Sell This House
Our house hit the market today, which is to say the Great Gods of Google allowed for it to be found by Realtors and anyone else who happens to have a larger-than-average nosy bone. Our Realtor said we could share it with our friends and family. I was trying to think of my marketing ploy and barely skipped over, “You could poop where I’ve pooped!” We already have six showings scheduled. Sell, baby, sell!
‘On Point’
I am old. Or, at least, I often feel old. And look old. And sound old. There’s not much about me that makes sense to the youngsters in Boy the Elder’s age bracket. I make pitiful attempts to pick up some of their phrases, but they often come out wrong or use them in inappropriate situations. So when Marti, a twenty-something colleague at my new job, stopped by my office on her way out yesterday to tell me my “meme game is on-point” in the office GroupMe chat, well, it meant more to me than such a little thing should. I’ve still got it… with memes.
The ‘Don’t Blame Me, I Didn’t Say It’ of the Day
“The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.”
Arthur C. CLarke, 2001: A Space odyssey
Seems like Mr. Clarke had an advanced understanding of social media.
Wonderful Neighbors
The first showing of our house is Tuesday morning. None was more surprised by this than the blades of grass in the yard that looked like a grazing ground for sheep. The plan was to mow them before the Open House on Sunday, though even that idea would have been difficult considering our lawn mower was moved to the new house a 15-minute car ride away. I drive a Nissan Versa. So does my wife. There was no way we were loading a riding mower into the trunk. Enter The Neighbors. Though we had people living on either side of us at Old House, Chris and Kara and their three daughters are collectively The Neighbors. Even though we now live in a different neighborhood, they still and always will be The Neighbors. Chris is an EMT. Kara is a fellow Creative Type. Their kids are some of Boy the Younger’s best friends. And so it was that, when BTY and Wifey-Poo stopped by Old House as the sun was setting, Chris was mowing our yard. They’re good people. We will stay in touch.
The Big Three: Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
- The sound of keys clicking when you’re typing.
- A good hot cup of coffee in the morning.
- When your commute goes quicker and easier than expected.
More From ‘A Puzzle Known As Life’
Safe at First — May 23, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Leg Pain 😧Graduation 🎓Orca Attacks ⛵ There was a precise moment on Saturday as I was moving this broken down, underused, untended nearly 49-year-old body down the first base line of a baseball field at McNair Park in St. Charles, Missourah, that I realized I was in trouble. I was lookin’…
Whiskey and Cigars — May 19, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Porch Talk 🥃Jacket and Tie 👔Strep 🤒 I find great comfort and relaxation in sipping a glass of good bourbon or whiskey while smoking an equally good cigar. Add a beautiful night, a screened-in porch and some good company who wants to be there, and I’m in heaven. Tuesday evening, that…
Religious Exodus — May 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Jesus Wept 😥Good Mom, Bad Mom 👩Baseball Success ⚾ In 1990, just 7 percent of Muricans considered themselves non-religious. Today, that number has quadrupled. Depending on whom you ask, this is either a sign of our descent into earthly hell or a great awakening to the sins of the institution most…
Slog — May 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Life Right Now 😥Classmate’s Death 😥TUP 😠 I long ago lost any semblance of the notion that life could be easy. To the best of my recollection, this shattering of innocence occurred for good somewhere in the third grade, when I was dealt my first really shitty teacher (I imagine Mrs.…
Sad vs. Depressed — May 4, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Scratchy Sweater 😥Birthday Boy 🎂Fucking Facebook 😠 I think there’s a big difference between being depressed and being sad. And I think I’m qualified to talk about that difference because I’ve been both. Some say that depression is sadness that lasts, which I think discounts the true power of sadness. True…
Porn — May 3, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩One in Two? ✌️Isolation 😥Really, HR? 😠 OK ladies, look to your left. Now look to your right. If you’re flanked by two men, one of them likely has been on Pornhub today. I used math today to figure that out. (Proud of me, aren’t ya, Wifey Poo?) I read a…
