This is the stuff I fear for Georgia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: guy who wants to run for governor of Georgia drops campaign video where he’s brandishing a shotgun the whole time, pointing it at a young man who recites his campaign points

See, this is the kind of shit that makes me worry for the future of Georgia.  I understand that the whole video was meant to be kind of tongue-in-cheek and definitely produced with a sense of humor intended.  But surprising to nobody with brains, it falls flat on face and comes off as some gun-crazy hick basically holding a young man hostage and forcing him to read off his generic promises if he’s elected governor.

Most educated, liberal, and/or just people with brains mostly conclude that this was a tasteless campaign commercial, and for all intents and purposes should not help him win the primary.  But the problem is that Georgia is filled with a whole lot of people who do not fit the aforementioned criteria.  These are people who will have thought this commercial was funny, this commercial was memorable, or worse off, completely agree with everything about the commercial – and then they’ll act on such sticking power, and actually vote for this shithead.

And that has me very scared for the future of this state, if gun-loving hicks like this actually rise to some prominence.

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What’s not racist versus what is

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It’s amazing the lengths that people go out of their way these days for in order to pretend like they’re offended so that they can have a reason to bitch about something on social media with hopes that they’ll go viral and get 15 seconds of internet fame.  This week’s staged offense is a story about a girl in Utah who went to her high school prom wearing a Chinese qipao dress; it doesn’t sound like a big deal at all, but the thing is that the girl wasn’t Chinese or any sort of Asian descent, and suddenly she’s a racist, she’s culturally appropriating, and she’s offending many, many people.

Speaking as an Asian person, I’ll say this: a not-Chinese person wearing a qipao is NOT racist.  Period, full stop.

It also isn’t cultural appropriation, which honestly shouldn’t really exist in terms of clothing, because if the whole world wanted to get technical, it would be quite the contrary and the vast majority of the planet would be appropriating clothing that was manufactured probably in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam or any other country where cheap, slave-wage labor is available.  If place of origin is what decides what culture clothing belongs to, then just about every American is culturally appropriating someone else’s clothing.

And historically, there have been litanies of women who have worn qipaos or other traditional Chinese garments who weren’t Chinese.  Whether they were celebrities or dignitaries from other countries visiting China, or expats living in China who eventually starting wearing local clothing out of convenience.  There is zero difference between people like these and a teenage girl wearing a qipao for her prom.  She’s in fact pretty and wears it well, and the Chinese originators of the garment would probably be proud to see it being worn to a meaningful event like a teenager’s prom by someone who claims to really love it.

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KANE FOR MAYOR

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Glenn Jacobs, better known as WWE wrestler “Kane” wins the Republican primary in the Knox County, Tennessee mayoral race

In other words, Kane is one step closer to becoming an actual mayor of an actual county in an actual metropolitan area in the United States.  Not a bad achievement for a guy who makes his living fake beating people up in a fake sport.  The only thing that stands in the way of total victory now is the Democratic candidate in the general election in November.

Honestly, I didn’t think Kane was going to make it this far, because despite how ironically funny and cool it would be to see a professional wrestler ascend the ranks of government and take public office, cooler heads tend to prevail in the end, and the career politicians usually end up winning most of the time.  But now that Kane has emerged victorious in the first critical step, I want to see nothing more than for Kane to go all the way and become MAYOR KANE, and send Knox County, Tennessee straight… to… HELLLLLLL.

Lest we forget Kane’s resume for becoming a mayor:

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MARTA pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Atlanta Magazine recently interviewed the new CEO of MARTA, and a couple of things caught my attention.  Primarily:

Most recently, (Jeffrey) Parker was vice president at infrastructure and design firm HNTB Corp.’s Atlanta office, where he ran the company’s Georgia practice. His base salary with MARTA is $350,000.

$350,000??  For running MARTA?  AKA installing some wi-fi hotspots on trains, putting up some signage to report bad behavior, but otherwise doing jack shit towards the grander spectrum of, y’know, expanding, or growing the network?

I don’t discount the grandiose accomplishments of former CEO Keith Parker, as it must have been true yeoman’s work getting MARTA’s books into the black.  But as far as Jeffrey Parker is concerned, a massive undertaking has already been taken off of his plate.  He’s not going to have to start in the red, because Keith had already brought the entire agency out of it already.  But at the same time, that means the microscope will be even more magnified, because Jeffrey won’t have the cushion of “well, I need to stabilize financially” to fall back onto when he inevitably does absolutely nothing, for years, and banks $350,000 per, along the way.

This bothers me more than the story of Kasim Reed blowing $500,000+ of taxpayer funds on his way out the door on crony bonuses (including five figure prizes for an ugly sweater karaoke contest).  I mean, most everyone already knew Reed was incompetent and a stooge of a mayor in the first place, so flagrantly blowing taxpayer money isn’t really that big of a surprise.  For the matter, most everyone already knows MARTA is a joke of a transit authority, but at least I didn’t, know that the CEO was making fucking $350,000 a year.

