Tag: crime

Oh, Atlanta #577

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these but obviously, it’s the same old song and dance that I just don’t have the time.  Honestly I feel like if I ever wanted to do one of these every day, I’m sure I could find a story absurd enough to warrant a post.  But there are days like today where the story came to me for a change of pace, and upon seeing it, I knew it was inevitable that I had to write about it:

Deadly shooting occurs at a Subway; over too much mayonnaise being put on a sandwich.  I really can’t make this shit up, even if I tried.  But to expound on the unfortunate situation, basically a Subway employee put too much mayo on a customer’s sandwich, they became irate, and then words began being exchanged, and the next thing you know, they’re opening fire into the restaurant and killing the employee.  The manager on duty promptly returns fire because of course they’re packing too, and the whole thing ends with the shooter arrested, an employee dead, with the employee’s sister who also worked there, also shot and in critical condition.

Also, the 5-year old kid of one of the women struck was there and watched their mom get shot.

Typically, these kinds of posts are dripping in sarcasm and are more of a you’ve got to be kidding me in an ironically judgmental funny way, and I’ll be honest that this is how I felt when I started writing about it.  But honestly, it’s nothing really funny about it is as much as it’s just fucked up and sad that there are people out there that genuinely felt that the best course of action to resolve the dissatisfaction at getting too much mayo on their fucking Subway sandwich is to pull out a gun and start shooting like Yosemite Sam.

I know this particular Subway, and where it is, and it is very much not in a particularly good part of town.  It’s riding a line where everything east of it is touched by the magic gentrification fairy, and are in a period of where there are people hoping to cash in on rising property values and get paid, but on the west side of the thoroughfare is basically still the Jurassic Park of ghettos.  So it’s not really any surprise that this kind of incident happened at this part of town, but it’s still tragic and fucked up that there’s literally a person dead over mayonnaise on a sandwich.

Guess all that’s really left for me to say is that I’m sure glad I don’t work or really have any business being in the city proper anymore, because I’d sure hate to get in the crossfire of any sort of altercation over shitty fast food.

Oh, Atlanta #376

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I last did one of these, yeah?  Mostly on account of the fact that in all the time between the last one and this one, the chance were pretty high that I simply just wasn’t checking any news, local or national, because I simply did not have the time and/or capacity to do so, and potentially run into something that makes words roll off the tongue (or fingertips) to brog about in the first place.  But sure as the rain falls in Georgia summers, I check the local news, the chances are high that I’m going to see something stupid that warrants some word barf.

Like these billboards that have been hung up in a few places in Greenville, South Carolina and now making their way into Atlanta, that supposedly are trying to send a message to the youths of these areas, to put guns down and presumably stop shooting other people.

At the core of these, the message is noble, and something that I do support; reducing gun violence.  But when it comes down to branding, awareness, the execution of a billboard, there’s just so much more wrong that I just can’t help but clown on it.

Like, I don’t know where to even start.  Do I go on about how the focal point of the message is all jacked up and could lead to misinformation, because GUNS NOW is all huge, that someone zipping by I-85 in Greenville or Atlanta, where the posted speed limits are anywhere from 55-70 mph with actual motorists usually going 80+, might not see the smaller text and just see GUNS NOW and become motivated to arm themselves?

Or that maybe in Atlanta where the gun violence is high but the education is low in the areas in which these billboards are up, the order of the messaging isn’t comprehended appropriately, and the wrong people read it as “put down the young people, GUNS NOW” and then they start breaking into other peoples’ cars to find guns, succeed, and then start shooting, young people.

Perhaps it’s the fact that “like” is in quotation marks, as if to encourage people to tongue-in-cheek, air quotes like them on, presumably, Facebook, because there’s a tiny-ass logo, but really don’t.  The use of quotation marks creates more confusing to their message than clarity, and confusion usually leads to harm.

The best part about it is that there’s no actual call to action on the billboard itself; I guess the closest thing is the fact that there is a Facebook logo, but really it’s up to Google to find this organization for you.  To its credit, it wasn’t that difficult to find a Facebook page of the same name which appears to be one and the same, but then there are all these visuals of inconsistent naming; the billboard says “Put Down the Guns Now Young People” but then there’s a bigass banner where the gun is no longer plural, and as someone in marketing, all I can do is shake my head and wince at the inconsistent use of messaging, which is among the top three faux pas when it comes to any sort of establishing brand voice.

Either way, although the message is noble and one that I could get behind, the execution is just far too shoddy and ineffective at getting its point across that I’m afraid I might be more encouraged to get a GUN NOW, because seeing those words in a giant splatter of blood makes me feel like I might need to arm myself to protect myself from those vile young people.

Well this is awkward

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Imagine going to work where you know your superiors do not want you there and would be happy for you to leave.  For absolutely no reason other than you do not fit in the ideal team in their heads.  So they ride you incessantly, nitpick every little thing you do, second guess every single action you make and generally make every day difficult in some way, shape, or form – with the goal of trying to make you leave.

But finding a new job or transferring to a different team is actually a whole lot harder than people seem to forget, and with a second baby on the way, the upcoming paternity leave is way more valuable and essential at this current juncture than your professional comfort, so you grit your teeth and smile and navigate each day after day, enduring the bullshit with a more important goal in the horizon.

However, since the superiors have failed to grief you until you quit, they have resorted to straight up war: looking for any and every procedural infraction they can find, and writing you up for them, putting you on an official disciplinary probation, where job termination is one of the potential outcomes, and most likely their intended goal at the end of the lengthy journey.

I don’t like to brog about work, because most of the time it’s boring, rarely is it cool, unless it’s a freelance gig that I can actually be proud of.  But the little hypothetical tale detailed above is precisely where I’m at right now, and I’m in a position of where I’m quite upset, angry to even think about describing it, and disgusted beyond belief that I work with people like this.

