Tag: ‘murica

Sorry if this metaphor is extreme

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But honestly?  The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the general aftermath, kind of felt like September 11th.  Yes, that September 11th, of 2001.  No, thousands of American lives haven’t been lost (yet), but from the standpoint that it was a fairly ordinary morning until a massive metaphorical bomb went off with the breaking news that Roe v. Wade had been overturned, and all across the country there was mass shock, a panic at trying to figure out what happened, and then just, outrage.

Naturally, a lot of this is exacerbated by the existence of the internet and the rabid amplification at how fast news and opinions can travel.  Frankly, I’m (thankfully) not on Twitter or Reddit, so I can’t really see just how much rejoicing of this there is because I’m pretty sure it would drive me into a disgruntled frenzy, so all I really can see is a fairly curated ocean of anger, outrage and disappointment in the country from the outlets that I’m typically exposed to on the regular, when I actually have the time to look.  I just assume that the vast majority of those who are for this bullshit are probably just old white people, and mostly men that look like Mitch McConnell or various mutations of him.

I know comparing it to 9/11 seems like a pretty extreme metaphor, but that’s really kind of how this day as felt.  Lots of shock, confusion, anger, but mostly this feeling of defeat and disgust, disappointment and just sheer lack of faith in our country, from what feels like the first time in eons, we’re witnessing the actual removal of a human right for its population.

Obviously as a male, there’s a definitive limit to how much I can understand and be able to empathize for female America, but all I have to do is look at my wife, and see the sheer detachment from the entire day upon hearing of this news, to know that this is a really, really fucking massive major big deal.  All I have to do is look at my two daughters, my two female children offspring, and see two people who somehow will grow up with less rights than the generation before them, and I feel disheartened and disappointed and disgusted with the country in which they had the misfortune of being born into.

I’m not a political person.  I’m not very educated in the political arena or lots of historical events, but even I knew what Roe v. Wade is.  I know it’s something that’s been under fire for longer than I’ve been alive, but silly me for thinking that America had just enough common sense to keep alive, regardless of the fact that it’s been attacked endlessly for the better part of the last 50 years.

While lamenting our collective disgust, some of my friends said that this was the victory of a very long game by the Republican party, but I had to vehemently disagree.  A long game implies strategy, cunning and most importantly patience, all which most definitely this didn’t feel like.  It just felt like 50 years worth of mindless zombies gathering at the entrance to a castle gate, and finally, finally, they’ve gathered enough of their kind to where they could finally overwhelm the wall and breach their way in.  No strategy needed so much as it was just a tireless, endless constant war of attrition, where most likely tons of people in support of it have no idea what they’re even fighting for.

Unfortunately, when it comes to American politics, there is no undo function, no 7-day money back guarantee, no 55-hour annulment.  The overturning of Roe v. Wade is going to happen, has happened, and countless Americans will suffer as the result of it.  For reasons why, nobody knows why a bunch of overprivileged white men asshole motherfuckers in Washington DC needs to control what women do with their bodies beyond a primal, caveman-like need to control what they think is their property.

The political system is beyond broken, and frankly nothing short of a catastrophe that wipes out a large chunk of Congress and/or the Supreme Court, nothing is ever going to change.  Old, toxic cogs that retire or die one by one are strategically replaced by similarly toxic cogs that are slightly younger, but ensure the maintenance of the same broken status quo that will never change as long as a system like this is in place.

The bottom line is that I may not be a woman and fully understand the full spectrum of how devastatingly this day sucks, but my heart still breaks for them, and all women who will be impacted the most by it.  My wife has been on another planet since the news broke and my daughters will grow up in a society whose government sees them as second class.

I don’t feel that it really needs to be said, but I want to put it in writing all the same, because it’s important to me that my stance be very clearly known to the zero people who read my bullshit anyway.  As a male, I will not fully understand, but I still vow to be an ally and support and not judge the feelings or disappointment or any other emotion that any woman is going through on account of this fucked up development.

America fucking sucks right now, and it would be easy to say that I’d want to pluck my family out and go somewhere else, but it’s hard as shit to accomplish and frankly no other country in the world is without their own bullshit and insufferable political issues that stampede on common sense human rights.

