Year six of forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even to this very day, I still sometimes can’t believe that I’m a dad.  I usually have these thoughts in the mornings, when I’m watching my kids eat breakfast, and my mind thinks back to when they were but little babies that drank from bottles, and eventually fed by spoon, and then finger foods, and here they are not only eating with utensils, they have opinions, on what breakfasts I make them that they do like, or if they’re one of their pissy morning moods, and whatever I’ve made is automatically putrid trash.

But sometimes I just quietly watch them while they eat, and I think back to my mom doing the same thing to me, and me thinking “whaaaat???” whenever I caught her staring.  I don’t remember what her answer ever was, if she even answered in the first place, but being a parent myself, I’ve come to understand why she was doing it in the first place, because I have to imagine she was probably thinking the same thing I think whenever I just watch my kids, that it’s still amazing that we have kids and that we are parents; bonus if the kids themselves are pretty good ones.

Today marks year six for my eldest, the one that started me on this path of being a parent, and like I stated above, there are times where I still can’t believe it.  Life as a childless adult feels like such an alien, foreign concept that I’m often flabbergasted when I see people who live such uncomplicated lives for basically nobody but themselves for the most part.  Sure, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the freedom, frivolity and sheer ease of not having to feel responsible for the life of young children, but there are times where there’s nothing like witnessing your own children grow into the world, and feeling somewhat responsible for helping shape them into the people they’re becoming.

Few things make me laugh more than hearing my children using some of the more common phrases that I use, like for example, #1 was getting tired of explaining some Pokémon thing to #2, and she bust out a how many times do I have to tell you, and I lost it right where I was sitting, because there’s absolutely no doubt where she picked that saying up from.  Maybe that’s not the best thing to be picking up to reflect on me, but it’s just an example of just how perceptive and how much of my kid my kids are capable of being, and seldom does a day go by where one or both of my kids don’t bring an avalanche of joy to my heart at some point.

And just like that, my eldest is six freaking years old.

She’s smart as heck, wants to know damn near everything she can about Pokémon, still enjoys reading with dad, and appears to be quite the math whiz, based on the fact that I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen an incorrect answer on her math worksheets throughout the entire school year so far.

She’s very observant, picks up on everything, and has the marvelously beautiful imagination that only a 5-6 year old can have, whether she expresses it through drawing, coloring or making things out of whatever she can get her hands on; Legos, wooden blocks, MagnaTiles.  I love building things to instruction with her, but it’s most fun when we disassemble a Lego kit, and then she’s free to build whatever she wants, and when she’s done she always has these elaborate backstories to the structures she’s building, and the figures that are living in them.  I’ll tidy up her room in the afternoon, and by the time bed time has come, she’s built an entire town of structures, with origin stories for everyone that’s living in it, and I don’t remember being nearly as imaginative as she is now when I was six.

What I really love is that she still wants to be picked up and carried by dad all the time.  There was one moment I had thought to myself at what age does it seem weird to be doing that, but it didn’t last long because I remembered that there would one day come a day where either she doesn’t want to be held any more, or for whatever reason I’ll be unable to do it, so I put that silly thought to bed, and I’m happy to pick up and carry my kid whenever she asks, because I’d rather get in all my carries and hugs in while I still can.

The point is, happiest of birthdays to my eldest child.  It’s been the greatest honor of my life to be your dad, and I love you (and sissy and mama) with every fiber of my being, and the simple objective of my life has always remained the same, to be the best dad possible to you, always.

It’s the Four Loko that makes this amusing to me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Hall County sheriff busted for DUI after blowing a 0.212, revealed that he had been drinking Four Lokos since 6 a.m.

Under normal circumstances, a story like this would roll off my back, perhaps get an eye roll out of me, knowing that police protect their own, and that regardless of how egregiously drunk the guy was, while in his county-issued vehicle, it’s safe to assume that he’s not going to be getting close to the same kind of punishment that us normal citizens would receive under similar conditions.

He may lose his job, but considering he’s out there drinking while on duty, he probably doesn’t care in the first place, and he’s most likely not going to be doing any time, or have a suspended license, or be on probation on account of the oft-cliched professional courtesy.

But what caught my attention and why this is ending up as brog-worthy is the clarity in the headline that this particular pig in question, hadn’t just been drinking since six in the morning, but he had been drinking Four Lokos in his cop car:

Couch told investigators that he had been drinking several Four Lokos since 6 a.m. that morning. Investigators also found two open cans of Bahama Mama that had spilled in his car.

