Month: June 2018

A wise man once said

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A futbol team cannot win a futbol game unless they score goals

Furthermore, a futbol team cannot score goals unless they take shots.  Although I counted two times where Sweden’s goalkeeper actually had to move in the box, the box score in Korea’s World Cup 2018 opening loss to Sweden, credits them with zero shots on goal.  ZERO.

How the fuck is it remotely possible to win a game when a team doesn’t even take a single shot?  The answer is that it’s not.  I’m pretty sure Sweden’s goalkeeper doesn’t even take a shower after the game and is able to meet up with whatever model of a wife/girlfriend for dinner without even having to reapply his deodorant, that’s how much of a day off today’s game was.  As for his teammates, they were basically in the Royal Rumble in a game that saw over 40 fouls called, but a big fat zero for shots on goal for Korea.

Yes, I know that getting in position to even take shots on goal is like 75% of the battle in the first place, but that just exemplifies Korea’s general lack of adaptability or creativity to even bother trying anything different from what wasn’t working throughout the span of 96 minutes, to where they could even take a shot.  Sweden’s defense was no slouch, but Korea wasn’t making anything harder by constantly having guys in telegraphed positions, or all the players essentially giving up once their routes were blocked.

But I’m not going to get too salty over this loss.  Korean soccer hasn’t been the same since the 2002 World Cup, and even then, they had the mother of homefield advantages throughout the entire tournament.  They were also coached by the legendary Guus Hiddink who was easily worth several of their wins by himself alone.  They’ve been good enough to qualify for all subsequent World Cups by virtue of a globally weak Asian pool, and once they get in, they’ve regularly been exposed as a class below the usual powerhouses from Europe and South America, and have been getting bounced routinely.

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Imagine if Niantic started doing community days sooner?

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I still play Pokémon Go. 

No shame.  I often ask myself on what’s going to hit 40 first between my age and my level in the game, it’s gotten to the point where the XP requirements for the next one are that gargantuan.  It’s literally taken me nearly ten full months to go from level 34 to 35, but I’m also not in the middle of an actual city where I can play to my heart’s content.  But the fact of the matter is that I still play, even if mythical gf and all my other friends who once played, don’t.

Turns out my brother has picked up the game, as introduced to him by his wife.  Although he is at pleeb level 25 compared to his wife and I, it was all I needed to know that I could have some actual human beings to play along with while I was down in Texas last weekend.  And as would have it, one of the days we had some time would be one of the game’s newer monthly featured modes, known as a Community Day, where a particular Pikachu would spawn like crazy for three hours, so it would be the perfect opportunity to stock up on them if a player’s had some difficulty in catching them in the first place.  Also XP gain rates are boosted during the time, to sweeten the deal for those less enthused about the featured Pikachu.

So we headed over to a still-in-existence mall, where we could have plenty of space to roam, Pika stops to spin, and most importantly, the air conditioning to not be walking around in a hot Texas summer day, and I was going to take part in my first Community Day.

At first, I was doing my usual thing of trying to be discreet about playing Pokémon Go, displaying my mastery of clandestinely throwing curveballs with one hand.  But then it became very apparent that all throughout the halls of the mall, especially as the clock started ticking closer to the official start of the event, that the vast majority of people milling about, were all also playing Pokémon Go.  So there was no more need for pretenses, and it was off to enjoy the game with the community.

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JOBBERS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: three professional wrestlers take on a 2.5-year old lion in tug-of-war, fail miserably

Honestly, I wouldn’t have guessed that the humans would lose, especially in such a dominant fashion.  The laws of physics would say that the three wrestlers combined to outweigh a not-yet fully matured lion, and that they should probably be able to simply brute force win a match of tug-of-war.

But I guess this is where we as humans get cocky over our position on the food chain and underestimate the raw primal strength of wild animals.  The lion doesn’t even appear to budge, against three men who are practically required by their profession to hit the gym and have more strength than the average human being.

