Tag: politics

Now that’s how to protest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seems unprecedented: in the midst of the NBA playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks boycott their game 5 matchup against the Orlando Magic, in protest of the shooting of an unarmed black man by the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prompting the NBA to cancel all games for the day

To my friends, I first made the obvious, low-hanging fruit joke about how the Bucks did the Magic a favor and kept them alive for one more day, seeing as how they were up 3-1 in the best of seven and were probably going to close out the series tonight, but the reality is, I’m actually pretty cool with what the Bucks did.

Far too often, we see celebrities and professional athletes talk a big game about the reach they have and they say a lot of meaningful things on Twitter about how change is needed, black lives mattering, and all sorts of political statements.  But after they hit send, they put their phones down, and then go back to making movies, music, or putting on jerseys and playing sports, for millions and millions of dollars that they make for themselves, and billions and billions of dollars for the people they work for.  And when the day is over, nothing happens, and this perpetual cycle of humanity failing continues on until the next tragic events causes everything to start all over again.

As long as life goes on, there’s little reason for anyone to stop what they’re doing and try and make any changes, of any size or magnitude.  But when the machine is abruptly killed when it is expecting to be churning at its maximum capacity, people will undoubtedly have to stop and look and wonder what the fuck is going on; and that’s precisely what the Milwaukee Bucks did, when they actually did boycott a pivotal and meaningful nationally televised basketball game.  Make no mistake, the rest of the NBA’s games of the day were cancelled in response and attempt to show solidarity, but this doesn’t happen if one team doesn’t make the first move, and that’s undoubtedly the Bucks.

I also love that it was the Bucks that did it, and it’s obvious why the team from Wisconsin did it, but I just think back to when the Bucks were the bottom dwellers of the NBA and that’s all I can ever think of the Milwaukee Bucks, despite the fact that nowadays, they’ve got a ten-foot tall all-star and are basically the best team in the entire league.

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Things that have happened since the brog’s been down

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shortly after my brog went down in April 2016, I started a document, bulleting things that want to potentially write about, in the event that the site would be back up within like a month or two.  Obviously that never happened, but it didn’t really stop me from adding to the list on a regular basis, even if it continued for nearly four years.

At first, it was a pretty nitty-gritty list, straight to the point and pretty succinct at what I wanted to remember.  But by the time 2018 rolled around, I noticed some patterns and categories in which things caught my attention and warranted notation, and so some categories started to take place.

I’m not entirely sure why I feel compelled to share all of this, but for whatever reason I’m following through with it, and basically this is going to be little more than a massive bulleted list of things that happened between mid-2016 through mid-2020, with probably not a lot of context, but likely some snark and veiled commentary peppered throughout.

2016

  • Pokemon Go came, lit the world on fire for 15 minutes, and then flamed out harder than the FOX Fantastic Four films
  • I became The Burrito King of Atlanta, winning Willy’s Road Trip promotion by visiting 27 Willy’s locations in four days
  • Kobe Bryant retired from professional basketball, but not before dropping 60 in his final game
  • The Golden State Warriors won 73 games and passed the ’96 Bulls’ unbreakable record, but then lost in the NBA finals like chumps
  • The Atlanta Braves retired Turner Field for whiter pastures, by sucking hardcore and losing 93 games
  • Hulk Hogan killed Gawker
  • Went on a European cruise vacation with mythical then-gf, visiting Italy, Turkey, Croatia and Greece
  • Went to Korea for the first time in my life, with my mom
  • The Chicago Cubs won the World Series, breaking a 108-year long drought and endless memes
  • An orange baked potato reality television personality inexplicably won the presidency of the United States of America
  • A fuckton of people died from senseless gun violence

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New Father Brogging, #016

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Prior to the arrival of my daughter, I read a book about new fatherhood, as well as watched a few videos and read some stuff on the internet in regards to new parenthood.  Naturally, there’s a tremendous amount of overlap when it comes to the rigors of being new parents, and they often times make it sound like the sleep deprivation and dirty diapers are the worst things since the Bubonic Plague.

I guess I’ve conditioned myself fairly well throughout the years, to where I can operate on low amounts of sleep and make do with coffee alternatively, so the sleep deprivation wasn’t nearly as hellacious as all accounts make it sound like it’s going to be, and I’ve cleaned so much poop and urine from a lifetime of having pets that poop and urine from my own offspring doesn’t seem remotely close to being disgusting or nauseating.

