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Be Yourself — Dec. 1, 2022

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Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com


🧩 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 had decided, en masse, that I was not good enough to hang out with. Suddenly, I was in a new school — our middle school combined four elementary schools from different communities — with absolutely no friends and more than just a few people who were engaged in what even then would have been called bullying.

“Just be yourself,” this trusted adult said, encouraging me to “get out there” and meet new friends.

I remember wanting to punch him in the face.

Didn’t he understand? That was at the core of the fucking problem! Who exactly was I? I’d never really known. I knew that I could adapt who I was to just about any different setting. I am extremely gifted in that area, I’ve come to realize as an adult.

I also knew that, when not with anyone else, I didn’t have a clue who I really was.

I knew who I was supposed to be. Those norms had been instilled in me by well-meaning parents and my suburban New York upbringing. But did I feel like being the person defined by those things? Absolutely not.

You know who I was back then? I was a scared-as-shit, lonely, angry, confused pre-teen who had absolutely no clue why he didn’t seem to fit into this world in any meaningful way. I’m quite sure that what this trusted adult was saying wasn’t that I should go be that person.

But if the me I was supposed to be being was someone different, well, no shit, yeah, I’d want to be that person. Would you happen to have the Dewey Decimal System number in the library to go find that book so I can study up and make it happen?

I tried so many different things to “be me.” I looked back to a time when “me” seemed “good enough,” and I pegged the change to third grade, when I got glasses. Apparently, seeing through external semi-artificial means was a grievous sin in my school, so after being made fun of one too many times for wearing glasses, I put my foot down and said I wasn’t going back to school if I didn’t get contacts.

I got contacts. It changed nothing.

I tried changing how I dressed. I tried smiling more. Smiling less. Talking more. Talking less. Approaching random groups. Being generous with surplus snacks. Selling Blow Pops for a quarter (word to the wise: Don’t ever start getting high on your own supply).

No matter what, “being me” always seemed to be a step behind or out of line with everyone else who seemed to have comparably less problem being them.

I fully recognize that all these changes weren’t me being authentically me, but again, at that time (and, to a large extent today), I had no clue who the hell the authentic me actually was.

Being told to be me led me down some pretty dark paths as I grew through my teen years. Being me sometimes meant I was a sullen, angry, argumentative, standoffish prick. Being me led to overwhelming, uncontrollable, often unseen sadness and pain that nearly drowned me.

That was me being me, but not the me I wanted me being … not the me that anyone wanted me being.

It has been more than three decades since that trusted adult told me to just be myself, and I think his advice no less stupid and unhelpful than I did back then.

I was thinking about that today, thinking that the person who gave me that advice is probably dead, wondering how many other people to whom he passed on that little pearl of wisdom. I know he meant well. I know he thought what he was saying was wise and helpful. I also know that he missed the point.

What would I say to sixth-grade me? Could I do any better job in counseling that kid, to help pave a less difficult, painful, scarring path for him to get to where I am today?

Yes. Yes I can.

“John, make yours a good self.”

I realized about a half decade ago that the cure for me when I’m feeling down or anxious or angry is to focus on doing for others, on being a light, on not just being me but being a better version of me.

This doesn’t mean I have any resentment to the me I am before I start focusing on being a better me. It just means that we all can do more. Every fucking day, we have opportunities to do something different to be a better self. That doesn’t mean we have to. It just means the option is open.

It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t not have to be big. It could be a random act of kindness for a stranger. It could be flowers for my wife. It could be leaving an anonymous gift for a co-worker on his desk. It could be sitting and talking with a homeless person and giving him a bag of supplies before a cold night. It could be buying myself a coffee and sitting outside in the cold and alternately sipping the hot drink and watching the fog from my breath in the cool air.

Whatever it is, if I go back to doing that thing that helps me be a good self, I seem to find peace. Do I fit in any better? Maybe. Maybe not. It just doesn’t seem to matter as much when I’m making me a good self.

