Tag: observations

Dad Brog (#142): Ending the pipeline

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not really sure how this post is going to turn out, but there’s inherently a lot of thoughts swirling around my head to the point where I feel like I should write something about it, but I’m getting a vasectomy.

Despite the fact that mythical wife and I are most certainly, definitely, irrefutably done with having any kids, admittedly there’s still something there in the noggin about the sheer finality of getting the snip, and although they are supposedly reversible, the intent is clear – I am not going to have any more kids ever again.  This, was always part of the plan, and yet there’s something, perhaps it’s the fact that I’ll have to have a surgery and I’ve never had any sort of surgery in my life before, or maybe it’s just the finality of the intent and scenario of it that has me feeling a little weird.

Make no mistake though, I don’t want anymore kids.  We don’t want anymore kids, mythical wife and I.  There is a 0% chance that I’m going to chicken out and not go through with it, not to mention the fact that I’ll be out $300 if I did, and I fucking hate the idea of wasted money as much as anything else, but I’d be lying if I weren’t feeling some strange feelings of apprehension and melancholy about what I’m going to go through.

But despite all the weird feelings and emotions, I know it in my head that I’m 100% making the right call and I will have no regrets afterward.  I have my children, they’re perfect and they’re all I want, and I have no desire to father anymore kids in my life.  Despite how many times I’ve been strapped for cash in my life and despite the curiosity and the enticement of getting paid to pleasure myself, I’ve never donated sperm before; I don’t want any mystery kids borne of a random selection in a catalog to a woman I don’t know showing up in my life later on.  As far as I am concerned, my genetics are ending, and if there was ever some form or archaic desire for my family’s genes to continue on, then that’s up to my daughters to do, if they ever so choose to procreate in the future.

Plus, the world is going backwards, and somehow women pretty much have fewer reproductive rights than they did before I was born which is a whole other can of worms that tends to make me feel sad for my wife, my daughters, and all the women in the world that I have care for, so it genuinely feels like I’m doing my part of being responsible, and being an ally by going through with a vasectomy, especially since I am most definitely done with having any additional children.

The last thing my household needs to have in their lives is an oops situation, where corrective measures couldn’t be utilized without becoming a fugitive, and the only legal alternative is to have another child, that wasn’t planned for.  Absolutely not.

So yeah, I’m going under the knife (or laser or whatever), and despite the weird state of mind the whole thing has me feeling as the clock ticks closer to my appointment, I know it in my head and in my heart that it is the right thing to do, and I will have no regrets about it.  I have my perfect kids, don’t want more, and mythical wife has done enough as far as shouldering the pain in the ass burden when it comes to further responsibilities.

Pretty sure the Dodgers are banking on the world ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not a lot to like about the Dodgers winning the World Series; it’s precisely what MLB had wanted when they wrote their script for the 2024 season, with golden boy Shohei Ohtani having one of the greatest seasons in baseball history and then capping it off with a world championship.  It validated the importance of spending money, because the Dodgers spent money like they had the infinite money code in Sim City, and there was no plucky Cinderella squad to dethrone them and give hearty lols to baseball fans outside the greater Los Angeles area.

But personally, I think worst of all is that it opened the door for Dodgers fans, most of whom are fairweather front-running troglodytes whom it’s clear to see how short of a time they’ve been Dodger or baseball fans, based on how loud they are on the internet about their sudden unyielding fandom of the team.  I haven’t seen such fervent sore winning from any fanbase, including Philadelphia; those cocksuckers flip a few cars, set fire to them, have a parade, and then it’s back to normal the following week.

The thing is, now that the Dodgers have won an actual championship, as opposed to the Mickey Mouse COVID World Series from 2020, all these slimes claiming to be Dodgers fans are all over the fucking place now, celebrating everything the team does, which also happens to be MLB’s favorite squad, much like all the memes that exist about how the NFL so flagrantly favors the Kansas City Chiefs.

And when there’s such blatant favoritism, then the rich tend to get richer, and the Dodgers have made a lot of news during the offseason, not just with Ohtani winning the National League MVP that was a formality, but the fact that despite the fact that they committed over a billion dollars to free agents last winter, they’ve invented some more currency and have gone ahead and committed even more money to signing Balakey Snell (5 years, $182M) and extending Tommy Edman (5 years, $74M).

