Category: Brog

General posting

I guess we know who’s vying to be the next Spirit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Some friends and I were bullshitting on the topic of how Spirit Airlines is seemingly knocking at death’s door, about how if and when Spirit goes under, who takes their place in the airline pecking order, as the new budget airline that will absorb the lion’s share of ridicule and be the butt of all airline travel jokes?  Surely, one would emerge, seeing as how that’s just the natural order of nature, that if the weakest link of any category were to be cut off and killed, that someone would inevitably become the next in line.

The obvious choice would be Frontier, which is basically just Spirit Airlines but branded in green, as far as being a budget airline that lives on nickel and diming the fuck out of their customers, but for those who play it smart, a fairly serviceable option to get from point A to B.  And as someone who has flown both airlines on multiple occasions before, they really are pretty one and the same, and it would stand to believe that when Spirit goes under, those who already didn’t think Frontier was the ass-end of the airline industry, might not have any choice in the matter.

However, a surprising* contender appears to be emerging, as far as being a strong candidate to be the next Spirit, and that would be the once-reputable, once-universally beloved, once-proclaiming to love their customers, Southwest Airlines.

*or not, given the general direction of the company over the span of the last two years

Over the span of the last 12+ months, Southwest has made a tremendous amount of operational changes, with almost none of them being remotely beneficial to consumers.  First, it was them ceasing the whole open seating policy they had, which, to some was welcome, but to others, a sign of conformity and how they were taking one step closer to becoming another United or American or any other middling airline.  Then, in a move that definitely rose the ire of travelers, was the implementation of baggage fees, when for years prior, they boasted how bags flew free. 

And just over the last few days alone, Southwest has continued moving in conceivably the wrong direction, by announcing a large slew of route cuts, that will adversely affect lots of travelers from having direct options, and even had the audacity to try to spin that layovers were opportunities to see different parts of the country.  For as long as it took them to get their hooks into Atlanta, it looks like they’re already trying to reduce, with supposedly over 50% fewer flights this time next year, departing from ATL.

But one new development that is sure to draw the wrath of the internet as well as many around the country is their redefining of the large passenger policy, which was previously that large passengers could purchase a single seat, and get a second seat por gratis, if the flight could accommodate it, which was polarizingly applauded by many as a firm stance of allyship of inclusion of people of all body shapes and sizes.  Under their new policy, large passengers will have to preemptively purchase two seats if they know they will need them, and refunds of the second seat would be taken into consideration but not guaranteed, presumably on a case-by-case basis.

The latter is still probably better than what most other airlines offer, but it doesn’t take a genius to anticipate that the wrath of the internet is just going to see this as a sign of Southwest hates fat people, and when perception becomes reality, they become just like all the other airlines in the end.

The point is, Southwest is seemingly giving no more fucks about customers, contrary to the general brand reputation of theirs over the last two decades prior.  They’ve made it crystal clear that they are trying to profit in a competitive market, which is white people speak for, we know we’d probably be fine operating like we had been over the last half century, but we want to make more money now, so we’re going to say fuck the people and just do what everyone else is doing in order to achieve that.

I mean ultimately, that is the goal of every business in the world, to make money, but there are ways to do it and keep integrity and respect of the people intact, but that of course, often comes at a cost in itself, and when a bunch of old white guys run all these corporations, integrity and respect quickly fall to the wayside in pursuit of those extra nickels and dimes.

But it is funny how rapidly Southwest is selling their soul in order to go from successful company to asshole-rich successful company.  A part of me begins to wonder if Southwest isn’t deliberately tanking their company in one of those strange-but-typical modus operandi of businesses slashing expenses in a massive manner through liquidation and layoffs, in anticipation of a company sale or merger, and that Southwest is somewhere in a process of selling the company or getting absorbed by another airline.

And if so, a little more to be poured out for the airline industry, because within the guts of Southwest Airlines exists the remnants of AirTran, the budget airline that did succeed, and that I flew the shit out of, because they accomplished absolutely everything I needed out of an airline at reasonable costs.  Spirit and Frontier never could accomplish the things AirTran did, and AirTran did so well, they got assimilated into Southwest, who like Microsoft or Adobe basically did in so in order to kill a competitor.

