Month: October 2017

Didn’t see this coming not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker of the century: a Publix supermarket built in the ghetto is having crime problems

I used to pass by this place on a routine basis, but when it was still under construction.  However, the signs were up, lauding the future arrival of a brand-new Publix supermarket, and I remember thinking “they’re building a Publix, here??”

“Here” was basically in the epicenter of a very ghetto area.  The corner of Marietta and Moores Mill is an area where one cross street is a pretty substantial truck route, on a road with lots of industrial companies, flanked by several buildings enshrouded in razor wire.  I get that the side opposite Marietta from the Publix is the notorious west side that is predominantly African-American but also unfortunately mired with the most substantial crime rates, but it doesn’t absolve everything east of Marietta Blvd. from being squeaky clean and safe.

I get that the some of the backbones of gentrification are strong and prominent anchor entities like major grocery stores like Publix, but there’s always a tremendous amount of risk when it comes to being the first ones to the party, because they’re almost always the sacrificial lambs when it comes to the process of trying to improve a rough area.

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Fire Emblem Heroes gatcha fail, October 2017

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Because I apparently like being in abusive relationships, yes I’m still playing Fire Emblem: Heroes on my phone.  Mostly on account of the fact that I’m kind of OCD and I tend to do the same things every day, all the time, and playing FEH is kind of one of those said things that’s kind of engrained in my everyday activities.  For the matter, I’m still playing Pokémon Go on a fairly regular basis, mostly because I don’t even bother to help it.

But in regards to FEH, I still play because I have these pointless hopes of assembling perfect teams that can run roughshod throughout the game, be it in the arena or any of their rotating challenge modes, but in order to assemble what I believe to be perfect teams, I have to get the necessary characters in order to build them, which has been about as possible as making pigs fly, yet I still keep on trying.

Or, in the case of October, there are sometimes just characters that are released that I simply want, usually because most of the time they’re sexy anime wimmins that feed into my inner-15-year old that wants to fill my roster with gold five-star sexy women characters, so that one of my set teams can be “Sexy Team.”  And the crown jewel of the October Performing Arts roster to me, was the special green-class Azura, and I really wanted to get one.

But, because FEH has worse odds than winning at a slot machine, such a want was one that was going to be something with an extremely unlikely chance of happening, but it still wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

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Everything happened I said would happen at Worlds

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At this point, I really don’t care who wins Worlds, because regardless who wins the final best-of-five, the winner is still Korea.  I mean, I’m aware that the scenario I was hoping for was like wishing the 90’s Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would do good each year, but it’s still never a smooth journey for the most competent of competitors year after year.  And this was supposedly the year that the rest of the world was thought to have caught up in League of Legends talent, and frankly that wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it just wasn’t enough.

But a week from now, will the finals of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship – pitting Souh Korea’s SK Telecom T1 against, South Korea’s Samsung Galaxy.  This is also a rematch of the previous year’s Worlds, and since all spectator events love to raise the importance of scenarios by stating first times for things, this is the first time that the same two teams have made it to the finals of Worlds, ever and in consecutive years much less, even in a league just seven years old.

LCK Fall Split memes, right here.

However, it’s not just the fact that it’s two Korean teams that has me all smug and arrogant, it’s also the narrative in which such a matchup came to fruition.  Worlds this year has been taking place in China, the region that has yet to hoist a championship in the seven years of competitive League, despite often being perceived as the #2 region in the world.  But don’t tell the Chinese that, because in their own opinion, they’re gods amongst mortals who can’t be touched in competitive League of Legends, except for the fact that, they’ve never won Worlds, and have almost never beaten Korean squads with very few exceptions.

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Tarnishing my Astro hopes

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It’s no secret that I’m pulling for the Houston Astros in this year’s World Series.  After all, I predicted them to go all the way long before the season got started, and when it comes to sports fans, fewer things are more gratifying than being right, so it’s exciting to me that the team I called in December actually has a legitimate shot to fulfill my prediction.

But I have to say that even if the Astros pull off the victory, it’s going to be somewhat of a tainted victory, marred by naturally, some off-the-field shenanigans that the media has snowballed into a gargantuan deal that goes viral on social media and overshadows the event in which it took place, regardless of just how good of an event the actual event is turning out to be.

