Tag: owned

Baseball is the best

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I’m a pretty casual fan these days that isn’t nearly in the trenches of the minutiae of the game like I once was, this turned out to be a pretty interesting final day of the MLB regular season, that I took more notice of a lot of concurrent storylines than I probably had at any other point in the season, probably over the last few too.

So, starting with the Braves, seeing as how they had clinched the NL East last week, this final week of the season was full of games where the outcomes were basically inconsequential, but in fitting Barves fashion, Atlanta had to go 2-4 and end the season with a loss, backing into the playoffs.  Inconsequential as these last games might have been, I’m a firm believer of momentum and routine, and seeing as how the team won 92 games by playing in a certain fashion, I never like the idea of changing the way they play the game and letting off the gas, when, especially in baseball, the team that gets hot in the playoffs usually is the one that wins it all, completely regardless of records, seeding and bracket positioning.

Frankly, I don’t like the Braves’ chances in the playoffs, seeing as how for most of the second half of the season, the offense has been pretty anemic, where the wins have been mostly on the arm of Chris Sale, blowout wins were sparse, and every victory felt like they were coming from behind, instead of putting opponents away early and cruising to any low-stress wins.

There were a handful of games today that I had hopes for the outcome, and almost systematically, nearly every single one of them went contrary to what I was hoping for:

  • Wanted Phillies to lose to Rays (Phillies won)
  • Wanted Diamondbacks to beat Padres (Dbacks lost)
  • Wanted Angels to lose to Mariners (they did)
  • Wanted Astros to lose to Athletics (Astros won)
  • Wanted Rangers to lose to Twins (they did)

Getting all five would’ve been a tall order, but two out of five still kind of stinks, and there were particular reasons where I was hoping for each of these outcomes.

With the Phillies and Diamondbacks outcomes the way they happened, means that the sixth and final playoff spot in the National League belongs to the Phillies, who will play the Braves in the Wild Card round, three games in Atlanta.

I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that I have a complex about more than the Phillies, because they’ve probably been the biggest thorn in the side to the Braves for as long as I’ve been a fan.  Philadelphia sports in general, it’s my belief that all Atlanta sports fans should have a similar complex about, seeing as how the Phillies and Eagles have tormented the Braves and Falcons for decades at this point, and it always seems like they’re the ones who send Atlanta home in the playoffs.

Historically, the Phillies are 3-0 against the Braves in the playoff series, having knocked them out in 1993, 2022 and 2023; and its worth mentioning the Phillies were the lower seed in the last two, and it really doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled them in the regular seasons, there’s just something about the playoffs where the Phillies rise up harder against the Braves than anyone else, before dropping like flies immediately after dispatching of the Braves.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that the Phillies have snuck into the playoffs, and even more disappointed that they matched up against the Braves.  I genuinely would have rather have seen the Cubs or Padres over the Phillies, and I don’t have a good feeling about this year either.

The Angels’ loss today meant that for the first time in franchise history, the Angels have lost 100 games, and is generally meaningless it is to me, I always like to see ironic historical marks, and seeing as how the Braves have never dropped 100 in my tenure as fan, I’m amused to see it happened to someone else.

Now the Astros and Rangers, the only reason why I cared about their games, was the fact that speaking of ironic history, 2026 would mark the first time in history where a division winner would be have a no better than .500 record, and few things seem as amusing as the idea of a baseball team marching into the playoffs with barely 80 wins, when the Brewers and Dodgers both have 100+.

If both the Astros and the Rangers lost today, they would have ended with identical 80-82 records, with the Astros winning the division based on a tiebreaker, and we’d be witness to the first-ever sub-.500 division winner.

Unfortunately, the Astros pulled out a W against the also woeful Oakland Athletics, and finish 81-81, a cool .500, breaking the previous mark of futility of the 2005 Padres and their 82-80 record.  I’m disappointed, because .500 is still .500 and isn’t as ironically entertaining as .494 and firmly under .500.

That being said, after the Braves get bounced by the Phillies, I think I’m going to have to root for the Astros to go all the way, because few things would be great in baseball than an 81-win team going all the way, before the whole league goes on strike, and the last World Series champion of this era being a shitty 81-win Houston Astros, whom everyone already hates their franchise because of the cheating scandal of 2017.

