Tag: wtf

Imagine how much it sucks being Asian and living in this high school zone

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC NY: high school in Long Island has 21 valedictorians

When I came across this story, the very first thing I noticed was the supporting image of the 21 kids all slated to be valedictorians of Jericho High School’s 2026 graduation class, was the obvious fact that there wasn’t a single, non-Asian continent face among them

I phrase my terminology deliberately because they’re not all just East Asians, but some that are from Central Asian countries, but the point is that it’s low hanging fruit to solely point out the obvious notion that when it comes to tryharding, nobody does it better than those from Asia. 

But then I thought to myself, man, how much does it suck to live in the Jericho High school zone; from the students’ perspective, it’s like no matter how good you think you were, there were 21 uber-achievers who never for a second let their foot off the gas since starting high school, and purportedly all somehow managed to get nearly identical perfect marks throughout their HS careers.

Among the 21 valedictorians, there’s got to be a tremendous amount of angst, jealousy, frustration and general animosity that none of them would admit to, but probably feels, on account of the fact that they worked their asses off for four years, and not only were they denied the honor of being the sole valedictorian, but gave to share it with not just one or two other achievers, but twenty other motherfuckers who tryharded just as much as they did.

And of course, let’s not forget the parents of these 21 tryhards, all of them being of various Asian descents, all of them wanting to be able to brag and micro-aggress to their peers and relatives over the intelligence and success of their kids, and being completely unable to, because thanks to the news and stories like this, most are probably innately aware that their outstanding child is nothing special because twenty other tryhards matched them in their abilities to tryhard.

All the same, I feel like I have to call bullshit on this whole thing. I have a hard time believing that 21 kids all got the exact same grade, and I feel like even if they did, there should’ve been all sorts of tiebreakers in place to weed out one true deserving valedictorian instead of crowning 21 nerds with participation trophies.

Like maybe the bar is lower than suspected, but there’s no way 21 kids all got like 97.83% on their aggregate grades, and even if they did, surely some of them had to have various extracurriculars and affiliations that would make them stand out among their academic peers.  Like if Johnny Tran and Vindaloo Nagrani both had exact grades, but Tran was a part of two clubs while  Nagrani wasn’t, then it’s an easy tie breaker in my opinion there.

No way everyone had identical qualifications to that granularity, and I feel like naming 21 kids all as valedictorians is a lazy and diluted honor, and none of these kids should really feel special because if they’re all valedictorians, then nobody is.

It makes me think of the episode of Saved by the Bell, where Jessie Spano thought she was a shoe-in for valedictorian but it turned out that Screech actually had a few decimal points on her, and until he ceded the role to her, he was the de facto valedictorian. Of course, the episode ends with somehow hidden genius Zack Morris speaking at the podium because of course he did but the point remains that when it comes to selecting a valedictorian, it really is serious business to the very end.

But speaking of these 21 kids, talk about how disappointing of a life it must have been, work hard, all gas no brakes, only to be lumped in with a bunch of others.  21 kids all living lives generally forfeit of high school hijinx, social lives, and being general teenagers, only to be stonewalled at the finish line because there were a bunch of others doing the exact same thing.

Makes me think of that film Booksmart, where the main girl who ends up valedictorian after basically living her life like these 21 tryhard kids, discovers that some of the other students in her class that are among the biggest slackers and underachievers, also managed to get into Stanford, Yale or got immediate jobs with Google, without the need to give up their lives entirely to get there.

Like I said earlier, they may all be buddy-buddy for the sake of the story, but there’s no way some of them aren’t harboring some deep seeded hater vibes for their fellow valedictorians, because one or two co-‘s would be understandable and plausible, but 21 is just pure bullshit coddling.

So dismissive, kind of callous, I can’t help but respect it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my birthday this year was basically borked on account of being endlessly sick throughout the entire month of April, I didn’t really celebrate at all.  I actually still have some gifts that I haven’t even opened, yet, because I’ve been in such a dour plcae over the last few weeks, I want to make sure that I’m in a positive headspace before opening anything that’s meant to be a pick-me-up, and I really don’t think I’ve gotten to that point just yet.

Either way, this is something that I’ve wanted to write about but just didn’t get a chance to and it kept getting pushed back in the queue of things that pique my interest or inspire words to formulate, but I noticed something in the soulless, mostly obligated birthday card that I received from my colleagues at work.

