Tag: racism

I guess too much salt can be a health violation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There is a remote possibility that at some point in the life of the brog, that I may have posted about this place in the past.  Either here, or on one of my social profiles when I was probably trying to be funny.

Either way, the thing is, I know exactly where this place is, seeing as how I used to be a resident of the south side of Metro Atlanta.  I used to live within reasonable driving distance to this place, and I in fact used to shop at the grocery store that was in the same plaza occasionally.

That being said, aside from the fact that the place is clearly named after the legendary WWE superstar/manager, it’s my familiarity with the place that adds to my general amusement of the fact that Mr. Fuji Japanese Steak House somehow managed to get a staggering 18 U rating on their State of Georgia Food and Safety Inspection score.

I mean, it seems pretty apparent that the food rating grading scale isn’t that far off from general public school grading scales.  100 the obvious goal, 90-99 is generally positively looked upon,* 80-89 being that solid B that lets patrons know that they’re still mostly safe, 70-79** being that dreaded C grade that might make a patron reconsider their choices, and anything below that would probably have someone who walked in the door turn around and leave immediately.  Frankly, that latter rating probably means the business has to shut down and address all transgressions until they’re legally allowed to operate again, but I don’t care enough to verify.

*unless your parents are Asian in which you’ve disappointed them for not just being perfect, but that you were probably 1-2 careless errors away from it

**writing this all out makes me realize that restaurant grading scales really is more Asian than American, because once you hit that C or below, it might as well be first-degree murder

So with all that in consideration, massive props to Mr. Fuji for violating so much shit that they got an almost unbelievable 18 score.  I remember back when I was in the 3rd grade and really struggling to get my multiplication tables, we had these daily drill worksheets that had like 100 math problems, and we all had 3 minutes to do as many of them as we could.  And the class had this board with every student’s name on it, and upon successful completion (80% or higher), students would get a sticker and advance to the next level.

I’m not sure how much this would be deemed acceptable in today’s standards, but like I said I struggled tremendously, and I got hung up on the third worksheet for the longest time.  One can imagine the number it was doing to my self-esteem to see the class chart when I was the last student stuck on level 3, while the rest of my class was pulling more and more ahead with each successive day. 

Eventually, multiplication just clicked for me and I would eventually go on a heater where I smashed #3, caught up to the rest of my class, and actually surpassed some of my peers before the entire introduction to multiplication drills came to a conclusion.

However, unnecessary as it was for me to write out that last paragraph beyond trying to ensure that any of my zero readers doesn’t think I’m still a mathematical luddite, backing back up to the point of why I brought up that nostalgia in the first place, there was once a day where while I was still struggling on #3 for probably the 11th time, I had bombed so badly that the teacher X’ed out the first ten or so wrong answers, and then just scrawled a giant red X throughout the rest of my worksheet, even though I did have 9×9=81 correct, because for whatever reason that one always stuck with me.

My teacher was that disgusted with my performance, that they basically threw in the towel on my worksheet that day, in exasperation.

I feel like whatever inspector came into Mr. Fuji to do their safety check, probably had to have hit a point throughout their visit, and just scrawled a giant red X on their checklist, before remembering that they were doing a state-mandated task, and then being thorough with their inspection, and writing down all the infractions as ticky-tack as “employee’s personal effects too close to food service area” to “entire planet of mutant cockroaches discovered in food storage areas.”

But 18 is a pretty legendary score of futility.  I remember teachers in the past would tell all the delinquent students who had a tendency to not do their work or turn things in outright, that a 60 F was still better than a zero in the grade book; sure 18 is going to be better than a zero for state safety inspections, but in this case, not by a whole fucking lot.  It’s like doing the SATs, writing down your name and banking those 100 points, but then turning in a blank scantron at the end.

Either way, pour one out for Mr. Fuji, as well as Peachtree City.  As a former resident there, I can tell you that there’s almost no diversity when it comes to eateries down there, and Mr. Fuji was probably one of the only places down there to get anything remotely tasting close to a flavor of the wondrous Orient, short of making it one’s self or befriending any of the Japanese residents that worked in the area.

