Jesus, Israel — September 19, 2024 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Stitches🎶
Nugs📰
Pager Bombs💣

THE DAILY UPDATE

Three Things I Am Grateful For Today:

Asian culture.
Jim Gaffigan.
Embarrassing photos of my children.

Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: TWO! Bow down and worship your Wordle God, for I am a benevolent God and will treat you decently.

Wordle 1,188 2/6

🟨🟨⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Today’s result: PERFECTO! That’s two in a row. This one took me less than a minute. My brain game godhood is strong today.

Connections
Puzzle #466
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

The song in my head when I woke up today: 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: A secret stairwell for remembering/And a moment for a song…

Work Tunes: Yesterday proved to be an insanely busy and productive day, with my day job, side gig, home stuff and life in general. So I ended up listening to some songs from my Chick Singers playlist while I worked.

A Thousand Miles, Vanessa Carlton
Rainbow, Kacey Musgraves
One and Only, Joy Williams
Dreams, The Cranberries
Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Jewel
When You’re Gone, Avril Lavigne
One Of Us, Joan Osborne
Mad About You, Belinda Carlisle
Welcome Home, Joy Williams
Cowboy Take Me Away, The Chicks
What’s Up? 4 Non Blondes
Time After Time, Cindy Lauper
Don’t, Jewel
Stay, Lisa Loeb
Front Porch, Joy Williams
Don’t Know Why, Norah Jones
At Last, Etta James
Hello, Adele
I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston
We Danced Anyway, Deanna Carter
You Learn, Alanis Morissette
Wish You Were Here, Avril Lavigne,
Zombie, The Cranberries
All I Wanna Do, Sheryl Crow
Burn Me Once, Bella White
The Trouble With Wanting, Joy Williams
New Siberia, Antje Duvekot
Give Me One Reason, Tracy Chapman
Ordinary World, Joy Williams
Kiss Me, Sixpence None The Richer
Look How Far We’ve Come, Joy Williams
Torn, Natalie Imbruglia
Ironic, Alanis Morissette
Complicated, Avril Lavigne
When Does A Heart Move On, Joy Williams
Long Way, Antje Duvekot
Uninvited, Alanis Morissette
Angel, Sarah McLachlan
Near You Always, Jewel
I Can’t Make You Love Me, Bonnie Raitt

Something I’m looking forward to today: A work interview this morning with a colleague in Dubai.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: It’s a baseball weekend, and we better win a freaking game.

Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Getting a whole lotta stuff done, and keeping my calm with an editor for a side gig job who has the professional tact of a Donald Trumpster rally.

What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved a rewrite of a story about immunotherapy vs. targeted therapy for cancer treatment.

What I’ve written: News Nuggies are fortified with humor, irreverence and down-home Missourah goodness. In today’s dish, you’ll find a reason to hate corn, a questionable definition of the word “value,” a brief biography of who the heck Harry Mudd might be, a Groundhog Day reference, hope for COVID brain, a no-duh drop in diversity and a really frightening spider GIF. Open up … the airplane is coming into the hangar.

I used to be news-obsessed. This was a good thing, as my first out-of-college job involved, in part, scouring the news wires to select stories that informed and entertained people. I then placed those selections in various places on various pages in people’s daily newspaper, back when such things mattered.

These days, I am news-averse. I don’t read a newspaper (PTSD?), I limit access to online news, and I sure as hell never watch a 24-hour news station where people scream opinions at each other. Part of this is self-preservation. I know I can fall easily into a “the sky is falling” mentality, and it’s not a good headspace for me to stay in very long.

That said … What the actual fuck, Israel?

The use of prepacked explosives in pagers and walkie-talkies to indiscriminately blow up around children and other civilians is a new level of barbaric warfare. Which, of course, isn’t to suggest the barbaric warfare perpetrated by associates of the combatants blown up by explosives-laden electronic devices is any less barbaric. But if this is a game of barbarism one-upsmanship, well, advantage to our our Jewish brethren overseas.

There is no such thing as a good way to kill someone when you consider yourself at war. First bullets, then long-range artillery, then airplanes, then drones have made the killing less intimate, but it’s all fucking batshit crazy, especially when you consider so, so, so goddamn much of it is done in the name of differing views of a supreme being, and let’s not forget, that’s what this whole Israel/Hamas/Hezbollah thing is. We’ve used religion to draw imaginary lines on the ground and said, “You, there. Me, here. And don’t fuckin’ forget it.” And of course, we don’t forget it but we cross those lines anyway and, voila! A new round of killing begins.

And for what, really? Because your particular interpretation of long-ago events is different from mine? Lord, help me to never be so sure in something unprovable that I feel a desire to explode someone and anyone near that someone and justifying it by saying this is what you would have wanted.

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?

Jesus, Israel — September 19, 2024

THE DAILY UPDATE

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