Month: January 2023

This story tickles me in a way that only other parents would get

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of us, one of us: extreme tidy-er Marie Kondo admits to giving up on extreme tidiness and that her house is messy

This is what we would call a pivot, in the working world.  I didn’t realize that Marie Kondo was two years younger than me, and it probably would’ve been a real fucking chore to maintain the air of minimalist perfection for the rest of her life in order to maintain her brand, not like she really needs it anymore considering her book has sold over 40 million copies and her Netflix show had already been a big hit.

Coming out to the public to explain that she’s mostly given up on being tidy, and that her own home was messy, probably the smartest thing to do.  Better to disclose the intel on her own terms instead of having someone find it out, disclose it on the internet, and have the wrath of the internet be all over her calling her a fraud and a hypocrite that tells other people what to do with all their shit but doesn’t know how to handle her own.

But what this really boils down to is the fact that the reason why the Queen of Clean has become the Herald of Hoarding just like that, is the same reason why millions of people like me struggle to maintain our own capabilities of tidiness as much as we’d like to: kids.

Her book went gangbusters in 2011, but then she got married in 2012.  Presumably it wasn’t long before did kids come into the equation, so it’s actually very impressive to me that she had the wherewithal to even entertain producing her Netflix series that dropped in 2019, which either means she was an absent parent or her husband filled in admirably, perhaps both.

But as is often the case, once the number of kids begins to outnumber the adults in a family unit, that is where the shit begins to hit the fan.  And this is coming from someone who’s family is currently at a 1:1 ratio, and I still feel like I’m losing control all the time.  I couldn’t imagine bringing another into the home, and mythical wife and I take measures to make sure that such will become an impossibility.

And in Kondo’s case, third child enters the fray, and suddenly she’s no longer able to keep up with being KonMari, professionally, or in her own personal life.  I think it’s hilarious that she didn’t just go from “no longer being tidy,” to being “my house is messy” because frankly that’s the kind of transition that my household went through when kids started entering the equation.

The point of all this is that kids quite literally, break anyone.  If they can break a wealthy multi-media success like Marie Kondo, they’ll have no problem at all busting up the lives of all the rest of us plebes who decide to reproduce and repopulate, and the more non-parents can comprehend just how difficult it is, the better chance of understanding and empathy can emerge.

I love that Duke is Virginia Tech’s slumpbuster

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Through casual following through the ESPN app’s favorite team tracking, was I somewhat aware of how the season of the reigning ACC Champions was going.  I noticed that they had a very strong start to the season, at one point being 11-1, with some notable wins coming against Penn State and UNC.  I was perplexed to why they weren’t getting into the top-25, while teams with way worse records and not that much stronger schedules like UVA and Duke were.

But then I noticed that the L’s started happening, and next thing I know the Hokies lost seven in a row, with two coming against Clemson which annoys me to see that they’re leaning so hard into hoops like Tech did after their football program has been less than stellar.  Suddenly, the record bolstered by a hot start is looking pretty mediocre, and Tech is looking more like an NIT school than the defending ACC Champions.

So my brother being of North Carolina upbringing, bleeds Carolina blue, which automatically means that he like many, hates Duke.  Any time Duke loses, he’ll post to me, or one of our group chats of a website, succinctly URL’d diddukewin.com, to which the site literally only reports a YES or NO with an ensuing link to ESPN’s recaps.

I hadn’t been paying attention, but on the latest of Dook’s fuckups, I was pleasantly surprised to have seen come against, Virginia Tech.  Seven-game losing streak, over.

As the subject of this post says, I love that Duke has turned into Virginia Tech’s slumpbuster for the better part of the last decade.  It doesn’t matter how ranked or mostly unranked Virginia Tech has been, how highly ranked Dook has been or how many Zions or Graysons or Reddishes or whatever highly-touted prospects they’ve trotted out, when Dook has gone to Blacksburg, more often than not, they’ve lost.  Since 2013, Duke has gone 3-5 in Blacksburg, and 5-5 in head-to-head matchups over their last ten.  .500 doesn’t sound that impressive, but consider the fact that we’re talking about Duke and Virginia Tech, and not like Duke and UNC.

