Michael Harris

🔭🪐🛸

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@PaulRoundy1 @Favwontmiss That’s just factually incorrect

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@BlakeHuntss Ok

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@littlenutsac_ @BlakeHuntss Clearly, she should be wearing a full suit of 17th century English Knight armor to protect her modesty…..obviously

[Infern0 Thee Ant 🍋 @InFeRn0AnT]

Even if you don’t live in NYC, please retweet this and get the word out so that the ppl in YOUR city also learn that they too can have politicians who get things done if they mobilize and vote socialist in other elections! 🗣️

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A Five Guys in a strip mall. I had heard the burgers here were honest. A samurai goes where the food is described in the smallest number of words.

At the door, a barrel.

A wooden barrel, knee-high, full of raw peanuts in the shell. A small wooden scoop. A sign:

FREE PEANUTS - HELP YOURSELF

I stopped.

I read it three times.

In my country, when a host places food at the threshold of his house and tells you to take it, he is testing whether you understand the difference between hospitality and theft. The wrong man takes too much. The wrong man takes nothing. The right man takes a small handful, bows, and proceeds.

I took a small handful. I bowed to the barrel.

I proceeded.

At the counter, a young man, name tag MARCUS.

"Hey man, welcome to Five Guys, what can I get you?"

"...I have taken your peanuts."

"Yeah, that's what they're there for."

"What is the obligation."

"...The what?"

"What do I owe."

"Nothing, man. They're free. Help yourself."

"...Help yourself."

"Yeah."

"Marcus. In my country, when a stranger is told to help himself, it is a kindness given to a man who is far from home. I have not yet introduced myself. You have already addressed me as a man who is far from home. You are correct. I am."

Marcus smiled the way you smile at someone you have decided you like.

"Hell yeah. What can I get you?"

"A cheeseburger."

"Want any toppings? They're free."

"...Free."

"Yeah. Lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, mushrooms, jalapeños, green peppers, mayo, mustard, ketchup, BBQ, A1, hot sauce, relish. All free. Bacon's the only thing extra."

I had not been read a list this long since I was made to recite the names of my ancestors.

"...You are giving a man as many options as he has weapons."

"Pretty much. What you want?"

"All of them."

"All the way?"

"All the way."

"You got it. Fries?"

"Yes."

"Regular or Cajun?"

I stopped.

The word landed somewhere inside me that had been arranged, recently, by a different meal.

"Marcus. Cajun is a people. From Louisiana."

"...Yeah?"

"I have eaten with them. They served me crawfish on newspaper. They called me brother. I did not know I had brothers in that country."

"Damn, sir. That's beautiful."

"Then bring me their salt. I will not refuse the seasoning of a people who fed me on a table without plates."

"Cajun fries it is."

"Size?"

"The smallest. I am one man."

"You got it. Little Cajun."

I paid.

I sat at a small table by the window with my brown paper bag. The bag was heavier than I expected. The boy at the counter had told me, as I picked it up, "bag's heavier than you think, sir." I had taken this as a piece of philosophy. It was, I now understood, a literal report.

I opened the bag.

The Cajun fries were in a cup. The cup was inside the bag. Around the cup, the bag was full of more fries. Loose. Spilling. As if the cup had given up trying to contain itself, and the bag had taken the overflow without complaint.

I lifted the bag and looked at Marcus across the room.

"...Marcus."

"Yes sir?"

"You give the man who asked for little, more."

"Yeah, that's how we do it."

"That is the most American sentence I have heard this week."

He laughed. I looked at the bag again.

I lifted one fry. The seasoning came off red on my fingertips. I ate it.

I had to set the cup down.

This was not the salt of the Cajun people. This was the war salt of the Cajun people. The men who had fed me on newspaper had been holding back. Marcus was not.

My eyes filled with water. Not from feeling. From paprika.

I lifted the burger. Two patties. Lettuce, tomato, onion, mushrooms, jalapeños, green peppers, pickles, mayo, mustard, ketchup, BBQ, A1, hot sauce, relish, and cheese. The thing was a small mountain wrapped in foil. I held it with both hands, the way a man holds the head of his enemy after a long battle, with respect and a small amount of fear.