Needless to say, it’s tempting karma to say raising a child has been anywhere close to easy, because it most certainly has not been, but when it comes to the things that most outlets and resources cite as being the worst things in the early stages, have been basically nothing to me.

I guess I should’ve started reading more books about once the baby has come home, and the things that start to happen after the third of fourth months, because I feel like now, we’re getting to the stage where I’m beginning to become frazzled and unglued at times, because I frankly am not always handling the pressures of trying to placate a wailing baby in the best manners.

Long story short, I didn’t know about sleep regression, and I didn’t really prepare myself to the rigors of teething.  And when they’re hitting simultaneously, resulting in a screaming baby that is in pain and won’t nap, and then they stay up past their nap time and hit their next feeding window and then they’re overtired and mixing in wailing about that and won’t go to sleep and we can’t put her to sleep because then she’ll never be able to go back to sleep when we get to her actual bed time; that’s where I feel like I need to have an arm that’s twelve feet long, because that’s about as much of wrist I want to slit when the shit hits the fan sometimes.

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Oh, Georgia #666

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Nothing surprises me anymore: Georgia governor Yosemite Sam attempts to appease his god-king baked potato in charge, by signing an executive order that effectively prevents localities from having the ability to legally mandate mask wearing in public AKA cities aren’t allowed to legally make mask wearing mandatory

If it weren’t the president and all of his followers making all these choices, I’m pretty sure there would be hundreds of politicians and bureaucrats that could technically be guilty of plotting first-degree murder.  If the definition of first-degree murder is that it was premeditated and well-thought out, that seems pretty fair to say that all these old white shitheads in politics are all taking great planning and thinking through the systematic potential killing of thousands of American citizens.  If that’s not premeditation, then I don’t know what is.

Anyway, at this point, I really don’t have any more words to add to the endless slope that America continues to slide down.  This country fucking sucks now and if not for the fact that my entire life and career is here, as well as all of my friends and family, mythical wife and I have often “joked” about the notion of packing our shit and moving abroad to like Korea.  Not to mention the immigration process is painstakingly arduous on both sides of the world.  But it’s still a discussion worth having these days, and if money weren’t an object, it could become a fantasy worth making into a reality.

But the picture alone is worth the metaphorical thousand words, but not really a thousand, because I don’t know enough synonyms for “shitheads” and “bigots,” and frankly both of these clowns are so simplistically terrible that there aren’t even close to a thousand words to describe them.  One hates everyone on the planet that isn’t a fellow billionaire and doesn’t challenge his way of life, and the other will do absolutely anything to appease his god-king, even if it means sacrificing American lives, but it’s okay because the vast majority of the lives at risk will most likely be blacks and Hispanics and the poors, and they’re less than human beings to both.

I mean seriously, look at Bubba in the above picture.  He’s basically eyeing the baked potato’s toadstool, wondering if he should use the swirl or the pinch once they’re in private quarters, and the mask he’s wearing isn’t so much to protect himself from coronavirus as much as it is to contain the rabid salivating he’s probably doing at the thought of getting to pleasure his idol.

But that’s low-brow of me to make such a crude observation.  However, I’m also not plotting on killing thousands of Americans on a daily basis, so when the day is over, a little crude narrative making doesn’t seem so bad in comparison now does it?

I think the saddest part of everything is that everyone seems content to wait until November to see what chips will fall come the next presidential election.  But last time I checked, in America, it’s entirely possible to fire inadequate workers from the job, and it really makes me sad that the office of president seems to be immune from it, regardless of being impeached or not.  Regardless, everyone seems to have this wait until November attitude, but there’s a lot of shit for America to continue to fall into and hang on in until then, and I can’t help but wonder why we’re all waiting, as a nation, instead of acting.  I feel like the country has never been so close to a mass mutiny as it’s been now, but wondering just how much more bullshit will have to happen before anything ever occurs. Because November might be too late for this country, and before we know it, America will have a million casualties due to coronavirus, while the rest of the entire fucking planet won’t even come close to that, combined.

I’ve made a lot of analogies to books and movies and television over the last few weeks to describe the state of the nation, but another one came into mind last night: The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick.  Originally a book, turned into a television series, but basically, America is taken over by the Axis of Evil.  Now without expounding on that much, all I have to really ask is that would America actually be worse off under German/Japanese rule than it is now?

