Tag: video games

The power of 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[Warning: this post is about pooping.  You have been warned.]

Ever since my birthday, when I was absolutely waylaid by an ear infection, I have struggled with my running.  Prior to my birthday, I was in a very good groove, and I was routinely completing 5K runs under 30 minutes, which is my usual every day goal whenever I lace up my sneakers and go out for a run.

But ever since my birthday that I spent laid up in bed the entire time, and struggling to get over the ear infection and subsequent what I’m guessing was what seemed like rupturing my ear drum, I have not been able to get back to my old running speeds.  Perhaps it’s age actually starting to catch up to me in some way, shape or form, or perhaps the sickness really took a lot more out of me than I had hoped it would.  Maybe it’s a combination of both, but the fact of the matter is that since then I don’t think I’ve been able to log a sub-30 5K time since April, and I try to not get too down about it, because Father Time outlasts everyone, and from what other runners try and encourage to me is that my split times for my age are still above average.

I’ve lightly dieted and been experimenting with stride and pacing, but nothing seems to get me back to where I’m seeing a leading 2 on my tracker when I hit my stopping point, and even though I’ve been able to occasionally get my pace back to a sub-10 minute mile, my overall 5K times have always crossed the 30 minute threshold.

I don’t know why I typed this all out because it really doesn’t have anything to do with the main subject of this post, but since it’s all related to running I think it just presented itself to me as the best opportunity to get that off my chest without having to make a dedicated post about it.

But anyway, I was on a morning run recently, and probably the #1 biggest concern while running started to emerge near the midway point of my run: the mid-run #2.  All through my running life, I’ve always tried to be cognizant of my body’s status whenever it comes to checking off all of the mental boxes before going on a run, be it casual training or on a formal run or race.  Every runner does, no matter how much they might not want to talk about pooping, it’s just human nature, and everyone poops.

Either way, I actually took care of business prior to this particular run, but perhaps again, symptom of aging, it wasn’t adequate enough or for whatever reason, while I was in the middle of my run, warning alarms started going off in the body that indicated that something inconvenient was about to occur.  And believe me, this is the absolute worst thing any runner wants to have to deal with, because it’s not often where relief is ready at a moment’s notice, be it on the trail, on the course, or casual outdoor running.

Fortunately for me, I had relief available to me, and it was conveniently on my route.  There’s a little park that I pass twice on my usual route, and there happens to be a surprisingly clean little public commode at it, and as long as it wasn’t occupied when I rolled up, I knew it was going to be one of those days where as much as I didn’t want to stop my momentum, it was better than the alternative of risking another 21 minutes to get home and shitting myself along the way.

Thankfully, the facility was available and I was able to take care of business, and as inconvenient as the whole process of stopping, and doing the deed can be, the amount of relief and satisfaction at knowing that you basically saved your own life and completely neutralized the risk of one of the most miserable indignities of the world, offsets the negative.

And in the case of this post, not only does it offset the negative, it outright becomes a positive, because once the physical strain of managing a bowel movement is eliminated from the body, the body is now free to focus all of its energy at the original task at hand – running, in my case.

The thought crossed my mind while I was breezing through the remainder of my run, because I now use a fitness tracker as opposed to all the years in which I did not, I actually have the capability to check out the tangible results of physical performance before and after taking care of business.  I amused myself with this scientific hypothesis, and looking forward to viewing the data after the run helped occupy my mind while I was finishing up my run.

Once again, I did not finish in under 30 minutes, nor was my 5K split under 30 minutes either.  My pace was fortunately still under a 10-minute mile, but I’m still handcuffed from notching that sub-30 5K that I’d like to get back to, and I don’t think I’ll get there unless I simply run more than I do now, but that would come at the expense of lifting weights, which is something I also enjoy doing and harvesting the fruits of such labor.

But no matter, when I got home and checked the data of my run on my phone, I was tickled to see the heat mapping of my pace; I had assumed that my general speed was going to be better after the bathroom break versus before it, but the fact that a lot more green and blue (slower) pace before stopping, and almost entirely yellow-to-red pretty much the entire way back was absolutely hilarious.

