Tag: coronavirus

RE: A pandemic Dragon*Con

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I observed over social media as people converged on Atlanta over Labor Day weekend for Dragon*Con.  Obviously, my complicated relationship with the con and cons in general notwithstanding, I’m happy for the people who still get tremendous amounts of enjoyment them, and I’m a little envious that they’re able to get to a place where they can, because I sure as shit couldn’t seem to anymore.

Regardless, I couldn’t help but observe with, for lack of a better term, fascination at the fact that it was still going on.  Last time I checked, the world is still very much in a pandemic, coronavirus is never going to go away, and even in spite of people getting vaccinated, there are still hundreds of thousands of people in the world, hidden in plain sight, that are among us, unvaccinated, uninterested in getting vaccinated, and content with being vulnerable and spreading sickness.  And contrary to the belief that all Dragon*Con-going geeks are all liberal vaxxers, there are obviously going to many among the throngs of people attending the con, who aren’t, whom might be carrying, and whom could be the ones to turn the whole thing into a giant tragic superspreader event.

Anyway, throughout the weekend, I’d see various people doing the usual spiel of posting their photos, be it of themselves in costume, drunk selfies, the usual humblebragging of I’m here you’re not, and all sorts of glimpses of what’s going on downtown.  And depending on the source would determine just how many masks were seen, or not seen, and I have a hard time wondering what I found more sad: all the people running around the convention without masks, or all the people with them, having to add them to their costumes, preferring to look a little out of place, but considerate to the health of others.

Like I’d see pictures of Starlight from The Boys wearing a mask, or Batman wearing a mask over the cowl, obscuring 100% of skin at that point, and I’m thinking, kind of weird, but at least they’re taking health rules as serious as voluntarily going to an event that draws well into the tens of thousands.

But then I’m seeing photos of people in room parties where nobody’s wearing a mask, or the usual mish-mash of humanity that all conglomerates at the Marriott or the Hilton, and my skin is crawling at the idea of so much regurgitated air being cycled among people, potentially spreading disease.

But that’s just the shit going on through my head.  Obviously, I wouldn’t have gone to the convention even if there were no pandemic, but there’s absolutely no way in hell that I would have gone, even if I were still gung-ho about conventions.  All the same, I still hope all of the friends of mine who went still had good times, and are hopefully healthy and symptom free in the weeks after the con.  If conventions drove me away without a pandemic, who knows if and when I’ll ever get back into them in the future again.

I hope the afterlife is ready to get their asses destroyed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

By now, I would wager that just about everyone has someone they can name off the top of their heads as someone whom they think has been the greatest casualty of the coronavirus.  Whether it’s a family member, or family of a friend, or a friend of family, a celebrity, regional personality, or what not, at this point it’s probably not a stretch for people to be able to have been affected to some degree of sadness at the death or someone they cared about.

For me, short of anyone in my family, the news of the passing of actor and martial arts legend, Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba is without question, the one death that stands out above all others in my personal little world, and it upset me tremendously to have learned of the passing of this icon.

At 82 years old, it’s not like he hasn’t lived a full and fruitful life in his own right, but the fact that he passed due to pneumonia associated with coronavirus says to me that he still died in a pointless, unfortunate and completely avoidable manner.  I won’t sugarcoat the disappointment that I felt to learn that he also wasn’t vaccinated, but given his age, I’m hoping he was more of the type to be concerned over a vaccine of such nature to a person of his age, versus someone who was just anti-vax, and flat out refused it, but this is something that I guess we’ll never know.

I don’t even really know where to go with the rest of this post.  I wanted to make sure that even in spite of my complete lack of any time to do any writing, that when I started writing this, I wanted to be clear headed, and relatively available to gather my thoughts and write, because most anyone who knows me probably knows that I’ve always been a die-hard Sonny Chiba fan, and that I saw him as more than a martial artist and an actor, and more like an icon and a personal hero, that started kind of as a joke, but really grew into something genuine and meaningful.

Continue reading “I hope the afterlife is ready to get their asses destroyed” →

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.

Yeah no thanks, I’ll keep my mask on for now still

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just the other day, the CDC officially reported that fully vaccinated individuals can drop wearing masks and relax social distancing.

That’s great and all, but as the title of this posts says, no thanks, I think I’m going to keep wearing masks for a little bit longer.  Maybe until like, 2024.  Because one, I don’t trust the vast majority of Americans or other people in general to not be selfish shitheads who have refused to wear masks and refused to get vaccinated to this very day, and two, I absolutely love the fact that I went an entire calendar year without catching the cold or any other contagious nuisance of a sickness from anyone else.

Frankly, I’m disappointed in the CDC and the president for announcing this, because if it were up to me, I wouldn’t even think about making it widely known that there was any modicum of safety until America’s vaccination rates were at like, 90% and not like the what, 43% it’s currently at right now?

Such is the very epitome of American ideals, where this country is so complacent, so impatient and so selfish to get back to a broken normal, that when something is barely partially effective, it is rolled out to the general public, with hopes that success rates will continue to climb when the ultimate variable of failure, people, are introduced into the mix.

