Tag: crime

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.

TFW your BAC is higher than your career BA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again in spite of the fact that like a year ago, it’s probably still not a very good idea, but because Major League Baseball is a machine that demands its financial tithe, the 2021 season is a-go, and it’s Spring Training all over parts of Florida and Arizona, or wherever each team is actually deciding to try and get their bodies into shape for another unnecessary season of sports while a pandemic is still very much in play.

But the specific time in which I am referring to is that with Spring Training afoot, it’s only a matter of time before a baseball player, personnel, executive or alum, makes the news having gotten a DUI, most likely from a little too much fraternization and/or having a good time with the boys.

In this case, it was an alum, in former All-Star outfielder Johnny Damon, getting pulled over and arrested for driving under the influence in Florida. And naturally, because it’s completely relevant to the conversation, the article makes sure to mention that in his baseball career, he had 2,796 hits, 235 home runs, and a career batting average of .284.

It’s one of my favorite clichés about professional athletes getting in trouble with the law.

However in this case, it actually does provide a little bit of interesting context, because batting average is a decimal number measured by three digits, much like a breathalyzer test, and in the case of Johnny Damon’s two tests, he allegedly blew both a .300 and a .294, to which I hope most people can do the math, is well past three times the legal limit of .080. I mean, anything over .000 is illegal in the state of Georgia and I’m okay with that frankly because (in a non-pandemic world) ridesharing has made any sort of driving with any booze in the system completely unnecessary.

But back to the topic at hand, not only is .294 a staggeringly high blood alcohol content that literally states that nearly 30% of his body’s blood diluted by booze, it’s higher than his career batting average. Which is ironically impressive, because a career .284 batting average is actually pretty quite good, so the fact that he was able to surpass his batting average on a night out is pretty amazing.

Obviously in the grand spectrum of things this is really pathetic; most baseball fans know Damon as kind of face of the 2004 Red Sox that came back from the 3-0 deficit to the Yankees and ultimately won the World Series, but now he’s this sad sack of retired professional athlete with too much time, privilege and money to do stupid shit, like get trashed three times the legal limit. More than likely Damon won’t do any sort of time or get anything more than a fine and slap on the wrist, whereas any ordinary American would be in pound-me-in-the-ass prison by now, most definitely if it were any sort of person of color. But since there’s little anyone can actually do about it, all we can really do, is make jokes.

Patience is a virtue

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: teenage Kroger employee in Gwinnett County arrested for stealing nearly $1 million dollars from his employer over the span of several weeks

The thing is, if this kid only paced himself and didn’t make it flagrantly obvious that something was amiss by refunding an $87,000+ transaction among the other $900,000 worth of refunds he issued to himself over two weeks, he probably would’ve had a system that could’ve stole about as much money with almost no risk.  But when you steal nearly a million dollars from your employer by issuing false refunds, from the same store you work at, within the span of two weeks, it’s this dumbass’s turd for thinking he’d actually get away with it.

Companies as large as Kroger typically have a built-in margin of loss on a daily basis, because of stuff like employee accidents, customers that accidentally ruin merchandise, prepared food that goes bad, and of course, petty theft, and if this kid were to keep his falsified refunds to smaller amounts, if he wanted them frequently, or numbers that weren’t $87,000 if he wanted to swing for the fences, but on much less frequency, then the losses probably would have slipped through the cracks and not rose any red flags unless there was some skepticism in the first place.

But as my brother pointed out, the simple reason was the fact that we were referring to the perp in question as a kid, because kids have no fucking sense, even less intelligence, and clearly don’t grasp the strength of the long game.  Because it sounded like he had a pretty rock solid system for pilfering extra cash, and if he could just keep his vices in check and not have to have Camaros and guns and shoes, he could’ve built up a sweet little side gig to keep things fluid and probably gotten away with it.

Whatever though.  It’s clearly a slow news day when people aren’t talking about politics now, because this story showed up in no less than all of the major Atlanta-area news outlets, and was picked up by a number of national news outlets too.  I guess when people want someone to point and laugh and judge from afar, dumbasses like this become low-hanging fruit and easy targets.

New Father Brogging, #033

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My kid has become observant enough to comprehend sights and interpret sounds and make associations to them, namely to say she recognizes the bottle, is familiar with the sound of the bottle warmer, and subsequently goes nuclear when she thinks it’s time to eat because clearly she must be starving to death and is wasting away at that very juncture in time.