It’s like the intention to lose is deliberate

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

PBS: former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Democratic nomination for Georgia governor

Before I went to my voting location, mythical wife and I were talking about how the State of Georgia was at it again, with Governor Yosemite Sam signing HB369, which long story short, basically hides political affiliations for those who choose to vote non-partisan, basically to intentionally create confusion and ambiguity so that people might accidentally vote for the wrong candidates.  Obviously designed to help Republicans in the bluer parts of the state, but just another means of capitalizing on the less intelligent whose votes count the same as those with higher IQs.

There was a part of me that considered picking a Republican ballot and trying to monkey around with their results, as if there weren’t going to be tens of thousands of brainless orange worshippers who wouldn’t offset my tampering, but at least I could tell myself if by supporting Brad Raffensperger, he’s a guy that seems to have a modicum of integrity in a toxic wasteland of politico.

But mainly because the Democrats of Georgia’s play was known and in my opinion a terrible idea, and it makes me think that they’re either really that arrogant and stupid, or that they’re secretly on the payroll of the Georgia GOP to just keep doing the same dumb shit over and over again and pretend like there’s any hope.

It was pretty well known that Keisha was going to get the Democratic bid for governor, and much like the last two Governor elections, it’s basically going to be another win for the red team, but way easier this time around, and it makes me think about the cliché seen above about the definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

For the third time in a row, Georgia Dems are trotting out a black woman to go for governor, and not that I don’t think a black woman would be capable of handling the role of the position, the Dems here seem to forget that they’re in Georgia, which is a state that historically has not been particularly friendly to both black people and women.

Furthermore, Keisha Lance Bottoms is no Stacey Abrams, and she lost twice.  Stacey was a respected, tenacious bureaucrat who actually did shit that mattered, like launching Fair Fight to try and aid in voter suppression.  Stacey was generally liked by all Democrats, black and white and everyone else, and her first run for governor, although was still an L, was the closest margin the Democrats had gotten in like the last 4-5 elections.

Keisha on the other hand, has had a maligned career as the Mayor of Atlanta, often seen as handpicked stooge successor to notorious clown Hizzoner Kasim Reed, who himself was revealed to have flagrantly blazed through mountains of taxpayer dollars on his own indulgences while Mayor of the Atlanta.  Keisha constantly put herself at odds with the orange shithead, and there was one particular incident I always remembered, when she basically tried to legalize street racing to a degree, and the implication was that her son was most likely involved in doing it, and it’s like she was trying to preemptively change the law so her son wouldn’t get in too deep of shit if he were to inevitably get caught.

The bottom line is, Keisha put herself into a position where not only will she not have the vote of white people, especially those who favor the color orange, but she was not liked by large swaths of the black community, who simply thought she just wasn’t doing a good job as Mayor of Atlanta, so why would they even bother putting forth the effort to vote her into the governor’s mansion?

Like, I can practically hear Sweet Georgia Brown playing on election day when voters hit the polls, and vote after vote is cast for whomever wins the Republican runoff, because it really doesn’t matter who emerges for the GOP, they’re going to stomp a hole in Keisha.  And after the election, when voter numbers emerge, I anticipate there being a really poor black turnout, because like I said, as much as there may be those who don’t like the color orange, but they don’t like the alternative enough to feel it’s worth leaving the house to vote for it.

If it were up to me, Georgia Dems should take a step back and try to get just one wishlist category a W; either push a black man, or a woman, but just stop trying to get a two-for-one, because fringe Georgia voters are way too racist and way too sexist to vote in a black woman.

And if they try again in 2030, insanity will be definitely confirmed and reinforced.

Been a rough year for Kim Hye-song already

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Prior to the season in the WBC, Kim had to be a part of the Team Korea that sure, finally managed to get out of groups for the first time in an eternity, but they also took some embarrassing losses to Japan and Taiwan.  Capped off by getting mercy-rule walked-off on by the Dominican Republic to end their run.