Iowa Visit — May 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Relays Weekend 🏃♀️Janelle 🤗No Steve 😥 Want to experience something trippy without the benefit of hallucinogens? Return to the place you met your spouse more than 30 years ago with your 20-year-old and 13-year-old sons. The Core Four took a long weekend minus My Favorite African, who was wonderfully cared for…
Listening Right — April 25, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Drive to Work 🚗Drive to Home 🚗Broken System 💔 I was thinking a lot on the drive to work this morning, which isn’t necessarily anything new. I think a lot, well, a lot. Long drives are usually prime time for me to tap into my intuition and listen to what’s being…
Baseball Bookend — April 23, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sweet Single ⚾Car Delivery 🚗Back/Neck Fixers💆♂️ On the one-year anniversary of that time a jackass piece of crap Little League “coach” did the most un-adultlike thing I have ever seen, Boy The Younger took the field for his new team in the spring’s first tournament. He batted second and started at…
3:32 a.m. Thoughts — April 19, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Garbage Can 🗑️Food Insecurity 🍲Poop Smell 💩 The level of significance of a particular task varies based on the time of day. This is something I realized this morning when I hauled my ass out of bed at 5:09 a.m. because of a thought that popped into my brain at 3:32…
Living — April 19, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Alive vs. Living 😔Dental Thoughts 🦷Pronouns 🧑🤝🧑 I am 48 years old, and I realized something today: I have no idea how to live life. This isn’t to suggest I don’t know how to stay alive. I’m OK at that. But the finer points of relationships and communication and working my…
Team Thanos — April 18, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Awww, Snap 😏Office Flood 🌊Potty Mouth 🚽 Boy The Younger is like his old man in a lot of ways. One is that, if we experience something cool, we have a pathological need to have others experience its awesomeness as well. It wounds my soul when I share my music or…
Falling Down — April 17, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Fuck Carvana 🚗Stupid Tooth 🦷Cave Woman 😠 I am a huge fan of the 1993 movie Falling Down. The movie stars Michael Douglas. Interesting side note: I once umpired a Little League baseball game for his son and called him out on strikes, which led to a crying temper tantrum. His,…
Toxic Positivity — April 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stop Being So (Fake) Happy 😊The Better Choice ✔️Checkmate, Motherfucker ♛ I’m not exactly what anyone would call an optimist. Perhaps it’s because I see the world too clearly these days to think that we’re headed anywhere close to the right direction. Some would call me a pessimist, and I’m OK…
Keith: Metallica and Mound Visits
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Al Roker. Stop, drop and roll.) My drive to work today was highlighted by my first listen of Metallica’s new album, 72 Seasons.…
Nickname Need — April 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Brown Stockings ⚾I’m A Dentist 🦷Quick Hitters 🐅🦎 If all had gone according to plan, I’d be well into retirement and diving into my money Scrooge McDuck-style after a success career pitching for the New York Yankees. Alas, I’m sitting at my desk in Maryland Heights, Missourah, munching on carrot sticks…
The Five Things I Did to Kick Longhaul’s Ass
In 2021, I thought I was going to die. And I was pretty much OK with that. It wasn’t that I was hoping for death or particularly wanted to die. It’s that I saw the trajectory Longhaul COVID had me on, and no matter what I had tried, nothing had provided even a momentary reprieve…
Dental Malpractice — April 5, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Crowned 👑MFA Moment 😥AI Danger 💻 I remember as a kid getting a filling and hearing that it was real silver being put in my mouth. I figured if times ever really got tough, I could just yank out my tooth, melt the filling and buy food. Yes, these were thoughts…
Not Snot — April 4, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Nose Woes 👃African in School 🚌Trumpster Fire 👮 The human body has a way of keeping us humble, especially as we get older. We lose hair where we want it and grow it in abundance where we don’t, we produce ear wax and eye boogers, and 99% of us should never…
WTF is a Tiguan? — April 3, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Tiger-Iguana 🐅🦎Cornhole Crushing 🌽Poison M&Ms ☠️ The first time I saw a commercial for the Volkswagen Tiguan, I thought it was a parody. As a marketing guy, I couldn’t fathom how an entire department of highly paid professionals could sit down at a table and decide the best name for a…
