Month: November 2017

Awareness is pointless without action

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this interesting article that brought up the topic that if Atlanta’s Jesus Sidewalk AKA the BeltLine, continues to grow without much regulation, then it will effectively re-segregate the city, due to the aggressive gentrification that’s it’s bringing in spades as it churns merrily along.

The funny thing is that this isn’t the first nor will it be the last time articles like this emerge, but it is admittedly one of the more data-driven articles, as it links to a 60+ page case study about the effects and repercussions of the gentrification which is a pretty good read in its own right.

The harsh reality about all this information is that just about everyone paying attention knows this is going on, and no amount of awareness of the situation is going to change the fact that it is happening, will continue to happen, and be a potential reality, because in spite of all of the information, nothing is happening to stop it. 

But that sounds about right as far as the objectives of the BeltLine are concerned – beautify, gentrify, and then profit; repercussions of any failed promises of affordable housing or the guerilla eviction of existing residents can be suppressed and brushed under the rug later, preferably one that exists in the lobby or the ornate dining area of one of the expensive buildings built along it at a later date.

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Writing when it feels like there’s not a lot to write about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like the subject says, I haven’t really felt like there’s been a lot to write about.  It’s times like these when I sit down and try to clear out all the noise in the world and in my head and just see what happens when I open up a Word doc and just start typing.

Usually, I surf a large variety of news sites, local and worldly to see if anything piques my interest.  Then it devolves into sports sites and op-ed outlets, just to see if there’s anything that triggers any sort of writable tangent.  Failing any of that, it’s the happenings in my own fairly ordinary and nondescript life, wondering if there’s anything worth talking about, or anything I actually want to put something down into writing.

My life, hasn’t been particularly interesting for a while.  My days and weeks consist of the same things often, and I’m occasionally fretting over the fact that I feel like I don’t make enough money which kind of puts a damper on some of my ambitions when it comes to things I want to do, or travels I want to indulge in.  I think about spending habits, spending plans and how to shave down the credit card debt that I’ve built back up throughout the moving process, and it frequently feels like an endless cycle that just chews up time and often doesn’t actually pan out like it should.

Like in my current state, I feel like I’d need like 6-8 months to really wipe out a lot of my debt while not having to starve in the process.  I’m sure that some additional sacrifices could be made to reduce my costs a little further, but it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough to warrant the inconveniences.  But really though, 6-8 months?  That’s literally from half to two-thirds of an entire year.  I’m not getting any younger, and the whole concept of getting older is another can of worms that has been on my mind increasingly these days, and I just feel like if I made more money outright, things might improve for the better, overall.

But then I feel like I’m kind of in a rut where my skillset doesn’t command as much money as I hope it would, and I give a lot of contemplation to my own career.  I really like where I work and the team I’m on and the people I work with, but again, money.  I make enough to pay my mortgage and pay my bills, but with the new house, I’m also paying more for a mortgage than I have before, and it’s still an adjustment knowing how much of a larger percentage of my incoming funds are going right back out the door paying for my property.

And we can’t talk about money and not talk about the correlation with time, and then the endless debate of money versus time.  I certainly value my time, and often times more than money, but at the same time, there are certain things that cannot be accomplished without the need for money.  And then it rotates in this perpetual cycle of feeling like I have enough of either, and then I begin to wonder if I may be bordering on the lines of a slight depression.  Which is a maybe.

It would be nice to just win a substantial lottery.  That just might actually make things improve for the better, contrary to the notions that huge influxes of money have accomplished in ruining several people out there.

But really, I can’t really complain that much about my life in some regards.  My life itself isn’t at all terrible, aside from the fairly minor gripes I have that I’m not unaware that there are worse people out there that would love to have my gripes versus their own more substantial issues.

I think I feel like what drags me down is my empathy for others, to where I always feel like the problems of others become problems for me.  I don’t think it’s untrue either, because there are people out there that are close to me going through some rough patches, and I feel helpless that there’s nothing that either I or anyone else can seemingly do about them, and I empathize for their sadness and grief with my own.  Obviously, I won’t get into the business of others, but they are substantial problems, and I’ve come to the realization of the increasing difficulties of life that come with getting older, and that things just might not get better any time soon for the people all around me.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the shitty cesspool of a world we live in, full of rotten corrupt people, politicians, terrorists and mentally deranged people who somehow all seem to have way too large caches of firearms.