The devil is in the details, and now we’re talking. 

Obviously, anyone who’s ever known me might recall my own fascination with Four Loko back over a decade ago.  I was mystified by the fact that these shitty, $4 tall boys of nuclear race piss were actually killing college bros, dumb enough to be drinking more than like, one, at a time.  When the government declared banishment on the drinks, for whatever reason, I felt the compulsion to seek out some of these awful drinks, and managed to procure several cans of various flavors.

Over the next years, I would bust them out at social gatherings or Dragon*Cons as my drink of choice in order to get a healthy buzz going, and make no mistake, one can of any Four Loko was instant drunk, and anything beyond that was playing with fire.

Eventually, I would steer away from this dumbass behavior, and the remainder of my hoarded cans would remain ironic collector’s items, that is, until for whatever reason, some of them would spontaneously eat their own cans, leading to some obnoxious messes that I had to clean and eventually realized that I should just chuck them out, thus closing the book on my keepsake cans of Four Loko.

Back to the present, Four Loko survived government intervention, but they apparently changed the formula somewhat to be less lethal when drank in stupid amounts, and they’re still available at gas stations and wherever shitty booze is sold.  And apparently for one Hall County sheriff, it was his go-to drink for when he wanted to get smashed on the job.

Like I said, if it were just a story of a cop who got blasted on the clock, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought beyond knee-jerk disgust and disappointment in the system.  But finding out that he had been getting smashed on Four Loko since six in the morning, and he was discovered obliterated five and a half hours later, man clearly had some serious demons in his closet for all this to be transpiring.

And that 0.212% BAC is pretty frightening, because to my understanding that’s basically saying that over 20% of the blood in his body was tainted with alcohol.  I’ve gotten drunk off of Four Loko before (always under slightly more responsible, non-driving conditions), but I have come down from the buzz pretty normally, so I doubt that I was ever remotely close to a 0.212% BAC, so I’m curious to how many cans of the jet fuel he consumed, and let’s not ignore the fact that he had several open cans of Bahama Mama, which is another fruity, race piss-like canned booze, so clearly this hick sheriff was having a one-man party in his cruiser.

Either way, I’m amused by the brief resurrection of Four Loko into the public lexicon, and the ironic and pathetic circumstances in which they did so.  In a way, there isn’t a better way for it to have happened, and 16 years later, Four Loko is running it back with inebriated chaos like it’s 2010 all over again.

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.

Dad Brog (#163): rattled

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife, the girls and I went to the Asian market the other day.  When we were on our way out, #1 got a little ahead of us, and began crossing the street on her own.  Mythical wife managed to get her attention to stop and come back and that she knows the rule that, hands held when in the parking lot.  No sooner than she got a hold of her hand, a Lexus SUV came flying into our periphery, before coming to a stop, maybe 2-3 feet away from mythical wife and #1; but adjacent to them.

Had both of them been 2-3 further into the crosswalk, they would have been hit and run over, entirely.  Me yelling out HEY to the reckless driver wouldn’t have done anything to stop them.

Naturally, justifying the stereotype of being some of the most unsafe drivers in the world, it was an older Korean woman, maybe a few years younger than my mom, who was driving the car.  She looked up at us with shock and concern in her face, pantomiming bowing her head in apology at her neglectful driving, and I gave her a stare that I wish could induce death, for the danger she potentially could have put my family in because she was probably too busy checking fucking KakaoTalk on her fucking phone instead of paying attention to the road in one of the most attention-requiring zones there could be, directly in front of a grocery store.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and ironically it was a good lesson for my kids to learn at the very real dangers of parking lots, since up to this point they bemoaned having to hold a grown-up’s hand every now and then, and wanted to flex moar independence that only kids of this age can.

It wasn’t really until we were driving home did it really start to sink in to me at just how fortunate we were that nothing happened.  Like I said, #1 was extremely close to getting hit by a car, and frankly I don’t know how I’d have reacted if that actually did happen.  More than likely I’d have wanted to kill the ajumma behind the wheel who was responsible for it, but I was playing the scene in my head where I struggled to curse and scream at someone in my elementary-level Korean.

I’ve seen my child in hospital care and with tubes and all sorts of apparatuses attached to them.  I am in no rush to ever have see such again, and I don’t know how I’d handle it if I had to, against all of our wills.

