🧩 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 the best editor of the Dayton Daily News’ Southwest Ohio papers who ever lived. All taught me how to be who I was as a journalist, which was a tough, fair, attentive, engaging reporter/editor who didn’t make excuses.
Which is why a podcast I listened to yesterday made me think of the rather disgusting phrase, “rolling over in his grave.” I’d rather not think of these Stalwarts of Newspapers’ Past doing any such thing. But you’ll get the point.
I give credit to the podcast, The Daily, for asking the tough question after New York Times reporter Grace Ashford discussed how she and colleague Michael Gold uncovered the many, many, many lies of Republican Congressman-elect George Santos. The Daily is run by The New York Times, so having Ashford on could have been seen as a pat on its own back, if not for the question: So why didn’t you do all that work before the election? Ya know, when voters could actually have used the knowledge to have it shape their choice of whom they wanted as their representative?
George Santos is an idiot, liar, moron, et al. The fact that he hasn’t resigned due to pressure from his own party is a sign of not just modern-day Republicanism but modern-day politics. Yet Ashford’s answer made me want to reach through my car stereo system and punch her in the face in honor of the Triumvirate of John’s Journalism Gods.
Ashford — a freaking New York Times journalist, not some ratty-ass weekly like I used to run — took a modicum of the blame, rightly stating that papers don’t have the resources they once did. Then she spent most of her time answering the question by placing blame on the Republican and Democratic Parties for not vetting the candidate enough.
Excuse me? Really? A journalist of The New York Freaking Times is saying that politicians didn’t do their work for her, which is why her paper didn’t uncover the easily discoverable lies of a candidate who, among other things, made up huge swaths of his education, work experience, finances and heritage to grab power by, as he put it, inflating his resume like we all do. What the actual fuck?
Ashford said the Republicans didn’t vet their own candidate thoroughly enough. She then said that the opposition research provided by the Democrats did, indeed, point out some of Santos’ bullshit, but it focused more on his Jan. 6 (by the way, happy anniversary, Trumpeteers) statements and other things that didn’t involve massive lies. She then went on to say that, though The New York Times, has “New York” in the title, it is now more of a national paper and that there aren’t as many resources dedicated to local news.
Except the election of federal politicians isn’t local news. As much as Congressionaloids act in the supposed best interests of their local constituencies (hardy-har-har on that one, folks), they help shape federal policy. I mean, dude … do we need to look at the old video of How a Bill Becomes Law most of us saw sometime in elementary school?
Many moons ago, Father Dearest and I were talking about the decline of newspapers. This was back when I still was in the industry. Very Nostradamus-like, I told him that the death of the newspaper was a bad portent for the nation because it was the newspaper journalist, not the TV “news” person or any sort of blogger, that kept government corruption in check.
“So you think there will be another Watergate situation that goes undiscovered?” Father Dearest asked.
“Maybe, but it’s far more likely that the unchecked local, state or Congressional politician will get away with a whole host of bad stuff because that’s where newspaper journalism is rotting the quickest and the most,” I replied.
And so it has come to pass.
Perkins and Woodward would have rightly flunked me in any of their classes if I said a good reason for not getting an important story was because an involved party didn’t spoon-feed me the information. Lisa Warren would have fired my ass — and then made sure no newspaper within in 50,000 miles hired me. And she’d been right to do so.
These days, Ashford gets to go on the most popular podcast in the land and have stories written about how influential her coverage was at uncovering such a huge story. The problem is, that influential story doesn’t mean shit because there’s nothing that says being a huge douchebag liar disqualifies you from serving as a Congressman. Probably, the general assumption was that all Congressionaloids would one day be huge douchebag liars. Who knows?
The result is that an most important seat is occupied by a man who just might be a criminal beyond being a lying asshole — and he is essentially protected. The Republican majority is so thin and the seat in question rests in such a split district that there’s no way the leadership, if one is ever chosen, will push him out. They’ll keep him off committees, sure. They won’t sit at his lunch table. But unless there’s a huge swing to the Right that gives the GOP a safer majority, Santos ain’t going anywhere.
And that’s the fault of political reporters such as Ashford and once great newspapers such as The New York Times. The former Moron In Chief likes to talk about fake news. He’s an idiot and no one should give anything he says a second of thought. It’s unreported or late-reported news like this that is really part of Muricah’s inner rot.
Ashford ended her spiel by saying that Santos himself was to blame for her failing at her job. How could anyone believe, she said, that someone’s whole life would be a lie? Because he’s a politician, Grace, and because it’s your job.
Since we’re talking about the media, let’s keep that bus rollin’. I read with interest the coverage of the release of the probable cause affidavit that led to the arrest of Super Crazy-Eyed Alleged Killer Bryan Hamburgler Err Kohberger. As most know, he just maybe probably massacred the four students who now are known only collectively as MadisonMogenKayleeGonclavesXanaKernodleButSometimesKernoodleandEthanChapin.
