Category: Brog

General posting

Oh, South Fulton #47

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: South Fulton taxpayers ‘livid’ because mayors wants to give himself a raise

It was 7:10 am and I was in the kitchen groggily pondering my life while getting ready to start preparing breakfast for the kids, when I saw the headline for this article pop up on my Echo.  My brow furrowed, and my knee-jerk reaction was what, fuck that when I pulled out my phone to look up the story to find out more.

I’ve said it many times that despite the fact that I’ve long bid good riddance to South Fulton county, I still have a casual interest in the goings over there, because I do believe that in spite of all the corruption and ironic bad behavior that will always render the place a swampy swirl, I do feel for those that are good, that still live there and believe in the place, even if I don’t, and want good for those people.  And my knee-jerk reaction was that a mayor giving himself more money for a region that seems incapable of improvement, doesn’t sound like a very good idea for those people.

But then I read the context behind the headline, and my attitude changed fairly quickly.

Turns out the Mayor of the City of South Fulton was making a paltry $47,676 a year.  The caveat to it is that for whatever reason, it was in a part-time capacity, and there are all sorts of easy jokes about how it’s possible or why it’s just part-time explains why South Fulton is such a wasteland, but in terms of numbers, the mayor was making a wage that frankly I don’t think is necessarily livable in the Metro Atlanta area.

It should also be mentioned that one of the former mayors of Atlanta once was discovered in an audit to have spent upwards of $20K doled out to employees as prizes and bonuses for holiday parties, to give a barometer of how much reckless spending there is in this general region.

But yeah, the mayor of the City of South Fulton is currently making $47K and wants to bump himself up to $85K; the article states that it’s a 78% increase presumably to increase outrage, but it’s really 55%, and frankly, for doing the thankless job in a wasteland, even if it’s at a part-time capacity whatever that entails, I don’t think is an unreasonable amount to propose.  It’s not like he’s asking for six figures to do the seemingly nothing that all the politicians in the Metro area do, and frankly it’s not like he hasn’t earned some money for all the efforts he’s tried to put into his jurisdiction.

For context, after being elected, he deliberately moved himself into one of the sketchiest apartment complexes in one of the most sketchiest parts of town, to try and prove to his constituents that he was one of them and was a man of the people.  He eventually had to bail because unsurprisingly a place like that had tremendous mold problems and it was threatening to the lives of him and everyone who lived there (the complex has since mostly burned down, “accidentally”), but this is the kind of guy that he tried to be, as a politician.

Regardless, there are many in South Fulton who are deemed as livid because he wants a little bit more money to part-time reside over them, and after seeing the numbers, I’m not opposed to it anymore as much as I think a lot of it should be past-services due. 

It’s like that scene in Ocean’s 13 where the dice factory goes on strike, and Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict hears the number $30,000, and is all like $30K for every employee?  And then is informed that it’s just $30k is what they’re demanding in total, and everyone’s just basically like.. that’s it?

That’s how I feel about this guy asking for a little bit more money.  It’s not an egregious amount, and it’s frankly too modest in my opinion.  I know it’s easy for me to say not being my tax dollars and my money, but if anyone were to offer me a 55% raise to go live back in South Fulton County, I’m not doing it.  Not even for a 100% raise, because there’s no way I could afford to live in a secluded fortress away from all the bullshit, not to mention the agony commute I’d be putting myself into again.

Man is just asking for a modest raise to continue living in a part of town that mostly everyone has given up on and doesn’t believe in, and even if he is one of the many Metro Atlanta politicians blowing smoke, $85K a year seems like a rounding error in comparison to some of the flagrantly irresponsible spending going on around the rest of the Metro area.

I will never understand the repeated 50/50 booking of Bron Breakker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was chatting with some of my bros about Jey Uso’s long-awaited singles championship when he won the Intercontinental blet from Bron Breakker, and my first remark was along the lines of, well I hope they don’t give the blet right back to him in 3-4 weeks, because this has basically been the exact recipe that the WWE has been doing with Bron Breakker since he debuted back in 2021.