Needless to say, I was quite rattled by the whole situation, and by the time I got home, I had decided it was probably for the best not leave the house any more for the day.  No matter how much we try to protect our children from the very real dangers of the world, it’s like at any given point, it’s always just that close, at any given moment.

Is this right-wing of me?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as I try to actively avoid politics, it’s inevitable that politics finds me from time to time.  The world as a collective just can’t ever shut the fuck about politics, and occasionally, I’m going to run into news that I really didn’t care to learn about in the first place.

Recently, I learned of some politics person; I don’t care enough to be specific on who it was, their party, what their title was, or what state they represented, but they basically said that they were trying to pass some bill or law that stated that child rapists should be eligible for the death penalty.  I’m pretty sure they were a Republican, and probably nine times out of ten, I disagree with most of the shit that comes from that side of the fence, but if I’m being honest here, not only did I not disagree with this proposed idea, I actually kind of like it.  I would be in support of child rapists being put to death.

That being said, is that right-wing of me to feel that way?

I always felt that I had somewhat of a nurturing, protective instinct, but those probably ramped to twelve upon having offspring of my own.  I would do anything to protect my children, and I would want the harshest punishments there could be toward anyone who would maliciously harm them.

There being child rapists and predators in jail, with any possibility of getting back out into the free world doesn’t sit right with me, and if the federal courts want to take the need for justice away from law-abiding citizens and put it in the hands of the courts, and rid the world of some of the sickest of fucks, I can’t say I’d be opposed.  In a way, it’s kind of like the Mr. Miyagi adage of the best defense is to no be there, and allowing the courts to dispense justice and punishment onto child rapists is kind of like allowing concerned parents like me to no be there.

Okay, that analogy really was terrible and I just kind of wanted to work in the Mr. Miyagi no be there adage, but the point remains that I don’t hate the idea of child rapists getting the death penalty, and I wonder if feeling that way is right-wing of me.  Mythical wife says yes, and I can get that assertion, but I feel what I feel.  I just don’t believe child rapists have any point in needing to exist, and keeping them locked up in prison still means they are a drain to taxpayers with every scrap of food they eat and manpower needed to keep watch over them.

From what I’ve heard from a friend of mine that used to be in law enforcement, child rapists typically don’t last long in prison, because even amongst the most heinous of murderers and criminals, harming children is still a line most don’t cross, and there are notable amounts of them that get dealt with, organically.  But in the instances where they manage to not get offed by other inmates, I wouldn’t be opposed if the courts exercised that justice themselves.

If that is right-wing of me to think, then so be it.

Is there a more perfect show than Batman the Animated Series?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is more of a rhetorical question because the answer is no, there really isn’t.  Obviously this is subject to personal preference, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only one out there who has this particular opinion.

I had finished watching WWE Elimination Chamber, and it was a pretty mediocre show overall; although the men’s and women’s chamber matches had outcomes that I didn’t get right, the Becky vs. AJ and the Balor vs. Punk matches were very obviously predictable.  Danhausen being the mystery crate reveal made me feel like the whole buildup is this generation’s Gobbledy Gooker, but probably more accurately the WWE’s need for a wacky character they can push towards the younger audiences and kids to help move merch and gain wider appeal.

But the overall feeling I had once the show was over was general disappointment and apathy, but mostly disappointment that mythical wife had actually paid real money for ESPN Unlimited so that I could watch PLEs, and it just so happens that the first one I come across is a relative clunker.  I think it might be a safe bet that once Wrestlemania passes, to pull the plug on the service since we already have like four other services we’re subscribed to.

Anyway, seeing as how the night wasn’t quite too late even though I would benefit from getting more sleep than I do on the regular, I felt like I didn’t want to end my television watching experience with an underwhelming wrestling show, so I switched to HBO Max where I knew that they had the entire library of Batman the Animated Series, and where I’d been watching an episode here or there, because it was perfect in the sense that it was high quality content that I’d already seen a million times and could multitask during, and the episodes are just 22 minutes, which means they’re no major time commitment.

It was while watching the episode of Clayface’s debut, it dawned on me that the reason why I seem to feel that Batman TAS has become somewhat of a default fallback, is because of what I just said, that it was the perfect show.  Not just for the aforementioned reasons, but holistically, the show is just perfect, in just about every other way as well.