Comes back to the United States to finish up Spring Training, only to be told that despite hitting .407 with an OPS of .967, he is being sent down to start the season in the minor leagues, citing his WBC commitment taking away from a proper preseason preparation regimen.  I didn’t really say anything over social media platforms because I frankly didn’t want to deal with the likely outrage of Dodgers fans, racist weebs and all other pleebs of the internet, but I found it suspicious that Kim would get such rationale as justification to send him to the minors, despite the fact that all of his Japanese teammates were in the exact same boat, and weren’t getting demoted, but that I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise to see a team full of Japanese players and constantly on the country of Japan’s dick 25/8 sending their lone Korean teammate away. 

Because it’s one of those things that nobody that isn’t Korean would really understand, and it wasn’t worth the aggravation of triggering the ire of the internet, but it’s definitely something that nobody would be willing to admit to probably being the case.

Anyway, Kim dominates Triple-A because it’s too easy for the caliber of player he is, in spite of the limited Spring Training, hitting .346 with an OPS of .822, and at the very first injury reported to the Dodgers, he’s immediately called back up, where he’s already hitting .308 with a .796 OPS.

And six games in is all it takes for Kim to be given the all look same treatment, and be mistaken for one of his more famous Japanese teammates, as SNY’s Gary Cohen states “Yamamoto looking on” when the camera panned to Kim watching in the dugout.

Like I said, it’s slights like these that nobody who isn’t Korean would really understand just how aggravating they can be, and why Koreans like me have these chips on our shoulders when it comes to rolling our eyes at the insufferably weeb-ey excessive praise for anything Japan that Weeb-ey America is so subject to falling for.

The tiny, in all fairness, factor to this is the fact that it was from the visiting team’s broadcast, and seeing as how the Mets haven’t had a Korean player since like Koo Dae-Sung, they’re less educated when it comes to disambiguation between Asians, but if I had to put money on it, I can’t imagine that this racist bungling of telling Asians apart hasn’t happened among Dodgers media either.

But the point remains it happened, it’s embarrassing for those who were apart of it, from Cohen, as well as the cameraman who put the camera on Kim after being prompted by discussions of Yamamoto.  And like most incidents that are insensitive towards Koreans and Asians in general, the backlash for this will be vastly less severe, acknowledged or taken nearly as seriously as if it would be if it involved black people or Hispanics.

If it hasn’t happened already, I don’t imaging there will be any sort of apology from Cohen or SNY, and while everyone is laughing about it, I can lighten up and see the humor in it, but also still remain disappointed and feel dejected by the continuous failure of white people and white people media who love to police others and tell them to be better, while continuously failing to take their own fucking advice.

It doesn’t matter how well Kim Hye-song plays or doesn’t play, if people keep getting him mixed up with the other Chinamen on his own team, I’d rather see him go elsewhere, where he might actually get some fucking respect.

The subtle aggression of emoji skin tones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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Every workplace’s text client communication vibe is different.  I’ve been places where there are a ton of old motherfuckers around, so there’s basically no text internal communication client at all, and even if there is one, nobody uses it, and those who do are pariahs and are looked at like moon people for even daring to consider internal text client communication as official business correspondence.

Conversely, I’ve also been to places that ran Slack, which means there are like 76 different channels of groups, communities, and teams, and every single message is responded to in 164 different gifs and emojis, and Slack communication is interpreted as official business, and there are major businesses decisions that are locked in via the client.

Where I’m at these days is kind of midway point between the two, where we run Microsoft Teams as our official client.  There are plenty of technologically inept olds still in the company that by virtue of either refusing, or are just too old to figure out how to use the client, simply don’t.  But I’m fortunate to my department having a lot more technologically savvy users who have no issues using the client, and it’s what we use on the regular to communicate, in and out of the office.

The majority of the etiquette here are users using the default emojis to acknowledge or recognize appreciation, mostly the standard yellow thumbs up, and heart, and if something is funny, then the laughing face emoji.

However recently, I’ve noticed a little shift in some user behavior that kind of has me thinking some things.  At first, it started with some remarks in some group threads, where the responses aren’t just getting thumbs up’ped, but they’re being thumbs up’ped with both the regular default yellow thumbs up, as well as the black skin tone thumbs up.

