In America, a warehouse store. A fully roasted chicken costs five dollars, the raw chicken beside it costs seven, and I stood between them like a man between two truths.
Golden. Hot. Seasoned. Spinning in glory under the lights, in a line of its brothers. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents.
I checked the raw birds. Seven dollars. Pale. Cold. You must do everything yourself.
This is not commerce. Commerce does not move backward. Somewhere in this building, mathematics lies defeated.
I asked the man at the counter. "How is the cooked bird cheaper than the raw bird?"
"Been five bucks forever. They keep it that way."
"But the store loses."
"Yep. On purpose."
On purpose. I held my receipt with both hands.
In my land, a lord who lowered the price of rice in a hard winter was remembered for generations. They built him a small shrine. This store does it every day, with chicken, and tells no one.
A woman behind me grew tired of my reverence. "It's just a chicken, sir."
It is not just a chicken. It is a wound the merchant takes on purpose, so that anyone, on any day, with five dollars, eats like a lord. The bird is the message. The price is the vow.
I will confess: I bought two. I did not need two. The second was not hunger. It was gratitude, and it was delicious.
Some prices are not prices. They are promises.
I return every week now. I take one bird. I bow toward the deli, briefly, so as not to alarm the staff. They have begun nodding back.
The vow holds. The bird turns. Five dollars.
Long may it spin.
This map shows where the 48 teams partaking in the FIFA World Cup 2026 will be based. 🇲🇽🇺🇸🇨🇦
Pretty sure that Argentina, England, and the Netherlands have an unfair advantage by being based in Kansas: heaps fewer distractions than elsewhere 😉
An unhinged speech in a once vibrant city now largely emptied of its Armenian population. Aliyev’s genocidal onslaught continues without consequence. #SanctionAzerbaijan
Dear @VP@KamalaHarris: Break your month-long silence
Take action to break oil-rich #Azerbaijan’s blockade of 120,000 indigenous Christian Armenians in #Artsakh.
Stop US military aid to Azerbaijan, start US humanitarian aid to Artsakh.
#ArtsakhTweet
"It’s time to cancel and sanction Azerbaijan, adding it to the list of countries committing gross human rights violations and war crimes in our lifetime," @serjtankian writes.
https://t.co/FMrwVgQeOJ
A huge victory. As an Armenian-American, I cannot tell you how glad I am that @JohnFetterman is headed to the United States Senate--and not Dr. Oz, an Armenian Genocide denier.
Just intro’d my Resolution w/@FrankPallone, @RepAdamSchiff & @RepAnnaEshoo condemning Azerbaijan’s blatant atrocities against Armenian servicemembers & civilians. Beheadings, mutilations & Aliyev's contempt for basic human dignity must not be tolerated! https://t.co/nsYK7NpfXo
Live Updates #Armenia: PM Pashinyan just wrote on his FB page: "No document has been signed and is not going to be signed. This is an information sabotage directed by unfriendly external forces to break the country's resistance."
Ten years (and 1.6 billion views) ago, when my brother and I decided that we could make videos that could substantially help people in their high school and college educations and then give them away for free, no one was there to tell us we were wrong.
@jayspanks False.
The taste of cool blue on the tongue generates neuron synapses associated with seeing cute puppies, eating a free steak dinner and making a baby. Glacier freeze is a pesticide used in rice fields globally.