Dad Brog (#143): the surprisingly emotional aftermath

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not that I’ve gone around and had lengthy conversations about vasectomies leading into my own, but I still feel like there were a few things nobody talks about whenever the subject emerges.  I knew that the type of procedure I was going to have wasn’t going to be bad and in fact was probably one of the more efficient and painless ones, but I’m also someone who hasn’t ever had a surgery of any kind before in my life, so the feeling of being in a medical place for myself and laying back on a table for something done to me was completely foreign.

Not that I didn’t see this one coming, but it’s still very awkward to have people touching and handling your privates, and I found myself staring intently at the tiles on the ceiling and inadvertently holding my breath and feeling my legs go tense from time to time.  Felt like at times my junk were treated like Chinese stress balls the way they were being rolled around, and I get they’re feeling for any things out of the ordinary but was still a completely harrowing feeling all the same.

One thing that nobody that I’ve seen has talked about is the smell; and not from the standpoint that of being downstairs, the first bullet point on my pre-op instructions was to shower and shave fairly close to go-time, but the smell of things that are burned by the laser that my particular clinic was using.  I wasn’t entirely sure if it were errant hair or flesh or blood vessels, I didn’t look down at the procedure the entire time, but despite the fact that the local was doing a good job of nullifying feeling anything other than movement and the pressure of contact, it clearly doesn’t cancel out the scent of burning that emanated from the point of surgery.

However, what it all culminates in, and what serves as the impetus for this post was the surprising wave of emotions that seemed to bubble up after I was done with the procedure, which all in all wasn’t really painful as much as it was just awkward and comfortable as much as your junk being handled for 25 minutes could be.  But when I was done, walked out the door and into the car, I just felt almost like crying.  Don’t really know why, this was all part of the plan and I certainly don’t want to go through the rigors of having another baby, but all the same, this involuntary and reflexive wave of sadness just kind of washed up and I felt pretty sad.

I know I can be a headcase about things, but I feel like I’m kind of on my own here, at least as far as people I know who have also had vasectomies.  I asked a few of my friends if they felt sad afterward, and the consensus is pretty much no, so maybe it is just a me thing, but I’d wager that there are plenty of men out there who can relate, but then against we have people who lose their shit over the opening sequence of Up, and many who don’t too.

If I had to guess, it probably has to do with the sheer finality of the whole thing.  Sure, vasectomies are technically reversible, but it’s one of those things that just because they are doesn’t mean anyone wants to go through with it, and I’m at peace knowing I won’t father any more kids, but it’s just the fact that it’s a decision sealed with a laser that makes it feels a little heavy handed.  For all intents and purposes, this was done to be a permanent measure, and there’s something about said permanence that seems to trigger emotion within me.

Otherwise, what a day it’s been afterward.  Got to go to Willy’s and get some nachos, even if they were prepared horribly by some white guy that looked like Bill Burr, chilled at home while waiting to see if I would have any pain that wasn’t already there from going to the gym for the first time in a month, as my office was shut down due to malfunctioning elevators.  I took a nap for the first time in like forever, and woke up to discover that there was some pretty substantial leadership transitions going on at my company, and that another elevator malfunctioned and we might be back to another shutdown.

But the easy joke is that with me getting to rest, nap and eat rich food brought to me, is that I should have more vasectomies in the future to have these baller kinds of days, but at the same time, I don’t like feeling sad, so it’s really one of those weighing the pros and cons things, and that nothing in my life can happen without there being a correlating reaction somewhere else.

All the same, so ends my lineage as far as I’m concerned, it’ll be up to my kids and my sister’s kids in the future if there’s any hope for my family’s genetics to continue on.

Dad Brog (#142): Ending the pipeline

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not really sure how this post is going to turn out, but there’s inherently a lot of thoughts swirling around my head to the point where I feel like I should write something about it, but I’m getting a vasectomy.

