Month: June 2020

MLB 2020 the (Shit)Show

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Welp, after months of billionaires feuding with millionaires over millions of dollars to play a kids game, while millions of Americans are applying for unemployment in the midst of a fucking pandemic, Major League Baseball has gotten their shit together, and it looks like we’re going to have a 2020 season after all.

Honestly, I really was hoping that the entire season was going to be cancelled.  The aforementioned narrative is no stretch from reality, and it was disgusting to the core to see so many rich assholes balking over as much money was being argued over, while the entire country has been brought to their knees by coronavirus, and millions of Americans are in financial ruin.  The lack of a season and the financial hit that the owners and the players would all have taken would have been an appropriate slap in the collective dicks for all these greedy fucks for their money-grubbing ways and a reality check that there are things in the world way more important than fucking baseball and I love baseball.

Plus, the sheer decimation and mistreatment of minor league baseball is saddening and can be filed in part of the millions of Americans who are out of jobs and will be in the unemployment lines, and brings the Major Leagues a questionable step towards an uncertain future, but more likely they have a lucrative alternative to the minor leagues already in mind.

Regardless, so it looks like we’re going to have a season, as begrudging it may seem to me.  In the other hand, the last time the Braves won the World Series, it was also in a shortened season, when the 1995 season was reduced to 144 games down from 162, so here’s hoping that the Braves can capitalize on another shortened year, and maybe fulfill the joking theory I have that babies bring luck for baseball fans.*

*A friend who is a Cubs fan had a kid in 2016, another friend who is a Nationals fan had twins in 2019 and look what happened

I mean with only 60 games to be played, 2020 truly stands to be a genuine shit show of a season where literally anyone can win right now.  Teams will fall out of contention within three weeks, but those in contention can remain such all the way to the end.  Sports have proven that any team can get hot on a moment’s notice, and/or have a torrid stretch, and with so little baseball to actually be had, all it takes is one well-timed hot streak, and any team can ride it to the World Series.

Continue reading “MLB 2020 the (Shit)Show” →

New Father Brogging, #012

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a portable apnea monitor.  As my daughter was premature, we were not given a choice on that she was required to have one in order to be discharged from the NICU.  Understandable initially, as she, like many premature babies had shown the tendency to have episodes of bradycardia (low heart rate), and it was nice to have a safety net at home to know if something were going wrong at any point.

How it worked was that our baby had two nodes strapped to her chest, that fed into an eight-foot cord, which was hooked into the monitor itself, which gave real time pulsing green lights indicative of her heart rate.  At any point if the baby registered more than 20 seconds of a slow heart rate, elevated heart rate, or shallow breathing, a piercing beep would emit from the monitor, along with the illumination of a red light next to whatever icon indicated the event.

The beep was soul-piercing to hear, and the red light was looking at the eye of Sauron.

At first, we’d experience events a few times a day, as we learned as parents on how to be parents and how to hold our child, feed our child and generally handle our kid in the optimum manner to avoid putting her in situations where she’d be at higher risk of triggers.  But as babies tend to do, she began growing rapidly, as mythical wife and I started to gain experience with handling her, and eventually the number of events began reducing to nearly nothing.

As time passed, the necessity of carrying around a box the size and weight of a school textbook and the long, tangly cable that ran with it began to grow increasingly frustrating, especially to me, as we as new parents, wished to expose our child to more of the world, and not just keep her in bassinets or the Mamaroo, but it began to feel like a literal ball and chain.  The number of events were next to nothing, and I was eager to find out when we could be without it.

During a visit to the pediatrician, we were told that two months no events, and then we’re good to go. 

Two months??  I was pretty livid.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #012” →

Bubba Kemp is determined to make Georgia #1

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

…at coronavirus cases and deaths, because he’s lifting even more COVID-19 restrictions, including large gatherings, sporting events and conventions.  And when I say conventions, you know that this post is going to be talking about the inevitability of Dragon*Con, which I can arrogantly say that I am quite glad that I had no inkling of going in the first place, which seems like a fantastic choice.

At this rate, it’s inevitable that barring a massive re-outbreak of coronavirus, Georgia will probably be completely open for business by like the start of August, further multiplying the chances for everyone that the shit will spread even faster and increase “our chances” at leading the country and effectively the rest of the world at coronavirus cases.  Already, at the time I’m writing this, the singular state of Georgia has over eight times the number of deaths as the entire country of South Korea.

Ironically, and not that I want people to get coronavirus and die, but in the latest data that’s been illustrating the US states’ individual growth rates of coronavirus, it kind of sucked that Georgia didn’t lead the nation in increase rates.  Because I feel like Georgia really needed to lead the league in corona increase, in order to prove that Bubba Kemp recklessly endangered Georgians by charging through the gates like Leeroy Jenkins by opening the state before anyone else did.

But because Georgia miraculously (or lied about their numbers, also extremely plausible) did not lead the league in corona numbers, it kind of validates Bubba’s choice to open the state, and kind of makes him this bigot asshole version of Forrest Gump, as in the good ol’ boy of below-average intelligence that somehow lucks his way into wins and favorable outcomes.

Back to the point though, of the things that Bubba’s given the green light to resume, naturally the one thing that stands out is conventions, because most of the people in my little world know and love this little, 80,000 people drawing convention known as Dragon*Con, which by this logic, is now a go, in spite of how terrible of an idea it is.

