New Father Brogging, #015

Today, I have started my paternity leave.  Regardless of what coronavirus has done to the world, this was close to the original plan to take my leave, because in a pre-COVID19 world, I work all through most of the summer while mythical wife is on maternity leave/summer break, and when she goes back to school, I tag in with paternity leave, and stretch out the not needing daycare for another six weeks.

Ironically, as I’ve said numerous times at this point, coronavirus has unintentionally given me a whole bunch of bonus paternity time, as I’d been able to be working from home throughout the entire summer, and almost entirely since my daughter was born.  For all the bad it’s done throughout the world, I ironically have to be somewhat grateful for its existence in the sense that because of it, I’ve gotten so much extra time to bond with my child before taking off officially.

And right in time too, because it was made no more clear than the last week or so, that my performance was deemed to be inconveniencing by my superiors at work, and I had a rather uncomfortable talking to about how much they think I suck at my job, despite the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic, I can’t get child care no matter how much we might all want it, because my baby was born medically fragile and Americans can’t be trusted to socially distance and remain healthy, so a lot of childcare during business hours still falls onto me.

To the point where I’m actually taking this week with my own PTO, and rolling directly into paternity leave, because I’m over the bullshit and the passive aggressive swipes and friendly reminders, and ready to just spend some quality time with my daughter, without feeling any need to be worried about my inbox filling up or some bullshit virtual meetings to have to attend.

So for the next seven weeks, good riddance to work, and hello to daddy time.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #015”

Oh, Georgia #666

Nothing surprises me anymore: Georgia governor Yosemite Sam attempts to appease his god-king baked potato in charge, by signing an executive order that effectively prevents localities from having the ability to legally mandate mask wearing in public AKA cities aren’t allowed to legally make mask wearing mandatory

If it weren’t the president and all of his followers making all these choices, I’m pretty sure there would be hundreds of politicians and bureaucrats that could technically be guilty of plotting first-degree murder.  If the definition of first-degree murder is that it was premeditated and well-thought out, that seems pretty fair to say that all these old white shitheads in politics are all taking great planning and thinking through the systematic potential killing of thousands of American citizens.  If that’s not premeditation, then I don’t know what is.

Anyway, at this point, I really don’t have any more words to add to the endless slope that America continues to slide down.  This country fucking sucks now and if not for the fact that my entire life and career is here, as well as all of my friends and family, mythical wife and I have often “joked” about the notion of packing our shit and moving abroad to like Korea.  Not to mention the immigration process is painstakingly arduous on both sides of the world.  But it’s still a discussion worth having these days, and if money weren’t an object, it could become a fantasy worth making into a reality.

But the picture alone is worth the metaphorical thousand words, but not really a thousand, because I don’t know enough synonyms for “shitheads” and “bigots,” and frankly both of these clowns are so simplistically terrible that there aren’t even close to a thousand words to describe them.  One hates everyone on the planet that isn’t a fellow billionaire and doesn’t challenge his way of life, and the other will do absolutely anything to appease his god-king, even if it means sacrificing American lives, but it’s okay because the vast majority of the lives at risk will most likely be blacks and Hispanics and the poors, and they’re less than human beings to both.

I mean seriously, look at Bubba in the above picture.  He’s basically eyeing the baked potato’s toadstool, wondering if he should use the swirl or the pinch once they’re in private quarters, and the mask he’s wearing isn’t so much to protect himself from coronavirus as much as it is to contain the rabid salivating he’s probably doing at the thought of getting to pleasure his idol.

But that’s low-brow of me to make such a crude observation.  However, I’m also not plotting on killing thousands of Americans on a daily basis, so when the day is over, a little crude narrative making doesn’t seem so bad in comparison now does it?

I think the saddest part of everything is that everyone seems content to wait until November to see what chips will fall come the next presidential election.  But last time I checked, in America, it’s entirely possible to fire inadequate workers from the job, and it really makes me sad that the office of president seems to be immune from it, regardless of being impeached or not.  Regardless, everyone seems to have this wait until November attitude, but there’s a lot of shit for America to continue to fall into and hang on in until then, and I can’t help but wonder why we’re all waiting, as a nation, instead of acting.  I feel like the country has never been so close to a mass mutiny as it’s been now, but wondering just how much more bullshit will have to happen before anything ever occurs. Because November might be too late for this country, and before we know it, America will have a million casualties due to coronavirus, while the rest of the entire fucking planet won’t even come close to that, combined.

I’ve made a lot of analogies to books and movies and television over the last few weeks to describe the state of the nation, but another one came into mind last night: The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick.  Originally a book, turned into a television series, but basically, America is taken over by the Axis of Evil.  Now without expounding on that much, all I have to really ask is that would America actually be worse off under German/Japanese rule than it is now?

Not a sermon, just a thought.  But sad that we’ve gotten to the point where such a question even comes to fruition.