Granted, as talented as he is in the ring, Ricochet is still probably like 185 lbs. and classifies as “a small guy” in the wrestling industry, so I’m not surprised that his contributions to this battle were probably minimal in comparison to the jacked Fabian Aichner, and the fat guy Killian Dain.  Even still, the three of them combined had to have been nearly double the weight of a young lion, yet they still jobbed like the Public Enemy going against the Acolytes.

Not a good look with NXT TakeOver: Chicago happening tomorrow.  If Ricochet ends up losing to the Velveteen Dream over the weekend, that’ll be twice in the same week where he’ll have been televised jobbing, which is never good for anyone’s body of work.  But then again, you kind of deserve it if you screw around too much against actual lions.

A challenger appears

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A different kind of fireball on the roadways: in a collision between tractor-trailers, one empties hundreds of mini-bottles of Fireball cinnamon whisky all over Interstate 40 in Arkansas

Normally I do my best to no-sell whenever somewhere outside of Georgia gets some sort of epic truck accident that results in a tragic amount of food all over the roadways, crippling traffic for hours, while crews have to work diligently and expediently to clear the road of random food and/or debris.  Often times, I’m envious whenever something particularly interesting is dumped out all over the place, and wish it happened in like Covington or Forest Park just outside of Atlanta.

However, in this case, aside from the most basic of white girl wasted cocktails most certainly catching my attention, it’s revealed that Arkansas has had its over veritable buffet dumped all over the highways over the last few years, possibly rivaling the sheer volume of wasted food done in Georgia.

Whereas Georgia has had a slightly more balanced menu scattered all over the roads with hams, chickens, cows, potato chips and numerous beer truck spills, Arkansas seems to go more for the college dorm diet, spilling frozen pizzas, and a whole lot of liquor all over their roads.  Allegedly there have been wrecks starring bourbon, gin and now Fireball cinnamon whisky stinking up the asphalt throughout the years.

Lord only knows how fragrant it might be at first, but as my brother points out, a little bit of sun and a little bit of heat, and I-40 in Central Arkansas is going to smell like unadulterated vomit not before long.

Either way, the magic is in the details, and a truck spilling whisky isn’t that much of a deal to me.  But a truck spilling hundreds of airplane-sized bottles of Fireball is kind of a tragedy, because god damn, does a Fireball-Dr. Pepper cocktail really taste delicious, regardless of how much of a basic white girl that would make me to admit to enjoying.

Not sure if this is a good thing to disclose or not

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Long story short: City of South Fulton Renaissance Wakanda City of South Fulton’s entire law enforcement division led entirely by African-American women; publicly acknowledged as “black girl magic”

Yeah, if I were still living in South Fulton county, I’d be happier if the law enforcement arm they weren’t doing photoshoots and were actually doing some work.  I’m not entirely sure this is such a great story to break currently, because for those who don’t really follow what’s going down in the City of South Fulton, the whole place is kind of in shambles, infrastructure wise.

The fact that they can’t even land on a name for the city goes to show just how disorganized and lacking in structure the whole place is in general, but the law enforcement is a whole other story.  Seldom does a day goes by where the front page of the AJC doesn’t have some sort of story that contains the words “shooting,” “killed,” “crime,” “South Fulton,” or any combination of them on it, because the crime is that out of control down there and continuously getting worse.

It’s the primary reason why I sold my house and moved away, and not a day goes by whenever I see a crime story emerging from down there, that I’m so glad to have gotten out of there when I did, even if it meant taking a loss on the house and going through a little bit of separation anxiety of parting ways with my first owned home, even if it was in a rapidly deteriorating area.

And as I’ve said numerous times, I’m still subscribed to the Nextdoor community online for my old neighborhood, because it’s giving me constant reminders and daily insight to just how much South Fulton is continuing to spiral downward.  I can see first-hand from people that still live there just how much they’re frustrated and exasperated with the escalating crime problems down there, and this is exactly why I’m not the least impressed by articles about how South Fulton’s law enforcement is helmed entirely by African-American women.

