Tag: ohatlanta

Oh, Atlanta #376

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I last did one of these, yeah?  Mostly on account of the fact that in all the time between the last one and this one, the chance were pretty high that I simply just wasn’t checking any news, local or national, because I simply did not have the time and/or capacity to do so, and potentially run into something that makes words roll off the tongue (or fingertips) to brog about in the first place.  But sure as the rain falls in Georgia summers, I check the local news, the chances are high that I’m going to see something stupid that warrants some word barf.

Like these billboards that have been hung up in a few places in Greenville, South Carolina and now making their way into Atlanta, that supposedly are trying to send a message to the youths of these areas, to put guns down and presumably stop shooting other people.

At the core of these, the message is noble, and something that I do support; reducing gun violence.  But when it comes down to branding, awareness, the execution of a billboard, there’s just so much more wrong that I just can’t help but clown on it.

Like, I don’t know where to even start.  Do I go on about how the focal point of the message is all jacked up and could lead to misinformation, because GUNS NOW is all huge, that someone zipping by I-85 in Greenville or Atlanta, where the posted speed limits are anywhere from 55-70 mph with actual motorists usually going 80+, might not see the smaller text and just see GUNS NOW and become motivated to arm themselves?

Or that maybe in Atlanta where the gun violence is high but the education is low in the areas in which these billboards are up, the order of the messaging isn’t comprehended appropriately, and the wrong people read it as “put down the young people, GUNS NOW” and then they start breaking into other peoples’ cars to find guns, succeed, and then start shooting, young people.

Perhaps it’s the fact that “like” is in quotation marks, as if to encourage people to tongue-in-cheek, air quotes like them on, presumably, Facebook, because there’s a tiny-ass logo, but really don’t.  The use of quotation marks creates more confusing to their message than clarity, and confusion usually leads to harm.

The best part about it is that there’s no actual call to action on the billboard itself; I guess the closest thing is the fact that there is a Facebook logo, but really it’s up to Google to find this organization for you.  To its credit, it wasn’t that difficult to find a Facebook page of the same name which appears to be one and the same, but then there are all these visuals of inconsistent naming; the billboard says “Put Down the Guns Now Young People” but then there’s a bigass banner where the gun is no longer plural, and as someone in marketing, all I can do is shake my head and wince at the inconsistent use of messaging, which is among the top three faux pas when it comes to any sort of establishing brand voice.

Either way, although the message is noble and one that I could get behind, the execution is just far too shoddy and ineffective at getting its point across that I’m afraid I might be more encouraged to get a GUN NOW, because seeing those words in a giant splatter of blood makes me feel like I might need to arm myself to protect myself from those vile young people.

Yeah good luck with that

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Job Creators Network sues Major League Baseball for $100M and demands that the 2021 All-Star Game be returned to Atlanta

Sometimes I wonder if third-parties like this get involved in scenarios like this because they actually care, or if they’re just chasing the potential to get some free money in a settlement when and if an entity like MLB just doesn’t feel like dealing with this bullshit and is willing to throw some money at it in order to get it out of their hair.

Obviously with a case like this it’s undoubtedly going to be the former, because anyone with a brain knows that it’s nigh impossible to go at a gozillion dollar company like MLB and actually expect to have a fighting chance.  Frankly, I’d love to see MLB take it on and potentially counter-sue for the inconvenience and bury a shitty-sounding organization like “Job Creators Network” into oblivion.

Normally, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge an organization that sounds like it’s trying to create jobs, but when I saw this blurb, I kind of felt like I knew what I needed to know to be able to determine a side I’d rather side with:

The lawsuit was filed in New York City by attorney Howard Kleinhendler, who was also involved in several failed lawsuits seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

So basically some baked potato-supporting brainless fucks who are picking fruitless fights for no real good reason.

The funny thing is that I normally love to see when MLB or Braves Corporate get owned, but in this particular instance, I have to stand with MLB, but at least Braves Corporate is still getting owned in the process.

Because there is a 0% chance that the All-Star game is coming back to Atlanta, and I’d like to see it remain that way; for both symbolic reasons that Georgia’s Jim Crow 2.0 personally ushered in by Bubba Kemp is horrific and flagrant, and that Braves Corporate, Truist and all their crooked cronies, constituents and talking heads are humiliated, owned and denied all the money that an All-Star game would’ve brought to them.  Bonus also being a big super-spreader event avoiding Atlanta Smyrna, alleviating roads, businesses and traffic.

Either way, this is a story that’s pathetic on all fronts, no matter what source it’s read from.  It’s a waste of time, money and resources for those who have to deal with it, and a perfect example of peoples’ eager willingness to do it in order to gain notoriety, exposure and potentially free money if the right people just want to see it go away.