For whatever reason, Bron Breakker always has two matches with a guy when there’s a title involved, and by the time the second match is over, Breakker is the one coming out with the title.  50/50 booking in professional wrestling is when two sides trade wins, with the goal of each party getting an opportunity to look like the stronger side once, but in the end the benefit is minimal if at all, because both parties will have taken an L.  It is often criticized by the fan community and I can’t say that I disagree with the notion, and I’d rather a guy be used sparingly and sell a feud on character work and promos as opposed to there being a series of matches where both guys come out no better than which they started.

Like, here’s a list of Bron Breakker’s championship 50/50s since emerging in the WWE ecosystem:

  • Tommaso Ciampa: Loses on 10/26/21. Wins NXT Championship on 01/04/22
  • Dolph Ziggler: Loses NXT Championship on 03/08/22. Wins NXT Championship on 04/02/22
  • Sami Zayn: Loses on 07/06/24. Wins Intercontinental Championship on 08/03/24
  • Jey Uso: Loses Intercontinental Championship on 09/23/24. Wins Intercontinental Championship on 10/21/24

Like, I’m not pulling this pattern out of my ass, since Bron Breakker has emerged onto the scene, this has been precisely how he’s been booked, and I don’t know why.  After three years, he’s proven himself to be a tremendous talent, very much the genetic heir to his family lineage from his dad Rick Steiner and uncle Scotty.  He’s demonstrated the ability to work with all sorts of styles of workers, from all-around talents like Ciampa and Ziggler, small technicians like Carmelo Hayes, to bruisers like Gunther. 

50/50 booking should be reserved for guys greener than Breakker, but I feel like they’re doing it anyways, because of his general age.  Pro-wrestling has this archaic philosophy that everyone should pay their dues and apparently for a very long time.  Furthermore, a guy like Breakker has to always be weary of being accused of succeeding on account of nepotism, so I have to assume that all this 50/50 booking is being done to help him pay his dues, despite the fact that I think it’s doing more harm than it is good to have him eat so many losses, when he’s clearly set up to be one of the torch bearers for the company in future years.

So I guess writing things out, I kind of answered my own question to why Bron Breakker is being 50/50 booked so much.  I don’t necessarily agree with it, but as long as some old philosophies remain, even the most talented of guys will have to learn to eat some shit sandwiches because all their predecessors did too.

That being said, the tease of Bron Breakker vs. Jacob Fatu will be interesting.  I would’ve said that the new Bloodline would be beginning an amassing of titles with Jacob getting his first taste of singles gold, but that would be problematic when it would come time for Solo to try and nab one of the World titles, and I think we all know nobody’s dethroning Cody or Gunther.  But let’s not pretend like the ol’ E won’t 50/50 Bron against Jacob Fatu as well for a fairly meaningless title change just to help advance the Bloodline storyline which is in my opinion starting to border on becoming dragged out too long and with too many players in place.

But hopefully, the E will just stop booking him like this inexperienced rookie, and just let him have a monster run with the gold, because I genuinely believe he’s the future, and it’s important for him to be established as such, when the time comes for him to start being the man.

Even if when he is in performance mode, he’s the color of Hulk Hogan mixed with a Costco rotisserie chicken.

FOX’s Shohei Ohtani coverage is out of control

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Let’s get one thing out of the way – I have no dislike for Shohei Ohtani.  Even if he is Japanese and the world has basically fetishized him into oblivion, I don’t have any beef with the guy.  He legitimately is basically the greatest player to have played the game of baseball at this point and seems like a pretty humble and level-headed human being.

But the way FOX and the rest of the media world has continuously forced him down the throats of every baseball fan, sports fan or just television watcher, is definitely making me sour on the concept of Shohei Ohtani, and it goes without saying, is among the chief reasons why not one iota of my being won’t be rooting for the Dodgers to take the L in the World Series.

Nobody likes being told what to do.  I don’t like being told what to do.  I definitely don’t like being told what I need to like, and the way FOX has gone so ridiculously out of the way to put Ohtani on this pedestal has been ridiculous and embarrassing frankly, and not even being teammates with Freddie Freeman, whom I will always be a fan of, and would ordinarily be okay with him winning another World Series with someone else as long as it weren’t with the Dodgers.

