Tag: reminiscing

Nothing surprises me anymore at how far this country is willing to sink

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NPR: Pentagon reports intention to livestream the military execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009

A few years ago, a report like this would elicit an are you kidding me? response, because it really does seem ludicrous the idea of televising the killing of another human being regardless of how much they deserved it.  But nowadays, the reactions not just from me are pretty nonplussed, unsurprised, and just the continuous sense of disappointment in the country we live in, at constantly crashing through floor after floor at how low it’s willing to sink.

When I was in high school, I don’t know why my friends and I went to go to see it, but we saw 8mm in theaters.  I don’t remember who’s idea it was to go see it in the first place, but back then the company was more important than the activity, and I think it had more to do with the fact that we were little edgelord teens who loved the idea of being able to get into R-rated films, regardless of what the film actually was.

Instead, we walked into a trauma-fest trainwreck, where the takeaway walking out of the theater was now knowing what a snuff film was.  And that films like this really don’t come into existence if there weren’t shreds of truth scattered throughout the origin story of this script, and understanding that there truly are some fucked up people in existence.

Livestreaming the execution of another human being is basically tantamount to a snuff film, except that this is being sanctioned by the highest forms of the American government, which is going to convince a lot of uneducated people out there that this is okay.

I think the worst part about it for me is knowing that without any question, this is somehow going to end up being monetized and someone(s) will be making a substantial amount of money on this horrific endeavor.  Perhaps the livestream will be hosted by YouTube, or HBOmax, if not one of the batshit right-wing media conglomerates out there these days; that being said, FOX seems logical to throw their name in the hat to host a live feed of someone getting shot to death.

And undoubtedly, the execution itself on-site, is going to be an event.  Similar to like the UFC on the White House lawn, this is going to be some live event spectacle where tickets will command a hefty dollar, and there will probably be shit like merchandise and souvenirs to commemorate the occasion, even if it is the extinguishing of another human being’s life.

I doubt many, if any, earned dollars will go to any of the victims of Hasan’s kill spree, either.

I find it ironic that barely a week ago, I learned about Christa Pike from her botched execution, where the mutant somehow withstood two lethal injections and ended up surviving and waking up a week later.  I remember thinking about how a different form of death penalty clearly was needed, and my mind immediately went to firing squad, because as barbaric as it might seem for many to open fire on a defenseless perp, it does seem like a fairly humane and quick end for a crook to receive such a mercy.

And here we are week later that a firing squad is in the news, as being on the table for a different criminal, but now we’re also talking about how his execution should be broadcast to the world, because sure everyone wants to see a human life come to an end from the comfort of their couches.  And that’s seemingly okay to even suggest, because that’s the world we live in now.

Dad Brog (#176): the importance of culture

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve probably brogged about this in the past, but growing up, I wasn’t really much in tune with my Korean heritage.  I mean, I learned the language, went to Korean language school, but really didn’t learn much about Korean culture.  The holidays, the customs, why we wear hanboks on special occasions, and the reasons for holidays that didn’t line up with the Western world I grew up in.

My parents and family didn’t really do much for us American-born kids in educating us, as proud as they might have been of their culture, they didn’t go out of their way to expand it or adhere to it whilst living in America.  And it wasn’t until I was much older, and wanted to learn more on my own, did I actually start to learn more stuff about Korean culture.

As a parent myself now, I’ve always felt it important that my kids learn a little bit more about their Korean heritage than I did growing up.  And as my kids have gotten older and to the ages of where they’re in school and have shown the capability to learn, I’ve always felt priority to expose them to Korean culture, whenever it’s possible.

This past weekend was Chuseok (추석) aka Korean Thanksgiving.  It’s not like Thanksgiving in the west, where white people stuff their faces with turkey, potatoes and green beans, it’s most of a celebration of the harvest moon, and to give thanks to a (hopefully) successful harvest season.

