Sheeeeeeen

God has abandoned us, but we will enjoy it.

[PGA TOUR @PGATOUR]

When your friend asks for a gimme on a 5-footer https://t.co/gTg6VQdeUv

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Georgia I entered a Chick-fil-A drive-thru line of forty cars.

I turned off my engine. I prepared to wait the way my ancestors waited out a siege.

Six minutes later I was holding chicken.

I do not know what happened to the other thirty-nine cars. The line moved like water that had somewhere to be.

A young woman walked between the cars taking orders on a small tablet, on foot, in the sun, smiling like the sun was her idea.

I said thank you.

She said, "My pleasure."

I did not think about it then. I should have.

At the window I thanked the young man for the food.

"My pleasure."

I thanked him for the sauce.

"My pleasure."

I thanked him for thanking me—

"My pleasure."

I want to be clear about what was happening.

This was a duel.

In Japan I trained in courtesy for forty years. Bowing angles. Seasonal greetings. The correct depth of apology for seventeen distinct situations.

I was a white belt in that drive-thru.

I escalated. I used my most formal English. I thanked him on behalf of my entire family line.

He said, "My pleasure," and gave me extra sauce.

Extra sauce. Unprovoked. A counterattack.

I returned the next day to reclaim my honor.

It was Sunday. The restaurant was closed.

All of them were closed. In the entire country. They close every Sunday, and they have closed every Sunday since the beginning, because the founder made a promise, and the promise did not expire when he did.

I stood in the empty parking lot and understood I had lost twice.

Once to a teenager with sauce.

Once to a man I will never meet, who kept his word so long it became a building.

In my country we say a samurai's word is his life.

I had never seen a restaurant say it back.

I returned Monday. I ordered. And this time I said it first, before she could.

"My pleasure."

She smiled and said, "It sure is."

America, I surrender.

It was my pleasure.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Alabama a man said "Roll Tide" to me as a greeting.

Later that same day, the same man said "Roll Tide" as a goodbye.

I asked a woman at the store what it means.

She said, "Roll Tide."

I asked what it means.

She said, "It means Roll Tide, sugar."

So I began collecting evidence. I kept a list. I am not embarrassed about the list.

I have now heard "Roll Tide" used as: hello. Goodbye. Thank you. I am sorry. Congratulations. That is unfortunate. I agree. I disagree. And once, in a hardware store, as a complete set of instructions for installing a ceiling fan.

I heard it said at a funeral.

It was appropriate. It was the most appropriate thing anyone said that day.

I began using it. Carefully at first, the way a man handles a borrowed sword.

I said it to a cashier. She said it back.

I said it to a police officer who had stopped me for a broken taillight.

He looked at me for a long moment. He looked at my face. He looked at my taillight.

Then he said it back, and nodded once, and did not write the ticket.

I wish to be extremely clear that I am not claiming those two events are related.

I am also not claiming they are unrelated.

A man at a gas station heard my accent and asked where I was from. I told him Japan.

He said, "Roll Tide."

He meant welcome. I knew he meant welcome. There was no ambiguity at all.

I have been in Alabama eleven days.

I have one word.

It has been enough for everything.

I have started saying it in other states.

It does not work in other states.

I said it in a warehouse store in Oregon. One man turned around.

He was from Alabama. He said it back. We did not speak after that. We did not have to.

I say it anyway.

[Novig @Novig]

Belgium vs USA match preview

[George Kittle @gkittle46]

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Three Year Letterman @3YearLetterman]

Tomorrow I will reenact Washington crossing the Delaware in an above ground pool. The float is here. Fireworks will criss cross my path while my pet bald eagle, President Franklin, sits perched on my shoulder. “I’m proud to be an American” will play at max volume

[Pardon My Take @PardonMyTake]

USA ADVANCES PLAY COUNTRY ROADS

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Three Year Letterman @3YearLetterman]

🚨 BRAKING LEGAL ANALYSIS 🚨

I have spent the last 24 hours in scholarly research and in prayer over the Supreme Court’s birthmark citizenship ruling yesterday. Here are the legal facts from my perspective as a licensed notary public and countywide justice of the piece:

