We’ve received increasing requests to certify our beef as halal. As Christians, we respectfully decline and focus exclusively on regenerative agriculture—restoring soil health, enhancing biodiversity, and producing exceptional beef—while keeping religious and ideological certifications out of our operation. Do you agree with our decision?
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.
Seattle homeless couple says all the money that’s given to the NGOs for housing doesn’t go to housing Americans
She says noncitizens always take priority for housing
They name multiple nonprofits that get money and the money disappears, they’ve tried to get housing but can’t
“You have all these housing people and they do nothing. They leave you out there. Right now I sleep in a tent — everybody's coming to our country and they all get everything they need, but the people that were born here aren't getting it.”
She specially names Catholic Community Services. This is a big one because they are affiliated with Catholic Charities through the Catholic Church’s social ministry network
Remember, Catholic Charities was one of the main NGOs used by the Biden Admin to send money and prioritize bringing illegals into America and giving them benefits and housing over Americans
It’s all connected
USA tourist visits Vancouver FIFA WORLD CUP
They provide honest review
Open air Drug use is out of control ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE
You do not need an alarm clock at 6 AM people are screaming for drugs
Actor Kelsey Grammer: There is a virus that has infected a very small number of people, I think, who just want to tear things down. They've been consumed by hatred... I pray for them.
Senator Bernie Moreno Says NY Socialists Should NOT Be SEATED in Congress, Demands BAN on Dual Citizens: 'They Cannot Uphold Their Oath...'
"Every elected official since 1789 had to put their hand on the Bible, lift their right hand and swear allegience to the United States of America and to uphold our Constitution... Unless that person is willing to do that, then they are unable to receive that oath of office and should not be seated."
We cannot have members of Congress who chant "Death to America", call for the "Total eradication of Western Civilization" and who use our nation's flag as a napkin.
These people are incompatible with our country and cannot represent us.
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?
OVER 98,300 fans have signed the petition!
The fans haven’t quit. The cast hasn’t quit. The Stargate universe still has stories to tell.
Reopen the gate @AmazonMGMStudios. Honor the greenlight. Give us what you promised.
#SaveStargate@MichaelShanks@robertpatrickT2@dhewlett
My wife and I own Forest Park Pharmacy, and we don't accept insurance. None of it. That decision is exactly why we could fix what happened to a patient today.
A family came in wanting to transfer their kid's antibiotic to us. The child had already STARTED the course. Then, mid-treatment, the insurance company decided the last 14 tablets suddenly needed a "prior authorization" before the other pharmacy could hand them over. A sick kid, halfway through an antibiotic, and the answer was "please hold."
The drug is linezolid. It's a generic. It's been generic for over a decade. It treats serious gram-positive infections — the kind you do NOT want to stop antibiotics in the middle of, because an interrupted course is how you breed resistant bugs and end up right back where you started.
So why the hold-up on a cheap, common generic? Follow the fake math.
Insurance and the PBMs behind them price drugs off a number called AWP — "Average Wholesale Price." People in my industry have another name for it: "Ain't What's Paid." It's a benchmark number, not a real-world cost. On paper, the AWP for just those last 14 tablets is about $2,500.
My cash price for the same 14 tablets? $18.
Read that again. The system that's supposedly "protecting" this family from cost is the same system that inflated an $18 medication into a $2,500 line item, then slapped a prior auth on it to "review the expense" THEY invented. They manufactured the problem, then billed everyone for the privilege of solving it — and made a sick kid wait while they did it.
This is the whole game. When a drug is priced honestly, there's nothing to "manage." When it's priced off a fantasy benchmark, you get spread pricing, PA paperwork, pharmacy phone trees, and delayed treatment — all dressed up as cost control.
Here's the part nobody tells you: roughly 90% of prescriptions are low-cost generics. For the vast majority of what people pick up every day, running it through insurance does two things — raises the real cost and risks delaying your care. That's it. That's the value-add.
That's why we fired the insurance companies. No middleman deciding your kid can't finish their antibiotics on schedule. No fake prices. Just the real number, on the shelf, today.
The medication was always cheap. The insurance was the expensive part.