Despite the fact that mythical wife and I are most certainly, definitely, irrefutably done with having any kids, admittedly there’s still something there in the noggin about the sheer finality of getting the snip, and although they are supposedly reversible, the intent is clear – I am not going to have any more kids ever again.  This, was always part of the plan, and yet there’s something, perhaps it’s the fact that I’ll have to have a surgery and I’ve never had any sort of surgery in my life before, or maybe it’s just the finality of the intent and scenario of it that has me feeling a little weird.

Make no mistake though, I don’t want anymore kids.  We don’t want anymore kids, mythical wife and I.  There is a 0% chance that I’m going to chicken out and not go through with it, not to mention the fact that I’ll be out $300 if I did, and I fucking hate the idea of wasted money as much as anything else, but I’d be lying if I weren’t feeling some strange feelings of apprehension and melancholy about what I’m going to go through.

But despite all the weird feelings and emotions, I know it in my head that I’m 100% making the right call and I will have no regrets afterward.  I have my children, they’re perfect and they’re all I want, and I have no desire to father anymore kids in my life.  Despite how many times I’ve been strapped for cash in my life and despite the curiosity and the enticement of getting paid to pleasure myself, I’ve never donated sperm before; I don’t want any mystery kids borne of a random selection in a catalog to a woman I don’t know showing up in my life later on.  As far as I am concerned, my genetics are ending, and if there was ever some form or archaic desire for my family’s genes to continue on, then that’s up to my daughters to do, if they ever so choose to procreate in the future.

Plus, the world is going backwards, and somehow women pretty much have fewer reproductive rights than they did before I was born which is a whole other can of worms that tends to make me feel sad for my wife, my daughters, and all the women in the world that I have care for, so it genuinely feels like I’m doing my part of being responsible, and being an ally by going through with a vasectomy, especially since I am most definitely done with having any additional children.

The last thing my household needs to have in their lives is an oops situation, where corrective measures couldn’t be utilized without becoming a fugitive, and the only legal alternative is to have another child, that wasn’t planned for.  Absolutely not.

So yeah, I’m going under the knife (or laser or whatever), and despite the weird state of mind the whole thing has me feeling as the clock ticks closer to my appointment, I know it in my head and in my heart that it is the right thing to do, and I will have no regrets about it.  I have my perfect kids, don’t want more, and mythical wife has done enough as far as shouldering the pain in the ass burden when it comes to further responsibilities.

Pretty sure the Dodgers are banking on the world ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not a lot to like about the Dodgers winning the World Series; it’s precisely what MLB had wanted when they wrote their script for the 2024 season, with golden boy Shohei Ohtani having one of the greatest seasons in baseball history and then capping it off with a world championship.  It validated the importance of spending money, because the Dodgers spent money like they had the infinite money code in Sim City, and there was no plucky Cinderella squad to dethrone them and give hearty lols to baseball fans outside the greater Los Angeles area.

But personally, I think worst of all is that it opened the door for Dodgers fans, most of whom are fairweather front-running troglodytes whom it’s clear to see how short of a time they’ve been Dodger or baseball fans, based on how loud they are on the internet about their sudden unyielding fandom of the team.  I haven’t seen such fervent sore winning from any fanbase, including Philadelphia; those cocksuckers flip a few cars, set fire to them, have a parade, and then it’s back to normal the following week.

The thing is, now that the Dodgers have won an actual championship, as opposed to the Mickey Mouse COVID World Series from 2020, all these slimes claiming to be Dodgers fans are all over the fucking place now, celebrating everything the team does, which also happens to be MLB’s favorite squad, much like all the memes that exist about how the NFL so flagrantly favors the Kansas City Chiefs.

And when there’s such blatant favoritism, then the rich tend to get richer, and the Dodgers have made a lot of news during the offseason, not just with Ohtani winning the National League MVP that was a formality, but the fact that despite the fact that they committed over a billion dollars to free agents last winter, they’ve invented some more currency and have gone ahead and committed even more money to signing Balakey Snell (5 years, $182M) and extending Tommy Edman (5 years, $74M).

