Diane Johnston

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A state fair in Iowa. I watched a man pay four dollars and receive a fried cookie on a stick.

Fried. Cookie. On a stick.

I asked the vendor to confirm what I was seeing.

"Deep-fried Oreo, man. Want six?"

Six. He offered six as the default.

In my country, oil is a discipline. Tempura is restraint made edible. A thin robe, a brief bath, out. The oil serves the food.

Here, the oil has ambitions.

I walked the fairgrounds and recorded what this nation has fried. Cookies. Butter. Butter, fried, as a dish, on purpose. And then a stall that fried Coca-Cola, which is a liquid, which means that somewhere an American looked at a beverage and said: it can be done.

I tried it. I will not be writing home about this one. My ancestors already doubt my letters, and fried Coca-Cola would finish me. Struck from the family scrolls. Over a beverage.

This is a nation so rich in joy that it ran out of solid foods to celebrate, and kept going.

"You want powdered sugar on that?" the woman asked.

There is no version of that question that ends in no.

Before the fried butter, I assumed a stance. A woman beside me said, "Honey, it's just butter."

It was not just butter. Nothing that requires a stance is just anything. She patted my armor twice, the way you calm a horse, and went on with her day.

It tasted like a holiday that should not exist, and does, every August.

By late afternoon I was on a bench, holding a funnel cake I do not remember purchasing. My armor no longer closes at the third clasp. A passing farmer looked at me with the softness of a man who had seen this before.

"First fair, buddy?"

Nothing here is safe from the oil.

In my land we fry to preserve a thing's true shape. Here they fry to set it free.

I know this nation's true border now. It is not land or sea. Everything in this world divides in two: that which has been fried, and that which Iowa has not gotten to yet.

Next year I will eat one vegetable before entering the gates. I checked the menu. It is a fried pickle.

I have already ordered six.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@Tvan1124 @japan_nobunaga He has been transparent about using AI for his translation from Japanese to English and for his artwork.

[Sue Beaumont @Sue_C_Beaumont]

@Rainmaker1973 https://t.co/wTudRgYkhL

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@NiallHarbison Such an amazing transformation. Rocky is my favorite! So happy to see him in such a wonderful place with such a great family! 💗

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@NiallHarbison Sharing cultures! 🥰

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@SallyAnneCoton1 @j4ppleby Imagine going to a GP for medical help when she can’t recognize the difference in male or female. 🤨🤷🏻‍♀️

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@HawkEmDownChris Tetras. My dad used to love it too!

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

😂

[Fergal O'Brien Racing @FOBRacing]

“Squirrel? F@*k them”

Ozzy Man reviews are always entertaining but this one is right on the money

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This Air Traffic Controller flies to work on a paramotor.

[📹 Jacob Hutzler]

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@themoviedrill I would argue that Gollum was actually the hero in the end. Frodo succumbed in the end wanting the ring and putting it on his finger. Gollum chomped Frodo’s finger and the ring off and then fell into the abyss. And BTW, Gollum was also a hobbit to start with.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@angeliqueenoire Wasn’t he a redhead? Or maybe, more accurately, a strawberry blonde?

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@PepeDogood @yacksman @libsoftiktok @TPUSA @WWSWHS 🤣 Did you attend the Learing Center in MN?

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@MattPinner_ Captain Bligh.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@YCntShitNotSuck @japan_nobunaga NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The organization was created after World War Two. Hence Japan was never in and will never be in NATO. Did you perhaps mean the UN? If so, Japan is a member.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@lady_valor_07 The Green Mile; Always. Cried my eyes out in both of them.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@whoKnowsWhyI @ilaks @VigilantFox Every generation lived frugally when starting out. As they improved their jobs & skills, increased finances, their living situation improved. problem comes when children enjoy their parents lifestyle & expect that to continue with none of the sacrifices their parents made.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@Sassafrass_84 Beef stroganoff with filet. Quick because the filet doesn’t need to cook for more than a couple of minutes. Add salad and French bread to soak up the gravy. One of my go to’s when it’s just the 2 of us.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

August is peak mosquito breeding season. You can crash your yard's mosquito population without spraying a single chemical by hijacking their breeding instinct and turning it against them.

It's an entomologist-approved method called the Mosquito Bucket of Doom. It's cheap, it's simple, and it's backed by research.

Fill a 5-gallon bucket about two-thirds with water. Drop in a handful of grass clippings, leaves, or hay. That step is important, don't skip it. Mosquitoes prefer to lay eggs in buckets that have some organic leafy matter in it.

Let it sit for a day, then drop in a Bti dunk (sold at any hardware store as "mosquito dunks," about $10 for six). Bti is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin that kills mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae only.

This method doesn't harm bees, butterflies, fireflies, fish, frogs, birds, pets, or people. BTI dunks are EPA-approved for organic use and safe in animal water troughs and birdbaths. Lay hardware cloth over the bucket to prevent animals from drowning.

One dunk lasts about 30 days. Top off the water as it evaporates. Cover with 1/2-in Mesh Hardware Cloth to prevent animals from getting trapped and put the bucket somewhere shady where pets and kids won't get into it.

The bucket becomes a mosquito magnet with a deadly dead end for the next generation. Compare that to fogging the entire yard with pyrethroids, which kills every insect in it, including the predators that eat mosquitoes.

The more buckets in a neighborhood, the bigger the dent in their numbers. One bucket per yard is a great start. 3 is even better.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is guarded twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

It has been guarded, without interruption, since 1937.

In September of 2003, Hurricane Isabel reached Washington. The National Park Service, out of concern, gave the sentinels of the Old Guard permission to stand down for the storm.

They did not stand down.

The sergeant of the guard on duty that night refused the permission, calmly, and without further comment. He would later say, in an interview, only that permission was not the same as an order, and that in the absence of an order, the walk continues.

The walk continues.

Twenty-one steps. Turn. Face the tomb. Twenty-one seconds. Turn. Face the other way. Twenty-one seconds. Twenty-one steps.

The rain came sideways.

A tree fell in the cemetery a hundred yards to the east.

The wind lifted a portion of the roof from a nearby maintenance shed.

The sentinel did not break stride.

He walked. He turned. He walked.

At 3 a.m. the wind reached seventy miles per hour, and a sentinel weighing 175 pounds in soaked wool, carrying a rifle, and wearing sunglasses in the dark because the manual requires them, walked twenty-one steps, turned, and walked twenty-one steps back.

Nobody was watching him.

Nobody could have watched him. The cemetery had been closed. The public had been evacuated. The only witness was the storm.

He walked for six hours.

He was relieved at 6:12 a.m.

The tomb had not been left, at any point during the storm, uncovered.

There is no medal for this.

There is no ribbon. There is no citation. There is no commendation in his file.

The Old Guard does not require one.

The walk is the point.

The walk was the walk before there was a country to record it, and the walk will be the walk after everyone who remembers this night is gone.

Somewhere in America, at this moment, in whatever weather, a sentinel is walking twenty-one steps beside a marble slab, facing an unknown man whose name he does not know, for an oath he took to a country that will never see him take it.

That is what the promise looks like when nobody is watching.

[Diane Johnston @justpeachy3003]

@MAGAMAHACindy Kinda like 95% of welfare recipients!