Tag: ‘murica

I need to just not leave my house anymore

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, mythical wife and I went out so she could find some holiday decorations for the house.  As it is our child’s first holiday season, she felt it was important that we make the house somewhat festive and relevant to the seasons, and I’m okay with that idea.

While we were driving to our destination, you’d think there was no pandemic still going on, based on just how slam-packed the shopping centers and surrounding streets were.  Parking lots getting backed up, because the access roads were being congested by the volume of cars getting stuck at lights, causing this colossal domino effect of typical traffic that I’m appalled but not surprised is going on given the whole pandemic thing that’s supposed to be encouraging people to be staying home when necessary, but we are in the midst of the holiday shopping season, and coronavirus or no, people are absolutely out and about.

When we got to the store, naturally my daughter shit her pants in the car, as is the usual routine, and it seems apparent that for the first years of her life while she’s still in diapers, that I’ll have to build in an extra ten minutes to any car ride at all, to account for the inevitable deuce that happens like clockwork whenever we go anywhere.

But anyway, when we got to the store, it took all of five seconds of being inside of it, did I spot the first no-maskers milling about, acting like nothing at all was wrong with ‘Murica and the air they breathed was as clean and pure as it probably is at the highest altitudes of the Appalachian trail.  Not long afterward, their shithead sons joined them, also wearing no masks, and the feeling of disgust immediately began bubbling up within me.

And while we were there, this one family was hardly the only cluster of people not wearing masks, and I saw several other individuals and families also shopping sans masks.  The ones that bothered me more than the no-maskers were the people who were wearing masks; around their necks as not on their fucking faces, obviously having said “I wore my mask to avoid scrutiny coming in, but now that I am inside, off with it until I’m reprimanded.”

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How easy it can be to forget

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During lunch, I ran out to run a few errands.  It was a beautiful fall afternoon, and cool enough to where it was appropriate to wear one of the numerous hoodies that I own because I like hoodies.  I drove out of my neighborhood, admiring the beauty of fall leaves and colors everywhere, and the gratification in knowing that my own property no longer needed to be raked anymore, due to my hard work.

I parked my car, and popped the hatch and grabbed the garbage bag full of baby clothes that I was going to drop off at Goodwill.  I was two steps walking towards the building when it hit me that I wasn’t wearing my mask yet.  Annoyed at the brain fart, I set the bag down and quickly retrieved my mask from the driver’s seat console and put it on.

Eight months into the global pandemic, and here I am forgetting to put the mask that all people with a modicum of intelligence and/or courtesy make mandatory of themselves.  It’s like, the day felt so pleasantly ordinary for 30 seconds that I forgot that we’re still in the middle of the aforementioned global pandemic, and the dreadful reality that there’s literally still no end in sight.

Scary how the world can look and feel so ordinary, so back-to-how-life-used-to-be, but still be the arena where an easily-preventable but still devastating disease is always wafting around all over the place, indiscriminately waiting on some idiot with no sense or too much freedom to latch themselves onto, and keep the cycle of spreading alive for yet another victim.

Such a reality check was enough to reel me back from feeling pleased with the weather to feeling the need to be weary about the people around who may or may not be as CDC-compliant as I try to be with myself, and that the world is still a scary fucking place.  It’s scary just how easy it is to forget it sometimes.

New Father Brogging, #026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I were playing some games online with our friends because we’re still very much immersed in pandemic ‘Murica and this is how things are done these days in order to be safe, and as we’re in between games, the topic of conversation goes towards what television shows everyone is watching.  Talking about The Mandalorian and Utopia among other shows, and how some of us might like them, or if they’re not any good at all, etc.

But mythical wife and I haven’t really seen or finished any of them, because we don’t have time.  Story of parenthood now.

We then start talking about video games; mythical wife and I just started playing Man of Medan, and gotten maybe three hours into the game, before we realized it was midnight which might as well have been 3 am for new parents like us, but reality sunk in that we weren’t sure when the next time we’d have a chance to play more of the game, because we just don’t have time, the perpetual story of parenthood now.

Even playing Jackbox games with friends for an evening means not having the opportunity to do another thing that we may or may not have wanted to do with what limited free time we have available to us, because as the story of being new parents go, you just don’t have much of it, because the primary meat of our time is spent raising our infant child and putting her needs first and foremost above everything else.