The power of 2 is something truly stupendous, and I likened the bathroom break to my bros to being like Sonic the Hedgehog when he hits a springboard on a wall and it sends him shooting off at immediate high speed.

Thoughts about Street Fighter the 2026 film

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I titled the post as such because these days, nobody has any qualms with regurgitating titles of films of the past with any ambiguation and I want to make clear that I’m talking about the brand new Street Fighter film circa 2026, and not possibly the 1974 film of the same name starring the late great legend Sonny Chiba, or the 1994 turd with Jean Claude Van Damme that had the unfortunate distinction of being Raul Julia’s last film, or the 1994 animated classic that as far as I’m concerned is still the pinnacle of the core Street Fighter II canonical story.

Because the 2026 film was absolutely everything I thought it would be, and I left the theater with absolutely no surprises or disappointment of expectations.  Unfortunately, my thoughts on what this film was going to be were nothing short of a colossal steaming goat turd, and it did a pretty good job of staying close to that bar pretty much the entire film.

When I heard that this film was coming out, I vaguely remember saying either to myself or to mythical wife, that there would be no way in hell I would go to see this in a theater, unless I were going with the boys, because there’s no way this had any chance in hell of being remotely decent.

And as much as I’m a wrestling fan, finding out that both Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns were going to be in it, as Guile and Akuma respectively didn’t help alter my preconceived notions about the film, and in fact probably hurt them, because wrestlers are generally campy over-the-top performers often times to begin with, and the thought of Cody dropping lines as US Colonel Guile made me just know he was going to be bringing the cheese, and frankly I wasn’t a single iota wrong about that.

But, the boys did come knocking, and when one of them pinged the group chat to see who was interested, and that he had a deal from work on the table, I couldn’t say no, because I love the boys and their company, and as shitty of a movie I figured this was going to be, it could be fun with their company, and so I went to the theaters for the first time in like forever, to watch Street Fighter (2026 film).

If I had paid money and expected to see something satisfying and fulfilling on top of being entertained, I’d have been sorely disappointed.  If I went by myself, or had to pay for mythical wife or anyone else to come watch with me, I’d have left the theater feeling disappointed.  Thankfully, the boys are also actual SF gamers, and had the capability to understand a lot of the niche and inside references throughout the film.

But overall, the film is campy, riddled with plot holes, wonky character direction, and I feel like they went too off-balance at trying to be true to the source material versus executing a plot that is actually humanly possible to portray with live human beings.  They shoe-horned the original eight from SF2 and oddly cherry picked Cammy and Juli from later games, seemingly on account to fill out female cast numbers.  And their determination to make game-references seemed to overwhelm the need for an actual plot.

Casting was weird, and the way I describe it is imbalanced, because they went to great lengths to try to carve out all this plot and depth for Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li, but then went very hard and literal to have all the other character portrayals.  Like Cody Rhodes as Guile, the big French MF from Reacher to be Zangief, and the guy they got to play Dhalsim were about as perfect live-interpretations as there could be.  Fiddy as Balrog seemed like a weird choice considering his lean stature versus Balrog’s hulking portrayal, and my friends and I were discussing how difficult it is to portray a decent Vega in all the attempts that have been made in SF film history.

I didn’t even know that Ma Dong-Seok was what I’m guessing was supposed to be Sheng Long but for whatever reason re-named Gouken, because of all the facial prosthetics and trying to make him like some weird Korean-Japanese Pai Mei, but I was tickled to see that he was a part of this.

Like many, I found it puzzling that they cast an Asian girl to portray Cammy, despite the fact that she’s very much a white British girl, so that was some weird reverse appropriation going on there.

But the core players, casting was, well cast.  None of them are people I’d really ever heard of except for Andrew Schulz and the guy that played M. Bison, but all of their characters were really weakly written, the story was not at all decent, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a degree of intentionality with how just overall bad everything was, as if a group of bros got high and started bullshitting about how if they make a movie that’s just bad enough, it’ll get people to want to see it, so they can partake in the shit show that the film actually turned out to be.

