Tag: batarians

Oh, South Fulton #47

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: South Fulton taxpayers ‘livid’ because mayors wants to give himself a raise

It was 7:10 am and I was in the kitchen groggily pondering my life while getting ready to start preparing breakfast for the kids, when I saw the headline for this article pop up on my Echo.  My brow furrowed, and my knee-jerk reaction was what, fuck that when I pulled out my phone to look up the story to find out more.

I’ve said it many times that despite the fact that I’ve long bid good riddance to South Fulton county, I still have a casual interest in the goings over there, because I do believe that in spite of all the corruption and ironic bad behavior that will always render the place a swampy swirl, I do feel for those that are good, that still live there and believe in the place, even if I don’t, and want good for those people.  And my knee-jerk reaction was that a mayor giving himself more money for a region that seems incapable of improvement, doesn’t sound like a very good idea for those people.

But then I read the context behind the headline, and my attitude changed fairly quickly.

Turns out the Mayor of the City of South Fulton was making a paltry $47,676 a year.  The caveat to it is that for whatever reason, it was in a part-time capacity, and there are all sorts of easy jokes about how it’s possible or why it’s just part-time explains why South Fulton is such a wasteland, but in terms of numbers, the mayor was making a wage that frankly I don’t think is necessarily livable in the Metro Atlanta area.

It should also be mentioned that one of the former mayors of Atlanta once was discovered in an audit to have spent upwards of $20K doled out to employees as prizes and bonuses for holiday parties, to give a barometer of how much reckless spending there is in this general region.

But yeah, the mayor of the City of South Fulton is currently making $47K and wants to bump himself up to $85K; the article states that it’s a 78% increase presumably to increase outrage, but it’s really 55%, and frankly, for doing the thankless job in a wasteland, even if it’s at a part-time capacity whatever that entails, I don’t think is an unreasonable amount to propose.  It’s not like he’s asking for six figures to do the seemingly nothing that all the politicians in the Metro area do, and frankly it’s not like he hasn’t earned some money for all the efforts he’s tried to put into his jurisdiction.

For context, after being elected, he deliberately moved himself into one of the sketchiest apartment complexes in one of the most sketchiest parts of town, to try and prove to his constituents that he was one of them and was a man of the people.  He eventually had to bail because unsurprisingly a place like that had tremendous mold problems and it was threatening to the lives of him and everyone who lived there (the complex has since mostly burned down, “accidentally”), but this is the kind of guy that he tried to be, as a politician.

Regardless, there are many in South Fulton who are deemed as livid because he wants a little bit more money to part-time reside over them, and after seeing the numbers, I’m not opposed to it anymore as much as I think a lot of it should be past-services due. 

It’s like that scene in Ocean’s 13 where the dice factory goes on strike, and Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict hears the number $30,000, and is all like $30K for every employee?  And then is informed that it’s just $30k is what they’re demanding in total, and everyone’s just basically like.. that’s it?

That’s how I feel about this guy asking for a little bit more money.  It’s not an egregious amount, and it’s frankly too modest in my opinion.  I know it’s easy for me to say not being my tax dollars and my money, but if anyone were to offer me a 55% raise to go live back in South Fulton County, I’m not doing it.  Not even for a 100% raise, because there’s no way I could afford to live in a secluded fortress away from all the bullshit, not to mention the agony commute I’d be putting myself into again.

Man is just asking for a modest raise to continue living in a part of town that mostly everyone has given up on and doesn’t believe in, and even if he is one of the many Metro Atlanta politicians blowing smoke, $85K a year seems like a rounding error in comparison to some of the flagrantly irresponsible spending going on around the rest of the Metro area.

I always wanted the front of my house to look like an office vestibule

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw this meme from Black Twitter about how now that glass-enclosed front porches are becoming a thing, it’s only a matter of time before black people start tinting their front porches.  It was one of those things that I thought was kind of funny because of the stereotypes that were being implied by such an observations, but really my mind went to being fascinated that glass-enclosed front porches were actually a thing.

The examples I’d been seeing since being curious don’t really sell me on their benefit, other than the fact that they’re a hard-shell that stands as one more layer to protect the front door of a home from the devastating effects of prolonged rain exposure.

