Tag: owned

Viral is mixing shit in a rotisserie chicken bag and making it look like vomit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I mean I don’t know much more succinct I can be about what this post is about.  Perhaps because I like food so much, for whatever reason, the algorithm has seen fit to keep feeding me all these variants of these idiot influencers who are all trying the supposed viral Costco rotisserie chicken bag ‘hack,’ where they chop up a chicken and mix a whole lot of things inside the chicken’s bag itself and call it any form of a palatable meal.

The idea of some of the concoctions seem like they could be good, but the fact that a lot of these dumbasses are insistent and execute them within the confines of a plastic bag, there’s no avoiding that the end result of every single recipe and variant makes it look like people are vomiting into these bags and squirting sriracha and/or kewpie mayonnaise onto them and imbibing on them and overselling how good they are, as if they’re eating Five Guys for the very first time in their life.

Back in my day, doing what these kids are doing now and calling it viral, of mixing a bunch of shit in a bag and eating it straight from there, would be called along the lines of prison food, or walking tacos, with the general perception that comes along with names like those attached to them.  But because the internet continues to make people dumber than they were a day prior, we have a thousand variants of people trying to do this and pyramid piggybacking on a bad idea, for the sake of some cheap views.

The bottom line is that I haven’t seen a single version of this so-called viral rotisserie chicken bag trend that looks remotely appetizing.  Sure, I know taste and satisfaction is supremely more important than aesthetics, but there’s still a minimum viable appearance necessary to make the eater not believe that they’re eating vomit straight out of a bag.

I know I’m occasionally susceptible to wanting to try out a trend, but as far as the viral Costco rotisserie chicken bag ‘hack,’ yeah no, I think I’m good on not wanting to eat food that looks like it’s passed through a digestive track before ending back up inside a bag.

The irony of remote work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At the time I’m writing this, pretty much all schools in the Metro Atlanta area have been declared closed on Monday, on account of the arrival of Icepocalypse.  Mythical wife and the girls are excited because it’s now turned into at least a three-day weekend, and therefore will get to spend another day in jammies and not having to leave the house.

However, as for myself, despite the fact that the my office building may be or may not be closed, the fact of the matter is that I will still have to work, because, I can.  Remote work has given everyone the ability to work outside of the workplace, but that also means that all of us capable of remote work are no longer capable of using inclimate weather as an excuse to not come into the office, and thus have a bonus day off, like everyone else in my house can.

I remember like a decade ago when Snowpocalypse ravaged Atlanta with its one inch of city-crippling, debilitating snow, I got like an entire week of work off because of it.  One, because I worked for the government, and government needs absolutely no excuse at all to shut the fuck down and not work, but two, because work then was done solely in the office, and if the office is close and incapable of being gotten to, then there’s no work to do.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 revealing to the world that just about everyone is capable of working remotely was somewhat of a blessing.  Without such, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly the bonus time that I did have to raise my kids at their earliest stages, and I wouldn’t have been able to be nearly as flexible in my job performances without the ability to work from home. 

But in a rare ironic sense, WFH also sucks in the sense that in the onset of shitty winter weather, I won’t be able to phone it in and get a bonus day off like those in particular fields will be getting for at least one or more days, because I’ll simply be able to log in and do my work from afar.

I wouldn’t trade it in for full in-office work for a second, but it’s something to brog about, how ironic it is of one fairly unintentional drawback to remote work.

White people can’t admit that kimchi is just good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Inquirer: US government includes kimchi to America’s list of gut health-friendly foods

Seeing as how I’m the only person in my household that actually likes and eats kimchi, sometimes it’s a struggle to eat all the kimchi in the amounts that they’re sold in.  For most of my life, kimchi was a dish served solely with Korean foods, rices, stews, bbq or anything that would constitute as a ‘Korean meal.’

But one day, I had this idea of just adding some of this aging kimchi to a sandwich.  I didn’t have any mustard, I was out of pepperjack cheese, and my house is generally pretty sparse when it comes to condiments, and turkey, I saw this great meme about how it’s the meat that is the equivalent of a human being who doesn’t drink enough water even though they know they should, and I had this idea of adding kimchi to my sandwich to help elevate a mundane turkey sandwich.