The “X Time Away from Shohei Ohtani” was mortifying to discover that FOX was doing, and I’m glad to have been watching more AL playoffs as opposed to the NL, because it seemed inevitable that the Dodgers were going to win the pennant after vanquishing of the Padres, and although I didn’t witness any of these obnoxious bumpers myself, I saw plenty of screen caps and memes enough to know just how much I hated them.

This is the kind of thing that would make me hope for failure and ineffective at-bats, but because he really is that incredible of a baseball player, of course he delivered in many of these long-called for at-bats, which added to the e-bile I felt in my thoughts about the Shohei Ohtani coverage.

Like, whether it’s on television, or on various social media platforms, or ESPN or any other sports sites, one of my go-to snarky remarks is that I can hear the Oriental gong going off whenever Shohei Ohtani is being discussed, because that’s just how much he has caught the imagination of the collective world with his baseball talents.  It’s almost obnoxious to know that he’s actually a pretty decent dude, notwithstanding the potential gambling problem/scandal from the start of the season which was kind of refreshing to think that amid all of his Mr. Perfect-isms, he was flawed too like the rest of us.

Either way, I thought that I would have more to say about the subject than this, but I basically got my point across.  Enough with the Shohei Ohtani coverage, and at this point, him winning the World Series with the also-insufferable Dodgers is the absolute worst-case scenario there is as far as baseball is concerned.  It validates flagrant spending, egregious marketing of Japanese superstars, and makes a whole lot of obnoxious front-running Dodgers fans happy, which I can’t abide for.  I’d rather side with the devils I know, and actively root for the Yankees, if for nothing at all, would make mythical wife and my mother-in-law really pleased to see the Commissioner’s Trophy being hoisted in the Bronx.

But my parting thought, as insufferably obnoxious the Shohei Ohtani coverage and the Japan fetish has been these playoffs and this season, shoutout to Tommy Edman for being the NLCS MVP; that’s right, a half-KOREAN guy being the best player on the Dodgers for going 11-for-27 with an OPS of 1.023 and a home run.

Suck it, weebs

I’m so envious of Earth-1610 Aunt May’s Spider Cave

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In my most recent episode of I don’t have any fucking space for myself, I began to fantasize about how great it would be if I could just have a underground bunker like Spider-Man (E-1610) had in the backyard of Aunt May’s house, perfectly hidden by a nondescript and dilapidated looking toolshed, as shown in Into the Spider-Verse (amazing film, btw).

And not just because it was full of all sorts of shit that’s right up my alley, like the gym full of free weights, the spacious computer area, as well as a generous amount of space allocated to workshopping, but just because of the sheer space that existed, available to use.

I have no personal space of my own.  Like literally, I don’t have any designated space that is mine and mine alone, and my blets are in storage, all my personal effects are in storage, and I have like a shelf, a desk, and a Ron Swanson poster in the corner of my master bedroom that’s the closest thing I have to personal space, and that’s when mythical wife isn’t taking a nap.

The rest of my house is absolutely overflowing to the gills full of kids things, and every now and then when my mind can grasp how ridiculously full my home is, I feel despair and hopelessness about how things will never improve.  When I bought my home, it was two adults in a four-bedroom home where one bedroom hardly saw any use, one was a guest room, and I had a room designated to be my office where I could store and display all of my personal effects.

Now it’s three adults, two kids, no spare bedrooms, no office, and me having angst about having no personal space, whenever I have the time to have angst, and writing about how I fantasize about a fictional underground bunker that ignores the existence of infrastructure, code and architectural integrity which is the least unbelievable thing about this specific world which has teenagers flinging themselves all around New York on spider webs, and travel between alternate realities.

But yeah back to the point, I’m so envious of the Spider Cave underneath Aunt May’s house, and if I had something remotely close to having an underground bunker of my own, without any hesitation, it would be the go-to place to store all the shit that’s taking up space in the house proper, and maybe allocating half of it to becoming my personal private office space.  Because don’t I deserve a place to get some peace and quiet too??