But otherwise, they make the homes that choose to go in that route look like, a vestibule to an office building.  And frankly, I don’t even understand what the point of vestibules are in the first place; Google is telling me that they’re:

for the purpose of waiting, withholding the larger space from view, reducing heat loss, providing storage space for outdoor clothing, etc

The thing is, most everywhere I’ve been, offices, hotels, airports, or any place that might have vestibules, the only rationale that really makes any sense is the prevention of loss of a desired air temperature; cold in the summer, heat in the winter, and anything in between.  I guess they could be used as something of mudrooms for a patch of space where people can reduce the amount of dirt and mud they track into the larger part of the structure.

But to basically turn homes into having a glorified vestibule once a front segment of a home is enclosed in glass?  Yeah, seems counterproductive in my opinion.

Not only does it look aesthetically ridiculous, it’s an invitation to greenhouse effect your front stoop/porch, and microwave the inside of it during a sunny and/or hot day.  Short of having some logical ventilation in there, I have to imagine that moisture gets trapped in these things and now you’ve also now got a sauna, pressing and permeating moisture onto one of the exterior walls and doors to your home, and if there’s one thing that I’ve ever learned about homeownership is that moisture is definitely not a good thing in most cases.

Provided on whether they’re locked or unlocked, these doors just create an extra layer for packages to be dropped off at; like Amazon will just plop the boxes outside the vestibule instead of next to your actual front door, and the risk of package theft goes up.  Or in a true nightmare scenario, a place for bums and squatters wandering by to meander to the door and give a tug, to see if they can get a free place to sleep overnight, or drop a deuce in the corner.

And of course, even if they’re not making up of straight up actual glass, plexi, acrylic and other forms of transparent surfaces still shatter and shard into sharp, dangerous pieces, and all it takes is one local vandal, an errant baseball, golf ball or football being struck or thrown, or a drive-by destruction of property in order to trash one of these glass boxes, and now you’ve got one more fragile thing that can break and cause a lot of harm and trauma.

I’m going to make an assumption here and assume that it was white people who came up with this silly idea, of glass-enclosed front porches because this definitely sounds like something white people would really come up with.  Have the pleasure of feeling like you’re outside enjoying a picturesque day, except not have to be influenced (as much) by summer heat or winter cold; and that’s provided that these are built to be remotely temperature controlled.  But completely not take into considerations of building little glass boxes that live outside, and all the consequences of creating such silly things.

But for real though, it will be entertaining if when the first time I actually see one of these out in the wild, it’s tinted.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: The Arrogance is real and appropriate for Duke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: teenager from Scotland not the country, North Carolina, accepted into more than 30 schools, selects Duke University

Firstly, if any of my zero readers were to click the link to de-anonymize this #TRYHARD, I have to ask if all of the photographs of her are actual photographs or if they’re paintings?  They’re processed so crudely that they look like paintings, and I know I’m already calling her arrogant, but I don’t think to the degree where she’d have paintings of herself in graduation.  But I guess out in Scotlandnotthecountry, North Carolina, they don’t have any reliable graphic designers anywhere to not make photographs look like shitty watercolor paintings.

But anyway, here we have another #TRYHARD who is just arrogant enough to pique my interest, because when the day is over, she’s really not that hot shit because she basically applied to every college in the state of North Carolina and because the article points out that she raked in nearly $1M in scholarships, not to mention will be getting aide from the Gates Scholarship which basically is a free ride to anywhere, any and all credentials and accolades have to be mentioned to really sell this #TRYHARD in a sea where there are fish who have cleared 60, 120, and 200+ college acceptances themselves.

To cut to the chase, she ultimately picked Duke, which is definitely a good reputable school in academics, but it’s also among the most insufferable institutions on the planet if you want people to hate your guts for any reason at all.  But it seems to be a match made in heaven already, because when describing her journey of when she started getting acceptance letters, she’s clearly got the arrogant part of being a blue blooded Dookie already down:

When she began opening her accepting letters, she thought it was too good to be true.

I was like, I need some rejection. I need to be humbled,” Revels joked.

Oh please, someone reject me just so I know that I haven’t applied to every single UNC-Wherever satellite school for agriculture among a few others that will still give me the time of day simply because of my demographic credentials.

But then it gets better and in this case I mean worse, as in her arrogant humble-bragging just continues to grow, in thinking that perhaps she sold herself short by not applying to bigger and better schools, like perhaps any Ivy Leagues (that we know of):

Despite being accepted into so many schools, Revels admitted she regrets she didn’t reach higher.

Don’t sell yourself short. I felt like Duke was my highest reach. Why not go higher and go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton? You never know what could happen,” Revels said.

Man, despite getting into a school like Duke, she doesn’t hesitate to take a dump on them and loudly ponder on if she could have done even better.  That’s quite some arrogance.