Among the generic and canned-corn hand written messages from my colleagues, I noticed that one person signed via a rubber stamp that simply said “Happy Birthday -Michael”

My brow furrowed, and numerous emotions went through my head at seeing such.  The fact that Michael had a rubber stamp created with the most generic of greetings, was such a sign of dismissal, a lack of genuine care, and an acknowledgment that office colleague birthday cards really are tedious, forced and things that we as people really don’t care about, but feel obligated to participate, for optics.

However, at the same time, I found it to be absolutely hilarious that Michael here had the wherewithal to understand that office colleague cards really are tedious, forced and things we don’t care about, that he created a solution that absolved him of even the littlest of thought necessary to hand write a generic greeting.

Responses from people in my circles whom I shared this with were varied, from wooooowww, to laughing, and if anything at all like me, kind of in admiration for Michael for having such a brilliant idea to have a dismissive and informal stamp to just slap on a soulless Happy Birthday greeting, which includes his name on it, so that everyone who sees it, can see, that Michael feels all of the above.

All the same, regardless of how anyone feels about it, it elicited enough of a reaction from me to where I felt inspired to write about it.  And frankly, that in itself is a gift that’s invaluable, at least to me, and Michael has no idea he accomplished such. 

I kind of want my own generic greeting rubber stamp now.

I clearly give off a fuck off aura

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, there was an all-hands meeting at work.  I went down to the conference room early so that I could have my choice of seat, and I chose this chair next to wall, but in the front row so it looked like I wasn’t a complete degenerate, planning on dicking around on my phone throughout the entire meeting.  After all, appearance is everything, so I’m often told professionally.

As the clock ticked closer to the start of the meeting, and seats began filling up, the seat immediately next to mine remained unclaimed, regardless of how full up the room was getting.  By the time the meeting started, there were at least 10-15 people who were standing against a wall, while the seat right next to me remained vacant.

In fact, not only was the seat next to me vacant, the two seats immediately behind me were also empty, creating this perfect three-seat halo around me of empty seats.  Had this happened on an airplane, I’d be over the moon, because that’s like the broke boy first class, getting a bunch of seats around you left open.

However, this was not an airplane, but a conference room where everyone had free choice on where they wanted to occupy for the duration of the next hour, the fact remained that three open chairs immediately surrounding me remained open, with numerous people preferring to remain standing, as opposed to sitting near me.

The low-hanging fruit is that I clearly must smell bad, or emanate an odor that is unsavory to people I do not know, but among my friends and those people who actually take the time to get to know me, most have no problem sitting in close proximity to me, so I’m (hopefully) able to take the stinky hypothesis off the table.

So the only logical conclusion at this point is that I have fuck-off aura, that is as potent and overpowering as an anime or video game character, at compelling people to stay the fuck away from me.  Not that I necessarily mind the space that people give me, it gets to the point where I begin to ponder about the appearance of everyone fucking-off from me, and unfortunately perception is reality, and it probably does me little good to look like a person that everyone else wants to stay away from.

I do not apologize or feel the need to disclaim that I have the male equivalent of resting bitch face, and that I look pissed off as my neutral state of existence.  There are times in which such is the case, but even when I feel as if I’m having a good day, I understand that the expression on my face is that of experiencing the absolutely shitty state of transportation in Santorini, Greece.  But people, including my own mother and mythical wife, often implore me to fake it and smile every now and then, which isn’t necessarily bad advice, but faking it, and faking a less miserable expression is tiring and requires more effort and fucks than I’m willing to give, especially in this day and age.

This was not an isolated incident as well.  I have all sorts of memories in my life where relative strangers typically have demonstrated a noticeable aversion to sitting near me, and this isn’t even the only incident off the top of my head in my own office.

There was once a team meeting, that was especially packed on this particular day, and every single seat was taken, except for the one right next to me.  I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the notion that even within my own team, my fuck-off aura struck again, and the only seat to remain empty was the one next to me, and this was among a lot of company who kind of knew me, as we were in the same department.

And to add insult to injury, one of the few people in my company that I am not particularly fond of, they meandered into the meeting late, as is customary for the narcissistic asshole they are, but they did a quick scan of the room to look for a seat, and they put themselves into a situation where they were seen scanning, which meant that they had to take something if it were available, and so I had to end up sitting next to my least favorite colleague for the next 40 minutes, all because my fuck-off aura put us into this scenario.