The Difficult Thing — April 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Closing the Door 🚪Car Shopping🚙Fake Kid-Hater 🧒 Over the course of my life, I’ve gotten used to doing the difficult thing. This often hasn’t been by choice, and it’s never been easy. It’s simply what I’ve had to do. Whether it was facing a pregnancy in which we knew our child…
Robin, I Owe You Some Quarters
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Vanilla Ice. Stop. Collaborate. Listen.) The first indication I had that girls are complex came at the ripe old age of 6. I…
African Arrival — March 31, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Changes and Similarities ✈️Family Drama Update 🎭Close Encounters 🤼♂️ My Favorite African (MFA) has arrived. His plane landed at Lambert International at around 1:15 yesterday, and about 15 minutes later, a kind TSA person allowed us and the woman who accompanied MFA on the flight to violate all sorts of Homeland…
African Eve — March 29, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D Nears ✈️Familiar Familial Drama 🎭Van O’ Canadians 🍁 My favorite African returns to us tomorrow afternoon. Dieudonne will board a plane from Philly with an escort (not THAT kind … I think, anyway), and land in the STL around 1:15. For the next three or four months, we’ll take…
Jill, The Dot Connector
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to your Gwenyth Paltrow’s laywer. Void where prohibited by law.) With the benefit of numerous trips around the sun, I’ve learned that whatever it…
Tech Hatred — March 24, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩TikTok Stupidity 😠Back Woes 😧Improv Friends 🎭 There are increasing number of hours each week in which I have a strong desire to throw every piece of connected technology into the nearest lake and move to wherever I have to go to be as far away from any modern gadget as…
Exit Ramp — March 23, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Anniversary Changes 💍Near Death Experience 💀Dreamcatcher Drama 😳 All relationships change over time. Friendships, parent-child, boss-employee, husband-wife … no matter the relationship, the only constant thing is change. My marriage has changed mightily since it began. When Wifey Poo and I said our vows on March 22, 1997, we were –…
Blah — March 22, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Why The Blahs? 😷Anniversary Plans 💍Unpleasant Warnings 🐍 Feeling blah is complicated when you have my medical history. For many people, feeling blah as I’m feeling right now is a clear indication that some sort of illness or infection has invaded the body. But for me — and for many others…
Floss Shaming — March 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Dentist Visit 🦷Basketball Sucks 🏀Found Husband 👨 No one truly likes going to the dentist. I’ve had people push back on me when I’ve said this before, but when I lay out the following scenario, well, it’s pretty much checkmate: “You just had the most well-respected doctor in the world tell…
The Lunchable Deal — March 18, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Dumb Gubment 🦅Dawg Party 🐶Flying African ✈️ We as modern Muricans tend to just accept that it’s the gubment’s job to educate our children. Of course, when other countries that aren’t our friends do that, we call it “indoctrination,” but that’s a topic for another day. The topic for today is…
Death Cometh — March 17, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Costly Mortality ☠️Crazies, Unite 🤪Defining ‘Appointment’ 🦷 I’m getting ready to die. Sounds ominous, right? Dramatic? Scary? It’s not. Oh yes, in a certain light, it’s depressing as hell. But what it really involved was a meeting with an attorney that Wifey Poo and I had yesterday to figure out exactly…
My Lab Partner, Amanda
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to your Tucker Carlson. Apply liberally.) Writing these Living Eulogies has brought up many things — for me, for the people who have read…
Finishing — March 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Books and Stories 📚SVB Lessons 🏦Basketball Party 🏀 Holy crap, you guys! I actually finished something I wrote! In fact, I finished two somethings I wrote! As my regular readers (hey you three!) know, I’ve been stunk in a funk of starting to write books and short stories with gusto and…
Sorry, Please Continue — March 9, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Podcast Appearance 🎙️The Birth Control Pill Story 🐶Good Tired 🥱 If you would have asked me a few years ago whether I could ever envision myself on a stage in the back room of a dive bar sharing a story about how my dog ate six months of birth control pills…
