If you're looking for any of the comms I've gotten, and any I will get in the future, they've all been moved to bsky - as will likely most of my posting. I'm not nuking this acc, but I'll be transitioning my focus over thattaways.
Direct link in replies below:
> check forecast
> no rain until 5pm
> I should get out of work before then, I'll take the bike instead of my roommate's truck while he's on vacation and told me I could
> it's 1pm
> it's raining
> a lot
Really should've seen that coming tbh.
@Supersonic_Red It's great because it's all the things that we've been telling them about for years and years, and they're finally getting a chance & reason to come over here, so now they finally get to experience it all in person and realize not a single bit of what we said was hyperbole.
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 โ I must report this calmly โ the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did weโฆ?"
"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 โ 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.
@SA_Broskitz Well now I'm lowkey wondering just how freaky someone's gonna get with the service bell before they ring it ๐ถ
I always just give them a short proper 'ding' with my finger I didn't know there were other ways to attempt to use a service bell