Let’s hope the Ravens aren’t good in 2019

May 25, 2016July 19, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because the Super Bowl will be back in Atlanta then, and the last time it was here, Ray Lewis murdered two guys. And if Ray Rice remains under the wing of big brother, then we may as well start a dead pool of all the people who will probably “mysteriously” die during that weekend.

Seriously though, I know there are a lot of people who are excited for this news; they are called NFL fanatics, and corporate stiffs. The NFL fanatics will be out of their minds with excitement at the biggest game of the year coming to their home, with aspirations of getting nosebleed tickets and all the potential for the scenes, celebrity and athlete sightings, and whatever else Atlanta plans on trotting out for the weeks leading up to, and ultimately the weekend of the big game.

The corporate stiffs are naturally over the moon with this development, because like most things involving the NFL, these rich people will inexplicably manage to get richer from this whole debacle, at the expense of the rest of the plebes that have the unfortunate misfortune of simply existing in their vicinity.

And then there are people like me, who not only couldn’t care less about the most overrated event in the world coming into my backyard, but is instead resentful about it, because I’m a grownup now, that pays taxes and has a general interest in things that might affect me, and I see through the bullshit and rhetoric spouted by sporting-related events and matters.

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League of Payforachievements

May 24, 2016July 19, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since not all of my six readers are League of Legends players, much less gamers at all, I’ll try to kind of start with an analogy that those who have gamed at all within the better part of the last decade might understand.

Achievements, have become a pretty normal thing in today’s gaming landscape, with players getting little pop-up notifications in-game from their systems themselves, when they accomplish particular tasks in the games they are playing. Ultimately, they’re utterly useless in the grand spectrum of most games, but their existence has created somewhat of a collecting hobby for those who game.

Some achievements are justly achieved by accomplishing monumental feats, like beating Mass Effect 2 on the hardest difficulty without dying once. Others are as systematically simple as proceeding through the story, and getting an achievement for each notable storyline break point. There are achievements of insanity, such as completing an entire Left 4 Dead 2 campaign only using a melee weapon. There are achievements of futility, such as deliberately getting every single question wrong in a round of 1 vs. 100, and then there are achievements of everyone gets a trophy, such as simply starting a game.

The point is, achievements have become somewhat of a point of bragging among gamers, and one of the greatest accomplishments is getting a 100% of achievements earned in games, because usually every game has a good variety of achievements from layups to Hail Marys. As in the case of XBOX Live, players’ stats have a running tally of how many games they get 100% success rate on, and for players like me, it’s something to be prideful of, to be able to prove just how little of a life I can sometimes have, when I obsess over trying to Boomer Bile over all four survivors in one hurl.

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Death seems like kind of an extreme alternative

May 18, 2016July 19, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Residents of English Avenue, near the site of the new Falcons Mercedes-Benz Stadium, express their staunch unwillingness to sell their properties in light of potential progressive development

Honestly, I’d take this whole campaign a whole lot more seriously, if it weren’t called “Unite or Die.”

Unite… or die? Death, as a result of not joining others in a subjective cause? That seems kind of extreme, and under the right (or wrong) circumstances, potentially extremely illegal.

Seriously, it sounds as absurd as the old Nintendo game, Skate or Die, and about as silly of a premise there as well.

Delving a little bit into the Unite or Die campaign and their subsequent website (unlinked, because I don’t really want to promote something that can be easily Google’d), I get what they’re trying to do. The voice is a little too black militant and tiptoeing a little too much on the racial fault line for my comfort, but I understand their goals and objectives.

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I don’t know how people do it

May 17, 2016July 19, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been feeling kind of depressed and stressed about how I haven’t really traveled or seen some particular friends or family in quite some time. Sure, I had a trip to Disney back in April, but almost at no point of that trip was I really able to sit back, relax, and kind of do nothing. I’m not saying nothing is all I want to do, but there are times that I feel that I’m pining for occasions where there is nothing really on the agenda but loose ideas, and little or no stress if any of these ideas are acted upon. But really, I’m finding myself missing people I used to see on a pretty regular basis, and the number of days, weeks and months since I’d seen them grows, leading to this perpetual cycle of feeling detached.