Naturally, this raises a lot of questions on how the Dodgers are funding their roster full of All-Stars, MVPs and Cy Young winners, at top-dollar contracts, and the answer is really quite simple: the Dodgers are spamming the ever-living fuck out of deferring money, and are completely comfortable at accruing colossal amounts of debt that will be due to be paid way down the line.

What a lot the people who are crying foul on the internet don’t really understand is that what the Dodgers are doing is 100% completely legal and allowed, it’s just the fact that there’s no team in history that has been this flagrant and so quick and willing to basically sign almost every one of their big-name free agents to deferred money deals.  Most teams are owned and operated by businesses and many businesses tend to err on the side of risk-averse, and being risk-averse usually means an aversion to accruing debts, especially those of which are measured in literal hundreds of millions of dollars.

Continue reading “Pretty sure the Dodgers are banking on the world ending” →

Strange, but not entirely unsurprising

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s this house I sometimes pass on my way to work, if I decide to take a certain route.  I’ve always noticed it for a variety of reasons; it was clearly a home where the property was purchased, and a lot of money was sunk into changing the landscaping of the property tremendously, as well as some modifications to the home itself.  In short, the landscaping of the property, behind the metal picket fence, is very ornate and kind of looks like Mr. Miyagi designed the property, based on the lush greenery and non-traditional (read: not white people) aesthetics.

There was one day I drove past, and the garage was open, and I noticed that they had a red NSX, which aren’t necessarily my favorite cars, but they are pretty rare in this day and age, so the fact that they had one, which looked to be in pretty immaculate state is still noteworthy and memorable.  Furthermore, they also had a Kei-truck, which I’ve heard are no longer legally approved to be imported to Georgia anymore, not sure how that goes, but again, having one of those also makes a property stand out. 

Because they’re clearly a giant weeb.

So color me a little surprised that one day driving by this home, and there’s a Trump/Vance sign in front of their house, also surreptitiously planted after the election.  It’s just like a, strange juxtaposition of personal interests and political preferences, to see a home clearly resided by a giant weeb who’s all into Japanese automotive, Japanese landscaping and architecture, but then is also into right-wing bigot ideology.

I actually don’t know the nationality of the person who lives in this property, but I have to assume it’s a white guy based on the sign alone, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it were an actual Japanese-American, probably of the older variety who immigrated legally in ancient times and harbors a lot of angst towards illegal immigrants and is drunk on the kool aid. 

But really, I’m thinking it’s probably just some white jarhead who is probably a veteran, lived in Japan for a little while, fell in love with stuff like their cars, aesthetics, but eventually came back to America, got drunk on the orange kool aid, but was still all into Japanese shit, not grasping the irony of their preferences versus their political brainwashing.

Either way, I figured the person living there was just a dorky weeb, but now I definitively know that the person living there is bigot, on top of being a dorky weeb.  Hashtag ‘murica.

LoL: Arcane, season 2 – so unprecedently good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What a week for Netflix-dropping both Cobra Kai S6.2 and Arcane S2 on the same week!  Much to the dismay of mythical wife, I went with Cobra Kai first, primarily on the fact that because the episodes are so short and generally way more digestible, despite my guilty-pleasure love for the show, I really wanted to clear it from the queue so that I could really savor and enjoy Arcane S2, which I knew was going to be the way heavier show.  I regret nothing, and the fact that I’m writing about Arcane and not another post about Cobra Kai says what left a stronger impression in the end.

To cut to the chase, I would go as far as to state without any hesitation or real need to think about it, that Arcane is probably the greatest video game-to-on-screen adaptation, like ever.  The bar of such a category wasn’t really that high to begin with, but I would say that it was previously set at like, a generic office building height of like 16 stories, but then Arcane came along and pushed the bar to the height of like that one gigantic ass building in Qatar or Abu Dhabi that’s considered the tallest building on the planet.

Like, despite my heavy criticism for Riot Games as far as business practices and bad behavior goes, and how critical I am of the League of Legends community, mostly being a nuclear toxic wasteland of the worst human beings in existence, Arcane combatted and overcame these handicaps and still put out an absolutely legendary banger of a program that I’m hard pressed to say anything negative about, because it was just so wonderfully executed from top to bottom.