Regardless of what happens to Southwest’s business in the future, if there was ever a bigger red flag of how they could become the next Spirit, look no further than the terminal incident out of Orlando, where a Southwest passenger went ballistic, and assaulted a terminal worker, as well as smashed up some monitors.  It’s funny because if this were actually Spirit, the lady would have been tazed and arrested within moments of the first aggression, but it’s like Southwest still has a lot to learn about unruly passengers, and she went unchecked for a while before presumably getting dealt with long after the cameras stopped rolling.

But if Southwest continues down this downward spiral, anticipate way more of this bullshit, and their gates will become the future places to meander to when you have a long wait before your flight after Spirit is gone, with hopes that you might see a street fight or a massive hot mess passenger meltdown.

Dad Brog (#154): It kills me to see kids practicing shooter lockdown drills

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I remember watching this episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America, and getting a good chuckle out of the clowning on America’s obsession with firearms to the point where we should start arming our children as early as possible.  But mostly I always love how no matter how much people in Washington have been aware of Sacha Baron Cohen, known bureaucrats still keep falling into his traps of showing up on his shows and conducting rigged interviews, seemingly somehow oblivious to the fact that they are being made fun of for being, well, white guys.

The other night I was looking through some of the photos that #2’s pre-K posts to a private Facebook group for the parents, and there was a picture of the class huddled in a corner of the room, head down, knees up, tucked as tightly as they could.  All families know that the school does conduct routine fire, safety and lockdown drills, but this was the first time that I’ve actually seen any photo evidence of what was obviously the active shooter lockdown drill, and let me tell you how much it kills my soul to see a bunch of 4-5 year olds having to practice defending their lives.

In one hand, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and to have a modicum of idea of what to do in the event that such a scenario were to come to fruition, but in the other hand, it’s depressing and sad to think that kids have to practice this in the first place, because guns are more available than Nintendo Switch 2’s, and school shootings have now achieved a frequency in which it’s long past being not an if, but when, the next one is going to occur.

Regardless, it all amounts to all schools, of children of all ages, now having to spend a chunk of time periodically simulating what they would do in the event of a real active shooter situation, as if, if one were ever to occur, most people wouldn’t just flat out panic and fall back onto running and hiding as best to protect themselves above anyone else over some protocol.

And seeing a photo of #2’s class all huddled in a corner, as far away from the windows as they can be, set me off.  They’re a bunch of pre-K kids aged 4-5 – yes, jokes aside about how they can be obnoxious brats at times, it would take the sickest of fucks to be going after kids this young and still mostly so innocent to the world.

It just fills me with piss and bile at society that this is even a thing and being a parent it’s a hopeless feeling of having no real power beyond just hoping that your kids don’t ever become the unlucky winners any of the next school shooting sweepstakes.

Cracker Barrel’s rebrand: the question stands

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

USA Today: Cracker Barrel unveils a new logo; the internet is unsurprisingly not impressed

When the day is over, I have no skin in the game of the existence of Cracker Barrel.  Full disclosure, I haven’t been to a Cracker Barrel since I lived on the south side of the city, when they opened a brand new Cracker Barrel not far (relatively) from my old place, and upon going there, all the big wigs and managers and trainers were there, so everyone was on their best behavior and it was actually a decent experience.

But no matter if people hate the new logo or people love it, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it one way or the other, and can only really share opinions and thoughts based on the creative direction of it, as well as relish in some of the less tasteful jokes that the internet is particularly known for generating about anything and everything in existence.

But my first blush impression and my knee-jerk reaction upon seeing the new Cracker Barrel logo was that of unsurprise at the fact that they removed both the man and the barrel, and have homogenized it down to an uninspired shape.  However, I am surprised at the fact that they did manage to keep the general wordmark of the text mostly intact, instead of just typing out “cracker barrel” in a variation of Helvetica Neue or Myriad, like so many companies inevitably do, as if they’re determined to not pay anyone for a font, and are completely at peace with just writing it out in system default fonts.

