USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
Things most Americans agree on:
Groceries cost too much.
Tariffs suck and make no sense.
Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks.
The debt is a mess.
The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good.
Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants and have never been explained.
Americans are exhausted.
AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process. Yo like I love you, but WTF, but I still love you.
Diversity is actually awesome! The opposite is boring AF.
Canadians are super fucking cool.
Mexicans are chill.
Putin isn’t a good guy looking out for America’s best interest. Rocky IV and Miracle are great movies.
Good neighbors are a blessing.
Freedom of religion and coexistence without having to blow each other up is probably a good idea.
We all question, are we alone in the universe?
We all fuck up along the way.
Epstein didn’t hang himself.
The Trumps and Epstein were best friends for decades. It’s like Bert trying to tell us Ernie was just an acquaintance in the same social scene on Sesame Street back in the day.
The Cowboys suck. Go Birds!
Things we’re told to fight about:
Me.
Laptop.
Vaccines.
Transgenders in sports.
Pronouns.
That’s the joke.
My high school math teacher Mr D was known for one thing.
He reused the same exam questions every year. Just changed the numbers. Everyone knew it. He also made a very big deal of collecting every paper back after we reviewed our scores so nobody could pass them to the next year's class.
Of course some of my classmates got their hands on a full set of tests from the previous year.
Within a week everyone had a copy.
Before every exam we'd sit together and work through every problem on the old test until we could solve them in our sleep. When the real exam landed the numbers were different but the logic was identical.
We thought we were geniuses.
Years later I became a teacher myself. Ran into Mr D at a funeral.
Me: I have to confess something.
Me: We had a copy of your old tests the whole time.
Me: Full set. Every exam.
Him: (smirked)
Him: Who do you think leaked them?
Me: (stared at him)
Him: Kids won't study if a teacher tells them to.
Him: But if they think they're getting away with something?
Him: (shrugged)
Him: They study all night.
Me: (stood there)
Me: (replayed four years of feeling clever)
Me: (we were never clever)
Me: (he played us perfectly)
Me: (I became a teacher and I still got played)
Me: (Mr D was built different)
@JaySkurski How’s your golf game looking during this soggy start to the season? Also have you ever putted from 40 yards away through thick rough only to make the putt ?
Will Sasso and Dan Soder are Macho Man Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rodney Dangerfield, and Robert Deniro reading Andy Rooney quotes. 😂😂😂😂
(🎥@ChrisVanVliet)
Softball and Baseball in Buffalo should be a fall sport. Spring is garbage, snow or rain and then of course the NYS deadline so kids forced to play in this garbage. So tell me @SectionVI why dont you make these fall sports? They would play 25 to 30 games instead of 14 and wouldn't have to see kids get hurt paying on wet turf .
The last great Republican was Dwight Eisenhower. He won WW2, taxed the billionaires, built the interstate highway system, warned us about the military industrial complex, and then dropped dead from smoking cigarettes. Based
In 1972, if you polled Yale Law School on which person in this photo would have the bigger political career, every single person would have picked the woman on the right. And they would have been wrong.
Three years before this photo, Hillary Rodham was already nationally famous. She delivered the first student commencement speech in Wellesley College's history, went off-script to publicly challenge a sitting U.S. Senator, received a seven-minute standing ovation, and landed in LIFE magazine's "Class of '69" feature alongside four other student leaders. She was 21. Bill Clinton was nobody outside of Georgetown.
At Yale, she was the one with the trajectory. After graduation in 1973, she joined the Watergate impeachment inquiry staff investigating Nixon. A Democratic political consultant named Betsey Wright moved from Texas to Washington specifically to help manage Hillary Rodham's career. Wright believed she had the potential to become a senator or president. Bill had returned to Arkansas to teach law and lost his first congressional race in 1974.
Hillary turned down his first marriage proposal. She later wrote that she "chose to follow my heart instead of my head" when she moved to Arkansas. She became one of two female faculty at the University of Arkansas Law School, founded the state's first legal aid clinic, then joined Rose Law Firm as its first female associate. By 1979 she was its first female partner. The National Law Journal named her one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. Twice.
The income math tells the real story. Bill made $35,000 a year as governor. Hillary earned $110,000 at the firm plus $60,000 in corporate board fees from Walmart, TCBY, and LaFarge. From 1978 until they entered the White House in 1993, she out-earned him every single year. For 15 years, the future president of the United States was the lower-earning spouse.
In 1990, when Bill considered retiring from the governorship, Hillary thought about running for governor herself. He decided to run again. Two years later he won the presidency.
Two corduroy-wearing law students in 1972. The one holding the textbooks became president. The one with the national profile, the higher salary, and the political operatives already mapping her career became the person who followed him to Arkansas.
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with the force of 24 megatons of TNT, making it one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in U.S. history.
The blast was so violent it literally blew the top off the mountain, triggered massive landslides, flattened millions of trees, and sent ash across multiple states.
To this day, the footage still doesn’t look real.
His 562 career points with the @QMJHL's Laval Voisins on their own are astonishing but in 1983-84, Mario Lemieux authored the greatest season in CHL history with 133 goals and 282 points in only 70 games! 🤯 #CHL50
📰 https://t.co/PDWFirwajl