New Father Brogging, #010

A thought that often crosses my mind is that I can’t believe the world that my daughter was born into.  And then I feel really sad about it, despite knowing that she very well won’t remember any of this stuff, but one day she might read about it in history books or any sort of resource that outlines the happening throughout history.

It’s bad enough she was born right at the very start of when coronavirus came into the United States and was shortly declared a global pandemic, literally changing the landscape of the world where the vast majority of educated people began to take shelter in their homes, to minimize the spread of a new disease.

But in a way that can only be described as amazing, a global pandemic still managed to get pushed into to the backseat by the more recent civil unrest that’s boiled over on account of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and very recently George Floyd in Minnesota, with the latter being pretty flagrantly executed by a white police officer, when his neck was low-key crushed under the knee of the cop.

As I’m writing this, all across the country, there have been countless protests, many of which escalated into riots complete with looting, and there are hundreds to thousands of people who have been physically harmed, gassed, tazed or impacted by some form of crowd control.  The police are widely viewed as the enemy now instead of the agency that’s meant to serve and protect, and it’s times like this in which I’m kind of glad that one, I don’t live/work as close to actual city-proper Atlanta as I used to, and two, add the staying home as yet another ironic benefit to there being a fucking pandemic.

It’s a very sad and scary thought to think of this being the world that my first child was born into, and I feel like the generations before her have already let her down in fostering a world that’s supposed to be safe and better for the future.

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New Father Brogging, #009

Today was quite the day, and not in a particularly positive manner.  I had a day in which I was mostly stressed out on account of the fact that I just felt as if I were kind of losing myself because I just didn’t have any time for myself, because I have to spend so much time in the day doing the same things over and over again, all pertaining to the obvious care of an infant child. 

Obviously I know what I signed up for, and that this was to be expected, so it leads to a tremendous amount of guilt over the fact that I felt such feelings in the first place, so then I try to compensate for my selfishness by trying harder, but then getting similar results and triggers that compounds my frustration, creating this unfortunate cycle of feeling exasperated.

Currently, my child is dealing with a lot of reflux issues, which is pretty common for babies similar to mine, so on a day like today, I’d been thrown up on several times.  I do not fault my kid, as she is still a baby and has little control over these such things, but it is disheartening to get thrown up on all the same.  Additionally, she’s in this current state where she’s either actively eating, or is fussy unless she’s being held.  In either state, she requires hands-on attention, and when either mythical wife or I are providing such hands-on attention, we have no capabilities of doing anything else really.

I’ve become somewhat adept at doing some things one-handed to where I can at least kind of dick around on my phone while nursing or trying to coax a baby to relaxation, or I can watch television, and I’m surprised at how fast we’re going through things on Netflix these days.

But what I can’t do are the perpetually mounting tasks, daily chores and routine dog relief while on baby duty, much less anything I want to do for my own gratification, and as I watch the minutes tick away into hours, and then suddenly it’s only a few hours left before the day’s end, and all of this starts all over again, and then I mentally feel defeated, and that I’m losing myself because I just can’t find the time to do anything at all, whether it’s necessary tasks or personal ones.  Either I feel like the chores are going to overwhelm me, or I won’t get to do anything for myself ever again, and both lead to me feeling negative.

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Patrick Ewing just cannot stop getting owned

Unfortunate: Patrick Ewing tests positive for coronavirus

To think that when Patrick Ewing had to deal with the renewed spotlight of how much Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls owned him over and over again throughout his career thanks to ESPN’s The Last Dance documentary, he probably didn’t imagine things could get any worse.

But then, last Friday it’s announced that he has tested positive for coronavirus.

Boom.

Admittedly, I was a Knicks fan growing up and I loved the hell out of Patrick Ewing.  His jersey was the first sports jersey I’d ever gotten in my life.  I even had a poster of Patrick Ewing in my room, and I always picked the Knicks in NBA Jam.

But there’s no real way to debate the fact that throughout his career, and now his life, Patrick Ewing is just a guy that just can’t stop getting owned.

After winning a National Championship for Georgetown in 1984 (his second attempt mind you, his first try was thwarted by of course, Michael Jordan), this rest of his career is just a cautionary montage of him getting owned over and over again.  Drafted first overall by the New York Knicks in 1985, Ewing definitely revitalized the franchise and the Knicks were almost never not relevant in the playoff picture throughout his entire time on the squad, but the unfortunate fate was that Ewing and the Knicks never won a championship.

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Grasping at the low-hanging fruit obvious joke

A Maruchan plant in Chesterfield, Virginia reported seven employees testing positive for coronavirus.

If they were forced to destroy all product manufactured in the presence of these infected employees, Maruchan stands to lose $7.82.

Don’t get me wrong, few things are as guilty pleasure than instant ramen and their 9 billion grams of sodium per pack, and as a proponent of limiting waste, I don’t like to hear stories of so much food having to go to waste.  But the joke is so obvious, it has to be made.

Oh, Atlanta #669

It’s funny, when Bubba decided to reopen the state of Georgia, starting with a very auspicious cherry-picked selection of businesses, my first thought was that “hey, this seems like it could be kind of racist, opening up all these businesses that tend to lean towards having mostly black workers and patrons.”  I asked around several people if they thought my opinion possibly held any weight, and the majority of the responses were mostly not really, and that I was more likely the racist for thinking such thoughts.

However since then, the black community has been pretty up in arms about how racist coronavirus is, how it’s a global conspiracy, and other claims, some more outlandish than the others.  But as it pertains to Georgia, when the black community starts echoing the thoughts that I had about how Bubba’s choices of business to reopen the state with, then I feel a little bit validated.

Unfortunately, in spite of the claims of Bubba’s racism, there are plenty of people who are content to do their best to be statistics and perpetuate stereotypes, even if there’s monumental scientific evidence out there that we should all probably still be staying indoors. 