Naturally, this raises a lot of questions on how the Dodgers are funding their roster full of All-Stars, MVPs and Cy Young winners, at top-dollar contracts, and the answer is really quite simple: the Dodgers are spamming the ever-living fuck out of deferring money, and are completely comfortable at accruing colossal amounts of debt that will be due to be paid way down the line.

What a lot the people who are crying foul on the internet don’t really understand is that what the Dodgers are doing is 100% completely legal and allowed, it’s just the fact that there’s no team in history that has been this flagrant and so quick and willing to basically sign almost every one of their big-name free agents to deferred money deals.  Most teams are owned and operated by businesses and many businesses tend to err on the side of risk-averse, and being risk-averse usually means an aversion to accruing debts, especially those of which are measured in literal hundreds of millions of dollars.

Continue reading “Pretty sure the Dodgers are banking on the world ending” →

Thanksgiving musings and perspectives

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the Thanksgiving holiday this year, my house trekked north back up to Virginia to spend some time with my side of the family.  Such was always something I was pretty ambivalent about in the past, but ever since I had kids, I do feel that there is some importance in having them have connection with my side of the family, not to mention try to build relationships with the litany of cousins they have, as I did growing up.

Overall, it was a very good trip, and I’m happy to have spent a good bit of time with my sister, cousins and parents, but most of all, I was happiest that my kids got to spend time with their cousins and my family members and be able to build relationships and connections with family that they don’t get to see too often.  My happiest memories looking back on the trip were seeing my kids playing exuberantly with their cousins, and I’m thankful for my niece, nephew and the kids of my cousins all being so good to my children, and I’m optimistic that they can have a similar upbringing to my own, where the cousins all were pretty tightly knit growing up.

However, an introduction like this doesn’t happen if there weren’t some things that weren’t positive, and unfortunately for this holiday there were some bad things that definitely put a damper on things.

Firstly, to cut to the chase, I hit a deer while driving, and my car suffered a nasty crack on the bumper as well as the headlight assembly.  I was driving along a road that I’d driven thousands of times in my life while living there, and I’d never seen deer on this stretch of road before.  I was probably going no faster than 25-28 mph while accelerating when the deer popped out of a grassy median and it was so bang-bang fast that I was a good 200 feet past and continuing before it really registered what had happened.

The thing is, while on the drive up, I distinctly remembered having a thought about just how many dead deer I had seen on the shoulders all over I-85 in southern Virginia, and how I really should keep my guard up while driving at night on this trip.  But as I said, this was a stretch of road that was long developed, not very close to any real wooded areas where deer might like to reside in, and where I’d never seen deer before in my life.  So my guard was definitely not up at this moment in time, and it just figures that would be when my premonition came to fruition, and I plastered the poor animal.

I replayed the moment in my head countless times at this point and the thing is, I’m not mad at the deer or the species as a whole, like I might’ve been in the past for putting me in this situation.  Northern Virginia is an endlessly developing area, and it’s a no brainer that the constant sprawl and development in Fairfax county and surrounding areas are displacing the wildlife all over, and next thing I know I’m hitting deer in a place where I’d never seen deer before in my life.

What I am thankful for is the fact that nobody in my car was hurt, and to my knowledge nobody behind me appeared to be hurt, as I was the first car in the line of cars turning onto the road, and it looked like there were plenty of braking going on behind me.  My kids were little zombies watching the iPad, so they didn’t notice anything but the sound of impact and the bump of me running it over, and didn’t seem to care because they were too busy watching Little Einsteins.  This wasn’t a conversation that I would’ve wanted to have had, so I take it as a win, on all accounts.

Additionally, despite looking pretty nasty when I originally did stop, when I got to my cousin’s place, we were able to pop the initial dent back out, which was a big victory, as it was pushing the wheel liner into contact with the tire, and there was initial talk about cutting it off in order to remain drivable.  A little duct tape and a few zip ties, and my car was safe enough to have made the return trip to Georgia, to where its repair is now on the table in coming weeks.