I would take all of the holiday shit in the attic and it’s going into the Spider Cave.  All of mythical wife’s teacher shit that sits in a number of crates in the garage; all that shit’s going into the Spider Cave.  The large tubs that are accumulating with kids clothes, artwork and toys that they don’t play with – Spider Cave.  Tubs of DVDs and BluRay discs?  Spider Cave.  The lawnmower I haven’t used in three years?  Spider Cave.

The irony is that all this offloading into a Spider Cave wouldn’t actually free up enough space within my house proper to where I could actually have some private space again.  Objectively speaking, the more efficient thing would be to leave everything where it is, and use the Spider Cave solely for my own personal space and use, since it would hypothetically fulfill my desire to have even just a little bit of space for myself.

But the knee-jerk reaction to a fantasy fulfilled of having a Spider Cave was churning reallocation of crap from one place into another place, where it could be better out of sight and out of mind.

All the same though, having a magical bonus 250-350 sq ft. of usable space really is a fucking fantasy.  And it would be truly incredible to have my very own Spider Cave; I don’t even need or want any of the Spider Tech, because I don’t want to have the great responsibilities that would come with inheriting such great powers, I just want a place where I can hang my blets, display all of the crap that I’ve accumulated that’s worth displaying, and having a space to myself that’s just, me.

I wish I could be CEO of my company for just a year

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I want to make yet another post talking about work, it’s just that this is something that’s been sitting on my mind a lot lately and falls into the category of if I don’t write it out now, it’ll never getting written out and I think this has legs enough to be worth a post.

But “culture” has been the overarching thing going on with the company I work for, and I do feel that we’re at a little bit of a rough patch as far as everyday operations are going.  Things aren’t the worst that I’ve ever had to deal with in my career, but they’re far away from being a place that doesn’t feel more than a means to an end type of job.

This year, my workplace has gotten a little caught up and fixated on their “scores,” which is how the company is perceived by its own employees, taken by a third-party company.  Apparently, the scores this year have been some of the worst ever, to the degree where many people above or not adjacent to my paygrade are seemingly constantly in the works to figure out ways to improve morale, employee satisfaction and potentially improve their scores the next time survey time rolls around.

Obviously, one of the first things that comes to mind is, where the fuck are all these people getting time to fixate on stuff like this, when there are business objectives and tasks that could be done alternatively?  But I digress, all this score analysis has resulted in a whole lot of aggravating outcomes, which feels like when a couple is having issues, and where one party is trying too hard to make things better that they actually are making things worse.  That’s pretty accurate to how it feels like at my workplace currently.

Recently, we had an event pop up called “Stress Break at the Park” which ordinarily would make me roll my eyes at the forced fraternization, but the park selected was actually near my home, and would’ve been a welcome interruption to daily Office Space to be able to have a much shorter trip home.  However, just the other day, an amendment went out, and suddenly Stress Break was no longer four hours long, but one, and it was no longer at the park near my house, but instead the atrium of the office.

The ironic laughter was copious among the jaded of my team.

Anyway, I could write a NaNoWriMo about some of the more inane bullshit that occurs at work, like most people probably could about their respective jobs, but I’ll try my best to cut to the chase and get back to the title of this post.

We had a meeting, where all hands on deck were tasked with spitballing ideas to improving business, profits, engagement and other metrics that big companies tend to want to see heading in an upward trajectory.  I remember making some suggestions that I thought were good and viable, but when the day is over, I’m so far removed from the plateau to where actual decisions could be made that when the meeting ended, everything seemed for naught.  However, I believe in a lot of the ideas that I have, and this is where I wished that I could just be the CEO of the company for just a year, so I could push through some of my ideas and put them really to the test to see if they would shake out for a company like ours.

Primarily, most of my ideas revolve around dropping prices across the board, and giving shit away.  There’s been so much evidence in the world of commerce that lowering costs to consumers typically equate to consumers spending more, and big bad Target just this past year recorded considerable sales growth on account of lowering prices to consumers.

