Tag: owned

I’m sorry, but this was one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: kid in China gets spinning helicopter kicked in the lower abdomen region by robot performing a martial arts demonstration

I know it’s in poor taste to laugh at the painful expense of another person, much less a child, but I can’t help it.  This is legit one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time, and I can’t stop myself from busting out laughing every time I see it. 

I know my tune would do a 630 if the victim in question were one of my kids, but I like to think that even in time, I would see the humor in it and eventually find it funny, because it really is that entertaining to me.

Straight up Homer Simpson cracking up at Hans Moleman’s football in the nuts video vibes here.

But it’s just so entertaining, to the point where when you’re watching it for the 10th and 20th times, you begin to dissect everything about it, from the ridiculous blue afro wig that the robot is wearing, to the fact that in spite of a child getting hurt, everyone is laughing about it, and pretty much nobody is seen giving one iota of effort to check in on the child, who is doubled over, and falls out of the crowd in discomfort.  I’m hoping that in the seconds after the video is cut off, the robot, which has returned to its starting point, bowed to the audience.

And because it’s in China, you know almost nobody will help the kid, because it’s expected that parents take care of their own, but in a lot of Little Emperor culture, lots of kids are borderline feral at the lack of hands-on parenting they receive, to where they end up in scenarios like this, unsupervised and in potential danger.

I mean, you can kind of see the imaginary border that onlookers were adhering to, in order to give the martial arts robot some space to operate.  And the kid that got decked, was well past the border, and kind of got what he deserved for being in the line of fire.  In fact, the boy behind the victim was probably relieved that pink shirt got the boot, because he definitely would have caught it otherwise, because robots are clearly as shitty martial artists that McDojo-trained kids are, and was nowhere close to a full rotation before swinging that kick out.

Needless to say, let this be a painful lesson to this little emperor for neglecting to stay out of the way and prioritizing his desire to see something stupid over his own physical safety.  He will undoubtedly become scarred by this incident, and hopefully become an opponent over the excessively aggressive advancement of AI and robotics.

It would be funny if in 24 years, we learn of some activist in China who is spearheading some group or organization that is generally in opposition to robots and AI, and explains that it all started with a sunny afternoon in Xinjiang, where he got helicopter kicked by a ill-programmed robot.

Pro Tip: how to never get any red lights while driving

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Are you sick of how many red lights you encounter on your commute to work?  If so, this is the advice that will change your life for the better!

And it’s actually really quite simple.

Right before you get into your car, send out a few text messages to a friend(s), respond to a group chat, or fire off some good memes to some bros.  And before you can get sucked into the vortex of your phone, get in your car, start the engine, and begin your drive.

If you’ve got quality companions on the other ends, they will respond or react in some fashion that will ping your phone back, and tempt you to want to look at your phone.

For the record, I am not endorsing texting while driving, or egregious looking at your phone while driving.  I’d be lying if I said I never ever ever have done either in my life, but especially since I have kids, I do try to be better at practicing what I preach, which is to remain as distraction-free while driving, especially when the girls are in the car.

However, not that it’s really that much better, I do have a tendency to check my phone when I’m at red lights, that I’m familiar with and I know I can get away with 20-30 seconds to look; yes, I know that in the State of Georgia, such could be construed as illegal, but I’m also human, easily distracted by my phone, and like I said, only when I know I have like a good 20-30 seconds.

All the same, the point of this method is that by engaging a bunch of friends or groups before you get in the car, you invite the possibility of responses or reactions, and in classic Murphy’s Law, the pings and notifications will inevitably tempt you want to check, but slightly more responsible drivers will resist, and tell themselves, at the next red light.

But brothers, let me tell you, once you tell yourself that, you will more than likely not get a single red light for the remainder of your drive.  And the longer you have to wait, and if you’re apt to get that anxiety that not responding quickly enough will derail the momentum of a potentially entertaining conversation, the more likely you will get all the green lights, and somehow to never get snagged at any red light, and have the opportunity to check your phone.