So please … fuck all this talk about just being yourself. That is so often unhelpful. Just make yours a good self.


I found myself back in urgent care this morning. It was a different urgent care from the one I visited Saturday morning, the one in which I was diagnosed with a double ear infection, given a steroid shot in the arm and handed two prescriptions — one for an antibiotic and one for steroid pills that have made me jumpy as a meth-head.

If anything, the stuffiness in my left ear is worse. The ringing in that ear is worse. My head overall is more stuffy. I’m tired, cranky and hate talking because it echoes in my brain.

If I wanted to see my primary care physician, I might be able to get in around January. Of 2088.

I worry about a nation that is pushing its ill to understaffed clinics with the most qualified person being a nurse practitioner. I have nothing against nurse practitioners. The have more medical training than I do. But they’re not doctors. Which isn’t to say I have tremendous faith in them either. Not after 2021 and my adventure with traditional medicine and Longhaul COVID.

This nurse practitioner today did the same thing the nurse practitioner did on Saturday She looked in me ears. She told me I have lots of fluid on my left ear and that my eardrum is really red. She told me my right ear has fluid but is less red. She peeked down my throat. She listened to my lungs, which seems to be the doctor-visit equivalent of being handed a tiny snack back on an airplane.

In the end, she called in a prescription for a different antibiotic and for ear drops. She said if I didn’t start feeling better by Monday, to call … and this is where I thought she was going to say “a real doctor” … my primary care physician or an ENT. I’m sure she’s well aware of the challenge of getting into either, even with ears stuffed for more than two weeks, before I either go insane from all this stuffiness or suffer permanent hearing loss.

Positive note: I’m getting really good at saying the word, “What?”


Inside the B.A.K.C. (Badass Alcatraz Knitting Circle)

Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing. If you keep lots of birds in a prison cell with you, you’re going to be covered in bird crap. Robert Stroud was not a kindly prisoner, even if Burt Lancaster was a sexy stud. My Grandma Fiorina had elective hand-amputation surgery. Before Amazon,…

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I got a text at work today from Boy The Elder. “Do you have time for a call in 15 minutes or so? I have a big internship decision to make and wanted to talk it through.”

This is how BTE operates. Nine times out of 10, he knows the right thing to do, knows what he wants to do, knows what he’s going to do … he just needs to talk to someone to get it out of his head and hear his own thoughts. I’m incredibly thankful that he sees me as a good person with which to do that.

I’m going to brag on BTE for a bit here, but keep in mind, this isn’t your typical dad-bragging-on-his-kid crap. I can take very, very little credit for anything that BTE is. He came out of the womb blessed with an old soul, curious brain and desire to learn. His work ethic is uncanny and certainly more than I ever had. He’s much more like his mother, but he surpasses even her intense concern over academics and achievement. Simply put, he’s driven.

Because of that, he has always impressed the adults he’s met. He’s always been ahead academically. He’s incredibly logical and a great thinker. He’s got amazing potential, and he’s not about to let any of it go unfulfilled. That’s a credit to him, not me.

BTE had a great internship over the summer. He had designs of going back there this coming summer. Then he interviewed with a different company, which he thought would just be a backup option. He absolutely loved the backup option. So what he needed to talk through was which internship would be the best one to take.

We talked it through. He knew already that it would be better to widen his net and take the one with the new company. The reasons are plentiful. Like I said, he just had to hear his own thoughts. That he considered my own is humbling.

The more important piece of advice I gave him is the same piece of advice I’ve been giving him for a year now: Slow down for a moment and take a look around. Breathe it in. Enjoy it.

He’s worked incredibly hard to get where he is. I know from experience the desire to achieve, achieve, achieve. He’s following a similar path by getting engaged while still in college. That means a post-graduation job is really important. So will earning more money once he gets into the working world.