Peaking — March 8, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Pee Mate 🚽Game Maker 🎲Dumb Muricans 🦅 I have been thinking about death a lot lately, not because I’m particularly eager for it to happen or because I’m particularly not eager for it to happen. I guess it’s because I’m a few months shy of my 49th birthday and please-for-the-love-of-God let…
The Secret Visit to Kate’s
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to your local Girl Scouts chapter. Do not use in shower.) For today’s Living Eulogy, I wanted to try something a little bit different.…
The Return of the African— March 6, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Dieudonne 🌍Hoops Win🏀Cornhole Roll ✔️ In 2021, during some of the darkest and most difficult times in our lives as individuals and couple, Wifey Poo and I did a thing. It was a big thing. It was a challenging thing. It was an amazing thing. But to say it was just…
Tribe — March 3, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩’Full Stop’ 🛑Needles 💉Business Lessons 🧑💼 Here’s something I learned about myself today: One way to ensure that I will debate you on a topic until I give my last breath or until you are huddled in a corner in a fetal position is to end the statement of your opinion…
Mrs. O’Loughlin and All I Needed to Know …
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to your local Applebee’s. Do not ingest.) Back before the whole “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” thing became a…
Mindful Commute — March 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mindfulness 🧘Mullet Prez 👩🦳Murder Family 🔪 Our brains are amazing things. So adept are they at routines that they can essentially run on autopilot and let you do the everyday stuff like operating a multi-ton object advancing at 70+ mph among lots of other multi-top objects advancing at 70+ mph without…
After Life — March 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Bloody Hell 💂Circus Moments 🤡Silence 🤫 OK, people: I’ve got a bone to pick with you. But first, a little digression. What in the bloody hell does that phrase mean? “A bone to pick with you?” That sounds absolutely disgusting. And if you’re wondering why I said “bloody hell,” well, that…
Jason, One-Third of the Separated Trio
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Scientology headquarters. Some assembly required.) When I look back at my early childhood, the number of memories that start with “Jason, Chris and…
Angry Marketing Guy— Feb. 28, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩24 Hour Video 😡Rubik’s Kid 🧊Dilbert Doofus 🤪 There are two things I cannot stand in the working world — and in life, in general. The first is people whose lack of preparedness turns ordinary stuff into emergencies. The second is when people criticize the result of something they previous approved.…
Twenty-Three Hours & Forty-Five Minutes of Joy
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Kirk Cameron. Apply pressure to stop the bleeding.) Long before there was a Facebook status to label it, there was the OG of…
Corruption, Penis Sizes and Bird Drones — Feb. 23, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mormon Billionaires 💰Bigger Packages 🍌Birds Really Aren’t Real 🐦 Can we just get on with blowing the tits off the world with nuclear weapons or something and end this stupid thing we call the human race? Yeah, I know that’s a little dramatic, but when I take a look at the…
A Living Eulogy Conundrum
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Dan Patrick. The choice of a lawyer is an important one and shouldn’t be based on advertising alone.) So this is where Living…
Home of the Hypocrite — Feb. 21, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Muricah The Evil 🦅You Buy You 💰Big-Ass Van 🚚 I find it rather humorous that Muricah warned China not to send arms to one side of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine … and that we issued this warning with a straight face. I’m quite sure most Muricahns believe their country…
Top 10 Really Shitty Things America Has Done
Welcome to Issue No. 19 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. I find it rather humorous that Muricah warned China not to send arms to one side of…
Paul, Leah, Mark & Chris … or is it Graziver, Elora, Fargas & the DM?
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Gary Gygax. Talk to your kids about drugs.) If there is a thing that has traditionally separated the nerds from the not-nerds, it…
Wal-Mart — Feb. 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Salve 🩹Car Wash 🚗💧Light Removal 🎄 I try not to venture too often into a Wal-Mart, especially on the weekend. I cling to slim hope for this nation as it is, and I find Wal-Mart trips do not help my grip. Alas, this weekend, Boy The Younger was under the weather…
Why is Charlie on my TV screen?
