Tag: coronavirus

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” →

Vaccines, bailouts and irony

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The sun has just barely set, but I’m already in bed, waiting for the Tylenol PM to kick in, so I can hopefully conk myself out to sleep for at least 9-10 hours.  I have spent the entire day with a fever that has ranged anywhere from 99.8F to 101.4F, depending on the work of all the acetaminophen I’ve been taking throughout the day to try and bring it down, because as much as I would’ve loved to have stayed in bed and just ridden out this ailment, I’m also a dad now, and I thought about these commercials from the past and completely understand how dads don’t get sick days, and I still had to make sure my child was taken care of first and foremost.

So despite the nagging fever that’s been wreaking havoc through my body throughout the day and made me feel like I was hit by a bus when I got out of bed at 6:20 am, I still completed a fairly routine day of parenting, although I did call in sick to work, because there was no way on earth I was going to be able to do both on a day like today.  I didn’t do any sit-ups, I didn’t do any push-ups and I most certainly didn’t go for any runs or do anything physical that would have exacerbated the shit feeling I was feeling all throughout the day, although mythical wife and I still made the best of an impromptu day off by going to the exciting land of Costco for random things, but most importantly $1.50 hot dogs and $9 pizza.

The thing is, I’m not sick because I caught coronavirus or anything, quite the opposite.  I’m laid out because of the vaccine, since I just got Moderna.  Frankly, most everyone I know who had gotten Moderna seems to have been laid out just the same in some capacity, and my own mom described pretty much everything I went through, so I kind of had an inkling that I was in for some hurting myself.  And much like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I remember waking up around 5-6 times throughout the night, feeling off, and knowing pretty right away that I was probably going to feel it when I got out of bed, and when it came time to do so, it felt like concrete blocks on my feet when I stood up to start my day.

Regardless though, I am now vaccinated, and it’s kind of surreal to know we’ve finally made it to this point in history, where the long-awaited vaccine that seemed like a myth and fairy tale throughout 2020 is here, and people all across the globe are getting it, hoping to sooner rather than later, put an end to coronavirus.

Here’s the thing though; I’ve had this kind of love-hate feeling with the idea of a vaccine, because as I’ve stated before in the past, as terrible as a thing as coronavirus has been, killing millions throughout the world, there were a couple of critical inadvertent blessings that came out of it, mostly namely the fact that because of it and all the stay-at-home measures, I had a tremendous amount more time to spend with my newborn baby and getting to really be a dad throughout the year.

But with people getting vaccinated, and the pandemic gradually coming under control, that means my time at home will eventually come to an end when I’ll eventually be needed to go back into the office.  Aside from the forfeiture of time spent with my children, this also creates a whole new slew of challenges, like daycare and the financial and logistical matters that creates.  Frankly, I don’t ever want to go back into the office, and my job and team have proven how we can absolutely still get shit done while working from home.

As much as I want to be able to go to restaurants and dine out again, I’d rather forfeit eating out than having to go back into the office.

Another train of thought I’d been having a lot lately is how I’m relieved that the vaccines are here, and I’ve gotten it, but at the same time, I have this negative thought in my head that I don’t like the fact that there are a bunch of selfish assholes out there who are eligible all the same to get vaccinated and therefore reduce their risks of getting coronavirus.

I’m talking about the non-believers, the anti-maskers, and all people who went around throughout 2020 as if there was nothing wrong, and flaunted their defiance of logical standards citing their freedom and rights.  I dislike the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of these shitheads out there that are all eligible and probably will get vaccinated the same as those of the world that adhered to safety standards, followed the rules, and showed a modicum of giving a shit about their fellow human beings.

The vaccine is a reward and a blessing for those people, but for the selfish pricks that didn’t help the world straighten itself out, it’s a fucking bailout.  I know there’s no way to disambiguate, but I really wish it were possible to weed out the people who followed the rules and genuinely want the vaccine, to give it to all of them first, and then let the rest of the degenerates eat themselves over the later rounds of vaccinations.

