Tag: ‘murica

New Father Brogging, #005

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We’re now well into the brave new world of pandemic ruining the planet, America “ascending” to #1, as in, being the country that’s most been most devastated by coronavirus and had the highest afflicted/death toll in the world, and pretty much everyone in the world has been advised to stay inside, avoid other people, and generally hunker down and hope for everything to eventually blow over.

Cabin fever, has perpetually been viewed as one of the biggest obstacles for Americans across the country, and it’s no more evident than whenever I do go out (pediatrician appointments, picking up takeout meals), that there are always people out and about, taking walks or jogging, more than ever.  Seriously, a running joke that myself and many people out there have, are that we’re all seeing people in our own neighborhoods that we’d never seen before, because people are mostly recluses to begin with, but forced into situations where they are discouraged from wasting time elsewhere, they feel the itch to waste time at home, even if it means being seen by their neighbors.

It kind of defeats the purpose of social distancing, but Americans have always been shit about following directions in the first place.  Although going on walks and jogging is a pathetic bending of a rule that isn’t going to help, things could be worse, so I guess it’s mostly a “fuck it, let them have that” kind of compromise, although I have heard of more draconian areas in the country that have police willing to write tickets for those not properly practicing social distancing.

Personally, cabin fever hasn’t really hit mythical wife and I, because the vast majority of our days have been overwhelmingly consumed by the whole, now we’re parents thing. I highly recommend popping out a newborn and raising it, if you’re feeling anxious about the way the world is now; I assure anyone that it most definitely is effective at taking their mind off of the inability to go out and do things, and that there’s absolutely no feeling of having too much time on your hands.

As it stands, since I’m working remotely, I actually feel like I work more now that I’m doing it from home, than I do when I’m at the office.  In fact, I feel like a lot of my reports and a lot of my peers in general are doing similarly, mostly on account of the fact that they all feel like they need to prove that they’re working, and subsequently actually become more productive than not.  I’m glued to my work machine for full work days, and by the time I log off, it’s the start of the evening, and we’re on a general cycle of feeding and changing the baby and then suddenly it’s 10 pm, and I need to start thinking about the next work day.

There are people out there who are complaining about how they’ve watched “everything” on Netflix already and are thinking of what streaming service to subscribe to next in order to find more fresh new content to watch; I’ve barely watched any television at all over the last few weeks.  The only things that I’ve really seen are when mythical wife is on pumping/feeding duty and I’m hanging out for support, and she’s been watching stuff like Great British Baking Show or Crash Landing On You.

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New Father Brogging, #004

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The last time I wrote about my plight of being a new dad, mythical wife and I were staying overnight at the NICU as the last milestone necessary in order for our kid to come home.  That being said, baby is now home where she belongs, and thus begins (really) the rest of our lives, and the start of our lives as a family unit.

Honestly, it hasn’t been as tragically difficult as people love to expound that new parenthood really is.  Sure, we’re operating on the NICU’s general schedule of feeding every three hours, so that our premature child can gain weight as efficiently as possible, but I imagine this is something that my body will get used to as time progresses, not to mention the fact that as baby grows and develops, she won’t need to be on this kind of timeline forever either.

So mythical wife and I get up at 2:30 and 5:30 in the morning each night to feed our baby, and slog our way through the motions in the AM hours.  I get up at around 7:45 to make sure that I’m logged into work on time, but then I go ahead and take care of the feedings at 8:30 and 11:30, while I frantically do my best to do work-related things in between.  Yes, I am still working from home, and it is truly an unprecedented brave new world we’re all operating in these days, and I often have anxious thoughts about the future of my own career, as I wonder if the longer all of this goes on, the more expendable my team’s work will become perceived.

Work aside, being a dad is pretty great.  I don’t mind the dirty diapers and the demanding schedule, because I have a beautiful daughter that I enjoy just sitting and watching sometimes, wondering how her features are going to grow in, and despite the fact that she had more of my features at birth, I can see glimpses of lighter brown hair, and there’s no mistaking the large eyes she sprouts whenever they open up, that definitely come from mommy and not from me.