I felt like I had just invented fire, based on the sheer life that it had injected into my entrée.  And then I had one of those moments where I had to stop what I was doing and process the door I had just unlocked and opened up, realizing that I could add kimchi to a whole new world of foods out there to try and enhance them.

Kimchi in sandwiches.  Kimchi in curries.  Kimchi in very specific tacos.  Kimchi on burgers, hot dogs.  Kimchi as a side to steak or chops or fried chicken.  Kimchi no longer needed to be restricted to accompanying solely Korean food, it was a revelation that I had way too late in my life.

The point is, kimchi is a wonderful food, and it’s cringeworthingly bittersweet that the United States government is recognizing it on a federal level.  And it’s clear that it’s a very white people tactic of trying to push kimchi to the American people, by instead of just letting people come to their own conclusions about the food, they wrap it in a cornucopia of science in declaring it a gut health food, so that people might eat it out of health conscientious instead of branching out their tastebuds into food other than chicken tenders or bougie doughnuts.

All the scientific jargon seems legit to me, but aside from it all, kimchi is just a food that tastes great.  And the thing is, like most of the Korean language, the term kimchi is so broad and subjective, and encapsulates a lot varieties other than the napa cabbage version that whitey is probably thinking is the only form of kimchi that exists.

Whatever though, as critical as I may be by the tactic, I always do like when Korean things get recognized on a more global scale.  Except if through its exposure, it causes all of the greedy merchants of the world to see justification to raise their prices and make it less economical for me to get my motherland’s staple.

I guess OnlyFans wasn’t as lucrative as she had hoped

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lot of turnover in the professional wrestling industry.  Budget cuts on account of oversaturation, poor television ratings, general societal changes where the industry just isn’t as hot as it once was, etcetera, etcetera.  However, I have this belief in wrestling that even if a talent is released, they are always one idea and a phone call away from being brought back into the business.  Over the years, we the fans have witnessed such revivals countless times, and as long as a released talent doesn’t go out of their way to scorch earth and set fire to any bridges they used, there’s always the possibility that they will be back, and hopefully to more success in the future.

Well, when the WWE released Cora Jade, she didn’t take it particularly well.  From the moment she was released, she was up on social media taking shots at the company, vaguebooking over some of the colleagues and personnel she wasn’t a fan of, and after the initial shock and resentment period that most people whom might have been fired from their jobs might harbor, Cora Jade didn’t really stop.  Seemingly at times, she would go out of her way, or inject herself into debates and discussions about the business in order to keep taking digs at the WWE, and how she didn’t need them, and how her future endeavors would definitely be more lucrative or make her more famous and in demand than if she had remained a WWE superstar.

Needless to say, it’s apparent that nobody in her personal life had ever told her the importance of not burning bridges, and that there is definitely a time and place for popping off, but it’s really generally not wise most of the time.

Regardless, with her bridge particularly singed, she embarked on an endeavor that would mostly ensure her being able to generate income utilizing one of her more prominent wrestling attributes: her body, and starting up an OnlyFans account.

Of course, she went way out of her way to put over OnlyFans while still taking digs at the WWE, as if she were trying to convince herself on top of all of her social followers that OnlyFans wasn’t something to be ashamed about.  Unsurprisingly, she seemed to be shot out of a cannon when she started, because of course she was quick to boast about her earnings by making a post about the luxury car that she was now capable of affording.

I mean, Toni Storm and Jordynne Grace both made gobs of money when they were on the platform, however, neither of them were shitting on the business while they were doing it, they were just capitalizing on a money-making venture while they awaited their next opportunity, which inevitably came, since the two of them were way better wrestlers than Cora Jade was, and they actually had something to offer their respective companies.

So honestly, it was a little surprising to see Cora Jade emerge back in TNA, under her old name, Elayna Black.  She had made such a big deal about how much she was over the professional wrestling industry, that even if she really didn’t want to step away, many in the business might be turned off by her general lack of appreciation for the industry, but here we are anyway.

The funny thing is that over the last few months before the return of Black, I actually hadn’t heard much from her, as far as the algorithm went at feeding me content.  And considering that she came crawling back to the industry that she said she didn’t need anymore, it leads me to believe that perhaps the OnlyFans train wasn’t doing as well as she had thought it was going to do, and that perhaps it might not be a bad idea to remain in the pro-wrestling space.