Obviously, in spite of my general appreciation of dark humor, I have no issue with black people representing and busting out black skin tone thumbs up emojis.  It’s just that I couldn’t help but notice that after these started getting used, it didn’t take long before I noticed that later on, when there was another comment that warranted mass acknowledgement, I would see that in addition to the black skin thumbs ups, there were now users responding with white people thumbs ups.

The thing for me is that I have no qualms with the white folks doing this, it’s just that in my observations, this was behavior that was not done until the emergence of black skin thumbs up emojis.  Maybe it’s just me, and maybe I’m likely overthinking things, but there’s something that seems subtly passive aggressive with a hint of racism about the act, as if some of my white colleagues were kind of triggered or offended that some of our black colleagues decided to start utilizing black thumbs up emojis, so they decided to respond with white ones.

And then we have comments that look like the above, where there’s a mish-mash of colored emojis in response to an inconsequential remark in the grand spectrum of a work day.

What if I felt the need to jump in on this racial representation?  You know who doesn’t get considered in the great expansion of emoji skin tones?  That’s right, Asian folks.  There are skin tones to account for white people, black people, and numerous shades of brown to cover Hispanics, Middle Eastern, Indian, or anyone whose skin tone is remotely in the spectrum. 

But Asian people?  No dice there.  No light skin tones with a hint of warmth to encapsulate Asians, and maybe some people from like Southeast Asia, the Pacific Island, or regions of Korea and Japan where there are lot more rural folks with tanned skin could get away with using some of the brown-tone emojis, but the fact of the matter is that there is no real set of emojis that takes into consideration Asian skin tones.

Obviously, the generic yellow thumbs up is not sufficient for Asian folks, because we are not fucking Simpsons characters, and have tones that look that yellow.

Needless to say, I’m leaning in a direction where I wish all skin tones would just be eliminated, and we’re left with just the standardized Simpsons yellow emoji.  Take race out of the equation, and eliminate any possibility for such subtle passive aggression.  I know all the people utilizing these non-standard emojis and I don’t think they’re trying to be racist, but to me, it kind of comes off that way, especially since racist-ass Microsoft’s emoji catalog doesn’t account for Asians, and if I wanted to jump aboard the representation train, I can’t.

The craziest part about all these distractions

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago as I was doomscrolling, I saw this one meme.  At this point, I can’t remember what it was about, whether it was Iran getting bombed, the rise of shitty gas prices (again), a bunch of dumb white guy CEOs biting into hamburgers, or whatever, but it went like, The craziest part about X is that [orange fuckface in the white house] is named in the Epstein Files over 3,000 times.

For whatever reason, this stuck with me, and I really began to actually think about recognize about all the shit going on in the country and across the world, that really are just a whole bunch of distractions to the fact that the sitting president of the United States has been named countless times in the Epstein Files.  And of course, not a single fucking soul is doing anything about it, and as much as I want to love my country of birth, I just end up hating it a little bit more each time I think about it and am reminded of such.

A few years ago, I felt like I had one of those life’s revelations that in spite of the constitutional right to have information, the media really does go out of their way to steer people away from thinking about bigger issues, and at the time, there was a big hullabaloo about the Washington Redskins finally agreeing to change their name, conveniently at a time where the country was in turmoil over coronavirus, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and just the ‘usual’ state of civil unrest.

That was probably the first time I really noticed and recognized a scenario of mass distraction like that, and despite the fact that I was like 40 years old, it felt like one of those naïve moments of realizing that the world isn’t quite as innocent and altruistic as we might want to believe it is. 

We are truly never too old to learn and realize new things.

Either way, that’s kind of where I’m at these days, feeling frustrated, disappointed, and generally mad at my country for being so simple-minded and easily distracted to bigger things.  Obviously, I knew nothing major was really going to come out of the initial release of Epstein Files, because Washington is a spineless and gutless swamp full of people with all the cards who would absolutely not narc on each other, and would sooner eat their young than to act in a manner that positions themselves contrary to the mutation of whatever direction-wing that the right has transformed into these days.

