Random Dude

~ Digital Analytics practitioner, Scuba & Motorcycle enthusiast ~

[Amy @20th_Centurygal]

Only in America...😂💥🇺🇲

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A gas station in Texas, called Buc-ee's. A hundred and twenty fuel pumps. A building the length of two villages. A grinning beaver, three stories tall, painted on the wall, holding a corn snack and saluting the parking lot.

I read the signs three times.

This was not a gas station. This was a temple, and the bathroom was its inner shrine.

A man in a cowboy hat named Hank was refueling beside me. He saw me bow to the beaver and lit up.

"Hey buddy, first time at Buc-ee's? You came for the bathroom, didn't you?"

"...I came to relieve myself."

"Yeah. Same thing. Wait till you see it. We got two awards. Two years running."

"...I will pay my respects first."

"You don't have to pay nothin', it's free."

"I am not paying with money, Hank. I am paying with respect."

Hank stopped. He looked at me, slowly. "Buddy, I have been coming to this Buc-ee's every Tuesday for nine years. I drive an hour out of my way. Nobody has ever said that to me about the bathroom, but it is exactly correct."

A trucker at the next pump, named Carl, leaned out of his cab. He had been listening. "Hank's right. I run this route twice a week. Always stop here. Always."

I followed the painted arrows inside. RESTROOMS. I rounded the corner. I stopped.

Sixty stalls in a single row. Marble underfoot. An attendant in a yellow shirt wiping a counter that was already clean. Two framed awards on the wall: CLEANEST RESTROOM IN AMERICA.

I removed my hat. I bowed at the threshold. I stayed bowed for a long second.

A boy of perhaps seven, clutching a brown paper bag, watched me bow from beside the sink. He raised his bag with both hands.

"Sir. Beaver Nuggets."

"...A bag of small valors named after the beaver."

"...What?"

"Nothing. They are the offerings of this temple."

"They're really good. Get a bag."

His mother, behind him, smiled apologetically. "He has been talking about them all week. I told him we would get one bag. He has already negotiated me up to three."

I used the facility. I washed my hands. I bowed to the attendant in the yellow shirt, who nodded back the way temple keepers nod at a pilgrim who has performed the rite correctly. I returned to the great hall.

I bought six bags of Beaver Nuggets. The cashier, a kind woman named Becca, rang them up with a smile.

"Big day, huh? You drove a ways to get here?"

"...I drove from New Jersey."

"Oh honey. That's a haul."

"...I will return next Tuesday. Hank told me he comes Tuesdays."

Becca paused. She looked at Hank through the window, who was still by his pump, waving at me. She looked back at me.

"Honey, I have been at this register for four years. People drive in here from Arkansas, from Oklahoma, from Louisiana, on a Tuesday, because of the bathroom. You are not the strangest thing I have heard this week. But you are the kindest. Drive safe now."

I walked out with my six bags. Hank was leaning on his pickup, finishing a cup of coffee. "See you next Tuesday, buddy."

"...Until Tuesday, Hank-san."

A temple does not visit you. You visit it. And the temple, in its kindness, places a man named Hank at the gate every Tuesday, so that the pilgrim is not, on his second visit, entirely alone.

I have visited the bathroom in Texas. I will visit it again.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

I painted this self portrait from a photograph the New York Post and Daily Mail ran over and over again alongside horrible stories about me. They averaged about 3 stories a day between them for years. The image came from their complete theft of my digital life. In the photograph I am in the worst stretch of my addiction. Exhausted. Contemplating how I could end everything.
They published it over and over because they believed it showed something disturbing, something degenerate, something people would recognize as evidence of whatever they were accusing me of that particular day.
I set out to paint it because I wanted to take back what they were trying to steal from me. It wasn’t just the image they had stolen. They had stolen thousands of images. They wanted to steal my humanity. Their portrait was of a monster. My portrait is of a man being reassembled piece by piece, bit by bit, pixel by pixel through the hard work of recovery.
A portrait of someone worth saving. Someone worth forgiveness. For all of me. Past. Present. Future. Gratitude for all of it.
The images they meant as weapons are no longer weapons to me. The man in them is no longer theirs to describe. He is mine, and I love him.

We do recover.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I went to In-N-Out and ordered a cheeseburger. The cashier, a calm young woman named Destiny, asked me a question I did not expect.

"You want that Animal Style?"

I paused.

I did not know what this meant. But a samurai does not admit he does not know. So I answered with weight.

"...Animal Style."

"Cool. So that's mustard-grilled, extra spread, grilled onions, pickles. Yeah?"

I understood now. This was a sacred permission. For one meal, I was being told to put down my manners at the door. To eat the way a beast eats, without shame. I had waited my whole life for someone to give me this order.

"Yes," I said. "I will become the animal."

Destiny did not blink. "...Okay. You want your fries Animal Style too?"

I stopped. Even the potatoes?

"The potatoes also become animals?"

"I mean, they get cheese and sauce and grilled onions, so..."

"Then yes. Let the potatoes abandon their restraint as well."

"...Got it." She was the calmest woman I have ever met. "3x3, 4x4, or just the one?"

I did not know these numbers, but I knew a challenge when I heard one. "How many must I face?"

"It's, like, how many patties you want."

"How many is the most honorable?"

"...Four is a lot."

"Then four. A warrior does not ask for fewer."

She wrote it down without argument. A 4x4, Animal Style, with animal fries. She warned me once, kindly. "That's gonna be huge." I told her I was counting on it.

It arrived. It was a tower. Cheese and sauce ran down my hands the moment I lifted it. There was no clean way to eat it. There was no dignified way. That was the entire point.

I ate it like a beast. Both hands, no honor, grilled onion on my chin, and I have to be honest with you, it was the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.

For thirty years I have kept my manners at every table in the world.

They handed me a burger and told me to be an animal, and I have never felt so free.

So tell me, America.

The whole country knows the secret menu. What else are you hiding in plain sight?

And "Animal Style." Was I eating the animal, or finally becoming one?

[Random Dude @skimsey]

@NaturalEye78321 The CN Tower is right there in the shot

[Random Dude @skimsey]

@MarcelAndRogie @historyrock_ Genuinely funny 👏

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

Spotted on a highway in California!

“He can’t even win a war against algae”

[This Day in Rush History @RushHistory2112]

#NewProfilePic

[Negan @Roger_Negan]

This

[Random Dude @skimsey]

Testify!

[Random Dude @skimsey]

That clears things up!

[Walter Masterson @waltermasterson]

Name a better take than this on the Iran war, I’ll wait.

[Walter Masterson @waltermasterson]

Name a better take than this on the Iran war, I’ll wait.

[Random Dude @skimsey]

@jeremyknauff @MattMaasdam Cry more

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

When threatened, the pope can spray holy venom up to fifteen feet.

[Random Dude @skimsey]

What a clown.