Barraging Blake 🧌

Hater first and foremost

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will tell you that you are funny, and you must decide what to do with such a verdict.

I bought stamps. The woman behind the counter asked if I had a good weekend. I told her the truth, that I had spent it cleaning my home and visiting no one.

She laughed, a real laugh, and said, "Oh my gosh, you're so funny."

Funny. I had reported a quiet weekend with no jokes inside it. Yet she had found something in my words that struck her as skilled.

I understood. In my country, to be called funny by a stranger means your timing is sharp, your wit trained, your blade quick. It is high praise, given only to a man of rare ability. She had watched me speak four sentences and recognized a master.

I could not let such praise go unanswered. A man honors the one who sees his skill.

So I straightened my back and gave her more.

I told her, in the same flat and honest voice, that today I had also eaten rice, and that the bus had been on time.

She laughed again. Harder.

I had her now. Whatever this gift was, I clearly possessed it, though I could not feel it in my own hands. I pressed on. I told her my refrigerator was making a sound I did not like.

She wiped her eyes. The man in line behind me was laughing too.

I do not know what I am doing. I cannot hear the joke. But I am, apparently, the funniest man in this post office, and I refuse to disgrace the title.

So tell me honestly.

If a man is called a master, and the whole room agrees, but he himself can find no sword in his hand,

is he still the master?

Because I have a routine about my refrigerator now, and I am not willing to give it up.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will offer you his fist, and you are simply meant to understand.

I bought coffee. I paid. The transaction was complete. Then the young man behind the counter slowly raised one closed fist and held it toward me across the register, saying nothing, watching me with a small smile.

A fist. Offered, not thrown. Held in the air between us, patient, waiting.

I did not know this rite. But a man does not flinch from a gesture he does not understand. He meets it with dignity and learns its meaning after.

I considered what was being asked of me. A closed hand, presented without anger. Surely a test of trust. He was showing me he came unarmed, in the old way, and inviting me to prove the same. A quiet pact between two men who had only just met.

So I did the honorable thing. I took his fist gently in both of my hands, bowed my head over it, and held it, the way you hold the hand of a man whose word you are accepting for life.

He went very still.

The smile did not leave his face, but it changed. It became the smile of a man who has started something he cannot now stop.

I released his fist. I told him his trust honored me, and that he could call on me should he ever need a sword. He said, "...right on, man." Right on. I did not know the phrase, but I felt it land somewhere noble.

The next morning I returned. A different young man stood at the register. When I had paid, I raised my own fist and held it out to him, to carry forward the custom I had been taught.

He looked at it. Then he tapped it once with his own, lightly, knuckle to knuckle, and pulled away.

So that was all it was. A touch. A greeting. The whole ceremony, over in less than a breath. I had cradled the first man's hand like a marriage vow.

I understood, with great calm, that I had been far too sincere.

So tell me honestly.

The first young man no longer offers me his fist. He waves now, from a safe distance, the moment I walk in.

Did I frighten him?

Or did I simply love him too quickly, in a country where the fist comes first?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.

I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.

"Nobunaga."

He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.

"Perfect. Banana, party of one."

Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.

Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.

I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.

It woke.

It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.

He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.

"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"

A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.

All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"

So tell me honestly.

For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.

When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?

Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@sereneshireen Me if I play against katsu on a Tuesday ever again

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@LegoKingo Her books aren’t selling well.

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

Flavor!

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@ol_sitrick 🥹

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@OfTheTaco lol silver age no thanks

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@dhmn_magic

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

"Despite a prominent sect of conspiracy theorists who continue to convince themselves that the following story is a fabrication, Skyward Serenade was in fact, a printing error."

Oh they hate this player base so bad lolol

[Flesh and Blood @fabtcg]

Scheduled Banned and Restricted Announcement:

https://t.co/vXaMNG1DjU

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@ol_sitrick How the hell does Aurora make lightning flow lol

[president of club quinn @realityysimp]

fans: we just want less twists

survivor 51: EVERY TWIST, EVERY ADVANTAGE, EVERY IDOL WE’VE EVER DONE IS ALL HAPPENING IN ONE SEASON

#Survivor50

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@billygiese Get him to a nursing home

[ken doll roy @weirdlynicebutt]

huge factor for survivor becoming unwatchable slop is that they used to cast people with real grit and nuance and now sandra would've been passed over for some dork who knows what a Mega-Beware Boomerang Bulbasour Triple Threat Upyourbutt Secret Idol Advantage is

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

@FaBJudges Who cares can’t play him anywhere lol

[Ashley's Dreamboard @AshsDreamboard]

Julie Chen on Big Brother All-Stars 3: By a vote of 5-3, Janelle..... why don't you say it

Janelle: I have been evicted from the Big Brother house.

[𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor_]

This is basically what philosophers and anthropologists mean when they say that the 'individual' is a relatively modern construct, and that many other cultures conceive of people in a more porous, contingent, interwoven fashion. Weird as it sounds, it's just observably true.

[Barraging Blake 🧌 @BlakeMeier]

Not the Runaways! 🧎‍♂️‍➡️

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[໊ @wynavira]

born to be a hater but forced to understand where you’re coming from