Here’s the thing though-as much as something like this probably would have tanked the entire trip for me in the past, I realized that there were so many other victories to be had given the circumstances, that the main L taken that will cost actual money and likely aggravation of playing car Tetris or a rental didn’t seem so bad.  Plus, when I got back to my cousin’s place, dinner was ready, two beers, a fire pit, reminiscing with my cousins while hearing the sound of my kids having a blast with their cousins really rescued the night and I like to think that this was all one of those, you know you’re maturing, kind of scenarios.

Also, waking up to the worst news possible of hearing of a passing of a loved one to my brother’s family really does knock everything else into a genuinely thankful perspective, on Thanksgiving.  Pretty much nothing can top that as far as bad news is concerned, but again, trying to find the silver lining in bad situations, given the circumstances of the departed’s final days, there’s probably a modicum of relief in knowing that they’re no longer in any pain or having to fight the good fight any longer.

As sad and heartbroken I felt for my brother’s family, it really did help put everything else into perspective about the things that myself and everyone else could genuinely be thankful for.  My kids were safe and unaware of the deer situation, most everyone in my family was in good health.  I got to spend some time with my parents with my kids, and I’m glad that my kids have interactions and memories with them, because I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen a grandfather in my life.

Even the whole car debacle afforded me a bonus good memory, because when I took the car on a shakedown ride to make sure it was safe at highway speeds and cornering, I took the opportunity while I was alone to pop by a close friend’s house to say hi and wish them a happy Thanksgiving.

The drive back was long, and doing Richmond to Atlanta was the longest stretch that my kids had ever had to endure in the car, but equipped with a lot of snacks and an iPad full of downloaded shows, they did great.  My only gripe is the feeling of being a glorified Uber driver, since I have to focus on driving, and none of my adult passengers can get their heads off of their phones to actually converse or be remotely the types of passengers to help a ride not feel so long.

But as a whole, I still look back at Thanksgiving positively.  My kids had a great time with my family, and I was happy to catch up with everyone who came to dinner, and I can only hope that future family gatherings in the future will be as good as this one was, but hopefully with no more deer incidents.

Strange, but not entirely unsurprising

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s this house I sometimes pass on my way to work, if I decide to take a certain route.  I’ve always noticed it for a variety of reasons; it was clearly a home where the property was purchased, and a lot of money was sunk into changing the landscaping of the property tremendously, as well as some modifications to the home itself.  In short, the landscaping of the property, behind the metal picket fence, is very ornate and kind of looks like Mr. Miyagi designed the property, based on the lush greenery and non-traditional (read: not white people) aesthetics.

There was one day I drove past, and the garage was open, and I noticed that they had a red NSX, which aren’t necessarily my favorite cars, but they are pretty rare in this day and age, so the fact that they had one, which looked to be in pretty immaculate state is still noteworthy and memorable.  Furthermore, they also had a Kei-truck, which I’ve heard are no longer legally approved to be imported to Georgia anymore, not sure how that goes, but again, having one of those also makes a property stand out. 

Because they’re clearly a giant weeb.

So color me a little surprised that one day driving by this home, and there’s a Trump/Vance sign in front of their house, also surreptitiously planted after the election.  It’s just like a, strange juxtaposition of personal interests and political preferences, to see a home clearly resided by a giant weeb who’s all into Japanese automotive, Japanese landscaping and architecture, but then is also into right-wing bigot ideology.

I actually don’t know the nationality of the person who lives in this property, but I have to assume it’s a white guy based on the sign alone, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it were an actual Japanese-American, probably of the older variety who immigrated legally in ancient times and harbors a lot of angst towards illegal immigrants and is drunk on the kool aid. 

But really, I’m thinking it’s probably just some white jarhead who is probably a veteran, lived in Japan for a little while, fell in love with stuff like their cars, aesthetics, but eventually came back to America, got drunk on the orange kool aid, but was still all into Japanese shit, not grasping the irony of their preferences versus their political brainwashing.

Either way, I figured the person living there was just a dorky weeb, but now I definitively know that the person living there is bigot, on top of being a dorky weeb.  Hashtag ‘murica.

