{"id":40695,"date":"2015-07-06T15:09:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T19:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=40695"},"modified":"2020-07-16T15:09:37","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T19:09:37","slug":"independence-day-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=40695","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s been recently, but I just haven\u2019t really had the drive to do much writing lately.\u00a0 My schedule is all sorts of rearranged lately, and I guess I just haven\u2019t really taken the time to sit down, look at the happenings around the world, and try and find some motivation to write.\u00a0 This definitely deviates from my desire to remain a somewhat consistent brogger, and as everyone who has ever written (and failed) to maintain a blog, the onus is on us to keep on writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

With July 4th<\/sup>\u00a0now in the rear view, I saw a few things that caught my attention that might warrant a few words, or at least serve as somewhat of an impetus to write something.<\/span><\/p>\n

Firstly, we have\u00a0this story from the Peachtree Road Race<\/a>, a 10K run that I\u2019ve done myself 4-5 times in the past.\u00a0 Frankly, I\u2019m glad that I didn\u2019t do it this year, because for starters, I have nothing left to prove, since I\u2019ve done it 4-5 times, and secondly, this particular year apparently broke the tradition of where the weather somehow maintains something decent, and instead was a torrential downpour and had some delays, something that I didn\u2019t even know they ever did.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anyway, as the story has it, as far as the competitive aspect goes, an American runner was on the cusp of winning, but sure as he\u2019ll likely end up on SportCenter\u2019s\u00a0Not-Top 10<\/em>, he began celebrating a little bit early, and was passed a hair before crossing the finish line; by a British guy.\u00a0 My knee-jerk reaction was actually wondering where the litany of professional runners from an African country were, and a murky recollection of wondering if the Peachtree Road Race had a policy change within the last few years that basically prohibited if they could compete it in or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

But naturally, as so often times is the case when I see something like this, it\u2019s\u00a0owned<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Figures he gets cocky, celebrates too early, and at that point, you have to hope he loses, and thankfully he did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, we have something that I\u2019m actively fascinated with every July 4th<\/sup>, and that\u2019s the\u00a0Nathan\u2019s Coney Island Hot Dog Eating contest<\/a>.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why I am, because it\u2019s not like I\u2019m remotely close to eating the capacities as these professional eaters do, but since the days of Kobayashi dominating the contest, to the eventual rise of Joey Chestnut, I\u2019ve often found myself paying attention to this event every year, regardless of how ambivalent I am towards the rest of the professional eating scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying it solely because he\u2019s the win, and I\u2019m just jumping on a bandwagon, but I\u2019d actually been following Matt Stonie\u2019s career prior to this victory.\u00a0 I actually rooted for him last summer, when the contest was held in spite of a lot of rain, but the fact of the matter is that his YouTube channel showed up on my account as a suggested video, I started watching him destroy gyozas, burritos, pizzas, English breakfasts, and The Rock\u2019s and Manny Pacquiao\u2019s diets.\u00a0 I became a fan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, considering the Nathan\u2019s contest can be summed up by basically eras, I\u2019ve bore witness to the passing of the Kobayashi era, and with Joey Jaws finally being dethroned, by Matt Stonie no less, it\u2019s cool to see the coming of a new era, but of some guy I\u2019d actually been following before all this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, is something that I saw in the local news outlets that got me wondering just what kind of trends is society headed towards: not just\u00a0one<\/a>, but\u00a0two<\/a>, instances of celebratory\u00a0gun firing<\/em><\/strong>, to commemorate Independence Day.\u00a0 And in both instances, someone wound up dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seriously?\u00a0 I thought celebratory gun firing was a plot device used in\u00a0The Simpsons<\/em>\u00a0to commentate on gun control through satire.\u00a0 Where Homer was given a gun, but then was using it so haphazardly that he was a danger to Springfield and his family, and so forth.\u00a0 But apparently, celebratory gun fire happens in real life as well, and unlike in the confines of a cartoon, has vastly more costly repercussions.<\/span><\/p>\n

This, definitely warrants an \u201cOh, Atlanta.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever though, this is a lame post, but I just wanted to feel the feeling of typing up words again for the sake of my beloved brog.\u00a0 Maybe more content sooner, rather than later!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s been recently, but I just haven\u2019t really had the drive to do much writing lately.\u00a0 My schedule is all sorts of rearranged lately, and I guess I just haven\u2019t really taken the time to sit down, look at the happenings around the world, and try and find some motivation to … Continue reading Independence Day musings<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,101,15,52,32],"class_list":["post-40695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-holidays","tag-og","tag-owned","tag-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40697,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40695\/revisions\/40697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}