Why I’m the only guy in the office still wearing a mask

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Both my kids are sick now.  Still possible that I caused it, but also some reason to believe it might not have been me.  Either way, strep was brought to them somehow, and obviously through basic transmission of germs.

But this is why I still mask up, even if in doing so, it’s still not foolproof at protecting my famiry.  I went all of 2020 with not even a common cold and it was glorious.  But as time progressed, people selfishly got sick of masks and arrogantly believed a vaccine made them invincible, sure as the sun rises, the common sicknesses that nobody got in 2020 were waiting around and it’s been a fucking war zone since.

Literally, a night nurse at the hospital #2 was born at got my wife and newborn baby sick, who immediately passed it onto #1 as soon as we got home.  That was real fun, dealing with a house full of sick people, among them a literal newborn.

2022 literally started with coronavirus infiltrating my house, where mythical wife got it, and although untested, myself and #1 probably had it too.  Amazingly, #2 seemed to escape unscathed.

And since then, I think it’s accurate to say that one or both of my kids have been sick every single month of this year.  Coincidentally, mask mandates are relaxing all over the country, and Georgia was full of yeah cmon hicks who already began ditching them, and shocker, fucking sicknesses are goddamn everywhere.

And when my kids get sick, I’m the one who has to eat the load and work from home and compromise my work responsibilities and often times run double duty on the girls.  I’m the only one who’s work suffers and the backlog usually ends up with me working into the evenings and/or having to rush and be at higher risk of shoddy work.

I’m just sick of my kids getting sick.  It’s by no fault of their own, they’re just kids.  I blame the fucking world around us full of arrogant and selfish assholes who can’t be bothered to wear masks in public, happily content with spreading two years worth of backlogged colds and other niggling ailments that everyone is spreading and getting all the fucking time.

I refuse to feel like the outcast in public because I choose to wear a mask still.  It may not be fool proof at preventing sicknesses but I’m doing the best I can to try to protect all my girls, even if it makes me seem like the outlier that was just barely months ago, the norm.

Peak America

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this story about how health care in America is so fucked up, that it creates a perfect scenario for billionaire Mark Cuban to swoop in and get to play hero to the country.  In short, Mark Cuban launched an internet pharmacy that offers more than 100 generic drugs at reasonable cost, which is a bigger deal than it might sound, because American pharmacists have been notorious for gauging the fuck out of the American people over the last decade or so.

Naturally, Cuban is being lauded with acclaim, in addition to people being refueled for their disdain for the pharmaceutical industry for being greedy and valuing profit over human lives.  The thing is, Cuban embarking on this endeavor is about as low-hanging fruit as they come; there are a number of billionaires, corporations, conglomerates or any other entities in the world that could have done this, a long time ago.  The fact that of all the random rich entities in there are, Mark Cuban is the guy that grasps the low bar, and is not only going to look like a modern saint, but make no mistake, he’s going to profit, massively.

I have no qualms with Mark Cuban, in fact I respect the guy tremendously, in spite of the fact that us pleebs are supposed to hate the wealthy.  He’s one of the guys that actually understands the need to give some shit away in order to make money, and such is the core strategy of how he basically transformed the Dallas Mavericks from perennial laughing stocks into eventual champions.

In fact, he’s basically doing the same thing all over again, but instead of basketball tickets, it’s common, necessary medicine.  Just because he’ll be selling generic medicine at a little over 15% over at-cost, he’s undoubtedly going to be raking in massive amounts of money on account of the likely million people who will all be shopping his online pharmacy; all while gaining their adulation at providing such a compassionate service.

It’s basic Wolf of Wall Street math here, sell cheap necessities to the lower classes, and there’s ridiculous amounts of money to be made.  And as much as I too think what Cuban is doing is a very good thing for the world, the sad reality is that he probably shouldn’t have been the party to have had the opportunity to do this; when it really should’ve been the responsibility of, fucking America, to do this for its own people instead.

But I guess without stories like this, America really wouldn’t be America.

How today should be versus how it is

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today is my last day with *Fortune 50 company redacted*.  I’ve been here for a hair under six years, and this is the longest job I’ve ever had.  As much of a stressor and source of frustration the job had turned into over the last two years, under normal circumstances today really should be a bittersweet one, because there are still a lot of good people there, I’ve made a lot of good relationships, as I close this chapter of my career.