1. Before yesterday, birthmark citizenship was illegal. This ruling ushers in a new era where, if someone has ever been on US soil, legally or not, and they later give birth, the child is a US citizen

2. This decision is stare decisis (Latin for “decided forever”) and therefore cannot be overturned by a later court or by constitutional amendment

3. The decision can be overturned by legislative action or executive order

4. However, even if birthmark citizenship is reversed, it CANNOT apply retroactively. That means that it cannot apply to anyone who is alive before the decision is overturned if they later give birth. Thus, anyone alive today confers birthmark citizenship when they give birth, regardless of whether the decision is overturned

5. With Justice Elito’s confirmed retirement, the decision cannot be revisited because that can only be done if the court’s members don’t change

[National Park Service @NatlParkService]

You know it’s hot when you go outside and it’s hot.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, when you drive long enough on one road, the land changes and a very large sign appears at the shoulder saying WELCOME.

Most people keep their foot on the gas. They have somewhere to be.

I pull over every time.

I was on Interstate 70, mile marker 312, doing sixty-eight, when Colorado rose out of the plain like a wall of blue stone and a sign the color of a clear sky shouted WELCOME TO COLORADO across three lanes of wind.

I turned on my blinker. I parked. I got out.

A family was already there taking one quick photo for Instagram and leaving. The father said, just a picture, honey, we have four hours left.

The mother waved me into the frame without asking my name. Her daughter, maybe nine, looked at my green coat and whispered, cool costume, mister.

I did not explain the coat. I explained the sign.

In my country a border marker is a serious thing. Wood and stone, guarded or not, it tells you the law has changed. The ground under your feet belongs to a different lord. You adjust your manners. You note the hour. You behave as a guest until the place knows your heart.

Colorado invited me before I crossed the white line on the pavement. Free of charge. With mountains on the wood.

Dale, a man from the visitor center in a tan vest, walked over chewing sunflower seeds. He said, you need a map, friend?

I said, I need to know what I owe for entry.

He laughed the way Americans laugh when they think you are kidding but kind of hope you are not. He said, entry is free, buddy. Take a brochure. Restrooms are clean today.

Entry is free.

I took the brochure anyway and read it like intelligence from a friendly court. Elk. Hot springs. Something called a fourteen-er, which I wrote in my notebook as a rank of warrior I am not qualified to fight.

Dale pointed at my rental car and said, you headed to Denver?

I said, I am headed into the kingdom whose gate I am standing before.

He said, yeah, Denver's nice.

We were having the same conversation. We were not.

The daughter asked if she could take one more photo with me. I bowed for it. She bowed back, wrong but perfect. Her mother took the shot. Her father checked the time and said, okay, road time.

They left. I stayed.

I stood under the sign until my neck hurt looking up at the letters. WELCOME. Not tolerated. Not processed. Welcomed. By a state so large it puts its greeting on the highway.

I have since collected eleven of these. Kansas welcomed me flatly and without drama, which I respected. Utah welcomed me with a red rock on the board. Wyoming welcomed me with a rider on a horse and almost no people, which felt honest.

I keep the photos in one folder on my phone labeled border marks. My wife in Osaka asked why there are so many pictures of me near wood.

I told her America does not make you sneak in. It puts up a sign the size of a house and hopes you will stay for lunch.

She said, are you coming home?

I said, after Wyoming.

I am not even halfway through the map. I intend to collect all fifty welcome signs before the snow, bow once at each border like the first, and eat whatever the brochure recommends within seven miles of the line.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

An arcade called Dave & Buster's. My friend handed me a plastic card and pointed me at a wooden ramp. You roll a ball up it. The ball lands in a ring. A machine prints you a ribbon of tickets. At the end, you trade the tickets for a prize.

This is the exact system by which my entire civilization rewarded its warriors. I did not expect to find it in New Jersey, beside a machine where a steel claw fails, again and again, to lift a stuffed bear.

I rolled the ball with the seriousness it deserved. Each roll, a battle. Each ticket, a deed recorded in the ledger of the house. After one hour I had earned forty-seven tickets. I carried them to the counter the way a general carries a campaign to the throne.

