I’ve never hated something so fiercely so quickly in my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When wandering around one of the 7,537 shops that I went with mythical wife into while in Seoul because she liked having me around as a safety blanket because I can speak Korean, I noticed these little trinkets that looked like four keyboard keys attached to a keychain.  I’d never seen anything like such before, and I didn’t give it much thought beyond simply stating my observation to mythical wife.

However, seeing as how mythical wife is a teacher, and surrounded by kids throughout her professional life, keyboard clickers were absolutely nothing new to her, and she was about as surprised as I was to have only discovered the existence of them at this point, long after they’d been in existence.  What can I say, we do our jobs in vastly two different worlds, and little ADHD fidget things aren’t something I’m exposed to regularly.

Later that day, we went to dinner.  Unfortunately, the wife chose a joint that was in Myeongdong, and I say unfortunately because Myeongdong is basically the epicenter of tourism in Seoul, and I tend to like seeking out less-touristy and more, patroned by locals kind of establishments, but it was one of those situations where if I didn’t put any thought into dinner, it’s whomever does’ call.

We enter the restaurant, and right away I see the place is crawling with tourists, and there’s specifically a table full of nerdy looking, obvious Americans, speaking at a volume that’s typically higher than most Korean restaurants tend to operate at.  My spider-sense starts tingling, especially when I see that there’s a convenient four-top table right next to theirs, and I start to creep towards the stairs, hoping that we might be able to sit elsewhere, but the host ushers us to the table next to the Koreebs, and I’m mentally cringing at the thought of being seated next to them.

Y’see, when I go to Korea, I want to immerse in Korea, use my Korean, eat Korean – not be lumped in with all the tourists and white people and their Koreeb-ey companions, blabbing too loudly about, hilariously, League of Legends and making me think that they might be Riot Games employees, based on their too-loud conversing.

But then the alpha-dork of the group, the one blabbing too loudly the most, whips out a clicker fidget after their latest topic of streamers and Slack chats comes to a lull, and as the subject of this post says, I don’t think I’ve ever felt such nuclear hatred for something I’d just discovered, so quickly in my entire life, than listening to this overgrown man-baby clicking away at his little fidget clicker.

And for the next ten minutes or so, when he wasn’t the one talking, he was the one clicking away at this little piece of shit, and I could feel my blood pressure rising, and the thoughts of fantasizing about throwing him out the window of our second-story restaurant materializing in my head.

I’ve often said to my bros that in the hypothetical metaphor of being locked in a room with Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Stephen A. Smith,* and having a gun with two bullets, I would shoot Stephen A. Smith twice, once for the kill to shut him the fuck up, and one more just to make sure.

*or anyone you really hate in order to drive home the point of magnitude of hatred

But if I were ever to be in the metaphorical room with two Stephen A. Smiths and whomever invented the fidget keyboard, I would shoot the inventor of the fidget keyboard twice.

I would really rather to listen to two Stephen A. Smiths blather and bait and go off about inane topics, than allow for the person who thought it would be a good idea to make a little fidget of keyboard keys on it, to live.

It took about those ten minutes of triggering clicking and clacking for me to give numerous nasty stares, glares and Korean 눈치 before this clown finally caught my eye and realized that his incessant clicking was possibly, annoying other people in the public restaurant.  I genuinely thought about actually speaking out, but fortunately he did notice that I was glaring at him to realize that other people exist in the world, and it’s probably the best when in public to take that into consideration when choosing to do annoying shit like clacking a fidget keyboard.

Thankfully he and his clown posse wrapped up their visit and left, because I genuinely was put on edge and ready to fight if he were to continue to click and clack as much as he had been doing.  It’s incredible that these things have existed for as long as they have, and it wasn’t until I was in fucking Seoul that I’d learn of them, and be ready to declare jihad on them, all in the same day.

I witnessed a lot of really obnoxious gen-Z tropes while in Seoul, but the fidget keyboards were undeniably the worst.  I hope whomever invented them develops chronic irritable bowel syndrome, and has a really hard time dealing with it, and spends the rest of their existence being inconvenienced by trying to manage it.

What I wouldn’t do to be this Korean guy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Korean YouTuber confronts Japanese “bumper” after witnessing him bump numerous women, including his friend

When I was in Seoul, I definitely got turned off by the oppressive volume of tourists that happened to be in the city at the same time in which I was visiting on more than one occasion.  I’d be lying if I didn’t fantasize about standing my ground while walking around and just trucking the shit out of everyone, primarily those who were eyes down, glued to their phones, to teach them a lesson to be more mindful of their surroundings.