I do not have a single iota of regret for having a child and I love my daughter more than anything else in history, but as the objective of these new dad brogs go, is to express the realities and genuine thoughts that I have going through my own personal journey as a first-time father, and the reality is that I just don’t have a lot of time, like ever, for myself anymore, and that part is something that’s always going to be a tough pill to swallow, especially in conjunction to our lives pre-children, where we’d sometimes have nothing but time to sit around and literally do nothing at times.

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The 2020 Election Post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the span of the last week, as I’m sure it’s been for large swaths of American citizens, it’s been an absolute roller coaster of events, emotions and life in general.  I think it’s safe to say that the 2020 presidential election was possibly the most high-stakes, emotional and draining election that there’s been in generations, and it’s probably taken its toll on the millions of Americans who cared about what the end results were.  It certainly has done all of that and then some to my household, and I for one am tremendously relieved that it’s over, and the end result was the one we were hoping for.

But there were still a ton of things that swirled through my mind throughout the week of the election and the long, dragged out process that transpired in order for it to reach its conclusion, and because I don’t really want to make a bunch of posts about it or politics in general, as I’ve made way more political posts over the last few years than I thought I ever would, I’m going to do my best to consolidate it to a singular post and hopefully be done with it, and try and get back to writing about anything else, but probably falling back on the topics of how chaotic my life is as a first-time father and talking about poopy diapers.

As election day came and went, I remember feeling like there was a massively important sports game where I had a tremendous amount of vested interest in – meaning I didn’t want to know what was going on as it was going on, since I always feel like solely me and my participation in watching it will entirely sway the result into precisely what I did not want to see happen.  That being said, as the afternoon rolled into the evening, polling stations closed down, votes began officially being tabulated and counted, and news outlets all turned into gigantic tickers with silhouettes of the states of the United States turning red or blue but mostly red, much to my disgust.

There were many states that it was no surprise to see go red, and the real game was in all of the states that were known battleground states, as well as the few states in which always are the ones that sway most of the elections in the past, like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.  And because all of flyover America have fewer electoral votes, it’s always disheartening all the same to see the vast majority of the land of the United States glowing red from the onset, and it always creates that feeling of blue team always feeling like they’re playing from behind, and as sports fans, how much it sucks to always feel like you’re playing from behind.

My wife and I both went to bed feeling disgusted with the state of the country, that in spite of the tyranny endured throughout the last four years, all the bullshit, all the abrasion, all the racism, all the flagrant contrarianism, all the lies, deceit and just plain shitty leadership, the baked potato was still putting up a legitimate challenge to the presidency.  I mean, this was absolutely no surprise at all to me, and I’d warned anyone who would be willing to listen that this was going to be the case, and to expect this, but it was still disheartening to actually see it come to fruition, because in spite of my predictions, I always hoped that this would’ve been like a 2008 election where the victor was determined and announced by 10 pm.

But then the following day, America witnessed as Joe Biden’s electoral vote lead continued to grow, while the baked potato’s EV count remained static.  Maps of the US showed the states that had yet to be called showing surprising splits, and fewer more surprising than North Carolina and Georgia, two notoriously historically always-red states that were wavering.  Wisconsin and Michigan slowly tipped over into favoring Biden and were eventually declared wins for team blue.  Meanwhile, Pennsylvania was decidedly in favor of the baked potato, but the tremendous amounts of mail-in ballots that had yet to be tabulated, were speculated to probably be mostly in favor of Biden, and if and when they were all counted, a blue victory was to be expected.

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Let’s replace “Krogan” with “Americans”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know what spawned the line of thinking, but I recently had a thought in my head about comparing the mythical one-day vaccine to coronavirus to the cure to the Krogan genophage in the Mass Effect series.  Frankly, I don’t know how this post is going to pan out, but I figured I may as well just start writing, and see where it ends up.

