Month: July 2016

Priorities fail

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Embarrassing: HuffPost sports article about NFL player who is underpaid despite making more money than entire small countries

I’ll admit, I bit the bait and clicked this article, knowing it was going to piss me off.  I get it, as a sports fan, knowing the logic and truth to why discussions about the salary of professional athletes can actually exist, and that in the grand spectrum of the game of keeping up with the Joneses, players can be “underpaid.”  But as a rational human being, I also know that professional athletes, at the lowest level of skill required to make a big league roster, will still make more than most doctors, educators and people who actually make differences in the world.

So I’m reading this article, and trying to choke back the alligator tears at the plight of a large man who is good at grabbing other large men and throwing them to the ground while fighting the villainous concussion monster.  I’m reading and reading, about the sacks, the tackles, the underrated rush defense efficiency, but wondering how long it’s going to take to get to the bare numbers, the ones that I know are going to piss me off.

13 paragraphs of rhetoric about how he deserves more money, as if he cured cancer but works at the Wendy’s drive-thru.  13 paragraphs, and then we finally get to the empathy-inducing pitiful numbers of a man, scraping by to get a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs to feed his wife and three children.

Continue reading “Priorities fail” →

Rare Pikachu: A smart NFL player

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I love this story: RB Alfred Morris signs a 2-year/$3.5M contract with the Dallas Cowboys, but still drives and loves his 1991 Mazda 626 that he purchased for $2 dollars.

Now this is what it means to love a car.  I’d like to believe that if I came into millions of fuck you money, I’d still continue to drive my existing car until it became a good idea to perhaps purchase something else.  And even then, I can’t imagine that I’d go nuts and get an Aston Martin or some other pointless supercar.

But I’m all about Alfred Morris’s love for his ‘Bentley,’ and the obvious notion that he’s a pretty level-headed guy that might just be aware of how volatile a career as an NFL fringe player, and that it might be a good idea to be smart with his money.  I respect a guy who doesn’t go crazy when he comes into pro-athlete money, and even more so when he loves his old beater of a car and refuses to propagate stereotypes.  One thing the country doesn’t need more of is broke, dumb former athletes who burden taxpayers with bankruptcy and their lack of contributions to normal society.

Despite the fact that a Mazda dealership back from his days on the Redskins refurbished his car to near-new condition, it’s refreshing to read a story about an NFL player that still manages to appreciate and enjoy the little things, like his first ride.

lol MARTA #458

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What is this, Great Britain?  MARTA to test double-decker buses for the summer.

I’ve often had this curiosity with buses.  Before the company went kaput, I was intrigued by the idea of riding the Fung-Wah Bus, because you can’t say you’ve really lived life unless it’s been in danger once in a while.  When the opportunity to ride a MegaBus presented itself, I remember being quite intrigued and kind of excited, instead of the dread at having to settle for the lowest common denominator to get to Point B, like everyone else’s faces were saying when waiting to board it.

I have never ridden a MARTA bus, once.  I don’t really plan on doing so, if I can ever help it.  As an Atlanta motorist, MARTA buses are a pestilence on the streets, with their drivers having no regard for other life on the road, and almost live to solely troll other drivers.  I very much dislike MARTA buses, and wish to never ride one.

Continue reading “lol MARTA #458” →

Ho hum, another game championship, another Korean win

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol ESPN: Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo wins EVO 2016’s Street Fighter V championship

First off, gaming has come a long way, seeing as how this particular story was broadcast on the front page of ESPN.com.   Not only can you read about the NFL’s collective dick getting sucked, Tom Brady, the New York Yankees and the NBA D-League, you can now occasionally get some articles about video games and video game events, like EVO and the League of Legends World Championships. (but very little about Major League Baseball outside of New York, Los Angeles or Boston)

Ultimately, the headline is not as cavalier as I try to make it sound, because at least as far as the Street Fighter scene is concerned, SF is a franchise that has mostly been dominated by Japan throughout the years.  There are guys all over the world who have made names for themselves, representing the United States, France, South Korea, and other countries, but typically when it comes to the EVO Championships, Japan has typically run the table on the Street Fighter franchise games.

Continue reading “Ho hum, another game championship, another Korean win” →

Chronicling The Pikachu Game stories seemed like a good idea

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like many across the regions of the world in which the game has been released, I’ve been playing Pokemon Go.  Or as I like to refer to it as, The Pikachu Game.

I wish I could say that I was amongst the game’s elite already, but let’s be real here, I simply don’t have as much free time to play as much as I’d like to.  In fact, I can barely get the game to run for more than like 20 minutes at a time, because I keep crashing whenever I catch a pidgey or a zubat or whatever the things not actually Pikachu are.

Either way, I’m finding enjoyment from the game, and it’s actually a little fascinating, a little amusing, and a little bit cool that so many people are into it, and for once, I’m actually a part of the crowd, instead of being the contrarian hipster I can sometimes become, when it comes to something so mainstream.

Continue reading “Chronicling The Pikachu Game stories seemed like a good idea” →

Don’t forget the ketchup!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In propagating American stereotypes: semi-truck hauling Heinz ketchup overturns and crashes on I-95, spilling its contents all over the road

Too bad this happened in the Florida stretch of I-95, and not like outside of Savannah or something.  Chalk this up as another close call that doesn’t really count, as it was close, but didn’t actually happen in Georgia, much less the Metro Atlanta area.  Bummer.

Whatever though, so ketchup.  Who ever knew that ketchup was in such a demand that it needed to be hauled in semis?  Seriously, segments of life can be measured in the time it takes me to actually kill bottles of ketchup.  Seriously, I remember a point in my life where my mom got a Costco-sized 64 oz. bottle of Heinz ketchup, and it probably lasted between the 4th through 7th grades; I’m pretty sure in the case of ketchup, best used by dates are more like suggested guesses and that it doesn’t actually expire.

Continue reading “Don’t forget the ketchup!” →

Owned by historical facts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

None of my six readers should really expect me to often talk about elephants in the room, because when the day is over I’d be saying nothing that couldn’t be read anywhere else and I’d rather try to not be talking about such disparaging news in the world.  However, occasionally I’ll touch on particular things, because they’re a little close to home, or maybe I’ve actually got something to say.

I was reading this article about how highways are popular targets when it comes to protests.  More importantly, clogging them up and effectively shutting them down, by means of human congestion on swaths of asphalt meant to transport people from point to point.  This does hit a little close to home, because in light of the current rash of protests on account of black people feeling that their lives aren’t perceived as being mattered as much as the lives of other ethnicities, Atlanta has been one of the cities where swarms of people, in defiance of the law and consideration of mostly innocent, uninvolved people, have decided clogging up the highway seems like the best method of “getting people’s attention.”

There are those who believe that “there’s no such thing as bad exposure,” and then there are those who believe that if you make a point to ruin their day, they will oppose whatever it is you’re doing that is ruining their day.

Continue reading “Owned by historical facts” →