The art style is breathtaking, the voice acting top-notch, and the writing and storytelling was A+ from start to finish.  There are plenty of easter eggs and references to satiate fans of the game, while not at all being difficult for those who didn’t play to watch without failing to understand what’s going on.

As I said from the first season, it’s all so good, it almost makes me want to start playing the game, and if not for the fact that I’m a parent who never has any time on his hands and can’t fathom the amount of time I sunk into playing League in the past, I would consider re-downloading the game and looking around at the virtual arenas that I dumped a solid 5-6 years of my life into.

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin on how to praise how good this show is.  They do a bang up job of utilizing existing characters, and the ones they invented for the show meld so seamlessly with them that doesn’t feel forced, feels organic and feels cohesive.  Ambessa and Mel feel like they belong in the original game’s canon all along, and their general arcs and development feed well into the overall storytelling of the show.

Viewers like me become emotionally vested in the characters, and despite the fact that as a player, Jinx was one of my mains, but just in general, I’ve grown tired of the Harley Quinn-type of mentally unstable girl that seems chaotic and unkillable while also happening to be harboring genius level intelligence hidden behind a façade of psycho, by utilizing her history and life as Powder, she’s still a character to get behind, and not tire of her antics when she’s Jinx.  Even though it’s not simple to deconstruct a Harley Quinn-type, Arcane does such in a way that is realistic and allows for actual growth and development instead of plateauing with more of the same psychotic behavior.

The one character I probably had the most feelings about after watching S2 was probably Ekko; I never played him in the game, and I always dreaded seeing an Ekko on the opposite team, but his treatment in the show was done to perfection.  In spite of the fact that he wasn’t nearly as focused on in the first season, he was a major, major player in S2, and despite my general ambivalence for his character based on my history as a player, he was easily someone I was definitely vested in during the show.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that scene in the show with Caitlyn and Vi; like I’m surprised that it happened, and happened so graphically, and there’s a multitude of feelings of surprised that the show and Netflix let it happen, but at the same time, I applaud the acceptance, the portrayal and the acknowledgement of all of the above, and I can sum it up in a singular word of “bold” and much like how I feel about the rest of the show, I think it was done appropriately, and not even from a sophomoric standpoint as much as it’s commendable that it was done in a manner that doesn’t hide from it, feels emotional and real, and probably gave long-time fans who felt similarly a moment to pump their fists in what feels like a metaphorical win.

Oh and the music of the season, my god.  I don’t seek out and look for new music these days, I’m usually content to occasionally stumble across an artist when it’s spoon-fed through me on Pandora or Sirius, but the soundtrack from S2 was out of this world.  I especially love the fact that it was pulling from all sorts of songs of other languages, and I felt like it was a little deliberate nod by Rito to do such, due to the global reach of the game itself, and if there was a soundtrack of it on iTunes, I’d be compelled to actually spend money on it.

As I’ve said countless times in my life when thinking about shows, films, books and any forms of storytelling, endings are the hardest thing in the world to come up with, and big props to Arcane for also not fumbling that aspect of the show.  Seldom are stories ever truly wrapped up in neat little bows, and Arcane is no exception, but at the same time it’s probably for the best, because to my understanding, Arcane may be over, but Rito definitely isn’t going to not want to tap the wells of numerous other League worlds to source future media from, so it’s best to keep things open ended for the sake of future shows or movies.

Overall, I can’t say anything bad about Arcane.  I really can’t.  I would give the show a solid 10/10 and not one of those bullshit reviews where internet reviewers give it a 9.8 or 9.9 out of 10 because people who review shit are hipsters who are convinced that shit isn’t supposed to be perfection, but as far as I’m concerned, I have no justifiable critiques about Arcane.  Art style, direction, voice over work, storytelling, music, plot, absolutely everything was good.  Not even mad that it was just two seasons, because if they dragged it out, it would inevitably open the door for flaws, this was just A++ show execution from top to bottom, and I’d recommend most everyone to watch this show, because it doesn’t take a history of playing League to enjoy it, and it’s just straight up excellent televison.