Continue reading “Well this is awkward” →

The best advertising, is free

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’ll get the brand out there: US border agents uncover $4.6 million dollars’ worth of meth hidden inside of numerous The Home Depot signature buckets

That’s one of the downsides of slapping such prevalent branding onto very useful and utilitarian things like 5-gallon buckets; occasionally, someone’s going to do something bad with them, and next thing you know, your company’s name is being mentioned in the same breath as terms like “methamphetamine” and “cocaine.”  Then there will be all sorts of people who will waltz into a Home Depot over the next few weeks and point and snicker at the stacks of 5-gallon Homer buckets for sale at every store in America and wonder if it comes with any meth.

Forget about the hilariously futile attempt by some shitty drug runners to try and hide 216 lbs. of meth inside of a couple of buckets, because that’s a lot of fucking meth to be hauling inside of a single Ford F-150.  I mean seriously, didn’t they watch Breaking Bad?  Gus Fring barely smuggled like 2 lbs. of meth inside of entire shipping trucks, and that was dunked inside of fry batter and hidden among 100 other buckets inside of a refrigerated truck.

It’s the fact that they used Home Depot’s bright-ass orange buckets and thought nobody would notice these plastic cylinders that are brighter than the fucking sun, and maybe hoped it would be so obvious that nobody would look, but then they tried to smuggle over 200 lbs. of likely shitty pre-Walter White grade meth over the border.

Regardless, I had to smirk and laugh to myself when I saw this story, because inadvertent as it may be, it’s impossible to not disclose The Home Depot’s name when describing this story, and I like to think that somewhere at HQ, sure they’re not worried about it affecting their bottom line, but still wince and cringe at the simple fact that their brand, name and identity is momentarily attached to drug runners, meth and trafficking.

But hey, there’s no such thing as bad advertising, right??

Oh, Atlanta #819

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: cops execute some raids on a home on account of investigating a meth operation, unearth a motherlode of meth, but in the process also discover that the owners of the property are also running a cockfighting ring

There’s not a lot to really say about the situation; meth is dangerous, cockfighting is inhumane, both are highly illegal.  Cops had just cause to raid for one thing, find out that there’s a second thing going on in the process.  77 lbs. of meth, plus a bunch of pissed off chickens ready to kill motherfuckers.  Kinda fucked up on all accounts, no matter what way you look at it.

But what drew my attention in this whole story is that, as a former resident of South Fulton county, this is a region that I’m pretty familiar with.  The two raids happened at properties where the streets are disclosed, and the interesting thing about them is that they all occurred less than a mile away from the Fulton County South services center.

I’ve been to the services center more times than I’d like to have had in my life, because it’s the place where tags are issued, among other things, but the reason I point this out is that it’s also a place that at any given time, is crawling with police.  I don’t know the specifics, but I’m pretty certain there’s police training, some modicum of local court businesses going on, but the bottom line is that it’s basically a police station among other county-related operations.

Basically, this whole meth and cockfighting ring, was happening less than a mile away from a police station.  There’s a lot of context missing in the details, most notably time frames, so the jury’s out on whether it’s ironic or not to say, fucking brilliant.

But if I’m a betting man, I’d have to lean that there was probably a lot more meth produced and a lot of illegal cockfighting that occurred before any busts actually happen, because government is slow to act or react, plus South Fulton county is about as competent as a Walmart greeter is at stopping theft.

So cockfighting and meth happening just a stone’s throw away from a police station?  That’s an Oh, Atlanta post if there ever was one to come back with.

Re: The Atlanta Asian Spa Murders

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic.  Very few of them coherent.  Every day since the news broke of a white guy too heavily armed, killing eight people in the Metro Atlanta region, way too close to where my family and I live, it’s been a shit show all over social media and the internet with all the news, opinions and just, overwhelming chatter going on.

There’s so much noise, that I can’t really find the capacity to formulate rational thoughts on the topic.  There’s nothing I could say that hasn’t already been said by someone else, from all ends of the spectrum.  I don’t know whether to be upset, mad, frustrated or annoyed, by all the perceived rhetoric, white privilege, seemingly fake and topical social activism, and all the sudden allies in arms for Asian communities.

Frankly, I just don’t have the time to think much about it, and I honestly would rather not, not because I don’t care, quite the contrary, but because I just have way too much going on in my life at home, that it’s really hard to find the capacity to think about much else that happens outside of it.

But because the internet doesn’t know how to ever shut the fuck up, it’s impossible to avoid and it’s impossible to not be exposed and revealed to fresh information as it’s constantly coming out, in spite of the embarrassingly high amount of empathy and consideration given to a mass murderer simply because of the lack of color in his skin.  So here we are, where I feel like I have to say something in spite of how much I really wish I didn’t, but I feel like if anything at all, I’ll look back at this post when the On This Day plug-in brings it back up in a future year(s) and go oh yeah, that shit DID happen, and America didn’t change one fucking iota as a result of it and all the non-Asian allies went back to their regularly scheduled lives the following Monday when Falcon & The Winter Soldier dropped on Disney+ and everyone moved onto the next shiny topic.

So all I’ll really say is that only in America can people get so misdirected by fighting over what the intent of murders were, that the actual murders themselves are basically rendered secondary in importance.  As if there’s any difference in a sexual motivation or racial one, when eight people are fucking dead, not to mention that it’s very fucking possible for it to have been both at the same time.

To once again say that America Sucks is among the grossest understatements there could possibly be, and this is one of those times where I just want everyone to shut the fuck up.  About their rage, about their convenient recency bias support of Asian communities, and just stop fucking talking and recognize that a bunch of people were gunned down by an angry white guy who was having a really bad day.

I fucking hate this place, sometimes.