Regardless of the stats and numbers, I’m just arrogantly pleased to see that Dook has once again gone to Blacksburg, and left with another L.  I don’t care if there’s no more Coach K, and Jon Scheyerface is struggling to manage the team, I will always take pleasure in Virginia Tech > Dook.  It never gets old, and it will probably never not warrant a post in my brog whenever it happens.  Hopefully the frequency in which it does continues to maintain pace, or get even better.

Figures that of their abysmal 2-7 conference record, the wins have come against UNC and Dook.  Maybe they’ll draw that lucky #7 seed in the ACC tournament again and go gangbusters and repeat as champions, but baby luck is over, and this is more likely than not a pipedream.  But at least we’ve got another win against Dook to highlight the season.

I’m actually surprised that Tech stormed the court afterward.  Considering how often we beat Dook at home, it’s kind of becoming a given, and no more special than beating William & Mary or the Dayton Flyers.  I’m not mad about it, just a little disappointed.  We’ve been there many times now, act like it.

Of course David Chang thinks he’s too good for Costco’s rotisserie chicken

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Not surprising, considering he’s an arrogant star-fucker: David Chang declares Costco’s signature $4.99 rotisserie chicken as “inedible”

The last time I brought up David Chang, I stated that I have a love-hate opinion of the guy, concluding that I was like 40-60 in favor of not cool.  But after hearing him shit on Costco’s rotisserie chickens, I think the needle pegs to 0-100.  The second season of Ugly Delicious wasn’t nearly as good as the first, and it’s pretty apparent that he’s so drunk on his own bullshit  and swept up in his own celebrity that he’s incapable of remembering where he probably came from.

Because I would wager money that in his lifetime, he’s consumed a number of Costco rotisserie chickens.  He grew up in the same area where I grew up in Northern Virginia, and regardless of geography, ALL Koreans love going to Costco, because of the savings available there, no matter how rich or poor they are.  And when it comes to getting bargains, pretty much few things on the planet are on the same level as Costco’s rotisserie chickens.

In fact, I bet his own parents in NOVA still go to Costco on the regular, pulling up in their probably Lexus, and there’s even a good chance that they themselves are still buying rotisserie chickens.  Maybe not necessarily to eat straight out of the package, but to shred up and use in a variety of other Korean dishes, that Chang alleges that still learns things from his mom.

But as for Chang himself, it’s clear that he thinks he’s too good for Costco chicken, and that the perma-$4.99 birds are way beneath him.  After spending the last few years gallivanting around the world and eating foreign foods on Netflix’s dime, and kissing the asses of Hollywood celebrities who all always think they’re some global foodies, he’s completely lost touch with the rest of the world that isn’t wealthy, and has jobs that isn’t opening overrated shit restaurants with weeby names despite being Korean, and might actually see Costco chickens as more than just an economic convenience.

Not everyone has the choice to pick Costco over Sprouts Alhambra, because Costco’s chicken is just too economically friendly that they can’t not buy them, even if the company has disclosed they lose money on every bird they sell because they don’t want to lose the customer faith.  To some, Costco chicken is convenient to process into other recipes, and to those who are workout buffs, the chickens are the absolute biggest bang for the buck as far as protein consumption is concerned.

But all this shit is lost on a celebrity fuck-boi like David Chang has become.  Yeah I’m sure he’s manufacturing hot takes like this in order to draw attention to his likely shitty podcast that he’ll probably abandon within six months because nobody is capable of playing the long game, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to see that he’s gotten a little too big to be able to understand just why Costco rotisserie chickens are so popular.

Perhaps he should stick to trying to rip off Chick Fil-A sandwiches and falling short, or making bougie gourmet mac and cheese that still falls short to Kraft from his own wife.

Observations of doing online food delivery

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A while back, I came to the conclusion that in spite of the fact that I make more money than I’ve ever made in my career, I basically still have no money when it comes to any sort of leisure or just wanting to treat yo-self on rare instances.  To no surprise, it’s all going towards my children or expenses related to my children, and this is one of those instances where I think about how much simpler life can be for those without kids, not to say I have any regrets at all for having them they’re perfect and I love them until the end of existence.

But I don’t really do well when it comes to financial anxiety, and a lot of my general well-being is often tied to how comfortable I feel about paying bills while staying out of debt, and over the last few months, as much as I loathe and avoid it at all costs, I’ve had to carry partial balances over with my credit cards, simply because my outgoing money was surpassing incoming money, no matter how much I try to avoid it.