Like the dude who was M. Bison, I just couldn’t get over the actor choice.  The dude who was the Polka Dot guy in Suicide Squad, and Mr. 3 in One Piece.  Always the quirky weird character, suddenly having to be the very rigid and very stoic M. Bison.  Plus his stature is kind of wimpy to be the last boss of the game, and honestly he probably would’ve been better to be Vega, given his stature and how a mask would hide his deadpan face.

I felt like this whole film was some brainchild of maybe Andrew Schulz, Eric Andre and David Dastmalchian, among others, and like I said, they probably got high and started kicking around an idea of a Street Fighter film, and since many of them probably have the clout and connection to Netflix and/or their investors, the ball got rolling, and then this turd emerged.  But at the same time, I feel like even they had to know this was turning out to be a stinker, but were somehow okay with it, because if you’re going to be bad, be legendarily bad so that it can still draw interest.  Like some weird meta cat-and-mouse game of trying to be bad on purpose, because it’s easier than trying to win an Oscar, and when the day is over, entertaining and earning are still the key objectives to why they’re doing it in the first place.

In the end, this movie was pretty turrible, the only enjoyment I got from it was from the company I went to go see it with, and the fact that they left it open for a future sequel(s) is hilarious because it’s awfully presumptuous to think that they should get one, but Hollywhite loves to burn money, and we’ve all seen shittier things get additions to them.

It wasn’t all pure shit though; the animated segments they used to portray flashbacks, that shit was straight fire.  If the whole film were done animated like it was done in these segments, probably would have improved the film at least twenty-fold.  I’d definitely be interested in future content from whatever studio did that animation, because that stuff was definitely quality.

When everyone has a hundo, nobody does

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I do play a little bit pretty much every single day, I actually don’t have a whole lot of knowledge of what’s going on in Pokémon Go.  I don’t read the patch notes, updates, or even pay much attention to whenever Professor Willow shoehorns himself onto the screen to tell me of some missions that are afoot.  I just play a little bit every day, try and do daily research, attempt to complete as many of the weekly tasks as I can, hatch eggs, and make some modicum of progress in levels.

To what end, I have no idea, and typing this all out, I kind of realize just how fruitless my ambition in the game really is.  It’s just something that I’ve done for probably 99% of the time since the game launched a decade ago, and OCD me has just stuck with it.  I like to think that I want to get shinies and hundos and shiny hundos, and to have an impressive Pokédex of rares and strong quality Pikachus, but when the day is over, there really is no goal in place for me.

All the same, recently the game has been celebrating its actual 10-year anniversary, and despite the fact that I don’t pay much attention to the happenings of the game, one of the things I can say that that I wager not as many people as they might think can claim is that fact that I have regularly played since the debut of the game, and although my level and accomplishments in the game might not reflect it, it is true.

One of the major things the game has decided to do in honor of the decade-long survival of a mobile game, is that to all players, they have an ultra-super low-hanging fruit mission to where the prizes for completion are a Master Ball, as well as a guaranteed encounter with a MewTwo.  Over social media, it became apparent that this specific MewTwo encounter was a guaranteed hundo (perfect stats), and as is the case with MewTwo encounters, there is a decent chance that one could get a shiny.

Many have flexed screen grabs of their shiny hundo MewTwos; my own was not shiny, but that’s fine because I already have a shiny, albeit it is not a hundo, but I can be content with the fact that I now have a hundo MewTwo in my Pokédex, even if it is basically a free giveaway.

But unsurprising, there has been a faction of Pikachu Game players who have opined their general disappointment and low-key bitterness that the game has basically taken the prestige and distinction of having MewTwos of any quality, by basically giving everyone one, pretty much for free.

I get that sentiment; when the game initially released MewTwo, in extremely difficult raids, with extremely difficult catch rates, if you could be lucky enough to participate in the raid much less succeed in the first place, I went out of my way to join communities, find out where other players were gathering, and got my ass out of the house in order to try and catch them.  I was determined to complete my Kanto collection 100%, which was possible for me seeing as how I had actually traveled to places like Asia and Europe and gotten region-specific Pikachus like Farfetch’d and Mr. Mime, and now MewTwo was the last one to round out Kanto.

