The cold equations of life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There was a sci-fi story I read in high school that I always remembered called The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin.  In short, it was the story about a guy who was piloting a supply ship through space, to deliver medical supplies to a mining colony on another planet.  However, unbeknownst to him, a young girl, hoping to hitch a ride to the colony where her brother was located, had stowed away and was discovered after the ship had launched and was already in route.  She thought the punishment for her discretion would merely be a fine, but quickly learned that the ship had only enough fuel to make it to the planet and did not account for the weight she had added to the ship. 

In other words, her stowing away jeopardized the lives of herself, the pilot and the colonists depending on the medical supplies because the ship didn’t have enough fuel to haul the extra weight and would fall short of its destination and crash.

Initially, the pilot was callously instructed by his superiors to jettison the girl off the ship and continue the journey, and naturally he showed tremendous reluctance at the thought of having to kill someone; but it was a matter of kill one person to save the many people who needed the medical supplies, or jettison the medical supplies in order to save the girl. 

Spoiler alert: they deliberate for so long that it doesn’t even matter; after jettisoning the medical supplies, it turns out that a little thing called physics had already come into play, and they’d been flying overweight for long enough to where the girl needed to be unloaded anyway, due to fuel constraints.  The pilot is mentally murdered by having to push the button on someone’s life, the colonists on the planet do not get the medical supplies, and he is arrested and imprisoned for insubordination. 

Everyone loses.

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When the day is over, you just have to do the shit yourself

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because my mental being can’t handle loose ends, I decided to take it upon myself to put back up my own fucking fence, so that it’s one less thing that I’ll have to dump money into when it comes time to (hopefully) finding someone competent to fix shit around my house.  As mentioned before, in the process, I fucked up my finger pretty bad, but fortunately it wasn’t in a state where I couldn’t just bandage it up, wear gloves and not be able to continue working.

To summarize, among the shit that the clown of a “handyman” I “hired” to fix my window did, was not just remove several fence panels,  but also damage the posts in in the process of fishing the $450 scissor lift rental I made on his request, off of my backyard, which also tore the shit out of my turf (photos below).  He claimed that he would take responsibility for the damages, but shocking nobody, he’s been as evasive and vague as an extreme cheapskate when the bill shows up, about when he’s actually coming to do anything, and frankly I don’t actually believe he’s going to do anything, and I’m going to light him up on the internet and hope it hurts his future business, because an asshole like this doesn’t need to be out there pretending to be a respectable handyman.

During the days of ghosting, I would step outside and just look at the unfinished job of the fence, and get madder and madder, and I realized that this was not good for my mental state.  Just because I didn’t want to do it didn’t mean that I wasn’t capable of doing it, and considering the sloppy nature of this guy in the first place, it would probably be in the best interest if I did it myself, to ensure that it would be done well.

So janky finger injury aside, I assessed where things stood, and came to the conclusion that this was one of those situations where I would just have to do this shit myself.

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New Father Brogging, #019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s days like today where I really realize that I can never be off.  I’m on paternity leave, but still managing to feel overwhelmed and like I have no time to myself, which I personally think is something that should be essential to all parents new and old.  By no means necessary am I holding it against my child for taking up so much of my time, the whole point of paternity leave is so we can spend all this time together.  But there are mornings in which she wakes up earlier than usual, and the day begins earlier than usual, and the day’s entire cycles are thrown off, and at some point in the day she’s going to be ready for bed earlier or screaming her head off because the schedule’s not lining up and then my blood pressure is probably spiking.

All throughout the day, I’m feeding her, trying to keep her entertained, as well as working on the development of certain physical milestones, such as being able to sit up on her own.  Some days she’s more tolerant of things than others, but then there are days in which she has no desire to lay on her back on her play mat, or no desire to be laying on her stomach working her little abdomen muscles, and is instead screaming her head off in dissatisfaction.  Times like this, the only thing that really placates her is being held, which I’m happy to do, but at the same time I’m wondering if I’m boring my child and wasting opportunities to be stimulating her somehow.  I can only read so many books, and mythical wife and I have agreed no screens for a while, so we’re definitely not going to be parents to plunk her in front of the television, but that limits the options for things to do.

It’s too fucking hot out still, so I’m reluctant to go out on long stroller walks with her, and I really wish that it were like October or something instead, so the weather would be drastically more pleasant to take her out in, for the both of us, and her awake windows aren’t necessarily long enough to really explore going to the pool without making her outright miserable.

So what really ends up happening is that there’s a lot of time spent doing the same things repeatedly, trying to chew up time, which makes me feel like shit that I’m sometimes counting down minutes until the next nap time so that I can get a brief reprieve to do whatever I want for at least 30 minutes, which is usually never anything particularly productive, because seldom do I do anything that feels remotely productive in the span of 30 minutes.