Since moving my dad down here to Georgia, one of the cool things is that he lives in a pretty concentrated Korean area, and they’re very in-tune with the culture, which is a refreshing change considering how little of it there was when I was growing up.  That being said, there was a Chuseok event up where he was, and I was excited to bring my kids to it, so they could see and experience some Korean culture, like folk singing, dancing, and to keep up with the times, stuff like a kids choir and K-pop dancing demonstration were on the agenda, as well as the availability of Korean snacks and consumables.

I planned on making a day of it, mostly so that my kids and I could spend some time with my dad, and we had done things like Kids Workshop at the local Home Depot, since my kids do enjoy creating things, banging nails in with hammers and painting wooden projects, get a nice lunch together, and go to the park if the weather cooperated.

And everything was going well, and the kids weren’t being too big of pills with the litany of random things they decide to complain about at any given point of the day.

But when 2pm rolled around, and it was time for the Chuseok activities to begin, my kids suddenly decided that they wanted nothing to do with anything at this little exhibition, and the complaints started coming in rapid-fire, and killing a little bit of my soul with each successive whine.

“I don’t want to be here”
“I can’t understand anything”
“Can we leave yet”
“Why do we have to just sit here”
“Why do we always have to do what you want us to do”
“We never get to do anything that we want to do”
“We’re only half Korean”

That last one really stung, but I was determined to show a modicum of respect for the people who put this little shindig together, and try to stick around at least 30 minutes of the two hours that they had been scheduled for.  Now in my opinion, had they started with something like kids choir, or the K-pop dance demonstration, it probably would’ve been more engaging to kids like mine, but I get it, this wasn’t for my kids, it was for an entire community, and they had the right to line things up the way they wanted to.

Needless to say, we only made it 30 minutes on the dot, and I was already over my kids, already over parenting, and I didn’t want to risk them causing any sort of scene or being any more disruptive than I thought they were going to be.  Extremely disappointed, I took my kids and my dad out of the event, and prepped them to go home.  Hopefully, my dad went back to the gig afterward and perhaps at least got some good traditional Korean snacks for the trouble.

Up to this point, it’s debatable on whether or not I’ve ever been more upset with my kids than I had been that afternoon.   All I could feel on the long, quiet (I refused to let them have their iPads) drive home was that my kids behaved like ungrateful little shits, I felt like I was failing them as a parent if they were that against anything that was a part of their Korean heritage, or behaving so poorly when they had been treated so well up to that point of the day.

Nothing I said or have already said seemed to get through how much importance I put in them being aware of the Korean heritage that is half theirs, and it really bummed me out just how inconvenienced they felt at being exposed to some of it.  They complained about not being able to understand the Korean that was spoken by the hosts, but at the same time, they complain and pitch a fit at the thought of being sent to Korean language school.  They showed zero appreciation or understanding of people who played instruments or sang in front of a small crowd, regardless of how many years of dance and ballet classes they’ve already done.

*it’s going to happen, they’re going to hate it, but hopefully, like me, they’ll get over it, and one day be appreciative to have done it, much like my own personal journey

I get that they’re “just” kids, and maybe they shouldn’t be held to the same expectations that I was held to when I was their age.  But my mom definitely made me go to things I didn’t want to go to when I was little, and sit through all sorts of things that bored the ever living hell out of me, but I still remember the exposure to Korean things whenever the opportunity was presented to me.

Their behavior ruined my day, most of my weekend, and was a bigger cause for depression than Virginia Tech’s first loss of the season to Pitt.  God forbid I want my children to have a little bit of culture in their lives, and for them to take a golden opportunity and ruin it with their impatience and unwillingness to have an open mind at that juncture of their lives really saddened me and tanked my mood for the entire rest of the weekend.

Like almost all facets of life, I want my kids to be better than I was at everything, including getting taught and learning more about Korean culture than I was at their ages, and it really saddened me that they resisted so much.  I don’t want my kids to be as white-washed as I was growing up, and to be able to be proud of their Korean side, and be able to know a little something about it too.

