🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
A Year of Hell 😷
Where’s Ben? 💔
Profiting From Pollution 🏭
Happy Covidaversary to me. On this day one year ago, I had a Q-tip shoved up my nose to confirm what I already knew. Wifey Poo’s sister had been diagnosed with it. Wifey Poo’s mother had been diagnosed with it. Wifey Poo’s father, just out of open heart surgery, had been diagnosed with it. Wifey Poo had been diagnosed with it. And the night before, every single last speck of energy had left my body. So bad was it that Wifey Poo had to drive me to get my nose assaulted.
I don’t even remember the day I got the call to confirm I was part of the growing ranks of Covid-afflicted. Aside from one really scary night during my two-week quarantine, Covid proper didn’t do a lot to me. I was dead tired, but I had no respiratory issues. No high fever. I was just achy and tired.
For a few weeks after my quarantine, I felt a bit better. And then I didn’t. And then I really didn’t. I couldn’t make it through a day of work. I needed naps. A lot of naps. I couldn’t think anymore. I’d try to do something like fasten my belt and couldn’t remember how to do it. I’d attempt to say something like “I left it in the garage” and it would come out as “I left it in the glasses.” And that was when something came out at all. Often times, I would trail off in the middle of sentences, unable to remember what should come next.
I would climb a flight of stairs and feel like I’d run a 5K. I’d be sitting on the couch and my heart would just start racing like I’d charged around the bases on an inside-the-park home run. I randomly would start to sweat for an hour… two hours.
Wifey Poo, Boy The Younger and I had been reading the Harry Potter series out loud to help pass pandemic time. Prior to my diagnosis, I’d become the main reader, the guy with the funny voices for Mad Eye Moody and Luna Lovegood (though I could never touch Wifey Poo’s Dobby).
Suddenly, I couldn’t read a paragraph without running out of breath or mental capacity to understand the words on the page. I had to hand the book to Wifey Poo. She finished the last few books.
I had my first doctor’s appointment on New Year’s Eve. Determined, I was, to get answers in 2021. Doctor’s appointments turned into tests and tests turned into more doctor’s appointments. I went to a Longhauler clinic run by Washington University and, by the time I had to walk from the parking lot to the waiting room and then fill out their paperwork, I couldn’t even tell the doctor why I was there. All I did was cry. Doctors had exactly no answers for me. Tests revealed a few hints but nothing to hang a diagnosis upon other than, “Yup, it’s Longhaul Covid, and we don’t know much about it.”
Yada yada yada.
Life is better now, mostly. I’m working on an article about exactly how I am kicking Longhaul Covid’s ass. I’ve been writing it for about two months now, but I’m hesitant. I learned the hard way that thinking I am “better” was a surefire way to have a relapse. And I do have relapses. They’re just not as bad and I’ve gotten a lot better at managing them. It took awhile, but I learned that Longhaul Covid is not something one can just push through with manly toughness. I tried. And I literally nearly died, passing out in the bedroom on our hardwood floors.
I haven’t gone one day in more than a year now without a horrible, rancid taste in my mouth and a goopy feeling on the back of my teeth that no doctor, dentist or ENT can actually see. I’m told it’s probably some damage to the nerve that sends signals to the brain or damage to the brain about how it interprets the signals from the tongue. As far as how to treat that, your guess is as good as theirs and mine.
When this taste is particularly bad and I’m in my car or somewhere that I can’t brush my teeth or use some mouthwash or have a Tic-Tac — not that any of those truly help for any great length of time — I sometimes wonder if this is how it’s going to be for the rest of my life. I’m grateful my sense of smell is undamaged and that my sense of taste was largely untouched, though water has started to take on a bit of an iffy tinge. If it is how every single goddamn day is going to be until I have the pleasure of dying, how am I going to do that?
The same way I did every day with Longhaul Covid, I guess. I didn’t have a choice, so I did it. And when things really sucked, I went to sleep and tried again the next day.
Fuck you, Covid. Fuck you, China. Fuck you, Trump and your Missourah lackey Parsons. Fuck you to everyone whose stupidity and idiotic faith in a demagogue allowed this thing to rampage through our country, kill people I cared about and fuck up my life. I know I’m not supposed to be bitter, that I’m supposed to “let that shit go.” But you try to let that shit go after the trip around the sun I’m just completing. I’m alive. I’m grateful for that. But I’m changed. And I don’t know that I’ll ever get rid of this thing.