All this adds to my general feelings of anxiety as of late, and leading me to wonder about therapy as I had talked about in a prior post.  I want to be the greatest dad I can be, but there are times where I end up feeling like a selfish asshole for wanting time for myself, and when I get time for myself, sometimes I’ll just scroll through photos on my phone which are 95% of her, and wonder why I’m not having tremendous amounts of more fun with the real thing than wistfully staring at photographs.

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I’m confused

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Atlanta suburb dealing with a rash of anti-Semitic vandalism

Let’s focus on the defaced photo of the sign here: Most people who don’t live in Georgia probably don’t know who Karen Handel is, but she did make some national news a few years back when she was in a congressional race for Georgia’s 6th District against Jon Ossoff, which became hot news and drew tons of national attention.  She ultimately defeated Ossoff to retain her congressional seat, but in 2018, was defeated by newcomer Lucy McBath, who played an expert game of politics by appealing to moms and stayed far as fuck away from the T word as humanly possible.

But anyway, like most women named Karen, Karen Handel is not letting it go, and is gunning to get her seat back.  I should also mention that Karen Handel is also a devout Republican, and as long since pledged her allegiance to the baked potato, and it was in fact a little bit of rub from the baked potato which helped her retain her seat back in 2016.

Which is why it’s really perplexing to me why someone would bother vandalizing a Karen Handel sign, in the name of the baked potato?  Why would someone tag baked potato messaging onto a sign for a baked potato follower?

Maybe the sign(s) in question are just in very conspicuous locations, and were the only things to deface in order to get the most visibility?  Or maybe the idiot(s) doing the graffiti actually don’t know that Karen Handel is also a Republican, and is actually on the baked potato’s side of, everything?  I mean I’m willing to wager it’s more the latter than the former, but when the day is over, it just makes whomever is doing the tagging look like the biggest dumbass of all.

Not to mention their sheer sloppiness when it comes to tagging; I mean seriously, they have put some of the worst and lowest-effort swastikas I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and the general curliness to their spray pattern suggests some effeminate penmanship.  Honestly, the swastikas are so bad, they barely look like swastikas, but more like some weird pinwheel gang tag that would seem very apropos to the bougie East Cobb Mean Street Posse that’s likely doing this.  

If I had to guess it’s some spineless white teenager(s) who is so hopped up on adrenaline for thinking they’re pulling the coup of the century by tagging fences and public spaces, that they’re rushing so horribly at making rushed and poor quality tags, that it just makes them look stupid on top of all the sad that there already is in this situation.

I wonder if I need therapy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Easy set up aside, I’m not trying to be funny at the moment.  Over the last few days, and dealing with the clown of a handyman who has for the lack of better term, fucked me, I haven’t been dealing with the frustration over it very well, and it’s bleeding out in various capacities.  As detailed, I got my glasses broken from negligence, and there have been other instances where I’ve made some careless errors that were fortunately nothing too bad other than aggravation.

But yesterday, since I’ve decided to take it upon myself to fix the fuck ups of my shit handyman, I had an incident where I nicked my ring fingertip with my belt sander; no, it’s nothing severe, but some blood was drawn, and it was in a terribly inconvenient place that made typing competently near impossible until I procured some appropriate fingertip Band Aids, which is how I’m back at the keys writing this right now.  You never realize how much a single finger comes into play with an assortment of daily activities until it’s put on injured reserve.

In all honesty, the meme above, about the try not to cry, but then cry a lot?  That’s kind of how I’ve felt on and off throughout this past week, and I’m feeling very mentally vulnerable right now.  I’m not sure if this is just extremely poor stress management, perhaps this is quarantining cabin fever manifesting in emotional instability?  Maybe it’s the anxiety of knowing I feel like the first three weeks of my paternity leave has vanished in the blink of an eye and now I’m on the downward slope of going back to work sooner rather than later.  My dog is also acting a little strange, which isn’t helping, because I already feel like a shitty enough neglectful owner because baby comes ahead of everything, but at least he’s getting his meals and routine bathroom breaks and not locked in his crate eight hours a day like when I was in the office.

Or maybe it’s all of the above, and it’s an amalgamation of factors leading me to feeling like maybe I need some professional help to help me make sense of why I’m in such a mentally turrible state lately.

And no matter how much I talk to myself about how I really shouldn’t be in this much of a funk, here I am.  I have my health, I have a stable job, in spite of some recent angst about it, I have a beautiful and loving wife who supports everything about me, and I’ve got the most gorgeous and precious kid that I have the utmost luxury to be taking care of every single day right now.  Frankly, even I don’t think I should be feeling so volatile given these facts, but I just can’t shake it right now.