I never stopped to enjoy my successes. I was a newspaper editor at age 22, albeit at a shitty weekly that couldn’t possibly get any worse. I was a hot-shot journalist with a bright future in an industry that, sadly, was in a death spiral. Not once did I ever pause to breathe it in and enjoy where I was. I was always looking to where I was going.

Then, suddenly, there was no place to go. The industry was dead. So I left it. I’ve never really had that same career trajectory since.

It only was recently that I realized that that was OK. My priorities shifted. I stopped being defined by my day job and started caring more about my passions. I should have realized long ago that those two things didn’t have to be the same thing. I started seeking good-enough jobs that paid well so I could support my family better and create the experiences for all of us that I want to create. I focused more on my physical and mental health.

Now, I truly work to live, as opposed to live to work. I am blessed with a good job that (finally) pays me what I’m worth. I can support my family with that, plus the work I do that is my true passion, Johnny Boy Marketing.

How do I know I’m getting it right? I’ve been in this job since late June. I don’t have my work email on my phone. There’s no need to. The workplace respects my home life. I take care of my shit here. Then I go home. I come back the next day. I do the best I can. Then I go home again.

It’s a simple formula. For me, right now? It’s working.

I just want to make sure BTE knows that this formula is a good option too.


Today’s Reasons to Keep Living

  1. I have new antibiotics to take!
  2. Metallica, 2023!
  3. Sushi

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🧩 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…

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Aunt 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…

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Bye-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…

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Redefining 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…

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Grief — 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…

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Human 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…

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Deer 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,…

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Metallica! — 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…

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Double 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,…

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Fitting 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.…

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Spouse+ 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…

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Coffee 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…

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No 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…

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What’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…

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Engaged — 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…

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Dying 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…

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Fairy 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…

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Year 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…

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Update: 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…

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Mega 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…

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Fun 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,…

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Halloween 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.”…

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How 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…

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School 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.…

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Helping 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…

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Marcus 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…

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Political 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…

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Chocolateman— 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…

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Top 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…

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Evolution — 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…

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Basement 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…

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Death! Death! Death! — Oct. 14, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Cue the Outrage 🔫Animal Extinction 🐆Eye Update 👀 Even back in the day when I considered myself a Republican (before the dark times … before the Trumpire), I never quite understood the death penalty. Perhaps it was because I looked around at the other nations that still killed people as punishment…

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Corneal Complications — Oct. 13, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Hello Darkness, My Old Friend 👀COVID Costs 🦠Jackass Jones Verdict👩‍⚖️ I’ve spent much of this week so far in forced darkness. After I wrote on Monday morning, my right eye started to get blurry. Then it got real blurry. Then it became utterly useless. In this, I have reprised my role…

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Mattress Shopping — Oct. 10, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Awkward Shopping 🛏️Disingenuous Holiday 🗓️Help the Homeless 😔 If there’s a more awkward retail excursion than mattress shopping, I have yet to find it in my 48 years. Wifey Poo and I went to a high school gym to do exactly that on Sunday afternoon. The bed we’ve been sleeping in…

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So Long, Cards — Oct. 9, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Playoff Disappointment ⚾Oh, Britney 📲Friendship Failure 😔 In the span of just more than 24 hours, I went from the excited expectation of being in Busch Stadium to watch the hometown St. Louis Cardinals eliminate the Philadelphia Phillies and advance to the next round of the playoffs to watching those Phillies…

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Playoff Baseball — Oct. 6, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Baseball Gear-Grinders ⚾Sunrise Woes 🌄Heavy Pumpkins 🎃 There are a few baseball-related indignities in my home that, as the saying goes, grind my gears. The first is that there is a state championship trophy on the mantel above the fireplace in our Humble Country Home with a gold-plated baseball player, bat…

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There Will Be Blood — Oct. 5, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Weird Wound Treatment 🧂Phillies Bring Doom ⚾Meetings Suck 👎🏽 Apparently, I’ll take medical advice from waitresses and allow myself to receive medical treatment from busboys. This, I learned last night. I have a tendency to get hurt in really interesting ways. When I tell you that I once got a concussion…