And I know that after I wrote my scathing opinion about the poor optics of them announcing that they would continue to hold the convention, I learned a lot very quickly about how they were obviously posturing for the sake of insurance and act of god clauses, that were, basically their only hopes for survival, because of the numerous contractual obligations of the D*C organization, they’d basically be fucked if they were the ones who had to initiate the cancellation of the convention.

Continue reading “Bubba Kemp is determined to make Georgia #1” →

100 Days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today marks 100 days since the birth of my child.  All jokes aside about my Americanization, it’s always been important to me that my kid hold onto facets of the Korean part of her heritage.  Her middle name is Korean, and mythical wife and I have every intention of having her learn some Korean eventually, so she can communicate with the elders on my side of the family among other worldly benefits.  But also to recognize Korean traditions like baek-il (백일), because they are most definitely a part of her as they are all other Koreans out there.

In Korean culture, the first 100 days of life is a celebrated occasion.  Historically in the old world, 100 days meant a lot to Koreans, because it genuinely was a milestone for a baby to survive that long, due to disease, famine, harsh climates and other various factors that worked against their survival.  To this very day, 100-day celebrations are commonplace to Korean culture, in remembrance of tradition and history.

Obviously the advancement of technology and medicine throughout time have diminished the underlying concern over the 100 day survival of modern Korean children.  However in 2020, the year of my child’s birth, America is dealing with chaotic civil unrest and the highest mortality rates of a global pandemic on the planet.  It certainly feels closer to the old world than the modern one, when you look at it that way.

But social commentary aside, today is still a joyous celebration for my family.  My kid has made it 100 days, and given the state of the world right now, that’s more of an accomplishment than it really should be.

New Father Brogging, #011

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout this week, mythical wife and I have introduced a baby monitor, so that we can put her down at a scheduled time, and still be able to keep eyes and ears on her from elsewhere in the house, while we try to reclaim a little bit of time for ourselves.  At first, it felt almost alien, having some free time back, and initially I used them only to do chores and tasks that tend to fall to the backburner on most days, but then when I’d finish those, I realized that it wasn’t yet 11 pm, and I actually had some free time back on my hands.  It was kind of nice.

Today, my daughter let out the most high-pitched shrieks I’ve ever heard come from her.  Worse off, we heard them first through the baby monitor, so they occurred with neither parent in sight.  I tore up the stairs and into the bedroom to get to my child as fast as possible, and hearing them in person was the most soul-piercing sounds I’d heard in my entire life.  I picked her up out of the bassinet and held her to my chest immediately.  Moments later I was in the most tears I’d been in since her birth, because no parent should want to hear such horrific sounds emanating from their baby.

Fortunately, everything seemed to be fine; maybe she was having a bad dream, or maybe it was the fear of awakening without the use of her arms, since we have her sleep swaddled.  Maybe a combination of both, or maybe she was overheated, since the bedroom tends to warm up throughout the day.  But either way, because nobody can speak baby, we’ll never truly know to why she was in such a frenzied panic, but all I do know is that it was one of the most frightening experiences for me in recent memory, and I’m still admittedly a little shaken up by it, regardless of if everything is fine.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #011” →

Silence ≠ ambivalence

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had a difficult time putting into words the things that I feel these days, as the world continues to sink further and further into chaos.  Tons of people suddenly loathe law enforcement, and there’s no end to the ping-ponging of stories out there where one side of the fence is writing whatever they can to slander the other side of the fence.  Cops supposedly being overheard ordering each other to deliberately go out and hurt protesters, protesters being accused of transforming into looters, and the list goes on and on where two definitive sides are trying to smear the other.

Throughout it all, I’ve watched own social media landscape turn from a pretty casual, relaxed locals-only kind of environment to where everyone is now taking a very intense voice about current events, and it’s honestly a little bit frightening.  People calling out their friends and family that might have different viewpoints, and others ready to get into vitriolic arguments at the drop of a hat if anyone dares to have a conflicting opinion.  I’ve seen no less than three posts where people are rallying others to suppress their own posting unless it’s relevant to current events, because “it will take up space” as if there’s ever been any amount of finite space on the internet.

Offline, people are going out en masse to attend protests and this scares me more than anything, because unless you’ve been living under rocks, protests all across the country have often descended into riots, regardless of whom starts it, and the nights end with tallies of injured, arrested, and eventually if this keeps up, dead.  Cops beating the shit out of civilians, bouts of looting erupting in just about every city where protests are occurring, and as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing good at all is happening on a nightly basis.

I’ve mostly kept quiet about all of this because I frankly don’t know what to really say.  My world right now is quite tiny, because yes I definitely have feelings for what’s happening in the greater world all around me, but with an infant child that classifies as medically fragile, my focus and energy is primarily on my baby, whom I grieve for, having been born in such a terrible year in history.

But please don’t mistake my silence for ambivalence, and I do state such in response to the asinine opinion that those who aren’t posting allied messages, or changing their Facebook profile pictures to black squares, or going out and protesting, or any other virtual action or otherwise, is implicit in the negativity by being inactive.  That’s a bullshit belief, and I really scoff at anyone who believes such; but only those specific people.

Because saying “everyone” would be an blanket statement, and frankly I feel that we’re in this what I’m calling blanket statement culture, where the prevalent opinions that are being flung around left and right are these gigantic, overarching blanket statements where all cops are bad, all protesters are looters, all black people are thugs, and all sorts of encompassing rhetoric.

Continue reading “Silence ≠ ambivalence” →