It’s almost flabbergasting the lengths that the current administration has gone to in order to get people not talking about the Epstein Files, and that the actual president of the country is named literal thousands of times in it, which is absolutely not a good thing, considering the context of just about everything else in them.  Like, the United States basically started a war, with Iran, in order to get people to avert their eyes somewhere else.  And then predictably, war-like conditions always result in a spike of gas prices, and for the people lucky enough to remain blind to World War 3, they definitely wouldn’t miss the escalation of gas prices on the homefront, and then they’re busy being miserable about that.

But honestly, it’s the fucking noise about the McDonald’s CEO and the wimpy bite he did, and the ensuing chatter and bullshit that has emerged from that, that has me feeling the most enraged.  Because there’s literally an unearthed horrific global pedophilia ring that was just revealed, but people would rather expend their energy debating and analyzing some rich asshole taking a bite out of a hamburger.

As much as I loathe all of the fucks in Washington that are keeping our entire country as the cesspool it’s been downgraded to, I have just as much vitriol and disdain for all the people in the country that fall for such elementary distraction tactics.

I digress though.  This is a topic that I really didn’t want to expend any energy on, because politics are all shit and I hate them, but it’s like when I’m on social media, and I see things that I want to comment on, where I can utilize the template of “the craziest thing about X is that [orange fuckface] is in the Epstein Files,” but I don’t want to deal with the rebuttals and responses of anyone who does live on that side of the fence, because their stupidity would undoubtedly be detrimental to my general state of mental health.

So to my safe little brog that nobody reads, where I can pop off about whatever topic I want, without there being any real chance for any recourse, even ones as inflammatory as politics are.

Like sending gorillas to do custodial work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s the best analogy that comes to mind when I think about the bright idea to send ICE agents to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Intergalactic Spaceport, Nail Salon and Chicken Tender Museum in order to assist with crowd control and the nightmare scenario where the vast majority of TSA agents are no-showing because they’re not getting paid.  Sure, they’re marginally capable of perhaps doing some base job functions like staring at people menacingly while behind a gaiter and holding an automatic firearm so that people think twice about trying to cut any lines and shave an hour off their wait, but there’s a higher possibility that these ICE clowns make things worse, escalate a situation, and there’s probably going to be more arrests and possibly deaths, before any progress or civility is restored to the airport.

I’m just really glad that I don’t have any upcoming flight bookings coming up, because I’d probably punt on any airline travel I have coming up if it required me to go through ATL right now, because it doesn’t seem to matter when people are rolling up to the airport these days, the waits just seem to grow commensurate to how early people are showing up.

Mythical wife and I are current with The Pitt, and the most recent episode introduced a sub plot where two ICE agents bring a woman set to be detained to the ER, because she was most likely injured during a raid that they conducted.  And the presence of ICE in at the hospital passively makes all sorts of minority staff, patients and waiting patients to peace the fuck on out of the Pitt.

When Doctor Robbie tells them to stay the fuck to themselves and not be meandering around, they basically roid rage and attempt to interrupt the treatment of their detainee and send her to detention without treatment, with no regard for her injuries, and when an RN intervenes, he gets taken down and arrested as well, and in classic Pitt logic, there is no situation that cannot be made worse, somehow.

I feel like this is exactly what’s going to happen at ATL, with ICE wandering around the airport now.  All sorts of Hispanic and other minority would-be passengers will see them lurking around, and decide it’s not worth getting targeted and possibly detained and shipped off to a concentration camp detention center, and slip on out of the airport and ironically, ICE will have assisted in relieving the congestion of humanity at the airport, slightly, but seeing as how this was probably also the intention of the whole plan, it begins to grow the narrative that airline travel is becoming more of a white privilege than it already is.

Regardless, it’s just sad, laughable, and endlessly pathetic to see the state of, well, everything these days.  ICE agents trying to do TSA functions is like asking gorillas to do custodial work, at first they’d probably show remote capability of the bases of functions, but ultimately something is going to set them off, and ragey, power-tripping violence is going to be inevitable.

