And of course, Happy New Years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s now 2014.  For the next 183 days, we are winding up the year, with hopes and aspirations of the best outcomes for ourselves and those we care about.  I don’t feel that 2013 was terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but we as human beings all love to feel optimistic that the following year should always strive to be better.  I have no problem with that.

For me, the year started off pleasantly, in the company of fine people, and admittedly pretty tanked.  There are text messages sent that I don’t remember, and this photo that I was too hammered to bother tagging people on that someone less inebriated than I took the liberty to do instead.  I used to feel that New Years Eves were supposed to be awesome and grandiose, but when the day is over, a chill evening with decent people is all I really want to bring in the next year.

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In regards to New Year resolutions

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I made a New Year resolution in 2013.  I failed to fulfill it.  The bar was set pretty low, too.

Going into 2014, I will not absolve or swear off making any resolutions, quite contrary, I think I’m going to repeat my 2013 resolution and try again; but with the bar set even lower.  The lowest it can possibly go.

If I fail to fulfill my resolution in 2014, then I am clearly not working, and changes will have to be made.

The obligatory reflecting on the year post

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Favorite musical discovery: Postmodern Jukebox

I know that we as people like to encapsulate chunks of time into nice round denominations, like years, but I have to say that with each passing year, I feel like time just seems to fly by, and it’s harder to encapsulate everything as easily as it once may have seemed. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not really going to try.

Perhaps the difficulty is in the fact that at least in my case, 2013 was a pretty ordinary year. By no means does that automatically imply that 2013 was a bad year by any stretch of the imagination, it just wasn’t one that particularly stands out in my opinion. Otherwise, I think I’d be in the situation of where I couldn’t wait to reflect on the year as a whole, so it would be a convenient excuse for me to get to relive and revisit thing(s) that were exceptionally good.

It’s a good and a bad thing that I’m such a dedicated and consistent brogger when it comes to being able to look back in time. It’s particularly good when I’m capable of finding anything that was particularly good that happened in a year’s time, because I’m a fairly open person, and I’m definitely sure to write about anything that’s made me happy or put me in a good mood. Contrarily, it works both ways, because I’m just as apt to write about the things that upset me or make me unhappy, to varying degrees of clarity and vagueness.

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Best American Horror Story season yet?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

All throughout the year, my DVR box accumulates shows I want to ultimately watch, but don’t really often do.  Part of it has to do with the fact that there aren’t really that many opportunities in which both Jen and myself are free at the same time to where we can watch an episode here and there, but then there’s also a lot of time that I spend playing LoL that I really could be using to catch on television shows.  But for all intents and purposes, it’s safe to say that I’m pretty much always behind when it comes to television programming.

So over the holidays, I was able to catch up with all nine-aired episodes of the third season of American Horror Story, the Coven arc.  I have been thus far pleased with it, and I can easily say that visually, it is my favorite season yet.  The filmography is stimulating, and the creative use of filters and fisheye perspectives really help accentuate the bright and sterile-looking settings that the show takes place in, contrasting to the dark and sinister atmosphere of the show’s actual story.

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Where will the chain-hating madness end??

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I was reading this article about how the Red Lobster brand is being considered to be sold off of or restructured into a bastardized spin-off of its former shell by parent company Darden, and I couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy over the notion that Red Lobster in one way shape or form, is dying.  One, I love lobsters, two, Red Lobster’s periodic endless shrimp offer is among the best things in the world, and three, it should be nothing new for my six readers that I’m a nostalgic kind of person who sure, understands the necessity of change, but at the same time isn’t always the most readily accepting of it.

But the point of me writing this post is questioning the modern defiant trend of people who try their hardest to avoid eating at chain restaurants, like a Red Lobster, Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday or Olive Garden.  Even the article alludes to this notion:

It seems that consumers are turning their noses up at hoity-toity sit-down places like Red Lobster and Olive Garden these days in favor of cheaper chains like Chipotle.

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Merry Christmas!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really have a whole lot to say about the occasion, so I’ll let the picture do most of the talking for me.

It was nice to sleep in for two weekdays, and naturally they have felt way too short, but I can say that it was a pleasant and relaxing Christmas for me. I have probably eaten too much over the last few days, and will probably eat more than I should in the coming week or two, but that’s kind of what the holidays are all about, in some capacity.

And it was nice to finally catch up with a lot of the shows accumulating on the ol’ DVR, like American Horror Story: Coven and the fourth season of The Walking Dead.

Why are Asians so fixated on brand names?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Being both American-born as well as the gigantic hypocrite that I am, I believe I have the convenient luxury of cherry-picking when it’s convenient to associate Asian traits to myself, or when I curl my upper lip, take a step back, and say “whoa, I was born in the States.”

A little while back, I was way the hell up in Dawsonville at the outlet mall.  Normally, going to an outlet mall in December, much less all the way up in Dawsonville is about as good of an idea as running blindfolded with scissors, but I was doing my best impression of being gracious and accommodating.

Dawsonville, for lack of a better term, is country as fuck.  The population of the town is like 3,000 people, and it makes me believe that outlet malls are stuck in desolate country towns like Dawsonville, just so that it can stimulate the economies of both the town and the surrounding area.  The most notable people to have ever come from Dawsonville are some former NASCAR driver “Awesome Bill From Dawsonville” Wallace, and apparently former pro-wrestler, Bill Goldberg lived there for a spell.

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