Welp, it’s because you did have doubts and did sell yourself short, and didn’t bother try to get into any of the Ivy Leagues.  Frankly, Harvard has accepted just about everyone under the sun this year that wasn’t white, so it stands to believe that this one probably would’ve made it through as well, but she didn’t try, and therefore she won’t know, and despite her high degree of arrogance, she most definitely falls short in the rankings of #TRYHARDs this #SZN.

Didn’t try hard?  Then you can die hard.  Owned

Who needs Vegas when you can just go to Kroger?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I wish I had the imagination to make this shit up: South Fulton Kroger under scrutiny for basically opening a slot machine area inside of the store

I don’t even know where to begin with this.  It’s like a hungry lion jumping into a herd of gazelle but there are so many intriguing options that it’s hard to focus on just one, and they all get away and they go hungry, but in this case I don’t know what angle to start blabbing on about and this post is going to (already) turn into shit.

It’s funny though; I like Kroger as a company.  They used to be 24 hr. mostly until the pandemic so it was convenient to go whenever, and the bottom line was always that my dollars always stretched a little further at Kroger than say, Publix.  But ask anyone I know around here, and the general consensus is that Publix is a preferable grocer, because it feels cleaner and safer and more upscale in general, none of which I necessarily disagree with, but when I’m trying to stretch dollars, Kroger is still superior in that regard.

Granted, I still do the majority of my shopping at Publix, because there are literally two of them equidistant from my home and closer than the nearest Kroger and for daily needs and quick gets, time is money and distance wins out, but sometimes when I know I need to make a big trip, I’ll go out of my way and hit up Kroger, because at least where I am, they’re not as scuzzy as say, the ones in South Fulton are, which I am all too familiar with, seeing as how I lived there for 13 years.

But over the last few years, Kroger hasn’t done themselves any favors in the public eye, especially that of the one that resides over the Metro Atlanta area.  I mean, prior to getting hit with the Gentrification Bomb, we had Murder Kroger in the middle of the city, where at least three murders had occurred.  Then we had the Kroger in College Park that was accused of being racist for implementing a series of security vestibules that basically enclosed shoppers inside aisles to help deter theft.

And now we have a Kroger in South Fulton County that for some reason, has decided to put a miniature slot casino inside their store.  Prizes are not monetary, but they’re still slot machines all the same.  Like, my knee-jerk reaction is just to laugh at the sheer absurdity of such a wild idea, and just how flagrantly targeted it is at feeding into racial stereotypes and not even trying to hide it.

Like really, what the fuck business do slot machines have inside of a grocery store?  Even Las Vegas has steered away from the days of having rando slot machines in every gas station, CVS and restaurant, and you can go into a Smith’s or an Albertsons to get just your groceries and not be tempted to dump the remainder of your paycheck in some crappy Wild Cherry or Double Diamond machine.

But not this Kroger, who set up a loosely partitioned-off area with a few slot machines and some sad stools for people to really post up and get comfortable for a wallet-draining slot session.  And it’s at the front of the store, where it’s easy for people to come inside with the sole express of gambling away their money, instead of like Costco where they make you march all the way to the back of the store in order to get a $5 rotisserie chicken. 

Kroger Casino’s spot is where you’d see some other Kroger or Kroger-affiliated stores set up like a Subway, a Starbucks, or like eye glass repair or a tax prep kiosk; random conveniences meant to make you want to spend a little more time in the store to sway you to shop more on actual profit-making products.  But instead, it’s just a literal hole in the wall guarded solely by some portable plexiglass partitions with a sign on it that states one must be 18+ in order to play.

I’ve been to Krogers in the hood; maybe not this specific one, but I’ve been to some rough Krogers in South Fulton.  Usually against my better judgment, but the desire to save a buck or two, or sometimes they’re just conveniently on my route.  I don’t think for a minute that by the time I post this, there probably have already been at least 100 minors who have meandered into this section of the store without repercussion and drained at least $2,000 by now.  The store is definitely not going to spring extra for some fat slob with a fake badge and can of pepper spray to run security for this section, and it’s clear that the intent of Kroger is knowing that they will help create young gambling addicts, and by being in existence, help pad their own bottom lines at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.

As sad as this all is, and the painfully obvious message that it’s sending, all I can do is laugh about it.  It’s fucked up, but I still find it absolutely hilarious.  Kroger is in the making money businesses, and there clearly no moral or ethical boundaries in place if they have an idea that can make them some, and they’re absolutely not at all concerned over the optics of choosing stores in the hood of hoods to pilot such an idea out.