Not a sermon, just a thought.  But sad that we’ve gotten to the point where such a question even comes to fruition.

When politics actually hit home

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Often times, no matter how much bitching and complaining we as ‘Muricans do about politics, when the day is over, not a lot really happens.  A penny tax doesn’t mean people are unable to feed themselves, and when the government talks about some convoluted bill or law that passes, most of the time very little noticeable things actually occur.  Maybe it’s naïve and insular for me to make such blanket statements, but at least in my little world, the things that happen as the result of stalling and bickering in Washington seldom really feel like they affect life on the home front.

In a prior post, I made a remark about how at no point in the history of my life, has it ever felt so physically tangible, the feeling of disappointment and letdown happening to the American people of the United States until more recently.  As stated, no matter how much I may disagree or not like something that’s now law, a lot of the time it doesn’t really impact the daily living of my life or my family.

Until now.

My wife is a teacher.  My child is immunocompromised.  I’ll just state those facts, and if you understand why this is a major problem today maybe you’ll continue reading.  If not, well go fuck off.

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This is really the state of America in 2020

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No matter how much I never liked to admit to feeling it, now that the faucet’s been turned, it seems like not a day goes by where the words don’t pass through my lips, and it doesn’t make me feel any better verbalizing it now as it did when I first came to the realization that right now, America sucks.

Talking with a friend about the state of the world, I found myself saying things that I’d never said before in regards to how I felt, mostly because I’ve been isolated, and mythical wife and I try not to talk about things too much because they really are that depressing, but what came out of my fingers in text is that I don’t think it’s ever felt so physically possible to feel just how much our country is letting us down, the way America is completely and utterly failing the American people on a daily basis right now.

It really is becoming impossible to keep up with all the ways things are fucked up, at least for me, who likes to jot down notes on a daily basis so I can remember the things happening in history for another day, especially in case I feel inspired to write about them at some point.  But it’s downright sad and pathetic the things that emerge on a daily basis about the state of America in the state of the world currently, and I realize that it becomes a little more difficult every day to not grow more jaded and nihilistic about how things are, which are definitely things I don’t want to be happening when I’m in a period of my life where I’m trying to enjoy and savor the time of new fatherhood and spending time with my baby.

It’s kind of not fair that America is in such chaos and forced to hunker, when all I want to do is show my kid the great big world and can’t, because neither of us want to get the coronavirus that’s fucking everywhere and risk our lives.

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I wouldn’t shed a tear if he got coronavirus

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In an obvious case of no shit you fucking idiot, Georgia’s imbecile governor by way of flagrant voter suppression, Yosemite Sam, extended the state’s public health emergency for several more months, as coronavirus numbers throughout Georgia continue to rise.

I’m not saying that I’m happy that the state’s coronavirus numbers are going up, but considering our dumbass governor’s maverick behavior of re-opening the state before everyone else, I kind of hoped this would happen, to validate his obvious stupidity, and shove his arrogant redneck bravado down his straw-chewing phony smiling throat.  I’m actually a little disappointed that other states spiked before Georgia did, but as long as Brian Kemp was proven wrong, and is forced to backpedal and basically put the state back down on some degree of stay-at-home measures, then I guess I can be satisfied.

What’s fascinating but not surprising to me, is how Bubba is now all about wearing masks.  Prior to recent events, he was all about emulating his lord-king, the baked potato in charge, and doing whatever it took to stay in his good graces.  But somewhere along the line, getting questioned by his lord-king when he re-opened the state like an idiot, and perhaps the hypothetical notion that it might be in Bubba’s best interests to distance himself away from the baked potato finally, and begin to actually posture himself in his own fucking image, he’s now all aboard the everyone should wear masks train, like a human being with an actual brain.

Regardless, Georgia is back aboard the train of being closed without it officially being closed.  Yosemite Sam would never admit to the fact that he fucked up, but in a pitiful attempt to save face and seem like he actually gives a shit about his constituents, he’s going to go around and put masks over like Mick Foley puts everyone on the planet over if they just give him some screen time.

Let’s not forget though, that Georgia probably should never have come out of lockdown in the first place if not for our idiot racist bigot governor, but what’s done is done.  Ultimately, I just wanted to put down a bunch of words to express my general disgust and disdain for Bubba Kemp, and if he were to ironically become afflicted by coronavirus on account of his own stupidity, well I can’t say that I’d be the least bit saddened by his demise.