A pre-requiem for the 2026 Atlanta Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Dylan Lee gave up two straight homers almost immediately after the Braves had clawed and scratched their way to a 3-1 lead going into the 8th inning, I immediately saw the writing on the wall.  As Braves fans, we’ve all seen this script before, and from this point on, it was just clenching and hoping the brutal cycle of abuse that comes with being a Braves fan would come to an end, but not be willing to put any money on it that it would happen today. 

Two innings later, the Phillies win game 2, and we’re headed to the winner-take-all game 3, later tonight.  The only series out of the four wild card matchups to have to go the distance, as the White Sox, Yankees and Padres all took care of business and won two immediate games to advance to the divisional series.

Over the last 14 hours or so, I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling in my brain, that I knew I wanted to write something about it, but wasn’t sure what angle to triangulate on and what tone to take when doing it.  Do I try and tempt fate and write something scathing and completely doom-and-gloom about the Braves’ chances tonight with hopes that I will be proven wrong, and that they’ll hang a 12-2 clobbering just so I’ll be made to look stupid but still be happy that they won?  Do I preemptively write out the post I had formulating in my head about how Philadelphia sports seem to solely exist to ruin the hopes and dreams of Atlanta sports, based on just how many times Philadelphia teams have eliminated Atlanta teams in postseason play throughout history?  Do I make an itemized list of Barves postseason failures over history?

I don’t know.  But I wanted to write something, before game 3, because, well, I don’t know why.  It’s like just my way of processing things, and maybe a combination of all of the above.  Writing something about the Braves becoming the Barves in October on an annual basis just is something that I’m compelled to do, and I hope for the best, but am prepared for the worst.

The fact that all three other matchups concluded means that for once, the Braves don’t have to play at 2 pm, and get a prime-time game that starts at around 8 or so, so more eyes can watch as the Braves will probably choke and lose to the Phillies in the playoffs, so that they will be 0-4 against them historically, with three eliminations over the span of the last five years.

It doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled the Phillies in the regular seasons throughout all these seasons, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, they just can’t seem to overcome them in the playoffs.  2022 was particularly brutal, because the Braves had 101 wins and played most of the year as the de-facto best team in the league, but they took their foot off the gas going the playoffs, had a bye, and immediately got smoked by the 87-win Phillies.  In fact, when the Braves drop to the Phillies tonight, they will have done so as the higher seed in three-straight eliminations, adding insult to injury, and at this point there’s really nothing more that can be said about the agony of constantly falling short to a common tormentor.

Dylan Lee, is a guy I hope I do not see again tonight, and if by some miraculous act of god they win and advance, is a guy I hope I don’t see again for the remainder of the playoffs, and frankly on this team ever again.  It’s nothing personal, but after his game 2 performance, that should be the nail in the coffin as far as his favor with any Braves fan should be.  Every now and then, we see the eventual winner of the World Series do some wonky things with the bullpen, and usually there are some guys who lose favor and are sparsely seen, no matter what their role was in the regular season and the journey to get to the playoffs.  Craig Kimbrel, in spite of his success as a closer was this guy for Boston in one notable year, and the Dodgers completely replaced all their back-end relief with Roki Sasaki just last year.  Dylan Lee, I hope, is the guy that Braves fans never see again, regardless of any positive contributions he may have had in the past.

In all likelihood, the Phillies will be starting Zack Wheeler, their ace, on short rest, which just adds to the feeling of dread for Braves fans.  The Braves used their two best in games 1 and 2, and got away with a split, and the Phillies, out of necessity couldn’t use Wheeler until tonight, but as it stands, we have Wheeler versus whatever the Braves have left.  Most likely Grant Holmes, who has been a fifth-starter type who has been inconsistent and does not inspire faith going into a deciding elimination game.

