Author: dannyhong

“Ready to fight” doesn’t quite describe bringing MMA gloves to a courtroom

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really have much to say about the situation in Taiwan, or have any inkling of an idea of how coronavirus response has been.  But when my friends showed me this story, the photo alone was most definitely worth a thousand words.

I guess there’s some nationalist party out in Taiwan who is less than satisfied with how the democratic party of the country has been handling the coronavirus, so they felt that their only appropriate course of action at this point, was to start a melee in the courtroom.

Sure, there’s all sorts of pacifist belief that violence doesn’t solve anything, and I could make all sorts of smarmy jokes about the level of civility that exists coming out of Taiwan, but let’s just skip to the part where one woman showed up to the courtroom, equipped in straight up MMA gloves.

Not only did she roll up to the courtroom ready to fight, she wanted optimal protection for her hands, so she could try and deliver haymakers without risking breaking any fingers or knuckles in the process.

It’s almost as if there might be belief that Taiwanese law might be like Final Fight, where defeating the opposing parties in hand-to-hand combat means your party takes over, no questions asked.  And those who show up ready to fight stand a better chance at possibly taking power, than those who didn’t come to work with their own MMA gloves.

2 Under 2: Untitled dad ramblings (#065)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I may have accepted that life might be on hold, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasional bad days.

#2 is getting better in terms of us managing the colic and learning her tendencies, but one thing that hasn’t really changed is her sheer unwillingness to take naps and give us a break from time to time, and the fact that she still exists in three states: sleeping (overnight), eating, or screaming her head off, with the caveat being that the screaming is usually only remedied by having someone holding her 24/7 until she can be brought into another state, eventually

I’m on dad duty for so long that I have no time to do anything else.  And when I say anything else, I mean do more work that I’d be able to do without having to have a baby in my arms, because I’m not fucking Goro from Mortal Kombat and have another pair of arms to be productive with.  My house is a fucking disaster zone full of piles of things that adds to my general stress and anxiety because I’m typically a pretty tidy person and I prefer my home be such as well.

I hardly have time to upkeep personal hygiene and pretty much every shower that I’ve had in the last two months have typically been after midnight, where I’m sacrificing rest time in order to not feel completely unraveled.

I don’t have time to be a good dog owner, and since my dog is 16 and elderly, I have to keep him crated for the vast majority of the day solely because he will pee on everything under the sun if he’s left free to his own devices.  I get mad when if and when he soils his dog beds, but it’s primarily frustration at the fact that I don’t even have time to even be able to take care of a dog’s base needs adequately enough.

I seldom have time to eat, and eat well, and everyone knows cooking at home is typically the key to improved eating habits, but who the fuck has time to cook much less eat it, without having to be hands-on with #2, so mythical wife and I subsist on an unhealthy amount of fast food because it’s all we can tolerate to indulge on when we’re already parked on E and need to eat while we can breathe.

Throughout the last few months, I’ve actually lost weight, I’m below my license weight which was fabricated to make me feel like not a fat fuck, but I’m actually below it now.  However, I know that’s solely based on the fact that I literally haven’t lifted any weights since mid-March of 2020, and I’ve pretty much lost all muscle-mass that I’d cultivated in the decades before coronavirus, and I’m pissed at ‘Murica for not being able to do what it takes to eradicate the pandemic and how it will never end and short of me turning my garage into a gym, there’s no way I’m ever going to reclaim any muscle mass that I’ve lost at this rate, not to mention where the time would be, being a dad of 2 under 2 and all.

Let’s not even talk about hobbies and personal indulgences, and the sheer time I don’t have to be able to do any of those.  One more thing I’d add to the list of unsolicited advice for new dads, would be to think of all the things you hope to accomplish in a day, and then count at day’s end just how many of them you didn’t get to.  Hobbies, are probably at the top of the list, followed probably by anything you wanted to do that utilized arms not handcuffed to an infant.  I’ve watched a lot of television over the last weeks, which isn’t the worst thing in the world and is something that I ordinarily would like to do, but the thing is I do it because it’s something I can do while holding an infant but when the day is over I’d rather be writing because that’s my passion hobby that I always want to be doing if I were ever to have free time where I wasn’t joined at the hip to my infant.

It’s not lost on me that the time I’m taking to write this could’ve been spent writing about anything else at all instead of another frustrated rambling of an overwhelmed dad, but as I often say, I want to remember everything, including the negative, about fatherhood, because it’s always important to be able to look back and learn from the past, even if they’re not always the most positive of things.

And unlike a lot of things where I have to write from memory and retroactively try to mentally get back to places, this is something that’s written fairly live and current, and I think it’s important to chronicle these emotions and frustrations and not let them simply evaporate until they bubble back up in the near future, and the words come out completely differently. 

Weekends suck because I don’t have the free time that I have to pay for in order to do absolutely anything other than being a hands-on dad.  Funny how that works out: free time, costing a fuck ton of money.

Ohio State sure loves to recruit quitters

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Sauce: Ohio State linebacker seemingly retires in the middle of a game, over not being subbed in

Honestly, there’s not much for me to add to this story.  This is retroactively being written, so I’m having a hard time getting back in to the same head space in which I wanted to write about this in the first place.