If you think I’m lying or full of shit, try it out for yourselves.  At least in my personal experience, the more people engage me via phone, and I’m actively in the midst of driving, the success rate of getting every single green light and never getting a chance to satiate my curiosity skyrockets.  And it’s only when I’m bored and unstimulated by anyone else, will the droll cadence of red lights get back to normal, because there’s no eagerness to engage tempting the fate of the street lights out there in play.

Try it out though, I would suspect that I’m not the only one who can manipulate this real-world RNG to work to their benefit, and I bet it’s likely to work for many others besides myself.

The whitest problem since desegregation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: City of Alpharetta proposing ordinance to provide residents relief from pickleball noise

Imagine the shit-eating grin on my face when I read just the headline of this article, and immediately trying to think of the words to best ironically describe the inhumanity of pickleball noise, ruining the lives of residents in Alpharetta, a lily-white suburb 30-80 minutes away from actual City of Atlanta, depending on the traffic.

I mean, there’s really not much to add, the headline does a pretty succinct job of painting the picture of the problem that is about as peak white people problems since Bad Bunny performing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve posted specifically about Alpharetta; a few years back, there was a situation where residents got really salty about a change in policy that meant that they weren’t allowed to fly Confederate flags during a Veteran’s Day Parade, so the city opted to just cancel the parade outright.

Even in the year, two thousand and twenty-six, shit like this actually is, written and reported on.

Still though, it’s entertaining to me that pickleball is about as white people sport as lacrosse and calling cops on colored folks, but it’s gotten so overly popular to the point where the goofy-ass sounds of pickleballs getting whacked have turned heel on the people that brought them into existence, and instead of trying to fix the game, white people are doing what white people do best – try and transmogrify the laws to where they can deal with the issue while avoiding any conflict at all.

I bet this never happens at a Canadian Timmy’s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYPost: altercation at an Indiana Tim Horton’s over an argument about a drive-thru order results in a 75-year old woman dead

I’d be curious to know what exactly happened in this scenario to where things escalated to physical violence.  I’ve had my share of fast food fuckups, and even if I cared enough to expend the effort to try and get it rectified, I can’t say I’ve had a low success rate at some sort of resolution.

It’s like, just remaining calm and not being a dick seems to a good enough strategy at achieving some sort of recompense, so I can’t help but wonder what happened at this Indiana Tim Horton’s, where an irate 75-year old woman marched into the restaurant, got in the grill of a 17-year old drive thru worker before their 20-year old manager intervened, to where things escalated even further, to where it became physical.

Tim Horton’s iced capps are definitely on my Rushmore of fast food items, but fuck if I’m going to risk my life if someone there possibly fucked up my order.

Watching the video, it’s scary and unfortunate to see the escalation of a conflict get physical, and to the point where death entered the chat, because there is seldom anything funny about the loss of life.

In one hand, I can’t help but feel inclined to side with the restaurant, because the elderly woman did march in there and seem to aggress with minimal restraint.  And when things get physical, people have the right to defend themselves.  But in the other hand, it was a 75-year old woman; obviously most of us probably aren’t experts at hand-to-hand combat with 75-year olds, but how hard could she have hit to incense a 20-year old to fight back with such fierceness?

Either way, it’s a scenario where everyone involved loses.  A woman lost her life, the employee that fought her will probably need therapy for the rest of their life knowing that their actions contributed towards it, and Tim Horton’s name gets dragged down into the muck by having a customer death controversy tied to their brand.

Plus, the daughter of the deceased takes some shrapnel for getting quoted sounding like a dumbass:

You should not enter a coffee shop for a coffee and a doughnut and come out unalived. That is diabolical,”

Really, unalived?  I’d ask, what are they, 13?  But it’s the daughter of a 75-year old, so presumably someone closer to my age than someone who probably actually thinks unalived is a real word.

Like the title of this post says, I can’t imagine something like this ever happening up in Canada, because Canadians are typically way more well-mannered and not as violent as their southern neighbors, and hopefully incidents like this doesn’t inhibit the expansion of Timmy’s in the US, because we’ve finally got remotely accessible locations in Georgia, and I hope to always be able to get iced capps when I really am in the mood for them.