Thanks to this allowance of people to unmask and relax social distancing, we all know what’s going to happen; the numbers of transmissions and positive results will begin to creep slower, vaccination percentages will start crawling if they even continue to rise in the first place, and coronavirus as we very well know it, is never fucking going to go away, because it will continue mutate and evolve, and be as commonplace to the list of sicknesses as the common cold, except coronavirus can actually kill motherfuckers.  And the vaccines that are already in place will eventually become obsolete and require the rat race of constant updating and developing in order to help shithead Americans just have the ability to believe they can think it’s safe enough to go out for margaritas and go to Target without having to wear masks.

I’m tired of wearing masks too.  I wear glasses, so wearing masks usually means my glasses fog up often, and it’s exasperating.  Taking them off when it’s safe means I have to fight with the arms of my glasses as well as hope the elastic doesn’t rip the backing of the one earring I choose to continue to still wear off, and I would much rather not have to wear one in the first place.  But I have a family and kid(s) that I want to keep safe from harm, and because the rest of America doesn’t seem to want to protect anyone else, it’s up to me to protect myself so I can, even if most of the people around me in public don’t deserve it.

It’s bad when Brazil is leading the pack in anything other than futbol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSJ (might be behind paywall): town in Brazil does “experiment” where close to 100% of adults get vaccinated, to “surprising” results

I obviously use quotations ironically, because it’s pathetic that American media is in this place where common sense is considered experimental, and the results are anything other than flagrantly obvious.  The fact that this is happening in Brazil of all places in the world, and not anywhere in the United States is pathetic, sad, disappointing and all other pejoratives applicable to describe just how third fourth world America acts sometimes.

Needless to say, since nobody actually needs to read the article behind the paywall to take a wild guess at what happens, but when 98% of all adults in a population of 45,000 get vaccinated, coronavirus numbers plummet, and the town of Serrana, Brazil has officially become somewhat of a safe haven oasis from COVID-19, and life has basically turned back into a state of being prior to the pandemic.

The “experiment” at this point can be considered a rousing success, and I can only wish that the legions of fucking idiot Americans would use this as a basis to follow suit, but we all know that that’s never going to happen because we are basically the dumbest country on the planet, cumulatively.

But yeah, a small town in Brazil; a mostly impoverished country, where they’re mostly known for futbol, Victoria’s Secret models, trolling League of Legends and annually converging onto Disney World much to the dismay of those who work there, has basically shown the rest of the world that they’re twelve steps ahead of the curve when it comes to handling the pandemic.  They’ve already declared check mate, while the rest of the world is still Googling what a Sicilian or the queen’s gambit is.

I don’t like to give Brazil credit if I don’t have to, but good on them for having the common sense to strive for 100% vaccination rates among adults.  The rewards are obvious and palpable, and the rest of the world looks like fucking idiots for failing to exercise common sense in the most common sense of scenarios.

Thoughts on Wrestlemania Week

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It occurred to me that in spite of how much I like sports like baseball, college football and basketball, or any other sport that I tend to get into for various spurts of time, when the day was over, and I really had to pick one thing to really stay interested in giving my very limited time these days, what wins out in the end is professional wrestling, the so-called fake sport.

I mean it’s really no surprise, considering my interest in wrestling precedes every single sports interest I’ve ever had in my life, so I’m literally falling back all the way to my childhood interest when there’s an overabundance of options to be interested in.

Anyway, so this past week was for lack of a better term, Wrestlemania Week.  Both NXT and the main roster broke up TakeOver and Wrestlemania into two-night affairs apiece, and to be perfectly honest, I really liked it in this format, and kind of hope it remains as such in the future, and not just a pandemic thing.  I enjoyed the fact that every single evening was a 2-3 hour event, and unlike ‘Manias in the past, wasn’t an exhausting five hour show to where I’m dog tired by the time the Brock Lesnar match at the end is over.  I literally had time to slap on a paint of coat in my second daughter’s nursery after night 1 of TakeOver went off the air before going to bed.

By breaking up the shows over multiple nights, I could build anticipation for matches on each of the nights, and I didn’t feel tired or burned out from watching any one show too long, and it actually helped me remain engaged and entertained.

However, before I get into the meat of this post and talk about my favorite matches of the week, I have to say that I was one part happy to see a raucous live sellout crowd at Raymond James for Wrestlemania, because fans really are one of the things that have been truly missing throughout the last year, and I know AEW and NXT have been running small crowds regularly, but seeing a packed house, made it feel like for the first time, something back to normal.

But on the other hand, the other part of me was absolutely mortified at the fact that there were 25,000 people sold out two nights straight in Tampa Bay, and just days prior in Dallas, were about 40,000 people packed into a ballpark for the Texas Rangers’ home opener.  The mere thought of these kinds of gatherings when coronavirus is very much still a thing makes my skin crawl at the sheer ignorance and selfishness being exhibited by all the people going to these things, and turning these gatherings into what will probably become super-spreader events.

I know people miss and desire the feeling of normalcy by going to major events like home openers and Wrestlemanias, but I’ll be damned if I go to anything expected to be packed houses, for at least, the rest of my life, if not another two years, without feeling scurred and/or paranoid the whole time.

But that’s just me.  Save for the awkward scariness of seeing tens of thousands of fans gathering in a venue again for the first time in over a year, Wrestlemania week was full of some fantastic work; and these were my favorites.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Wrestlemania Week” →