Month: May 2018

Now that’s some hardcore ownage

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Applause for draconian punishment: dumbass teenager who threw a firework that resulted in a gargantuan forest fire sentenced to pay $36 million dollars in restitution

Step aside, Smokey.  You ain’t done SHIT in 64 years.  Kids have continued to play with fire and idiots have continued to inadvertently start fires that have resulted in god knows how much damage and carnage to nature throughout the last century.

But Hood River County Circuit Judge John A. Olson sentencing a 15-year old to pay $36 million dollars in restitution?  Now THAT’S going to make some dumbasses think twice on whether or not it’s worth playing with fire and risk starting a blaze and getting caught and facing the gavel themselves.

I really love this story, because far too often, America has seen people who have done terrible things get away with merely metaphorical slaps on the wrists.  Draconian punishments would undoubtedly make people think twice or three or four times on whether or not a bad choice is worth the punishment, and if only America would go a little dark side and apply more of them, then maybe this country wouldn’t be so full of shitheads.

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Baseball players can be such greedy bitches sometimes

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I love outside-the-box unorthodox strategizing.  In every form of competition.  I love wildcats and flea flickers in football, I love the point forward in basketball.  I enjoy running tank Lulu, tank Karma and other weird builds in League of Legends.  And no other form of competition is open to the notion of unorthodox strategizing than baseball, where the pace of the game and the individual events of every single pitcher versus batter matchup completely creates the perfect environment for some unique strategies to be born.  The DeVanzo Shift, four-man outfields.  Moneyball, moneyball, moneyball.

The Tampa Bay Rays did something that I’ve always talked about would be an interesting concept to try, but nobody in baseball ever did; until now.  I’ve bounced the idea around before, suggesting teams should start a relief pitcher occasionally; primarily on the notion that there are a number of pitchers who for reasons completely unknown, have rough first innings, or there are some matchups that they should avoid for a first time through an order.  Once, I thought the New York Yankees should have employed this, when Mariano Rivera was on his farewell tour, and there would be no more appropriate way for him to go out than to start a game at Yankee Stadium, cutter the top of the first inning to death, and then get removed from the game to the bonkers raucous crowd reaction he rightfully deserved.

But nah, the notion of starting a guy with the intention of going one inning never seemed like it was going to happen until now.  The Rays, facing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in Orange County off of Interstate 5 South, started not just a game, but two straight games, with relief pitcher Sergio Romo.  In those two games, he pitched 2.1 innings, faced nine batters, walked two but struck out six.  In one game, he was lifted for an actual starting pitcher, Ryan Yarbrough, who proceeded to pitch the next 6.1 innings and get the win for the Rays, and in the other, he was relieved by a series of other relief pitchers who lost the game.

Regardless, Sergio Romo did his job and pitched efficiently in two straight starts.  And because it worked once, it definitely has opened some eyes as a viable strategy; except that the Angels, namely infielder Zack Cozart has been immediately vocal about how it’s not a good thing for the entire sport, and then he’s basically backed by the MLB Players Association, stating that such a strategy is going to be financially detrimental to players who are designated starting pitchers.

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Contrary to Cobra Kai logic

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The best defense is not always more offense.  Sometimes the best defense, is actually defense.

Now if you told me that the Houston Rockets lost to the Golden State Warriors by 41 points, I’d have just kind of gone ‘meh.’  Everyone gets blown out by the Golden State Warriors these days, and seldom are there any final scores that aren’t a 1-2 point nail-biter or a 20+ point blowout.  The Memphis Grizzlies lost a game by 61 points earlier this year, so 41 sounds like a tight contest in comparison.

But add in the fact that this happened in the Western Conference Finals and that the Houston Rockets were the #1 seed getting throttled by the #2 Warriors, and now it’s (sort of) worth talking about how pathetic the NBA is once again.

The Rockets and Warriors aren’t just the #1 and #2 in the Western Conference, they’re pretty much the #1 and #2 teams in all of the NBA.  The Boston Celtics are somehow managing to win and play well in spite of all their injuries, and the Cleveland Cavaliers are where they are because they’re always at this point every year mostly on the sheer will of LeBron James, but neither is remotely a threat to the championship.

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The Whitest Weekend Ever, vol. ~113,064

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Every now and then I feel like the world gets a little too oversaturated in white people things.  I mean I know white people like to believe that the entire planet revolves around them, and they go through extraordinary measures to keep things feeling that way, but every now and then I feel like the cauldron burns extra hot and the bullshit bubbles over to the point where it needs to be pointed out how excessive they’re being.

This past weekend was a good example of just how white things were getting, and how, at least to the eyes of this not-white person, how either frightening, obnoxious, insufferable or all of the above, it feels to be alive in this world while not also white.