What isn’t helping the entire conundrum is the fact that I no longer have the ability to up and hop on any flight as I used to, and which is serving as impetus for writing this in the first place. I’d like to travel and visit some friends or family pretty soon, but simply put, I just can’t afford it, or find myself being able to stomach the cost of flying, without privileges.

Frankly, I don’t know how people do this, planning so far ahead in advance to get reasonable rates, and looking at $600+ round trips if one actually wanted to make a last-minute flight somewhere. I don’t know how people do this.

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Strengthening today at the cost of tomorrow

May 12, 2016July 19, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Washington Nationals sign pitcher Stephen Strasburg to 7-year deal/extension, worth $175 million dollars

The best thing about baseball contracts like this one is that when the day is over, seldom do the initial headlines come remotely close to the actual payouts by the teams that make these ludicrous deals, paying grown-ass men to play kids’ games.

Case in point, one of the most notorious ironically humorous baseball contracts in history is Bobby Bonilla’s contract signed in 1996. On paper, Bobby Bonilla signed with the Florida Marlins on a deal that dictated he would be paid $23.3 million dollars over four years. Sounds simple enough, right?

The Marlins being the Marlins (read: cheap), would eventually trade Bonilla away in 1998, but the rules of a contract state that the acquiring team assume responsibility of remaining salary, unless negotiated in the deal. The Dodgers paid the remainder of is 1998 salary, before trading him to the Mets after the season, so the Mets would be on the hook for the 1999 and 2000 portions of his deal.

Bonilla was such a clubhouse cancer with the Mets that after 1999, the Mets wanted to be rid of Bonilla, and Bonilla was more than happy to continue his career elsewhere. The problem was that the Mets were still contractually on the hook for the remaining $5.9 million dollars on the deal, but frankly didn’t want to pay it, citing the need to cut payroll and organizational rebuilding.

Ultimately, the Mets and Bonilla came to an agreement, which has to this very day, become one of the greatest jokes in all of baseball history, and a huge contributor to why the Mets remain such a butt of baseball jokes.

Instead of paying Bobby Bonilla $5.9 million dollars in 2000, the Mets would pay him $0. However, it was agreed upon that starting in 2011, the Mets would begin paying Bobby Bonilla approximately $1,193.248.20 every July 1^st – for the next 25 years.

It doesn’t take a genius to quickly realize the math doesn’t even come close to equaling the $5.9 million dollars that he was owed in 2000, but closer to five times the amount, $30 million dollars, by the time 2035 rolls around.

The Mets have to live with always having Bobby Bonilla thrown at them in tacky arguments, while Bobby Bonilla, whose career ended in 2001, will cash in every July 1^st for pretty much the prime of his retirement years, laughing all the way to the bank, along with the baseball fans who love to make fun of the Mets.

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That time where NYC was behind the times

May 6, 2016July 19, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s so New York: Bill de Blasio calls for boycott of Chic-fil-A, because their owner hates the gays

So New York of de Blasio to now be doing something that’s CFA markets all across the United States have experienced doing since 2012. But because it’s happening in New York, it’s making the news yet again, unearthing a horse that’s been dead for quite some time now.

The funny thing is that the Daily News article I linked does a pretty good job of cutting through the political bullshit fluff that they’re accusing de Blasio of, and that this whole stance is completely without any real moxie and for solely political reasons. I especially like the part where they cite the Hasidic Jews that heavily donate to him, and how he takes their donations happily in spite of their very staunch and vocal stance against same-sex marriages.

Given the fact that when the original controversy erupted in 2012, Chic-fil-A’s sales actually improved in spite of the popular belief that discriminatory boycotts would hurt their bottom line, who’s to say that Bill de Blasio isn’t conducting some sort of experiment for monetary gain, by resurrecting the controversy, but in New York City, to see if CFA’s sales don’t improve again, with some sort of agreement to cut him in on the profits if they did.

Regardless, it’s funny to me to see this story emerge again, given the amount of irony that transpired the first time around. Like New York likes to believe, if it doesn’t happen in New York, it hasn’t happened, I guess they deserve a chance to witness the ironic trail of events that’ll happen, for them to see as well, now that NYC is also now a Chic-fil-A market.