So with the Astros in, the American League playoff bracket is something that of a slow-adult dreamed up, where an 81-win Astros get the #3 seed by virtue of winning a pitiful AL West going up against an 83-win #6 seed White Sox, where the winner of series gets go play against an 85-win Guardians squad that actually won the AL Central.

Meanwhile, on the other branch of the bracket, a 93-win Yankees squad goes up against an 87-win Red Sox squad, where the winner gets to play a 97-win Rays squad, where if you’re paying attention, all of them are in the same division, and because there’s no re-seeding after the Wild Card round, the #1 seed in the AL has to play a stronger squad in the divisional round, and it’s guaranteed that at least one sub-90 win squad is going to be in the ALCS, and keep hopes for a World Series alive.

But let’s end this post about baseball on a high note, which was the emotional Detroit Tigers game, which was the final game of future Hall of Famer, Justin Verlander, the pride of Goochland (Virginia).  I always love when professional athletes go out on their own terms, and I’m happy for Verlander doing the same, instead of milking it longer in order to pursue 300 wins (retiring with 266).  It’s not like he has anything left to prove at this point otherwise, seeing as how he’s already got two World Series rings, three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, 3,500+ strikeouts, three no-hitters, and countless all-star selections.

He goes out in a beautiful game where he’s joined by his kids with his supermodel wife Kate Upton, and I think the best part about the game was in his final inning, where legendary-bad umpire, and also-in his final game ever, Laz Diaz completely capitalizes on the Pirates’ running out of ABS challenges, and makes some hilariously bad calls in order for Verlander to end his final outing with a strikeout.

It’s been a fun regular season, but as we all know, the playoffs are a completely different animal, so let’s close out the regular season with reminders of just how awesome baseball is still capable of being.

lol MARTA #620

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: MARTA “payroll error” results in janitor making $620,000 in overtime pay in April, not flagged until July; neither janitor or employee responsible for clerical error are with company, no funds have been returned

Chalk this story up as one of the most Atlanta stories there could possibly be.  A crime that should have no right succeeding, and perpetrators who will in most likely get away with it, enjoying the spoils of their effort, before the legal system drags on and on and on before any sort of comeuppance is achieved, to where nobody’s going to even remember much less give a shit about this story by the time anything happens.

Make no mistake, there’s in all likelihood no error at all that resulted in a MARTA custodian somehow getting $620,000 bones in overtime in April, because the reality is that most payroll systems are nearly completely automated, and it most definitely required some degree of manual manipulation to suddenly make this guy’s OT hourly wage go from like $7.75 an hour to $7,750.

It’s a two-person job and everyone knows it, considering the obvious result that both the person who made the ‘clerical error’ and the custodian who received $620,000 in OT wages, peaced the fuck out of the job, and probably the country, the second after the funds hit the bank.

I think the funniest thing is that the crime happened in April, wasn’t flagged until three months later in July, and it’s now practically October that everyone is now hearing about it.  Even though MARTA is pursuing legal action and should by all rights win whatever case they have against those who stole from them, it’s not going to change the fact that the crooks who robbed them are going to be living pretty until that day of reckoning comes, if it ever does.

It’s a microcosm of the state of the legal system, not just in Atlanta, but the country, where it seems that so often times, the legal system is so slow, inefficient, and full of loopholes and trash cans to tip over to slow down the chase, where crooks are emboldened and not at all afraid to commit crimes and flagrantly steal, because it just seems like the punishments don’t outweigh the benefits and luxuries of committing the crimes in the first place, and in the end, they still win out.

The only ones who really suffer are probably the people who rely on MARTA, because the agency will probably cut jobs or worse off, implement a fare hike, to make up for the $620k that they lost, service will suffer, MARTA becomes an even larger ironic joke, and Atlanta takes more flack for being a low-rent city with a completely inefficient and incompetent transit authority, and where criminals are playing the game on easy mode.

It’s times like these where the world needs vigilantes like Batman, who don’t operate under any rules or jurisdictions, and could probably go after, apprehend and turn in the two crooks to the authorities in like two seconds.  It’s not like they probably went all Milton from Office Space, and actually managed to get out of the country and are enjoying their stolen money from some tropical paradise.

This was never a matter of if, but when

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Stanford busted for using AI-altered student photograph for advertising, most notably swapping out Hispanic male for black female

If I’ve never put it in writing before, I’m a firm opponent of AI.  I think it serves a purpose for doing monotonous tasks that can save people a lot of time and efficiency, but obviously this was never the objective of the companies and individuals who are hellbent on advancing it, and it’s astounding how many people who work on AI seem blind to the notion that they are expediting the extinction of jobs and careers for people all across the world.