So perhaps you’ll give me a little grace and allow me to spew my venom from time to time.
When Your World Withers Away
Hi. My name is John, and I’m a COVID Longhauler. Looking back, it’s clear when this little trend started. It was back in January, which, not surprisingly, is when it first hit me that no one knew what the fuck they were talking about with my Longhaul symptoms. It’s also when my father-in-law died. And…
Keep readingHere’s What Real Longhaulers Are Saying; Are You Listening?
Hi. My name is John, and I’m a COVID Longhauler. Many people honestly struggle to see the world through anything other than their own filters. People believe the world is a certain way because their world is a certain way. If you want Reason No. 1 for why things suck, there ya have it. The…
Keep readingLonghaulers Are Killing Themselves; Here’s Why — And What You Can Do To Help
Hi. My name is John, and I’m a COVID Longhauler. When the coronavirus epidemic shut down the country in March 2020, Kent Taylor refused to accept his base salary as chief executive officer of Texas Roadhouse restaurants and instead poured that money back into his frontline restaurant workers to help them stay financially afloat. A…
Keep readingRight before Wifey Poo and I started dating as college freshmen, there was this whole to-do involving me, her, my friend Ben and a girl named, wait for it, Sunshine. I’ll spare you the details (which truly is more sparing myself from the embarrassment), but suffice to say I ended up going on a date or two with Sunshine because Wifey Poo’s interest in me was a bit vague thanks to a Beverly Hills 90210 incident. Trust me, it makes sense to us.
Anywho, Ben then proceeded to walk into Wifey Poo’s room the next day and ask her out. And she promptly told him, “No.”
Period.
Full stop.
She said that one word: “No,” and then there was silence, after a few seconds of which Ben got up, left the room and came into the commons area to replay the strange event for his buddies.
Wifey Poo’s two-letter crushing of Ben’s heart is something that comes up from time-to-time (as does my time with Sunshine, of course), and for some reason, it did this morning. So I looked Ben up. He’s an actuarial VP somewhere in Kansas. Quite a bit different life she would have had than with a weirdo empath creative-type from New York.
📚 Let’s Learn Something Together 📓🖊️
It is such an American thing to take what most in the scientific community are saying is humanity’s contribution to the long, slow march to the death chamber for our planet and try to make money off of it.
I became familiar with carbon offsets back when I worked in the electricity industry. Now, a decade later, talk about them has ramped back up. Essentially, a company pays for the right to put what that same overwhelming majority of the scientific community believes is harmful into the air. On the other end is another entity (sometimes a country, sometimes a state, sometimes an industry or community, depending on where you want to go with this) who will take your money and enable you to do what you do.
This all has some semblance of a chance of working if what that other entity is doing to offset your pollution actually works. But when part of that offset is, say, planting trees (which, yes, is a thing), and then big bad Mother Nature burns down those trees in a wildfire, well, all you have is a polluter who paid for the right to pollute.
But it’s worse than that. Companies who don’t want to stop polluting are able to pay for the right to pollute and then stuff run ads talking about how environmentally friendly they are! Because, yes, technically they might be able to reach net-zero with their pollution. But they’re doing absolutely nothing. They’re paying someone else to do it for them.
And then there’s you and me. Since Americans will bet on anything and what the stock market is at its core is a betting house, there soon could be the opportunity for us to invest in carbon offsets. If I believe you’ll someday pay $100 for a unit of offset and see the price right now is $75, I can buy low and wait for your need to pollute to push you into paying the higher price. Then not only are you still able to pollute but I can get rich off it!
Ahhh, America. What a country.
(Of course, if you look at “In Other Writing,” below, you’ll see my stance on humanity’s ability to turn this ship around. Hint: We can’t.)
The ‘What Did You Say?’ of the Day
‘I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.’
Elon Musk, Tweeting at Bernie Sanders
Damn. Savage.
High Five ✋
Today’s official endorsement goes to Ze (pronounced “Zay”) Frank’s True Facts series on YouTube. Back before there was a YouTube and a TikTok and content creation and virality, there was Ze, doing his “A Show With Ze Frank” for a year. And God, it was good. A raw, honest look at the day’s events. Everyone who’s making money off online content should be paying a tax to Ze for paving the way.
Of late, he’s been doing a series called “True Facts” in which he takes an animal and dives deep into “why it do what it do.” There are episodes on wild pigs and ticks and the tardigrade, batfishes, killer surfing snails and the sea pig. And damn if I don’t learn something from every one of them while laughing my ass off at the same time.