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Top 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/26-10/2

Welcome to Issue No. 8 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 held an epic car concert If you were anywhere in the vicinity of my…

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Place Your Bets — Oct. 3, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Football Picking God 🏈Fish Story 🐟Free Floating ☁️ A few months before Boy The Elder was born, I had about $100 set aside to buy Wifey Poo a gift that I intended to give her after she ushered our child into the world. It was the least I could do for,…

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Sliced Bread — Sept. 30, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩New Route Home 🏎️Confirmed Weirdness 🤪Here’s Your Sign 🤦 I took a new route home from the western part of Missourah yesterday after doing the whole open-house thing for work in St. Joseph. Rather than shoot down to I-70 and traverse the state on that familiar road, I went across Hwy.…

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Rental Tank — Sept. 29, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Woo-Woo vs. The Beast 🛻Dart Throwers 🎯My Job 📋 I am not used to driving a tank. My normal vehicle is Woo-Woo, AKA The Shitty Little Car, AKA a Nissan Versa. It’s practical. It gets great gas mileage. I hate it. Woo-Woo normally accelerates as quickly as a child asked to…

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LinkedIn — Sept. 26, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Unwitting Guinea Pigs 🐹False Bragging 🦹‍♂️Put Me In, Coach 🚀 My regular readers (hey, you three!) know that I have a hatred for social media’s influence on society with an intensity rivaled only by the heat of a thousand suns. The latest bit of “Are you fucking kidding me?” comes from…

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Top 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/9-9/25

Welcome to Issue No. 7 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 reached out to a friend I have not been shy about sharing that I’ve…

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iPhone Envy — Sept. 25, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩More Stupid Human Stuff 📱KC Trip ⚾Miserable Missourah 😠 Quick: Take a look around you. If you’re in a room with five other people, one of them thinks you’re financially struggling if you don’t have the latest iPhone. That’s according to a new survey following the release of the iPhone 14.…

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Human Babies — Sept. 23, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Loser Species 👶Email Win 📧Dad Pride 👨‍👦‍👦 I’m pretty sure I’m not normal. Normal people respond to that statement with, “Oh, John, nobody’s normal,” which is just a sign for us non-normies that the person we’re talking to is normal. Yesterday, I was waiting for Wifey Poo to pick me up…

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In It — Sept. 22, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Thoughts 🧠Marriage 💍Drunk Idiots 🧉 There’s this scene in the 2004 movie Garden State in which Sam (Natalie Portman) looks at Andrew (Zach Braff) and notices … … And yeah, that resonated with me then and resonates with me now. Ever since then, being “in it” has become a thing…

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Remembering Sarah — Sept. 21, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Beautiful Skies ⛅Two Terms For 2022 ✌️ Back in our early days at Pound Ridge Elementary School, Sarah was the fastest girl runner in the class, which bought her some serious playground cred. There were only a few of us boys who could hang with Sarah in the 50-meter dash…

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Small Ear Canal — Sept. 19, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ear Flushing👂Grunge God🎶Tech Guy📺 If you have to have a doctor tell you a body part or yours is small, I suppose one of the least offensive would be the ear canal. That’s what a doctor told me this morning, after I finally broke down and actually went to said doctor’s…

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Nominee Day! — Sept. 16, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Toys in the Hall🪅Idiot Governors🗳️Flopping FedEx✈️ Last night in my hotel in Springfield, Missourah, I set out a glass of milk and a plate of cookies before going to bed. It’s not that I don’t know how to read a calendar or have any particular belief in a fat man in…

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Springfields Aplenty — Sept. 15, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Which One?🗺️Leave Introverts Alone🤫Oxford Commas🤪 I’m on the road for work this week, in Springfield. Ahhh, but Springfield what? There currently are 35 populated places in the United States named Springfield, spread out over 25 states, including five in Wisconsin. In addition, there are 35 Springfield Townships, and Ohio owns 11…

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