Looking Up — October 3, 2024 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Here🎶
Nugs🎙️
Vastness🔭

THE DAILY UPDATE

Three Things I Am Grateful For Today:

Hugs. I don’t get nearly enough of them, and I’m kinda starving to death over here.
My ability to carve birds — chickens, turkeys, ducks … if it once had feathers, I can get its meat off its bones effectively. And my god does that make me sound like a psychopath!?!?!
The miracle that is Dippin’ Dots.

Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: Four. *Nods approvingly*

Wordle 1,202 4/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Today’s result: Five. First, “water” threw me. Second, if anyone knows who does the purples for this game and you don’t put me in touch with him/her, I hate you. Purple Person is my soulmate.

Connections
Puzzle #480
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟩🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

The song in my head when I woke up today: 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: Can’t you just forgive me/I don’t want to relive all the mistakes/I’ve made along the way

Youth Group Tunes: Music as I drove Boy The Younger to his youth group last night was from John’s Ultimate Chill Song Compendium.

Janie’s Got a Gun, Aerosmith
3AM, Matchbox Twenty
Times Like These, Foo Fighters

Something I’m looking forward to today: Doing some DnD prep for my first time as a Dungeon Master tomorrow. I’m such a nerd.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: Going to the Yankees-Royals playoff game on Wednesday!!!!!!

Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: The Royals beating the Orioles! See above item.

What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved two stories for a new Johnny Boy Marketing client. One was on Western Governors University School of Business and alignment between curriculum and jobs. The other was on Florida Atlantic University’s spot on the Washington Monthly Top 50 Universities list. That’s about 2,700 words of awesomesauce, right there baby!

What I’ve written: Need something to get your through your work day? Four out of five doctors recommend twice-weekly doses of News Nuggies. Today we’re talking about the cost to protect tech brains, a surprising statistic on overdoses, grumpy buzzards, The Caitlin Clark Effect, and a funny little thing Michael Jordan is doing to try to sell his house.

Last night, Wifey Poo and I ate dinner while watching the Royals finish off the Orioles and then cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen. Boy The Younger was at his church youth group. It was trash night, so I dutifully took the bag from the kitchen garbage can to the big bin outside and then started to wheel it down the driveway.

Our driveway is concrete, about a football field in length, a straight shot with a slight downhill. We live out in the country, and though light pollution has made its way into the area over the past few decades, the night sky still becomes a wonder of twinkling stars on a clear night. Last night was a clear night.

There are these times when I feel so … goddamn … small. This most frequently happens when I look up. We humans can grow used to everything. Those who live near the majesty that is the Rocky Mountains leave their house and drive to work with this amazing backdrop they don’t even notice. We love-love-love songs that we listen to so much we suddenly can’t stand them anymore. The person we were absolutely wild about and couldn’t keep our hands off of becomes the spouse we still love and appreciate, sure, but not in the same way we once did. I guess that’s part of being human, but I’d put forward that it’s a shitty part of being human.

Anyway, to my point … we become so used to the night sky that we don’t stop to think about what we’re seeing. We literally are seeing the past. Light that started longer ago that we can fathom is finally reaching our eyes, and we look up at it like it’s a neon sign for Denny’s. Each of those little twinkles up there is something. It’s something we can’t really wrap our stupid human minds around. It represents vastness, and what it should do to each of us is make us realize that we are really, really, really small. We are mere pinpricks on a dot in a universe so big there aren’t terms to describe it accurately. Every time we think we understand what’s going on out there, we come up with a piece of technology that says, “Yeahno. No you don’t. Not even close.” I honestly don’t think we humans will ever understand it for real, though that might be because we’re so violent and dumb that we’re going to end ourselves before we advance far enough to give it a good shot.

Walking down the driveway last night, I couldn’t help but think “Why?” What is it exactly that’s going on Here? Why do I exist on this dot as that pinprick (some might eliminate “pin” from that)? Surely it can’t be to roll a garbage can to the end of a driveway on a Wednesday night and write about reinsurance and higher education and make videos for dance studios and deliver people their fast food because they’re too lazy to get it themselves. Surely there’s got to be a reason that’s a tad more significant than all that. Right? Right!?!?!?

If you think these thoughts long and hard enough, you’ll lose your balance. I’m talking literally and figuratively, you’ll lose your balance. When you think of this big-huge Earth as an infinitesimal dot, it can make you lose any semblance of grounding. Then, it’s almost like you’re a hamster in a ball or that guy in the circus running on top of that wheel whom the audience is cheering on but secretly hoping he bites it … big time.

It’s really hard (for me, anyway) to look up and out and not think, “Is there something else out there looking back at me?” Not me, because, again, pinprick. But me as in my planet. My little twinkling light that is just reaching them after traveling billions of years. I sure as hell hope there is. Why? Because trying to bare up under the weight of us being the only (supposedly) intelligent, sentient life in something so goddamn vast is actually painful. And it just feeds into those “Why?” questions that we don’t and likely never will have the capacity to answer.

There is Fact out there somewhere. Everything is knowable, given enough time and evolution and progress or revelation. I just don’t happen to think we’re special enough to ever figure it out.

Some men just wheel the damn garbage can to the end of the driveway and come back inside. Apparently I’m not one of those men.

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?

Looking Up — October 3, 2024

THE DAILY UPDATE

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