Here’s a good episode to start with:
In Other Writing …
Breaking Down the Myth of Human Exceptionalism
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing There have been five previous mass extinctions.We’re in the middle of the sixth.We evidently don’t know about 90 percent of the species on our planet.Knowing where babies come from is a relatively new thing.Humans aren’t that special. What if you really are nothing special?…
Keep readingToday’s Reasons to Keep Living
- Bosslady is in Houston for a thing, so I’m leading our team meeting tomorrow.
- I want to see the deer out my home office window again.
- It’ll be fun to see how spectacularly bad Mizzou basketball is this year.
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🧩 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…
Keep readingAnimal 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…
Keep readingBad 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…
Keep readingDone — 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…
Keep readingMedia 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…
Keep readingSantos 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…
Keep readingInstitutions — 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…
Keep readingFinishing — 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…
Keep readingFifty 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,…
Keep readingVision 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…
Keep readingThe 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…
Keep readingFreezing Fans — Dec. 26, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chiefs! 🏈Indy Tickets 🏎️Bank Visit 💰 When I bought the tickets to the Christmas Eve contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Seattle Seahawks as a gift for Boys The Elder & Younger, it was sometime in September and temps hovered around 90 degrees. The thought that the game might…
Keep readingJacob at 22 — Dec. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Timelines 👶Extinctions 🌋Sin City 👌 As I fall deeper down the rabbit hole learning more about theories on space and time, the concept of alternative timelines comes up again and again and again. Whether it’s the stuff of science fiction or one day will be proven to be the stuff of…
Keep readingJoe(y) the Comedian — Dec. 18, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩’Cousin’ Laughs🎤Improv!?!? 🎭Drake Hoops 🏀 Back when I was a boy, I had a favorite Cousin-Who-Wasn’t-A-Cousin. His name was Joey DeVito, and he was in no way a blood relation to me, though I called his father Uncle Frankie and his mother Aunt Celia. I’m pretty sure this is an East…
Keep readingDoughnut Guy — Dec. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Glazed 🍩Bingo! 🖥️Disappearing Christians ⛪ I didn’t intend to bring doughnuts for my co-workers yesterday morning. It just sorta happened. How it happened and how it played out is a window into my weird mind. First, an explanation: I have a card purchased from Boy The Younger that entitles me to…
Keep readingJames and Stinky — Dec. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩STL’s Homeless 😥Snake Hoo-Hoos 🐍That Was Epoch 👴 I found James huddled underneath a blanket as he sat, knees to his chest, head bowed, just outside the doorway of a CVS in the Delmar Loop section of St. Louis. If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s a fun place filled…
Keep readingPaul Silas — Dec. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Knicks Memory 🏀JBM LLC 🧑🏼💼Brain Drain 🧠 My most memorable interaction with Paul Silas occurred when I was a 17-year-old kid with big dreams of being a sports reporter. I’d talked with Paul before — his wife and Mother Dearest were active in the local Make A Wish Foundation chapter and…
Keep readingHumbug — Dec. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Piped-In Music 🎵Astronomy 🔭Fusion ☢️ Here’s the thing about Christmas: I want to love it, and in many ways, I do. I love giving gifts and, to be honest, I love getting gifts. There’s something so cool about the magical times when someone knows you well enough to get you that…
Keep readingAunt Pauline — Dec. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Familial Reflections 👪Career Rebuild 🛠️Andrea 📱 It’s hard to think of my Aunt Pauline as old, hard to imagine how it is that she’s just about to leave her 80s and, thus, it’s hard to understand how she could be in such poor health right now. Aunt Pauline is Father Dearest’s…
Keep readingBye-Bye, Zombies — Dec. 8, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩The Walking Dead 🧟Nose B Gone 👃Turkey Trouble 🦃 I spent Tuesday night watching the final episodes of The Walking Dead. I have always been the type who can get so lost in a good story that I have really strong emotions (shocker, I know) when it ends. It happens with…
Keep readingRedefining Family — Dec. 6, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Who’s Family? 👪Music Speaks 🎵Wedding Websites 👨❤️👨 I was raised as an East Coast Italian, despite being a mixed bag of ethnicities born in Denver, Colorado. That meant that there was this huge importance placed on family that’s not necessarily shared with the same ferocity by others. Yet as I grew…
