Tag: gym

Thoughts while riding MARTA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since riding MARTA is such a life-sucking sometimes-necessity, I feel like I should write so I don’t lose my mind. For whatever reason, I’ve got a lot of thoughts swirling through my head, so I figured what the hell, write and pass the time.

I used to work with this queen and among the absurd things he told me one thing stuck – how to spot a fake Louis Vuitton. A true Louis Vuitton will never allow the LV logo mark to ever be cut off by a seam, edge or crease.

Today, I experienced possibly the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. If we can’t laugh at ourselves sometimes we are truly humorless, so without getting into too much detail, I’ll just say that there is a mark, thankfully no blood, but it took every restraint in my body to not keep over and lie on the ground and writhe in pain. I was also pretty close to actually crying, it hurt so bad.

I’m pretty sure the impetus for many popular mashup songs comes from people riding trains and hearing at least four “songs” going on at the same time from people deliberately not wearing their headphones correctly so everyone can hear their crappy “music.”

Every time I ride MARTA, I feel like I’m always a hop skip and a jump away from witnessing a World Star Hip Hop video from happening.

Sometimes I feel like Bill from King of the Hill

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There was once an episode of King of the Hill somewhere in the 13th season, where the non-Hank plot of the episode was that Peggy, Dale and Minh realized that Bill was the perfect representation of the every man in the United States, and basically that anything he liked was worth putting some chips into on the stock market. Discreetly, of course. After a while, the troika began to make some money on stock market, and started to enjoy some of the luxuries that an influx of cash provides.

Eventually, it slips to Bill that he’s the guinea pig to them, and once made aware that his decisions had impact on others, the talent of inadvertently picking stock market winners vanishes as he becomes overly self-conscious of the things he likes, and the troika not only starts tanking at the stock market, they ultimately lose all their luxuries in the process and come back to zero.

Now there’s absolutely nothing to be proud of in comparing myself to Bill Dauterive, because in the show’s hierarchy, he’s the world’s biggest loser, in spite of his unknown wealthy background, fluency in Cajun French, and numerous talents, hidden because he’s the show’s punching bag. But in context of this post, I do feel like I can sometimes relate in being somewhat of an everyman.

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Technological irony-slash-fail

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Despite being in prison, prisoners are somehow procuring cell phones, and using them to orchestrate crimes via other criminals not in jail, despite being behind bars themselves.

Never mind the fact that the State of Georgia claims to have the signal blocking/intercepting umbrella technology that would help prevent such things.  As far as I’m concerned what seems ironic to me is that Georgia prisons are more capable of sending and receiving data, than my gym.  Prisoners are able to send text messages and make phone calls, orchestrating elaborate crimes such as robberies and fraud while in prison, while I’m struggling to check Facebook or send/receive a text message at the gym.

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The worst guy at the gym

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For those of you who are unfortunate enough to be “friends” with me on Facebook, you’re already probably well aware that I pretty much post nothing on it except for sporadic attempts to be funny by exploiting the types of silly people that populate my gym, also known as The Gym Bro Chronicles.

The adventures of GBC has seen a wide variety of actual people that actually do the things I’m describing on a regular basis at my gym.  Whether it’s guys that use two elliptical machines at the same time, all the douchebags that drop their weights, use their Beats headphones as auxiliary speakers, grunt, scream, sing, and every conceivable negative stereotype associated with meat-head gym bros, I’ve pretty much seen them all at my gym that I’ve been going to every single work day for the last three years now.

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I must have a tapeworm or something

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t weigh myself often, because considering how often I hit the weights and try and develop muscle, I should always expect to be a little on the heavier side if I’m doing things right.  In other words, I think the number is irrelevant as long as the body develops in an ideal manner, but I’d also be lying if I didn’t say I was somewhat partially conscious about it.

But every now and then I get a little curious, usually after some sort of period of time in which I’ve abused myself with eating like crap, or like when I do a whole lot of social drinking.  The curiosity is often in the tone of “how much did I regress?”

So when I saw that the scale was actually unoccupied the other day, I decided to cave into the curiosity and brave the harsh reality of what I must weigh now.  It’s been about six months or so since the last time I actually weighed myself, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had managed to creep underneath the 190 pound mark, to 188 pounds. I know I had succeeded in some size gains, given how some of my shirts were starting to get tight in the chest and arms, but the fact that the number had actually crept downward meant that somewhere in the prior span of time, I must have managed to shed some fat.  Shedding fat is always a good thing, in my opinion.  Putting on muscle and shedding fat is like a double bonus.