In one fucked up way, it’s almost as if I wished the pandemic would continue so I would have more time to stay at home with my daughter and my future second, and there’s more time for the anti-maskers to be exposed and potentially get punished for their greedy defiance.  There are so many out there that don’t deserve a vaccine that are eligible for it, and the idea of the world getting back to a semblance of normalcy where all these shitheads can resume blending back in disturbs me.  At least in the middle of a pandemic, it’s become pretty easy to spot the shithead, when they’re out in public with no masks on.

Despite the fact that I’ve gotten vaccinated, I’ll still be wearing masks out, because frankly it’s not the end of the world, and save for the beating I took because of the vaccine, I like the idea that I haven’t gotten sick all throughout the last calendar year, and would like to keep it that way.

Frankly, I don’t think we’ll ever hit a point in the world where masks aren’t ever a good idea, but as long as there are selfish shitheads out there, it’ll never not be up for debate, because we won’t be in a position where unanimous compliance will ever come to fruition.

The new IWGP blet makes me go IWTF

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my general admiration for New Japan Pro Wrestling, I don’t really follow them beyond the snippets of news that pass through my Apple News feed, or whenever a wrestling fan bigger than me brings it up on social media.  But if there is always one thing that is relevant to my interests, it’s whenever blets are brought up, regardless of what fed or promotion they might be for.

So one of the more prevalent storylines throughout NJPW over the last few months has been double champion Kota Ibushi striving to unify the IWGP World and IWGP Intercontinental championships.  I actually give NJPW some credit for taking this and making it into a storyline, instead of just merging them, as it created yet another solid matchup between Ibushi and Tetsuya Naito, with Naito trying to “rescue” the Intercontinental championship from unification, only to fall short in his efforts to strip it away from Ibushi.

With Naito vanquished, the path to unification was clear, and the above blet is the ensuing result.

I’ve definitely seen worse blet designs in my life, but my first impression when I saw the new, unified IWGP World Championship blet, was definitely, a WTF face.   The center plate basically looks like a Phoenix emblem from X-Men comics, and as a belt, it just looks really imbalanced.  I’d hate to feel what wearing that blet would be like, since the top part of the plate juts out at angles, and any sort of abdominal contracting would have them digging into your ribs.  But I guess if you’ve got the action figure-physique that someone like Kota Ibushi has, he can probably just no sell it all the same.

Aside from the design, I’ve heard that the decision to unify the blets has been mostly unpopular, due to the general history that the IWGP Intercontinental championship has carried throughout the years.  Even in the shorter time that I’ve followed NJPW, guys like Shinsuke Nakamura, El Sombra (Andrade), Tetsuya Naito and Chris Jericho were notable carriers of the belt, and much like the WWE’s IC blet, it’s one very much given to workhorse types.

But the reality is that at this current juncture in time, with coronavirus having rampaged the world much less rosters of all professional wrestling promotions, NJPW just has too many blets for as diminished of a roster that they have.  Aside from their unified title which encapsulates two blets now, they’ve still got the NEVER championship, the IWGP US championship, heavyweight and a jr. heavyweight sets of tag team championships, and a jr. heavyweight championship. 

Frankly, they practically have enough blets for most everyone on their entire roster to have one at this point, so shelving the intercontinental championship isn’t a bad idea, because most anyone with a brain should know that the blet will be back in the future when the pandemic is behind us, the rosters start expanding, and then they’ll have the perfect opportunity to do what NJPW does best, which is have some massive tournament, where a brand new IWGP Intercontinental champion will be crowned.

Back to the main point though, I’m not impressed with the new design of the IWGP championship.  Bootlegs as they may be, I’m glad that I have replicas of the former World and Intercontinental championships, and I most definitely wouldn’t plunk down $2,400 for a replica of this new blet.

Maybe in the future, when the IWGP Intercontinental championship comes back, it’ll have a design worth paying for a Pakistani bootleg, but until that day comes, RIP IWGP Intercontinental championship.

**EDIT: it figures Kota Ibushi loses the championship in his first substantial defense after getting the new blet.  Given the fact that it changed hands to gaijin Will Ospreay, I wouldn’t have put it past New Japan to have make it some microaggression, symbolically made sure the old, prestigious blet wouldn’t be held by someone not Japanese or some weeb lifer like Kenny Omega or Scott Norton.