Tag: white people

I kind of really fucking hate Nike right now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard about the special edition Kirkland x Nike collaboration Dunks, my knee-jerk reaction was along the lines of, lol look at these ultimate dad shoes, followed immediately by, I want them, because I’m a fan of Dunks in general given their visual proximity to Jordan 1’s which are still in my opinion the pinnacle of sneakers in history.

Originally, they were slated to have been released “Holiday 2025,” is what sneaker news cited, and I remember thinking that there couldn’t be a more perfect thing to redeem the $180~ cashback certificate I had been sitting on all through 2025.  That is, if I could even get a fighting chance to get my hands on a pair, because according to sneakerhead culture, these were picking up heat at potentially being the most demanded shoe in history, depending on whom you asked, but the point remained that the demand for these was going to be really high, and therefore, difficult to get.

I was hoping that my one saving grace was that being a Costco Executive member, the early hour perk could be my only chance at being able to get a shot at these.  But as Holiday 2025 approached, came, and then went, without there being any news of these moving forward, it became apparent and then confirmed that the Kirkland Dunks were a no-go, and that there was no clue to when they were going to drop, if they ever were.

And then of course, without any warning, they suddenly dropped, but in like, seven Costcos in the nation, most of them being on the west coast.  Naturally, once word got around, they were all gone, and are already up on resale sites for 3-4x the MSRP of $134.  Of course, Atlanta was not included in this initial drop, but scuttlebutt left it vague enough that these could potentially start rolling out in other Costcos across the nation, and my hope that Atlanta being a large enough market to be one of these supposed future drop locations could be there began rising again.

Over the span of the last week, I’d actually been checking the Costco not too far from my office right at 9 am on a daily basis, which might actually be the closest one to City of Atlanta proper, hoping to be lucky enough to luck into one of these purported “shock drops” which is a term I’m beginning to loathe considering the ambiguous and unpredictable chance that I’d even get to have a fighting chance at acquiring the ultimate dad shoes, and despite the fact that I still want a pair, underneath it all, I’m really fucking hating Nike as a company for these bullshit tactics, obviously deliberately done for absolutely no other reason than to create buzz, demand and all sorts of other intangible bullshit reasons that would be completely useless in a post-apocalyptic world once the zombie virus ravages humanity.

It’s frustrating, because they’re oft-called dad shoes, but any dad in my circumstances has almost no chance at getting them.  I’d frankly pay a higher MSRP if there was a chance that I could lock in a pair, or there were at least some concrete fucking information on when these would be available and I could have a fighting chance, but it’s the ambiguity and lack of information and transparency that’s been the killer of this whole debacle.

But all the same, I still want them.  And the thing is, it’s not even really so much that I want them as dad shoes that I can make beaters, these things have gotten to the point of where if I were to successfully nab a pair, I’m not even sure I’d even wear them given their increasing status as some kind of rare loot drop.  But I just want to feel a win, at succeeding at some small lottery type of victory, because my life has been pretty devoid of those over the last few years, and I think it would do my personal morale some good to feel special and lucky in any manner that doesn’t come from my children.

On that same token, on the very high likelihood that I do not succeed, it’s just going to make me really more resentful towards Nike as a company, which won’t necessarily cause me to full boycott, seeing as how I have a few pairs of J’s that I still enjoy, but still curse their existence whenever the topic of sneakers comes into play, although I wouldn’t rule out purchasing future product if they fit my fancy.

Fat chance airfares are coming down

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

CBS: Airline industry projecting to save millions of dollars on jet fuel in 2026 on account of the massive amounts of collective weight loss throughout the planet due to GLP-1 drugs

It really is incredible.  GLP-1s have become so prevalent and so effective on such a massive scale, that it’s impacting an industry that requires some really creative routing in order to make a relation.  The correlation between weight loss drugs and the airline industry seems like quite the reach, but at the scale of the collective weight loss of the world, it actually makes perfect sense that the airline industry is set to start saving tons of money on jet fuel, if more passengers are weighing less than ever before.

The thing is, the first thought that came into my head upon hearing about this news was, will the airlines pass any modicum of these savings onto passengers?  Of course, that was a rhetorical question, because anyone with a pulse already knows the answer is, absofuckinglutely not.

It’s just like every single price hike in history in any business; companies get used to seeing the increased revenue, and it doesn’t matter at all if the reason(s) used to justify a price hike(s) are rendered invalid, there’s not a company in history that is willing to roll back a price hike, and the airline industry is one of the most flagrant at conducting such business.