But I didn’t, because I’m a civilized person, and even the most obnoxious of human behaviors are not worth potentially causing more than minor bodily harm, no matter how gratifying it might be to vent out my frustrations with human congestion.

My general rule is that when in tighter quarters, I will give people around 45 degrees of bodily rotation when wanting to go around them, and expect around 45 degrees back from them, so that we can hopefully traverse around one another as seamlessly as possible.  If they are not willing to reciprocate to the degree I do, well then fuck them, they can maybe get a little bit of body by virtue of their rudeness.

That being said, this was about one of the most satisfying pieces of internet content that I’ve seen in a long time, and it definitely gave me that e-chub of approval and envy that I wished I were the Korean guy in this video.

But apparently, and I’ve read/seen things about this phenomenon, about how there are a lot of Japanese people who are completely over all the weebs and foreign tourists that clog up their country, and have long since passed their boiling point of ignoring it, and have crossed the line into physically acting out on their frustrations, by deliberately bumping tourists; but because most of these frustrated Japanese people are still massive pussies, they only do so to women, children and generally people smaller than themselves.

To a degree, I get it, I’m not even a Korean citizen, and I was getting repeatedly incensed by the massive swarms of mostly Chinese, Russian or Indonesian tourists I came across in Seoul, clogging up the place of my heritage.  I would’ve loved to have bodied some people, especially those of whom weren’t paying attention to their surroundings, but like I said, I’m slightly more civilized than the Japanese creeps who let their frustrations get the best of them.

So this Japanese bumper is going around, shoulder checking all sorts of, mostly women, almost all smaller than him, but in his reign of terror, he bumps the wrong girl, one who has a rather large hulking oppa with her, who does not appreciate what he has seen.  And I love how the video footage shows how he’s repeatedly taking a wide route around him, and taking some time to verify that his target is accurate, almost hunting him like a shark.

And when the time is right, he intercepts the bumper and meets him with a shoulder check of his own, before stopping him and getting up in his grill, flexing his massive size difference to the little pussy, with his bro offering absolutely no modicum of support or backup.

In typical meek Japanese pussy fashion, the bumper collapses like a house of cards to a confrontation from someone larger and more imposing than they were, checking smaller females left and right, and although I would doubt that getting verbalized and bodied by someone larger was going to cease his dickish behavior once the cameras stopped rolling and he was away from his confronter, but it was satisfying to watch, and absolutely undoubtedly would be me if I were to ever be in Japan, and I caught someone deliberately bumping my wife, that is if she didn’t get up their grill first.

Man, what I wouldn’t give to be in this guy’s shoes in this moment in time.  I’d love to physically and verbally de-pants some asshole for being an asshole.  Yes, tourists can be obnoxious, but there are just some lines you just can’t expect to cross without there being the possibility of retribution.

Get owned motherfucker.  Korea > Japan

Nos vemos en cuatro años, Copa Mundial de la FIFA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And just like that, the World Cup is over.  Este fue un viaje hermoso.

Not really, but with the eliminations of Los Estados Unidos, as well as Mejico, within the span of the last 48 hours, and even Canada, all host nations are eliminated from the tournament, as are their Cinderella dreams of deeper runs, and general interest in the World Cup, I would predict are about to take a massive hit, with most casual futbol enthusiasts seeing little reason in continuing to watch.

I know it’s arrogant to predict such things based on the continued participation of the United States as well as Mexico, but I’d be curious to see the Fox One data for the rest of the World Cup, compared to when the US and Mexico were still in it, once the tournament is officially over.

But not only is it a sad albeit inevitable fate that the host nations are all out, but to the point of my general criticism of the state of futbol globally and the World Cup, the remaining teams are mostly the same pool of countries that always remain, including France, Argentina and Spain; Germany and Brazil were unfortunate victims to some upsets courtesy of Paraguay and Norway, but for the most part, it appears that the general script of the World Cup is still on course to have a rematch of 2022 in the finals, between France and Argentina, primarily the matchup between Kylian Mbappe and the MJ of futbol, Lionel Messi, over who can extend their all-time World Cup goals record, and if Messi can presumably go out as a two-time champion, seeing as how he’s possibly done with World Cup competition after this one.

I’m not going to say I wouldn’t watch any more World Cup now that all of the teams I’ve been generally supporting are out (Korea, USA, Mexico, Brazil), but personally my general enthusiasm for the rest of the field is mostly depleted, with a lingering hope for countries like Norway and laughably Egypt, to disrupt the status quo, but once they’re out, it truly is just another copy/paste field of World Cups prior and I can’t say that I’d have much interest if the finals do end up being comprised of France or Spain vs. Messi.