I’m hoping that once I get my property back in order, I’ll feel better about things, as the visual results of having been fucked will be behind me.  But if that doesn’t work, I think I may explore what my options are, and/or see if my insurance can be of any help at all in this.  Who really knows what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve never been one against the idea of therapy, but I’ve always felt like I just didn’t need it, but if things can’t seem to get better through all of the channels that I’ve been using throughout my life so far, perhaps some professional help might not be a bad idea.

I owe it to my wife, child and rest of my family and friends to be the best I can be, and not be so wrecked by stupid shit.  Maybe a good cry is what I really do need, like in Fight Club.  Would probably be a lot cheaper than therapy!

Everyone on the internet is a Colin Robinson until proven otherwise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since my daughter’s been born, mythical wife and I haven’t watched a tremendous amount of television. I may have mentioned it before, but ultimately we’re hoping to avoid exposing our child to too much screen time until she’s around two years old, because we’d prefer to be parents who can stimulate their child’s brain without having to resort to plopping them in front of a television and hoping to let digital technology raise her. Needless to say, since having a kid, we’ve watched maybe a handful of things, mostly bullshit like 90 Day Fiancé or My 600 Lb. Life.

In addition to TLC’s greatest hits, one show in particular we’ve actually worked our way through has been FX’s What We Do In the Shadows, which has been great because the episodes are short, and the plot is funny in the mockumentary style of format. The cast is outstanding and the general plot is so ridiculous and quick-paced that it’s an easy show where we can watch one or two episodes, step away from viewing for a few days or a week, and then pick right back up without much difficulty.

After blowing through the two available seasons, I’d have to say that the one character that I enjoyed the most was Colin Robinson, the energy vampire. Mostly treated as a tertiary character, his whole spiel is that he’s not one of the traditional blood-sucking vampires, but rather one who feeds off of the energy of others, including the ability to drain from other vampires. He’s basically the troll among trolls in Nandor’s house, and in my opinion, he’s the funniest character among the entire cast.

There’s one episode in particular where he’s expanding on his powers to drain energy from victims by utilizing the internet, and then it occurred to me that Colin Robinson is basically the living embodiment of every internet troll on the planet. We re-watched the first episode recently, and there’s a line he mentions during the initial character introductions where “you probably know an energy vampire,” and then it hit me like a ton of bricks that he couldn’t be any more accurate that basically we all do.

Every anonymous internet troll, asshole whom you don’t know who chimes in on a social media conversation, is a Colin Robinson. An energy vampire who’s deliberately trying to deliberately trying to get under your skin and get you to tilt, so that they can drain your energy, even from afar. Once this connection is bought in, it’s actually quite amusing to envision the face on the other end of the keyboards in any sort of internet confrontation, probably looking like Colin Robinson, a bald, middle aged Dilbert looking guy. And as much as the Colin Robinsons probably got their rocks off on feeding on your energy, there’s something empowering to know that such a dorky looking dweeb is probably the one on the other end of the interwebs from any sort of online debate.

Am I naïve for having so much faith in people?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sorry, I just can’t get over this yet.  I wasn’t really planning on writing about this again, but on the day my handyman was supposed to come back and finish fixing my fence, he no-showed on me, citing that he was going over on another job he had, which is understandable, but the objection I have is the fact that he had stated that he was going to make it by a particular time.

I’m okay with the need to reschedule and adjust, but don’t leave me hanging and make me have to be the one to get some fucking answers when it was probably very clear that the job was going to be going long, and I wouldn’t have had to feel like a hostage in my own house waiting all day, because I wanted to talk to this guy before he got to work to point out some things.

Alternatively, the title of this post would’ve been “To blow up, or not to blow up,” because I’d been thinking about this a lot over the last day, about whether or not I should light this guy a new asshole on the internet for the absolute putrid way he’s running a business.  There’s a part of me that just wants this to all end, and leave things civil, and let an up-and-comer not get obliterated on the internet, but there’s another part of me that’s sick and tired of constantly waiting for this guy to show up, the fact that when he did show up, he fucked me harder than Andy Dufresne probably did in Shawshank Redemption, and that I’m practically waiting on him to cut-and-run on me, leaving me at more than just a $450 loss.

Originally, I figured I wouldn’t bother, because as shitty of a business this guy is running, I have reservations of blowing up a guy with a million kids and clearly in need of a job, because a bad reputation isn’t just going to cost this guy a few projects, but could very well be the difference with him being able to provide for his family.

But seeing as how he’s clearly got other projects, ones that he prioritizes over mine, which he royally fucked up, I’m a little less piteous of his situation, and I’m feeling pretty steamed over the fact that he left me out to dry.

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