When you look at some of the most successful apps out there, they thrive on microtransactions, because most everyone can afford to part with a few bucks here and there, as opposed to targeting the most financially privileged and expect nothing but home runs from every transaction.

One of my favorite stories in business is Sega, when they created Sonic the Hedgehog, instead of charging consumers for their answer to Super Mario, they basically gave the game away.  It helped usher in an entire generation into purchasing Sega Geneses, and lightning struck twice when they released Sonic 2, and had it be the pack-in for later consoles.

That’s the kind of general mentality I’d love for my company to do, is not be afraid to give shit away for free, to the right recipients.  Partner up with other Atlanta-based companies or organizations and get their name out there and collaborate.  Donate product to be used for their offices or places of business, in exchange for content and sponsorship.

Partner up with charitable organizations and donate products to build relationships, create positive PR and press, and get the company’s name out there to be associated with charity, good will and doing well for others.

Sure, there would be a big up-front cost to give away product and labor, but I just believe that there’s enough evidence out in the world of business that proves that those companies who have been unafraid to give shit away, have managed to prosper and flourish in the long game.

Frankly, in the sterile, copy what everyone else is doing world of business, I would just love to take the reigns of a company like the one I work for, and love to try and shake shit up and see if I could rock the boat and succeed and thrive using ideas of my own that I don’t have to push through and climb the ladder with.

One can dream.  I have little desire to actually be in the role of a CEO, I’m someone who needs to work, and being a figurehead and a fall guy doesn’t seem like much of a job to me, but one can still dream about wanting to make change.

Things White People Like: Not showering after working out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In all my years that I’ve been going to gyms, this is something that I can’t say that I’ve really paid attention to until more recently.  Maybe it’s because my current gym is very small and has a very small sample size to analyze, but it’s through this observational process do patterns begin to emerge, and lead to me being able to spout off bullshit brog posts like this one.

But as the title of this post reads, I have observed a disturbing trend that has occurred enough for me to widely brush stroke the statement that white people don’t shower after working out.

Once or twice, sure, maybe we’re short on time, maybe something has come up.  A meeting you’re cutting too close to, or the workout had been underestimated and time is no longer on our side.  But I’m witnessing the same people with regularity, who work out, and vanish into the locker room only to emerge just minutes later, with not nearly enough time to make believable that any sort of bathing had occurred.

Look, I’m not a complete psycho who’s following every white guy into the locker room after their workout, but I know from my own experience with expedient showers, that even when trying to be quick and timely as possible, I still need like 10-15 minutes in the locker room to shower, dress, groom before I’m ready to go back to the office.

These Ben Afflecks are in and out of the locker room in under 5-7 minutes in most cases, and the laws of physics are saying that these motherfuckers ain’t showering, full stop.

And it’s always white guys.  Much like myself, all the black men who also work out at my gym, they always shower after working out.  It doesn’t matter if they’re doing weights, or spending any amount of time on a cardio machine, if they exercise, they’re showering.  It’s only the white guys where it’s more of a surprise to see one actually taking time to bathe and clean themselves after a workout than not.

The thing is too, a lot of these guys I’m witnessing on a regular basis who don’t shower, it’s not like they’re doing some wimpy pussy workouts where they don’t build up a sweat or put themselves into situations where they should probably consider cleaning themselves up for the courtesy of the people they’ll spend the next half of the working day in close proximity to.  Lots of these guys are doing cardio and building up a considerable amount of sweat and perspiration, the chief ingredient when it comes to generating BO.

And then they finish their workouts, get back into their white guy uniforms and hop on the elevator to get straight back to the office.  This kind of lack of regard for the olfactory comfort of others is equal parts selfish, arrogant, disgusting and just plain dickish.

My brain can’t wrap itself around the idea of not showering after a workout.  The shower is practically the best part of the workout, the reward for taxing the body and now we can cleanse ourselves of all the sweat and strain of exercise.  I love the feeling of being clean, and especially in the workplace where feelings of positivity and physical pleasure are often being worked against, why would I deny myself something that I could realistically indulge in?