LoL: Arcane, season 2 – so unprecedently good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What a week for Netflix-dropping both Cobra Kai S6.2 and Arcane S2 on the same week!  Much to the dismay of mythical wife, I went with Cobra Kai first, primarily on the fact that because the episodes are so short and generally way more digestible, despite my guilty-pleasure love for the show, I really wanted to clear it from the queue so that I could really savor and enjoy Arcane S2, which I knew was going to be the way heavier show.  I regret nothing, and the fact that I’m writing about Arcane and not another post about Cobra Kai says what left a stronger impression in the end.

To cut to the chase, I would go as far as to state without any hesitation or real need to think about it, that Arcane is probably the greatest video game-to-on-screen adaptation, like ever.  The bar of such a category wasn’t really that high to begin with, but I would say that it was previously set at like, a generic office building height of like 16 stories, but then Arcane came along and pushed the bar to the height of like that one gigantic ass building in Qatar or Abu Dhabi that’s considered the tallest building on the planet.

Like, despite my heavy criticism for Riot Games as far as business practices and bad behavior goes, and how critical I am of the League of Legends community, mostly being a nuclear toxic wasteland of the worst human beings in existence, Arcane combatted and overcame these handicaps and still put out an absolutely legendary banger of a program that I’m hard pressed to say anything negative about, because it was just so wonderfully executed from top to bottom.

The art style is breathtaking, the voice acting top-notch, and the writing and storytelling was A+ from start to finish.  There are plenty of easter eggs and references to satiate fans of the game, while not at all being difficult for those who didn’t play to watch without failing to understand what’s going on.

As I said from the first season, it’s all so good, it almost makes me want to start playing the game, and if not for the fact that I’m a parent who never has any time on his hands and can’t fathom the amount of time I sunk into playing League in the past, I would consider re-downloading the game and looking around at the virtual arenas that I dumped a solid 5-6 years of my life into.

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin on how to praise how good this show is.  They do a bang up job of utilizing existing characters, and the ones they invented for the show meld so seamlessly with them that doesn’t feel forced, feels organic and feels cohesive.  Ambessa and Mel feel like they belong in the original game’s canon all along, and their general arcs and development feed well into the overall storytelling of the show.

Viewers like me become emotionally vested in the characters, and despite the fact that as a player, Jinx was one of my mains, but just in general, I’ve grown tired of the Harley Quinn-type of mentally unstable girl that seems chaotic and unkillable while also happening to be harboring genius level intelligence hidden behind a façade of psycho, by utilizing her history and life as Powder, she’s still a character to get behind, and not tire of her antics when she’s Jinx.  Even though it’s not simple to deconstruct a Harley Quinn-type, Arcane does such in a way that is realistic and allows for actual growth and development instead of plateauing with more of the same psychotic behavior.

The one character I probably had the most feelings about after watching S2 was probably Ekko; I never played him in the game, and I always dreaded seeing an Ekko on the opposite team, but his treatment in the show was done to perfection.  In spite of the fact that he wasn’t nearly as focused on in the first season, he was a major, major player in S2, and despite my general ambivalence for his character based on my history as a player, he was easily someone I was definitely vested in during the show.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that scene in the show with Caitlyn and Vi; like I’m surprised that it happened, and happened so graphically, and there’s a multitude of feelings of surprised that the show and Netflix let it happen, but at the same time, I applaud the acceptance, the portrayal and the acknowledgement of all of the above, and I can sum it up in a singular word of “bold” and much like how I feel about the rest of the show, I think it was done appropriately, and not even from a sophomoric standpoint as much as it’s commendable that it was done in a manner that doesn’t hide from it, feels emotional and real, and probably gave long-time fans who felt similarly a moment to pump their fists in what feels like a metaphorical win.

Oh and the music of the season, my god.  I don’t seek out and look for new music these days, I’m usually content to occasionally stumble across an artist when it’s spoon-fed through me on Pandora or Sirius, but the soundtrack from S2 was out of this world.  I especially love the fact that it was pulling from all sorts of songs of other languages, and I felt like it was a little deliberate nod by Rito to do such, due to the global reach of the game itself, and if there was a soundtrack of it on iTunes, I’d be compelled to actually spend money on it.