Oh, Atlanta #819

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: cops execute some raids on a home on account of investigating a meth operation, unearth a motherlode of meth, but in the process also discover that the owners of the property are also running a cockfighting ring

There’s not a lot to really say about the situation; meth is dangerous, cockfighting is inhumane, both are highly illegal.  Cops had just cause to raid for one thing, find out that there’s a second thing going on in the process.  77 lbs. of meth, plus a bunch of pissed off chickens ready to kill motherfuckers.  Kinda fucked up on all accounts, no matter what way you look at it.

But what drew my attention in this whole story is that, as a former resident of South Fulton county, this is a region that I’m pretty familiar with.  The two raids happened at properties where the streets are disclosed, and the interesting thing about them is that they all occurred less than a mile away from the Fulton County South services center.

I’ve been to the services center more times than I’d like to have had in my life, because it’s the place where tags are issued, among other things, but the reason I point this out is that it’s also a place that at any given time, is crawling with police.  I don’t know the specifics, but I’m pretty certain there’s police training, some modicum of local court businesses going on, but the bottom line is that it’s basically a police station among other county-related operations.

Basically, this whole meth and cockfighting ring, was happening less than a mile away from a police station.  There’s a lot of context missing in the details, most notably time frames, so the jury’s out on whether it’s ironic or not to say, fucking brilliant.

But if I’m a betting man, I’d have to lean that there was probably a lot more meth produced and a lot of illegal cockfighting that occurred before any busts actually happen, because government is slow to act or react, plus South Fulton county is about as competent as a Walmart greeter is at stopping theft.

So cockfighting and meth happening just a stone’s throw away from a police station?  That’s an Oh, Atlanta post if there ever was one to come back with.

lol Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not much to really say.  As a fan of both baseball and human rights in general, I for one stand in full solidarity with the decision to strip the All-Star Game from Atlanta because of Georgia’s turrible voting rights laws.  I hear it’s going to Denver instead, which will probably be good for baseball, because people like legalized weed, and home runs, both of which exist in abundance in Denver.

But in spite of being for lack of a better term “my team,” I’m taking sadistic amusement of seeing ScumTrust Truist Park being forced to embarrassingly remove all mention of the All-Star Game from the ballpark and probably all around the surrounding Battery.  Probably at the airport too.  Oh fucking well.

This is what leadership like Bubba Kemp looks like – big talk, no action, and getting owned.  Yea c’mon~

I’m okay with whenever Braves corporate gets owned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When the topic of Georgia’s recently passed voter suppression laws were fresh, I had plenty of thoughts about it, but no real desire to write about it, because when it comes to politics and racism, it’s a sad and unfortunate feeling of a pointless debate, because it doesn’t matter just how flagrant and blatant it can be, it still inexplicably breezes on through to law and no amount of protesting and action afterward ever can undo it.  That, and the whole I have no time ever thing, to where when I do have a little bit of free time to myself, none of it wants to be spent writing about the futile state of Georgia’s politics.

But the recent news of Major League Baseball plucking the 2021 All-Star Game right out the hands of Cobb County, the Atlanta Braves and ScumTrust Truist Park, as something of a national punishment for being in a state that allowed such flagrant discrimination?  Now that’s some shit right there, that piques my interest and gets some creative writing juices flowing.

In one hand, there’s a sensible portion of me that feels a little bit bad for ultimately, the Atlanta Braves organization, because they’re the ones getting embarrassingly punished for a decision that has next to nothing to do with baseball, and sits on a level way above a glorified kids game.  This is kind of along the lines of businesses threatening to boycott and leave the state because of Jim Crow 2.0, where that might send a message to people that what Georgia politicians did was a bad thing, but it will definitely hurt the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people who work for these businesses or rely on these businesses to make livings.

But in the other hand, there’s a sadistic part of me that sees the Atlanta Braves organization-real estate conglomerate is this entity that makes a gozillion dollars every year on a variety of revenue streams, and is ultimately headed up by some circle-jerk of old white people who I have no qualms with seeing take a humiliating slap on the wrist on a national level, and hopefully lose out on some large pies that will instead go to like Chicago or Philadelphia or Los Angeles instead.  Sure, the hundreds of people that would be allowed to actually attend in a pandemic ‘Murica won’t spend their money at local businesses, but MLB’s All-Star break is just a few days in which some projected money won’t be thrown about; it’s a vastly different scenario than say the Georgia film industry, uprooting and leaving, forever, killing thousands of jobs in the process.