I’d be curious to see the venn diagram on this one

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of my current dad-related nonsensical missions is that I need to get him a Georgia driver’s license, or rather at this stage, state-issued identification because pffh ain’t no way he’s driving anymore in his current state.  Despite the fact that his current license is still valid until 2027, he’s been harping on me to get it changed over, as if there were some sort of threat of grievous harm if he doesn’t, naturally because it’s something one of his buddies said, and in true Korean parent fashion, what a buddy says >>> what your children says.

When I moved to Georgia in 2003, I remember going to a Department of Driver Services office, saying I needed to get a Georgia license, and basically the only things I needed were my current, Virginia license, and some sort of proof of address.  I did have to take the written test on the spot, but because I am not a halfwit, such was no problem, and I was in and out of the DMV in a reasonable amount of time without too much aggravation.

I took my dad to a DDS office, and because nothing with my dad is ever easy, naturally there was a line stretched all the way back to the door.  I had my dad go take a seat while I camped the line, and I had the positive wherewithal to look on my phone to make sure I had what I needed, lest we waste any further time to get up to the desk and be told we didn’t have sufficient materials.

In addition to his existing license, and proof of address, it turns out that the criteria for getting a Georgia identification from somewhere else now requires:

  • (At least) one more piece of mail to prove address
  • Social Security Card and/or tax return
  • Proof of US citizenship, such as US Passport, immigration card – existing drivers license not valid for this purpose

Seeing as how I did not have either of these bullet points, I immediately pulled got my dad and we left the DDS, explaining to him that shit’s changed, and this license mission isn’t going to get done today, and that we needed moar shit before coming back.

It’s apparent that the process has been deliberately made as hard as possible for immigrants to accomplish things by the book, but not at all surprising that things are the way they are like this.

Naturally, my dad has lost his current passport, despite the fact that he visited overseas as recently as 2022, however, I was able to find the last three passports he had previously, all expired, and one being his Republic of Korea passport.  And fuck if he knows where any documentation of his US citizenship certification or immigration card or his Social Security card is; and add insult to injury, I found the envelope that his original SSA card came in, but the card itself was removed from the perforated sheet, lost to the aether of age and neglect.

So, in order to get my dad’s Georgia identification, I will have to get him a replacement passport.  Thankfully, as I recently did my dad’s 2025 taxes, I have those to stand in place of his SSA card, and I have proof off address and his previous license that he’ll have to turn in.  But ironically hilariously, I still have to get him a new passport so he can get a driver’s license equivalent.  And obviously, anyone who’s ever had to get a passport before knows just how much of a pain in the ass that singular task is, but I have to go through it all in order to just get to the next step of a different pain in the ass task.

Regardless, moar bitching about my dad wasn’t what prompted me to start writing this post, but because it’s on the topic of passports, all this nonsensical shit poured out because it’s somewhat related.

But I was reading about how the Orange Administration is taking credit for a law that’s actually existed since 1996, about how those deadbeats in the country who are being on child support and alimony will have their passports revoked.  From what I understand, this policy has really existed since 1996, but the amendment that the Orange Party is taking credit for is that instead of waiting for passport holders to try to use their passports before getting rejected and revoked, they’re instead just going to preemptively revoke them through public records.

So in other words, a whole lot of nothing, in actuality.

But the funny thing is that I’d be curious to see the data of just how much impact this is actually going to have in the country, because I have a hard time imagining the types of deadbeats who fall tremendously behind on their child support are really the types to be having passports in the first place, so they can jettison away from the United States in the first place.

Same logic applies to the types of people who will be crawling all over themselves in order to get limited edition passport books with the baked potato’s disgusting mug on them, as part of the United States 250th birthday bullshit.

Yeah, the schmucks who are interested in limited edition passports with their god-king on it, or/and the types to be behind in child support, I can’t imagine there’s a big correlation with them having or even needing passports in the first place.