I remember how accomplished I felt when I finally got my first one, and how I declared myself a true lord of Kanto.  But then the itch of the Three PS3s guy kind of creeped into my brain, and I began to ask myself why stop with just one MewTwo, when I could have three?  It was a little bit of a grind, but I got my third MewTwo, but then it kept going, and going, and at the time I’m writing this, I have 22 MewTwos, which isn’t bad for someone who doesn’t live in like New York City or Seoul or any other high-density location where there are always 6 Pokéstops and gyms every square mile, where taking down the strongest of gyms is easy with high bases of players.

Needless to say, it is kind of a crappy feeling to know how many people are getting basically a free hundo MewTwo now just for participating, when it was so difficult to get them back when they first emerged.  It cheapens the rarity and sense of accomplishment of getting them in the past for the old heads like me who have been in the trenches of daily playing for the better part of the last decade, and I can understand the salt from players like us.

Naturally, there are contrarians to the detractors, and I’ve seen commenters on social media throwing up all sorts of analogies and straw man metaphors to try and shit on the people who shit on the event which just leads to the shitty wasteland that is a social media arena, and I’ve smartly decided to stay out of public discussion because I know I’d just get piled on for my opinions and I don’t need that, and I have a brog that nobody reads where I can air out my thoughts without any concern of rebuttal.

People complaining about free stuff, rich people complaining about too much butter on their lobsters, but the one that piqued my interest were those accusing the haters that they probably hated when the government paid off student loan debts.  I get the analogy, and see the similarities between people who have responsibly paid their student loan debts off getting salty over thousands of people suddenly getting them absolved, but at the same time it’s laughable that someone would even make the analogy of student loan debt versus Pokémon Go.

Student loan debt is a legitimate problem in the world, and there are very real-world consequences for those who have struggled on account of them.  Pokémon Go is a fucking phone game, and nobody at all has endured any sort of legitimate struggle on account of it.  But from a semantics standpoint, yes it is similar; tenured lifers who have put in their 10,000+ hours suddenly getting to see filthy casuals get to reap similar rewards with a fraction of the effort, it does make sense.

The thing is, this isn’t even the first time that Niantic has pulled this shit of lowering the bar and giving tons of shit away for free in order to boost engagement, downloads and player participation.  A few years ago when I went to Korea, I was psyched to be able to catch a Farfetch’d, and I went kind of out of my way to get one, and I felt so proud when I did.  But literally that same trip, Niantic dropped this event where players could briefly get regional Pikachus from other regions, meaning those in the west were able to get Farfetch’d, Mr. Mime went to the Oceanic, Tauros went to Europe, and Kangaskhan came to Asia.

It’s hypocritical for me to have felt a similar salt since thanks to that event I was able to get Kangaskhan without having to go to Australia/NZ, but I did admittedly feel salt that Americans were able to get Farfetch’d without having to be in Asia, like I was at that very time.  They didn’t earn it, and I did feel annoyance when I’d see like Facebook friends who I know long abandoned the game, who were posting about how they’d logged in for the first time in. years just to get it, and smugly proclaim how they intended to hibernate immediately afterward.

But at the end of the day, it’s still just Pokémon Go.  In two weeks, everyone will have forgotten about this whole thing, and as time passes, everyone’s hundo MewTwos won’t mean shit, especially if like 70% of them will be in accounts that will just go dormant for months to years.  But it’s still interesting to see the whole shitshow of Niantic dropping an event, and the inevitable clash between the lifers, versus all of the filthy casuals who pop in and feel as entitled and deserving to the same benefits that those who have actually put in the work to get beforehand already have.

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.

It’s like the intention to lose is deliberate

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

PBS: former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Democratic nomination for Georgia governor

Before I went to my voting location, mythical wife and I were talking about how the State of Georgia was at it again, with Governor Yosemite Sam signing HB369, which long story short, basically hides political affiliations for those who choose to vote non-partisan, basically to intentionally create confusion and ambiguity so that people might accidentally vote for the wrong candidates.  Obviously designed to help Republicans in the bluer parts of the state, but just another means of capitalizing on the less intelligent whose votes count the same as those with higher IQs.