I love changing her outfits and seeing her in the large varieties of adorable baby clothing that we’ve purchased in advance as well as inherited from the generations of cousins ahead of me.  I’ve been peed on and I’ve witnessed various catastrophes of soiled diapers, but they’re no big deal at all.  I refuse to be a stereotypical dad that can’t handle changing diapers or think I’m too macho or manly to do things that people tend to associate as being “mom work.”

In fact, it kind of makes me a little sad whenever people have given me praise over my indifference and enthusiasm for doing things like changing diapers or bathing my kid.  It speaks volumes of the amount of men out there that don’t do the littlest things that instill love and affection for their children, and if there’s one thing that I want to accomplish as a dad, it’s that my kid grows up knowing that I love her more than anything, from the big things to the little ones.

Eventually, we’ll hopefully get to a comfortable rhythm as it comes to living with a child in tow now.  As much as I want to use this additional time at home to catch up on cleaning and making the house as great as possible for our kid, or I want to be a lazy slug and watch television and movies in between feedings, I just don’t feel like I ever have the time.  Three hours sounds like a lot of time, but given how much of it I spend cleaning bottles or pump parts or straightening things out for the next feeding/changing session, then I feel like I don’t have enough contiguous time to do anything productive or enjoyable, so I usually dick around on my phone or watch YouTube videos instead.

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Maximum Baltimore

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If there ever were something that would get me to take a break from brogging about the wonders of my newborn daughter, this story about the mayor of Baltimore pleading with residents to stop shooting each other, so that the beds in the local hospitals could be used for aiding those with coronavirus is a good topic to distract me.

The headline alone, is maximum Baltimore.

It’s basically the equivalent of asking a dog to not sniff butts, or a bear to not shit in the woods.  All the pleading in the world isn’t going to make a lick of difference, but it sure is funny to see someone try.  The residents of Baltimore can’t stop shooting other people as much as fish need to be in water to survive.  It’s just the laws of nature, that cannot be defied, no matter how much pleading or imploring is done in front of television cameras.

In all seriousness though, Baltimore really is kind of a sad place to me.  Basically as long as I’ve been alive, Baltimore has been a crime-ridden cesspool of a city that inexplicably gets way more credit than I can fathom why.  If anyone were to describe a place that’s riddled with endless tension and guns being fired off on a regular basis, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Baltimore, or the North-South Korean DMZ, except the DMZ has inadvertently turned into somewhat of a sanctuary for endangered species animals. 

In Baltimore, humans are the endangered species, based on how much any person’s mortality rate drops just setting foot into city limits.  Add coronavirus into the mix, and the daily survivability in Baltimore probably plummets to half of what it is throughout the rest of the world that only has to worry about coronavirus and not everyone in the city packing heat like Grand Theft Auto on hard-mode.

Anyway, I laugh about the whole situation in Baltimore but ultimately it’s still sad that such is even news.  Coronavirus really is no joke, but it’s still not stopping Baltimore from remaining at peak Baltimore, and apparently spring breakers all over Florida don’t seem to care about getting sick, because they’ve prioritized their need to party like idiots over the general safety of themselves and their fellow persons.

The world really is kind of fucked, if these are the people that are allowed to remain in existence.

New Father Brogging, #002

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my sporadic writing habits leading up to the birth of my child, I ironically seem to be finding more time to sit down and write now that she’s come into the world.  Mostly on account of the fact that as she was five weeks early, she’s unfortunately not home yet, and is still at the NICU, where her frail little preemie body is playing catchup under the safe and watchful eyes of medical professionals.

Ultimately, mythical wife and I both know that she’s exactly where she needs to be in her current state, and we are eternally grateful to the kind and caring staff of the hospital that has been definitely providing excellent care for our daughter.  However, when the days are over, the reality is that she is still not home with us, and it’s an agonizing struggle at the end of each night when the time comes for us to part ways with our daughter, while she stays in the NICU while we leave her and head back to our house, empty of human children.

