Icky Work — September 24, 2024 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
So Far🎶
Nugs📰
Oblates⛪

THE DAILY UPDATE

Three Things I Am Grateful For Today:

Free bananas.
Rock music.
Anniversaries of good memories.

Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: Four. The definition of me?

Wordle 1,193 4/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Today’s result: Seven. Ugh.

Connections
Puzzle #471
🟦🟦🟪🟦
🟦🟦🟪🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟦🟪🟪
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦

The song in my head when I woke up today: So Far Away, by Staind, which has been one of the anthems of my recovery and rebirth. Can’t wait to see the band in concert!

Sept. 23: Long Way, by Antje Dukevot
Sept. 22: Going Under, by Evanescence
Sept. 21: For the second day in a row, Don’t Let Me Down, by Joy Williams
Sept. 20: Don’t Let Me Down, by Joy Williams
Sept. 19: Four Stitches, by Antje Duvekot
Sept. 18: The theme song from the MEGA podcast. So that’s a new entry into my morning brain.
Sept. 17: Burn Me Once, by Bella White
Sept. 16: Follow Your Arrow, by Kacey Musgraves
Sept. 15: Burn Me Once, by Bella White
Sept. 13: It’s Not Over, by Daughtry
Sept. 12: In a radical departure from recent morning-brain songs, It’s So Easy, by Guns N’ Roses
Sept. 11: Complicated, by Avril Lavigne, who’s back in my morning brain after a one-day absence.
Sept. 10: Wide Open Spaces, by The Chicks. At least it’s not Avril Lavigne
Sept. 9: I’m With You, by Avril Lavigne
Sept. 8: When You’re Gone, by Avril Lavigne, for the second day in a row.
Sept. 7: When You’re Gone, by Avril Lavigne
Sept. 6: I Will Not Bow, by Breaking Benjamin
Sept. 5: It’s Been Awhile, by Staind
Sept. 4: So Far Away, by Staind
Sept. 3: Banana Boat, by Harry Belafonte
Sept. 2: One Love, by Bob Marley
Sept. 1: Welcome to the Black Parade, by My Chemical Romance

Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: These are my words/That I’ve never said before/I think I’m doing okay

Commute Tunes: The dark and dreary drive to work this morning was done to my NuRock playlist.

Halo, Soil
Take The Power Back, Rage Against The Machine
The Devil’s Bleeding Crown, Volbeat
Rx (Medicate), Theory of a Deadman
Bulls On Parade, Rage Against The Machine

Something I’m looking forward to today: A day in the office with my colleagues.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: The Breaking Benjamin/Staind concert!

Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Having our baseball games rained out, which turned Sunday into a relaxing day where I actually baked stuff and watched football.

What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved most of the draft for an article about the growing gap between male and female life expectancy.

What I’ve written: Harris vs. Trump? Pshaw. See the REAL candidates — the candidates for the 2024 class of the Toy Hall of Fame. Also: Find out if you’re likely to die soon. Understand a central truth about adult gamers. Plan for your old-age roommate. And locate Kermit The Frog’s ideal home. All this and MORE in today’s News-B-Nuts. Open up and say “News Nuggies!”

I’ve worked or done work for some pretty scummy people and organizations through the years. It’s a symptom of being a participating human, I think. You reach a certain age and you can look back at those whose ethics are, shall we say, questionable at best.

None was as bad as the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. This extremely strange organization with an antiquated name is linked to an obscure French saint and a girl who may or may not have but a nutcase. Like many things Catholic, the group extrapolates on a few events to create a cause that, at its core, is a fundraising operation wrapped in holiness. Which isn’t to suggest the priests who are a part of it haven’t done good things. Some of them have.

And some of them have done deplorable, awful things — including the systematic genocide of the native Canadian culture, predation on children and the coverup of predation on children.

Sitting in the office on Day 1, I was appalled at the no-shame attachment of prayer to “suggested donations” and the pedaling of supposedly holy relics for “contributions.” The spiritual head of the group would add you to his prayers — for the low-low price of $20. Want a vial of water taken from a spring where the possible nutcase of a girl saw some visions a few centuries ago? Sure, we can send that to you, but the suggested donation price has gone up. Don’t want to pay that suggested donation? Well, come on now … shipping is more expensive these days, ya know.

And then there are the pedophiles. So. Many. Pedophiles. On Day 3, I was asked to find some retired priests to write profiles about. The Google machine was a great place to start … to find those names attached to preying-not-praying on children and those who helped cover it up. First-person documents are everywhere on the interwebs detailing the crimes of these supposedly holy men. But yet we are to believe that’s a thing of the past, that the bad apples have been found and discarded.

Except even the bad apples don’t get discarded. In proofing a list of priests celebrating a milestone anniversary of their “service,” I googled the names … and landed on one housed in a donation-supported Oblates retirement home in the Northeast whom the organization was preparing to celebrate who had been caught years earlier with child pornography and who had appeared naked before a teen boy and asked said teen boy to whip him. Yes, let’s celebrate that.

Every day I would step into that building I would feel disgusting. Every day when I would leave I felt like I needed a long, hot shower. The day I turned in my resignation was a day filled with joy. My hope … my prayer, which I didn’t have to pay for, is that this organization and all those associated with it are nothing more than a stain in history at some point soon. I know they are in trouble. Donations are drying up. The horrible mismanagement of the organization led them to watch as their donation based aged and died, and the current age of the average donor is older than 80. Meanwhile, they nixed the part of the budget that was aimed at attracting new and “younger” donors — ya know, people in their 60s and 70s.

The Catholic church in general is reaping what it sowed for hundreds of years, and I, for one, am happy to watch its downfall.

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?

Ten Random Things, The World Has Moved On, Part 13 — April 2, 2026

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Kid Diddling — September 26, 2024 – Johnny Boy Marketing

September 26, 2024 at 8:16 am

[…] know, it’s not just the Catholics,” said a Catholic in response to my reflections on working for the Catholics and how it was pretty much impossible not to trip over pedophiles. “The Baptists did it […]

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Icky Work — September 24, 2024

THE DAILY UPDATE

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