Because that’s what social media does, it ruins everything.

So the Astros’ first baseman, Yuliesky Gourriel AKA Yuli Gurriel to the hordes of people who don’t actually give a shit about baseball but have heard about this unfortunate story and want to be outraged by it anyway, was caught on camera making a supposed racist gesture towards the Dodgers’ pitcher Yu Darvish, whom everyone seems to be identifying as solely Japanese despite the fact that he’s actually half Iranian.

The thing is, I saw when this happened live, because I actually like baseball and was actually watching the game when the event occurred: Gurriel hits a home run off of Darvish, and then is back in the dugout.  Because FOX loves to pan cameras back to the person of the moment, they’re repeatedly panning back on Gurriel who is now back in the dugout, smiling and laughing with all of his present teammates, ecstatic at giving the Astros a lead on the Dodgers.  The offensive moment is all of 0.5 seconds, before Gurriel is back to quaffing his doofy bouffant hair.

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No, please god no, just no

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The word people my ancient age are really beginning to identify as a legit trigger: spinoff.  As in The Karate Kid is filming a spinoff show, starring Ralph Macchio and Billy Zabka, about their fucking kids and their own miserable, post-Karate Kid lives.

This one hurts.  I tolerated Fuller House and Girl Meets World because as much of an old-man stink as I made about their spinoffs, because as much as I actually did watch the shit out of those series, I didn’t really care about them.  Same goes for whatever Roseanne spinoff they’re plotting.

But The Karate Kid?  THE fucking The Karate Kid??  With Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi and Cobra Kai and get him a body bag yyyeeeaahhh??  This one hurts.

This one hurts, really bad.

Why the fuck can’t people just let the classics live out their lives and die peacefully?  Why does some fucking asshole(s) have to dip into nostalgia and dig shit out of their treasured pasts and bring them back into this shitty present time with social media and retards as elected officials and other literal and metaphorical cancers, with weak, convoluted, fan-fiction-caliber storylines and their kids’ perspectives for the promises of paydays?  Why the fuck can’t these actors manage their money or their egos where they don’t feel the need to accept these miserable spinoffs for the sake of their own classic bodies of work?

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Now that’s what I’m talking about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Complain about there being nothing noteworthy to write about, and the world shall provide – a truck carrying 40,000 lbs. of chicken manure tips over on busy Atlanta highway

Yes, a truck full of literal chicken shit has spilled onto the highway, and that’s apparently far more interesting to me than the usual dregs of well-beaten topics in the news otherwise.

No, this does not get added to the highway buffet of things spilled onto Georgia highways, because what kind of sick fuck would remotely consider eating the dung of chickens?  For the matter, why does chicken shit require the necessity to be transported in the first place?  Shouldn’t the farms or plants in which the chickens are producing it have some way to dispose of it?

Is it like bats, where if there’s so much shit present at once it can essentially become toxic?

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Same shit, different sport

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Continuing the tradition set by all of the other professional sports teams in the city of Atlanta: Atlanta United gets bounced from the MLS playoffs with a loss to Columbus Crew SC

Prior to me writing this, I had thought about writing about how I really hoped that Atlanta United would have pulled the ultimate miracle of all expansion teams, and somehow managed win the MLS Cup.  Not only would it have been an unprecedented performance of winning a championship in their first year of existence, but there would be something so gratifying about the expansion soccer team, breaking the “curse” of Atlanta sports, and being the first team to deliver a championship to the city since the 1995 Braves, especially after the uber-meltdown of the 2017 Falcons in Super Bowl Lee.

I had a plan to twist my choice of words to ironically talk about how it probably had everything to do with the fact that ATLUTD had gargantuan fan support since their arrival, and getting into their games turned into Dragon*Con hotel registration, every single game, they were that hot of a ticket to get into throughout the season.  And how ATLUTD was demonstrative of the power of fan support, attempting to shame the fairweathered Falcons, Braves and Hawks fans who only come out to support only when they’re good.

In fact, I was all ready to start writing the night prior, but because I don’t really follow MLS or have any inkling to how their scheduling works out, by the time I sat down at a computer and prepared to write, I discovered that the playoff game had already happened, and Atlanta United had already lost.

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