E Neevs

Jaded, but still falling hard on grace.

Faith - family - music - art - whisky - not always in that order. Hence the grace.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.

I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.

Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.

In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.

This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.

The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.

So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.

The owner asked if everything was okay.

"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."

He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"

I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.

I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.

So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.

And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.

Reborn.

A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@iowahawkblog New Ice Age movie screenplay just dropped.

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@JJ_Denhollander Just saw Costco selling Grillo flavored potato chips. Get a bag of those with this smoothie and it's a meal.

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@stephenspin @JoshuaTorrey Why do so many men who profess to be Christians hate women?

[Rachael (sometimes SaaSy) Anne @swimflythrive]

TIL @MontereyAq has a daily livestream of their jellyfish exhibit and it is whatever the *opposite* of bad / too much screentime is. 😍🪼😍

https://t.co/7w7ofD55mV

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@JJ_Denhollander Missed opportunity

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@JJ_Denhollander

[Bennie🕊️ @Bennieeexyz]

A customer at the library asked me a question I wasn't prepared for.

Customer: Excuse me.

Customer: Why does this machine require flesh?

Me: ...what?

Customer: This machine.

Customer: I am touching it, but it does not work.

Customer: Is because... flesh?

At this point I was trying very hard to figure out whether I had accidentally wandered into a horror movie.

Then she held up her hands.

She was wearing gloves.

Me: Oh!

Me: The touchscreen.

Me: Right.

Me: Yeah, it probably can't detect your fingers through the gloves.

Customer: Ah.

Customer: Okay.

Customer: Sorry to bother.

Me: No, no.

Me: That's the best thing I've heard all week.

She laughed.

The machine worked.

And I thought that was the end of it.

It was not.

Now whenever one of our library computers stops working, someone inevitably says:

Staff: It requires flesh.

Staff: The machine must be fed.

Another staff member: Who's volunteering?

So thanks to one perfectly innocent question, our library now sounds like a cult every time the self-checkout freezes.

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@madmup So tacky

[Uppity Hobbit: Maker of Things @uppityhobbit]

And it FELL. Let that be a lesson to you.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

A truly despicable, corrupt, un-American, rapist, wanna-be-authoritarian “man” is running the country and everyone enabling him should be ashamed.

[Jacob Denhollander @JJ_Denhollander]

Trump doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's essentially a mob boss and that he viewd the machinery of government as nothing more than a tool to his corrupt ends.

https://t.co/zZmsZjEj7K

[Michael Freeman @michaelpfreeman]

Isn’t this the weaponization of government Republicans are always crying about….on steroids?

[David Burge @iowahawkblog]

Night Ranger, Loverboy, Stryper, and Winger had previous obligations

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@JoJoFromJerz Good thing we're getting a UFC ring to help beautify it.

[E Neevs @eneevs]

@JosiahHawthorne

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.

They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.

France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend

[Elai @elaifresh]

The Crunchwrap Supreme has existed for 5x longer than the Confederacy

[TaQuIn MaUvE @TaQuIn_MaUvE]

Si vous êtes à Rome, n'oubliez pas que demain, 24 mai, le Panthéon se remplira de milliers de pétales de roses.
L’un des rites les plus évocateurs et spectaculaires de Rome revient à l’occasion de la Pentecôte.

[Kristen Rudd @kristenrudd]

My husband has spent the past few months working on a practice app for musicians. It's now live in the App Store.

It's called PracticePlay, and if you are a musician, you need this app! Test it out, buy it, and tell all your friends!

Link in the first reply.