Fuzzy the Clingstone: as if it were going to be anything remotely interesting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Braves’ AA-affiliate Columbus Clingstones announce the name of their mascot – Fuzzy

Naturally, I didn’t expect much when I found out that the Columbus Clingstones were seeking out a name for their anamorphic peach mascot.  Not that they’re being forced by the Braves like they once used to, but being a Braves affiliate still means they’re not going to do anything remotely interesting or willing to rock the boat.  I didn’t know, nor did I really care to look into what the other options were,* but considering “Fuzzy” won out, I can’t imagine that they were possibly anything competitively intriguing.

*Fuzzy, Pit, Stoney and Cobbler; yep, nothing exciting

Fuzzy is the name that a three-year old toddler names their favorite stuffed bear.  Or any sort of stuffed thing that comes into their possession that they declare in two seconds that they want to have forever and is already their best friend.  I love my kids, but they’re still too young to be coming up with some seriously clever and/or meta thinking names for the things they want to name yet, but they’re also four and three years old, and I have a hard time believing that of the alleged 675 fan suggestions, they were all toddlers.

Unsurprising though, considering the lukewarm response to naming themselves the Clingstones, a term that most people outside of the southeast have never even heard of, that they would go with an absolute snoozefest of a name like Fuzzy.

I was hoping that the Clingstones would’ve carried on a trope started by the AAA-affiliate of the Braves, when they were crowdsourcing for a new name; they came up with four finalists, had a voting period, and when the vote was over, they announced a name that wasn’t even one of the options to begin with, the Stripers.  In all fairness, the Stripers was way better than all of the available options so it wasn’t all for the worst, and considering what options the people of Columbus had to pick from, it would’ve been both hilarious and productive if the same kind of thing happened here as well.

Frankly, as much as I like the actual mascot of Fuzzy (what can I say, I’m a sucker for anamorphic food mascots), I hate the name.  It would’ve been great if they had their silly little voting period, and then in the end, went ahead and declared that the name of the mascot be Clinger, the Clingstone.

And with a name like that, it can create all sorts of room for interpretation, but most prevalently the fact that a clinger is an allegory for a little turd that is stuck to a creature’s butt, which seems appropriate for the absolute flop of a naming rebrand the Columbus baseball organization did.

It’s like, I really like the colors, the mascot, the general aesthetic of the team; but the names Clingstones and Fuzzy the mascot are just colossal whiffs.  It’s like I wish the team could borrow the Time Stone from Dr. Strange or Thanos, rewind just far back enough to where they got to the point where the brand kid was complete but didn’t have a name, and just re-did reality to where they might have gone with other names before the Clingstones and subsequently, Fuzzy.

But at least it served as impetus to create an image of Fuzzy the Clingstone being the clinger that the names of the team are in my opinion, and poop jokes sell, in my little slice of the internet.

Jaguar’s new logo = Publix Supermarkets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Trent Crimm, The Independent: Jaguar unveils new branding and logo and the crowd goes mild but eventually more into ire

I don’t particularly care much for Jaguar as far as cars go, they’ve always been a little pretentious and overrated as far as my tastes are concerned, but I also wouldn’t put them in the category of cars that I wouldn’t ever get if I had the means necessary.  Their aesthetics aren’t really my cup of tea, but I can like what I see on a paper when it comes to performance specs.

That being said, put me in the camp of people whose interest in the car company most definitely trended downward upon seeing their rebranding.  Jaguar becoming JaGUar, with this absolute masterclass of horseshit spinning from their corresponding press release:

seamlessly blended upper and lower case characters in visual harmony”

Nah, of course it’s not as cerebral as that.  The designer, and I use that term loosely, didn’t like the way the lowercase G looked and didn’t like the extra stroke that the lower case U had and went with upper case variants which looked more seamless; and then the right VPs, with their wealth of artistic credibility, happened to like the way it looked, gave it the green light, and away we go.

Looking at it made me immediately think about Publix Supermarkets’ logo and possibly the Beats by Dre identity,* but mostly Publix, and it always amazes me when the brand designers of the world don’t really take any time to research the logos of the world and take a modicum of effort to not look like someone else’s identity.  Because then rogue designers like me can’t clown on them and make the easy swap of logo into what they really look like, and if I’m someone with any clout, or at least tempted to try and engage Publix on social media and post this graphic just to see their reaction.