Will we see AI become sentient and ultimately take over the world, enslaving or terminating the human race, a la The Matrix or Terminator?  Probably not in our lifetime, but as all those stories have predicted, it really does seem inevitable that machines will eventually see human behavior as truly redundant and expendable, seeing as how machines are devoid of emotion and well, humanity.

For the time being, AI is primarily being used (publicly) to “inadvertently” kill my line of work, in the creative field, as hundreds of thousands of companies, businesses and individuals are churning out gojiggabytes of AI-generated “artwork” from shitty restaurant menus, billboards and signage, as well as a trillion memes and bad video edits.

Genuinely, I feel that my line of work does have an expiration date, and I have experienced multiple instances at my own job, where colleagues and collaborators have leveraged AI to haphazardly try and create rogue content, and having to be gently reminded that it’s not okay… as long as products shown aren’t necessarily from competitors.  And the faster that AI advances and lazier the uneducated and unethical become, the sooner people like me will be out of a job, forcing me to probably go into the trades and improve my life exponentially.

But anyway, this was a highly dramatic cold open to a post where I wanted to write about Stanford University getting busted using AI to create graphics, namely altering a photograph, where a poor Hispanic kid was swapped out for a black girl, presumably so that Stanford could look more diverse in advertising.

There’s a lot of different angles to approach this one, but most of it circulates around the notion that Stanford, being in northern California, simply does not have any diversity, being in Silicon Valley, so they’ve gotten to the point where they’re leveraging AI to make it look like there is, instead of, actually allowing some black students attend their hallowed institution.

But on the other hand, I’m a firm believer of merit, and that the best students should attend schools, regardless of race or gender or any other categorization.  Sure, Stanford is probably racist as fuck I mean come on, just look at them, and have as flagrant of a black people scale as big as they probably have an Asian scale, so it’s hilarious to me that instead of going out and actually recruiting some actual living black students to attend their school, they’re just using AI to pretend like they have some.

Frankly, as the subject of this post implies, this was never an if it would happen situation, it was always a when would it happen, and we’d all be blind and deaf if we believed that this was the first time that this had occurred, but the fact that an institution as reputable as Stanford was the one busted doing it is what makes it news right now.

Honestly, my reaction was similar to the victim of the shitty AI swap, at first glance, it is funny, but when you sit down and really give it some thought, it really is just sad and pitiful and actually malicious, that they’re not only deleting the actual humanity from a photograph, but replacing it with something artificial, false and completely dishonest.  Let’s not even get into the cosmetic modifications to the people that were allowed to stay in the photo.

When the day is over, Stanford, for all their academic praise and reputation globally, is no different than any other shitheads on the planet who are completely okay with the global takeover of AI.  It just sucks for all the Billy Ramirezes of the world who draw the short straw in photos that need to be modified to force in some artificial diversity by dishonest companies who are too chickenshit to accept actual diversity into their holy confines.

Nothing says ‘I still got it’ than pub-stomping some high school girls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: 52-year old Ichiro Suzuki twirls a 127-pitch complete game shutout against an all-star team of Japanese high school girls in an exhibition game, striking out 17.  Also collected two hits as a batter, in a 7-0 win

When I saw this news start to pop up on my feeds, I thought that this was an instance of old news coming back to the surface, and was ready to get on the internet offensive and accuse some pleebs of old news, get with the times dork.  But it turns out that this game of mostly old and retired Japanese pro players versus the best girls high school players in the country exhibition actually did happen again, and apparently this is a thing that occurs every two years, and has been the case for a while.

If it’s been going on prior to 2019, I don’t have the slightest clue nor do I care enough to check, but it’s news as of then, solely because of the fact that Ichiro has been participating in these matches since then.  And for the fourth time out of five appearances, Ichiro has thrown a complete game shutout, and nothing is probably more validating to his aging masculinity than taking the pitcher’s mound and suffocating a bunch of teenage girls for a the better part of a decade.