The funny thing is that in the grand spectrum of effectiveness of getting deadbeats to pay back child support, I feel like the states that have laws that are along the lines of those who owe, can’t get hunting and/or fishing licenses, probably have more success than any rules mandated by the stooges in DC.

As the subject says, I’d really be interested in seeing a bunch of venn diagrams to illustrate the effectiveness and correlations between shitheads who don’t pay child support, versus people who have/need passports and those who have/need licenses for redneck activities like fishing and hunting.

I’m willing to be the latter is better at getting people to catch up on their child support than penalizing passports is.

Ironically, I asked for this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the big selling points I used on my dad when I was arduously trying to talk him to move down to Georgia, other than the fact that everything made sense, was that with him being somewhat in the Metro Atlanta area, not only could I see him with tremendously more regularly than any member of his family had been able to see him over the last 10+ years, he could now participate in things like holidays, events and milestone occasions, like the Pre-K graduation of his granddaughter.

Yes, I know that in the grand spectrum of things, Pre-K graduations are pretty much important only to the parents of the children ‘graduating’ from preschool, but it’s one of those things where I’ve been to enough children’s things over the last six years to understand and have witnessed all sorts of healthy family dynamics where grandparents often show up to events as such, because it’s what family does – show up.

Because graduation day was kind of hectic on account of an altered schedule and in-laws visiting, I didn’t want to have to wake up at like 5 AM to drive the 40 miles to my dad’s facility to pick him up, and then weather the teeth of Atlanta morning traffic to get back 40 miles, I opted to just hail an Uber for my dad, and bring him to my side of town, and then we could go to graduation, and either I drive him back, or I send him home in another Uber. 

We’re adults, and we throw money at obstacles.

I call him at 7 AM, to find out if he’s ready to go, and naturally he doesn’t pick up his phone because communication with my dad is basically a one-way street where he will blow up my phone whenever he wants to ask me a question that I’ve already answered for him at least 15 times previously, but when I need to get in touch with him, he never fucking picks up the phone, and I can usually expect to get a callback in a minute or two, like he’s a fucking ER doctor being paged.

Anyway, when he calls back, I ask him if he’s ready to go, and he says he wants to have breakfast first, which is a fair accommodation, his place has set meal hours, and he’s entitled to get his meals.  I tell him to call me when he’s done eating, and I’ll hail an Uber and let him know the make and color of the car, like we’d been doing for rides to church the last few Sundays, and he gives me an affirmative.

20-25 minutes later, I call him back because now I’m sweating the time, because if he doesn’t get into an Uber soon, he’ll definitely already be in morning traffic, but there would be no guarantee that he’d make it to my side of town in time to make it to the graduation, which I would later discover security was following rules to a T, and basically barring anyone who didn’t check in prior to 10 AM, wasn’t getting in.

My dad basically tells me that he doesn’t want to come, that it’s too far, too long of a car ride, and he actually wasn’t planning on coming.  Immediately, my mind quips that in one hand, I’m actually pretty relieved that he’s bailing, because this means I won’t have to babysit him all morning and afternoon, and seeing as how I was skirting work for the day, I would have my job to tend to, as well as the want to do certain errands, such as vote and go help mythical wife with another errand.

I don’t make a big deal about his abrupt bailing because of the relief at not having to babysit him, but subsequently, my mind started unpacking the underlying messages of his decision, and as pretty much is the case with everything my dad does to me, it began to aggravate the piss out of me.

I had reminded my dad well in advance of this date, and at no point did he ever express any sort of lack of want to come to my daughter’s graduation.  I made him write it down on his white board in his own handwriting, because I believe that even those with deteriorating recollection, if they see things written in their own hand, they’re more apt to be able to recall it.  So it’s not like he didn’t know this was coming, and he waited until the eleventh hour and 59th minute to bail on me, which in most cases, wars have been started for less offensive acts.

