John Agliata – Johnny Boy Marketing

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Ongoing Failure🎶
Retainer Help😁
Surgical Delay🔪

THE DAILY UPDATE

Three Things I Am Grateful For Today:

1. The pickup truck in front of me on the drive to work this morning with the window decal that said, “Don’t let the bad days win.” Word.
2. Cigars.
3. The pick and roll

Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: Five. That’s the slowest start in Wordle history, I would imagine.

Wordle 1,222 5/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Today’s result: Five. So clever, Connections People. My love of hockey tripped me up on the first guess.

Connections
Puzzle #500
🟦🟨🟦🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

The song in my head when I woke up today: Failure, once again, by Breaking Benjamin

• Oct. 22: Failure, by Breaking Benjamin
• Oct. 21: Colder Weather, by Zac Brown Band
• Oct. 20: Just The Way You Are, by Bruno Mars
• Oct. 18: The Breaking Benjamin theme continues. Today’s? Red Cold River
• Oct. 17: Evil Angel, by Breaking Benjamin (are you seeing a trend here????)
• Oct. 16: Without You, Breaking Benjamin
• Oct. 15: Everlong, by Foo Fighters (acoustic version)
• Oct. 14: Dear Agony, by Breaking Benjamin
• Oct. 13: Crawl, by Breaking Benjamin
• Oct. 12: Failure, by Breaking Benjamin
• Oct. 11: It Not Over, by Daughtry
• Oct. 10: Outside, by Staind
• Oct. 9: These Dreams, by Heart
• Oct. 8: Complicated, by Avril Lavigne
• Oct. 7: Complicated, by Avril Lavigne
• Oct. 5: Slide, by Goo Goo Dolls
• Oct 4: Evil Angel, by Breaking Benjamin
• Oct. 3: Right Here, by Staind
• Oct. 2: So Far Away, by Staind
• Oct. 1: I Will Follow You Into The Dark, by Death Cab For Cutie

Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: We bury the sunlight

Commute Tunes: My drive to the office this morning was once again done to my Rap Attack playlist. Because what rich white suburban kid who grew up in the ’80s doesn’t love old-school gangsta rap?

• The Real Slim Shady, Eminem
• Shut Em Down, Public Enemy
• Soldier, Eminem
• Walk This Way, Run D.M.C.
• Mama Said Knock You Out, LL COOL J
• It’s Tricky, Run D.M.C.

Something I’m looking forward to today: My appointment with my soon-to-be (hopefully) neck surgeon.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: My yearly solo writing retreat. Going off into the wilderness to re-center, edit some stories and write some more. Will I return? Maybe.

Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Finding my center again after my neck surgeon appointment got cancelled at the last minute and pushed back to this coming Tuesday. Grrr.

What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved writing drafts for two stories for Johnny Boy Marketing clients. Once was on a guy who founded a venture capital firm and who teaches a class on financing sustainable energy projects. The other was on a woman who is in charge of user experience with JPMorgan Chase & Co

What I’ve written: Thesis Project Brings Out Smiles: Sue Kim leaned heavily on empathy to create a concept for an app that helps people who used to have braces wear their retainers as instructed.

I have begun to doubt that people understand the definition of the word “appointment.” This reminds me of a scene from Seinfeld in which Jerry confronts a car rental agent over the definition of the word “reservation.”

“I know why we have reservations,” says the agent.

“I don’t think ya do,” replies Jerry.

Appointments are an agreement for two people to meet for the purpose of getting something done. I’m sure that’s not how Webster defines it, but what do we really know about that Webster guy to give him such authority?

We make appointments to have our eyes checked, teeth checked, prostates checked. We make appointments to bring our cars in for service, to have our washing machines repaired, to play laser tag or paint ball. The expectation when someone makes an appointment is that the thing that he wants to happen actually happens.

In the past year, I have had more appointments cancelled or go awry than I care to think about. Most recently, two separate appointments for a much-needed massage were cancelled. And I get it: Sometimes shit happens. One party to the appointment gets sick, has a car accident, is abducted by aliens … whatever. It just seems like this has become a regular occurrence in my life.

Yesterday, I was mere hours away from having my long-awaited appointment with my eventual neck surgeon. I was very much looking forward to this appointment, as my neck has been rapidly deteriorating over the past week, and I’m more or less at some level of constant pain. It’s affecting how I sleep. It’s affecting my mood. It’s limiting the things I can do in life. My hope had been that I would come out of yesterday’s appointment with a definitive date for surgery so we can get this stupid thing fixed and I can get back to life.

That’s when I got a phone call. The doctor had been called into emergency surgery. My appointment had to be pushed back to this coming Tuesday.

Now, I get it. I’m much better off than the person who needed the emergency surgery. But can’t medical facilities be operated like baseball bullpens? If the starting doctor is pulled into emergency surgery, can’t there be a relief doctor warming up and ready to come into the game? Sure, I’d love to be operated on by the Roger Clemens of surgery. But Mariano Rivera was a pretty damn good relief pitcher. I’d take him, too.

Alas, I took some deep breaths and spent some time re-centering myself. I’ll go to my appointment next Tuesday, and in all likelihood, I’ll survive until then. If I don’t, well, then I hope someone else takes my appointment.

Would you please help a brutha out? I’ve created a weekly eNewsletter called News-B-Nuts in which I’ll be sending out news nuggets and witty commentary to subscribers. If you can, would you support this endeavor for just $5 a month via Patreon?