In the prior two years, I made a pretty penny on doing online surveys for nickels and dimes, enough to make people take notice in like the ten new wrestling blet replicas I was able to get with all of them, but that well has kind of dried up in the sense that the circumstances in which I was able to do them aren’t really applicable anymore, because my kids command a lot of attention, and I can’t absent mindedly bullshit my way through multiple surveys a day like I used to.

Needless to say, I had this revelation while I was in the car one day, that my household now has a third car that’s kind of dormant, and how it would be an ideal ride if I were to get into online food delivery.  It’s small, gets great mileage and is pretty fun and agile to drive, and it would be getting some use, instead of just sitting around deteriorating in dormancy.  Plus, the take home from doing online food delivery would be exponentially larger than doing online surveys, and it was something that I could do when the girls were down for the night.

And so I signed up for both DoorDash and UberEats, and over the last 6-7 weeks, I’ve embarked on moonlighting as a delivery driver.  Suffice to say, I’ve learned a lot in that span, but overall I can’t say that it’s been that negative of an experience as far as wanting to make some side cash for only as much effort as driving around picking up and dropping off bags of food takes.

It’s also been giving me a lot of perspective of being on the other side of the transaction, and naturally a remark like that isn’t said if it wasn’t to commentate on the sheer lack of respect and consideration customers have for their drivers.  Which is all a more eloquent way of saying that the vast majority of customers are a bunch of cheap motherfuckers who by all right shouldn’t deserve to eat if they’re unwilling to pay the people that bring their food to them.

For every generous tip I get from a customer who seems to recognize that I beat the estimated time, took into consideration the swing of their doors when placing their shit so they didn’t hit it, or other little things I do to make sure everything is right, I will have probably like 6-7 cheap motherfuckers who tip the bare minimum it takes for their order to not get outright rejected by all other drivers.  Like in 98%* of instances, I won’t even entertain a request where my take away is $2.75 or less because there’s a 100% chance that $0.00 is a tip and you’ll just be getting the base fare, and these are the shitheads that truly don’t deserve to eat if they’re not willing to pay for any labor.

*why not 100%?  Because sometimes UberEats will do these quests that give you bonus money for completion of trips, regardless of their amount, so if I’m teetering on a quest completion, I’ll take a shit fare if it means getting a bonus afterward

But the majority of tips that I accrue are somewhere in the $2-3 range, and these are orders that looking at the things they’re ordering, are usually well over $20-30, meaning on average, these are barely 10% tips.

The point is, it’s a good thing that I’m doing this as a side hustle and not relying on this to be my primary income, because I think I would go insane by how much passive abuse I’m getting from cheap-ass customers who use the veil of anonymity to justify being cheap assholes to have their shit delivered to their doors.

Another thing I’ve observed is that initially, I thought doing this, I’d be exposed to a lot of new restaurants where I could passively learn about through delivering their stuff.  I mean I’ve found a few places that I wasn’t really aware of, but when it really comes down to it, I’d have to say the majority of the drops that I’m doing are usually delivering someone their fast food, or Chinese food, or chain-establishment pizza, which really befuddles me, because I’m usually passing a number of Chinese or pizza joints on the way to these delivery spots, so I have no idea how these algorithms are when it comes to people and their choice of food.

I’ve learned that chain joints like McDonald’s, Popeyes and other massive chains don’t really give two shits about service time and having an order ready for pickup, because no amount of negative feedback to them is going to really improve their operations, so when I’m able to be picky about things, I try to tell myself to avoid them, because the bane of my existence is waiting for these businesses to prepare orders, and not a single night has gone by where there hasn’t been one pickup that hasn’t made me wait because I’m fast and they’re slow, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re the ones who cost me the chances at getting better tips on account of being extra early.

Favorite words to see: Leave at door
Least favorite words to see: Meet at door
You guys are assholes: Customer PIN required

Overall, the experience hasn’t been that bad.  I’m making some side cash in about 60-90 minutes on the nights I decide to go out, and I can usually do like 2-3 drops whenever I do go out.  It’s a decent way to clear my head and do something mindless, but at least make money in the process, and with these funds, I’ll hopefully be able to supplement my income for the ever-mounting expenditures that seem to be creeping into my life, or maybe even sack some of it away for some me-shit like a new raptop or inevitably, moar wrestling blets.