Needless to say in order to adjust to such behaviors, mythical wife and I try to be as discreet as possible when it comes to pulling bottles from the fridge and getting them to the warmer, so she doesn’t notice, and subsequently begin screaming bloody murder.

I feel like we’ve become something along the equivalents of prisoners, where we have to sneak the bottles around like we’re handing off shanks, and we’ve been practicing trying to be slight of hand when it comes to keeping the bottle out of sight, and since there’s little we can do about the sound of the warmer, we typically have to keep her out of ear’s reach once it starts ticking away for 9-10 minutes.

No, I still have no regrets or unhappiness about parenting, but I do find it greatly amusing the correlations between prison inmates and new parents.

The whitest thief in the world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I mean, there’s really not much to add to the headline.  A Tennessee man is arrested for stealing an alleged $65,000 worth of clothing from Hollister and American Eagle. 

Clearly, the mall in which he was victimizing must not have had an Abercrombie & Fitch, otherwise it’s safe to assume they would have been pilfered from too.

Sometimes, stories just kind of write themselves, and when I see a headline about how Hollister and American Eagle are the companies being burgled, my first thought was “white people clothiers” and how the perpetrator must undoubtedly be a white guy.  Seriously though, it probably wasn’t the best idea to be stealing from global brands like these, because regardless of race, these are companies that live and die by numbers, and $65,000 worth of merch is undoubtedly going to be noticed and it would only be a matter of time in which action would be taken.  Trent McWhiterton III clearly dipped into the well a little too many times and to no surprise, was eventually caught.

The funny thing to me was his general racket of stealing brand new goods, and then selling them to consignment shops.  Undoubtedly, Plato’s Closet was probably only to give him 25% of the value, at consignment rates, so in spite of the fact that he stole like $65k* worth of clothing, he probably made like $10k in sales.  Honestly, if this bro weren’t so lazy, he probably could’ve made vastly more money through eBay, and probably been way safer, since apparently it was Plato’s people who helped tip off the fuzz.

*let’s also not forget that $65k worth of Hollister and American Eagle is probably like $6,500 in materials and Cambodian slave labor to manufacture

What’s also entertaining to me is that I just happened to chance across this story, because like many Americans right now, I’m fixated to election news, and for whatever reason, this story happened to be the first thing listed in related articles.  I guess there is though, a modicum of relation considering just how white and criminal the election process kind of is, that a story about a white guy stealing from white people clothiers can be somewhat related.

Whatever though, white people getting busted for stealing from white companies, and where ultimately everyone comes out a loser, that’s all water off my back.  It’s something whimsical for me to write about while I await hopefully good news to come out of this shit show, because I’m tired of feeling like I’m held hostage by the country with everyone else, who just wants to know who’ll be our dear leader for the future.

When the day is over, you just have to do the shit yourself

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because my mental being can’t handle loose ends, I decided to take it upon myself to put back up my own fucking fence, so that it’s one less thing that I’ll have to dump money into when it comes time to (hopefully) finding someone competent to fix shit around my house.  As mentioned before, in the process, I fucked up my finger pretty bad, but fortunately it wasn’t in a state where I couldn’t just bandage it up, wear gloves and not be able to continue working.

To summarize, among the shit that the clown of a “handyman” I “hired” to fix my window did, was not just remove several fence panels,  but also damage the posts in in the process of fishing the $450 scissor lift rental I made on his request, off of my backyard, which also tore the shit out of my turf (photos below).  He claimed that he would take responsibility for the damages, but shocking nobody, he’s been as evasive and vague as an extreme cheapskate when the bill shows up, about when he’s actually coming to do anything, and frankly I don’t actually believe he’s going to do anything, and I’m going to light him up on the internet and hope it hurts his future business, because an asshole like this doesn’t need to be out there pretending to be a respectable handyman.

During the days of ghosting, I would step outside and just look at the unfinished job of the fence, and get madder and madder, and I realized that this was not good for my mental state.  Just because I didn’t want to do it didn’t mean that I wasn’t capable of doing it, and considering the sloppy nature of this guy in the first place, it would probably be in the best interest if I did it myself, to ensure that it would be done well.

So janky finger injury aside, I assessed where things stood, and came to the conclusion that this was one of those situations where I would just have to do this shit myself.

Continue reading “When the day is over, you just have to do the shit yourself” →