I guess kids will have no choice but to grow up now

I guess it’s getting to the point where it’s inevitable that the things of our youths ultimately end up dying slow and undignified deaths.  I kind of wonder if this is one of those generational things that happens to every generation, but given the fact that some of these iconic companies are often times nearly 30, 40, or 50+ years old, I’m going to have to lean towards that such might not be the case for every generation.

Now I’ve gotten nostalgic and poetic waxy about franchises of my own youth, like K-Marts, Old Country Buffets and Sears, but the impending death of Toys ‘R Us is a pretty hefty blow in its own right.  Whereas the deaths of most of the other aforementioned businesses tended to hit grownups the hardest, there’s almost something cruel about a business that primarily made their bread on butter on the wants of children getting the axe now.

I mean, business is most certainly an unforgiving, indiscriminate venue, but taking it out on the children seems especially harsh.  It’s no secret that lots of people hate Walmart, and Target and Amazon are pretty universally loved, but when it really comes down to it, all of them, as well as all other businesses that could be considered competition were all involved in twisting the knife that eventually succeeded in bringing death towards the most iconic toy retailer, at least of my entire lifetime.

Continue reading “I guess kids will have no choice but to grow up now”

Growing Up Type-R

I know I touched on this subject before in the past at some point, but seeing as how the car has been green lit very similarly to the initial concepts, it doesn’t hurt to revisit this.  Sure, cars rarely change dramatically from their concept stages, and I wasn’t expecting the Civic Type-Riceboy to go from Gran Turismo Edit B pocket rocket to a sleek sophisticated sleeper, but we all can wish, right?

Anyway, upon seeing the updated photos of the release model, the first thought that popped into my head was the immediate comparison to the Homer Simpson car that tanked his half-brother’s original fortune, that’s how clown-y it looked, with its giant spoiler that I’m sure will be described as “aggressive” and face that looks like a smashed down Stormtrooper helmet.

And that’s just the superficial details that aren’t to the standard that I once held the vaunted Civic Type-R when I was still 19.

Mechanically, it’s definitely the strongest Civic, and one of the strongest Hondas in general off the factory line in history, but there too, it seems to have lost all the cool shit that made Hondas back in the late 90s.  An alleged 306 horsepower is advertised, but it’s coming from a turbocharged 2.0 liter with a redline of “just” 6,500 rpm.

Continue reading “Growing Up Type-R”

I am a fan of teens eating Tide Pods

The long and the short of such a remark is that it’s simply accelerating Darwinism that the stupid and weak evacuate existence faster than nature may have originally intended to.  I’m not a fan of stupid people, and unfortunately the world is quite overloaded with them anyway.  I’m also not a fan of mercilessly killing people for the sake of reducing the population of unsavory people, but when people croak on account of their own stupidity because they think it’s funny or are so starved for internet attention that they resort to eating laundry detergent, then it’s really out of all of our hands here.

I’m long past writing out the words “just when I thought people couldn’t get any dumber” because I learned a long, long time ago that no matter how low the bar may be lowered to, people will always, always find the ways to make it sink even further.  Frankly, teenagers deliberately staging fake tripping incidents in grocery stores while holding gallons of milk or juice seems like Mensa-caliber compared to people eating Tide Pods.  Or when thousands of people managed to organize and gather… for a Rick & Morty themed chicken nugget sauce that pretty much barely existed, and were ultimately owned by McDonalds when they all had to be told that they didn’t have any; those buffoons seem like MIT’s class of 2020 now.

Frankly, I wasn’t really surprised or concerned when I found out that teenagers eating Tide Pods was a thing recently.  If I think tons of people my age and generation are idiots, it’s a no-brainer that their offspring that’s budding into today’s teenage class are going to be just as stupid, and in this case, somehow manage to be even dumber.  Not only is the risk of ingesting laundry detergent clearly labeled on all packaging, the thought of eating it isn’t remotely appealing or worth the risk in order to get twelve people to see it on social media.

But whatever, if kids want to eat Tide Pods and kill themselves in the process, go ahead and let them. If they’re dumb enough to be doing so in the first place, it’s kind of doing the world a favor and getting them out of the way so that the actual cream of the crop can rise and make something of this wasteland of a world that we’re living in.  I’m not promoting death, but far be it for us to stand in the way of natural selection, and if kids are knowingly swallowing poison on their own volition because it’s what they think will get them attention, then I should switch professions into the funeral industry, because there’s tons of money to be made there for this reason and so many more.

Is trick-or-treating dead?

When I moved into my house, I often noticed the sheer volume of children in my subdivision.  Riding around on bicycles, and dragging their feet shuffling home after getting off of the school bus that clogs the road at 4:30 every day.  I thought to myself that, all i-hate-kids nihilism aside, that it was still a pleasing atmosphere to see, especially in contrast to the warzone that my previous home’s subdivision was devolving to.