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to 1980s TRH [Truly Reprehensible Human] Carolyn Bryant. No sugar added.) Everyone thought it was bullshit, which is quite remarkable for a high school…
Shit People — Feb. 17, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩CC, BCC, FU 📧Basketball Poll 🏀Andy Rooney 🎙️ This week has largely been a Shit Week marred by Shit People. What are Shit People? They aren’t exactly easy to define, but one hallmark of a Shit Person is his rampant use of the CC function at work to passive-aggressively play power…
Brain Rest — Feb. 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chill Day 🛋️Busy Weekend ⚾Halftime 🏈 I’m not working today. Not only am I not working at my day job, I’m not doing any work for my side gig today. I’m not planning on doing much of anything, actually. And I don’t feel guilty about that. This weekend was insanely busy.…
Drugs — Feb. 10, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Big Pharma Sucks 💊Work Rules 🧑💼Big Weekend 🏈 Spend any time in front of the television and you’ll see ads touting the latest drugs that you shouldn’t take if you’re allergic to and that you most definitely need to ask your doctor about. Now comes a study showing that the people…
Mrs. Tulin, The Reason I Write
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to 1980s Kansas City Royals shortstop U.L. Washington. The choice of a lawyer is an important one and should not be made based on…
Top 10 Ways The Earth Shows Us It Hates Us
Welcome to Issue No. 18 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. I’m not quite sure why we celebrate Earth Day. Sure, the Earth is the only ball of…
Crazy Pat
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Tony Hawk. Reapply every two hours during exposure.) Something that’s becoming increasingly apparent to me as I go about doing these Living Eulogies…
Amy and the Awkward Sixth-Grade Dance
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Marty Walsh. Read all directions before use.) In the first known picture capturing a moment between my big sister and I, she is…
Top 5 Problems America Refuses To Confront
Welcome to Issue No. 17 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday night featured the go-to line for a…
Five Dumb Things About The American Workplace
Welcome to Issue No. 16 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. Very few of us would actually continue at our jobs were we financially able to not. That…
A Kind Word From Danny
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to LeBron James. See our website for full terms and conditions.) On the surface, Danny Bryan and I shared very little in common. Back…
Lindy, The Best Friend I Hated
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Jessica Simpson. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and allow six to eight weeks for delivery.) Someone had to be first, and in…
Missourah and the Spy Balloon — Feb. 7, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Top 5 🎈Symphony 🎻Living Eulogies 💗 Top 5 things overheard in Missourah last week as a purported Chinese spy balloon made its way over the state en route to its rendezvous with an F22’s missile: Despite my high-brow upbringing in Suburbia, New York, I’m not what anyone would call A Symphony…
Meredith, The Girl Who Loved Baseball
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to John Stamos. Please spay and neuter your pets.) My bus stop was a hive of activity in the early years of my education.…
Josh, the Quiet, Err, Mad Alaskan
(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance for everyone who has different recollection of the same event. No animals were harmed in the making of these living eulogies. Send all complaints to Elon Musk and Garth Brooks.) There was always a buzz in the…
Michelle and the Chocolate Chips
Some people are the leading actresses in the movie that is your life. Maybe it’s your girlfriend or spouse. Maybe it’s your bestest of besties. I’ve been blessed to have a few amazing leading actresses make my life better. Then there are the women just outside that leading role who are no less important to…
Welcome to Living Eulogies
When my classmate Sarah died late last year, I realized just how much she was a part of the fabric of my childhood. And that was interesting to me. I mean, were my life a movie, Sarah wouldn’t be anything close to the lead actress. She would probably be considered an extra in many ways,…
Pokey Joe — Feb. 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Space Walk 🧑🚀Bye-Bye Brady 🏈Failure Rate 🐿️ When Boy The Elder was just Boy and devoid of a younger brother, we had a nickname for him: Pokey Joe. BTE didn’t do anything fast, but more than anything, what he did incredibly slow was get out of a car. That would suck…
What Type of Bosses Do Employees Leave?