Like when they used the fuel crisis of 2008 to jack up their fares, those fares didn’t come back down once crude stabilized.  When they basically colluded to eliminate free bags across the board, nobody was willing to be the disruptor and go back to free bags in order to undercut their competition, they had gotten far too comfortable with the bag fees adding to their bottom lines to risk lowering anything.

This is no exception; a plethora of reasons, including rising weights were blabbed in order to justify their fare hikes, and it won’t matter at all if the world has collectively dropped 5% of their weight, there’s a 0% chance that any airline is going to discount even a single fucking nickel from their fares.

If anything at all, they could feasibly go the other direction and start jacking fares up again, citing airplanes becoming too aerodynamic, and that they’re getting to their destinations faster, causing more crowding at airports, more idling, which of course, means the need for more jet fuel, or some other randomly convoluted justification to spin up more fare hikes.

Originally while I was thinking about this post, I was going to opine where all this collective weight loss is going, because the food that caused it still exists, and at what grandiose level does the Earth ultimately collapse upon itself from the collective increasing weight of, existence?

But once the wheels of piss and vitriol towards the airline industry get churning, it’s like an avalanche of shit-tily nihilistic opinions about a bunch of greedy old white fucks, and how much I think the general concept of investing is what is causing the world so much collective despair across the board.

I get that it’s a cool thing to hear that people are the world are losing so much weight thanks to GLP-1s, that the airline industry are slated to save nearly $550M in jet fuel this year, but when you stop to ponder what happens next and realize that consumers and travelers don’t stand to benefit from their magical savings, it just gets me all fired up and once again mad at the greedy ass business in the end.

Viral is mixing shit in a rotisserie chicken bag and making it look like vomit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I mean I don’t know much more succinct I can be about what this post is about.  Perhaps because I like food so much, for whatever reason, the algorithm has seen fit to keep feeding me all these variants of these idiot influencers who are all trying the supposed viral Costco rotisserie chicken bag ‘hack,’ where they chop up a chicken and mix a whole lot of things inside the chicken’s bag itself and call it any form of a palatable meal.

The idea of some of the concoctions seem like they could be good, but the fact that a lot of these dumbasses are insistent and execute them within the confines of a plastic bag, there’s no avoiding that the end result of every single recipe and variant makes it look like people are vomiting into these bags and squirting sriracha and/or kewpie mayonnaise onto them and imbibing on them and overselling how good they are, as if they’re eating Five Guys for the very first time in their life.

Back in my day, doing what these kids are doing now and calling it viral, of mixing a bunch of shit in a bag and eating it straight from there, would be called along the lines of prison food, or walking tacos, with the general perception that comes along with names like those attached to them.  But because the internet continues to make people dumber than they were a day prior, we have a thousand variants of people trying to do this and pyramid piggybacking on a bad idea, for the sake of some cheap views.

The bottom line is that I haven’t seen a single version of this so-called viral rotisserie chicken bag trend that looks remotely appetizing.  Sure, I know taste and satisfaction is supremely more important than aesthetics, but there’s still a minimum viable appearance necessary to make the eater not believe that they’re eating vomit straight out of a bag.

I know I’m occasionally susceptible to wanting to try out a trend, but as far as the viral Costco rotisserie chicken bag ‘hack,’ yeah no, I think I’m good on not wanting to eat food that looks like it’s passed through a digestive track before ending back up inside a bag.

White people can’t admit that kimchi is just good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Inquirer: US government includes kimchi to America’s list of gut health-friendly foods

Seeing as how I’m the only person in my household that actually likes and eats kimchi, sometimes it’s a struggle to eat all the kimchi in the amounts that they’re sold in.  For most of my life, kimchi was a dish served solely with Korean foods, rices, stews, bbq or anything that would constitute as a ‘Korean meal.’

But one day, I had this idea of just adding some of this aging kimchi to a sandwich.  I didn’t have any mustard, I was out of pepperjack cheese, and my house is generally pretty sparse when it comes to condiments, and turkey, I saw this great meme about how it’s the meat that is the equivalent of a human being who doesn’t drink enough water even though they know they should, and I had this idea of adding kimchi to my sandwich to help elevate a mundane turkey sandwich.

I felt like I had just invented fire, based on the sheer life that it had injected into my entrée.  And then I had one of those moments where I had to stop what I was doing and process the door I had just unlocked and opened up, realizing that I could add kimchi to a whole new world of foods out there to try and enhance them.

Kimchi in sandwiches.  Kimchi in curries.  Kimchi in very specific tacos.  Kimchi on burgers, hot dogs.  Kimchi as a side to steak or chops or fried chicken.  Kimchi no longer needed to be restricted to accompanying solely Korean food, it was a revelation that I had way too late in my life.