So it’s kind of a push in the sense that they did murder all the character and uniqueness of the logo by removing both the man and the barrel, as well as the unsymmetrical shape in which the wordmark was housed, but still managed to preserve some sense of character, familiarity and recognition by at least keeping the wordmark mostly the same.

A hexagon with rounded corners isn’t a vanilla rhombus or oval like so many brands have boiled down to in this modern business space, and at least they appear to have kept their primary color intact; however, it appears they’ve cheapened up by swapping out their brown for a black, thus making future production simplified in that they technically only need one additional color outside of black and white.

Honestly, the container looks a little too large for the wordmark, and in the event like creating signage and advertising materials, the general proportion of it compared to the Cracker Barrel name is might end up looking comical, or lead to some comically large signs in order to compensate.

But like I said, when the day is over, I do not care one iota about this rebrand, beyond the obvious joke that was made in the shown screen grab – why DID they get rid of both the cracker and the barrel??  Considering the brand is kind of synonymous for being a white people eatery, not entirely sure why they’d go to the lengths of alienating them by removing paw-paw from the logo, but whatever.  As far a corporate rebrands go, this one is far from the worst, and it’s not going to suddenly make me want to deal with the shitty parking situations enough to want to actually go to a Cracker Barrel again any time soon.

Phelps County probably smells delicious right now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Hill: tractor trailer carrying 40,000 lbs. of ribeye steaks catches fire on I-74 in Missouri

Normally, I don’t bother writing about trucks full of food stuffs catching fire or overturning unless they happen in Georgia, but every now and then there are a few examples that pique my interest to the point where I can turn the clock back and write about truck carnage at the expense of delicious foods.

But headlines talking about a truck full of steaks catching fire got my attention, and specifically the fact that they weren’t just any old run of the mill steaks, but forty thousand pounds of ribeye steaks specifically that caught my attention.

The devil is in the details.

Sure, there is a time and place for every cut of steak, and sometimes I’ve just been in the mood for a good New York strip, sometimes a big ass porterhouse.  Sometimes just the filet is sufficient, if I want to luxuriate in all the other sides and courses.  But for the most part, there’s seldom a time when a good ribeye isn’t a viable option for a steak, and learning of this truck disaster where several tons of ribeye steaks went up in flames definitely got my big back attention.

Naturally, I’m long past the first person to probably make the joke about how delicious I-74 in Missouri must smell at the idea of all this succulent beef going up in flames, but it’s probably not wrong.  The whole region with a multiple mile radius probably smells like an incredible barbecue is going on, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Missouri is that the state knows how to barbecue, apparently even on the physical highways itself.

However, I do have to question the quality of the steaks, if they’re in a parcel of 40,000 lbs of other ribeyes.  I have to imagine that they were probably of the frozen variety to begin with, and probably nowhere near high-end restaurant quality cuts that most people fantasize about when they’re thinking about a good steak.  As I said, the devil is in the details, and I’d be curious to know if these were like Dollar General hockey puck steaks, or if they were closer to like Outback Steakhouse steaks.  That’s the intel that separates a ho-hum run of the mill truck disaster from one that people talk about for years to come.

Either way, congrats to Missouri for having a truck catastrophe that sounded so grand and probably smelled so good, to where it warranted words to be spouted on my little slice of the internet.

Dad Brog (#153): the State of Parenting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I realize that as the passage of time has progressed over the last five years, the frequency in which I’ve written these very dad-centric brog posts have petered off.  As much as how things change, the amount in which I write is one of those things that I don’t want to ever fall into that category, but such can’t necessarily be said about the topics in which I do write about.

However, over the last few weeks, part of my chaotic morning routine includes checking the sheets of both my kids when I wake them up, because this household is now diaper-free, and has been for the better part of the last few months now, and now we’re at the stage of life where they’re going to bed without any safety nets, and bedwetting is very much in play. 