I suppose to jotted down this note because I always love when there are stories about Ohio State fucking up in some capacity, because I think they’re one of the most overrated athletic programs in the country and I always relish in seeing them getting knocked down, even from within, with entitled uneducated athletic ringers who can’t spell “luck” or “fuck” on social media.

Or maybe it’s because the guy in question’s name is “K’Vaughn” which I’m not entire sure on whether it’s supposed to be pronounced “Kevin” or “Keh-Von” and really it’s just a low key dark humor of weird black names that this guy could be one of the actual players who participated in the Key & Peele East/West Bowl introductions.  

Regardless, lol at Ohio State for getting yet another ringer who quits the team when things aren’t going his way, as if K’Vaughn’s last name were Bosa.  Not that it really matters, because in spite of all the choking they do on an annual basis, they don’t seem to ever have any shortage of 4-and 5-star recruits wanting to go there, so K’Vaughn’s spot will likely be filled right up with someone just as good if not better, and perhaps a better speller on Twitter too.

2 Under 2: Reconsideration of the worst (#064)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Last year, I came to the determination that among the worst things ever as a new parent, was if you were unfortunate enough to have a child that required an apnea monitor.  At first, it is welcoming, as it is a literal safety net for new parents, to monitor the heart and oxygen rates of newborn children, but after a while, it transforms into an obtrusive ball and chain, that your child is required to be affixed to until they reach medical clearance for removal.

I stated that I hated the apnea monitor more than the former elected president.  That I wouldn’t wish an apnea monitor on my worst enemy’s children.  That there couldn’t be anything worse for new children and their parents.

But then I had a child who suffered from colic.

I had a revelation during one of the numerous times in which my wife and I were trying to soothe our second child from one of her daily colic attacks where she’s screaming her lungs out bloody murder, and there’s literally nothing we can do about it other than to hold her and try and bring her down which typically results in nothing but colossal failure.

I basically said that dealing with a kid with an apnea monitor was preferable to having a child who gets colic.  And I meant every word of it.

At least with the monitor, we learned how to control the triggers and recognize behaviors that could result in an event beep; it’s just that we were mandated to go two straight months without any events before we could get the green light to remove it, and as the days churned on, it began to feel like a tightrope act in tip toeing towards the finish line, but we succeeded.

But with colic, there’s no hard time to strive for, there’s no definitive end to when babies grow out of colic.  Some grow out of it as early as three months, but #2 has just passed the three month mark, and still is susceptible to colic attacks with the most minimal trite triggers.  And when she begins screaming her lungs out, it’s nothing but feeling defeat, and feeling like failures as parents.

Without question, I most definitely rank colic as being worse than the apnea monitor.  With the monitor, there was always a visible light at the end of the tunnel, but with colic, despite the existence of modern healthcare, nobody’s still been able to figure out what causes it, how to soothe it, or any sort of avoidance.  There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because we have no earthly idea of when she’s just kind of going to grow out of it, but for what it’s worth, I most definitely would feel and empathize for any other parents who have to suffer from having colicky babies themselves.

556 days later

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I went into the office for the first time since March 16, 2020.  I know this to be true, because the desk calendar of daily dad jokes that I have, that’s the last date that was shown, and my my morning routine typically consisted of setting my coffee down, tearing away the prior day’s dad joke, turning it into a paper ninja star, and putting it into the spindle lid, as shown above.

The thing is, I left on the 16th with no intention of returning to the office for a while, because it was not long after the birth of #1, and I was going to flex some work from home in order to best be available as brand new parents.  Sure, I had an inkling of the news rapidly spreading around the world about how coronavirus was ravaging China, and initially finding their way stateside, but little did myself or anyone else really know or understand that the office was on the verge of indefinite closure on this particular day.

By the end of the week, the building was vastly shut down on account of the rapid spread of coronavirus throughout the country, and businesses and offices all across the world were doing the same thing.  In between learning how to be a dad for the first time, and trying to keep up with the new rhythm of the work day, I had to sign off and fill in numerous requisition forms for my reports to be taking their physical iMacs home with them, so that they could embark on the new world of working from home.

Frankly, this is no new story for just about anyone with an office job, and I’m stopping myself from reminiscing too much, because I’m trying to remind myself that I’ve got many other retroactive topics I want to brog about and a very finite amount of time in which I can do such.

Regardless, the plant pictured to the right, now that was one of the few things that actually worried about, at the office, when the world shut down.  It was but just a small succulent that was given to all employees at the door in promotion to spread awareness of the arrival of spring, and seeing as how I have a window cube, it was quite easy for me to put it on the sill, and see how long it would take before I would invariably end up neglecting it and it dying.

But succulents are some tough motherfuckers, and it persisted all through occasional watering droughts, time off, my wedding and honeymoon, and not only survived, but thrived.  What started out as a little nugget of a plant branched out into these lengthy, snakey vines, and to where I eventually put a little bit of effort into its general growth and development, like the tape-rubberband combo to help it stretch out and sun.

