PerfumedLobster (Parody)

Just an ordinary lobster living by the docks down by the sea. #ParodyAccount

[Byron Donalds @ByronDonalds]

To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.

I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.

One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”

It knocked me back.

I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.

That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.

I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.

I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.

People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.

I'll tell you why.

Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.

I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.

In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.

The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.

You just have to stop running.

[WeatherRX @rx_weather]

@VoicesofWW2 Here’s my patch from 1980:

[PerfumedLobster (Parody) @PerfumedL]

@VoicesofWW2 Those pilots had balls of solid steel.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

They called them flying coffins. The men who volunteered to fly them knew exactly why.

The Allied gliders of D-Day were made of fabric stretched over a frame of wood and metal tubing. They had no engine. No armor. No weapons. No parachutes for the men inside. They were towed to France at 130 mph on the end of a 300-foot nylon rope attached to a C-47, and when the rope was cut, there was one chance to land.

One. No go-arounds. No second approach. Whatever was below you was where you were going.

What was below them was Normandy at night.

The Germans had spent weeks preparing. Under orders from Field Marshal Rommel, they had driven wooden stakes into every open field in the region, angled to impale gliders on landing. The French called them Rommelspargel. Rommel's asparagus. Thousands of poles, many with mines or artillery shells wired to the tips, packed into every field large enough to land on.

What the glider pilots had not been properly told was the scale of the Norman hedgerows. The bocage. These were not English garden hedges. They were ancient earthen walls, some dating back centuries, topped with dense root systems and trees, rising 50 feet in places, bordering fields barely 200 yards long. A Horsa glider coming in at 100 mph hitting a hedgerow did not survive it. Neither did most people inside.

Some fields were flooded. Some were mined. Many were both.

517 gliders went into Normandy. 97 percent were abandoned in the field by the end of the operation. Most were destroyed.

General Don Pratt, assistant commander of the 101st Airborne, was in the first glider wave. His pilot managed to find a field near Hiesville and brought the glider down. It slid across the wet grass without slowing and hit a hedgerow at speed. The co-pilot died instantly. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Murphy, broke both legs. General Pratt suffered a broken neck. He became the first American general to die in the Battle of Normandy. His glider had landed in one piece.

Sergeant Eric Wilson's glider did not. It hit a building at high speed. Both of Wilson's legs were broken. He was trapped inside the wreckage, unable to move, in enemy-held Normandy, for two and a half days before anyone reached him.

Lieutenant Den Brotheridge had come in earlier than anyone, in the first glider to land in France, the silent coup de main assault on Pegasus Bridge just after midnight. His glider stopped 47 yards from its target. He led his men out at a run, reached the bridge, and was shot. He died within minutes, the first Allied soldier killed by enemy fire on D-Day.

The men who survived the landing did not get to stop. Glider pilots were not assigned to combat units. Once down, they were expected to fight as infantry, dig foxholes, guard prisoners, carry ammunition, do whatever was needed. Most of them had trained to fly, not to fight on the ground behind enemy lines in the dark.

They did it anyway.

Of the 517 gliders that went in, 222 were Horsa gliders. Most were destroyed either on landing or by German fire in the hours that followed. The Waco CG-4As fared slightly better but 97 percent of all gliders from the entire operation were eventually abandoned in Norman fields, broken and empty.

The men who flew them were not pilots in the traditional sense. They were soldiers who had been given just enough training to put an unarmed, engineless box of fabric and wood into a dark foreign field at 100 mph, full of men and equipment, with one attempt and no margin for error.

Many of them got it exactly right.

Many of them did not come home.

Today is June 6th.

Remember them too.

[𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ @NiohBerg]

In 1979, the mullahs tortured the Shah's favourite horse to death.

The horse, Azar, was paraded in the streets. They broke his legs, cut his tongue out, and then shot him in the head in front of a large crowd.

Iran is occupied by demons from hell.

[Jason Bartlett @Jason2bartlett]

In South Africa every cop takes bribes, they intimidate citizens at random traffic stops and openly and blatantly ask for bribes…it’s just part of their culture!

So next time you see a cop in America go and thank them because you have no idea how privileged you are to have people who protect you!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Such injustice!

[Mark Ormrod MBE @MarkOrmrod]

Starting my new job today!

Wish me luck 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Yes

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

The heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy to fight against tyranny must never be forgotten.

Generations have enjoyed freedom thanks to those in uniform and all who helped.