The point is, kimchi is a wonderful food, and it’s cringeworthingly bittersweet that the United States government is recognizing it on a federal level.  And it’s clear that it’s a very white people tactic of trying to push kimchi to the American people, by instead of just letting people come to their own conclusions about the food, they wrap it in a cornucopia of science in declaring it a gut health food, so that people might eat it out of health conscientious instead of branching out their tastebuds into food other than chicken tenders or bougie doughnuts.

All the scientific jargon seems legit to me, but aside from it all, kimchi is just a food that tastes great.  And the thing is, like most of the Korean language, the term kimchi is so broad and subjective, and encapsulates a lot varieties other than the napa cabbage version that whitey is probably thinking is the only form of kimchi that exists.

Whatever though, as critical as I may be by the tactic, I always do like when Korean things get recognized on a more global scale.  Except if through its exposure, it causes all of the greedy merchants of the world to see justification to raise their prices and make it less economical for me to get my motherland’s staple.

A microcosm of what’s wrong with the airline industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.  I’m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn’t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn’t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story™.

I don’t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.  Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.  Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment’s notice.  Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it’s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it’s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people greed.

The gate I’m sitting in is relatively deserted.  Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.  The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.  If I were still doing the standby thing, I’d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.

That said, there’s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.  There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.  I’d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.

I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I’d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.

A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.  My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that’s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol’ Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn’t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they’ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can’t afford in order to travel, they’re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.

I know that I’m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.  I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000’s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.

Ed doesn’t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they’re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.

And then Ed’s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that’s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.  There’s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.

Dad Brog (#159): PSA to parents of students

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is probably a little bit of a stretch as far as classifying this as a dad brog, but my kids are students and have teachers, and obviously mythical wife is a teacher and deals with kids and whatever, this is a dad brog, fucking deal with it

But back to the subject of this post, this is a PSA to all parents of students, specifically those who wish to get holiday gifts for their children’s teachers:

Stop buying mugs and candles.

Unless your children’s teacher is celebrating their very first holiday season as a teacher, it’s safe to assume that they already have no less than four holiday mugs and three scented candles, most likely from Yankee Candle or Bath & Body Works.  Otherwise, multiply these numbers by the number of years in which said teacher has been teaching, and that’s how many fucking mugs and candles exist in their homes.

And if the teachers are anything like mythical wife, they have no earthly idea on how to remove them from their domiciles, so they end up accumulating and taking up space, and I, as a teacher’s spouse, end up creeping closer and closer to a breakdown from our house slowly descending into becoming an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive, covered in so much cliché crap that is pawned off onto my wife under the guise of being in the spirit of the holidays.

This goes quadruple for my wife, who has the olfactory abilities of Wolverine, so she’s extremely sensitive to scents and therefore doesn’t like 80% of the candles given to her because they’re wonky and smell weird or bad, and they never get used, and currently just exist in a giant stack behind our Keurig.  And she doesn’t drink or even like coffee, so any mugs that comes with a coffee mix or a Starbucks gift card is pretty much lost on her, even though I like it when she bequeaths any Starbucks gift cards to me, the accumulation of yet another mug makes it not worth it.

Yes, I understand that any form of gifts to teachers are voluntary and are given with the best of intentions, and I’m not trying to put a kibosh on my wife from getting free shit with thoughtful intentions.  It’s just I’m challenging all other parents to be better and be aware that the teachers of their kids more than likely have a ton of fucking mugs and candles, and they are probably long past no longer welcome, even if they’re not allowed to say it.

Gift cards are always welcome, even if weirdos like mythical wife don’t drink coffee, thus making Starbucks ones pretty useless, but places like Target, whatever grocery chains are nearby, or even the American Express ones that nobody likes to buy because they’re usually an activation fee included on those.  Chick Fil-A, or whatever chain joints are around the area are welcome, and of course, Amazon.

Baked goods, be it completely homemade, or shit purchased from the local grocer or commercial bakeries are always welcome.  Snacks or treats in general are pretty welcome, but always a risk, not knowing what dietary restrictions the teacher may or may not have.

Failing all else, holiday cards, with just nice messages or greetings are welcome and superior to moar mugs or candles.

The point is, please please please stop buying teachers mugs and candles for Christmas.  It makes me think that these are cruel re-gifts, or were add-ons from larger purchases, that these parents are cleverly disguising as unique gifts for the educators of their children, with passive hopes that getting in their favor will prove beneficial to their children in the future.  Obviously I’m not the teacher in my house, but if I were, and I sniffed out a potential re-gift, yeah, it might influence my attitude towards their kid; but not in the way that they had hoped for.