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Sound logic

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Atlanta rapper encourages people to use paintballs instead of actual bullets, if one must satiate the need to shoot firearms.  The message was seemingly intended to curb violence; except when some dickheads unleashed a torrent of paintballs on a bunch of people at a public gas station, one enraged 15-year old fired back – with a real firearm.  And of course, a toddler was inadvertently struck and killed in the completely unnecessary and preventable fracas, and so now a child is dead and a teenager is in all likelihood going to prison for a long time and the people shooting paintballs who started the whole incident are nowhere to be found.

Hashtag Atlanta not the TV show

It’s a little difficult who really should be responsible for the root of this whole incident.  On one hand, we have some c-list rapper using his social media reach to even put the wise idea into the heads of little impressionable wannabe thugs that shooting guns is okay as long as it’s with paintballs and not actual bullets.  On the other hand, the dumbasses he influences aren’t really his responsibility, and he’s not the one who fired at actual people, since his own genius video documentation of him vandalizing things were usually inanimate objects.

I think the seeds to why I felt like writing about it is simply the fallacy of the intention of suggesting paintballs over bullets; which is basically why shoot anything at all?  In what world outside of the Middle East are people afflicted with the urge to need to shoot shit to where a suggestion of paintballs over bullets would even be made in the first place?  Look, I know coming from America there’s a lot of irony in that statement, but still, there’s something seriously wrong with the idea of if you must shoot guns is even a perceived thing in the first place.

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Greatest Royal Rumble my ass

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It took two sittings to watch it, because a five hour show is asking too much for anyone, much less anyone actually in attendance, but I just made it through watching the WWE’s Greatest Royal Rumble special out of Saudi Arabia.

Mercifully.

It goes without saying that I did not have high hopes for this special, therefore it was of zero shock and surprise that it turned out to be the mediocre, glorified house show that I figured it would be.  The events of Greatest are for the most part non-canon to current storylines, but the performers still have to put forth the effort and the work to next to zero story advancement to the rest of the events that are happening in current WWE programming, which is about as zero-sum as it gets, considering the sheer amount of time, resources and physical effort necessary to hold what’s basically an unnecessary show.

The matches were almost all terrible, the performers were clearly jet-lagged, a step or more slow, and completely uninspired performing in front of a mostly confused and/or apathetic crowd.  Predictably, zero titles changed hands, and the only notable thing that occurred in the entire show was the crowning of Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt as winners of the vacant RAW Tag Team Championships.  The rest of the card was underwhelming and underperformed, and the 50-man Rumble match itself was loaded with jobbers, no-names and C-listers who would otherwise have no chance of performing regularly on the average North American tour rotation.

Not to mention the fact that due to the antiquated misogynistic Saudi culture, none of the WWE’s women were permitted to perform, much less any women really be present in King Abdullah Stadium without the supervision of a man, which is a little bit of egg on the company’s part, as they could have really made a global statement by refusing the show in the first place because of their cultural restrictions but whatever, that’s Saudi Arabia for you.

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Is this really happening?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout my entire life, the Koreas have been at war.  The same can be said about just about all of my peers, friends and acquaintances.  Obviously, this doesn’t mean that there’s always been continuous combat for 36 years, but in the technical terms of the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953, the fighting may have ceased, but the Korean War had never ended.  It’s safe to say that large chunks of the world’s populations have never known of a world where the Koreas have not been at war.

So it’s kind of surreal, almost strange, and definitely unbelievable the recent news of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un meeting with South Korean president Moon Jae-In, and coming to terms and signing a peace treaty declaring a formal end to the Korean War.  It’s treading into waters that most of the world has never seen before, and it’s kind of amazing to think that babies born beyond April 27, 2018 will be coming into a world where the Korean War was not technically happening.

Seeing as how I am American by birth, and as authentically Korean as a Hyundai assembled in Mexico, I’m a little surprised at how much the news of the Koreas ceasing the war affected me.  I’ve only been to Korea twice, and know a pathetically paltry amount of the history of my ancestors.  Yet, reading news and progressions of the peace summit at Panmunjom really made me feel genuine hope, positivity and a swelling of emotion from within that I think I can only really explain as a result of my Korean heritage.

I know there are tons of people who are skeptical and untrusting of North Korea, and I’m most certainly not without my own skepticism and conspiracy theories of what might actually be in the works.  There are allegations that North Korea really fucked up on a missile test and took down a mountain, destroyed a major developmental facility, nuclear fallout, or all of the above.  There are theories that the escalating trade tensions between the United States and China have unintentionally begun to choke out North Korea’s primary trade partners, thus making them suffer, forcing them to become desperate and take these measures.  Both are somewhat logical and justifiable to why seemingly out of the blue, North Korea has been open to meeting with South Korea.

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