First off, there was this little fun fact reported by a TV person from an Idaho news anchor: In describing how a student who just came back to campus wasn’t there when the murders happened because he was studying abroad, she said that he has strong feelings about the case, even though he was, and I quote, “hundreds of thousands of miles away at the time.” Where exactly was this kid studying abroad? The Earth itself is only 24,901 miles around. The moon is roughly 238,000 miles away. Does the University of Idaho have an interstellar program instead of an international program?
Anywho, more interesting to me is the fact that one of the surviving roommates, at around 4:15 a.m., allegedly saw the killer wearing a black ski mask as he exited the residence. He allegedly walked right past her. Frightened, she went back into her room and locked the door.
And then didn’t call the police until roughly noon.
Huh?
I know she might have been drunk. But she was sober enough to get out of bed and open the door. Seeing an intruder in a black ski mask walk right by you would have the general effect of sobering a person up toot-sweet, I would say. So what’s the deal with the delay? It’s an unanswered question news people have been slow to ask and that, as of this writing, I haven’t seen explained.
Also, there’s this creepy tidbit: A security camera some 50 feet away from the victims’ home picked up what was described as a thud and a whimper around the time the murders allegedly occurred. What the fuck, people! That means that camera had the ability to pick up a whole lot more before there was any stabby-stabby stuff going on there. George Orwell’s 1984 was just a few decades early.
I regularly see surveillance footage that helps catch bad guys that makes me cringe. Why are there so many cameras and listening devices everywhere? It’s all done in the name of keeping us safe, and it does help protect us from the bad guys — or at least lead to the capture of the bad guys who harm us.
But it’s all uber-creepy, and it’s sad that not many people actually raise a hand and say, “Um … guys?”
Finally, the last question I have is where the other bodies are buried. I find it hard to believe that a dude who did what Hamburgler allegedly did didn’t do something sorta-less gross beforehand. Starting out with a quadruple homicide in which the victims were stalked and the crime was so violent and planned is definitely in the go-big-or-go-home camp. Where else has this dude traveled and lived? I’d definitely be interested in cold cases in those areas.
The First Sermon of the No-Dick Church
What follows is an excerpt of the sermon delivered by Pastor Q.F. Conseco of the No-Dick Church on July 3, 2022, from his home outside Escandido, California. Good morning and welcome to the first-ever meeting of the newly created No-Dick Church of Hellhole Canyon, California. Verily, I welcome you and hope you are enjoying our…
Keep readingWhy don’t we round out this Puzzle with my personal nomination for the Story of the Year for 2022? Sure, there was some amazing coverage of Putin’s Army’s Summer Vacation and the oh-so-amazing reporting of Grace Ashford at The National Times, but let’s hear it for Andrew Court at the New York Post. He broke a much more important story.
The lead reads “The case left doctors shell-shocked.”
Go on …
“A French hospital was partially evacuated Saturday after a senior citizen arrived with a World War I artillery shell lodged in his rectum.”
Do tell …
“The 88-year-old patient visited Hospital Sainte Musse in Toulon to have the antique explosive removed.”
Talk about an active senior.
“Stunned doctors removed the object, which measured almost 8 inches long and more than 2 inches wide, from the man’s rectum.”
This is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words, my friends.
“‘An apple, a mango, or even a can of shaving foam, we are used to finding unusual objects inserted where they shouldn’t be,’ once doctor declared. ‘But a shell? Never!'”
And that right there is your Story of the Year for 2022.
Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
- It’s good to stay alive to see what humans will next insert up their butts.
- If I live to be 88, I’ll try to insert something even bigger into my own. That’s a promise.
- Wifey Poo and I are going to an improv show tonight, which hopefully won’t involve any butt-insertion of large explosives. But ya never know with improv, do ya?
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🧩 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…
Keep readingLiving — 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…
Keep readingTeam 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…
Keep readingFalling 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,…
Keep readingToxic 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…
Keep readingNickname 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…
Keep readingDental 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…
Keep readingNot 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…
Keep readingWTF 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…
Keep readingThe 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…
Keep readingAfrican 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…
Keep readingAfrican 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…
Keep readingTech 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…
Keep readingExit 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 –…
Keep readingBlah — 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…
Keep readingFloss 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…
Keep readingThe 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…
Keep readingDeath 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…
Keep readingFinishing — 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…
Keep readingSorry, 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…
Keep readingPeaking — 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…
Keep readingThe 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…
Keep readingTribe — 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…
Keep readingMindful 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…
Keep readingAfter 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…
Keep readingAngry 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.…
Keep readingCorruption, 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…
Keep readingHome 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…
Keep readingWal-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…
Keep readingShit 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…
Keep readingBrain 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.…
Keep readingDrugs — 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…
Keep readingMissourah 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…
Keep readingPokey 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…
Keep readingStuck 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…
Keep reading‘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…
Keep readingSnow — 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.…
Keep readingSTUPID 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…
Keep readingWriting 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…
Keep readingCeilings — 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…
Keep readingMovie 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…
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 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…
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