Month: October 2014

The serious business of pumpkin carving

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of my friends throws a pumpkin carving party every year, and for the most part, I try to participate in it every year I can. The impetus of the party is the belief that it’s simply nice to have traditions; and I for one could not agree any further. That being said, regardless of who, or how many people actually participate in the act of carving pumpkins, I have always taken it pretty seriously; probably to a magnitude where my effort can make up for the lack of effort on someone else’s part (I’ve carved two pumpkins a few times now).

Because I’ve had a difficult time of finding content as well as motivation of things to write in the absence of my brog, I figured I would write a little bit about my process when it comes to preparing for pumpkin carving.

For starters, I am a tryhard, and I do not care to use any generic stencils or ideas that come available in a commercially available book or website. I prefer to strive for unique ideas, or things that really hit home to my personal preferences.

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When being right sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back in early September, when the Dodgers knocked the Giants out of the division lead, I told a friend of mine that he had better hope that they don’t manage to get into the Wild Card game.  Because if the Giants got into the playoffs, then it was pretty much worth not having the playoffs, because it was a foregone conclusion that the Giants were going to win the World Series, by virtue of absolutely nothing other than the fact that the Giants always win on even-numbered years now.  His team, the Nationals, getting bounced along the way would merely have been collateral damage.

I enjoy when I’m right with predictions, because it’s often times a gratifying feeling to be seen as someone with good intuition, luck or simply the mental fortitude to make educated guesses.  But last night, despite the fact that my prediction most certainly did ring true, as Giants players hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy high into the Kansas City night for the third time in the last five years, there was no gratification, no joy, and definitely no enjoyment in the fact that I was right.

I try and not let the outcomes of inconsequential sporting events dictate my moods, and frankly I’m not going to lose any sleep over the Royals failing to win it all despite coming oh-so close, but god damn was I disappointed that the Royals didn’t win the World Series.  I hadn’t wanted to see a team win a World Series this badly in forever, and this wasn’t so much watching because I enjoy watching baseball, as it was the fact that I was actively pulling for the Royals, despite playing against the team of destiny.

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Happiness is ambivalence

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can say pretty comfortably that I’ve been in fairly high spirits lately, in spite of the fact that my brog is still down, and the out-of-sight, out-of-mind game is playing wicked tricks on me and sapping my overall compulsion to write for hobby like I’d been doing fairly consistently for well over a decade.  But really, things are going well, and I’d venture to even say that I’m quite happy with the way things have been overall.

A large part of it has to do with the fact that simply put, ignoring just about everything that’s going on in my small little world that it popularly called our social media circles.  I don’t really know, or care to know about the details of this thing called GamerGate that a lot of people I know, as well as the geeky-techy sites/blogs I read are all up in arms over.  I don’t care about what people think about Renee Zellweger getting a boatload of plastic surgery done.  I don’t care about the massive explosion of comic book movies and the nerd rage they incite by so-called purists and those who love to compare films to printed media.  And I frankly don’t care about anything else that I see people incessantly debate and clearly let themselves get emotionally involved in with other volatile, emotionally involved people.

And it makes me happy that I simply don’t give a shit about any of it.

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I love Jessica Lange

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Quite often, I’ll develop these mock crushes on the most random girls seen in media.  And more often, I’ll ride them ironically, because I know it makes people roll their eyes, or there’s a sense of amusement in it for me.  Like for example Taylor Swift; she’s a beautiful young woman, who’s undoubtedly easy on the eyes, and I like to pretend like I enjoy her poppy music, because it makes every girl I know roll their eyes and chastise me for being such a basic guy.

But I don’t really care about Taylor Swift.  Or the cute brunette on the AT&T commercials that plays “Lily.”  Or Autumn Reeser, Alexandra Breckenridge or Emma Roberts.  Sure, they’re all aesthetically pleasing to me, but when the day is over, I don’t really care about any of them.

Jessica Lange, on the other hand, she is the actress that I love more than anything.  Like seriously, it’s hard to describe the admiration and love for her I have as a performer.  I’m enjoying American Horror Story: Freak Show as much as any other AHS fan should, but there was actually a moment in the earlier episodes where I voiced my displeasure that there frankly wasn’t enough Jessica Lange being shown to that point.

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The importance of Gawker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The out of sight, out of mind brogging tribulations continue, and in spite of my best efforts, I’m finding it difficult to want to write when there’s nowhere to post it.  I’ve honestly probably written more Yelp reviews over the last month than trying to write to a brog that at the time I’m writing this doesn’t technically exist, and it’s admittedly affecting my general desire to write at all.

That being said, another aspect of why my writing habits have dwindled as dramatically as they have is simply the fact that for all intents and purposes, October’s been a pretty eventful month for me, generally speaking.  There have been quite a few trips, out-of-town excursions, and I’d be lying if I also didn’t mention my foray into the ranked fields of League of Legends didn’t have something to do with it either.

However, whenever life can’t provide me with the motivation to write, I usually turn to the internet to see if I’ll come across anything that piques my interest, inspires me to jot some words down, or makes me thing that I might be able to write something funny.  Often times, there’s a story that happens locally in Atlanta that makes me shake my head and think there’s something ironically humorous to write about, and sometimes there’s something on one of the nerdy outlets that I occasionally browse that flips the switch.

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The misery of ranked mode

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve never really had any aspirations to play ranked mode in League of Legends. When the day is over, I know that I’m a fairly middle-of-the-pack player at best, and don’t necessarily have any aspirations to rise to the Challenger ranks or anything.  I play with a locked camera, which I get a ton of grief for, and my preferred role is that of ADC, specifically either Jinx or Miss Fortune, to which I receive much more grief over the fact that I have allegedly “four champions (in spite of the fact that my “friends” trolled the shit out of me and mystery gifted me like 15 new champions, thus polluting my stacked champion deck with champions I’m less familiar with).”

I never really saw much point for me to play ranked, because I figured it would ultimately end up with me placing where I probably figured I’d belong, somewhere in the middle of the pack.  Additionally, once ranked, I put myself in the crosshairs of the tryhard players who scrutinize their peers’ accounts to check their rankings, so they could use what they find as fodder for harassment.

This is doubly worse for those who end up placing bronze (the lowest) on account of their own talent level, or in most cases, by being tanked by the weight of trolls who deliberately and flagrantly sabotage games, in order to grief others.

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Being right vs. What I want

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite being the world’s worst baseball fan, there are still two things I have been following as it pertains to this season’s, Atlanta Braves-less MLB playoffs.  The first are the San Francisco Giants, who are a team that I dislike on account of their smarmy fanbase, overrated ballpark, and the city they represent.  However, the Giants represent a theory that I, among many snarky baseball fans have jokingly bought into, and there’s an intrigue in seeing if it comes to fruition or not:

The Giants win every even-numbered season.

Granted, it’s only been two instances, but still, that’s two more championships than most other franchises, much less the Braves have seen in their franchises’ histories.  But with titles won in 2010 and 2012, I’ve been saying that 2014 is destined to be their year as well, and that if nobody can keep the Giants out of the playoffs, than there may as well not be any playoffs, because another championship is all but inevitable.

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