Time is a fascinating concept to me. I’ve written about it before, but it just seems so arbitrary sometimes. It amazes me how we can suck at it so badly that we have to add an entire extra day every four years to keep our system going — and no one really bats an eye.
We break things up into millennia and centuries, decades and years, months and days, hours and minutes and seconds. Not satisfied with that, we break up groups of months into quarters, which, if nothing else, allows for orderly American football and tense times for businesses that report to stockholders.
I can’t beat the system here. As much as I’d love to live away from time and all its constraints and limitations, it appears as if I’m stuck here in a society that values it and adheres to it in equal measures of strength.
So without further ado, here’s my Q1 report from my “One Hundred Intentions for 2022” list!
On Target
Lots of things are either done or on target to being done. Let’s review.
No. 1 — Go on 52 dates with CC: We have, indeed, gone on a date every week of this calendar year. I value these times to reconnect with Wifey Poo. We live busy lives, but I’m grateful for the time we take to be “just us” every week. It makes us better spouses, yes, but also better parents and better people.
No. 2 — Go to a Yankees/Cardinals game: I am a life-long Yankees fan, having grown up an hour from The House The Ruth Built. Wifey Poo is a life-long Cardinals fan, being a St. Louis regional native. Our teams play in early August and, thanks to the players and owners working out their differences, the tickets I bought Wifey Poo for Valentines Day remain valid.
No. 5 — Go to a concert: Music is my thang, and the f’n pandemic killed live music for a while. I’m making up for lost time. This summer and fall, I will see, if all goes well, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Shinedown, Jewel, Gin Blossoms and perhaps Evanescence. Rock on’, yo.
No. 11 — See license plates from all 50 states: Though the end of the first quarter, I have seen 44, which puts me on pace to see 176 different state license plates and is a lesson on why you need to be careful with statistics. Living near I-70 has helped. Going on a few road trips has been a great assist. I’m imagining I’ll be able to find Connecticut, Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia in the next nine months. It’s Hawaii that worries me.
No. 16 — Go to Ikea: Insert whatever the Swedish word is for “done.”
No. 20 — Go to a stand-up comedy event: Wifey Poo and I went to see Tim Allen in March. He was… meh. Very meh. We’re going to see Sebastian Maniscalco later this year, and Tom Segura is coming into town. I’d love to see him.
No. 23 — Go to a WLW wrestling event: So Harley Race was a badass wrestler from the 1970s-80s. He ran a wrestling promotion near where I live until his death a few years back. His son now runs it. Though this didn’t happen in Q1, Boy The Younger and I went this past weekend to Race Arena, which is really just a small warehouse with a roof so low that off-the-top-rope moves took on a different kind of risk than I’ve ever seen before. There were maybe 75 people in attendance. And it was awesome.
No. 24 — Start a collection of something: I began collecting CDs (see No. 5). I love music. And CDs were the pinnacle of sound quality. So I’ve started an eclectic collection that features Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Metallica, Bob Dylan, Marcus King, Evanescence and the Eagles. Recommendations are always welcomed.
No. 30 — Get Uber Eats delivered: Nothing like some Buffalo Wild Wings left on your doorstep when the family is out of town and you don’t feel like cooking.
No. 31 — Go to three new restaurants: Wifey Poo and I went to an African restaurant called Chez Ali, a really cool diner-type place with friends we met in Indianapolis called Rosie’s Cafe and, for our 25th anniversary, an amazing seafood place called Splash in Des Moines, and yes, despite being in Iowa, it truly was an amazing seafood place.
No. 36 — Read five books: This one was a matter of redemption for me. I used to be beyond an avid reader. Then Longhaul Covid turned my brain into mush. I can’t exactly describe what it’s like to try to read with such a brain, but the feeling is kinda like when you’re trying to get the top off of something and, no matter what you try, it just … won’t … budge. A neurologist recommended I push through that feeling as a way of helping my brain rewire itself. And it’s working! I read three books through Q1 (Blaze, by Stephen King; Heavier Than Heaven, the biography of Kurt Cobain; and Klara and the Sun), and just finished Stephen King’s The Institute yesterday. Now I’m onto Dave Grohl’s new book. Suck it, Covid.
No. 37 — Play Dungeons and Dragons three out of every four times the party plays: This had been another Longhaul Covid casualty. Just when I had reconnected with some high school acquaintances and begun slaying dragons, my brain turned to mush and, aside from reading problems, long periods of exposure to technology was horrific. So I stopped. Now I’m back, and I brought Boy The Younger with me. We completed one adventure in February and have started a new one. I’m now a half-orc barbarian with major rage issues. Seems about right.