I ate.

The bun was sweet. The patty was salty. The peanut oil it had been cooked in was, by some quiet miracle, present in everything. I was eating, I realized, a burger that had been raised on the same oil the fries had been raised on, and that oil had been raised on the peanuts in the barrel at the door, which were free, which were the same peanuts that were now still in my coat pocket because I had not eaten them yet.

I stopped chewing.

"...The barrel. The fries. The burger. They are all one animal."

The man at the next table, a man in a work shirt with the name CARLOS embroidered on it, who had been eating fries with one hand and looking at his phone with the other, looked up.

"Cajun fries, huh? Those'll get ya."

"Carlos. I have been gotten."

"Right? Best in the game."

"I yield. I have been ambushed by salt three times in one meal, and twice by people I did not see coming."

Carlos laughed, the small full laugh of a man who is finally understood.

"Welcome to Five Guys, man."

I finished. I finished everything. The cup. The loose fries. The burger. Even the small flecks of seasoning that had fallen onto the paper of the wrapper. A samurai does not leave the field with the enemy's salt still on the ground.

I crumpled the foil. I rose. I bowed to Carlos. Carlos raised his half-finished Coke and tipped it slightly toward me.

I bowed once more, to the barrel at the door, which I now understood was the beginning of the meal and not merely the lobby of it. I took out the peanuts I had stored in my pocket, cracked one shell, and ate it as I walked out.

The salt of the peanut. The fourth salt.

This entire restaurant was a single quiet declaration: that a man should not be allowed to leave hungry, that nothing he eats should cost the dignity of being measured, and that the smallest order in the house is still more than one man can finish alone.

This is a country that puts a barrel at the door and trusts you with it.

This is a country that gives a man as many weapons as he has options, and charges him for none of them.

This is a country that overfills the bag of a man who asked for little, on principle.

Tomorrow I will return. I will order the same. I will eat the same. I will lose the same battle. A man does not flee from a salt that has already named him.

The Cajun fed me crawfish on newspaper. The man at Five Guys fed me their war salt on a fry. I have eaten with the same people, in two states, on two coasts, and they did not know they were the same.

I knew.

I have been gotten.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A Waffle House at three in the morning. I ordered hash browns. The waitress, Charlene, turned toward the kitchen and shouted.

"Scattered, smothered, covered!"

I rose from my stool.

These were battle commands. Shouted across a room, fast, in code, the way a captain calls a line into position. Something was happening. I prepared myself.

"Who is under attack?" I asked.

Charlene turned back. "Huh? Oh. That's just your hash browns, baby."

I sat back down slowly. "...The potatoes have their own commands?"

"Mhm. Scattered means on the grill. Smothered's onions. Covered's cheese."

"And there are more?"

She counted them off without looking at a menu. "Chunked is ham. Diced is tomato. Peppered's jalapeños. Capped's mushrooms. Topped's chili. Country's sausage gravy."

I was silent for a moment. Nine words. Nine fates, for one potato.

In my homeland, a man earns a name through a lifetime of deeds. Here, a hash brown can earn nine in a single night. I had badly underestimated this country.

"I want all of them," I said. "Every word. The potato has earned them."

"...You want it all the way?"

"All the way. To give it fewer would be an insult."

Charlene shouted the whole thing back into the kitchen, the full litany, and the cook answered without turning around, and I stood again and bowed to him, sergeant to sergeant. He did not see it. It did not matter. I knew.

It came buried. Onions, cheese, ham, tomato, peppers, mushrooms, chili, gravy. You could barely find the potato underneath, which seemed correct, because by then the potato was no longer a side dish. It was a decorated soldier.

I ate the whole thing with a fork in both fists. It was hot and filthy and magnificent. I have eaten in palaces. I have never eaten anything that was honored this thoroughly.

So tell me, America.

You can shout the same potato into nine different lives.