Either way, it must kind of suck to be Elayna Black/Cora Jade.  She had a great big Gen-Z crashout after she lost her job, and made herself look like an idiot with all of her bridge burning on social media.  Relegated herself to selling risque pictures of herself to creeps, but when that well seemingly began to dry up, she came crawling back to the business she had spent the last year trying to bury.

Owned.

Xaivian Lee’s parents must be so disappointed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: Xaivian Lee’s late three-pointer secure’s Florida’s upset against #10 Vanderbilt

In other news, I learned of Xaivian Lee’s existence and upon a cursory fact check, yes he is Korean.  Which means that there is a Korean hooper out there outside of Korea, that is actively playing for a North American D-I program.

Color me surprised and fascinated.

Granted, according to his wiki, boy is from Toronto, and is about as white-washed as I am, especially based on the fact that his name is “Xaivian,” and based on his general physical appearance and the fact that he cleared 6’0, I’d really be curious to what his 23 and Me looks like, but for all intents and purposes, he’s of enough Korean descent for this post to manifest.

My knee-jerk reaction to seeing that he had transferred out of Princeton to go to UF was that his parents must have been apoplectic at the notion of him leaving an Ivy to go to an SEC school, but I saw that he was at Princeton for four years, which leads to the assumption that he had to have graduated, which is the absolute bare minimum of acceptance for Korean parents.  I’d guess that they let him chase his dream of moar hooping contingent of graduation from an Ivy League school although they probably would have preferred if he went to Harvard or Yale instead of Princeton.

Initially, I was ready to make all the bad jokes in the world about own disappointed his parents must’ve been that he went from Princeton to Florida.  But the more I read and learn about his general bio, the more my thoughts and opinions alter, since I’m kind of writing this off the cuff and learning while I write as opposed to doing my research in advance and coming up with a general basis before writing out.

Seeing as how ol’ Xaivian finished his time at Princeton, and his numbers scream out, nowhere close to good enough for the NBA much less should he even want to go considering the absolute racist gate he would be inevitable to slam into, he’s a perfect case for the college player to bilk as much eligibility and NIL money as humanly possible, and a move to UF was probably a great idea. 

And therein lies some of the effects of the NIL pendulum swung so hard to the opposite end of the spectrum, where fringe and no-chance-at-pro caliber players are clinging to dear life at college eligibility and are looking like a bunch of Van Wilders staying at school at 24+ years of age.  But for every Asian athlete that literally has no shot at North American pros, there are probably like 3-4 non-Asians who might be, but know they can still bilk more from NIL versus being a practice squad or development prospect at the pro level, and these guys can eat dicks and gtfo out of the NCAA.

I saw some shit recently about how there were like over 3,000 players currently in the transfer portal currently; that’s almost like 60-70 entire teams’ worth of players.  This is what’s making college sports so crazy right now, is that the entire collegiate level is jam packed full of all these kids bouncing around all over the place trying to sniff out as much NIL money as they can.  And among them are all these 23+ year old graduates enrolling in patsy graduate programs in order to keep playing college sports against other Van Wilders or literal teenagers.

But I’m straying off topic here, the point of this post was to acknowledge the existence of Xaivian Lee, an actual Korean hooper playing for a noteworthy NCAA program, and being good enough to be hitting game winning threes and getting a little bit of spotlight from North American sport media.  He may have already graduated from Princeton and is doing a little bit of Van Wilder-ing because he knows he has no shot at the NBA, but there’s no doubt in my mind that his parents are probably still disappointed in him, even if he is pulling in a million bucks in NIL.  They probably think he could’ve already been making four times that had he traded up to Harvard or Yale and become a doctor or lawyer instead.

A microcosm of what’s wrong with the airline industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.  I’m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn’t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn’t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story™.

I don’t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.  Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.  Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment’s notice.  Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it’s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it’s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people greed.

The gate I’m sitting in is relatively deserted.  Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.  The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.  If I were still doing the standby thing, I’d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.

That said, there’s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.  There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.  I’d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.