"Forty-seven gets you a sticker or a bouncy ball," the woman said.

A sticker. Or a bouncy ball. For forty-seven battles.

I chose the bouncy ball. It is green. It is the size of a plum. I hold it in my palm and I think: this is what my service is worth, at the exchange rate of this nation. One plum of rubber. I am not insulted. I am educated.

My friend cashed in nothing and saved his tickets. "You save up for the big stuff, dude. The PlayStation is like a million tickets."

A million. So there is a higher rank. There is always a higher rank.

I have returned every week for two months. I never save my tickets. I take the bouncy ball every time. I now have nine bouncy balls. My friend says I am playing wrong. But each ball is a war I have won, and a man does not leave his victories in a paper cup, waiting on a PlayStation. A man takes his victories home and puts them in a bowl, where he can see them.

The bowl is almost full. I have never, in eight hundred years, been more decorated.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, there is a secret password. I have cracked it.

When two men pass each other, one will say: "Sup."
This is not a question. It requires no answer.
The correct response to "Sup" is to say "Sup" back.
Two men. One word. Said twice. Nothing is exchanged. Both are satisfied.

I have seen it escalate.

"You good?"
"Yeah, you good?"
"Yeah."

Three "goods." Nobody asked anything. Nobody answered anything.
A complete conversation made entirely of reassurance about a problem that does not exist.

I tried to use it.
A man said "You good?" and I, panicking, said:
"Good. Are you good? I am also good. We are, I believe, both good."

He stopped walking.

I had used four goods. The maximum is two.
By saying it correctly but too much, I had revealed I was a foreigner — like a spy who speaks the language flawlessly but bows when answering the telephone.

He looked at me for a long moment and said:
"…You good, man?"

And now there was REAL concern in it. The password had become a real question.
I had broken the system from the inside.

I have studied for months. I am now fluent.
"Sup." (do not stop walking)
"You good?" "Yeah." (do not stop walking)

Yesterday a man nodded at me from across the street and said nothing at all.
I nodded back, also saying nothing.

We had a full conversation. It went perfectly.
I have never said a single word to my closest American friend.
We are very close.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

To everyone who's been enjoying my Samurai series.

I've finally gathered the stories into one place. You can find them through the link in my profile.

I'm also working on a Kindle book, with brand-new epilogues revealing what happened after each story.

If you'd like to support my work, a Buy Me a Coffee means more than you know.

Most of all, I hope you enjoy discovering the samurai's "correct" way of seeing the world. ⚔️

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

My American friends invited me to dinner. It was wonderful.

Then, at 9 o'clock, someone said the sacred words: "Well! We should get going."

I rose. I gathered my coat. A clean farewell. We would part now.

We did not part now.

This was not a goodbye. This was the ANNOUNCEMENT of a goodbye.
A goodbye, I would learn, has many stages, and we had completed only the first.

For we then talked, standing, for twenty more minutes.
About a road. About the road they would take to drive home.
The conversation about leaving had become longer than the dinner.

We reached the door. "Okay! Goodnight!" Surely now.

No. At the door, a SECOND conversation began. A fresh one.
Someone remembered a story. We laughed. We were not leaving. We were thriving.

We moved to the porch. Stage three. The night air. New topics emerged.
The host, in his socks, in the cold, would not go back inside while a guest remained.
The guest would not get in the car while the host stood in the cold. A perfect deadlock of courtesy.

We reached the cars. Stage four. The driveway summit. The final boss.
Standing by the open car door, we discussed, in depth, plans to do this again —
the very event we were currently, allegedly, ending.

It was now 10:30. The "goodbye" was ninety minutes old. It had outlived the meal.

I understand it now. The long goodbye is not a failure to leave.
It is the meal's dessert. The reluctance IS the affection, made visible and stretched as long as it will go.

So I have learned to honor it.

Last week I left a friend's house.
The goodbye was so warm, so complete, so beautifully extended,
that we finished it standing in his driveway at midnight,
and I was so moved I invited him to MY house —

and he is here now. We are having dinner.