I realize that at one point I probably was planning on making a dad post about the glory about no longer needing diapers at all, but it’s been pretty seamless into feeling relief, mostly financial, at the fact that we don’t have to participate in the escalating cost of diapers and always needing them, but going into night-training where there are periods of time in which we have more wet beds than not in the mornings, and the new aggravation and disappointment of having to do laundry just about every single day has taken its place.

But yeah, we’re trying everything we can at this point to expedite the process, like cutting off water consumption at a certain time, repeatedly taking them to the bathroom before lights out, and even trying to incentivize having as many dry nights as possible to get each kid closer to upgrading to big kids’ beds, to the point where we’ve even taken them to a store to look at beds to give them understanding of what awaits once they get their bedwetting under control.

However, like I said, there are times in which it feels like it’s never going to improve although I know it eventually will.  At the time I’m writing this, both kids are on like a four-day streak in the wrong direction, with sheets being wet every morning, and there’s a part of me that’s debating on whether or not to have the kids go back into overnights although I definitely won’t cave, I’d be lying if I didn’t think it.

Unsolicited parenting tip for those going through a similar journey: dog pads.  Stashed under the fitted sheet primarily where the child sleeps, they’re low profile and effective at preventing any overnight leakage from soaking into the mattress itself.  Costco has the biggest bang for the buck, and if you’re like me, you’re going to need them during this stretch.  Perhaps in the future there will be a dad brog championing the lack of need for these that I’ll never get to.

Otherwise, as mentioned in the dad brog prior to this one, my eldest is now in kindergarten, officially in elementary school.  #2 still has one more year of pre-K to complete before joining her sister, and my wallet will definitely be thrilled to not have to pay the cost of private pre-K, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a truly fantastic school to send my kids to.

But as a dad to a five and four year olds, I have to admit that this is probably one of the hardest stretches of being a parent I’ve felt in a while.  Mostly on account of the fact that my kids are at an age where they’re tapping into their wills, which are extremely strong, and it results in a lot of just not listening, a lot of fighting, and a whole lot of exasperation on my end.

I admit to getting flustered and frustrated more than I want to be, but it’s like asking my kids to do anything is usually like having to ask no less than 13 times, occasionally requiring some sort of bargaining or threatening to leave without them, which results in a separate meltdown, and if I weren’t afraid of losing my hair, I’d be pulling it out on a regular basis.

Bath time, bed time, time to go, time to do anything usually results in a whole lot of defiance if not straight up not listening, and I’m finding myself exasperated pretty much any time I have to try and get my kids to do anything.  Getting them to leave a store, while holding my hands in the parking lot, while trying to steer a shopping cart – by the time I’m in the driver’s seat pulling out, I’m pissed and sweaty and not wanting to speak to my kids, and my kids are upset that I’ve probably had to raise my voice at them because they’re not listening.

And then after bedtime when the dust settles, I think about how much I love my kids and how shitty I feel about having ever gotten exasperated with them.  Their motives aren’t ever malicious or remotely detrimental, it’s usually they just want to explore, experience or spend more time with the family instead of going to bed or getting into the car, or being told what to do, regardless of it’s for safety purposes or not.

Yet when it inevitably happens the following day, and then the day after that, it’s like the cycle that keeps perpetuating itself.  I love my kids more than anything on the planet, but damn if they don’t get on my nerves sometimes, and I can’t help but feel exasperated when they just don’t listen to anything.

I know most everything when it comes to parenting happens in phases and all things that annoy will eventually come to pass eventually, but I’ll be the first to admit that this current juncture of parenting definitely has been patience-testing almost as much as how things were pre-pandemic, pre-au pair, when I was having to do double duty, an inordinate amount of time.

And then I’m sure there will come a point in my life where I’ll look back at miss these young formative years, and try to remember all the good times that came from them as opposed to all of the stuff that I let bother me, and maybe then I’ll write Dad Brog #181 then.

What’s worse: leaving dog poop or leaving dog poop in a bag?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

These are the thoughts that go through my head when I go out for runs.  Because despite the snooty upscale environment my general area pretends like it is, there’s still a lot of white trash behavior underneath the thin skin of it all.  Like people who leave their dog poop, in bags, on the side of walking trails and sidewalks that inevitably never get picked up.  Which got me wondering, the title of this post, what people think is worse between leaving your dog’s poop behind out in the open, or taking the time to pick it up, bag it and then, leaving it behind. 