*also there’s this regional adult store chain that also utilizes a similar typeface that I always see billboards for while driving to Disney World that is somewhat related to the jaguar animal kekeke

All the same, it’s kind of sad.  I might not have been that high on Jaguar as a brand, but their identity was pretty unmistakable, with the silhouette of the jaguar leaping over a fairly nondescript bold all-caps wordmark.  But there’s this overarching cry in the design community, that modern branding is all metamorphosizing into a very diluted pool of vanilla “safe” logos that are all looking the same and homogenized into these blobs of non-personality.  Serifs and symbols have become enemies, variations of Helvetica Neue and Gotham are overtaking visual identities everywhere, and with JaGUar’s rebranding, another long-standing reputable brand has deliberately chosen to converge with the masses and adopt a boring, vanilla, forgettable identity, once the initial reactions and internet ridicule all die down.

That being said, I think it’s only a matter of time before JaGUar releases some turd on wheels that’s a hybrid crossover CUV that looks just like a Corolla Cross or a Buick Encore, and then we will truly know that JaGUar has really given up on trying to compete in the market as much as they’re just trying to blend in and hide in plain sight.

I mean with a logo that looks like this, they’re already halfway there.

If this were my Korean family, I’d jump out a window

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

FOX26: 17-year, 8 month girl passes the California bar exam, breaking the record for youngest person to do so, previously held by, her brother, besting him by three months

Originally, this was just going to be a fairly predictable, forgettable post about how tryhard these Korean teenagers are, how they propagate Korean stereotypes and make it harder for the rest of the Koreans on the planet that don’t want to be doctor or lawyer and have to go to Harvard or Yale, but then I found this specific article that did a little bit of a dive into their entire family, and then the whole thing kind of turned into a horror story that makes me feel all triggered and grateful that this wasn’t my life growing up.

But when I found out about these tryhard teens who both passed the California bar at the age of 17, my first thought was that man, I certainly hope they don’t have any younger siblings, because the bar set by their asshole elder siblings is going to be one hell of a lofty goal to aspire to best.  And then I found this article that goes in depth to their entire family and not only is there one younger sibling, there’s actually two more kids in line behind the brother and sister who passed the bar at 17.

My next thought was that man, life is going to suck for the two of those younger siblings.

Turns out that the 14-year old next in line, is already in her second year of law school.  I don’t know how long law school goes, but I’m going to imagine that she’s probably going to do whatever it takes in order to take the bar exam when she’s like 16 years old, and will probably kill herself if she fails to best her nuna.

But if she succeeds?  Man, it’s going to suck to be the baby of this family, who’s just eight years old now, but will probably have to pass the bar at 15 in order to keep up with the escalating expectations that his asshole siblings keep heaping onto him.  But the little nerd has already declared his intention of being an attorney as well, to the point where he’s dressing up as a little Korean Carlton Banks, pretending to be an attorney already.

Man though, the thought of if this was my own Korean family growing up, just makes want to go all Tommen Baratheon if I were the baby of this family and not of my own.

The best part is that neither of the parents aren’t even lawyers either; appa is a patent clerk, and umma is a baking teacher, and apparently the two of them somehow had House Hunters finances to embark on having four fucking kids. 

I can’t imagine the old-world Korean pressures that they put on their kids to the point where they not only managed to get not just one, not just two, but three and potentially all four kids to actually want to become full-ass lawyers.  Lord knows my parents and probably countless Korean parents across America would love to invent a time machine to go to the future, abduct these parents to bring them back to their children’s childhoods and learn how to brainwash them into wanting to become lawyers themselves.

This family sounds like they have to be the biggest squares on the fucking planet, giving Koreans a sad name of being so overachieving and so tryhard.  I imagine family dinners must be a real hoot, with a whole bunch of lawyers around the table, and when they get together with extended family, I’m sure all the cousins and aunts and uncles are real thrilled when they roll in luxury cars that budding lawyer salaries are financing, full of tryhards ready to argue and rebut and well actually everything anyone says.

Sure, they will inevitably make a ton of money if they all climb the lawyer ladders they’re aspiring to climb, but all the same I have no other envy for them.  I’m sure their life is nothing like Suits, is tremendously more boring, and that these nerds probably have even less hobbies than a drowning dad like me.