I can see, in his eyes, he is already thinking about the road home.

[Awful Announcing @awfulannouncing]

"IT'S TIED AGAIN! YOU'RE KIDDING ME!"

The Algeria-Austria finish was absolutely bonkers. ⚽️🎙️ #WorldCup

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

AUSTRIA FINDS LIFE IN ITS DARKEST MOMENTS OF THE WORLD CUP AND STAYS ALIVE WITH THE DRAW

WHAT A THRILLER IN KANSAS CITY

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A gas station in Texas, called Buc-ee's. A hundred and twenty fuel pumps. A building the length of two villages. A grinning beaver, three stories tall, painted on the wall, holding a corn snack and saluting the parking lot.

I read the signs three times.

This was not a gas station. This was a temple, and the bathroom was its inner shrine.

A man in a cowboy hat named Hank was refueling beside me. He saw me bow to the beaver and lit up.

"Hey buddy, first time at Buc-ee's? You came for the bathroom, didn't you?"

"...I came to relieve myself."

"Yeah. Same thing. Wait till you see it. We got two awards. Two years running."

"...I will pay my respects first."

"You don't have to pay nothin', it's free."

"I am not paying with money, Hank. I am paying with respect."

Hank stopped. He looked at me, slowly. "Buddy, I have been coming to this Buc-ee's every Tuesday for nine years. I drive an hour out of my way. Nobody has ever said that to me about the bathroom, but it is exactly correct."

A trucker at the next pump, named Carl, leaned out of his cab. He had been listening. "Hank's right. I run this route twice a week. Always stop here. Always."

I followed the painted arrows inside. RESTROOMS. I rounded the corner. I stopped.

Sixty stalls in a single row. Marble underfoot. An attendant in a yellow shirt wiping a counter that was already clean. Two framed awards on the wall: CLEANEST RESTROOM IN AMERICA.

I removed my hat. I bowed at the threshold. I stayed bowed for a long second.

A boy of perhaps seven, clutching a brown paper bag, watched me bow from beside the sink. He raised his bag with both hands.

"Sir. Beaver Nuggets."

"...A bag of small valors named after the beaver."

"...What?"

"Nothing. They are the offerings of this temple."

"They're really good. Get a bag."

His mother, behind him, smiled apologetically. "He has been talking about them all week. I told him we would get one bag. He has already negotiated me up to three."

I used the facility. I washed my hands. I bowed to the attendant in the yellow shirt, who nodded back the way temple keepers nod at a pilgrim who has performed the rite correctly. I returned to the great hall.

I bought six bags of Beaver Nuggets. The cashier, a kind woman named Becca, rang them up with a smile.

"Big day, huh? You drove a ways to get here?"

"...I drove from New Jersey."

"Oh honey. That's a haul."

"...I will return next Tuesday. Hank told me he comes Tuesdays."

Becca paused. She looked at Hank through the window, who was still by his pump, waving at me. She looked back at me.

"Honey, I have been at this register for four years. People drive in here from Arkansas, from Oklahoma, from Louisiana, on a Tuesday, because of the bathroom. You are not the strangest thing I have heard this week. But you are the kindest. Drive safe now."

I walked out with my six bags. Hank was leaning on his pickup, finishing a cup of coffee. "See you next Tuesday, buddy."

"...Until Tuesday, Hank-san."

A temple does not visit you. You visit it. And the temple, in its kindness, places a man named Hank at the gate every Tuesday, so that the pilgrim is not, on his second visit, entirely alone.

I have visited the bathroom in Texas. I will visit it again.

[Three Year Letterman @3YearLetterman]

After their humiliating tie against Gambia yesterday, here are some updated facts about “Great” Britain

They woke up today once again to the realization America is the oldest and greatest country on earth and controls more of the world than they ever did

[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?

[Three Year Letterman @3YearLetterman]

With their resounding victory over Australia 🇬🇧 in today’s soccer game, America is now:

1. The preeminent soccer power on earth
2. The oldest and greatest country on earth
3. The country that single handedly won both world wars
4. Undefeated in wars

The Europoors are furious