Keep readingGrief — Dec. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Messy Grief 😔Hear Ye! 👂Die Trump Die 😡 I am acutely aware that I am hardly alone as a 48-year-old man when I say that I am well acquainted with grief. I’m not sure if it was always this way — though I imagine it was — but I don’t think…
Keep readingHuman Jewel Beetles — Dec. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Beer Bottle Connections 🍺Ear Concerns 👂BTE vs. Deer 🦌 What exactly is reality? Is there a limit to the universe? How can something as heavy as the Earth be just sort of suspended … and what exactly is it suspended in? This is the rabbit hole I’ve fallen down, all while…
Keep readingBe Yourself — Dec. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Good Self 👋Urgent Care, Revisited 👩⚕️Slow Down 🐢 I remember this time back in sixth grade when a trusted adult was talking to me as I struggled through what turned out to be a pretty life-defining traumatic experience. The friends I’d grown up with since I was a small boy…
Keep readingDeer Drama — Nov. 30 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Shooting a Fake Deer 🦌Time Spent Poorly ⏰Child Support 💸 About midway up my left shin underneath my leg hair is a scar about three inches long and the width of a deer antler. Well, a fake deer antler, anyway. “Deer-antler width” is hardly a standard unit of measurement, I know,…
Keep readingMetallica! — Nov. 29 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gods of Music Deliver! 🎸Insta-Anger 😠Unpleasant 😓 I was in need of something good to happen yesterday. Desperate need. The gods of music delivered. Metallica is coming to St. Louis in concert in 2023 for a two-day show at the Dome at the America Center. I found out about this at…
Keep readingDouble Ear Infection — Nov. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Urgent Care 👂👂Alone Update 😔Rest 🛏️ It’s never a good sign when, less than two seconds after sticking a light in your ear and gazing through the little viewfinder thingy (patent pending), the doctor says, “Oooooooooh.” That was followed by a diagnosis of a “nasty” left ear infection and the question,…
Keep readingFitting in — Nov. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Alone 😔Christmas Changes🎄My Two Skillz 🔪 I would venture to guess that most of us like the feeling of fitting in somewhere. Even the most self-confident, secure person likes to have a tribe. We’re social creatures, and to have a place we just seem to slide into safely is a blessing.…
Keep readingSpouse+ Subscription — Nov. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Marriage Talk 💑Requesting Money 💰Murder-Free 🔪 If you’ve been married as long as I have (rounding the corner and heading toward 26 years), you understand that conversations between spouses can sometimes be awfully weird. I mean, Wifey Poo and I have known each other more than 30 years now. How much…
Keep readingCoffee Hand — Nov. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Man Cold? 🤒Balloon Analogy 🎈World Flop ⚽ If you want to know how my Monday started yesterday, I poured coffee all over my hand. It isn’t that I don’t know how to pour coffee. I’ve done it a billion times. It’s that, on this particular Monday, somewhere in between the start…
Keep readingZoo Signs — Nov. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gorilla Harassment 🦍Brother Love 👨👦👦True Crime 🔪 My love of wild animals was fostered early in my childhood. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was appointment viewing for my family. I grew up with scenes of hungry cheetahs chasing down baby gazelles that included what’s not included on nature shows today ……
Keep readingNo Slides Allowed — Nov. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Presentation Skillz 📽️No Tribe 😔Fuck 45 🖕 There was a time not all that long ago, cosmically speaking, that the mere thought of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a talk would have made me want to throw up in my shoes. In fact, there has been a…
Keep readingWhat’s Funny? — Nov. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Boss Kudos 🙌Chill Time 😌One In 8 Billion🧍 It always feels good when the Big Bossman comes up to you and shakes your hand for a job well done. That happened last night when El Presidente of our company congratulated me on the video I wrote, shot and produced for our…
Keep readingEngaged — Nov. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩BTE and Div 💍Brother Greetings 👨👩👦👦Travel Day ✈️ The morning after Boy The Elder was born, I awoke in the hospital to his sweet cooing and his momma’s deep-sleep breathing. Scooping him up carefully and holding him nervously, I sat in a rocking chair in the pre-dawn darkness and talked to…
Keep readingDying Democracy — Nov. 11, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Election Message 🗳️School Priorities 🏫Tickets Aplenty 🎫 It would seem to me that if a common sentiment from wise people following an election is that it’s a good thing the results were so muddled because it means not much will get done in the next two years, you’ve got yourself a…
Keep readingFairy Tale — Nov. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stephen King 🕮Legal Weed🌿Public Schools🏫 I read my first Stephen King book when I was in high school. It was summer, if I remember correctly, and everywhere I went, I carried a worn library copy of Pet Sematary. Since that time, King’s words have been a regular companion through every stage…