Like I said, incidents like this have happened numerous times in my life, but it just so happens that it happened to a degree where I finally had the motivation to actually sit down and write about it.  And also like I said, I refuse to apologize and ask for forgiveness for looking mean and scary, and if people are unwilling to put their biases aside, then they really can go fuck off.

eBay has the chance to do the funniest, probably most satisfying, thing in the world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Engadget: GameStop reportedly trying to purchase eBay, with reports of offer being $56 billion dollars

I’m not going to pretend like I have any modicum of care of what’s really going on with this whole story, except that I think it’s really weird that a general small coffer company like GameStop is in any position to acquire a much larger company like eBay, but I think most of the world has seen stranger things and about as improbable takeovers in history.

But as the subject of this post says, I think eBay has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, and that’s telling GameStop that their $56B offer, has not met the reserve.

It would be satisfying to probably everyone remotely following this story, because I feel like every gamer in the history of existence has probably been fucked over or at least been insultingly low-ball offered by GameStop, and it would probably bring great joy to see eBay, much less any large conglomerate, basically tell GameStop something they’ve been telling their customers for decades.

Seriously though, how the fuck does GameStop have the gall to offer to buy eBay?  Their company is valued at like $9-11B, and where the fuck are they getting the extra $45B+ needed for their offer?  Store credit??

When the day is over, I really don’t give a fuck what happens with this.  I don’t shop at GameStop, and my eBay usage is pretty minimal, beyond impulsive niche purposes; however, I have recently learned about the CIB retro game market, and I’ve come across some clean and potentially lucrative games with boxes in my old belongings, and it would suck if a GameStop-ified eBay comes to fruition and manages to fuck up my potential earning.

All the more reason why I hope eBay tells GameStop to fuck on outta here with their offer.

I’ve never had an April that has sucked more than this year’s has

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even in the most curmudgeon periods of my life, I’ve always kind of held my breath and walked on eggshells whenever it’s come to the month of April.  Seeing as how it’s the month in which my birthday is, I’m always cautiously optimistic that they can’t possibly suck that much, seeing as how there’s a very concrete day in which the world is obligated to not be too much of a dick to me on, and I always hope that the grace of a birthday has a tendency to permeate through as much of the rest of the month as the fates are willing to grace.

Sure, I’ve had some shitty things happen in Aprils before, and history has shown a predisposition for some real bad shit to usually happen around the time of my birthday, but save for large swaths of the world crying, memorializing or mourning the departed, most of the time I can usually rely on my birthdays themselves to not be the worst days in the world.

Throw all that shit out the window this year, because not only was a really fucking sick on my birthday this year, it’s not a far stretch to say that I’ve basically been sick all throughout the month, and the fact that I can’t seem to get back to being 100% healthy has been mentally challenging, frustrating and demoralizing, especially since I feel like I could handle or have handled a lot of the frustrations of the month better than I have, had I had my health to rely upon to be in good standing through it all.

It’s like, #2 and I caught a cold of some sort early on in the month, that I remember taking almost an entire week off from the office and worked remote, and I kind of got better.  But it’s like neither of us truly got fully recovered from that sickness, and by the time I hobbled back home after my week of exile back up in Northern Virginia to clean up my old joint, both my kids had ear infections, and within a week, such had passed onto me, leading to me spending my actual birthday in a lot of pain and misery of having an ear infection that went undiagnosed by the first urgent care I went to because they suck, leading to me to suffer throughout it for several days afterward before I went to get a second opinion, and confirmation that I had some shit going on.

I’ve never had an ear infection in my life before, so let me just say how much it sucks to get one for the first time.  The feeling of a swollen or burst ear drum, the constant throbbing and being able to hear my heartbeat, the sensation that it’s like I permanently have an AirPod in the ear with noise cancellation on, because I’m hard of hearing through it.  And before I got put on antibiotics, the main was just so dull and persistent, and was absolutely handicapping when I wasn’t on some sort of painkillers.