Needless to say, take everything all of the above, and I do not have a good feeling about tonight’s outcome.  I want to be wrong more than anything, and this is an instance where being right would bring no joy, other than to be able to sigh and say, welp, at least I was right.  The Braves’ offense is still anemic and has never been fixed at any point in the season, and has relied tremendously on the strength of their pitching, but you can’t win games if you don’t score runs. 

Wheeler will either be lights out, or succumb to the rigors of working on short rest, but knowing the Braves’ bats, I’d wager on the former, and I think the chances are way higher that we have same shit, different year, with the Braves going out in the first round, regardless of the fact that MLB added an even first-er round to the playoff field with the Wild Card – if the Braves make the playoffs, they’re destined to get bounced in whatever round comes first to them, because I’m not, and I can’t have any more kids, so I can’t produce any more babies to bless them with any more baby luck.

This shouldn’t be eating at me this much, seeing as how lackadaisical of a baseball fan I’ve been over the last decade or so, but I guess that’s the nature of being a sports fan and a fan of a team.  No matter how much you try to not let it affect you, it just does.

Prove me wrong, fate.

Feeling despair, vol. #1,256

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, my kids have both decided that they really like the lullaby tune playing on their Hatches while they go to sleep.  It’s the sweetest tune that everyone knows, but when I listen to it playing on the monitor coming from both their rooms, it takes me back to the days when they were but little nuggets of babies, and it absolutely melts my heart, reminiscing of those days.  I do not deny the feeling of tears welling up from time to time when I think about it.

I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately, and I’m having a hard time getting out of it.  Times like this, there’s really little else but for me to try to put it down in writing to see if it helps me process and figure things out which sometimes happens when I put it all into actual words.

Also, it’s because I don’t really feel like there’s anyone I can speak with much these days, because everyone is understandably busy with their own lives and matters and everyone’s time is important to them, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I feel so utterly alone these days, but at the same time I’m so absolutely over feeling like I have to be the initiator of every single human interaction, be it with my own parents, my wife, colleagues or anyone else, that lately I just want to be left the fuck alone after all and not have to do absolutely anything.

But I guess that’s really what depression kind of is at the very root of things, feeling down about anything and everything, hoping someone will notice and offer to help out, but subsequently not wanting to deal with other people and their own personalized bullshit, so it’s just this kind of negative swirl in the brain where you think you know what you want until you realize it comes with some variables attached to them, things that you don’t want, so it’s maybe for the best that I’m just left alone, and then it just regurgitates over and over again until it’s time to go to bed and hope that you wake up not feeling so shitty about things.

What it all amounts to is a version of me that’s kind of going through the motions, where the mundane is the easiest part of the day in the sense that I don’t have to think about things too much, because my job is monotonous and obnoxiously busy, but I get to go to the gym there and I don’t know what things would be like for me if I didn’t exercise as much as I do.

I come home and try to make the absolute best of time I have with my kids, reading books, playing with Legos and other building toys, occasionally watching some television together, and both girls are currently in the midst of reading Harry Potter books, and they both seem to really like them, so it’s been a pleasure reading some long-form stories to them on a nightly basis.

They go to bed, begrudgingly, and not without tremendous resistance, and then dad-mode disengages, but then my house is a fucking disaster zone because everyone treats my home like a storage facility where nobody knows how to throw anything away and shit continues to accumulate within my walls, and bringing it up to anyone results in snappy rebuttals and nothing gets done, but I try to do my best at being really the only one who puts forth any fucking effort at straightening the place up, because I no longer have an office or any dedicated space to call my own where I can hide in and decompress, so I’m constantly trying to make the public areas of my home more to my liking, but that eats into the time I have available to me to not be dad.

I feel underappreciated and taken for granted by just about everyone in my life these days, and my kids are the only ones who really get a pass because they’re still just kids and don’t really understand such complexities of human behavior yet.  But whether I’m at home, or at work, I just feel very underappreciated and taken for granted, and it feeds into the perpetual cycle of being down on a daily basis, probably getting worse.