The craziest part about all these airport nightmares is that the guy sitting in the White House was named like 3,000+ times in the Epstein Files.

This is where I’m at with my trust in my country

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I got a thing in the mail from the US Census Bureau today, that wasn’t the next official US Census, but something called the American Community Survey.  My address was “randomly selected,” and it’s claiming to be collecting information to decide where important services are needed:

• Improving roads and reducing traffic
• Building schools
• Planning for the health care needs of the elderly

As a dutiful American, I took the time to fill out the survey in regards to my household, but I couldn’t help but notice just how tremendously thorough the survey seemed to be at gathering the specific racial breakdown of my household.  Mythical wife and I often joke about how we would conveniently tweak our children’s ethnic checkboxes to give them the most advantage in various situations, and considering the state of our nation as it is today, I had half a mind to just put my kids in as just “white” because there seems to be little benefit to being anything other than such, and it’s not like I’m completely lying, seeing as how my little girls are 50% white.

However, it’s apparent that “white” isn’t sufficient enough on the ACS, because there’s not only just a checkbox for white, but a text field asking for specificity on what kind of white; English, Irish, German, etc, and naturally the survey makes it a mandatory field where you cannot continue without some sort of clarity.  For once in my life, white people have it harder than I do, whereas all I had to do was check Korean, and that’s it.

It’s like they’re trying to filter out the people who can pass for as white, and make sure that the light-skinned Spaniards, Middle Eastern, Western Asia, and South Americans, who might be Latinos or Muslims or any other un-‘Murican category can’t be existing the country in plain sight.

I played it straight, and entered both of my kids as Korean as well as white + whatever specificity mythical wife could surmise was her background, because I have this paranoia that the US Government already knows the answers to the questions they’re asking, and this whole thing is a gigantic government-sanctioned phishing quest to find out what Americans are liars, and then target them for some sort of federal retribution.

However, by the time I got to the point of the survey where I was down to the final screen where my final buttons were “review” and “submit,” I couldn’t help but notice that about 85% of the survey was entering in racial information to an uncomfortably granular degree, and there were a few sections dedicated to asking about cars in the household, and level of education of the residents of the home.

Considering there are basically concentration camps being not-so-silently built throughout the country to capture and detain and worse, minorities, ICE raids and acts of murder, the timing of the ACS is extremely unnerving and gives me an overwhelming feeling of distrust that this isn’t being done for the altruistic purposes it claims to be gathering information for.

But it’s got to be legit, it’s from the US Government!

Yes I am aware, and frankly that’s precisely why I don’t trust it, because that’s where I’m at with my trust in the country, to where I’m scared to be compliant and submit my information, for fear that my response gets filtered into a bucket of people and households that aren’t the preferred pool of just white people, and puts me on the radar for a future ICE raid or federal scrutiny, because I’m not white.  There’s little to reason to believe that my spouse being white, and my kids being half-white would give them any more protection, and I don’t want them to be categorized as future targets, especially at this stage of their lives.

Needless to say, I did not hit submit on my survey, and short of being strong-armed in the future through some strongly-worded follow-up snail mail or actual communicative contact, I’m in no rush to do so.  Because I do not trust the United States government at all these days, more than ever, and the ACS just reeks of racial information gathering, and I have zero faith that this information won’t be used for anything that isn’t nefarious or malicious towards minorities.

It is sad and pathetic that I feel this way, and it sucks knowing that no matter how good of an American I try to be, I’m always going to be looked at as a second-rate human being by the people who run the country, because I’m not white.  Yes it’s not lost on me that Asians are among the more tolerated minorities in the country, but when white people can’t seem to figure out how to eliminate more black people, and they feel that Hispanics are too lofty a goal to try to eliminate, they’re going to target Asians, if they already aren’t, just to feel like they’re getting some traction somewhere.

It’s like playing a really hard video game, getting frustrated by it, and dropping the difficulty down just to feel good about yourself.  ‘Murican government probably doesn’t operate much differently, and as a result, I have no faith in them at all, nor am I in any rush to be complicit with submitting my ACS survey information.