Furthermore, ear infections are usually byproduct of bad colds, and it’s like I’ve had this one, or maybe two colds all month long, and although I mostly feel fine, it’s one of those bugs where it’s left a Chinese Great Wall of mucus in my chest and sinuses, that is taking its dear sweet fucking time in going away, resulting in a lot of aggravated coughing spells, which is wreaking havoc on my sleep and my wife’s sleep, and I haven’t felt like I’ve gotten adequate sleep almost throughout the entire month.  It’s been like an entire decade since I’ve had this kind of phlegmy misery, because I remember how much is sucked back then, and how much it sucks to have it again now.

The bottom line is that I just can’t seem to get healthy, and it sucks that basically the entire month of April has come and gone with me being sick throughout most of it.  And to add insult to injury, there’s been all sorts of bullshit happenings between my dad, the workload at work, my dad, all of the shit I have to do for my dad, the disappointment of trying to accomplish things but relying on the responses and communication of others, and of course, my dad.

As is often the case, I feel as if I’m being pulled from all sides from everyone in my life, leading me to grow frustrated and wish people would just take the reins and run without having to review everything with me first, and that I’m taken for granted on such a monumental level by pretty much everyone in my life.

And because as much as I’d like to memorialize these folks with individual posts but don’t really feel like I have the energy to do it in remotely a time-sensitive manner, some dudes I enjoyed or revered kicked the bucket this month, just to hammer down the notion that April this year sucked goat ball sacks.  But Darrell Sheets from Storage Wars apparently killed himself, with there being tremendous speculation that it came at the urging of a psychotic online bully stalker.

And although there wasn’t as much scandal behind a 91-year old man with dementia passing, Roger Sweet, the creator of He-Man passed as well, and this is one of those situations where there’s no hyperbole when I say a piece of my childhood just died, because I lived, died and breathed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe growing up, and it is truly sad to learn that that creator of such an iconic property of my childhood has left us.

Needless to say, this April has sucked colossally, and I’m relieved to see it nearing its end.  I try to not put too much stock into arbitrary windows of time, because there’s no guarantee May will be better than April for no other reason than it not being April anymore, but this past month has sucked so much that I’m willing to set my pessimism aside for just a little bit and hope that May doesn’t blow half as much as April of this year has.

More than anything, I just want my health back, and for my ear to stop ringing and to be able to hear like a normal functional adult again.  I feel like if I’m at least physically healthy, it will only help in enduring any other bullshit that might come along and is immediately made worse by my not feeling well.

I still want a re-do on my birthday though.  I haven’t opened any of the gifts I received yet, because I’ve been in such a negative headspace, that I don’t want the good intentions of any presents to be soiled by my negative headspace.

The poor Chick Fil-A recruiting class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, there was a Chick Fil-A that then-mythical gf and I went to pretty regularly.  There was a guy that managed the place, who we called Sam; whether that was actually his name or not is irrelevant at this point, but Sam was one of those guys that had an explosively bubbly personality, was always smiling, always happy, and clearly had an 11 on his attribute slider when it came to people skills.

One time, he saw us in the drive-thru line and addressed the two of us by name, and after we had left, we had one of those collective moments that both found it a little weird that he clearly learned, us, and that we probably come by too often, to where it’s gotten to this point.

All the same, as slightly uncomfortable as it felt to be learned by Sam, there was no mistaking the fact that he ran a really tight ship, and this particular location was always firing on all cylinders.  The line moved fast, orders were almost never inaccurate, and the place had to be among the leaders or the region in terms of profit and satisfaction.

Any time mythical wife and I come across any sort of business, whether it’s another Chick Fil-A or not, where the customer service and general quality of employee performance seems below par, we often remark about how this place could use a Sam.  He’s basically become the measuring stick of effective leadership, regardless of it it’s in the fast food space or not.

Anyway, I’ve made no secret of my general love of the Chick Fil-A app, and locations that utilize an app-only lane.  The app is one of the greatest apps in the history of mobile application development, and I love how it gives me access to the app-only lanes of certain CFA locations, because fewer things in the world tickles my fancy than checking in with the app, and then bypassing at least five cars, slowly ordering and waiting in the pleeb line, multiplied only by how fast I get my food and am on my way versus how many cars are still waiting in pleeb class.