As I’ve said countless times in my life when thinking about shows, films, books and any forms of storytelling, endings are the hardest thing in the world to come up with, and big props to Arcane for also not fumbling that aspect of the show.  Seldom are stories ever truly wrapped up in neat little bows, and Arcane is no exception, but at the same time it’s probably for the best, because to my understanding, Arcane may be over, but Rito definitely isn’t going to not want to tap the wells of numerous other League worlds to source future media from, so it’s best to keep things open ended for the sake of future shows or movies.

Overall, I can’t say anything bad about Arcane.  I really can’t.  I would give the show a solid 10/10 and not one of those bullshit reviews where internet reviewers give it a 9.8 or 9.9 out of 10 because people who review shit are hipsters who are convinced that shit isn’t supposed to be perfection, but as far as I’m concerned, I have no justifiable critiques about Arcane.  Art style, direction, voice over work, storytelling, music, plot, absolutely everything was good.  Not even mad that it was just two seasons, because if they dragged it out, it would inevitably open the door for flaws, this was just A++ show execution from top to bottom, and I’d recommend most everyone to watch this show, because it doesn’t take a history of playing League to enjoy it, and it’s just straight up excellent televison.

Fuzzy the Clingstone: as if it were going to be anything remotely interesting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Braves’ AA-affiliate Columbus Clingstones announce the name of their mascot – Fuzzy

Naturally, I didn’t expect much when I found out that the Columbus Clingstones were seeking out a name for their anamorphic peach mascot.  Not that they’re being forced by the Braves like they once used to, but being a Braves affiliate still means they’re not going to do anything remotely interesting or willing to rock the boat.  I didn’t know, nor did I really care to look into what the other options were,* but considering “Fuzzy” won out, I can’t imagine that they were possibly anything competitively intriguing.

*Fuzzy, Pit, Stoney and Cobbler; yep, nothing exciting

Fuzzy is the name that a three-year old toddler names their favorite stuffed bear.  Or any sort of stuffed thing that comes into their possession that they declare in two seconds that they want to have forever and is already their best friend.  I love my kids, but they’re still too young to be coming up with some seriously clever and/or meta thinking names for the things they want to name yet, but they’re also four and three years old, and I have a hard time believing that of the alleged 675 fan suggestions, they were all toddlers.

Unsurprising though, considering the lukewarm response to naming themselves the Clingstones, a term that most people outside of the southeast have never even heard of, that they would go with an absolute snoozefest of a name like Fuzzy.

I was hoping that the Clingstones would’ve carried on a trope started by the AAA-affiliate of the Braves, when they were crowdsourcing for a new name; they came up with four finalists, had a voting period, and when the vote was over, they announced a name that wasn’t even one of the options to begin with, the Stripers.  In all fairness, the Stripers was way better than all of the available options so it wasn’t all for the worst, and considering what options the people of Columbus had to pick from, it would’ve been both hilarious and productive if the same kind of thing happened here as well.

Frankly, as much as I like the actual mascot of Fuzzy (what can I say, I’m a sucker for anamorphic food mascots), I hate the name.  It would’ve been great if they had their silly little voting period, and then in the end, went ahead and declared that the name of the mascot be Clinger, the Clingstone.

And with a name like that, it can create all sorts of room for interpretation, but most prevalently the fact that a clinger is an allegory for a little turd that is stuck to a creature’s butt, which seems appropriate for the absolute flop of a naming rebrand the Columbus baseball organization did.

It’s like, I really like the colors, the mascot, the general aesthetic of the team; but the names Clingstones and Fuzzy the mascot are just colossal whiffs.  It’s like I wish the team could borrow the Time Stone from Dr. Strange or Thanos, rewind just far back enough to where they got to the point where the brand kid was complete but didn’t have a name, and just re-did reality to where they might have gone with other names before the Clingstones and subsequently, Fuzzy.

But at least it served as impetus to create an image of Fuzzy the Clingstone being the clinger that the names of the team are in my opinion, and poop jokes sell, in my little slice of the internet.