Tag: ohgeorgia

Too distracted to enforce the distracted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Georgia Senate approves House Bill 673*, outlawing motorists from holding their cell phones while operating a vehicle AKA the stop fucking texting while driving bill.

*behind paywall, but just hit the stop loading button before the paywall script popup has a chance to load to read content anyway because fuck myAJC

That’s great and all, but it’s going to be completely meaningless when no cop in the state is going to bother enforcing this law.  Unless they’re extremely bored and want to do work to pass the time and/or they’re targeting minorities.  One of my best friends works in law enforcement, and every time I have questions about “is X illegal?” the answers are almost always yes, but with a disclaimer that it’s basically discretionary on the officer to whether or not it’s worth the effort to tie themselves up with menial violations when there are bigger fish to potentially fry.

And considering Georgia’s lax discretionary ambivalence about HOV lane violators, blackout license plate covers, jaywalking, and other seemingly innocuously negligible yet illegal misdemeanors, HB 673 seems destined to be as useless as most of these other laws, because if nobody’s going to bother enforcing it, what’s really the point?

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I guess Atlanta can kiss Amazon HQ2 goodbye now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If you’d have asked me any time prior to today what I thought were the chances that Atlanta would have landed Amazon’s prized HQ2, I would have said somewhere in the realm of, 100%.

And I wouldn’t be saying it solely because I live here, and I’d love the idea of HQ2 taking root in my city; in fact, I’m actually quite skeptical of if Atlanta were to be the selected holy land to secure HQ2.  As much as people believe that the arrival of Amazon into the State of Georgia would magically turn the entire state into millionaires, there’s quite a substantial amount of proof that quite the opposite could occur, from one corporate entity holding way too much leverage over the place they chose to call home.

But I think when all the dust has settled, I think there’s more room for benefit and good to come out of HQ2 being in Atlanta than would be if it didn’t.  And realistically speaking, I genuinely feel like Atlanta has a very good shot and getting HQ2, mostly because it’s a city that offers just about everything that they’re looking for: an EST time zone, mild climate that rarely has to worry about snowstorms derailing everything, a major travel vein both domestically and internationally, major hubs for both UPS and FedEx, and a pipeline into a prominent tech incubator that Georgia Tech would be for them. 

Most importantly, Georgia is a state that has proven to be more than willing to play ball with big businesses, and have been willing to bend over backwards for prominent names and businesses, such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and the entire film industry.  Without question, Georgia and the City of Atlanta would have done absolutely whatever it took to make Amazon pick them for HQ2, even if it meant royally screwing every single Georgian in the process, just to be able to say tomorrow will be better than today.  Shit, one entire town has declared willingness to rename their entire populous Amazon, if they were chosen to house HQ2.

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Different Georgia team, same choke job

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The morning after, I’m a little surprised at how agitated I am by Georgia’s heartbreaking loss to Alabama in the National Championship.  It’s like there’s a part of me that should be satisfied because I was right, and accurately predicted Alabama would win in a low-scoring affair, and the pursuit of being right is the reason why predictions are made in sports.  But then there’s the part of me that still went on record stating that in spite of my prediction, I hoped that Georgia would win, because it sure would be nice to see a sports team in Georgia actually hoist up a championship.

Unfortunately, rooting for sports teams in Georgia is like rooting for the Buffalo Bills in the 90s; no matter how good they might be, they’ll never manage to get over the hump and never be anything better than second best (but also being capable of being absolutely anything well below).

Much like the Atlanta Braves have done countless times in the last 20 years, they failed.  Just like Atlanta United’s soccer team made the playoffs in their inaugural year and filled the city with hope and faith for some accolades, they too choked, losing to a lesser-heralded team, at home no less.  And just like the Atlanta Falcons choked away a 28-3 lead, the Georgia Bulldogs somehow found a way to lose their own championship game.

And it’s that Super Bowl that this game felt eerily identical to, in the way it played out, with Georgia jumping out ahead and holding the lead for the vast majority of the game.  Alabama, much like the Patriots, were pretty inept in the first half, but it’s the second in which legends are born and heroes are made.  Alabama came roaring back in the second half, and before we knew it, the game was tied closing out regulation.  The next thing we know, the team representing Georgia is standing under a deluge of confetti, heads down, as the other team begins celebrating their championship win.