There was a part of me that considered picking a Republican ballot and trying to monkey around with their results, as if there weren’t going to be tens of thousands of brainless orange worshippers who wouldn’t offset my tampering, but at least I could tell myself if by supporting Brad Raffensperger, he’s a guy that seems to have a modicum of integrity in a toxic wasteland of politico.

But mainly because the Democrats of Georgia’s play was known and in my opinion a terrible idea, and it makes me think that they’re either really that arrogant and stupid, or that they’re secretly on the payroll of the Georgia GOP to just keep doing the same dumb shit over and over again and pretend like there’s any hope.

It was pretty well known that Keisha was going to get the Democratic bid for governor, and much like the last two Governor elections, it’s basically going to be another win for the red team, but way easier this time around, and it makes me think about the cliché seen above about the definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

For the third time in a row, Georgia Dems are trotting out a black woman to go for governor, and not that I don’t think a black woman would be capable of handling the role of the position, the Dems here seem to forget that they’re in Georgia, which is a state that historically has not been particularly friendly to both black people and women.

Furthermore, Keisha Lance Bottoms is no Stacey Abrams, and she lost twice.  Stacey was a respected, tenacious bureaucrat who actually did shit that mattered, like launching Fair Fight to try and aid in voter suppression.  Stacey was generally liked by all Democrats, black and white and everyone else, and her first run for governor, although was still an L, was the closest margin the Democrats had gotten in like the last 4-5 elections.

Keisha on the other hand, has had a maligned career as the Mayor of Atlanta, often seen as handpicked stooge successor to notorious clown Hizzoner Kasim Reed, who himself was revealed to have flagrantly blazed through mountains of taxpayer dollars on his own indulgences while Mayor of the Atlanta.  Keisha constantly put herself at odds with the orange shithead, and there was one particular incident I always remembered, when she basically tried to legalize street racing to a degree, and the implication was that her son was most likely involved in doing it, and it’s like she was trying to preemptively change the law so her son wouldn’t get in too deep of shit if he were to inevitably get caught.

The bottom line is, Keisha put herself into a position where not only will she not have the vote of white people, especially those who favor the color orange, but she was not liked by large swaths of the black community, who simply thought she just wasn’t doing a good job as Mayor of Atlanta, so why would they even bother putting forth the effort to vote her into the governor’s mansion?

Like, I can practically hear Sweet Georgia Brown playing on election day when voters hit the polls, and vote after vote is cast for whomever wins the Republican runoff, because it really doesn’t matter who emerges for the GOP, they’re going to stomp a hole in Keisha.  And after the election, when voter numbers emerge, I anticipate there being a really poor black turnout, because like I said, as much as there may be those who don’t like the color orange, but they don’t like the alternative enough to feel it’s worth leaving the house to vote for it.

If it were up to me, Georgia Dems should take a step back and try to get just one wishlist category a W; either push a black man, or a woman, but just stop trying to get a two-for-one, because fringe Georgia voters are way too racist and way too sexist to vote in a black woman.

And if they try again in 2030, insanity will be definitely confirmed and reinforced.

I clearly give off a fuck off aura

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, there was an all-hands meeting at work.  I went down to the conference room early so that I could have my choice of seat, and I chose this chair next to wall, but in the front row so it looked like I wasn’t a complete degenerate, planning on dicking around on my phone throughout the entire meeting.  After all, appearance is everything, so I’m often told professionally.

As the clock ticked closer to the start of the meeting, and seats began filling up, the seat immediately next to mine remained unclaimed, regardless of how full up the room was getting.  By the time the meeting started, there were at least 10-15 people who were standing against a wall, while the seat right next to me remained vacant.

In fact, not only was the seat next to me vacant, the two seats immediately behind me were also empty, creating this perfect three-seat halo around me of empty seats.  Had this happened on an airplane, I’d be over the moon, because that’s like the broke boy first class, getting a bunch of seats around you left open.