Saying you’ll come back for it later and most likely not, irrelevant to the query at hand.

And this isn’t even something that’s solely based on a single day’s exploration of the outdoors.  Whenever I’ve hit the Silver Comet Trail, I see bags of poop all over the sides of the trail.  Taking my kids on nature walks and mini-hikes, same deal.  It’s just disheartening to have seen such bullshit behavior now having crept into my own community, where I do my outdoor runs.

This is a case where no answer is right, and no answer is wrong.  Anyone who does absolutely anything other than picking up your dog’s poop, and relocating it into an appropriate receptacle, is frankly a piece of shit and if I were the lord and ruler of the world, this would probably be a three strikes and then the death penalty kind of thing.

Like, people who leave the dog poop are absolute cocksuckers in the sense that the act of them letting their dog poop on someone else’s yard or a public place, and then not picking it up and walking off is a combination of shithead behaviors – negligence, inconsideration, laziness and just plain being a shithead.  Few things get me fired up than finding an errant turd in my yard, because some asshole in my neighborhood was being an asshole, and short of setting up a camera to surveil my yard at all times, I have no idea who it is, no matter how much I want to return the turds to properties of the owners of the dog(s) who left them.

But I actually think people who bag up their dog’s poop but then leave the bags behind, are worse.  Because when they do what they do, they’re not only demonstrating all of the aforementioned shithead behaviors, they’re also adding deceit, lying, delusion and just plain being wrong, in thinking what they’re doing is somehow better than just leaving their dog’s poop out and open.  All topped off with the fact that these cocksuckers+ are making conscientious decisions to bag the poop and then leave the bags behind, where as those who don’t might sometimes actually be able to play negligence because most people who walk their dogs are also phone-addled zombies and may not have noticed a poop, but that’s a different gripe for a different time.

Let’s not even bother deliberating on the whole “I’ll come back for it later” bullshit – I don’t think anyone would believe a single person who claimed that they would come back for them later on the return leg of their walk, and even if there were paragons out there that did such, the world is so full of cocksuckers who don’t that shouldn’t be worth the fact that people are just going to assume you’re a cocksucking liar when you start bagging up your dog’s poop and leave the bag behind, regardless of your intention to, get it later.

At least when a dog turd is left out in the wild, it can and will inevitably break down, decompose, be food for some bugs, and be somewhat of a benefit to nature.  But if it’s left in a bag, maybe the bag itself might be biodegradable, maybe it isn’t, but the point is, the contents of that bag aren’t getting returned to nature any time soon, but the general stinkiness, grossness, and symbolic an asshole left this here message, remain as long as it takes for some superior Samaritan to take the bullet and clean it up.

What it all really boils down to is the fact that if people don’t want to do all the responsibilities that come with dog ownership, they simply shouldn’t have them in the first place.  If I were a dog, and even if my owner gave me steak and chicken tenders, played with me regularly, lavished me with fresh tennis balls, clean beds and all sorts of love and attention, there’d still be a ceiling to how much I could reciprocate my love if I knew that they themselves were still cocksuckers enough to be leaving my poop behind, and worse if it were still bagged up.

So frankly, I think it’s worse to be the assholes who bag the pool and leave it behind, versus those who don’t.  But make no mistake, anyone who does either, if it were up to me, I’d implement the death penalty for all y’all motherfuckers.  It’s not hard at all to bag up a turd to where the smell is minimal, and not so uncomfortable that it can’t be held until proper disposal.

Would you narc on a cop?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Context: when I go running, I run through the parking lot of a closed-down drugstore as my turn around point; over the last year or so, I have noticed that a police vehicle parks their car under the awning of the drive-thru.  This was not an isolated incident, and given the fact that I’m fairly schedule oriented, I have seen this cop parked out here at roughly the same time ranges, and I would go so far as to say that it’s north of a 50% chance that I’ll see the car whenever I go for a run.  And like I said “year,” this has been the case for the better part of the span of the last year.