Art direction, execution, writing, music, an entry of DC comics storytelling, light years ahead of its time, parading around as a kid’s show.  Believe me, I have seen every single episode of the show, and I’m having a really difficult time at thinking of any episodes that are actual 100% clunkers, with no redeemable quality to them, and by that criteria, I can’t say there are really any.  Sure, there are some episodes that I may want to skim or possibly skip, like the one where Batman is gassed by the Penguin, and he has to be saved by some kids, but by and large, I anticipate myself going to really enjoy the steady, gradual and methodical rewatch of Batman TAS with an episode or two every now and then.

And anyone who knows me knows that I almost never rewatch anything, because there’s so much content out in the world, lots of which I want to watch, that I very seldom go back and rewatch anything, because that time could be spent imbibing on something I haven’t seen before.

But Batman TAS?  It’s perfect in just about every subjective and measurable metric, and the most important thing is that it’s extraordinary ability to chase any shitty example of viewing media and bring me back believing that there’s good television out there, and that there’s really no bad time to catch an episode of the TAS.

I can’t even begin to express how pathetic this notion is

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whilst doomscrolling earlier in the day, I came across this ad for some app/community that was targeting couples with no kids who seem to be exasperated with the idea that they’ve been marginalized and feel the need to require the crutch of a specifically curated app/community to meet other couples with no kids for platonic friendships and relationships.

I stared at my screen for a few seconds, and if my eyes could roll further back, they might accidentally connect with my sinuses and then accidentally roll into the back of my throat, I’d accidentally swallow them, and I’d be blind for the rest of my life.

As the kids would say, (get) the fuck outta here

There are actually couples without kids out there that feel that they are the ones who feel marginalized?  They’re the ones who feel the societal shift because they didn’t want to have children?  They feel like their circles alienate them because they don’t have kids?

Have these self-absorbed twats been paying attention to the news?  Remotely even heard about the rapidly falling birth rates?  Women who feel empowered to shut the gate toward the continuous survival of the human race until shithead men get their act together?  Most Asian countries on an eventual timeline of extinction, because their birth rates have fallen faster than anywhere else?

Like, the way it works is that the more these birth rates fall, and if they were to continue, the human population, as overpopulated as shit is now, eventually does swing in the opposite direction, and sure it would be quite some time from today, but would eventually be on a timeline towards extinction, if none of the societal problems of the world don’t wipe us all out first.

But it’s all summed up with me looking at this ad and service and thinking, are you fucking kidding me?

I think the testimonials are what set me off the worst, people whining about how they’re feeling like pariahs because they don’t have kids, and how hard it is to meet other couples and people.  I’m like, mother fuckers, if the shoes were on the other feet, and you’re the ones with kids, and realizing just how much of your general social life much less life’s aspirations you have to put on hold in the name of being somewhat decent parents, maybe, just maybe you’d understand just how tone deaf and asinine such a service is.

To a parent like me, hearing about a service/app like this is like millionaires who developed an app to help them find more money.  I have zero regrets about choosing to become parents, but I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t see my childless friends and not be astounded by the freedom, flexibility and general ability to do whatever the fuck they want that I don’t always think they seem to realize they might be taking for granted.

Couples without kids have a degree of freedom that parents will not have for a very, very long time, at least not without the sacrifice of time spent with their children.  Them complaining about how hard it is to meet other couples, to me is like, they simply have forgotten how to open their fucking door and step outside, because I can assure these flakes that it’s a whole lot harder to meet couples with kids in tow, than it is without, because our offspring are wild variables completely incapable of controlling.

These out of touch headfucks seem to think that parents meeting parents is such an automatic-in with making friends, but just because our kids get along doesn’t mean the parents will.  It helps a little bit, but in the six years I’ve been raising two kids, I can comfortably say that we can probably count on one hand of the parents we actually like, and even still, we’ve never had any sort of meal, play date or social gathering with them at all.

I will concede that meeting people in this day and age is harder than it’s ever been, due to a variety of factors, be it societal, the stark divides between various socioeconomic, idealistic, classist factors, COVID did a number on peoples’ social skills, and the fact that millennials and on have all been raised by the internet and people just don’t know how to interact with each other.

But for couples with no kids to complain about how hard it is to meet other couples with no kids, is tone deaf on a monumental degree, and these cocksuckers have no idea just how easy they have it.  Them not being able to have spontaneity, flexibility or meaningful relationships isn’t a problem with all couples with no kids, it’s exclusively just them.  Trying to make it an umbrella issue, might unearth a good bit of like-minded couples, but really, it’s just revealing a whole lot of lazy, untalented, uncharismatic assholes out there.