No. 40 — Get a bottle of bourbon that’s on the “best of…” list: I bought a bottle of Woodford Reserve Double Oak Barrel and, I must say, it’s delicious.
No. 42 — Create a college football bowl pool with a traveling trophy: I did exactly that and the trophy was won by … Boy The Elder’s girlfriend? She was not much of a sports fan at all until she started dating BTE. Now she’s the champion of the tournament.
No. 43 — Start The Waffle House Fantasy Baseball League: So there are lots of leagues out there in fantasy sports in which the winner gets a trophy or money. I don’t know how many there were in which the loser has to spend 24 hours in a Waffle House and is able to reduce the time by an hour for each waffle consumed, but there’s now at least one.
No. 47 — Pick up a freelance marketing side gig: So I love what I do. I love writing, designing, videography… whatever. I had a nasty habit for a while of doing what I love to do and am good at doing for free. While nice and friendly, that doesn’t help my finances. So I let it be known I was in search of a side gig and landed a few in Q1, including a side job for my boss, a one-off in which I designed a flyer for an early learning center and an ongoing one in which I write articles for Northwestern University to help attract students to its masters programs.
No. 51 — Get new pants that fit: Having pants that don’t constantly threaten to fall down around your ankles is a good thing, I think we’d all agree. As part of my battle against Longhaul Covid last year, I completely switched up my diet to remove any and all foods that could cause inflammation. In the process, I lost 30 pounds. This year, I bought new pants to celebrate my less-fatness. Two pairs are in hands. A third is now somewhere out there in a DHL warehouse or truck making their way to me. Thanks Indochino!
No. 54 — Get a monthly massage: This one almost fell by the wayside in January. If not for a last-minute appointment, it would have. Now I have a great new massage therapist who is amazing to talk to and who, every month this year, has worked out the various knots and kinks that plague my neck and back.
No. 55 — Do a float every quarter: If you’ve never done a float in a sensory deprivation tank, you should. Yes, I know you feel like it’s closed in and scary. Try it and take deep breaths. For me, it’s a necessary thing, I’m finding. As an extreme empath, I’m constantly bombarded by other people’s crap. Locking myself in a chamber of warm salt water that promotes effortless floating and is completely dark and quiet is an amazing way to disconnect and just be.
No. 60 — Keep my new healthy eating habits and maintain my weight: See No. 51, above. I have had some day-to-day fluctuations — it appears I can gain or lose 5 pounds in a day based on what I drink or don’t drink — but I’m still below where I need to be below.
No. 64 — Get into and stay in the 99th percentile in Lumosity: So yeah, a lot of things on my list this year had to do with saying “fuck you” to Longhaul Covid. This was one of them. As part of my “retrain my brain” efforts, a doc recommended Lumosity in addition to reading. At first, the games killed me. Then I started to heal. Now, I’m in the 99.4th percentile for my age group overall. Suck it, Covid.
No. 65 — Take care of a pet: The original intention here was to watch someone’s dog or lizard or something. Then we got it in our minds that we were somehow ready for a new dog. I had been staunchly against this in the wake of the deaths of both my dogs in 2020, within three months of each other. Wasn’t 2020 a great year? Anyway, that all changed when we saw our Luna, an English bulldog who’d been used up as a breeding dog by some asshole who deserves a throat punch. She’s slowly coming around to the reality that people are good and love her. And I do. A lot.
No. 72 — Give an anonymous gift each month: What I’m learning is that, in this day and age, it’s tougher to stay anonymous. Still, I’ve been able to thanks a college friend, a work colleague and my middle school English teacher.
No. 73 — Create a screen-in-porch oasis: Another one not totally finished until April, but it’s finished now. May the creator of allen wrenches forever be damned to have blisters from turning his infernal creation! But the porch furniture is assembled and this past weekend I put together a mobile TV stand and hooked a TV to it so I can wheel it out and watch baseball on nice spring/fall afternoons.
No. 74 — Create with BTY his new bedroom: Doing this Q1 review has made me realize I put a lot of stuff together this year. And this is amazing, considering there was a time in which I felt totally incompetent with things like this. Now, I feel like I could put anything together. BTY has a completely updated bedroom — less like a child and more like the teen he soon will be. I put together his bed, his dresser, his nightstand, a fish tank stand and installed three shelves. This came after painting the walls (with his and Wifey Poo’s tremendous assistance).
No. 83 — Write my own obituary: I don’t want anyone else telling my story when I die. First off, I don’t want anyone to put in any bullshit like “He was loved by all who knew him.” My own sister hates me, and my mother ain’t too fond of me either. And there sure as hell are some former work colleagues who aren’t going to be sending me any Christmas cards of the non-ticking variety. I made a first pass at writing this and it’s technically done, but I wrote it when I was kind of angsty and should probably revise and soften it a bit.