My medium at work is oft-overlooked and not at all taken into consideration by the decision makers of the company who are all so easily distracted by all things shiny and digital, but when the day is over, our retail locations would sure look like shit if they didn’t have people like me who put forth the work to give them any sort of visual identity.  Just this week, I’ve heard colleagues absent-mindedly proclaim their general ignorance for the work that my team and I do, and I’m just like, great, good to know that you’re not as qualified for the job you have despite probably saying you were, good times.

At home, I feel like a glorified housekeeper, seeing as how I’m the one who does the vast majority of any sort of house work, but the difference is that I’m not getting paid to do it, and in fact, my credit card debt is actually only getting worse after an expensive trip to Asia where I’m shouldering the brunt of the financial lift, and any sort of recompense is going to be slow, small, and generally inconsequential to the fact that I’m the one eating the interest on any balances carried over month to month.

Nobody respects my time, which makes me feel like nobody respects me, and with as limited time I have in order to do anything remotely close to being for myself, dwindles with every 5-10 minutes chunk that is burned by my kids not listening, or anyone else just not respecting me or my time.  Almost nothing in the world is a bigger pet peeve than my time getting wasted, I state it as clear as day, and people either ignore it, or consciously choose to not give a fuck, with neither being a particularly respectful decision.

Subsequently, my temper has been short, probably more than usual, because it just feels like nothing is easy, and nothing is really good right now.  The littlest tasks end up going tits up real fast, because wanting to do A, requires B, C and D to happen, but not before you move E, F and G out of the way so that H could be gotten.  I usually snap and curse the sheer amount of unnecessary crap that exists in my house, and my wife just assumes I have anger issues when she, or anyone else doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck enough about my state of being to try and find out what the problems are to see if they could possibly help.

No amount of break, trip or escape would be close to helping me out when I’m in this state of mind, because I know that if I were to be away from my house for even the smallest amount of time means coming home to a disaster zone, which is usually what happens whenever I do go away for like a weekend.  And then it’s usually worse than before I started because now I have to retroactively clean other peoples’ shit, which just ends up being a lose-all scenario.

My wife suggested I come down to a day of Dragon-con this weekend, and I don’t think I could have possibly shot that idea down any faster.  I have no ill-will towards the convention, or any of my friends or acquaintances that are looking forward to going.  But it is not something that I am at all interested in anymore at this juncture in my life, and I definitely am not remotely close to being in a mental state to where I could even fake it for a few hours, even if it means not seeing a lot of people that I think fondly of.

The con is just so different than it used to be, and I understand that that’s a me problem and not the con’s problem, but it’s no longer an event I can go to without an agenda, and wing it.  I used to say about conventions in the past, let the con come to you, but that’s a dated mentality that isn’t valid at conventions today, because everyone comes in with plans, agendas, and schedules, and old fucks like me without are usually left to just aimlessly wander, and hang out and hope to run into people they know, who usually can’t stop for more than a minute because they’ve got shit to do.

I’ve never felt lonelier at an event boasting 50,000+ people than I had at the last two Dragon-cons I’d been to.  I don’t really want to feel that way again any time soon, or spend the $2,000 that usually comes along with room, food, parking and booze.

Mythical wife has a purpose this year, and actual tasks to do, and perhaps that’s something I could consider in the future if I ever felt the itch to ever go back to any convention ever again, but for this year, hard pass on Dragon-con.

Well, I can’t really say that feel that much better putting all of these thoughts down into text.  I don’t think I really have any true takeaways from all this swill that can help me process the depression I’m dealing with right now.  I’m trying to eat better and working in a two-a-day workout, usually some sort of 30-35 minute in the evenings that I’m sacrificing out of my scarce free time, in the sake of improving my health.

But I can appreciate myself in doing it at all, instead of intending on doing it, not doing it, and then getting anxious and upset about not doing it, to which it then becomes an Inception-like layer of angst in which to fuel a future rant.  And I guess that in itself is somewhat of a pyrrhic W, and these days I have to take any wins that I can get.

