{"id":126,"date":"2025-05-08T16:01:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T16:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/?p=126"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:02:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:02:51","slug":"quiet-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/?p=126","title":{"rendered":"Quiet Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Julian sat at the counter like some forgotten relic\u2014part monk, part outlaw\u2014cradling a mug of black coffee as if it held the last truth left in the world. No cell phone in sight. In fact, he\u2019d left it outside on the bike, where it wouldn\u2019t be distracted by humans and could just be in the moment.<\/p>\n

Biscuits and gravy, with a side of chorizo\u2014that was the morning sacrament. Everything was better with chorizo. Julian didn\u2019t trust people who disagreed with that.<\/p>\n

Around him, the other patrons formed a quiet, glass-eyed congregation, bowed heads lit by the glow of tiny screens. No one spoke. One man, hunched over in a ballcap like a low-level wizard mid-scroll, never once looked up. He might\u2019ve been watching cat videos or orchestrating a cryptocurrency coup\u2014no way to tell. Another sat motionless, tapping one-handed as he ate blind, never glancing at the plate he was forking. Honestly, that level of coordination deserved applause.<\/p>\n

The waitress\u2014efficient and unbothered\u2014moved like a caffeinated ballet dancer. She poured a row of Bloody Marys in preparation for lunch, her phone bulging from her back pocket like a digital tumor. He asked what she was mixing, made some quip about the coming storm of brunchers ordering those tomato-bombs like greyhounds at a rabbit track.<\/p>\n

She chuckled, and for a brief moment, human connection sparked across the stainless steel no-man\u2019s-land of the counter.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when it hit him. No phone. Talking to people. Making eye contact. Laughing. He looked around. He was the only one doing it. The only one being here.<\/p>\n

He grinned to himself.<\/p>\n

To everyone else, he probably looked like a serial killer. Or worse\u2014someone who wanted to talk.<\/p>\n

What a weirdo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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The Antiquity of Technocratic Salvation: A Personalist Critique of Davos Progressivism<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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If Liberty Matters, Then Culture Matters As Well.<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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The Fortunate Misadventures of Julian Fog Episode Nine Graveyard of the Warborn<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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The Time Makers Plot<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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Julian Fog Episode EIGHT: THE GLASS ARCHIVE OF VEXALON-3<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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Nobody Likes A Know-It-All<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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Managed Reality – Prophetic Warnings from 1999<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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Julian Fog Episode Seven – Ghosts, Guns, And The Iron Funeral<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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If I Were An Honorable Man<\/a><\/h4>\t\t\t
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If I were an honorable man, I suppose I might say a few things I\u2019m apparently no longer qualified to say. I might say that grown adults shouldn\u2019t speak to one another like feral children playing dominance games on the schoolyard. I might say that public power, the kind held in trust, not seized for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecynicalpatriot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}