If you accept the truism that people don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses, the next question is obvious: “What do bosses do that cause their people to leave?” The answers to that are as varied as the types of horrible bosses, but it’s possible to roll those individual reasons into just a few bigger buckets.…
Stuck Balls — Feb. 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Raccoons 🦝February 💘Man Nips 🕺 Today I bring you the story of a raccoon who got his balls stuck to railroad tracks. But the reason you think I’m bringing you this story is not the reason I’m bringing you this story. You think I’m bringing the story of the raccoon Neil…
‘Fuck Tha Police’ — Jan. 28, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Tyre Nichols 😔Tattoo Day ✒️Nephew Hoops🏀 I was a white kid in suburbia, New York, in 1988 when the gangsta rap group N.W.A. came out with its album Straight Outta Compton, featuring the song Fuck Tha Police. It was scandalous, at the time, to suggest that the police would be anything…
When Old Things Don’t Fit
Most of us are familiar with how it feels when we find an old article of clothing in the back of our closet and make the mistake of trying it on. Bodies change. Styles change. Tastes change. In most instances, closet finds and best left unfound. I think it’s something of a truism in life…
The Significant Things
Oh, to know The Significant Things as they happen That the casual “hello” is the first word you are speaking to your forever love. The handshake is an introduction to the person who will most deeply touch your soul The trip, taken, is the one that starts the path to your destiny. To know The…
Snow — Jan. 25, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Car Concert 🎵Sick Wife🤒People Suck 🖕 Within the 24 hours in the run-up to Snowpocalypse 2023, the estimates on the Weather Channel app for our snowfall total ranged from 1 to 10 inches. That’s like going to the doctor and being told you have anything from a splinter to terminal cancer.…
Hard
So much of this world is hard. By that, I don’t mean “difficult,” though yes, it is that, too. What I mean by “hard” is the opposite of “soft.” I’m talking about the kind of thing that, when you bump your shin or — God forbid — your pinkie toe against it, it fucking hurts.…
STUPID Goals — Jan. 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mission: Failed 👎Ho 🤣Handy Family 👍 It has to suck to work at the Missouri Department of Transportation. Why? It took exactly 75 minutes for all of 2023 to be a failure. Let me explain. Those of you unfortunate enough to have been involved in any sort of corporate planning process…
Writing Retreat — Jan. 15, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Houston 🖊️Sad clown 🤡Taco Seasoning 🌮 Houston, Missourah, is not unlike a lot of other rural Missourah towns through which I’ve driven and bears a resemblance to the Small Town USA in which Boy The Elder did a lot of his early growing up and to which Boy The Younger came…
Ceilings — Jan. 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Definitions 📖Missing Bourbon 🥃Mysterious Knocks 😵 I generally abhor any writing that starts with, “Webster’s dictionary defines …” Webster’s dictionary defines “ceiling” as a noun meaning “the overhead inside lining of a room.” The implication is that it’s a limitation, a max, a point of demarcation between what’s out there and…
Movie Ambush — Jan. 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Annoyance 😠Disappointment 😞 When Boy The Elder was Boy The Only in our home, he watched one of the Air Bud movies featuring a basketball-playing dog. Or maybe it was football. Or soccer. By the time that series was over, that dog had played them all. Anyway, whichever Air Bud…
Animal Updates — Jan. 12, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Thor’s Blurry Hammer 🍆Pigeon Delivery 🕊️Idiot List 🤪 Thor is really, really good with his hammer. And by that, I mean that Thor the walrus in Scarborough, England, is really good at masturbating and ruining New Years Eve. If you haven’t heard about this story, stop reading stupid news like politics…
Bad Boys— Jan. 11, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Bruising Basketball 🏀Poke ☝️Six?!? 🔫 I grew up in the NBA era of the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons while loving a New York Knicks team that was, to put it mildly, quite physical. Guys like Steph Curry and LeBron James can makes basketball seem like artistry these days, but give me…