White people, man.  I just don’t understand these motherfuckers sometimes.  For as much as they think they own the entire planet, they sure conduct themselves in some truly mind-boggling, third-world manners.  I feel very fortunate that of all the white guys that I’ve seen not showering after sweaty workouts, that I don’t have to conduct any business with them; I just know that if I saw them in the actual office, I would just know that they probably reeked of varying degrees of BO, and I wouldn’t be able to hide the displeasure on my face, and nobody wins when unpleasant interactions occur.

The perils of getting younger in the workforce

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I seldom feel as old whenever I stop and take a few steps back and look at my job, and ponder how many of the aggravations and gripes I have stem from the fact that my company hires a lot of younger people, as opposed to older professionals with actual work experience.

Sure, there’s merit to hiring young from a corporate standpoint, they lack the leverages of experience and work history to where companies feel like they hold the advantage when it comes to negotiating salary and benefits.  Younger workers are often believed to be malleable to fit into existing cultures, and the theory is that they still have enthusiasm and energy, and hope that they can inject such into workforces that are tired and jaded by a history of Office Space.

However on the flipside, younger workers lack the work ethic the generations before them have, and their overlap with older workforces often creates a culture clash that companies are still trying to figure out the calculus on how to combat and work through in order to have a harmonious environment.  You can’t push younger workers too hard, lest they immediately start updating their LinkedIn profiles and start looking for an exit.

If it isn’t obvious, the impetus of this post stems not just from a recent resignation of a colleague under the age of 28, but of months and months of being a part of a company that has demonstrated the tendency to hire on the younger side of the spectrum as opposed to possibly more professional candidates, and I feel like it’s leading to a lot of the day-by-day issues that are emerging and compounding as time progresses.

The recent resignation sucks, because this person was basically the point person of this retail campaign that my company is in the midst of trying to launch.  Their departure creates a noticeable hole in the workflow of the project, and until their successor can be identified, implemented and brought up to speed, the project is effectively on pause, because despite them still being present for their two-week notice, they’ve already basically stopped working on anything, instead of you know, trying to leave on good terms and tie up as many loose ends as they can.

But just in general, I work with a bunch of kids on certain teams, and them being kids means they’re all flaky and terrible communicators and spam up our internal Teams channels with gifs as a means of communication as opposed to actual fucking words.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to not be nearly as age-ist as I’ve heard some of them be, they’re rather pleasant and easy to chat with on a personal level, but when the temperature at work starts to rise from time to time, very few of them have the fortitude or tenacity to keep their shit together, and their bad habits tend to come out when things heat up.

But the biggest thing is though, like I said before, you can’t push them without chasing them away.  The turnover at my company in the three years that I’ve been here has felt pretty absurd, and I feel like it’s this downward spiral where young workers are hired, crumble under the pressure of real-world work, bolt after 6-8 months, creating a shitshow for the teams they abandoned; their backfills are also young workers, but entering a worse environment than their predecessors, crumble under the pressure and then bolt, and the cycle has been repeating itself, but with things continuously getting worse, rather than showing any signs of stabilization or recovery.

I get that the workplace in general is changing and loyalty and longevity mean dick and butt these days, and it’s not necessarily age-related when it comes to people bouncing in short order, but it doesn’t help the narrative and reputation that it is, when it’s mostly the younger workers of the workforce, that are exorcising this right the most frequently.

Seeing as how this is a thing that more of a cultural shift as opposed to something that can be fixed, it’s times like these where I wish I could just work for myself, but the reality is that I don’t know what I’d do for a living, let alone make ends meet and support my family.

If only I could get paid, generously, to brog about inane bullshit and the happenings in my life, that would be the ultimate dream come true.  But since that’ll never happen, it’s remaining in the downward spiral vortex, and just simply holding onto my butt and hope one day improvements occur.  At least I’m not under the draconian thumb of my old boss, but frankly, it’s not okay to constantly keep that comparison in my back pocket to justify other bad workplace behavior.