Who wrote this language, and where can a foreigner learn it?

And the cook who answers in code at three in the morning. Is that a kitchen, or a war room?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I went to In-N-Out and ordered a cheeseburger. The cashier, a calm young woman named Destiny, asked me a question I did not expect.

"You want that Animal Style?"

I paused.

I did not know what this meant. But a samurai does not admit he does not know. So I answered with weight.

"...Animal Style."

"Cool. So that's mustard-grilled, extra spread, grilled onions, pickles. Yeah?"

I understood now. This was a sacred permission. For one meal, I was being told to put down my manners at the door. To eat the way a beast eats, without shame. I had waited my whole life for someone to give me this order.

"Yes," I said. "I will become the animal."

Destiny did not blink. "...Okay. You want your fries Animal Style too?"

I stopped. Even the potatoes?

"The potatoes also become animals?"

"I mean, they get cheese and sauce and grilled onions, so..."

"Then yes. Let the potatoes abandon their restraint as well."

"...Got it." She was the calmest woman I have ever met. "3x3, 4x4, or just the one?"

I did not know these numbers, but I knew a challenge when I heard one. "How many must I face?"

"It's, like, how many patties you want."

"How many is the most honorable?"

"...Four is a lot."

"Then four. A warrior does not ask for fewer."

She wrote it down without argument. A 4x4, Animal Style, with animal fries. She warned me once, kindly. "That's gonna be huge." I told her I was counting on it.

It arrived. It was a tower. Cheese and sauce ran down my hands the moment I lifted it. There was no clean way to eat it. There was no dignified way. That was the entire point.

I ate it like a beast. Both hands, no honor, grilled onion on my chin, and I have to be honest with you, it was the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.

For thirty years I have kept my manners at every table in the world.

They handed me a burger and told me to be an animal, and I have never felt so free.

So tell me, America.

The whole country knows the secret menu. What else are you hiding in plain sight?

And "Animal Style." Was I eating the animal, or finally becoming one?

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@AngelRu05991398 @pawsoffmybong @goheels420 @mauiwowie69420 @Mbakaza4L What you are talking about is a pretty basic concept known to us as “empathy”. Most normal people are able to comprehend this from a very young age.

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@brianorsomethin @AngelRu05991398 @goheels420 @Mbakaza4L Bro, don’t even waste you’re time arguing with someone like this. Anybody who says “just don’t let politics affect you” is way too dumb to be arguing with

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@samb0n @kjngamer Truer words have never been spoken

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @LocalmanMatty @freedseren43409 @JoezMcfLy Trust me man, you haven’t said anything this whole time. Don’t even worry about it

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @freedseren43409 @LocalmanMatty @JoezMcfLy First off, you are not the arbiter on what is attractive. Second, we did not agree that she is ugly. You decided that because you reading comprehension is atrocious.

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @freedseren43409 @LocalmanMatty @JoezMcfLy Okay but that’s just a bad comparison. Like that’s not how comparisons work. You can’t just take “this woman is unattractive” and compare it with “character that is intentionally made to look out in place in an environment”. Like I said: troll or dumb.

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @LocalmanMatty @freedseren43409 @JoezMcfLy We just don’t CARE about it. I think you just either trolling for the hell of it or are fundamentally incapable of complex thought

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@LocalmanMatty @CrazieyBoy @JoezMcfLy Facts, I swear I was arguing with a bot 😭. I’m ready for the game though that shit looks so good

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @LocalmanMatty @JoezMcfLy Nah I’m sorry you have to be a bot. There is not way you think that all of human psychology boils down to that. Or that you don’t believe that people can just not care about those things.

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @LocalmanMatty @JoezMcfLy You do realize it is possible for people to not care about those things though right?

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @JoezMcfLy But it literally doesn’t matter though. How hot or ugly a character looks doesn’t have any real bearing on the story, unless the characters looks are written into the narrative, which isn’t the case for most games. Your porn addiction is your problem buddy

[Michael Harris @99MikeAaron]

@CrazieyBoy @JoezMcfLy How so?