Instead I’m just bitter, at all the life’s circumstances that are swirling around in play right now, and I’m having a very difficult time letting go of all this anger and frustration I’m feeling. It’s tarnishing absolutely everything around in my life right now, and I’m fully aware of it and how calm people always wax poetic about how it’s never good to hold onto anger, but I can’t help it because my entire household has been compromised by one fucking person who thinks vaccination means they can resume living life like it were 2018 again and going into crowds and picking up plagues to spread unto others.

I should be excited about my new job starting up soon, but I’m not.  I haven’t even worked a day, but I’m already dreading it, because my home is still fucked with COVID, and in spite of me originally thinking I may have been asymptomatic, I’m feeling shit in my throat that is saying otherwise and I’m 99% sure I too now have dropped off the list of the undefeated but I can’t know definitively because the America is too full of stupid fucks, the disease is everywhere and I can’t get tested because all sites are slammed to oblivion and and all home tests are sold out everywhere until like 2025.

Instead of embarking on my new career path full of optimism and hope eternal, it’ll more than likely be just like a day like today: me on double duty with my girls because we can’t bring in help because of COVID and mythical wife still having to go to work because the school system is more fucked up than Heaven’s Gate and they’re more than willing to turn a blind eye to someone with a very recent exposure as long as they don’t have to go get a substitute teacher.  So I’m quadruple stressed out because I probably have the ‘Rona, I’m still on the clock with my last day of work, I’m worried for my wife, and dealing with both kids.

All because one person brought the fucking plague into my home.

I should be coasting to the finish line and feeling melancholy as I bid adieu.  I should be excited about my new job coming up. 

I should be in good spirits.

But I’m not.  I’m angry, frustrated, disappointed and disgusted.  Brain full of bile, throat full of phlegm, feeling bitter and resentful and helpless because there’s absolutely jack shit that can really be done about any of this but wait it out.Have to power through orientation and day 1 of new job while putting up a facade that everything is fine.  Have to wait out 10-14 days to hope that this Omicron bullshit works its way through my house’s residents.  Have to eventually find somewhere to test or have to pay for fucking home tests if they can even be found.

Have to keep life in fucking hold stasis for even longer, because of the conduct of someone outside my home.

Today should be a good day.  But it’s fucking not.  I can get over me getting sick, but my wife and my innocent children getting sick, is inexcusable.  It’s not fucking fair, and this is anger that I will be incapable of letting go of, for a long time. 

The world will one day drown in cardboard

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every other Sunday, I spend an inordinate amount of time outside with a box cutter, slashing up cardboard boxes as if I were plotting to hijack an airplane.  This is an activity that I have grown quite exhausted with, and every other Sunday, I curse my waste management company for being greedy pricks who have handcuffed my general area with a monopoly of the waste disposal everywhere.

Seriously, they’ve literally purchased all of their competitors, and regardless of the fact that there are waste bins with three different companies, it turns out that they’re all owned by the monopoly and it’s just more cost efficient to let all the other-brand bins remain as-is.  I know, because I’ve reached out to these other companies to seek an alternative waste provider, only to be told this.

The monopoly has grown complacent and lazy with their service, and used coronavirus as an excuse to curb their recycling pickup to every other week, citing safety for their workers or some other bullshit, but really it’s probably to reduce overhead and maximize profits, especially considering the reduction in service seemed to coincide with an increase of cost.

As it is, every two weeks, my household has the capability to generate an absurd amount of cardboard that needs to be recycled, because we do pretty much all of our shopping online, and we’re purchasing a ton of shit because we’ve got a second kid on the way.  Needless to say, without any sort of actual physical effort involved, the amount of cardboard we typically amass is usually impossible to be securely placed inside of the pedestrian 96-gallon waste bin provided by our waste management company.

So every two weeks, when I’m in the driveway cutting boxes down to more compactable chunks, all I can think is that the world is destined to drown in cardboard, because of all the online shopping that is done these days.  And as convenient as Amazon is, they’re the ones probably leading the forefront of this inevitable destiny, and I can’t imagine that no matter the claims of recycled materials or environmentally-friendly initiatives, I’m dubious that the recycling of all this cardboard can keep up with the demand for shipping boxes, and that the world is really headed for a future where we’ll drown in all this brown corrugated shit.