When the day is over, I’m glad that Atlanta lost the All-Star game. Aside from being a newer ballpark, and MLB loves to award All-Star games to newer ballparks, the Braves or the city, or this fucking state hasn’t done shit to deserve getting a cash injection that an All-Star game tends to bring, and I’m not going to lose any sleep over the city getting owned, as a result of a crooked choice made by the state.  Because let’s be real here, in spite of their efforts to remain politically ambiguous, most records revealed just how much of the Braves brass leans right, and so they kind of indirectly did this to themselves.

No matter the fact that I support the baseball team and want to see them succeed, I love hearing about when the Braves business organization gets owned.

Not sure if sad or Oh, Atlanta

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Pretty sure this wouldn’t be news if it weren’t tied to Shaquille O’Neal: Atlanta Krispy Kreme owned by Shaq basically burned down

Not entirely sure how I feel reading this.  The fact that I’m writing about it speaks to the fact that it clearly triggered some sort of response in my brain.  I maintain the fact that this wouldn’t have made national news if there were no ties to Shaq, but it is somewhat of a deal for those Atlantans who all hate change, are attached to their city’s things, and come out in droves when something they haven’t thought about in years changes or is harmed.

Frankly, moving out to the burbs and being at peace with the fact that I don’t really miss the city at all, and I’ve long passed the days of where I used to feel like I should have some finger or limb still associated to something in the city, so I could feel like I could always have a stake in all-things City of Atlanta.  And unlike the people who probably never went there because doughnuts are inherently bad for your health, but are pretending like they care about this Krispy Kreme getting severely damaged, I do have many memories of this particular place.

Ponce de Leon Ave. is one of the major thoroughfares in the actual City of Atlanta, and just about everything on it people tend to get attached to, like Murder Kroger, Paris on Ponce, the Plaza Theatre and the Majestic, the old Kodak building, among other things.  The Fellini’s on Ponce was a place where I’ve had lots of meals with friends and in the very rarest of times a few dates.  The Plaza Theatre was one of the go-places to watch indy flicks, and although I never was interested, where Rocky Horror allegedly took place.

But the Krispy Kreme on Ponce, this was the place to get late night donuts after a Braves game, get donuts after eating at somewhere like Cameli’s or Willy’s, or in more than one instance, an excuse to duck out of traffic and circumvent a red light by cutting onto North, but then actually stopping for two donuts and coffee instead and then passing through.

And like in the photo above, when friends would come in for past Dragon*Cons, and actually wanted to leave the con-space and see shit outside of the then-three hotels, where we’d go to stop and get donuts spontaneously, because we saw the red hot-and-ready light on.

The reality is that I’m sad that a place of business is going to be put on indefinite hiatus until it comes back, and make no mistake, it will come back because Shaq is rich as fuck and is real business smart, and not likely to let his investment of a Krispy Kreme on prime central real estate go to pot.  But I’m not really that sad that this happened, because like me, there are lots of people reminiscing about a simple doughnut shop and thinking about happier memories, and I know that when this place comes back, it’ll ultimately be business as usual, but for at least a week or so, I’m sure they’ll have a blowout of a return which will once again put this place in the news and most likely be an appearance by Shaq, and Shaq is always amusing to me.

Patience is a virtue

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: teenage Kroger employee in Gwinnett County arrested for stealing nearly $1 million dollars from his employer over the span of several weeks

The thing is, if this kid only paced himself and didn’t make it flagrantly obvious that something was amiss by refunding an $87,000+ transaction among the other $900,000 worth of refunds he issued to himself over two weeks, he probably would’ve had a system that could’ve stole about as much money with almost no risk.  But when you steal nearly a million dollars from your employer by issuing false refunds, from the same store you work at, within the span of two weeks, it’s this dumbass’s turd for thinking he’d actually get away with it.

Companies as large as Kroger typically have a built-in margin of loss on a daily basis, because of stuff like employee accidents, customers that accidentally ruin merchandise, prepared food that goes bad, and of course, petty theft, and if this kid were to keep his falsified refunds to smaller amounts, if he wanted them frequently, or numbers that weren’t $87,000 if he wanted to swing for the fences, but on much less frequency, then the losses probably would have slipped through the cracks and not rose any red flags unless there was some skepticism in the first place.

But as my brother pointed out, the simple reason was the fact that we were referring to the perp in question as a kid, because kids have no fucking sense, even less intelligence, and clearly don’t grasp the strength of the long game.  Because it sounded like he had a pretty rock solid system for pilfering extra cash, and if he could just keep his vices in check and not have to have Camaros and guns and shoes, he could’ve built up a sweet little side gig to keep things fluid and probably gotten away with it.

Whatever though.  It’s clearly a slow news day when people aren’t talking about politics now, because this story showed up in no less than all of the major Atlanta-area news outlets, and was picked up by a number of national news outlets too.  I guess when people want someone to point and laugh and judge from afar, dumbasses like this become low-hanging fruit and easy targets.