On the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, and always, we continue to remember and honor their legacies. 🇺🇸

[Laura Loomer @LauraLoomer]

Here’s a crazy idea:

Make it a law that all ballots must be counted on election night.

It’s rocket science, I know.

[Kristina Wong 🇺🇸 @Kristinawong]

Best day ever.

I got to spend it at Normandy with our nation’s heroes.

This is 107-year-old World War II Navy veteran Arthur Rose.

Not expecting to be part of the invasion, on June 6, 1944, at Omaha Beach he commanded 36 vessels delivering provisions to Army forces ashore.

He wrote in a letter home to his parents a few days later:

"I will always be grateful to my commander for taking me along. Don't worry about me. I am well, and whole, and happy. Love, Art.”

I am so lucky to have met him! 🫡

[Sassafrass84 @Sassafrass_84]

It was never supposed to be a career.

[Tyler Thomas @tylerthoma4ye]

America please pray for us😮‍💨

#USmarine

[Mandy Arthur @mandyarthur]

My older brother was born with cerebral palsy.

My mother almost died giving birth to him.

Half his body doesn’t work. He can’t even grasp a fork with one hand. He wears out shoes every few months from dragging one leg.

And yet I will never forget the night my younger brother spiraled into depression, seriously questioning whether life was still worth living. It was my older brother, through tears and sobbing, who pleaded with him to see the good still waiting.

I remember how he described the little joys of life in ways I had never considered. He noticed beauty I had walked right past. Through his eyes, life felt richer and fuller.

I am grateful for his perspective every day and infinitely grateful he is alive.

Because in a body that fights him at every turn, he still chose to become the light for someone else. And that choice didn’t just save my brother.

He taught us what it really means to live.

He’s living proof that everyBODY, no matter how broken, deserves the chance to love this life and find its quiet joys.

[Byl Holte @SirBylHolte]

Just now on the train to DC, I sat across from this KAREN.

She took one look at my Trump hat, eyes bulging, and said:

“Oh my god how can you be gay and wear that hat?”

ME: “It’s a free country, and Trump has never harmed me in any way. What has he done to you this week?”

HER: “My daughter drives Uber and she has to work 2 extra jobs just to afford gas because of his bullshit war.”

ME: “Is that what your news is telling you, because gas prices always go up and down just like they did under Biden and you people said nothing. You need to stop blaming who the president is for all your problems.”

She bolted up and moved away from me.

I made sure I kept my Trump hat right on my head where she could see it.

[Adam Carolla @adamcarolla]

Funny

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Private Carlton Barrett was possibly the smallest man in his regiment.

5 feet 4 inches tall. 125 pounds.

On the morning of June 6, 1944, he landed at Omaha Beach in neck-deep water, machine gun fire cutting the surface all around him. He made it to shore.

Then he turned around and went back in.

A soldier was drowning. Barrett pulled him out. Then another. Then another. For hours, under constant fire, this 125-pound man waded back into the surf again and again, pulling drowning men to safety and physically carrying the wounded to evacuation boats offshore.

But he didn't stop there.

He ran dispatches the full length of the fire-swept beach. He found soldiers paralyzed by shock and calmed them back into action. He appeared wherever the crisis was worst, doing whatever needed doing, treating rank and personal safety as irrelevant details.

He did this for hours without stopping.

His Medal of Honor citation says his courage had "an inestimable effect on his comrades." That is military understatement for: this small, anonymous man held that section of beach together through sheer force of will.

He survived the war.

His comrades later said his life darkened after he came home. He lived quietly and died in 1986 in California, largely unknown outside of military history circles.

5 feet 4 inches. 125 pounds. He went back in.

Remember him.

[Alice Marie Johnson @AliceMarieFree]

Today is my Freedomversary.

Eight years ago, President Trump granted me clemency and gave me a second chance at life. After nearly 22 years in prison, I walked out the gates and into a future I had prayed for but could no longer see.

I will never forget that moment.

Prison took many things from me, including years with my family and the loss of my parents and a son. But I never lost hope or faith that my life still had purpose.

The gift of freedom came with a responsibility: to help others.

Over the last eight years, I’ve advocated for second chances, supported criminal justice reform, and now serve as White House Pardon Czar.

From a prison cell to the White House, this journey has been possible through God’s grace and President Trump’s courage.

Every day, I strive to honor that gift by helping others find hope and a path forward.

Thank you to everyone who prayed for me, believed in me, and supported me along the way.

And to God be the glory.

🙏🏽❤️ #Freedomversary