All this said, I would have wagered money that come Halloween, my neighborhood would be a veritable hotbed for trick-or-treaters, since there were already a lot of children in the neighborhood, and that my subdivision seemed kind of tailor-made for trick-or-treating since it was relatively flat, homes moderately spaced out and looked affluent enough to attract children into thinking good candy were abundantly available.  With such in mind, my home was very well stocked for the freeloaders, with the hopes that maybe a fistful of the stuff would be left for us afterwards.

Which brings us to this morning, where I’ve got a bowl still practically overflowing with candy, and Halloween saw less than like, 30 kids coming to my door.  And we had jack-o-lanterns, fake tombstones and a decorated door with blinking lights to indicate that my home was game for the kids.

So I have to ask now, is trick-or-treating pretty much dead these days?

Continue reading “Is trick-or-treating dead?”

No, please god no, just no

The word people my ancient age are really beginning to identify as a legit trigger: spinoff.  As in The Karate Kid is filming a spinoff show, starring Ralph Macchio and Billy Zabka, about their fucking kids and their own miserable, post-Karate Kid lives.

This one hurts.  I tolerated Fuller House and Girl Meets World because as much of an old-man stink as I made about their spinoffs, because as much as I actually did watch the shit out of those series, I didn’t really care about them.  Same goes for whatever Roseanne spinoff they’re plotting.

But The Karate Kid?  THE fucking The Karate Kid??  With Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi and Cobra Kai and get him a body bag yyyeeeaahhh??  This one hurts.

This one hurts, really bad.

Why the fuck can’t people just let the classics live out their lives and die peacefully?  Why does some fucking asshole(s) have to dip into nostalgia and dig shit out of their treasured pasts and bring them back into this shitty present time with social media and retards as elected officials and other literal and metaphorical cancers, with weak, convoluted, fan-fiction-caliber storylines and their kids’ perspectives for the promises of paydays?  Why the fuck can’t these actors manage their money or their egos where they don’t feel the need to accept these miserable spinoffs for the sake of their own classic bodies of work?

Continue reading “No, please god no, just no”

The death of an era

Pour one out soon: AOL Instant Messenger announces it will shut down permanently in December after 20 years of being the penultimate forefront of instant messaging over the internet

Honestly, I don’t think anyone is really ever going to fully understand the importance of AIM in my life, or that I am going to be legitimately sad when it logs off for good on December 15th.  And this isn’t so much of just another “something from Danny’s childhood is vanishing for good” kind of emo as much as it is a genuinely true passing on of something that was very integral to my daily living for nearly two full decades.

I still have my original screen name for when I was even still an AOL subscriber for $19.99 a month, and I logged on through their software on a 2400 baud then eventually a 33.6 kbps modem, and have been using it as recently as 2015.  Back when I originally made it, I didn’t even grasp what an ISP was, and didn’t realize internet access even existed outside of AOL.  I also remember knowing it tied up phone lines and made accessing my house over the phone nearly impossible for whenever my sister and I weren’t fighting over computer time and someone was parked at it, chatting away on the world wide web.

Through AOL did I come and go through my tremendous anime weeb phase of my life, but along the way I made lots of internet friends whom I’d shared countless hours and nights chatting away with and role-playing Ranma 1/2 characters in cleverly-named Members chat rooms.  I had like two different internet girlfriends at various points, one of whom I’d actually met in person once at an Anime Expo which was a completely different rabbit hole, but the point is, I learned it was entirely possible to meet, make and maintain real human relationships over the internet in spite of all the endless skepticisms that it was full of creepy terrible predators.

Continue reading “The death of an era”

The Dragon*Con post, 2017

As some might recall, I skipped Dragon*Con in 2016, citing that I felt like I needed a break from the event as a whole, cold turkey full stop.  Mythical gf and I deliberately scheduled an out-of-country cruise vacation on that very same period of time so that we could eliminate all doubts and remove all temptations to participate in anything, and I have zero regrets for doing what we did then.

However, I would be lying to myself if I didn’t feel a little bit melancholy about the notion of deviating from what was something of a yearly tradition, where large chunks of my friends gather, and it’s a pretty comprehensive experience of catching up with people, taking a ton of pictures and imbibing in a whole lot of alcohol.  As much as I relished in the opportunity to take a break, I kind of knew that I would be back the following year; I accomplished my goal of wanting to feel like I missed out, which renewed my sense of wanting to go back.

Life works in interesting ways sometimes, and we don’t always get to have a say in what happens when.  And as much as I was actually back to looking forward to Dragon*Con again this year, some things I’m not going to get into happened at a fairly conflicting time, and really derailed the experience as a whole.  Needless to say, not only was Dragon*Con something that got pushed into the backseat, I’ll admit that it was something that was practically impossible for me to enjoy throughout the weekend.

I’ll often say that writing is an efficient form of therapy for me, and sometimes it takes seeing thoughts formed into words and slapped onto a word processor for me to gain some clarity, but such is very true as far as my overall feelings of the con itself.  I’m trying my best to remain as objective as possible without letting my personal life overlap with anything else, but the reality is that everything is relative, and life doesn’t take a backseat just because something is planned, and life doesn’t stop when it comes to day-to-day living them out. 

Continue reading “The Dragon*Con post, 2017”