Continue reading “Writing when it feels like there’s not a lot to write about” →

Is Puffy eight years old?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: I just wanted to acknowledge that this was the 2,000th post to my brog. The thought crossed my mind after I had back-filled all of the original brog’s posts, which was roughly 1,620~ posts, so given the fact that I had nearly five years of posts to retroactively post, I knew that eventually I was going to hit the 2,000 post mark.

Naturally, if I were posting in real time, I’d probably have made a dedicated post to the milestone, but instead I thought it’d be entertaining to see where on the roulette wheel 2,000 would end up.

Figures it would be on a fluff post like this one, lol.

That’s actually a rhetorical question; we all know he’s got the social intelligence that of an eight-year old, and the “uhhh i was just kidding guys” excuse is pretty much a prime example of such.

Kidding my ass.  Didds saw the backlash from his dumb little publicity stunt, and from the real Brother Love himself, and immediately backed the fuck off.  I’m really hoping Prichard and/or the WWE had a legal lock on the Brother Love name, and threatened legal action unless he backed off immediately; but knowing the way the WWE works today, I like to believe that Triple H or someone up in the company gave him the opportunity to keep the legal part hush-hush, and in exchange, Puffs will owe the WWE something in the future.

Let’s just say, it won’t be at all surprising if we see Puffy on WWE television in near to distant future, and we’ll probably know why it’s the case.

Either way, Puffs got what he wanted, which was attention, and hopefully now that he’s gotten his fix, he can get back to lording over and producing over those much more talented than him to make decent hip hop.  Hopefully he’ll know in the future not to fuck with the real Brother Love, and at least cross-reference the internet for two seconds before he decides to change his name to something stupid in like five years.

But let the record show that Puff Daddy jobbed to a non-wrestler, in Brother Love.  This is kind of better than Jay-Z jobbing to Diamond Dallas Page.

I hope he ends up like Jay-Z

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For reasons nobody will ever know: Sean-Puff-Diddy-I-Really-Killed-Tupac-and-Biggie changes his name for the 57th time, anointing himself as “Love,” or “Brother Love”

Anyone’s guess is as good as any; but ultimately, I don’t think it’s any stretch to assume that when the day is over, it’s just Diddy’s way of trying to get attention, as if he felt like the news of the world has lulled too long without any news of himself in it, so he does something stupid like changing his name so that people get to talking about him again.  Ironically, I’m writing about it, among countless others, so it’s not entirely a bad tactic, except that the general consensus of scuttlebutt is either along the lines of criticism, or if anything at all, why??

Regardless, to me, this wouldn’t have been even a drip in the bucket if not for the fact that he’s given himself the name of Brother Love on top of just ‘Love.’  Because to wrestling-loving nerds like myself, there’s only one person in the world synonymous with the name Brother Love – the red-faced, white suit wearing, original manager of the Undertaker, Brother Love, portrayed by Bruce Pritchard.

I think it’s a safe bet to assume that Diddy didn’t bother to check for any overlap, or any conflicts of similarity, because he’s an insufferable attention whore that doesn’t really think before he acts, but I’m agitated that he took the namesake of an iconic personality, whether or not he knew of his existence or not.  I mean sure, professional wrestling is pretty silly, but it’s also not an invisible niche industry, and Pritchard himself works for the largest, publicly traded wrestling company on the planet, so it’s not like he’s one of the no-name scrubs in the world using the moniker of Brother Love.

Continue reading “I hope he ends up like Jay-Z” →

Fulfilling destiny

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It wasn’t as nail-bitingly exciting as the finale of the World Series last year, but I guess it seems kind of fitting that the deciding game of an otherwise insane World Series would end in such a mundane and anti-climactic manner, with the Astros jumping all over Yu Darvish in the first two innings, and then basically just holding on for two and a half hours, counting down 27 outs.

