HILARIOUS: Justin Gaethje: “I was like, f*ck it. If I get taken out in the middle of the case, how f*cking legendary would that be?”
Joe Rogan: “I said to Trump, ‘I hope we don’t die in a terrorist attack.’ He goes, ‘We gotta go somehow.’ I go, ‘What the f*ck, dude?’”
On August 1, 2004, Daigo Umehara had one pixel of health left against Justin Wong in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.
He parried all 15 hits of Chun-Li’s super and won the round.
The crowd reaction became one of esports’ most replayed clips.
A young man, barely more than a boy, completed the bagging of my provisions. Then he reached for them again, though I had already taken hold.
He was sixteen. In an apron. Smiling. "I got it, sir."
He gripped my bags. I gripped my bags. In Japan, a man carries his own burden — this is the spine of a man, it is not negotiable. I pulled. He pulled. Gently. With the unstoppable leverage of POLICY.
"It's literally my job, sir."
Do you see the cruelty of this country? He weaponized his duty against my honor. Release the bags: I am a man who lets boys carry his rice. Hold the bags: I am a man who denies a boy his sworn office. There is no winning move. America has built a politeness trap with no exit and staffed it with teenagers.
I lost. Record it. I lost a battle of honor to a sixteen-year-old with a name tag, and he did not know we were fighting. He carried my bags to the car talking about the weather.
His name tag said KYLE.
A man who loses to Kyle must study Kyle. So I have. Kyle has carried my groceries four times now. Kyle says "no worries" to every one of my objections, which is somehow a complete defense to all of them. Kyle is sixteen and has never once lost the bag battle, to anyone, in two years of service.
Undefeated. In my country he would have a banner and a war name.
So I have restructured the campaign. Kyle carries the bags. I guard the cart. Afterward, I return the cart to the corral — a duty I assigned myself, which Kyle calls "honestly a huge help."
A man does not ask the trap to open. He only becomes useful inside it.
We are a unit now. I praise him loudly to his manager every visit. Kyle pretends to be embarrassed. Kyle is not embarrassed.
Hear me, America: if you wish to know a nation's future, look at who it sends to carry things.
Yours sent Kyle. You will be fine.
Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.
The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.
The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.
Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.
"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.
It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.
"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.
In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.
And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.
You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.
The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.
I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.
Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.
"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.
Discipline is a journey.
I’m sorry was a born yesterday…. Has the United States not been a capitalistic empire for basically ever? Did this country not coin manifest destiny? Why tf would we not have state of the f*cking art facilities? I am legit confused do these people think we live in the slums???
USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
Remember: 2500 American men got chewed to bits by machine guns, drowned under the weight of their own gear, hung by their parachutes in French trees, and blown to jam by 88mm artillery
so some goblin bitch at the office could call you a Nazi for making the wrong joke
Just rewatched Taken with Liam Neeson after years. The grooming, trafficking, racketeering, drugs & prostitution in the film is exactly what Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs have been doing across the UK.
Neeson’s line hits hard.
“You come to this country, take advantage of the system & think because we are tolerant, that we are weak & helpless. Your arrogance offends me.”