Tag: rage

Attempting to kill The Killing Joke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the holidays, I took a little bit of time to watch the animated rendition of Batman: The Killing Joke, widely regarded as one of the most memorable Batman comics ever made.  Despite curmudgeon Alan Moore’s best attempts to discount its merit, there’s no denying that it’s a genuine classic that puts an exclamation point on the dark undertones of the series, and shows a very serious and vicious rendition of The Joker and a storyline that distances it miles away from the safeness of The Animated Series and the campiness of the 60’s Adam West show.

When the film debuted over the summer during Comic-Con, there was a lot of buzz in the negative sense about its execution; something about an artificially added storyline, damaging of female empowerment, and a very non-canonical relationship.  In other words, typical nerd outrage over something that a lot of people didn’t agree with.  Although the details of these particular elements did sound a little suspect, I didn’t really want to come to any conclusions without seeing it myself; after all, with the return of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy to reprise their TAS roles, maybe this could be an epic retelling of an epic comic story.

Well, after watching The Killing Joke, put me in the camp of comic nerds who believes it was overall crap.

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How to civil war

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A year ago to this day, I asked people on theFacebook a question about where they stood on couples that sit next to each other, side-by-side, at restaurants.  Personally, I think it’s a little tacky and potentially inconsiderate if the restaurant is one that is apt to get crowded.  Of all the random questions I ask people on social media, this one seemed to elicit the largest pool of responses, ranging from agreement to my sentiments, and a whole lot of agitated disagreement.

Needless to say, I was greatly amused seeing this old thread on On This Day, which is pretty much my favorite component of theFacebook outright, I think.

Anyway, I decided to do a little cursory researching over the internet about this specific topic, to see what a little bit more of a mass audience felt about it.  In the end, I found countless Yelp discussions, message board threads, and various opinion pieces complete with passionate commenters, on the topic, and it’s not difficult to get a generalization of the types of responses:

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Is election backlash getting worse?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Amidst reports of massive protests in major cities to oppose the election of Donald Trump, I can’t help but have a knee-jerk reaction of “damn, these people mad.”  Then my thoughts go towards the protests that are happening in cities that are in states that went red, like Chicago, Cleveland, and of course, Atlanta, and feel this empathy over the fact that it seemed like within all states, regardless of outcome, the major cities or largest metropolitan areas within them, went blue.

Places like Seattle and San Francisco can at least take solace in the fact that their states agree with dissenting populous, but those upset in blue cities in red states, it sucks to know that no matter how much they tried to create awareness over the importance of voting blue, there’s just simply too much red around them to contend.

If there ever was a time for blue collar middle-Americans to feel empowered, it’s now, since their massive numbers very much toppled and overcame large, liberal cities and their loud and influential populations and basically decided the election.

Or maybe it was sheer apathy that tanked the expected result, but that’s sadly not really out of the ordinary.

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Hatred prevails

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

You know every time there’s a tragedy somewhere in the world, or countless times throughout the coming of the election, there would be messages and/or images circulated over the internet with the message that “love will prevail?”  Usually a lot of rah-rah positive rhetoric about how humanity needs to stick with one another and together, overcome the influences of the world that are motivated by hatred, greed and other negative connotations.  The message is always delivered with the best of intentions, and I have to imagine that most people who see it probably want to believe it.

The problem is that not everyone is going to see it.  Despite the fact that the world has advanced leaps and bounds technologically throughout the decades, in spite of popular opinion, the whole world isn’t connected to the internet all the time, and not every single American has a reliable data connection, a smart phone, or even a computer.

But most every single American has a television, or access to television.  The radio.  Physical newspapers.  No matter how big or small the markets, there are mediums that have transcended the generations, in spite of how often the technologically advancing want to anoint them as dying or fading into obscurity.  And these are the mediums that statistically have the greatest chance of reaching the largest contingents of American citizens, no matter how much the Googles, Comcasts, Verizons and other telecommunication companies would prefer it that everyone plugs in and gets with the program.

What I’m getting at is that all throughout the night of the decision, I heard the phrase “secret Trump voters” repeatedly, to justify the surprising number of voter turnout that pushed the button to vote for Donald Trump.  That phrase was as arrogant as it was ignorant, because there was no secret at all to who these voters were, and anyone capable of rational thought could quickly get the point to what turned out to be a pretty competent plan for the Trump camp.

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Korea Stories: The Tour 😐

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I brought up the idea of going to Korea with my mom, to my mom, initially, the thought was to go see the Korea that my mom grew up in, see the place she called home, any sights and streets that she remembered from her childhood/upbringing, and maybe any restaurants that she might have remembered liking growing up.

It didn’t take long for my mom to dismiss all of that, stating that it had been 38 years, and there was little chance that pretty much anything of her past was still actually in existence.  I had a very 😐 face at this thought, but I understood.

Alternatively, my mom stated that she would, through a travel agent friend of hers, book us a tour package.  I expressed my concern and general disagreement with a tour package, because I typically prefer to not operate on itineraries and schedules, unless like, I’m getting paid to do so.  The freedom to explore and plan my own course is always preferable, but for whatever reason, my mom was insistent on a tour package.  The compromise was that we would have a few days before and after the tour itself to where we could explore Seoul on our own, which satiated my own want and need to explore and wander, so I agreed to do the tour group in the end.

So after four days in Seoul, we flew out to Jeju Island, the first stop on the tour.  I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much anything about Jeju; mythical gf was more knowledgeable about the place, based on the metric butt-ton of Korean dramas she watches, and it’s apparently the de facto romantic destination for Korean couples in them, but otherwise a tropical island getaway destination, often called “the Hawaii of Asia.”

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I’m with the angry Italian

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fat story made thin: Italian man angry with Emirates airlines because they’re not doing anything to dissuade his dissatisfaction with having to have sat next to a morbidly obese man on a nine-hour flight

I’m aware that this story is one that of an insufferable, apparently entitled individual, trying to cash in on a no-win situation from Emirates, but I’m also not a perfect person either.  I’m on the side of the angry Italian.

I fly a lot, as my six readers very well know.  I’ve enjoyed the luxury of the occasional surprise upgrade when I played the standby game, but way more often than naught, I’ve suffered the indignity of having to sit next to undesirable people.  And I wish it were the people with babies, or the blabber mouths, or the people that often come to mind when people think of undesirable seat neighbors.  No, I’m talking about the people who don’t know what a shower is, or had been living at the airport for days, or sometimes both.  People who try to dominate the armrests or any and as much space as they can, because they’re just that selfish or greedy.  

And then there’s the fat people.

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Photos: Europe Trip 2016, batch 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note] Lost content, never posted on account of brog downtime.  Moar photos from mythical then-gf and I’s Europe vacation in 2016.

Photos encapsulate our port excursions to Santorini, Greece, the land transportation forgot, which started out great, but ended horribly down the donkey trail.  And then there was Olympia, Greece, the home of the OG Olympics, which was much nicer to not have to go down a donkey trail.

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