Batman: Caped Crusader – tf did Alfred do to deserve all this disrespect?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to mediums outside of comic books, it’s no secret that DC Comics has struggled bringing to life most of their property, regardless of how iconic, how much potential and how much of a layup it really should seem.  Fortunately, James Gunn and John Cena seem to be on what I think is a positive direction with a potentially entertaining DC Cinematic Universe akin to what Marvel has accomplished, and I love the idea that Peacemaker, that John fucking Cena seems to be the lynch pin that could be the basis for it all, much like Robert Downey, Jr. did as Iron Man for the MCU.

Animation, has clearly been the strong suit for DC, and they’ve done a pretty good job of bringing stories to life in animated form throughout the years.  The whole saga starting with the Flashpoint Paradox was pretty enjoyable, and of course, a lifelong top-10 possibly top-5 show for me was and always will be, Batman the Animated Series.

It seems kind of surprising that it took nearly two decades for a proper spiritual successor to Batman TAS to come out, but then again, TAS holds up so well that it really didn’t need any successor, but all the same, Batman: Caped Crusader on Amazon Prime has been doing an adequate job of spiritually succeeding TAS, as far as I’m concerned.  It doesn’t hurt that Bruce Timm is back in the driver’s seat, along with JJ Abrams, one of the lord of the nerds who has a knack for breathing love into projects that many might think would be too lofty of endeavors.

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it’s remotely close to bettering TAS, but it has still been a refreshing watch, and at the time I’m writing this, I’m over halfway through S2, but felt a compulsion to write about it now and often times I have to strike when the iron is hot, but it’s been good.  I don’t think S2 has been as good as the first season was, but I imagine it will conclude with a massive upshot, considering what the show has obviously been doing throughout the season.

But it has done a good job of partially recapturing the magic of TAS, no doubt due to the completely lifted character design and complete auditory homage to the original, but they gain a little distance by going a little further back in the Batman timeline, as well as taking a much more adult theme, clearly intending this show to be nowhere near the after-school FOX Kids lineup or anything like it.

Batman is undoubtedly nerfed, seeing as how he’s earlier in his crime-fighting career, and definitely takes his share of getting damaged, but most of the differences are very heavy handed throughout this universe, primarily with the mass re-imagination of just about everyone from the series, in various ways.

Jim and Barbara Gordon are now black, Harleen Quinzel appears to be possibly Asian in appearance, Selina Kyle is now raven-haired, the Riddler has been made to be more of a bruising gunman, and the Mad Hatter is now a woman.  Renee Montoya is getting a ton more screen time now, but she’s also been made to be kind of fridge build Latina.  Harley’s also been thicc’ened up, deviating from her lithe petite pixie stature of TAS.

I can imagine that there’s a lot of discriminative takes on the massive wave of changes in CC from those who were passionate about TAS, or just traditional source material.  I notice all the differences, but when the day is over, I really couldn’t care about a lot of the characteristic swaps made throughout the cast, except for one: Alfred Pennyworth.

For some reason, Caped Crusader has decided to make Alfred fat, and look more like “Mean Gene” Okerlund than most traditional variations of Alfred, who is usually of a medium-to-lean, unsuspecting build, which is perfect considering the history of the character was that he was basically an MI5 espionage spy in his younger, active days.

Why CC decided to make him fat is completely beyond me, and one of the few things about the show that I really can’t stand by, and get triggered every time I see him. 

To make matters worse, the show has made the younger Bruce Wayne more of an asshole, pretending way too hard to be a pretentious womanizing socialite billionaire playboy when he’s in his alter ego, but the behavior doesn’t seem to end when he’s back under the mask.  Primarily the fact that he only refers to Alfred as “Pennyworth” like he were the senior jock quarterback of the school while Alfred were some sniveling maggot freshman, lucky enough to be in the stratosphere of Bruce Wayne.