So Friday kicks off with the very white past time of shooting up a school, where I didn’t have to wait for the release of any names to take bets that the shooter was probably white.  Sure, he had a very Greek name, but when the day is over, he still fuckin’ white.

At this point, there’s really not much else to say about school shootings and gun control.  Considering there’s a shooting incident at a school at almost a weekly basis now, after the incident in Florida it wasn’t so much of an if it ever happens again, it was always a matter of when it was going to happen again.  After Texas, it’s not a matter of false promises, and the also-very white past time of saying thoughts and prayers; at this point, it’s not if this is going to happen again, it’s simply that the days without incident sign just gets reset to zero.

Saturday morning featured something that I haven’t seen white people get so excited and hot and bothered about in previous iterations, with the Royal Wedding between Prince Ginger and that chick from Suits, one of the few USA Network shows to stand on its own without the WWE crutch.  Seriously, it was kind of astonishing to me just how much white people cared about the marriage between two people in England, over absolutely anything and everything happening in the United States, like the high school shooting that occurred less than 24 hours previously, but they really seemed to be making a tremendous deal about it.

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Pleased AF

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Often times, upon completion of presentation of a project, I wait a little bit afterward and then look at it again, to see whether or not I hate it yet.  So many times in my life I’ve made something, been very pleased with it, but then 1-2 days later I’ll look at it again but instead be completely disgusted with the things I create.  Regardless of what people might think or say about the things I make, when the day is over I am my very own worst critic and the true litmus test on whether or not I decide something I’ve created is satisfactory depends primarily on how I feel about it a little after it’s been out in the world.

Technically speaking, I am the creator of Arby’s Saucy_AF typeface they’ve released, as part of their marketing juggernaut team that I can proudly say that I know several members of.  I’m not the one who made the intricate characters out of sauce, nor was the person who photographed them, but I am the designer who vector outlined everything, and turned said artwork into a fully-functional typeface.  If I knew how to find out how to view the credits of a typeface, I’d totally show off the screengrab my name in them, but for now I’ll just have to settle with the private satisfaction of knowing that this is my work, and that I can also proudly say that I got to legitimately be a contributor to the Arby’s marketing team that is the envy and a shining star of marketing creative throughout the industry.

Few things are more satisfying than working with people you know you work well with and producing creative that I can be proud to say that I had a hand in.

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FREE BEEF

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Haven’t done one of these in a while: tractor-trailer hauling live cattle overturns on Interstate 75 in Cobb County, Georgia, liberating several cows that systematically mangled the morning rush to levels worse than usual, until they were corralled and moved to onto the side of the road.  Seven cows did not survive the wreck. 😞

Now I don’t really take lightly the unfortunate deaths of animals, but considering what cows are typically raised for, I think it’s safe to assume that FREE BEEF has just been added to the menu of the buffet spilled across the highways of Georgia.  And frankly considering the typically inhumane ways that animals are put out of their misery before they become food for us mostly worthless humans, dying in a car accident might not be the worst way to go for the bovines lucky enough to escape their eventual destinies.

As I said, it’s been a while, so I don’t even know where to begin searching out my last list of food lost on Georgia roads.  All I can really point out that with fresh beef finally entering the fray, joining chickens and hams, the only meat that has yet to represent on a highway is like some salmon, catfish or some other form of seafood.

But if that day ever comes, then Georgia roads can be the Arby’s of the United States highway system, since they’ll have had, all the meats.

FX’s Atlanta is a sneaky good show

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Atlanta isn’t one of those shows where you can watch the pilot episode and then get on social media and tell all of your internet friends that this show is great, and that you should really watch it.  Like Cobra Kai.  No, Atlanta is the kind of show where you watch it at your own leisure, and you think about every episode for a little bit, and then come to a pretty definitive opinion after pondering about the layers upon layers of each episode.

I just finished season two of Atlanta, and much like finishing up the first season, I had to think about it for a little bit, but my general consensus is that it’s a really good show.  I think the best ways to describe it is that Atlanta is most certainly not the kind of show that’s going to immediately be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those of whom it is, it’s a really good show in that it provokes thought, thinking from alternative perspectives, provides a wealth of situational humor and is pretty well shot from a visual standpoint.  The writing is stellar and gets most of its points across without having to lean on the crutch that most everyone in the show is black and doesn’t really require blacking it up in order to convey the story, except when it’s deliberately trying to so.

I think Atlanta is the kind of show that anyone who liked Netflix’s Master of None would be able to appreciate, except Atlanta is a little more socially acceptable right now since Donald Glover or anyone else in the cast of Atlanta hasn’t yet been accused of sexual harassment.  But both shows come from the modus operandi of having strong, creative writing, serious societal observation and discussion, and plenty of situational humor to keep the mood from getting too preachy.  Both are kind of on a similar level, and in spite of the misconducts of Aziz Ansari, I still really like both shows unapologetically.

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