I have no beef with Alabama, and everything about them is pretty awe-inspiring at this point, from the never-ending excellence of Nick Saban, to the story that college football fans are going to hear a LOT of now on, the birth and rise of Tua Tagovailoa, the true freshman with the cannon arm who came off the bench to lead the Crimson Tide back to the glory land.  The freshly-benched Jalen Hurts displayed a level of maturity, class and sportsmanship that couldn’t possibly be expected from a guy who went 25-2 and just got benched in the National Championship but still did, showing how much of a classy man he is.

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Looking stupid, even in victory

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Long story short: Democrat Doug Jones defeats publicly and nationally accused sexual deviant Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama senate race; by a margin of less than 2%

I can’t believe that I’m writing about politics twice in the same week, much less about the dumb state of Alabama, but this is something that I grew remotely intrigued about as the story transpired.  Honestly, despite the fact that to like-minded people, the battle between an accused sex offender versus a not(yet accused)-sex offender should seem like a layup victory for the morally superior, I actually would have put my money on Roy Moore.  Because, the country I live in has repeatedly demonstrated a sheer lack of decent human values in favor of blind misguided political fanaticism, and I would never have imagined a state like Alabama of all places would have been one capable of snapping out of the tragic pattern.

But I was proven wrong.  It’s not often in which I like this result to be the case, but for the sake of the greater good I believe is needed, I’ll take this L with a modicum of relief. 

Naturally, despite the fact that it was a battle between an accused sex offender and someone who has yet to be accused, it still ended up being a race tighter than Mariah Carey’s workout apparel, with a margin of victory allegedly less than 2% for Jones.  Meaning despite the fact that Roy Moore had been drug through the mud and accusers popping out of the woodwork claiming sexual deviancy, over 49% of educated Alabama voters still voted for the him to represent their state in Washington.

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Add sour rancid milk to the list

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Worse than carcasses: truck carrying 48,000 gallons of milk crashed and overturned on GA-316 involving several other cars and trucks, causing numerous injuries

It has been hot and humid as hell lately.  I’m not sure whether or not it’s at all record-setting, a fact that I’ve pretty much been endlessly working on things involving a lot of physical movement, or a combination of all of the above, but it’s been hot, humid and miserable as shit over this summer.

That being said, if there was absolutely anything at all that would be a miserable truck-full-of-food-spill, milk would undoubtedly have to be at the top of that list.

On its own, milk is already a volatile, diarrhea-inducing agent, now imagine it spilled all over the roads, baking into the surfaces under the hot and miserable Georgia sun?  Rapidly souring, going rancid, and cooking its way into the asphalt and soil.  Bacteria growing like a petri dish, and the sharp odor soon to emanate from everything that the shit spilled all over.

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Would love to cross-reference this with demographic data

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Kars 4 Kids conducts survey to determine grades of courtesy of all 50 United States

I came across this article that declared Georgia amongst the rudest drivers in America, so I was curious to what the criteria actually entailed.  Ultimately, the sample size was way, way, way too small at 2,500 correspondents considering the fact that the United States has a population of nearly 320 million, so I don’t think this is nearly that accurate of a survey.

Especially the ranking of Maryland, which somehow scrapes into the top-half of the spectrum as “friendlier” drivers, because the reality is that Maryland has some of the worst drivers on the planet who would rather let entire third-world nations die of genocide before letting you merge in front of them.

However, it’s still not entirely inaccurate either, and despite the strokes being very wide and broad, it’s still entertaining to see the obvious correspondence with stuff like population densities and demographics in relation to how certain places graded.

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Oh, Georgia #607

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Macon gas station runs promotion where cash buyers could get regular unleaded for 99¢ a gallon, resulting in massive lines, long waits, frustrated customers and ultimately police intervention

A few years ago, I went up to visit my parents, and I was driving around running some errands with my dad.  His tank was running low, so he said he needed to get gas, and proceeded to go to a station that he preferred, because it was the cheapest place.  We arrive at the gas station, and it’s an eight-pump station that is in fact ten cents cheaper than everywhere else, but every single pump is occupied, and there were a few other cars precariously circling the premises like a hungry shark stalking an opening.

My dad said that this was the norm.  I said that if he’s really hard up on the dollar he’ll save by going to this station as opposed to the numerous alternatives surrounding the area, I’d be happy to give him a dollar to go somewhere else.  Since I was the one driving anyway, we went to the Shell station down the street that was completely open, filled up, and was right back on track doing our own things, as opposed to joining the feeding frenzy at the cheap station, risking road rage, headache and fender benders all in the sake of saving, a literal dollar for ten gallons of unleaded.

Time, is worth more than money.  Piece of mind, is also worth more than money.  Definitively, for both.  And it astounds me that there are people that don’t seem to understand this.

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