For those who don’t know Mass Effect lore, the Krogan are a race of these almost dinosaur-ish, triceratops-ish, reptilian species.  They’re ultra-tough, aggressive, burly and violent, and as the story goes, they reproduced at a speed that gave concern to the galactic alliance, and for lack of a better term, a virus or genetic ailment of some sort, known as the genophage, was unleashed onto the entire race, in order to help suppress their population growth.  Yes, it’s a fucked up concept, but as all stories go, there’s really no bigger villains in the galaxy than man (and their intergalactic allies).

In Mass Effect 3, there’s a mission (Priority: Tuchanka) where the cure for the genophage is developed, and it’s up to you the player to travel to the Krogan planet, to determine the fate of the entire species.  If successful, the cure to the genophage is airborne released into the skies of Tuchanka, where it presumably cures every Krogan who breathes.  Given the way ME3 ends, who’s to say if it actually amounts to anything, but it’s a nice gesture to try and give them some sort of semblance of life back to the Krogan before the Reapers emerged from dark space.

In my perfect world, when the vaccine for coronavirus is developed, it will basically be Priority: Tuchanka, except that it’s more like Priority: America.  Unfortunately, as much as the idea of Commander Shepard going up against, and inevitably killing hundreds of right-wing, over-armed anti-vaxxing Karens and muh-rights Karls is a sadistic fantasy to behold, the mass killing wouldn’t quite go over so well in the real world as it does in a video game.

But the end result where an airborne vaccine is just mass-released into the atmosphere, and takes the choice out of the hands of everyone, seems like a pretty ideal outcome to me.  Granted, given the fact that the world is currently rushing the shit out of this, and who knows if we won’t accidentally sterilize the whole planet in the process, but it’s a risk that many would probably be willing to take in order to get back to some sort of normalcy in the world.

Ironically, the amount of resistance it would take to get a vaccine distributed throughout America much less the rest of the world, would probably be equivalent to the massive resistance we the players get in trying to save the Krogan in a video game.  And unlike in a video game, we can’t just annihilate everyone who is resistant, as gratifying as it might seem.  But the idea of the vaccine simply being dispersed in the atmosphere and taking the choice out of everyone’s hands seems very appealing to me, because it’s not about freedoms, it’s not about rights, it’s entirely about the long-term survival of the human race, and when too many people are being stupid, intelligent ones need to step in and make the smart choices for them.

Well, that didn’t turn out entirely as I had thought it might, but it’s sad/funny that we’re even in a position where the American future can plausibly be potentially compared to the genocidal plot of a video game.

Is this the worst era of politics ever?  Yes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Occasionally, there are things that go on in the world and in the lives of people in my own little bubble, that I wonder if these are things that every generation goes through.  Take for example, as my general generation of people are all climbing out of their 30s and some into their 40s, we’re entering stages of our lives where peoples’ parents begin to ascend into ages where life expectancy is nearing their ends, and there’s occasionally the somber conversation that comes up where family members have passed away.  Undoubtedly, this is something that every generation goes through, as Father Time is unbeatable and everyone eventually goes.

But the inspiration of this post is unfortunately politics.  It doesn’t take people with the power of enhanced sight to see that it’s a powder keg of a topic and the most volatile thing to possibly discuss in the world these days, and there are people who are smart enough to keep their mouths shut and keep their opinions to themselves in public, and then there’s everyone else who just can’t manage to shut the fuck up about politics.

I didn’t imagine the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have bothered me much, since usually the passing of anyone in Washington is met with who cares indifference.  But RBG meant a whole lot to a lot of people, and even casual news followers like me had heard plenty about her stances, accomplishments and general grit and determination throughout her career and her life.  And seeing the reaction of many of my internet friends, both female and male, about their general disappointment at her passing, puts into perspective for people like me just how big of a loss this is to a country that desperately needs strong people like her in it.

As sad and as much of a loss it was with RBG’s passing, what predictably happened next was no less nauseating and disappointing, no matter how inevitable it was; in spite of the fact that in previous instances of a justice passing away in an election year, their replacement was held off until after the elections, but shocking nobody, the baked potato and his cronies are going to do everything in their power to fastrack another hand-picked stooge to fill RBG’s seat as fast as humanly possible.

This, has unfortunately overshadowed the news of RBG’s passing, as this administration has the power to take absolutely anything in the country, and turn it political, obviously ruining everything it touches.

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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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