Keep readingYear In Music — Nov. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Craze 🎵Back Crackin’👩⚕️To-Dos Done🚗 My year of music is over. And, my God, has it been good. It started on a sweltering mid-July afternoon at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in which Wifey Poo and I watched my Backup Wife Jewel do her thing. It ended last night on an evening that…
Keep readingUpdate: My Favorite African — Nov. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D’s Return 🏥Irony 🔨Planet Killer 🌎 Being a host parent to a little boy from Africa (Burkina Faso, to be precise) was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life. And now, that little boy is returning to the United States. For those not…
Keep readingMega Billions — Nov. 2, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stupid IT Rules 🖥️The Bend 🚑Is The War Over? ✌️ Tonight, there will be a lottery drawing in which someone could win $1.2 billion. That someone won’t be me, as I didn’t buy a ticket, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about what I would and wouldn’t do with that…
Keep readingFun Family — Nov. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Family Dynamics 👪New Mattress 🛏️To Share Or Not To Share? ❓ Let’s say the only cracker you’ve ever eaten is a Saltine. You have no experience with any other crackers. In fact, you don’t even know that there is such a thing as other crackers. You might not love the Saltine,…
Keep readingHalloween Haters— Oct. 31, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ghosts of Halloween 👻Wrinkles 👴Words Spawn Action ✍️ Wifey Poo made a bold declaration about her opinion of Halloween on our drive back from Springfield, Missourah, Saturday afternoon: “Halloween is a great time for kids to dress up …” If you think there’s more to that statement, nope. She added: “Period.”…
Keep readingHow I Do Me — Oct. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Empath Life 🤗Earthquake 🌎Revolutionary Failure 😶 About six months after I started my career as a professional journalist, I started walking past this job opening in our company every time I walked in and out of the building. It was for editor of a weekly paper routinely ridiculed by those who…
Keep readingSchool Shooter Match Game — Oct. 24, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Game Time 🎮Family Picture📸Marriage Tips 🪢 I remember when it was simple. Horrible, yes … but simple. There was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and they matched up with Columbine — which, side note, would have been my high school had my parents not moved to NY when I was 2.…
Keep readingHelping the Homeless — Oct. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Helper Bags 🆘What’s In The Bag?🎒Mini Golf ⛳ I was raised to avoid the homeless. Avoid eye contact. Avoid conversation. And most definitely avoid giving them anything they asked for. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, which doesn’t make me feel any better. What was instilled in me as…
Keep readingMarcus F’n King — Oct. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Books & Covers 🕮Seeking Balance ⚖️Weirdo🤪 We’re taught at an early age to not judge a book by its cover. If I remember correctly, that was impressed upon me sometime around the first grade. Yet to be honest, I don’t think it’s a lesson that ever really sunk in. I imagine…
Keep readingPolitical Ads — Oct. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Illegals or Guns? 🤦Scrolling Through Stupidity 🖱️Worst Nurse Ever 👩⚕️ If there’s anything I hate more than politics and politicians, it’s political advertising. Cutting the cable cord has lessened its intrusiveness in my life, yet it still manages to seep in. Case in point: I was watching the Padres-Phillies game last…
Keep readingChocolateman— Oct. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Passion 🍫Sarcasm 😜Poop 💩 I appreciate people who are passionate about something. Well, except politics. Then I’d prefer it if you’d just keep your mouth shut. But if you’re super-interested in photography, goats, cooking, geocaching, quilting, etching … whatever … your enthusiasm feeds my soul. Which is part of the reason…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: Oct. 10-16 edition
Welcome to Issue No. 9 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. No. 5: I pledged to finish something I am a writer. If I’m going to be a…
Keep readingEvolution — Oct. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Monkey Crap 🐒BTY Day 👨👦Incomplete Stories 🖊️ If you’re of the belief that human beings evolved from apes, I’m not here to try to dissuade you. What I am here to say is that, if evolution is true, we sure have come a long way. I say this after a trip…
Keep readingBasement Water — Oct. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Personal Growth 🌱Mad Mom 😠Oh, Jeffrey 🧠 About a year ago, Arti The Wonder Therapist waited patiently for me to finish yet another of my amazing monologues detailing just how I felt about the various situations I was attempting to address in my life at the time and then calmly asked…
Keep reading