Continue reading “Ironically, I asked for this” →

I haven’t felt this disconnected to the WWE since my parents took cable away

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is something that I’ve often wanted to write about, but mostly on account of the chaos that is my life, and/or not feeling like writing about it when I actually have a few minutes to write, it’s just constantly been put back on the shelf

And then other things would emerge from the passage of time, in the WWE universe, and my general notes of what to write about when I get to it modifies, tweaks and I always hope it stays connected enough to where I can consolidate it to all one singular post instead of branching out into separate ones that give me anxiety of an ever-growing topic list of things I want to brog about if I ever had the time (and the drive).

But as the topic of this post clearly states, I’ve never felt so disconnected from my general fandom of the WWE and professional wrestling as a whole, than I am feeling these days.  By now, it’s no secret to fans that parent company TKO has done a number of things that have gotten the attention of fans of the industry, such as cutting a large swath of the WWE roster, reports of requesting massive pay cuts out of those who are still left, and the subsequent voluntary departures of others who did not want to yield their contractually obligated salaries, among numerous other acts of The Man.

Television, which for me is currently limited to just RAW on Netflix, because I don’t want to pay for ESPN Unlimited for PLEs, I don’t want to pay for Peacock for sporadic SNMEs, and I don’t want to pay for whatever service is necessary in order for me to be able to watch theCW for NXT and FOX for Smackdown.*

*I don’t want to jinx it, but there’s also AAA, free on YouTube, which has been extremely gratifying to watch, as it fills a metaphorical void left behind with the closure of NXT UK, where it’s a smaller, grassroots territory with a ton of talent and I’ve been enjoying its product immensely, especially since the book was given to the Undertaker

RAW is next to unwatchable nowadays because at least 65-69% of the broadcast is commercial breaks, stacked on top of the near cartoonish amount of ads that are strewn about the guardrails, on the ring apron and printed on the mat itself.  Wrestler entrances are what really makes wrestling into pro-wrestling, and almost every match has one superstar getting the shaft of having their entrance covered up by 7-8 minutes of commercials.

I genuinely don’t remember the last time I saw Roxanne Perez’s entrance, Io Sky seems to have fallen down to the tier that is at risk of having commercial break entrances, and the New Day’s fantastical entrances have been on perma-commercial break.

Speaking of the New Day, they’re probably the most notable names to emerge from recent events as talents who refused to budge from their contractually obligated compensation, and were subsequently forced into departure as a result.  In one hand, it makes me really sad to see Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston leaving, but in the other, I’m so proud of both of them for sticking up for themselves, their worth and basically saying fuck no to TKO.

Normally, I think AEW’s track record of converting those who jump into lasting successful results isn’t very high, but if there’s ever been talents that probably have the potential to make a noteworthy splash, it’s The New Day’s who will obviously have to change their names, but the field has been set up to embark on a list of what-if programs, with FTR, Edge and Christian Cope and Cage, and of course, The Young Bucks.  And if they can somehow miraculously both pry Big E away from the E, and get him medically cleared, insert Kenny Omega into the mix for the long-fantasized Elite vs. The New Day.

Speaking of departures, the recent departure of Asuka under ambiguous circumstances was another massive blow, as far as my fandoms were concerned, because there were few more talented packages in the women’s division than Asuka.  Reportedly, she’s not released, she’s not quitting because of salary cuts, but I can’t help but feel that such things weren’t in her head when she chose to step away for a spell.  The firing of her partner Kairi Sane while in the midst of an active storyline, and the lame duck finish to an interesting arc are probably things that she considered, regardless if she refuses to admit.

And just in general, the quality of the product has gotten really poor, in general.  A lot has been made about the reduction of house shows and live events, and yeah it’s great that the talent doesn’t have to kill themselves on these televised events, but it’s not like these events existed solely to cash grab smaller towns.

Live events are basically live training and practice fields for talent to work things out and practice and grow chemistry with their partners.  When you take a lot of these events away, talents have less opportunity to build rapport and practice spots and move sequences in real time, and when it comes time to do them on live television, the results have been noticeably more sloppy.

Take for example, Sol Ruca.  Frankly, I think she is the very obvious face of the women’s division in the future, but her recent demotion promotion to the main roster has been anything but impressive.  And it’s not really any fault of her own, she’s been booked to lose to all the current mainstays, which is not illogical, but when you’re trying to build up a callup, jobbing them to oblivion isn’t the way to go.