Circling back to the USA vs. Belgium elimination game, man I just knew, I knew, that the United States was fucked as soon as the red card suspension controversy swirling around Folarun Balogun started, with our sad sack excuse of a dear leader meddling around and somehow got FIFA to allow him to play against Belgium in spite of the red card he had drawn against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The narrative powering the United States went from being the Greatest USMNT in History that was actually starting to garner some respect from the global futbol community, to [Orange fuck] Meddles with World Cup to Give USA Unfair Advantage and it was back to everyone hating ‘Murica again; but more importantly igniting a fire under Belgium and giving them all the motivation in the world to shake off the nerves that got them to the Round of 16 looking vulnerable with just two wins and two draws and 4 goals allowed, to looking like a top-10 FIFA ranked team in the world again.

Not only was the motivation real for Belgium, but the distraction was palpable for the United States, who basically played like shit for 80 minutes against the Belgians.  They couldn’t pass, they couldn’t touch, they lost seemingly every 50/50, everything was challenging, they couldn’t get the ball to the Belgian side of the field, much less have any attempts at goal.  Pulisic was shaky and invisible, Dest couldn’t dribble, Balogun being allowed to play was a complete non-factor, Remm was getting worked the whole match, and the whole team couldn’t handle Belgium’s pressure, and I can only imagine how pitiful their pass accuracy looked.

The Greatest USMNT in History looked completely outclassed and overwhelmed, and the prevalent thought going through my head throughout the whole match, as well as the Mexico vs. England match was that futbol of the Americas, unfortunately still has a long way to go when it comes to being able to compete with futbol from Europe.  Both the US and Mexico were completely defeated by higher-tier European squads, and it’s like they’ve both figured out how to dominate against the CONCAF, but are completely clueless on how to compete outside of it.

Sure, Mexico defeated Czechia, and the United States defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the US also got exposed by Turkey, and the conclusion is that European futbol is still in a class above North America, and this World Cup ends with continued head scratching on wondering what it’s going to take for the US to ever catch up to Europe, if they ever can.

Regardless of the conclusion of Cinderella(s), I can still fondly opine that this has been the most beautiful and entertaining World Cup that I can remember since like, 2002, when Korea (and Japan) captured the imagination of the world when they hosted.

The amount of wholesome and wildly entertaining content to come from this World Cup have been stuff of legend, with tourists and visitors foreign to the Americas coming in and documenting and sharing their amusement, wonder and culinary discoveries with the internet, and there’s been no shortage of happy entertainment over the whole tournament.

Mexico welcoming everyone, and making BFFs with everyone from Korea, Japan, Czechs, Uzbeks and even the English has been a delight to watch.  Tourists from all over Europe and Japan making their journeys into the United States, and experiencing quintessentially American things like fast food, Buc-ee’s, barbecue, Tex-Mex, ‘Murican portions, MLB baseball and of course, ranch dressing, have all been amusing and helpful as an American to see what others actually don’t hate about our country.

There was a great meme narrative that summed it up pretty well, along the lines of that the World Cup is showing that we don’t all hate each other, we just hate our world leaders, and the World Cup is like a giant fun gathering of cousins where the parents all hate each other, and it really couldn’t be any more true.  The amount of unity, acceptance and general copacetic peace shown by so many throughout the United States, Mexico and presumably even Canada has been genuinely the best part of the whole tournament, completely regardless of the outcomes on the pitches, and even if the end result is yet another boring France or Argentina win, it doesn’t change that this has still been the best World Cup ever.

ABS is the gift that keeps on giving MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Larry Brown Sports: seven ancient-tenured MLB umpires accept buyouts from the league to retire early, including notoriously oft-questioned umpire, CB Bucknor

Make absolutely no mistake, this story is probably 95% on account of the fact that the automated ball and strike system has nuclear-power kicked open the door of exposing umpire ineptitude, with the other 5% being that there’s an extremely high chance that the entire league is going on strike after the 2026 season and that there will be no or a shortened 2027 season on the near horizon, and Beaner wanted to give their old boys club a chance to get out ahead of time.

But really, this has almost entirely to do with the fact that the ABS system has wreaked havoc on the umpire fraternity, and this seems like the safest way to get many of the most exposed umpires out the door with the most minimal amount of further humiliation at how bad they are at their jobs.

I know it’s been a divisive topic among baseball fans, with lots of old school old heads not liking the advancement of change, and that old school part of me can understand it, but I’ve been a sports fan long enough to know the frustration and aggravation of missed officiating ruining and tarnishing games, so even if it means that there’s a chance that it goes against the outcoming I’m hoping for, I’m generally accepting of the fact that this newer system of accountability is in place, in the event it helps the probabilities that I’m hoping for.

