In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called. I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years. "Nobunaga." He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly. "Perfect. Banana, party of one." Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now. Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands. I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready. It woke. It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master. He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room. "BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!" A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me. All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!" So tell me honestly. For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came. When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana? Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.

Congrats to @SteveBurtonWBZ for being inducted into the @MABroadcasters Hall of Fame today @JoeGiza @Kay_Breezy22 @BurtTalksSports @MikeReiss @pfwpaul @Patriots

You just won a 2-week, all-expenses-paid vacation to somewhere within my glorious crack. But there’s a catch: you have to stay within one region the whole time. What are you picking?

Meteor explodes off Massachusetts coast, causing loud boom, meteorologist confirms cbsnews.com/boston/news/mass…

For the 33rd consecutive year, the Stanley Cup belongs to the United States of America! 🇺🇸🦅

You all fell for it. So there was this whole engagement-bait driven argument last week (driven by one of the Internet’s worst humans, citing questionable data), about how younger generations (who also happen to be less well-off financially) use expensive meal delivery services more often. No, I’m not tagging the originator, or citing any of the awful (or even funny) posts on either side of the divide, because *that was the whole point*: to create engagement focused on divisiveness. Today, I took a ribeye roast, and rendered into steaks, ribs (not pictured), and fat for tallow. This is a step in the meal prepper dream: buy food in bulk, driving down the price, and using all the parts. This isn’t even, really, the argument about cooking your own food; because this is the step beyond. I’ll save the rib bones and make beef stock, which will later be the base for beef stew. I’ve got bags of chicken bones and veggie skins already in the freezer for the next wave of chicken stock. Here’s where Sam Vimes Economics kicks in: it takes money to save money. I can do this because we have four freezer (three fridge-combos, one deep freeze). I always have the space to buy a large piece of meat, or buy the Costco size bag of something. My kid, who just moved into his first apartment, would be happy to do deep food prep, even more than me. But it’s a tiny apartment, with a kitchen slightly larger than a shoebox, with four bedrooms. When he was last visiting, he wouldn’t take back as much food as we wanted to send, *because he couldn’t store it*. While I’m not going to defend using meal delivery services for all of someone’s meals, let’s recognize that the depth of someone’s larder *is* inversely correlated with wealth. If someone gets sick in our house, we’ve got a week’s worth of chicken soup in the freezer ready to go. Younger urban folks? They may have to DoorDash a bowl of soup. Let’s just be charitable.

Introduce yourself with 10 bands you’ve seen live: 1. Nine Inch Nails 2. R.E.M. 3. TwentyOne Pilots 4. Sting 5. Counting Crows 6. Live 7. Billy Joel 8. Everclear 9. B-52s 10. Violent Femmes

Just to confirm, you put FDR as high as 9th (of only 17 in the 20th century!) because of … rereads … Social Security, the “billed as a Ponzi scheme, but really just a tax, that created a third rail ticking time bomb in American politics that continues to threaten our economy”? I mean, I might put him as high as 15th.