One time, I saw the office sitting with his door open trimming a cigar, so it’s clear that the cop isn’t just hiding out to kill time or take a breather, but to be giving himself a little daily vacation on company time, fairly regularly.  The fact that I’ve run past numerous butts and remnants of cigars in the lot indicates that this probably happens more than he wants people to be aware of.

Now before I continue, I don’t know definitively that it is the same officer that’s doing this on the regular, but I do definitively know that it’s the same vehicle I’m seeing every single time.  I’m not in law enforcement so I don’t know if every officer has their own vehicle, or if they have to share with others, but if it is the former, then it leads to believe that it’s the same cop who’s loafing on company time on the regular.

Anyway, on this particular morning where I’ve decided to finally pose this question, I had the opportunity to get out and run early, and I decided to capitalize, because fewer things bring me joy like getting to knock out certain self-imposed daily tasks like Duolingo and exercise, so I was out of the house and running by like 9 am, before I would log into work on my weekly remote day.

Typically, whenever I see the lazy cop car, it’s at around 12-1 pm, when I’m either taking a lunch break when I’m working remotely, or the kids are in their rooms for quiet time, and I have the opportunity to get out and run.  And like I mentioned earlier, the rate in which I see the cop car when I run is pretty high, and frankly I’m at the point where I’m more surprised when I don’t see them.

However on this morning when I’m approaching my turning point at around 9:15-ish, the thought crossed my mind on whether or not I’d see the lazy cop car, seeing as how it’s nearly three hours earlier than I normally run.  But sure as the sun rises, there was the cop car, same five-digit vehicle number on the rear hatch as I’ve grown to recognize.  Door was ajar, legs sticking out of the driver’s seat, human being very much present and alive.

And this is where I began to ponder, if this guy is here at 9:15 am and often seen at 12-1 pm, is this cop just parking here and hanging out for his entire shift?  Is he coming and going at intermittent intervals?  Did I just happen to catch him completely coincidentally at an odd time?  Is this cop really that much of a lazy pig, completely complacent by the sheer lack of job accountability?

Which brings us back to the original query of this entire post – would you narc on a cop?

Full disclosure, I don’t hate the police.  I know I identify more as leaning liberally, but I don’t hate the police.  A few bad cops don’t paint the whole picture of the entire occupation of law enforcement, and sure I think that there are some places in the country where the police have too much funding and it could be scale back some, but by and large, I support law enforcement, and want to give benefit of the doubt that most cops are good cops.

But like I said, I’m writing all this after nearly a year’s worth of observations of what appears to be a singular cop taking way too many liberties with his job, and I’m curious to know on whether you, my non-existent reader, would narc on them or not.

And by narc, I’m thinking of taking pictures and putting up on social media and tagging the agency in which the officer works for, and pointing the finger, because most everyone probably knows that cops do have a culture or protecting each other, and I don’t imagine a phone call to a precinct would result in anything more than a good laugh from those on the inside, as well as a marking on the source, as, an enemy to law enforcement, for daring to take action against a cop.

Not like putting them on blast on social media wouldn’t result in the same risk of retaliation, but at least the intel would be made immediately public, and put the officer in question as well as the agency they work for in self-defense mode first, and muddy up the waters on how they’d be able to retaliate without there being any scrutiny.

And it sucks that this is where we the people are with law enforcement, where it definitively feels like engaging in a manner that is accusing the police would result in some form of retaliation, because I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that law enforcement has the resources necessary to trace an image, a post or a be able to scrape metadata better than most armchair sleuths and pretty efficiently be able to identify those who act against them regardless of how warranted it might be.

But anyway, no matter how much it irks me to see a sworn officer of the law behaving in a manner that’s anything but a respectable police officer, I’m not doing anything.  I try to operate my general life as low-key and devoid of any legal scrutiny as possible, and I’d rather there not be a note next to my identification that I’m some opponent to the police that deserves the book at the slightest infraction should there ever be a time, and I don’t want to increase the risk of that ever happening.

That’s just me though; would you?