In one hand, it can be said that Ichiro is showing these girls the utmost honor and respect by not pulling any punches and going out and tryharding as much as he and most Japanese workaholics often are capable of doing.  But in the other hand, he may be retired and inactive in Major League Baseball, but Ichiro is still one of the greatest of all time, and probably the greatest of all time to come out of Japan (for the time being), and aging will do way less to his ability to play baseball than it would be like some fat undisciplined flash in the pan like say Prince Fielder, post-career, and even though he’s 52 as of 2026, he’s undoubtedly still better at the game than the best girl high school players in the nation.

Although I highly doubt the overly polite and respectful Japanese would possibly think Ichiro and all the other former MLB/NPB pros stomping high school girls is a dick move, my American brain tends to think that there’s a modicum of dickishness to a bunch of former professionals going out and dropping hammers onto a bunch of girls vastly their juniors.

Unsurprising, Ichiro dominated the living piss out of the high school girls, again, and the funniest-not-entirely-funniest thing about Ichiro’s participation in this game is that this is now is fifth game where he’s appeared in, all of them as the only pitcher, and he’s now pitched a total of 45 innings, 5 complete games, 4 shutouts, and has an ERA of just 0.06.  He has at least 43 strikeouts, because I can’t find the strikeout totals from 2019 and 2023, but even if he had zero in those two games, his K/9 rate would be close to 10 as it is, which is considered elite.

In one regard, this is probably the honor of a lifetime for all the high school girls, getting to play ball with some of the greatest to ever play for the country, but at the same time, it’s meant to be an exhibition, not taken so seriously, and where they’re getting 9-17 runs hung on them.  Like, if you’re trying to inspire confidence in the youth of tomorrow, clobbering them for 10+ runs in a meaningless game isn’t really going to help.

But in the end, I suppose if eating the lunch of a bunch of high school girls is what Ichiro needs to do in order to remain active in the game, then so be it.  I still maintain that when the day comes when he’s no longer able to be involved in baseball, he’s going to go on a murderous rampage, so anything that keeps him in the stratosphere of the sport, means safety for humanity.  I mean, look at his face from this year’s game when he came to the realization that one girl had collected three hits off of him; when the day comes where Ichiro can’t play anymore, and his murderous intent comes out, the name Rin Fukuda will probably be high on his list of targets, for embarrassing his honor by collecting three hits, and a steal.

Looking forward to the 2028 edition of this game, where a then-54 year old Ichiro will probably still be ready to pitch another complete game shutout, and I can only hope by then, there’ll be some cocky female slugger who’s salivating at the thought of facing Ichiro and is ready to clobber a dinger into the Tokyo Dome rafters, just so we can all see what Ichiro’s reaction is going to be.

Who would’ve guessed that foreign travelers don’t want to get gauged either?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau report that hotel bookings did not live up to the impact predictions that the FIFA World Cup would bring

Among some of the great content that came out of the FIFA World Cup, I particularly liked the local Atlanta material, about foreign visitors’ experiences in the Metro.  I really enjoyed videos about witnessing people wandering around in the hoods of College Park, the West End and East Atlanta, looking absolutely petrified at just how hood some of these neighborhoods were capable of being.

It’s obvious that they chose these areas because they were MARTA accessible, and they figured that instead of staying within a mile radius of The Benz and get gauged to death, they’d stay a little bit further out for less, but it’s aight because we got train access.

I’d never seen so many the sax is getting louder memes in such a short time, but they’ve all been entertaining to me, especially when I recognized some of the places of some of the videos.

But getting back to the article here, it brings me great satisfaction to see all the L’s the city is taking in regards to expected hotel occupancy versus what had actually happened.  It’s not that I want to see Atlanta getting laughed at by the rest of the world, but I’m diametrically opposed to flagrant price gauging and any act of trying to turn screws to the people of the world, that I feel like quantifiable evidence of failure like this is necessary in order for any sort of course correction to happen.

It’s pretty great:

FIFA once promised an impact equal to eight Super Bowls.

But then the numbers start coming in, and tax revenue, hotel occupancy and hotel occupancy within a 1-mile radius are all in the negatives, and it’s just one of those smug, gee, tf did you think was going to happen when you ask people to pay thousands of dollars to fly to Atlanta, thousands more dollars to get tickets into the matches, and think that they’d still have thousands of dollars left over to stay in overpriced hotels?

I especially like the Ls that all the nearby hotels took, because firstly, they’re all of the luxury, high-end name brands, of W, the Four Seasons, the Ritz Carlton, and then all the Dragon-con hotels that are all perpetually overpriced all the time.  They should be the least surprised that people who were dumping their life savings into these trips would prioritize lodging the last versus logistics and match tickets.