No. 88 — Watch season 5 of Better Call Saul: Damn, I love that show. And I loved Breaking Bad. The fact that the latter is over and the former is heading into its final season makes me sad.
No. 90 — Watch a classic film from the 1940, 50s or 60s: Wifey Poo and I watched Casablanca for Valentine’s Day. The intention was to have a crowd, as part of No. 61: host a monthly movie night, but that plan didn’t work because I apparently have no one living within 50 miles of me who thought my planned movie night worthy of their time in January, February or March. Still, it was nice to watch it with Wifey Poo. Great flick, great date.
No. 98 — Make an anniversary video for Wifey Poo: We celebrated our 25th anniversary in March. I made her this. Ladies, if you’re looking for romance, marry someone who knows Adobe Premiere Pro.
No. 99 — Rent a Jeep for Wifey Poo to drive for a day: Wifey Poo loves Jeeps. We currently drive piece-of-shit Nissan Versas because we’re poor and love good gas mileage. Someday I will buy her a Jeep, but for now, renting one to take on our 25th anniversary getaway brought a smile to her face. Speaking of which…
No. 100 — Plan/go on a 25th anniversary trip: The original plan was to go to Alaska this summer, though Wifey Poo didn’t know that. When things didn’t happen as I wanted them to with my job soon enough, I pivoted and creating something far less adventurous but far more sentimental. We went to Des Moines Freaking Iowa, back to Drake University, where we met. Back to Roseman Bridge, where we got engaged. Back to Drake University club hockey, where we had our first date and where, this time, I arranged with the team to be at their practice and for them to surprise her with flowers and a team “happy anniversary” wish. It was awesome. A lot has changed since our Drake days (1992-96), but one thing that’s stayed the same is us. Always us.
This is how I invited her:
Probably Not Gonna Happen
Ahh, if everything could be going as swimmingly as the items above. Alas, this was a list of intentions, not a list of things I definitely was going to do. Some things probably aren’t going to happen. A few definitely won’t happen. Let’s discuss.
No. 39 -Take enough photos to have a Photo of the Week for 52 weeks: I love looking at the world through a camera lens. I love capturing moments from that world. I just live in a very small world and am pretty boring, which makes finding interesting photographs a challenge. Or I’m just plain lazy. Whatever.
No. 58 – Go to restorative yoga 52 times: I love restorative yoga. I love my little yoga studio. But perhaps going, on average, once a week was a little ambitious. Weather canceled some classes. BTY’s sporting events, my round-two battle with Covid and other situations led me to skip out on a few more. Fifty-two ain’t happening. But some is better than none, and I’ll keep going.
No. 59 – Meditate daily: If you’re picking up on a theme here, you’re not alone. These highly time-bound items are killin’ me, Smalls. “Daily” was perhaps ambitious. Of course, “not meditating at all for the first two months of the year” was perhaps lazy and stupid. March saw me get into more of a routine, and now I’m approaching something like four or five days a week. But daily? Pshaw. I should have known myself and my own affinity for ignoring self-care better.
No. 61 – Host a monthly movie night: My long-standing battle with not having friends is a thing. I thought this would help alleviate that. I would invite a shit-ton of people I kinda sorta knew, and at least a few of them would show up for some fun and entertainment. In doing that, maybe one of those folks would turn into an actual friend. Yeahno. Not one person RSVP’d to January — and then Covid invaded my house and it was canceled anyway. February came and went with no RSVP’s. March was successful only in that BTE and his girlfriend came, but they’re not exactly friend material. So screw it. You don’t want to come? I don’t want you here. (And you wonder why I don’t have friends?)
No. 77-82, 84 – Writing stuff: I had grand plans to do a lot of creative writing this year. It’s not happening, though it’s for a good reason. It’s because I’m getting paid to spill words out, as I mentioned in No. 47. That said, I’d like to do at least something creatively. I have started a few short stories. I’m real good at that — starting stories that never get finished. We’ll see what happens.
No. 94 – Take an improve class: I love comedy. I have been someone who makes people laugh ever since I was a little boy. I think I could perhaps do something with comedy to make more people laugh. So I put this on there because I know of a place where improv happens and where they’ll teach you how to do it better. That said, the thought of actually doing it, of putting myself out there like that, terrifies me. So I say this probably won’t happen, but in reality, it really should. I mean, at the very least I can laugh at myself.
So there you have it, the Q1 update on the List of One Hundred Intentions For 2022. I’d say I’m fairly happy with where I am. Q2 has started off well. Let’s see what happens.
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🧩 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…