In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas.
I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build.
I was not prepared for the gas station.
There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps.
I counted them because I did not believe them.
A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty.
He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things.
Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon.
A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced.
A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume.
And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot.
The beaver is a saint.
The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house.
And the bathrooms.
I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.
I was wrong to dismiss it.
The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.
I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.
A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist.
I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes.
I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.
I did not need any of it.
I needed all of it.
I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.
I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.
But I did fill the truck.
And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.
I dubbed this one, along with a couple older ones that I recorded days ago, that I was only just now able to get to. Shoutout to my girlfriend for putting up my bullshit as Amy and Blaze 🫡
"Ohhh, I wish it could be Christmas every daaaay!"
"OK. ->
I WILL NOW ENGULF THE EARTH IN AN ETERNAL NUCELAR WINTER AND BUILD BRIGHTLY-LIT INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS OVER YOUR HOMES TO REPLICATE FESTIVE LIGHTS FROM AN OVERVIEW PERSPECTIVE. ->
3... 2... 1... GO!"
- how was the fnaf 2 movie?
- really good
- really?
- yeah it made me jump that was awesome
- wow so was it a good movie?
- fuck no it was corny as shit and the writing and editing was ass but it did provide massive fan service I did like that