She was born 12 days ago, but it doesn’t really quite feel like we’re parents just yet, as when the time comes in which we go to bed, it’s like we’re a married couple with no children, since there’s no kid to put to sleep and marvel over the fact that it’s a life that we created together.

We spend around 6-8 hours a day in the NICU with our kid, but until the day she comes home, there really is something kind of missing from the whole experience of having a child.  We feel like parents when we get to change her diapers, feed her, and rock her to sleep, but the wholesome feelings always end when the realization hits that we need to go home to rest and take care of ourselves, so we have the energy and capacity to do it all over again the following day.

Our daughter’s showing progress on a daily basis, but the fact of the matter is that it’s still an indeterminate amount of time before she’s given the green light to come home.  Her last real hurdle is to continue to demonstrate the ability to eat more and out of a bottle, more consistently, and subsequently gain weight.  Every day where she drains an entire bottle is akin to a playoff win, but behind the scenes we don’t know if we’re in the lightning-quick MLB playoffs, or if we’re in the endless vortex known as the NBA’s playoffs.

Back home, I’ve actually accomplished a lot of the tasks around the house that mythical wife and I agreed needed to get done before the arrival of our kid, because once she got here, we know they probably won’t be gotten to.  I’ve painted entire sections of our house, I’ve stained the entire fence around the house.  I’ve swapped out old outlets and switches for new, tamper-proof versions of them for future kid safety.  I’ve unboxed strollers and learned how to install car seats into both mine and mythical wife’s cars.  Just about every piece of furniture for our baby’s nursery is assembled and the room just about finished.

I’d wager to guess that most parents who ever have to go through the experience of their children going into the NICU go through the same kind of anxieties and frustration that mythical wife and I are going through.  I know there are many out there who have it way worse than we do in terms of state of the baby upon arrival or how little or long they stay in the NICU, but when the day is over, we’re all in the same state of where we as parents go home, while our children remain behind, which is a shitty feeling no matter how you look at it.

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It’s kind of like Battle Royale, but real

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In plot A, one classroom in the entire country is chosen, supposedly at random, where the students are pitted against each other in a fight to the death, where only the last one standing is allowed to live.  It is sanctioned by the government, and the end result is bloodbath with numerous fatalities and a tremendous amount of fear and distrust for the government, for continuously allowing this to happen.

In plot B, one or more public location(s) in the entire country, is/are chosen, supposedly at random, where people armed to the teeth with assault firearms, open fire at crowds of unsuspecting people, where only the people who manage to successfully flee or not succumb to their injuries, are allowed to live.  By virtue of consistently turning a blind eye to the issue of there simply being too many firearms too easily available, it is sanctioned by the government, and the end result(s) is/are bloodbaths with numerous fatalities and a tremendous amount of fear and distrust for the government, for continuously not doing anything about it.

The ironic thing is that not only is plot A obviously Battle Royale, but it’s also a work of fiction.  It’s a singular, annual event that happens once in a calendar year, and once passed, the students not selected throughout Japan can kind of exhale and breathe easy knowing that they’re safe from having to compete for their lives in a merciless death rumble.

Unfortunately, plot B is not a work of fiction, it is reality, and Americans do not have the luxury of being able to breathe easy once the last mass shooting happens, because it’s potentially viable to happen again, at any given time afterward.  It is also not exclusive to solely schools, although schools have typically been a frequent location for several of these horrific incidents.

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I don’t even like Clemson, but they deserve better than this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

However, there’s kind of an appropriate metaphor in the imagery: College Football National Championship winning Clemson Tigers football team goes to the White House, Donald Trump serves them a gargantuan spread… of fast food

I don’t think it’s any new news that I don’t like Clemson.  For nearly the last decade, I don’t remember the last time that Tech has beaten Clemson in football, whether it’s been Tajh Boyd, Deshaun Watson or Kelly Bryant at quarterback.  I’d even root for Duke over them in basketball, and I’ve become way bigger of a supporter of SEC schools simply out of the necessity that someone’s got to be willing and able to stand up to them in their ascent of the college football ranks.