However, this was not an airplane, but a conference room where everyone had free choice on where they wanted to occupy for the duration of the next hour, the fact remained that three open chairs immediately surrounding me remained open, with numerous people preferring to remain standing, as opposed to sitting near me.

The low-hanging fruit is that I clearly must smell bad, or emanate an odor that is unsavory to people I do not know, but among my friends and those people who actually take the time to get to know me, most have no problem sitting in close proximity to me, so I’m (hopefully) able to take the stinky hypothesis off the table.

So the only logical conclusion at this point is that I have fuck-off aura, that is as potent and overpowering as an anime or video game character, at compelling people to stay the fuck away from me.  Not that I necessarily mind the space that people give me, it gets to the point where I begin to ponder about the appearance of everyone fucking-off from me, and unfortunately perception is reality, and it probably does me little good to look like a person that everyone else wants to stay away from.

I do not apologize or feel the need to disclaim that I have the male equivalent of resting bitch face, and that I look pissed off as my neutral state of existence.  There are times in which such is the case, but even when I feel as if I’m having a good day, I understand that the expression on my face is that of experiencing the absolutely shitty state of transportation in Santorini, Greece.  But people, including my own mother and mythical wife, often implore me to fake it and smile every now and then, which isn’t necessarily bad advice, but faking it, and faking a less miserable expression is tiring and requires more effort and fucks than I’m willing to give, especially in this day and age.

This was not an isolated incident as well.  I have all sorts of memories in my life where relative strangers typically have demonstrated a noticeable aversion to sitting near me, and this isn’t even the only incident off the top of my head in my own office.

There was once a team meeting, that was especially packed on this particular day, and every single seat was taken, except for the one right next to me.  I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the notion that even within my own team, my fuck-off aura struck again, and the only seat to remain empty was the one next to me, and this was among a lot of company who kind of knew me, as we were in the same department.

And to add insult to injury, one of the few people in my company that I am not particularly fond of, they meandered into the meeting late, as is customary for the narcissistic asshole they are, but they did a quick scan of the room to look for a seat, and they put themselves into a situation where they were seen scanning, which meant that they had to take something if it were available, and so I had to end up sitting next to my least favorite colleague for the next 40 minutes, all because my fuck-off aura put us into this scenario.

Like I said, incidents like this have happened numerous times in my life, but it just so happens that it happened to a degree where I finally had the motivation to actually sit down and write about it.  And also like I said, I refuse to apologize and ask for forgiveness for looking mean and scary, and if people are unwilling to put their biases aside, then they really can go fuck off.

eBay has the chance to do the funniest, probably most satisfying, thing in the world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Engadget: GameStop reportedly trying to purchase eBay, with reports of offer being $56 billion dollars

I’m not going to pretend like I have any modicum of care of what’s really going on with this whole story, except that I think it’s really weird that a general small coffer company like GameStop is in any position to acquire a much larger company like eBay, but I think most of the world has seen stranger things and about as improbable takeovers in history.

But as the subject of this post says, I think eBay has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, and that’s telling GameStop that their $56B offer, has not met the reserve.

It would be satisfying to probably everyone remotely following this story, because I feel like every gamer in the history of existence has probably been fucked over or at least been insultingly low-ball offered by GameStop, and it would probably bring great joy to see eBay, much less any large conglomerate, basically tell GameStop something they’ve been telling their customers for decades.

Seriously though, how the fuck does GameStop have the gall to offer to buy eBay?  Their company is valued at like $9-11B, and where the fuck are they getting the extra $45B+ needed for their offer?  Store credit??

When the day is over, I really don’t give a fuck what happens with this.  I don’t shop at GameStop, and my eBay usage is pretty minimal, beyond impulsive niche purposes; however, I have recently learned about the CIB retro game market, and I’ve come across some clean and potentially lucrative games with boxes in my old belongings, and it would suck if a GameStop-ified eBay comes to fruition and manages to fuck up my potential earning.

All the more reason why I hope eBay tells GameStop to fuck on outta here with their offer.