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Chris Jericho and the Mt. Rushmore of Wrestling

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A week or so ago (it’s hard to really pinpoint approximate times and dates for New Japan for me), Chris Jericho defeated Tetsuya Naito and became the IWGP Intercontinental Champion.

There was a time where I was often unimpressed with Chris Jericho, because he seemed to me as somewhat of a performer that operated on a formula.  He’d vanish for six weeks to six months, reemerge to monster, welcome back pops, have one or two notable feuds where he’d ultimately lose in the end, and then vanish again, only to repeat the process again in another six weeks to six months.  In the midst of each of these tenures, he’d win an Intercontinental championship, and then give the rub to some main players on the way out.

I always thought of him as an extremely talented worker, that understood ring psychology and had a very deep wealth of technical ability, but I also thought of him as a guy that had the ability to adjust the knob up or down depending on the magnitude or quality of the feud, and/or his general enthusiasm for it.  Examples of when Jericho shined were his feuds with Shawn Michaels and AJ Styles come immediately to mind, but I thought his work with guys like John Cena and CM Punk were uncharacteristically weak.

Perhaps it was his books, or his podcast, that I indulged in, because I’m a wrestling fan, but my opinions of Jericho have gradually changed over the more recent years, and I’ve grown to really admire, appreciate and enjoy all of the things that he’s been doing not just now, but throughout his career, through a refreshed re-analysis of his past work.

Looking back, it’s pretty crazy to think of anyone voluntarily leaving WCW and their fat paychecks, back when they were thoroughly winning the Monday Night Wars, week after week, beating WWE RAW in the ratings.  But completely unhappy with his career in WCW, Jericho endured a typical WCW farewell tour, meaning he was completely removed from television and if he was used, it was to job to Ralphus, a fat non-wrestler, and then jumped ship to the WWE, where he would basically start over and rise to heights that WCW was completely silly to never have capitalized on.

But then we come to the span of the last year, nearly 18 years after when Jericho jumped from WCW to WWE.  An older Jericho, despite his ability to perform, frankly wasn’t getting the opportunities to shine in the WWE.  I’m not sure whether he opted to not re-sign a contract with the WWE or if the WWE even offered one, but very quietly, Chris Jericho kind of vanished from WWE television after his last program with Kevin Owens.*

*Yes, I’m aware of his appearance in the “greatest” Royal Rumble, but one-offs happen all the time in the WWE

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Shouldn’t the slogan be different this time around?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was outside with the dogs this morning letting them do their business, and I couldn’t help but notice that someone within eyeshot of my own fucking front door had erected a Trump-Pence Make America Great Again campaign sign in their yard.  It’s 2018, and we haven’t even hit the midterms yet; the steam rising from the turd known as the 2016 election has barely dissipated, and this household is already putting their signs up for 2020?  I can barely stand campaign signs in the two months before the presidential election, am I going to have to open my front door and see this shit for two more years?

This is literally what my face does when I think about it.

It’s a mixed household where it’s an elderly man, presumably living with a married child, who has their own children.  Although dad literally does nothing but tool around on a classic Chevelle every single day, the wife of the couple and their kids always smile and wave to me, the Chinaman across the street, whenever we’re outside at the same time.  I wouldn’t expect such a friendly gesture from a household that advertises their particular political tastes, but then again fewer things epitomize white culture than false niceties.  Or perhaps it’s dad with the obvious political preference, with more liberal thinking children.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a husband in that household equation. Hm.

Interestingly, this household has Hispanic landscapers who do a fantastic job of maintaining their lawn.  They used to do my lawn as well until I realized that my actual property extended far beyond what we had originally arranged, leading me to have to end my business with them for financial reasons.  But I wonder if they know that one of their clients is a supporter of a guy who has some pretty extreme prejudices against Latinos?  Did they know his political leanings two years ago?  Or do they prioritize making the money first and foremost?

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