Let’s not sugar coat it, baseball umpiring has been among the worst when it comes to league oversight.  No other major American sport, do fans know the names and faces of officiating crews more than they do in baseball, primarily for reasons of disdain, dislike and hatred.  It didn’t take me long at all to learn who Tim McClelland, Joe West and Angel Hernandez were in the past of notorious umpires, and it took me no time at all to understand the significance of CB Bucknor headlining the latest list of umpires getting pushed out the door.

And not to go unnoticed is Laz Diaz, whom despite not being the headlining name, was very clearly listed second in the list of umpires sent packing.  Whether it was intentional or not, smart of him to sneak in underneath CB, so that some of his heat is mitigated by a worse umpire.  But make no mistake, I’m about as pleased to see Laz getting the boot as much as Bucknor is, because he too, fucking blows.

I digress though, when change this large crashes over, it sometimes turns into those scenarios where we might not like the devil we don’t know that’s looming ahead of us, versus the devils we just sent out to pasture.  I still believe that there’s an extremely low chance that there’s even a baseball season in 2027, given the MLB Owners basically speed-running the inevitability of a work stoppage, with their list of demands that the players will more than likely absolutely not agree to, but regardless of what happens when baseball is back on the field after the 2026 season, as far as the umpiring goes, it’s probably going to be, one of baseball’s favorite cliches, a brave new world.

But at least it will be one where umpire culture is getting something of a hard-reset and hoping that we the fans (and those like me who pretend to be them) won’t ironically know and react to the names of every umpire that is slated for the games we want to watch.

White people know no bounds when it comes to wanting to be mad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was at the airport when I saw the yellow official Peachtree Road Race shirt for 2026.  I thought to myself, whoa cool, it’s yellow, seeing as how since Adidas took over the production of the shirts in like 2022, they’ve been peach, blue and red, so there really hasn’t been any hard rule on what color they were supposed to be.  And seeing as how I tend to favor the color yellow, mostly for ironic reasons, I looked forward to when I would get mine, since I’ve since been a mere virtual runner the last six years because no iota of my being wants to get up at 3:30 am to go wait at the Lenox mall parking lot to run the Peachtree in person anymore, when I can do it at my own leisure.

However, over the span of the last 24 hours, I’ve seen at least 5-6 posts fed to me from algorithm, of people I have no idea who they are, as well as local news outlets, all, for lack of a better term, talking or debating the yellow PTRR shirt.  Almost entirely fueled by hatred, by, unsurprisingly, white people who are completely bent out of shape over the fact that the shirt is yellow and not red, white and/or blue, primarily, in honor of the fact that this is the vaunted 250th anniversary of the United States of ‘Murica. 

The news outlets are obviously cleverly feeding off of this reaction, and are simply querying the masses, fully knowing that the negative engagement is still engagement all the same, and the comments sections that I can’t resist looking at, are almost entirely echo chambers of salty white people all saying the same nonsense about how it should be red, white or blue because 250, and a whole lot of people corroborating this opinion because most people with brains know better than to jump into these lions dens of poorly veiled racism and orange fuck supporters.

However, it’s to the point where I can’t just simply chalk it up as white people being salty and actively looking for reasons to be pissed off, but more that the reactions and opinions and choices of words seem to be so uniform, so echoed and so similar that I can’t help but wonder if these are all the actions of bots and AI, deployed by the types of farms that are designed and meant to incite and provoke, knowing that even negative engagement is still engagement, and engagement equals profit somewhere down a line.

All the same, if it really is that all these reactions and posts are genuine human beings, all consistently and collectively being mad over the fact that a run’s shirt is yellow, it goes back to the title of this post that white people truly know no boundaries when it comes to the innate desire to be mad about, anything at all.

It’s funny to me that this reaction did not happen when in 2023 the shirt was said to be peach, but is this weird sickly orange-y color that borderlines pink, but as long as it was called peach, it could be justified, seeing as how the name of the fucking race is called, The Peachtree.  But yellow probably makes the right white immediately think about the evil Chinese since yellow is the negatively connoted color associated to Asian people, despite the fact that yellow variations of popular ‘Murican muscle cars are oft-coveted, but it doesn’t matter because yellow = wrong.

All the same, I dig the yellow shirt, and I look forward to when I get mine.  The Adidas versions of the PTRR shirts over the last few years are all great, because they’re no longer cheap, Gildan-like cotton t-shirts that I wouldn’t really ever wear, but are mesh, workout-caliber shirts, that immediately go into my rotation of workout apparel, and get regularly worn.  The fact that simply wearing them on my own walks and runs is going to incite white people, will only be a cherry on top, aside from just liking the color and design in the first place.