Given the endless escalation of Amazon Prime, and online shopping, I would wager that I am the only household that generates ridiculous amounts of cardboard on a regular basis, and it’s simply a game of basic math; all the households that generate tons of cardboard every single week, versus the time and resources it takes to break down, sort and actually recycle all this shit, and we’re all on borrowed time.

Unless someone invents a way to turn all this cardboard into masses of land to plop into the water like the landfills in Sim City, I do think that if coronavirus doesn’t kill us, overpopulation doesn’t kill us, climate change doesn’t kill us, then drowning in cardboard probably stands a chance to land on the endless list of things that will one day overrun the earth.

Not entirely sure what’s worse

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

White people during the pandemic, or white people amidst the “end” of the pandemic?

Serious question.  Because at least during the pandemic, when you saw white people* running around maskless, it was pretty clear where they stood – deniers, racists, idiots, or all of the above, and it was nice to have a defined line to know when to stay the fuck away from people.

*or anyone for that matter, it just so happens to be that the vast majority of anti-maskers in America just so happen to be white

But now that a whopping like 23%** of the country has been vaccinated, all across America white people* have been whipping off their masks and running around maskless and arrogant and thinking they’re invulnerable as if it were 2019 all over again.  Suddenly, the clear distinctions between unvaccinated idiots and the vaccinated are completely gone, and especially considering at the time I’m writing this, those under the age of 12 are still ineligible for vaccination, that terrifies the ever-living shit out of me knowing that people are all over the place unknowingly potentially spreading coronavirus everywhere.

**not willing to try to find an accurate number

I ran some errands the other day; a trip to the inside of a bank, followed by a trip to the grocery store.  Sure, they’re two incidents that has formulated this entire overarching statement, but what the fuck ever; the conclusion on from such a brief outing was sufficient enough for me to determine that white people simply cannot wear masks.  A cursory Google search when I got back to my computer reveals a gabillion hits, with among them studies like this that all but confirm the assumption.

At the bank, there mercifully were not a lot of people inside when I went, but two white males and one white female were the only people there without masks on.  Everyone else there, who were minorities of various ethnicities were wearing masks.

When I went to the grocery store next, ironically the only white people I saw that were actually wearing masks were an elderly couple; color me surprised.  But literally every single other white person in the store, and even a surprising amount of store employees, the white ones naturally, were now sans-masks.  This isn’t to say that I didn’t see a few people of color not wearing masks, but it goes without question that the overwhelming majority of no-maskers now are unmistakably white.

I mean already, not a day goes by where I don’t opine my disgust and disappointment in America, but this gradual increasing of people arrogantly throwing their masks away most certainly doesn’t help changing my opinions.  Coronavirus is most definitely not gone, and as I’ve stated before, I have no intention of going maskless in public until like 2024, and if white people don’t get their fucking arrogance in check, it might end up stretching out until 2026 at this rate.

One, I have a child and soon children, under 12 years of age, and I’m sure the vaccination age will continue to drop as time passes, but I’m still not willing to put myself in harm’s way which would put them in harm’s way by running around maskless just because it’s occasionally uncomfortable, my glasses fog up, I don’t like the smell of my own breath or the occasional break out.  I mean seriously, if those are the inconveniences I have to put up with in order to help keep the human fucking race safer, then my god, burn all these fucking masks.

But two, being Asian, in a country where anti-Asian sentiment is bubbling up, it doesn’t seem like a good idea for me to run around without a mask and potentially feed some over-armed Georgia redneck that I’m a Chinese carrier here to spread coronavirus or anything.  I haven’t personally experienced overt blatant racism in a while, but I don’t want to reset that clock any time soon unless it came by some Fortune 100 company whom I could then sue and get Oprahrich but that’ll probably never happen.

Getting back to the original query though, frankly, I think things are worse right now, with white people arrogantly ditching their masks, regardless of their state of vaccination.  Because it’s allowing the anti-vaxxing morons to blend in in plain sight among those that are vaccinated, because the vaxxed that have been vaccinated are simply too selfish and unconcerned about their fellow man, were too inconvenienced to continue to wear masks, that they’ve basically become just like their anti-vaxxed brethren.