I am surprised to see that the general, umbrella Metro Atlanta hotel occupancy also remained in the negatives, which means that probably the AirBnB and short-term rental markets probably did gangbusters throughout the World Cup’s tenure in Atlanta, or perhaps people were staying in places like Newnan, Woodstock, Braselton and the way the fuck outskirts that might not fall into the Metro umbrella.

Either way, chalk this up as some satisfying tea to indulge in, because as much as I love sports, the politics that go behind it are as much full of shit as the nonsense that endlessly churns up in Washington DC.

Non-Koreans need not apply

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I use my brog to vent out my general frustrations about randos on the internet because I don’t want to comment on social media and possibly risk engaging in interactions I don’t want to get sucked into.

But over the last year or so, there’s a content creator with whom I engage with regularly enough to where theFacebook keeps offering me up a top fan badge which I promptly delete the suggestion because I don’t care nor is it at all important for others to see me as someone who spends more time than is necessary engaging with someone that I don’t know at the end of the day.

I like to keep my interactions generally positive, as this person is also Korean, also a dad, and although I could be jealous of his success at climbing the rope of content creation and the lifestyle it has created for him, I don’t want to be the jealous fatty of Korean person who envies and generally becomes a hater, because I really am happy to see a Korean guy finding success, making wholesome content in such a droll world where everything is an uphill battle.

Mostly I interact with fairly innocuous remarks, primarily positive, but also when he queries other parents, I sometimes share opinions, as another Korean father in America.  But I occasionally sprinkle my commentary with some 한글 every now and then, kind of as a way of directly speaking to him and/or other Korean supporters of his, because sometimes there are just some things in the world that aren’t really relatable to anyone other than to us Korean people.

However, being public forum, this means that the rest of the non-Korean pleebs of the world can see what I’m saying, and worst of all, have the capability to comment and respond when they feel necessary, which is unfortunately to say way more often than I’d like it to be.  Mostly because the overwhelming majority of people in the world are incapable of initiating, which includes on the internet where nobody has the balls to make their own comments but have zero qualms with rebutting and contradicting when they feel the urge (that nobody asked for) to say something.

A lot of the time, my remarks get the “this doesn’t apply to just Koreans” or “I’m also X Asian/minority class and this tracks for us” counters, which in some cases might not be completely invalid.  But my favorites are the responses I get from what are obviously white people who feel that they have absolutely anything to add in any sort of matter that pertains to me pointing out -isms of Koreans and other Asian tropes.

Like the impetus of this post stems from this content creator low-key flexing his pockets by showing an itemized e-receipt of some ingredients purchased for a future video.  But instead of being a hater and acknowledging and calling out the humblebrag, I remarked about imagining his or the hypothetical Korean parent seeing this receipt and it’s exorbitant cost, and how they’d probably imagine it would be cheaper to travel to [foreign location] to [acquire] the ingredient, and ignore the whole time and labor cost, in the name of saving money, because the trope is that Koreans are eternally cost-conscious and the only things that matter are those bottom lines.

I get some Chad Borowski responding to me that time and labor is free to one’s self, and that they can get memories and experience out of the hypothetical journey to [foreign location].  Some hippie-dippy white person bullshit, injecting their belief system to a culture that couldn’t give a shit less about such things versus the objective of not paying exorbitant costs for anything.  And then it’s topped off with an umbrella sermon about how Chad wished more people were capable of doing things for themselves and enjoy the process.

 

Normally I don’t re-engage, but this one made me roll my eyes so hard, by the time my eyeballs returned to their sockets, I had already hit send on a response, facetiously saying his remark was cute but [due to his obvious lack of knowledge of Korean parents on account of not being fucking Korean] that the only experience and memories a Korean parent wants to get out of such a hypothetical journey is the ability to humblebrag to their group chat about how much money they saved, and have an unsmiling selfie at the location to prove it.  Because that’s entirely what hypothetical Korean parents of this specified generation are entirely all about, and the exact course of action that would take place.

But my bad for re-engagement, because later in the day, Chad rebuts again because white people are about as other classes when it comes the need to get the last word in, and they accused me of being miserable with a sour world view, which isn’t entirely incorrect, but in the context of this conversation, is completely putting words in my mouth.