I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I’d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.

A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.  My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that’s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol’ Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn’t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they’ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can’t afford in order to travel, they’re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.

I know that I’m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.  I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000’s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.

Ed doesn’t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they’re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.

And then Ed’s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that’s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.  There’s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.

This guy would make a killing in Atlanta, or be killed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Sun: Bay Area man, proclaiming to be a ‘squatter remover’ uses swords among other forceful tactics to help clients evict squatters

Back when I lived on the south side of town, there were a ton of homes that were foreclosed on in my neighborhood, resulting a tremendous amount of abandoned properties all through the subdivision.  It was harrowing going onto Zillow and seeing just how many red dots that were all over my entire community signifying all the available properties, where clicking on any of them made it pretty clear that almost all of them were available on account of foreclosures.

However, the problem became when the properties stopped being vacant, and people started moving into them – and in most cases, not legally.  Even one of the homes adjacent to me, suddenly had people I didn’t recognize going in and out of the home, at odd hours of the day, and one of the weirder behaviors I noticed was one guy sitting in the backyard with a laptop, and looking back at this if I had to guess was probably because the inside of the house had no power or air conditioning or something, or maybe they were trying to leech off of my wi-fi.

Squatters probably occupied more of the neighborhood than legitimate residents at one point, and was/is probably the primary reason why the entire neighborhood went to shit as rapidly as it did.  I remember doing some Zillow-hunting on the aforementioned adjacent property to mind, and found out that it was owned by a bank or some investment company, with an address not even close to being in Georgia, which made it fairly obvious that I had squatters living next door to me.

Ordinarily I really wouldn’t care if they were discreet and kept to themselves, but unfortunately there was no discretion from those who lived there, and they would have like four cars crammed into the driveway with another two parked on the street, and trash strewn all over the yard.  If not for the fact that our houses were on a hill, with me having the higher ground, their shit would have undoubtedly blew onto my property which would have been more problematic than they already were, but the point was that it sucked having squatters next door.

Cursory research will show that squatters have an extremely inordinate amount of rights and protections throughout the country as it pertains to legally removing them properties that they illegally began occupying in the first place.  It has nothing to do with being left or right leaning, for whatever reasons, squatters basically have some of the most ridiculously concrete iron-clad rights there are, and it’s fucked up that legal owners of properties have literally no other choice but to acquiesce to squatter rights lest they risk crossing legal lines and committing crimes, in spite of the fact that they’re just trying to solve situations cause by other people committing crimes.

Really, the only (legal) options are grind out the legal process and eventually get the law to demand that they vacate the property, lest they be charged with criminal trespass, they leave on their own volition, but usually not before they trash the place to oblivion, or they are, coerced, to vacate the property, and the owner(s) or their proxies can secure it upon exit.

This is where the Bay Area squatter remover guy comes in – I have to say I love the story of this guy, and I wish more people like him existed and provided services all throughout the country, because squatting is something that I imagine is a very rampant problem across the nation and not just exclusively limited to major metropolitan areas like San Francisco or Atlanta.

And it’s just riotous that it’s apparent that his personal signature is the fact that he goes around with a real katana, and claims that it’s actually used in his line of work, and I like to imagine a guy who clearly has seen The Matrix five too many times confronting a squatter with live steel, brandishing and waving it around like a Mortal Kombat character, threatening some crooks to get the fuck out of the home they’re squatting in.

The guy boasts a 95% success rate, so it’s funny that he clearly manages to infiltrate these squatter homes, and by virtue of waving around his katana at people, he’s getting them to vacate the premises at a high clip and helping property owners reclaim their rightful properties.

I would’ve loved to have seen this guy in action in my old hood, and if the owners of the properties even cared about their investments, they would’ve just sent this guy on endless loops around the neighborhood, evicting deadbeat squatters left and right.  But at the same token, I’d imagine Atlanta to be a vastly more dangerous part of the country than the pussy Bay Area is, and he’d probably be up against way more heavily armed squatters, and willing to put up way more resistance.

As the subject says, katana guy would either make a real killing out in Atlanta, or just end straight up killed, but either way I love this guy’s idea and entrepreneurial spirit at putting in the work of evicting squatters on his own shoulders.