But that being said, champions are still champions, and should be rewarded for their excellence as such.  Now I’ve got plenty of words and opinions to offer about the whole government shutdown, but little good can actually come out of putting any of them in writing, but the fact that as a result of it, the White House basically has no cooks or chefs on site, relegating the champion Clemson football team to have a train cart of McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and other fast food options, that’s kind of sad.

Even Clemson deserves better than this kind of spread, in the fucking White House.  But then again, given the current state of the political world, somehow it all seems kind of ironically appropriate, and the imagery that has come from this whole shit show within a shit show, have been nothing short of classic and iconic.

Still though, any team that even accepts an invitation to the White House in the first place, should probably expect some sort of luxury or opulence when visiting the home to basically who’s supposed to be the most powerful person in the world.  Even the Clemson squad that won the National Championship in 2017 had some sort of gourmet barbecue spread, and it occurs to me that Clemson championships have all occurred in years in which a particular guy has been in office, and that they’re both orange as fuck.

Despite the fact that many players and perspectives see this as funny, charming, or are able to roll with the punches, I’m definitely in the camp of people, players and perspectives that doesn’t really find it as humorous, except in an ironic metaphorical sense.  I get that elite athletes probably don’t have the opportunity to eat like retards as much as they want, unless they’re linemen, but for those athletic players that actually would like to have a future professionally, a buffet of fast food really isn’t the best idea, even in celebration.

When the day is over, this too, like many other absurd and ludicrous stories that come out of Washington D.C., isn’t really that big of a surprise.  There’s little reason to believe that Clemson won’t get (another) re-do in coming years, and maybe them or Alabama, will be treated to a nicer spread, a little more appropriate for future champions.

I guess all that’s left is, I wonder what the Boston Red Sox’s meal is going to be?  A truck full of Dunkin Donuts maybe?

I’m proud of Metro Atlanta

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Considering that at the time I’m writing this, the midterms were ten days ago, and the State of Georgia has still not officially declared a winner for the governor’s race, I was initially going to wait until the result was made official before writing anything about this.  But I’m leaving the country for the next week and change, and I just know I’m not going to want to bother retouching this subject after a long vacation, and frankly the result looks like it’s pretty much in the bag, in spite of the valiant effort put forth by the Democrats, so let’s go ahead and get this shit out of the way.

It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point that Brian Kemp is going to be the new governor of Georgia, much to my dismay.  Color me part-mortified that the guy I ridiculed months ago for having a campaign ad where he’s basically holding a shotgun to a teenager is going to be rising to amongst the highest offices in the state, but at the same time, I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised in this day and age; especially if you stop and think about who’s in charge of the United States at this current juncture.

I have several mixed feelings about the whole clusterfuck that ended up being the governor’s race, but I think the one that bubbles up to the very top of them all is simply put, fuck the Libertarian party.  Given the extreme narrow margin of victory that Yosemite Sam had over Stacey Abrams, I have this opinion that the presence of a Libertarian candidate on the ticket basically usurped votes that could have either solidified a Republican win, or swung the entire race in favor of the Democrats.  Considering the general ideals of the traditional Libertarian versus the perceived extremes between the Repubs and Dems, I feel like if a gun were to the head of a Libertarian, they’d probably swimg Democratic, and we’d have a completely different story on our hands right now.

I feel that the Libertarian party in this instance were being selfish and incapable of reading the room, and even they had to realize that Babytrump couldn’t possibly be in the best interests of Georgia.  And with that in mind, why would they bother to interlope in a critical election that was already expected to be razor thin from the onset, and usurp essential votes that could very well have changed history at this time?

Frankly, the Libertarian party disgusts me currently, and I kind of fucking hate their existence right now.  I’m not saying that their votes would have definitively all swung blue, but in a hypothetical, majority blue scenario, they’d not only have led the election to a run-off but probably a Democratic win.  And maybe with some modicum of change achieved, maybe they’d have a better chance for notoriety running in a not-red state.

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