However, as pandemics do, 500+ days is too much to ask of any plant, and when I popped into the office for the first time in 556 days, the anticipation of what I’d see from my little succulent was answered, in a reddish, dead husk of a succulent, almost frozen in time, by virtue of never being molested at all during that stretch.

And with my biggest curiosity answered, I finished up doing what I came to the office for in the first place: removing all of my personal effects in an attempt to low-key clean out my desk, because I have no intention of ever coming back to this office again in my life, if things go my way.

But as many of my peers and co-workers have said to me, it was as they described – it was almost as if the entire floor were frozen in time, as if the calendar never moved on from March 16, 2020.  Calendars all around the floor were still in March, name plates of numerous people who have moved out or moved on are still in place, and lord only knows what’s living in the break room fridge at this point, but it was an interesting field trip all the same, and I’m glad that all my personal shit is out of there, but sad all the same, to see the fate of my determined little succulent friend.

Has there been a more legendary of a power move than this?

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Obviously, there are probably several comparable examples floating out there in the world, but I’m a dad with an extremely small world these days, so bear with me here.

But I recently saw that Katey Segal has apparently showed up in the ashes of what used to be Roseanne and is now The Connors, seemingly as the love interest of Dan Connor, Roseanne’s widowed husband after her character died of cancellation.  But for lack of better term, Peg Bundy has shown up and completely usurped the role of Roseanne out from Roseanne herself, and I’m left here flabbergasted, wondering if there’s ever been more of a legendary power move in history?

It goes back to the 80’s when not necessarily direct rivals, but definitely there were comparisons between the two actresses, playing similar characters of no-bullshit, smart talking moms between Roseanne and Married… With Children.  To the point where it’s even acknowledge in the roast of Roseanne by Katey Segal herself, and if people didn’t put one and one together before seeing that clips, it’s easy to see the correlations between the two.

And then Roseanne had to go and get herself cancel culture’d, putting the whole reboot of the Roseanne show into a tailspin, but ABC and Disney are clever, and have the financial means to throw infinite money at a problem until it goes away, and it appears that even the social cancellation of the titular Roseanne is not insurmountable.  Killing her name from the series, and renaming it The Connors is one thing, but to more or less flip all of Roseanne’s role and probably future storylines onto Peg Bundy is pretty incredible no matter what way you look at it.

It’s kind of like whenever Ric Flair would get himself in hot water with whatever legal, drugs or one of this 13 ex-wives, and WCW would always have this sudden power vacuum in the main event.  But then they’d poach some WWF main eventer, be it Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart or whomever, and they’d instantly step in and bring a modicum of low-adapting stability to the scene and things would resume business as usual until the company imploded in 2001.

Katey Segal stepping in to fill the shoes vacated by Roseanne’s social indiscretions all but solidifies who really was the queen of the old school sitcom moms’ roost, and now not only did she dominated MWC through her original time, she’s dominating someone else’s original IP in the modern age.  If that’s not a power move on the legendary level, then I don’t know what else is. 

Squid Game: of course Korea can make the battle royale genre better

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think I only needed like 30 seconds of the trailer to determine that Squid Game was probably something that I was going to really like.  Even before the trailer reveals that the games were deadly for those who couldn’t compete, it seemed fairly obvious that such was going to be the case but all the same I was all-in for such a concept, because I was a fan of such battle royale notions like Lord of the Flies as well as Battle Royale.

The thing is, despite the fact that the general concept of Squid Game is kind of lifted from numerous predecessors, it still in my opinion, ended up being a better execution than all of them, mostly because the long-form format of being a Netflix series gave the story a tremendous amount of room to breathe, develop its characters, and tell the more comprehensive story about just how desperate people can be when facing the weight of mass economic despair in their lives, that somehow become determined to become expendable at the potential reward of sudden generational wealth.

Needless to say, the show as a whole was about as easy of a layup to love as I thought it would be.  It’s lock on the top rankings of Netflix since it’s drop date goes to show that I’m not the only one who feels as fondly to the series, but since it’s made in Korea, I can take just a little bit more ownership to it than all other non-Koreans, and everyone else can kiss my ass and continue to overanalyze and pretend to be experts on Korean dramas suddenly because they watched Squid Game.

Frankly, after watching through the series, it’s actually an unfair comp to put it in the same breath as stuff like Battle Royale.  Squid Game is far more nefarious and thought-provoking due to the fact that all participants of the entire thing are basically voluntary, and there’s few things as jarring as the thought of people willingly putting their lives on the line for a very minute chance at winning a large pot of money.

I won’t go into too much analysis because I don’t want to give away any spoilers to zero readers, plus the imaginary weight of my writing queue is probably about as heavy as the economic hardships all 456 participants of Squid Game feel, but it really all boils down to the fact that Squid Game most definitely delivers on the massive amounts of hype and mania as people are rightfully giving it, in my opinion.

Leave it to Koreans to make a better battle royale story than all of its predecessors, and it makes me happy that shit like this continues to further the obvious narrative of just how high quality and good at telling stories and making media that Koreans are capable of.  I enjoyed the show immensely, and I look forward to what comes next from the Motherland as far as future projects are concerned.