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Writer’s funk ain’t no fun

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m still in the midst of this writer’s funk, where I feel like I want to write something, but I simply don’t know what I want to write about lately.  It’s hard to explain how I’m feeling these days; I can’t say that I’m in one of my bouts of depression or being all ronery-emo, because I don’t really think I am.  Work is boring and stagnant, but it’s not like I didn’t know this was going to be the status quo when I took this job.  I’m working out and exercising along the same clip, and I feel physically fine, and mentally too, for the most part.

Yet, I can’t really find or think of anything remotely interesting to write about these days, to which that puzzles me a bit.  Usually, I lean onto local news, or try to find something remotely interesting on the internet to spark some train of thought worthy to put into words.  But Atlanta news is pretty stagnant and predictably boring, and nothing makes me want to write about racist agendas and the obvious racial bias that “my fair city” exhibits on such a regular basis.  Not to mention the fact that all the local Atlanta news outlets are money-grubbing rags that recycle the same news anyway.

The Atlanta Braves blog I occasionally write for, I’ve been informed that there are going to be some changes with.  Although it’s nothing really that serious, it does make me wonder if I want to continue to obligate myself with writing about baseball on a weekly basis.  Obviously, my fandom with baseball has grown a little disenchanted over the last three seasons, but I kind of wonder if this was an opportunity to dive head-first into trying to re-invigorate it, or if I just want to stop outright.  Sometimes I think that my position of floating in the middle isn’t necessarily the best idea.

Speaking of baseball, it’s not that I don’t love the game any less than I used to, but here’s an interesting fact: I’ve been to one Braves game all season.  I’ve been to more baseball games at Coors Field in Denver, than I have at home in Atlanta.  I’ve seen as many games in Detroit and Miami as I have at home in Atlanta.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy going to the ballpark, it’s just that the idea of going alone isn’t what it used to be.  I tell you, one of these days I’m just going to have to buckle down and get on board with an 81-game plan, and make my damndest effort to do an entire 81-game season.

Maybe this is the kind of slump that happens when I don’t really do anything in my spare time.  I’ve been spending a lot of time reading lately, and I have to admit that since I started using my iPad as a Kindle, I’ve been reading a ton of books, and I’m finding it more of a bear than anything else when I force myself to read a physical book again, but my declaring particular authors as “physical book only,” it’s something that I’m not going to abandon any time soon.

But my list of options of things to do when I’m at home is a little stale, and makes me think that it’s contributing to my overall mental stagnancy lately.  All I do when I’m at home as of late is either read, play LoL, or watch DVR’d shows.  I could be a little bit more productive and try to do some cleaning, but when 95% of the clutter in the house isn’t mine, it’s somewhat unappealing and unrewarding to even fathom, let alone do, especially when it feels like it’s just going to have to happen again in a week.

Perhaps I need more activities to do in my spare time, to stimulate my brain into wanting to write about something.  That’s usually what normally happens, when I really find inspiration to write, while I’m doing something else, creating the false conundrum that I need to address and write about something while the iron is hot, but oh noes, I suddenly don’t seem to have the time to do such.  Perhaps I should actually address these projects for Dragon*Con while there’s still plenty of time in advance, as opposed to trying to get everything done in the month of August like I ended up doing last year.

But until then, this writer’s funk blows.  I like having something a little more focused to write about.

Is commitment the key to greatness?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Generally, when I think about myself and what I’m doing with my life, I like to think of myself as a pretty versatile person.  My interests are pretty varied, and I like to think that having versatility in my knowledge, talents and things I like to do is a good thing, and I still do think such holds to be true.

But at the same time, I don’t particularly think I’m necessarily the greatest at any one thing I do on a fairly regularly basis.  I work out every day, but I’m not massively muscular, chiseled or have unlimited stamina.  I play League of Legends on a fairly regular basis, but I’m not going really reach a level where I could become a professional or anything.  I make stuff for a living, but aside from the attempts to be humble about it, I know I’m not the greatest graphic designer on the planet.  I’m a pretty involved baseball fan, and still do a decent bit of baseball-related writing on a regular basis, but I’m not really going to get to a point where I could brog about baseball for a living, or make my own publications.

Long story short, I’m involved with several things, dabble in many, but I don’t necessarily think I’m truly great at anything in particular.  And sometimes I wonder if I want to be great at something, I need to fully commit to it, and give it my primary and majority attention and effort.

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