But it’s the fact that she’s been thrown to the wolves with very little rapport building with the likes of Liv Morgan and Iyo Sky, both of whom she’s already lost to, but the matches were clunky, disjointed, and way below the standard that the level of talents should be capable of.

The reason why Sol was such a standout in NXT is the quality of the matches she had with all the girls down there, but the difference is that down there, Sol and all the other girls worked out a ton at the Performance Center, NXT runs live events throughout the state, and Natalya Neidhart runs an open training facility for all the local talent.  But on the road with the main roster, Sol has looked exposed and completely devoid of chemistry, because there’s frankly not enough opportunity for it to build.  On paper, there’s no reason why she should have clunkers with the likes of Iyo Sky and Liv Morgan, but if they’re not getting enough reps in off-camera, then it’s definitely going to show on-camera.

Overall, at a holistic level, it just feels that there’s an overwhelmingly oppressive amount of corporate meddling going on in the WWE by their parent company, and although the likelihood of the same result occurring being very low, seeing as how the E is still a veritable money printer, I get a lot of vibes of WCW’s tail end, with how much corporate meddling going on.  AOL Time Warner’s constant interference, and standards and practices basically killed WCW by a thousand cuts, and every time I hear or read some inkling of the corporate meddling by TKO to the WWE, I keep seeing some dudes named Ari and Shapiro at the root of some decisions that indicate that they really have no idea how to operate professional wrestling, and it always feels like there’s always some dude named Shapiro involved whenever it comes to money micromanagement in any arena, be it wrestling, baseball, or any other multi-million dollar industries.

The bottom line is that the WWE has been really, really hard to want to continue to support, and I feel this nihilistic line of thinking that TKO is really deliberately trying to alienate older, passionate fans of the product and industry, preferring to draw in fresh and younger and looser with their money audiences, which isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, but one that can only have fatal consequences down the line for when the ADD-ness of them all decides they don’t like, or wants to cancel wrestling.

There’s a popular saying that, nobody hates X more than X fans, so in this case, it would be that nobody hates wrestling more than wrestling fans, but I used to jokingly add “and Bret Hart” to the end of it, since ‘ol bitter Bret has absolutely nothing positive to say about the current state of professional wrestling, but nowadays, it seems like it’s more accurate to say that nobody hates wrestling more than TKO, because it just feels like with their obsessive pursuit of profit, they’re absolutely killing a property that has proven for generations how profitable and sustainable it can be, when managed by the right parties.

Backlash came and went, and it was one of the first PLEs that I didn’t watch in a while.  I tinkered with VPNs for the Royal Rumble, and plunked down a month for ESPN Unlimited in order to watch Wrestlemania, but the way Backlash’s card set up, it just didn’t look like it was even worth the effort to try and swindle my way to watch it por gratis; apparently my assertion wasn’t wrong, as it turned out to be a very mid card.

The last few weeks have been hectic for me, and I missed RAW last week and didn’t feel like I missed anything (I didn’t), and the latest episode, I kind of watched it for lack of anything better to do with that amount of time, and as I’ve been saying to mythical wife who’s often sitting next to me while I’m watching, the worst part of every Monday night is when I catch up to the live feed, because that means I’m not subject to have to watch the commercials.

As a wrestling fan, I’ve put up with the loss of kayfabe, the steroid scandal almost killing the business, oversaturation of product, AEW’s fans, Katie Vick, the Gobbedly Gooker, and all sorts of shitty stories, wrestler deaths, and tasteless storylines, and stuck around.  But at this current trajectory, there is a very realistic possibility that I’m just going to stop watching RAW, because all the commercials just makes it unbearable, and when it is on, the quality of the performing going downhill isn’t going to help its cause.

Going back to the title of this post, I just haven’t felt this alienated from something I’ve loved for as long as I’ve almost been alive, and it’s kind of sad, and I would wager that I’m not the only one who’s feeling this way out there.