Stay mad, white people, I look forward to observing what pisses y’all off next.

Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although Korea was priority 1A on this vacation, 1B was very much the Disney Cruise that mythical wife booked, leaving out of Singapore.  Frankly, the way I looked at things, seeing as how both mythical wife and I had a lot of plans, ideas and goals we wanted to do in Seoul, the real vacation wouldn’t be until we were sequestered onto Mickey’s boat, and had no other choice but to relax.

Seeing as how I logged the steps probably for about 125 miles while in Seoul, a vacation while on vacation seemed like a good idea and sufficient reason to tear ourselves away from the Motherland.

But not to go overlooked, were brief stops in Singapore before the cruise, and a whirlwind night in Hong Kong, both of which added value to the trip, and seeing as how neither of us had been to either before, were good toes dipped into the water to realize that both are worth seeing again in the future.

So Singapore, we actually spent two nights before cruising out, although the first was pretty much an arrival day at night.  But with one full day and a morning, I felt like I got a good taste of the place, from a lot of walking around, as well as eating pretty much nothing but hawker stall food.

One of the observations I made about Singapore is that food is cheap, but booze not so much.  I’m pretty sure all the food I ate for breakfast and lunch on our first day didn’t cost as much as one of the Singapore Sling cocktails we had at the Line Bar.  And maybe it’s because it was at a touristy location, but Tiger beers costing the equivalent of $8-9 USD seemed kind of steep for what’s basically the Budweiser of Singapore.

Speaking of food, I wasn’t really a fan of Haianese chicken rice in spite of all the suggestions to try it.  However, the satay from Satay Street was fantastic, but if I had to name a favorite food from the entire country, it was the curry puff pastries, that I housed like four of them in my short stay.  They’re basically samosas, but still so fucking delicious.

I also made a point to go see the Merlion, which I summed up to being kind of like what the Mannekin Pis is to Brussels, some arbitrary statue that somehow has the identity of the city baked into it.

Honestly, Singapore felt kind of like the Chicago of Asia to me, since it’s such a diverse mixing bowl of cultures that all seem to converge in one harmonious city and country.  Natives co-exist with people from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and it all seems to work out.

9/10 for Singapore, would visit again, even if it were ball-sticking hot and humid.

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Seoul Searching, circa 2026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel like there’s got to be an industry for creating end-of-vacation travel packages that help mitigate the downward emotional connotation of a conclusion to a trip.  Not sure how it would entirely entail, but stuff like low-stress return travel, not having to do death marches at inconvenient times, and any methods of help reduce the strain of time changes and logistics.

Of course, this is a hypothetical thought that comes to mind while mythical wife and I are en route home after two weeks without kids, as we’ve traversed through Seoul, Singapore, the ambiguous open seas somewhere between Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and wherever else, before a crash course through Hong Kong, and on our way back to ‘Murica, while trying to fight the feelings of dread of returning to normal life although we’re both looking forward to seeing the girls again.

This was, for all intents and purposes, the first true adults-only vacation that we’ve been on, since, our honeymoon, due to the unintentional expediency in which our kids came into the picture, as well as a fucking pandemic.  Not necessarily by design, during the course of our trip, a lot of shit happened, noteworthy to me, like the Knicks winning the NBA championship while we were in the air, missing ALL of the World Cup group stage, while trying to catch some action while hilariously on the other side of the planet, Father’s Day, and our anniversary, where we entered year 8 of marriage dear god where has the time gone

But, in true autist fashion, of course I jotted down notes and blurbs of things and thoughts that came to mind during travels because of course it’s got to become shit for me to write about in the brog that nobody reads except for me.

The last time I was in Korea was nine years ago, when I came with mythical wife on what was her first-ever visit to the Motherland. She has since been back a few times without me because she hates traveling with me, but I was excited to return because it has been quite some time since I’d been.

I didn’t think that much would be different since my last visit, but I suppose it was naive of me to think that, because it was almost culture shock to count all the ways things had changed since my last time out here.  If I had to try to nail the reasons, I would say that it’s probably a combination of boy band BTS going globally mainstream, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and the general mass popularization of Korean culture on a global scale, because for the most part, Seoul was absolutely crawling with foreign tourists.

Naturally, this is me saying that it was at times, uncomfortably and inconveniently crowded at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t think to myself thoughts about how Thanos Was Right and other nihilistic things that stem from my general aversion to crowds.

Continue reading “Seoul Searching, circa 2026” →