And to get in front of an inevitable question: yes, I have taken a French fry from a customer’s order before.  They didn’t tip, Chick fil-A didn’t seal the bag, I was hungry, and I didn’t know how to cancel orders yet, so in order to feel like I was getting any sort of retribution to an asshole, I totally took a French fry out of their order.  So the picture of Johnny Lawrence from Cobra Kai isn’t entirely just coincidental.

I don’t think many people realize the ownage here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously after winning a second national championship, there’s been a lot of rhetoric thrown around about the legend of Stetson Bennett the Fourth, about how he’s basically bigger than god in the state, he’ll never have to pay for a meal or a drink in Georgia for the rest of his life, etc, etc.

And honestly, good on his part, because after living here for 20 years now, I never thought I’d see the day when Georgia would actually reach the top of the mountain much less win two in a row, after the years on top of years I’ve passively witnessed the Dawgs come close but choke, mostly to Alabama.  As a Georgia resident, I am happy to see the hometown team reach the pinnacle of college football not just once, but twice in a row is pretty sweet.

I recently saw this ad come across my theFacebook feed, and was pretty surprised to see the God of Athens going so all-in as the poster boy for Raising Cane’s chicken.  To my understanding, Cane’s has a pretty big, almost cult following in the markets they exist in, but down in Georgia, is Zaxby’s country, their carbon copy franchise.  No seriously, their menus are nearly identical, and I remember the first time I ever came across a Cane’s, it was in Las Vegas, and their menu looked surreptitiously familiar, and my close friend I was with, when ordering her usual Zaxby’s equivalent, I implored her to get the “Cane’s Sauce” and sure as shit, it was the same thing as Zaxby’s Zax Sauce.

I have no qualms with Cane’s, but as someone who discovered Zaxby’s first, between my friends and I, I usually just refer to Cane’s as “Zaxby’s Red” for obvious branding reasons.

The thing is, Zaxby’s is not only based out of Georgia, their headquarters is in Athens, right near the University of Georgia.  I actually interviewed with their corporate offices, but the flaky response to whether or not I’d need to make periodic visits to the office in Athens, which is nearly 90 minutes away from me made me not pursue it, but the point is the fact that Zaxby’s allowed Raising Cane’s to somehow swoop beneath them and sign the kid in their very own backyard, and make Stetson Bennett their poster child is a pretty devastating blow.

Then again, Cane’s apparently has that killer instinct about their company, because while I was interviewing with Zaxby’s, it was brought to my attention that there’s actually one solitary Raising Cane’s location in Georgia; and it happens to be in Athens.  Very cut-throat and guerilla of them to do such, but it was clearly enough for a guy like Stetson Bennett to probably have tried them at one point and have enough of a positive association to the brand to when they came knocking with some NIL money, he signed on.

Although I said I have no beef with Cane’s, I’m still a Zaxby’s first person, because they’re here and available.  When I travel to places that have Cane’s, I enjoy them all the same.  But I have to give some respect to Cane’s for landing such a critical hit to a chief competitor, because as I said, I don’t think a lot of people are going to understand or realize just how much of a big deal it is that Cane’s got a hold of Stetson Bennett and not Zaxby’s.

Letterkenny S11: what was the point of this?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I recently wrapped up watching Letterkenny season 11, and I was left with this feeling of, what was the point of this season?  As quirky and Canadian redneck Seinfeld-y the show can be, most of the later seasons at least had some kind of storyline that the plot gravitated back towards at the end of every few episodes; Wayne and Tanis, Wayne and Marie Fred, Katy and Dierks, the hockey season; to me, the charm of the show was that when it actually narrowed its focus to some centralized storylines, the quality became untouchably good.

Sure, most everyone loves the show for its cold opens, the long-game jokes that the show commits to using even after multiple seasons, and the endless array of one-liners.  But after season nine (the hockey season), the show has seemingly plateaued, and it’s like Jared Keeso and the rest of the showrunners have no clue on what to do next, and until they do, they’re just kind of putting out a bunch of stop-gap one-off episodes with no centralized plot, but also no sense of heart and soul that some of the preceding seasons managed to capture.

Everyone knows that S10’s objective was to set up the Shoresy spin-off show, to which I think was a little bit (read: a lot) of a flex by Keeso to make up a fluffy season of Letterkenny to launch a show that basically lets him play hockey on a network’s dime, and the quality of the season was really mediocre.  I likened it to Ocean’s Twelve, which was an excuse for George Clooney and gang to have a working Italian vacation, while making a turd of a film, but at least there was still an objective for S10 to accomplish.