But when Nike releases some new Air Jordans, it’s apparent that even a global pandemic isn’t enough to prevent people from staying indoors, instead choosing to gather in tight crowds and really put each other in the line of fire, all for the sake of trying to get some fucking shoes.

Now before anyone else decides that I’m being racist for thinking that surely not every single person at this Air Jordan release day is black, read the article: Greenbriar Mall.  Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of Atlanta knows that Greenbriar Mall is basically 100% black, save for the few other minorities that have the gumption to open up businesses in a predominantly black mall, but as far as patrons go, it’s basically 100% black.  For context, this is a mall that used to house a Magic Johnson Theater, which were basically only in Los Angeles and a few other sparsely selected jurassic ghettos outside of California.

Either way, this is what we’d ironically classify as “a very Atlanta story” as even in the middle of a pandemic, people still can’t seem to stay away from gathering, as long as Air Jordans are on the line.  Naturally, the internet has had a field day with it, claiming all sorts of racist unflattering remarks, and pointing out why so many people are going out in public when, at the time of this going live was, the shoes were still readily available to purchase online; which then opened up a whole other can of racist remarks and memes.

To some degree, I hold Nike responsible for recklessly (or cerebrally) maintaining the course and releasing these shoes.  Surely they know the pandemonium the releases of Air Jordans tend to do to the sneakerhead community, much less urban, and it’s pretty poor optics that even when people are getting sick and dying out there, they’re content to give people reasons to leave their homes and gather, but that’s just me.

I guess Bubba will be very happy if the black voter base starts taking some more losses on account of them pursuing fucking shoes, but frankly that was probably the intent the entire time when he decided to reopen Georgia.

New Father Brogging, #006

One of the most important things that I’ve learned as a first-time dad is that whenever you feel like you’re getting a grasp of raising a baby, behaviors will inevitably change and then you’re back into a position of knowing nothing all over again, and feeling helpless when your baby is reduced to crying and finding great difficulty at what may be causing your child distress.

When my baby is crying, it could be a variety of things that could be causing it; might be hunger, even if it might be improbably because she ate a full feed just 80 minutes ago, but a growth spurt could be in play, meaning she’ll want to eat pretty much every single hour.  Maybe it’s indigestion, to which there are only a few things that can actually bring her relief, like pressing her up against the warm body of a parent, or medicinally with gripe water or newborn anti-gas drops.  Maybe she needs to be burped more.  Maybe she’s cranky because she needs to take a nap.  Lately, she’s become cognizant to the discomfort of having a soiled diaper, something that hadn’t been the case in the first five weeks.  And sometimes, she just wants to be held by mom or dad.

The point is, there have been numerous times where I feel like I’ve identified a behavioral pattern, only to rely upon the knowledge of yesterday for today’s problems, and find out that everything has changed all over again, and then I’m left feeling dumbfounded and useless that I can’t figure out how to bring comfort to my own child.

I never once discounted the difficulty of parenting, for the first time much less, but as I expected it would be, parenting is not easy.  This does not deter me in the least bit, but I am just confirming that it’s about as difficult, and occasionally frustrating as I imagined it would be.  There’s nothing like changing a diaper, only for the kid to rip a wet fart and soil it seconds after being put on, only for an after shock to hit two minutes later, and make me throw my hands up at the frustrating of changing three diapers in the span of 120 seconds.

Ultimately I wouldn’t change a thing, and I’ll change a trillion diapers if I have to in order to raise my little girl right, but damn can I at least say there are times when I just have to say, what the fuck man?

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This is what is called “poor optics”

Since really March, when coronavirus really began taking off and running wild across the globe, a lot of massive events have been cancelled, understandably.  The 2020 Olympics postponed until next year, the NBA and MLB have suspended their seasons indefinitely and it doesn’t look like either is going to resume at all this calendar year.  The city of Las Vegas pretty much shut down, as did both Disney World and Disneyland.

Basically, anything that encouraged any sort of mass gathering of human beings has been cancelled, with great justification.  Major events such as SXSW and recently San Diego Comic-Con have cancelled.  Hell, even non major events, but still capable of drawing people out of their homes have shuttered up, as they don’t want to have the blood of anyone dying from contracting coronavirus at their events from happening.  Momo-con in Atlanta, a massive Memorial Day convention has cancelled, among all sorts of fun runs, shows and concerts.

As disappointed as I’d be, the Peachtree Road Race is probably going to be cancelled at some point soon, because it’s the world’s largest 10K run, that draws 65,000 runners to Atlanta every July 4th.

One of the biggest questions among some people in my little world was “what about Dragon*Con?”  Seeing as how it falls on Labor Day every year, there stood to be some hope that it might still happen, since we were still several months away from it at that point.  But at the same time, America has literally been the worst country on the planet at handling coronavirus, with idiots who not only don’t adhere to social distancing and staying home, but proudly defy the one scientifically proven way to combat the pandemic, and go outside and amass in groups to protest, being suggested of what to do.

Even if we’re still several months away from Dragon*Con, the world as a whole is even further away from any sort of vaccine or drug that can help suppress the spread or effects of coronavirus.  I think it goes without saying that an event that draws nearly 75,000 people in the tightest possible quarters, should probably be cancelled.

Nope, as of right now, Dragon*Con is still a go.  Four months from now, still anticipating 75,000 attendees crammed like sardines within a three-block radius in Downtown Atlanta with no known vaccine or inoculation in sight.

So much for that whole flattening of the curve thing.  It only took the convention nearly a decade to successfully scrub a known pedophile off of their board, but somewhere within it is basically another Bubba Kemp who insists on keeping the convention on schedule despite the fact that nearly every known other major event and gathering of people have been cancelled or postponed.

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