Top 5 Reasons I Might Not Suck At Improv
Welcome to Issue No. 15 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. In just more than five weeks, I’ll be heading down to The Improv Shop in St. Louis…
Done — Jan. 10, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩What There is Like! ⛅’Modern Policing’ 🚨Xylophone Time! 🎵 When you decide to talk about a time in which you truly believe you more-or-less died and saw what comes after this life, you have to be comfortable with the fact that people might think you’re nuts. Hell, talking about it on…
Democracy and Newspapers
The three most influential people in my life as a journalist are, sadly, all part of the Great Newsroom in the Sky now. Professors Michael Perkins and Bob Woodward (AKA Bob Woodward-Not-That-Bob-Woodward) helped educate me at Drake University, and Lisa Warren was the best editor of the Dayton Daily News’ Southwest Ohio papers who ever…
Sixteen Notebooks
It was the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2015, and I’d just returned home from a short stay in a psychiatric hospital. The pace of life in a psychiatric hospital is glacial. Days stretch on endlessly, nights pass in medicated dreamlessness, and the cycle repeats again. There’s horrible food, group sessions, recreation time outside when it’s…
Media Landscape — Jan. 6, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Grace Ashford! 📰Idaholy Shit! 🥔Story of the Year! 🍆 The three most influential people in my life as a journalist are, sadly, all part of the Great Newsroom in the Sky now. Professors Michael Perkins and Bob Woodward (AKA Bob Woodward-Not-That-Bob-Woodward) helped educate me at Drake University, and Lisa Warren was…
Santos Kills Puppy — Jan. 5, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Poor Puppy 🐶Romeo and Juliet 🤴👸Meta Mistake 🙊 Disturbing news out of Washington, D.C., today as Republican Congressman-elect George Santos (if that’s his real name) brought a 6-month-old puppy to the house floor and screamed “Hey, look at me!” before slitting its throat and lapping up its squirting blood like a…
Institutions — Jan. 4, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Pretty Good Rant 😠Tesla Plunge 🚗Missed Lasts 😥 Those of you who regularly read my drivel (I see you, DirtySciFiBuddah) might have become aware of the fact over the past year or so that I am not a huge fan of our world’s modern institutions. All of them might, in…
The Second Sermon of the No-Dick Church
What follows is an excerpt of the sermon delivered by Pastor Q.F. Conseco of the No-Dick Church on the evening of July 3, 2022, from his home outside Escandido, California. Read his first sermon that launched the church. Good evening and welcome to the first evening meeting of the newly created No-Dick Church of Hellhole…
The First Sermon of the No-Dick Church
What follows is an excerpt of the sermon delivered by Pastor Q.F. Conseco of the No-Dick Church on July 3, 2022, from his home outside Escandido, California. Good morning and welcome to the first-ever meeting of the newly created No-Dick Church of Hellhole Canyon, California. Verily, I welcome you and hope you are enjoying our…
Finishing — Jan. 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Incomplete 🕮Frustration 😠Bowl Bust 🏈 To say that I know how to write is like saying I know how to breathe. No one considers that they know how to breathe. They just … breathe. No one is particularly good at breathing or bad at breathing. Again, they just … breathe. I’ve…
Fifty Intentions for 2023
Welcome to Issue No. 15 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. So last year, I had a list of 100 intentions for 2022, and I did fairly well,…
Vision Board — Dec. 30, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩2023 📅Helping 🧠The Universe 🔭 I’m not much for long-term plans and goals. This isn’t to suggest I don’t think they’re important. I just think that spending a lot of time on them is futile. What’s the saying? Man plans, God laughs. Something like that. Anyway, I’ve learned through experience that…
The Point of Suffering — Dec. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chain Links 🔗”Work” 🧑💼Popular Toys 🧸 After my first son died in December 2000, I spent a lot of time wondering why. Why me? Why Wifey Poo? Why Jacob? Why this level of suffering in a world supposedly created and run by an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God? So I did what…