But in the end, the Houston Astros stand triumphant, winning their first ever World Series in franchise history, and I am pleased.  Contrary to the belief that I’m solely happy because it validates a moon shot of a pre-season prediction and makes me feel like I actually know a thing or two about baseball and how to make an educated guess, there are lots of other reasons why the Astros winning is a good thing in my opinion.

I’m happy for Carlos Beltran, whom I felt was one of the missing pieces for a championship-caliber squad, and it’s nice to know that such a talented star throughout a long career will get his ring.  I’m happy for Brian McCann, Evan Gattis and even Charlie Morton, as former Braves players who additionally filled out the Astros roster and contributed big-time performances throughout the playoffs with clutch hits and big innings; I always wanted McCann to be a Brave for his whole career, but such notions are pipe-dreams today, especially with a tightwad organization like the Braves.  But I’ve always rooted for McCann, and I’m happy to see him reach the peak, even if it’s for someone else.

I’m happy for the organization, who went through The Process and actually hit pay dirt in the end; all the years of living in the basement of both the National League as well as the American League when they moved, netted them numerous high draft picks whom most have developed and matured into stars like Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and the World Series MVP George Springer, who absolutely went nuts throughout the series.  So many teams go through The Process, because there’s really no other alternative unless their organizations have massive payrolls, and so many fall short, because baseball is ultimately one gigantic crapshoot anyway.  But the Astros stuck with it, and with nothing more than good development, and smart acquisitions like McCann and Beltran, the team ascended up the mountain as contenders, and come out on top as champions.

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Stranger Things 2: The Steve Show and the bar for sequels

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I just finished watching the second season of Stranger Things, and I’ll try to be as spoiler-free as possible, but to cut straight to the chase, I just wanted to say that it was some of the best television I’ve seen recently, and that I believe that it is the bar in which all sequels should aspire to perform to.

So yeah, I liked it.  No, I loved it.  Stranger Things 2 was fantastic television, and the most astonishing thing about it all, was how seemingly easy the show was executed to where it’s so super easy to enjoy nearly all of the characters, and be engaged and interested in all of the storylines happening concurrently.  The acting is so good throughout the show, and Winona Ryder and David Harbour make their characters just so easy to relate to and empathize for which in turn enhances the experience of watching the show.

But the true MVP of the show would have to be Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, who embarked on the face turn of a century that we haven’t seen since The Rock decided he was done with Vince McMahon and the Corporation before ascending into the cosmos.  It’s truly amazing, because I remember really hating the shit out of Steve in the first season, and hoping he would die or at least get written off the show.  But after the second season, there’s no star that broke through the night and rose to the cream of the crop and broke the glass ceiling and grabbed the brass ring more than Steve did.

I won’t elaborate any further on it since I don’t want to risk giving anything away, but the bottom line is that feel that Steve was the undisputed MVP of Stranger Things 2, and I certainly hope that anyone and everyone who watches it will feel the same way too.

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Is trick-or-treating dead?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I moved into my house, I often noticed the sheer volume of children in my subdivision.  Riding around on bicycles, and dragging their feet shuffling home after getting off of the school bus that clogs the road at 4:30 every day.  I thought to myself that, all i-hate-kids nihilism aside, that it was still a pleasing atmosphere to see, especially in contrast to the warzone that my previous home’s subdivision was devolving to.

All this said, I would have wagered money that come Halloween, my neighborhood would be a veritable hotbed for trick-or-treaters, since there were already a lot of children in the neighborhood, and that my subdivision seemed kind of tailor-made for trick-or-treating since it was relatively flat, homes moderately spaced out and looked affluent enough to attract children into thinking good candy were abundantly available.  With such in mind, my home was very well stocked for the freeloaders, with the hopes that maybe a fistful of the stuff would be left for us afterwards.

Which brings us to this morning, where I’ve got a bowl still practically overflowing with candy, and Halloween saw less than like, 30 kids coming to my door.  And we had jack-o-lanterns, fake tombstones and a decorated door with blinking lights to indicate that my home was game for the kids.

So I have to ask now, is trick-or-treating pretty much dead these days?

Continue reading “Is trick-or-treating dead?” →