And in all fairness, I rather liked Shoresy a lot, because they established a central storyline, and no matter what hijinks or parade of one-liners the characters got into the rest of the season, it always gravitated back towards it.  It seemed apparent that a little bit more heart and soul went into Shoresy than it did Letterkenny, and if there’s one thing I’ve always said about any business, which television shows are, it’s don’t stray too far from what brought you to the dance.

But getting back to S11 of Letterkenny, not only was it short at just six episodes, I have no idea what the whole point of this season was.  I couldn’t really tell if there were even any seeds for a potential plot to have in the future, and the whole season felt more like it was making episodes for all of the usual suspects to get a paycheck, as well as basically being a sounding box for Keeso’s pet peeves.

They kind of had one small plot revolving around a degen trying to turn over a new leaf, but it’s resolved in the sixth episode, and if that really was the only real story of the season, much like Dune, you only needed to read/watch the last 30 pages/minutes, and that was the whole story right there.

Otherwise, it was just a checklist for everyone to make an appearance; Glenn got a good bit of time to shine with his dialogue, Jonesy who looked like he got jacked in S10, looks like he lost his gains and Riley found them, and Bonnie McMurray’s actress looks like she’s had a little too much work done to herself and doesn’t look particularly healthy.  Wished there was more Tanis and less of the Dycks, but when you only produce six episodes and call it a season, what can you do about having enough screen time to breathe?

I’m not mad, just disappointed.  I really loved the journey of watching the show from seasons 1-9, but the last two have just been really below standard, and I hope they get their shit together for a future season, otherwise this is just a classic case of a show getting big, but then running out of ammo to keep up the good fight.

Blame yourselves and god

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Y’all did this to yourselves: The Home Depot changes pay policy to pay hourly associates down to the minute instead of rounding to nearest quarter hour

When I was an hourly associate for THD, I learned pretty quickly about the quarter hour rounding mechanism of the time clock.  I typically liked to work 8-4-ish in order to help negate Atlanta’s shitty traffic for this was still during the age of commuting a long, long time ago.  I learned pretty quickly that I had until 8:07 to punch in and still “be on time,” and that I could begin my walk out the building at 3:50, and make sure to punch out at 3:53, and I would be credited for having been there until 4.

I wasn’t really ever a massive nickel-and-dimer while I was hourly, but I’d be lying if I didn’t let the notion of “giving away” some work influence some of the things I did in the office in order to make sure that I would be on the more favorable side of the rounding than on the negative.  Seldom did I let myself get rounded down, and occasionally oopsie, I’ve got a quarter hour of OT now, my bad, but I can justify it lol.

But the point is, just about everyone knew about the way the clock worked, and you’d never see more people be obvious about it than at like 3:50 or 4:50 pm where people are milling around, walking a lap around Main Street, waiting out those three minutes from where seven minutes turns into eight minutes, and it would be the right time to punch out and get credited for 15 minutes.

And of course The Home Depot knew about it too, but in spite of my shitty last boss, I still hold the company in high regard, and they knew all their hourlies were doing what they were doing, but as long as the work got done, on time, fucking let them.

Now I’m sure the initiative for the dissent of this probably started at the store level, because individual store managers are more likely to be tryhards on power trips who want to flex their position onto their subordinates, and I could totally see a blowhard store manager get on the case of associates who are threatening to encroach on a bonus quarter, and demanding they punch out before they get credited for it.  And those who get chewed out will then be salty and full of piss, and bitch and moan about labor theft, and here we are, where the company as an entire whole fucking corporation has to change their policies.

The thing is, I would wager money that there are going to be waaaayyyy more associates unhappy with this development than those who are happy with it.  Store managers will still get on the case of associates to make sure they punch out at the top of the hour, and every associate who relied on those 7-minute windows to beat traffic, school bus routes, or just be able to get out of work at optimal times, will now be forced to wait.  People punching in will be dealing with more anxiety and stress when there’s a traffic jam or a bad red light that takes too long, and nobody wins when there’s excessive nickel-and-diming going on.

But as I stated above, y’all did this to yourselves.  Companies like THD don’t make changes for one store, it’s all or nothing, and because of the dissent of a few, vastly way more will suffer the consequences.