I didn’t bother responding again because I had already broken one of my general rules of social media of commenting on comments, and I feel no need to get the last word, but the point of all this is that Chad here, or any other white person need not bother getting involved in this observation that has nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, I know that tons of white guys out there in the world are incapable of receiving such a memo, so this won’t be the last time Ben Affleck or Jillian Michaels is going to interfere with my knowing commentary of Koreans to another Korean.  But hopefully, it won’t pique my nerves to the point where I feel the need to burn a brog post about it again.

I suppose when you’re about to be euthanized, no-caffeine may let you live three more seconds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Georgia death-row inmate selects last meal, set for execution on September 16th
Let’s just cut to the chase:

For his last meal, prison officials said Humphreys requested barbecue beef brisket, pork ribs, a bacon double cheeseburger with fries, buffalo wings, a meat lovers pan pizza and two caffeine-free sodas. For dessert, he chose butter pecan ice cream and peach ice cream.

Honestly, take the whole murdering of two real estate agents out of the equation and journey to death row, and this sounds like an absolute banger of a big back meal, that would be like a final boss-caliber cheat day of eating.

The funny thing to me about final meal requests is that these inmates always ask for enough food for entire families, more than likely knowing that they have no chance at finishing everything, and the crazier thing is that the institutions of incarceration always seem to honor them.

As far as final meals go, this one does seem kind of tame.  Man is basically asking for the entire menu at like Buffalo Wild Wings, with all the barbecue items he’s requesting, as well as cheeseburgers and pizza.  About a decade ago, also here in Georgia, there was a woman on death row who requested a ton of things that seemed to have a common thread, of buttermilk and eggs, and it seemed to me that she was planning on making herself into a human atomic bomb of toxic gas, fully anticipating that once she died, and believing that the body’s functions cease and evacuate, to make the absolutely most trainwreck of a mess as possible on the way out.

This guy isn’t really going that route, even if it is the only real chance that any accused has to get the last word in with their jailers, man just wants a solid Roy Hobbs Day on the way out.

But why this is a post on the brog is that the devil is in the details, and it’s some of the details that pique my interest and inspire me to put down some words.

First, is the fact that he specifically asked for a meat lovers pan pizza, and not a whole-ass Pizza Hut Big New Yorker with every single meat option slathered on it.  I get that there is a culinary difference between the two, what with the pan pizza having those crispy edges that might be a personal preference, but if I’m on my way out, feel any sort of malice or resentment to my jailers or the state of Georgia, and know that the taxpayers are on the hook for feeding my ass one last time, I might pick the more expensive option, knowing that I probably won’t finish it anyway, taking any sort of pyrrhic victories as I can.

Instead, this dude is being quite modest with his request of a diminutive pan pizza, almost as if it were meant to be a dainty side dish to accompany his barbecue train he’s going to run.

Next we have the two caffeine-free sodas that he’s requested; I’m going to assume they’re along the lines of a cola or of the dark colored variety, and not like a Crush or Mountain Dew.  It’s funny in the sense that he specifically asked for two, and not an entire six or 12-pack, because short of going to a gas station or a Dollar Tree, I don’t even know where you can even get individual cans of soda.  More than likely, whomever is in charge of fulfilling this meal request will be stuck with leftover sodas in their possession, knowing that the missing cans were meant for a dead guy.

But the coup de grace is the fact that for whatever reason, it was specified that he wanted caffeine-free sodas.  Man is about to be put to eternal sleep, and he’s sweating having sodas that have caffeine in it before he’s put to death.  And just two – clearly trying to watch his weight and sodium intake, in spite of the 8,000mg of sodium he’ll already be taking in with his requested final meal.

When I was a kid, I was so hooked on soda, and in spite of my mom’s general aversion to supporting such a habit, occasionally I could talk her into picking up a case of sodas, provided it were caffeine-free Diet Coke.  It’s like being the absolute least offensive of the cola family made it somewhat palatable for my mom to purchase.  Plus, the gold cans are kind of baller, and it’s almost a shame that the color gold is treated as like fourth tier in the Coca-Cola hierarchy.

I suppose he’s being cognizant of the risk of elevated heart rate that caffeine has on the human body, and seeing as how he’s going to be put down via lethal injection, I suppose keeping his heart rate as low as possible when getting the needle, he might be able to prolong his life by like maybe, three more seconds. 

And if he has any inkling of wanting to remain among the living, I suppose every second counts.