One of the greatest days of my fat guy life was when the CFA location that my house frequents the most, underwent renovations in order to implement a dedicated app lane.  Sure, when they re-opened, there were some growing pains and some training needing to be done by the restaurant and to the idiot customers, but eventually we got to a point where it became business as usual; I could whiz into the app lane, check in, pass by 3-7 pleebs in the old people manual ordering line, and be on my merry way.

However, over the course of the last contemporary school year, it has been noticed how ineffective the local CFA has become.  Long waits, frequency of inaccuracies rising.  It didn’t matter if I were using the app or not, the kitchen would get backed up and overwhelmed from what seemed like fairly predictable and busy periods that should be relatively easy to anticipate.  The app lane did very little to change things, and the gleeful text messages I’d send mythical wife of how many cars I passed in the pleeb lane were often replaced by frustrated texts detailing how long I’ve been waiting, and how generally annoyed I was feeling from this experience.

The coup de grace was when I was coming to pick up some food from the CFA, and I noticed that although the drive-thru still began with two lanes, with one of them being solely for app users, prior to reaching the pickup point, the lanes forcibly merge.  And in some cases, in a twist of irony, by the sheer nature of zipper merges, occasional pleebs who ordered with sticks, nuts and pebbles get to jump in front of the savvier app users, and conversely, few things annoy me as much as that.

Naturally, when inane bullshit like this begins to go tits up, I often ponder, how?  I began to think about how the whole school year, performance has been relatively on the lower-tier of output, and I concluded with the notion that my local CFA just simply had, a bad recruiting class. 

Much like in the same vein of when a college has a poor recruiting class, resulting in poor performance throughout the season, and an eventual sense of wanting this to be over with so that they can possibly retool and rebuild for the following year.

I suppose the people in my community and I have been taking for granted the general strong yearly performance of our local CFA, seeing as how when it’s actually bad, it’s really noticeable, but it’s still disheartening that they seem to operate much like a college program, where if you’re bogged down with marginal talent, you’re stuck with it until they all graduate out, and hopefully a more talented class takes their places afterward.

But make no mistake, the problems at my local CFA definitely stem from the fact that they had a very poor recruiting class for the 25-26 season, that can’t handle the kitchen, which in turns taxes the runners, which in turn slows down the drive thru lines, which unfortunately results in the deactivation of the app-only line in order to drop the general speed to something that the kitchen is capable of handling.

All I’m saying is, if Sam were in charge of this CFA location, none of this bullshit would even be a part of the discussion.

Every business out there, regardless of if it’s a Chick Fil-A or not, could only benefit from having a Sam of their own.

Why do people like Twizzlers?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honest question.  Mythical wife bought this huge fucking sack of them, and they’re sitting on the kitchen counter.  The kids want them every time they see them, and much like a lot of the junk food that mythical wife buys, she barely eats it, so either I eat more of it than I should, the kids eat more of it then they should, or it ultimately gets thrown out.

Needless to say, I’ve had like two ropes of the crap, and each time I take a bite, I ask myself, why do people like Twizzlers?  They’re basically barely edible plastic, hardly have any flavor, and I feel that they’re more effort to eat than they are to enjoy, as if anyone could actually enjoy these shitty things that feel like you’re biting into a candle, with about as much flavor.  I imagine that they’re like the human equivalent of Greenies treats for dogs, because they look like plastic, are minimally edible, and when they break down in your mouth, I imagine the effect is the same, where they passively scrape and inadvertently clean your teeth.

In all fairness, I’m talking about the traditional twists variants, because I’ve found that the pull ‘n peel Twizzlers are actually enjoyable and tasty, but as far as brand recognition goes, it’s all about the traditional twists.  And the question remains, why the fuck do people actually like these things?

As I said, the bag has been laying, mostly open, on my kitchen counter.  Usually, I try to be cognizant of any food that’s left out on the counter, because once everyone goes to bed at night, the cats in my house definitely like to get up onto the counters to snoop around and look for anything remotely edible.  And yet night after night, the Twizzlers remain completely untouched by the cats.  Just a day ago, an errant bag of cereal that was left on the counter fell victim to the fucking cats, and I found it on the ground the following morning, with it shredded open in the middle like it had been caught by velociraptors.

So the dumbass cats in my house won’t eat these shitty Twizzlers, but my wife argues with me that they’re remotely supposed to be good.  I do not understand how any people think these are remotely as good as to warrant their continued survival in the junk food space.

Make it make sense pls