Next thing we know, there will be some form of legalized prostitution brought to you by Kroger, where customers can walk up to a different loosely partitioned section of the store, scan your Kroger Plus Card, and then chat with some store employee in a blue Kroger polo shirt about wanting to get 30 minutes with Kayla, before going into a makeshift brothel like in Taken to get your jollies off.

And of course, this would pilot in Forest Park, or Covington, Georgia, because the seedier the idea, the deeper into the hood they need to be piloted in.  Fresh for everyone!™

A win is a win for Union City?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Union City is #1… ranked worst place to live in Georgia.  Ouch

Normally whenever some rando websites called stuff like 24/7 Wall St. make lists about places the people writing them have obviously never been before in their lives, I’m usually full of objections and piss and vinegar and snark ready to rebut with.  Because like good old fashioned your mom jokes, as much as I criticize and dog on Georgia, it’s okay when I do it, but I sure as hell don’t always like it when those outside of here take a stab at some cheap shots.

But in the case of this rating system, that has Union City, Georgia as the #1 worst place to live in all of Georgia, I’m inclined to agree.   As a former resident of the south side of the Metro Atlanta area, I can say that I lived way too close to comfort to Union City than I’d care to admit.  Close enough to where I patroned the businesses, even if I didn’t really want to be there, just because it was close and convenient to where I lived. 

Needless to say, I’m not just agreeing with the shaming of Union City just because I buy what some website’s criteria is, I’m agreeing, because I have familiarity and a lot of personal experience of just how big of a shithole Union City really is.

Honestly, I didn’t really feel like I needed to have to read it to figure out what the main factor of the poor ranking was, because Union City and crime go hand in hand like peas and carrots.  The cited statistic that Union City’s crime rate is triple the state average, seems low in my opinion, seeing as how my old neighborhood’s NextDoor feed has at least two posts a day detailing people reporting gunshots, thefts or police incidents on a regular basis.

Just driving through town feels unsafe, no matter what time of the day it is, and it’s truly tangible how your own body can feel unsafe in an environment, just by being in the proximity of the town.

And I was always just passing through, or at the very worst, going to the one Kroger that was probably the closest to my actual house.  The roads are unkept, every parking lot is full of oil slicks, glass diamonds and copious amounts of litter, all evidence of poor maintenance and riff raff behavior.

I couldn’t imagine living in Union City, because if I was beginning to feel unsafe and uneasy on the regular where I used to live, I couldn’t imagine how much worse it probably was in actual Union City.  Having firearms and guard dogs wouldn’t bring me any more easiness, especially knowing that with the crime statistics in the city being what they are, the likelihood is that criminals would be living among me at any given time.

Either way, the point is, despite the fact that often times a lot of these rando sites that come up with lists about real estate and towns and cities across America are full of WASPy and NIMBY bullshit, but in the case of this particular list, I don’t think they could’ve hit the nail on the head any better.

I’m amazed Cam Newton lets Union City tout that they’re where he’s from, because he seems like a pretty regular cat.  But I guess it’s easy to live the good life when you’ve successfully gotten out of Union City.

Incredible

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was little, and growing up in the dairy farmlands of Harrisonburg, nobody in that hicksville had any idea what a Korean person was.  All through elementary school, people always gave me the “are you Chinese or Japanese?” schtick, like a real-life King of the Hill.  When I said no to both, most people were absolutely baffled, and had no idea of what possible alternatives there could be to Chinese or Japanese people.

A long while ago, I wrote about a how a kid in my neighborhood apparently thought I was Spanish, and said “hola” to me.  Throughout the last few months, this kid has seen me a few times during my morning jogs, and has said “hola” to me on all those instances.  Because I’m not Spanish, I do not respond ever.

Just the other night, while I was out on my evening jog, I ran by two little batarians, to which one of them said “hola” to me.  Seeing as how I was now right next to the kid, I finally said, “I’m not Spanish.  You don’t have to say ‘hola’ to me.“

Being in numbers often times creates a false sense of courage in kids, so the other kid laughed, and began motoring his mouth as I proceeded to leave them behind.  In the midst of my pulling away I heard “So what are you?  French?  Italian?  You speak Japanese?“

Wow.  Aside from being Spanish, I’m mistaken for a French person, or an Italian person, before even hitting the continent of Asia?  Man, these little black kids live in a sheltered world.  I’m actually surprised at how dumb these kids are going to grow up to be.