Just like my attitude towards gift giving over the recent years, if you can’t give a thoughtful gift with genuine intention, don’t feel obligated to get one.  It’s better to give no gift, than a shitty thoughtless one, and I’d personally rather receive nothing, than receive something that contributes to the existing clutter in my home.

I sure hope Murakami likes the taste of defeat

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: latest Japanese sensation, Munetaka Murakami, signs with the Chicago White Sox on a 2-year, $34M deal

When Murakami’s name, and his intention to pursue a move into MLB made it to American media, I was one of many who had the same thought – go to the Dodgers.  Failing that, he’d go to the Yankees, or Red Sox or Mariners; teams who have had a good relationship with Japanese players and media.  Or maybe even the Phillies or Blue Jays, teams with big wallets and feeling the pressure to win now.

So when news broke that he had signed with the Chicago White Sox, all I could do was throw my head back and laugh heartily, because I don’t really think the man could have picked a worse place to land than the Southside of Chicago.

Like, did Murakami do any research before making his choice, or did he just leave everything to his agent/representation to do all of it for him and make the decision on his behalf?  I feel like it has to be the latter, because I can’t imagine any ballplayer would voluntarily go to the Chicago White Sox, unless they were like a hometown kid out to try and prove a point or something, and even that’s a stretch of a hypothesis.

The White Sox are coming off of their third straight season of losing 100 games, and two years removed from literally setting the all-time record in losses with their historic 121-loss season.  If I’m a free agent hot shot wanting to make a mark and set a team on fire, the White Sox are absolutely the worst team to try and accomplish such.  Even if his hitting prowess does translate well to the Majors, it won’t change the fact that the rest of the team sucks, and the only rookie* record that he’ll be chasing will how many walks he’ll be issued when the rest of the league starts pitching around him.

*term used loosely  on account of the fact that he has 7 seasons of NPB experience, but MLB is a slave to appearances

Plus, just about everything else about the organization sucks, from their management who has clearly no motivation to win much less put a competitive team on the field and seem to be going through the motions of pretending like they’re rebuilding while more than likely just churning and trying to just make a paycheck, to their shitty ballpark which is basically the living embodiment of the stigma of shit being on the south side of cities being, shit.  Obviously, he is under no obligation to live on the Southside of Chicago once he relocates to the United States, but traffic in the region is pretty turrible, and he’s going to be playing an interesting game of either living near the park and being remotely close to the Southside, or living somewhere nice but run the risk of being victimized by the shitty traffic of the city.

What’s even funnier to me is that above all else, from a holistic perspective, everything about this deal already seems like a big-ass L from the onset.  Not that a $17M annual salary is anything to scoff at, even for professional athletes, but for a guy with the name, pedigree and aura as Murakami, not to mention MLB’s gigantic raging boner for Japanese players, I feel like he’s taking a really big settling deal, especially considering the fact that he landed on the White Sox.  There is no team in baseball that wouldn’t benefit from a guy that, even if his aggregate production were slashed to account for the league and culture shift, and he became “just” a 20HR/80RBI guy, there are definitely teams who pay more for that, and it’s hard to believe that it was just the White Sox that came knocking.

I get that his general MO of high-power, low-contact is concerning for many, but Kyle Schwarber literally just signed for $30M per year over the next five years.  Sure, teams are taking a gamble when it comes to his character, ability to gel with a clubhouse and they have no idea what his presence will do to a team’s chemistry, but I still feel like that Murakami probably left at least $3-5M per year and another year on the table with the deal that he took.  I mean, good for the White Sox and when the day is over I’m not going to lose any sleep over any dude getting the short end of the stick, but I just feel like Murakami’s camp really dropped the ball at getting their man paid, and signed with a team that doesn’t absolutely suck.

Either way, I sure hope he really doesn’t mind losing, because he is going to be doing a whole lot of it over the next two years.  Maybe it’s all part of the plan to take such a short-term deal, because by the time his two years of Southside prison are up, the Dodgers or Yankees will be in dire need of a new DH, and then if he’s been playing his cards right, would be the most ideal candidate to swoop in and then sign his big fuck-you I’m Japanese bitch contract then.  He is after all, just going to be 27 around that time, still very much reaching his physical peak.

But until then, we’ll see how much he can tolerate being on a squad that’s all but assured to lose at least 85 games a year for the life of this deal, and if he’s still got the willpower and cojones to try and be a baller, or if he’ll be just another White Sox player whose had the life sucked out of them.