The severe disrespect for Alfred Pennyworth throughout the series is the only true serious beef I have with Caped Crusader.  It’s otherwise a very good show, and an adequate successor to TAS, but it annoys the piss out of me whenever Alfred is disrespected so flagrantly.  Seeing as how I haven’t finished S2 yet, I hope this course corrects at some point, and we get back to an Alfred getting a modicum of the respect that he is deserving of.

Vaya con dios, [redacted location]

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I’m a person of any importance in the world, but all the same, I’m generally intentionally vague when it comes to giving out too many specific details of my life.  I’m sure the internet is ripe with all sorts of information about me, my family, and people I associate with if anyone were so inclined to want to dig, but all the same I prefer to not give too much intel away willy-nilly.

That being said, my family just recently sold my dad’s place up in Virginia, which was a property that I lived in for about seven years, which makes me double take writing that out that I lived there for so short, in the grand spectrum of my life.  But I lived in that town, that county, for 13, which again seems short when I write that out, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that I spent my formative years up in Virginia, so for better or worse, the place will always hold somewhat of importance to me, regardless of how much I actually don’t really like it up there anymore, save for the fact that much of my family still resides there.

My sister made me realize however, that with my dad’s place sold, my family now no longer owns any property up there, as my mom’s gone the route of mercifully ditching homeownership, and opting to live out her remaining years renting in a home of convenience, which suits my sister and I fine, knowing she’ll be closer to family and living in a place that will take care of things for her instead of relying on her children to make a shit ton of calls and handle everything for her instead.

But the bottom line is that as far as one of our primary childhood towns are concerned, we now no longer have any reason at all to go there ever again.  I didn’t think of it, but it is still a tiny bit jarring to realize that, mostly from the standpoint that neither of us will really have a free place to stay whenever we visit in the future anymore, since my mom’s apartment is adequate for two people, tops, much less my entire family or my sister’s.  Maybe some cousins can harbor us, but the reality is that hotels may need to be leveraged in future visits.

Back to the point though, my sister was right, there’s absolutely no reason for us to ever really visit [redacted] again.  None of my family lives there anymore, my closest friends have all moved away from there, and short of my high school, and any former addresses that would show up if I were ever to need federal clearance again, there’s basically nothing left that ties me to [redacted] anymore.

As nostalgic as I may seem like I’m coming off, when the day is over, it doesn’t really matter much at all.  It’s just the tiniest of swan songs for a place that I haven’t lived in for more than half my life now, and melancholy me just wanting to get some words out about the topic before the recency bias of current events evaporates into the aether.  [Redacted] isn’t even my true hometown, just the place where I probably did the most growing up, and truth be it, I haven’t even really liked the last few times I’ve been up there.  The sprawl has gotten out of control, the infrastructure of the whole area has failed to keep up with the demand of population growth, and I often found myself growing frustrated with the lack of shit, terrible traffic, and the fact that it was one gigantic endless vanilla suburb.

And I hit a fucking deer, in a place where deer probably wouldn’t have been expected, but because of the sprawl and destrucity of nearby nature, the poor deer have little elsewhere to go, so now that I think about it [redacted] can go fuck itself, and good riddance to the place.

Without really even realizing it, I kind of had my swan song up there, the last time I was there, cleaning out all of my dad’s shit.  I drove around, ran around the old lake I used to run on, drove around some more, ate at a newer restaurant that had come into existence, visited my old 7-Eleven.  [Redacted] has changed tremendously from when I used to live there, and will continue to change and fill in all available space long after any traces of my family and I are gone, leaving nothing but memories.

Man, that wasn’t the direction I thought this post would go in when I thought about writing about it, but seems legit enough for me.  With my friends all gone, my family ties now being completely severed, there really is nothing left for me there except nostalgia.

