at Sole Survivor for repair but I found their instructions confusing so I called them at around 10:00. At first, I got their voice mail but I tried it again and got through. I said I didn’t understand how they expected me to leave my shoes there without telling them what needed to be done. She said that there is a form online that I was supposed to fill out. I told her that all I’d seen was something on which I confirmed I was coming. I said I’d been expecting to actually talk to a real person when I came to drop the shoes off. She explained that they have to do it this way because they no longer have a retail space and they share a studio with someone else. She said this time they would make an exception and when I got there she would come downstairs and meet me.

            Just before noon I rode over to Sole Survivor and called the number. The woman who met me was very nice. She said they could repair my Doc Martin sandals but they would have to replace the stuffing under the sole and it would cost me $60. I figured a new pair of Doc Martin sandals would be pretty expensive and so I agreed to have them do it. The other footwear I brought was my Kodiaks, which are coming apart just above the heel. She said they could fix them but they would need to sew into the rubber and it would weaken them in that area. She said it would cost $40 and I decided it wasn’t worth it if they were going to be weakened in the same place where they are already coming apart. I decided I’ll just buy a new pair in the fall. She said her name is “Lo” but I don’t know if that’s how it’s spelled. She told me it would take about two weeks and she would email me when the sandals are ready. 

            Before going home I stopped at Metro Cycle to tell the guy that my back tire is still wobbling. He explained that the rim is straight but it’s just that I have yet to change the back tire, which is frayed and so it wobbles because it’s uneven. I said I’m waiting for a rainy day to change it. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back and it started raining on the way home. If it had begun earlier I would have changed that tire. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I woke up my old PC and ran the speaker jack from the new computer into the old one in the bedroom. I plugged my mic into the microphone jack and there was a horrible whirring hum in the recording but there was no clipping when I recorded one of my loudest songs. I plugged in the Scarlett interface to the front USB port and at first nothing happened. But after I went into System and switched to the Scarlett as a microphone, and turned up the gain on the Scarlett it recorded my voice clean, with no humming or clipping. On my new computer, the Scarlett gain knob does nothing whatsoever, but on the old PC all the knobs and buttons did something, and the lights on the Scarlett responded to the sounds that were going through it. At first I couldn’t get a playback. I thought that somehow when I moved the speaker jack from the new computer to the old I’d somehow disconnected the other end from the amp. I checked the connections and everything seemed to be fine. Finally, I looked in the system and saw that my old computer was trying to play through “Scarlett” speakers. I switched it back to the Realtek and the playback was fine, as I said with a clean, clipless and humless recording. Unless I can figure out a way to cure the new computer of clipping I may have to record audio with the Scarlett on the old PC. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 2, episode 6 of Star Trek Picard. 

            Agnes, accompanied in her head by the Borg queen, has infiltrated the surveillance room used by the tight security at the gala event for the astronauts who are about to enter quarantine before the Europa mission. She uses some sort of gas to put the guards to sleep but she needs to get to their computer to hack it in order to create fake backgrounds for Picard, Seven, Raffi, Rios, and Tallinn, so they can enter the party and make sure that Renée Picard does not back out of the Europa mission. Agnes is handcuffed to a chair and so she allows the Borg queen some control so she can break free.

            The team gets in and they observe Renée from a distance. Renée has been texting her therapist who is really Q and who is encouraging her to back out of the mission. She begins to leave but as Picard starts to follow her he is confronted by Adam Soong, who says he is working with Q and is going to stop him. Soong alerts security about Picard and so Agnes gives the queen a little more control in order to create a distraction. Agnes begins to captivate the audience by singing a jazz song. The euphoria that results from this allows the queen to take control of Agnes’s body. 

             Picard follows Renée while disguised as a security guard. He engages with her and calms her doubts. She says she has a feeling as if she knows him and can trust him. She decides to return to the party and to go ahead with the mission. But as they are walking back to the entrance to the building, Adam Soong speeds towards Renée in his car. Picard pushes her out of the way and he is hit. 

            They can’t take Picard to a hospital and so Rios contacts Teresa Ramirez and they take him to her clinic. At one point Picard’s heart stops beating and Teresa uses a defibrillator which behaves in an abnormal way and produces a backlash of electrical charge, probably due to the fact that Picard has an android body. Picard is stabilized but he won’t wake up. Teresa leaves to be with her son. Tallinn says the only way to get Picard out is to go into his mind and get him. She proposes to use the same technology with which she observes Renée on the outside, to go inside Picard’s mind and pull him out. Seven and Rios agree but Raffi is reluctant. Finally, Raffi gives in. 

            Soong goes home drunk and talks to his daughter Kore, but he speaks to her as if she was not his daughter when he refers to her as his life’s work. He staggers off to bed and Kore, now puzzled and frightened goes to her father’s computer where she discovers that she is not his daughter at all but rather his longest surviving genetic experiment. She finds that the first clone died as a baby and each subsequent one lived a little longer but there have been many. 

            The episode ends with Agnes, under the control of the Borg queen walking slowly and confidently in her elegant red dress through the late-night streets of Los Angeles. 

            Kore Soong is played by Isa Briones, who was born in London, but her family moved to New York when she was still a baby. She began working as a model at the age of three and when she was seven her family moved to LA. In 2020 she played two sets of android twins in the first season of Star Trek Picard. She is also a singer and has performed and recorded several duets with AJ Rafael. She performed multiple roles in “Hamilton”. 

            For the fourth night in a row I found no bedbugs before going to sleep.