When politics actually hit home

Often times, no matter how much bitching and complaining we as ‘Muricans do about politics, when the day is over, not a lot really happens.  A penny tax doesn’t mean people are unable to feed themselves, and when the government talks about some convoluted bill or law that passes, most of the time very little noticeable things actually occur.  Maybe it’s naïve and insular for me to make such blanket statements, but at least in my little world, the things that happen as the result of stalling and bickering in Washington seldom really feel like they affect life on the home front.

In a prior post, I made a remark about how at no point in the history of my life, has it ever felt so physically tangible, the feeling of disappointment and letdown happening to the American people of the United States until more recently.  As stated, no matter how much I may disagree or not like something that’s now law, a lot of the time it doesn’t really impact the daily living of my life or my family.

Until now.

My wife is a teacher.  My child is immunocompromised.  I’ll just state those facts, and if you understand why this is a major problem today maybe you’ll continue reading.  If not, well go fuck off.

Continue reading “When politics actually hit home”

This is really the state of America in 2020

No matter how much I never liked to admit to feeling it, now that the faucet’s been turned, it seems like not a day goes by where the words don’t pass through my lips, and it doesn’t make me feel any better verbalizing it now as it did when I first came to the realization that right now, America sucks.

Talking with a friend about the state of the world, I found myself saying things that I’d never said before in regards to how I felt, mostly because I’ve been isolated, and mythical wife and I try not to talk about things too much because they really are that depressing, but what came out of my fingers in text is that I don’t think it’s ever felt so physically possible to feel just how much our country is letting us down, the way America is completely and utterly failing the American people on a daily basis right now.

It really is becoming impossible to keep up with all the ways things are fucked up, at least for me, who likes to jot down notes on a daily basis so I can remember the things happening in history for another day, especially in case I feel inspired to write about them at some point.  But it’s downright sad and pathetic the things that emerge on a daily basis about the state of America in the state of the world currently, and I realize that it becomes a little more difficult every day to not grow more jaded and nihilistic about how things are, which are definitely things I don’t want to be happening when I’m in a period of my life where I’m trying to enjoy and savor the time of new fatherhood and spending time with my baby.

It’s kind of not fair that America is in such chaos and forced to hunker, when all I want to do is show my kid the great big world and can’t, because neither of us want to get the coronavirus that’s fucking everywhere and risk our lives.

Continue reading “This is really the state of America in 2020”

Cancellation of Minor League Baseball kills my soul

Primarily thanks to coronavirus, Minor League Baseball has officially cancelled the 2020 baseball season.  I say primarily, because the insinuation is that it was not the one and only factor in this decision; because prior to the world going into the shitter on account of a pandemic, MiLB was already at risk, because Major League Baseball is full of greedy cocksuckers, and they were trying to kill off associations with a large chunk of existing Minor League organizations.  Coronavirus just gives MLB a convenient scapegoat to push the whole thing under the rug for the time being, and possibly come back later to put the nails in the coffin at a later, easier time.

But commentary aside, the reality is that in 2020, there will be no Minor League Baseball, and that fact alone hurts my soul in a variety of ways.

Obviously, my love for the minor leagues throughout the years has easily made me prefer them over the MLB product, despite being but cogs in the grander machine, but there’s no denying the appeal of the more laid-back, relaxed culture of MiLB, where everything is not taken so seriously, and there’s vastly more accessibility and intimate closeness with the players and the teams, than their MLB parents.

Continue reading “Cancellation of Minor League Baseball kills my soul”

Revisionist history culture is concerning

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it

-Winston Churchill

[2020 note: I basically made this exact same post three years ago, starting in a similar manner]

Not long ago, I saw that Community was available on Netflix, which was pleasing to me.  Community was one of those shows in which I’d only seen sporadic episodes in no particular order, depending on whichever group of friends I’d hang out with and happen to catch an episode or two at their point of watching through the series.  However, crushing on Alison Brie withstanding, I liked the show, and I always thought it would be a good idea to binge the series in order if the opportunity ever presented itself.

One episode in particular that made me think “whoa, this show is really clever” was the episode that most widely seems to be known as “the D&D episode.”  Not giving anything away, but the Community gang plays a game of Dungeons & Dragons for a particular motive.  However, if there’s one scene in the episode that really sticks with most viewers, it’s of Ken Jeong’s character, Chang, completely painted black and wearing a white wig, because he wants in on the game, and assumes LARPing as a dark elf would get the job done (spoiler: it doesn’t).

But it’s a little bit of a jaw-dropping scene because in all technicality, it’s still Ken Jeong in complete black face (and hands and presumably all other flesh).  But the thing is, he’s not trying to imitate or ridicule black people, he’s just trying to get in character as a dark elf.

Well, I just learned that that episode of Community won’t be available on Netflix anymore.  In fact, any episode of any show, and presumably any movie, that features any non-black character painting their skin tone as to appear darker, has been scrubbed from Netflix’s library, in light of the rampant racism problem, running roughshod in America currently.

Blackface, has suddenly shot up the charts as a hot button, and all throughout the world of media, there’s a whole lot of retroactive scrubbing being done, to eradicate all proof of any show, person, entity or whatever, partaking in blackface at any point in history.

Continue reading “Revisionist history culture is concerning”

MLB 2020 the (Shit)Show

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”