Good riddance, [redacted], who knows when I’ll ever step foot there again.  I’m not much into the idea of high school reunions, and I have enough family and friends in the surrounding area to occupy me in the event I’m ever up adjacent to the area, and maybe when I’m much older and somehow more nostalgic, I’ll take my kids when they’re also older, to maybe take a walk or something around the old lake.

If only I were in my 30s again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There have been multiple times in my life in which I have thought that I was born in the wrong time.  Like whenever I see professional gamers and how revered they are in Korea and how worshipped they are in the gaming community, I think to myself that maybe that could’ve been me, had I been born in like ten years later than I was, where my parents wouldn’t have discouraged and shamed my love of video games and instead nurtured and encouraged them, and maybe I could’ve ended up like Faker or Daigo or some other professional gamer that makes millions of dollars playing video games and streaming video games today.

Lately, I’ve been having those similar thoughts again because for whatever reason, the social media algorithm has decided to start providing me reels of all these people who basically do nothing but film themselves, going around doing mundane things by themselves, but usually prefaced with a caption of “single 30-something does X in a day,” and it’s a 45-70 second reel of them going around, doing mundane things, with the underlying hook being that they’re doing it peacefully and without anyone bothering them.

Grocery shopping, visiting some local restaurant, going on a run, hitting the gym, driving around, eating some more food, cooking food that they’ll eat, getting and/or drinking a fancy coffee; running some mundane errands but doing it at their own pace and leisure.

These videos will all have hundreds to thousands of reactions, comments and seemingly very high engagement numbers, and although it might be all by bots, the stats are still stats, and undoubtedly these people are making money doing such.  They all have templated formats, cold opens and tiny gimmicks, presumably to make them who they are, but at the root of things, they’re still just doing mundane crap, and it just so happens that they’re not all unattractive blobs of humanity, they’re admittedly watchable.

I just can’t help but think that if I were in my 30s now, when I was single forever, and had pretty much nothing but time on my hands when I wasn’t working, I could be in on this hustle, and be making a bunch of videos about my mundane life and presumably be getting paid to do it, and when I got tired of doing it, I’d have a million bucks in my bank account to where I could have the seed money to perhaps embark on to my current life, but with moar capital backing me up.

Seriously, I’m not sure I could churn out content at the rate as many of these creators do, but I think about the things that I have done in my life throughout my 30s, and wonder if some things would be worth making content out of.

  • 30-year old single Korean-American travels to X to visit MLB team/park/city
  • A day in the life of a 31-year old Korean living in Atlanta
  • How a 32-year old single Korean guy prepares for standby travel
  • 33-year old single Korean guy gets stranded in Minneapolis
  • Dragon*con with a 34-year old single Korean guy
  • 35-year old Korean guy visits Korea for the very first time

Shit, I could do what a lot of the creators do now.  Albeit perhaps with less of the extravagances they subtly like to flex, like how all their cars seem to be way high-end, or they have designer belongings, but I like to go to coffee shops and restaurants, and I could film myself walking into a gym or an H-Mart.  Film myself going to my computer “to work” and all the other inane bullshit that all these creators do.

And when the cameras aren’t rolling, basking in the largely positive ratio of engagement scores that my content is generating, and waiting for all the digital media money to start rolling in, and encouraging me to keep going.

Nah, instead I’m in my mid-40s now, married with kids, and I’m not saying that they’re the reason why I couldn’t embark on a new career of being a content creator, it’s just that I know that content creation is an largely, wholly time-consuming endeavor to embark on, and personally it’s more important to be present with my family and children versus getting caught up in the rat race of trying to produce, film, edit, and post content, and knowing my luck, by the time I get the machine rolling, the content creation bubble will pop, and it won’t be nearly as lucrative then as it is now.

And ironically, the new moneyball of making money, would be getting a fucking job, doing it, and getting these periodic things called paychecks.

But, nothing is ever going to change until I get in on things, because I am begrudgingly the master of the universe, and nothing happens until I decide to get involved.  If I did what the single 30s somethings are doing today, it probably wouldn’t be nearly as monetarily viable as it is now.