Tag: wtf

Current status:

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally I try to keep certain aspects of my personal life out of my writing, but I’m at a point where I feel like I can’t really speak to just anyone about the things going on in my head over the span of the last 12+ months and the journey I’ve been enduring, and writing to nobody seems like a better alternative to unloading a metric fuckton of baggage onto just anyone because frankly I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would want to hear it and nobody probably needs to hear some of the negativity that’s manifested in my thoughts.

This includes my own immediate family, my wife and my closest friends, I don’t feel I can really do much beyond vent some surface level things without encroaching into a realm of dark and frustrated thoughts without risking bringing people who don’t really need to be brought down, down.  And although I know many people who have endured their own episodes of family bullshit, there really aren’t that many that I know who are in the entirely relatable situation of dealing with immigrant parents with severe language barriers fucking shit up on top of all the other typical bullshit that dealing with aging parents entails.

I’m not trying to deliberately separate myself from everyone else, or even insinuate that I’m going through a very specific and very unique scenario, obviously there are millions of xennial children of today who are dealing with this exact scenario, it’s just that I don’t really know any whom I can commiserate with.

Real talk is that I’m moving my dad down to Georgia, so he can come live out the remainder of his life, closer to one of his kids, instead of being on an island up in Virginia, where he basically has no real friends, and the military buddies he has don’t really include him in anything anymore these days on account of his rapidly declining mobility and basically inability to transport himself to wherever they gather and fraternize.  So he’s basically been living a life of solitary confinement for the better part of the last few years, and it’s doing no favors to his general state of mental wellbeing, and his memory has started to rapidly decline and whether it’s early onset dementia or Alzheimer’s I don’t fucking know, but it’s wreaking havoc on, life, as a whole.  His, mine, my sister’s, and by proxy the ones in our individual lives, because I have family obligation to give a shit about my dad’s well-being.

However, it’s been a colossal pain in the ass, because my dad has been indecisive and has numerously changed his mind on relocating or staying, with it becoming more and more frustrating each ensuing time.  I got him to come down for Thanksgiving to try out the home I found for him, and in typical fashion, he didn’t hate it, but he also was in no rush to move.  Unfortunately, shortly after Thanksgiving, his cognitive abilities began falling off of a cliff and my sister and I were rudely awakened to the fact that he seemingly couldn’t recall that he had any grandchildren, and that I even lived in Georgia.  Our spouses were completely forgotten, and if not for the fact that he has family photos in his home, he wouldn’t know that we were both parents in our own right.

Such really chaps my ass, because we’re at the stage of where my sister and I are basically flexing our power of attorney over our dad and low-key forcing him to relocate now, as opposed to him coming on his own volition, no matter just how much sense we were trying to talk into him.  Nobody can make another person do something they’re not willing to do without things getting uncomfortable in some manner.  Had he transitioned a year ago when I first found the home, or even six, eight or ten months ago, when his wits and memory weren’t an issue, he could already have had one foot in the door and begun his twilight years cognitively competent, and not basically being moved for no other reason than his own safety and need to be close to one of this kids because we’re the only people on the planet who give a fuck about him.

It goes without saying that I’m full of resentment and frustration with my dad for not fucking listening to me, or my sister, about relocating sooner.  He can’t live alone anymore, and shouldn’t really have been over the last year and change, but neither of us could make him help himself without his willingness to be on board with changes, and now we’ve crossed the point where it’s not a choice based on logic and mutual acceptance, but one out of necessity and for the sake of safety.

After basically flexing power of attorney on him, I deliberately left two weeks on the clock, so we could have a little buffer for any last minute issues that may or may not come up, as well as to arrange travel without having to rush or pay for rush charges.  Unsurprisingly, the last two weeks have been agonizing from the standpoint that my dad’s been blowing up my phone on a daily basis, having forgotten everything we talked about the day previously, requiring me to say the same shit and explain the exact same stuff that I’d been discussing with him for multiple days at this point.  No amount of demanding he write shit down works, because he’s either lying or being lazy or both, because if he were, then he wouldn’t be needing to call me six times every fucking day.

I snapped at my dad, telling him how frustrated I was that I had to keep doing this, and he uncharacteristically grew a little defensive and clapped back a little bit, citing that if he couldn’t ask questions to his own children, then who could he ask questions to?  I explained that he’s forgetting things on a daily basis and to write things down to a degree where he wouldn’t have to ask the same questions every day, and that he needed to also consider my position of where I have to say the same crap every single day because he won’t help me help himself by writing down the important things. 

He forgets, I can’t.  No matter how much I’d love to, and then chalk everything up to being forgetful.  My angst, frustration and pain compounds daily, while he gets to forget about it, and ask the same bullshit questions that could’ve been avoided two, four, six or twelve fucking months ago had he just listened to his own goddamn kids.

And on top of it all is the motherfucking language barrier that eternally exists between us.  And I will never not resent my parents for not learning more English after 50 years in this country, or pushing me to become more proficient in Korean.  It takes a difficult situation and ramps the difficulty up tenfold, with neither of us really being able to say the things we really want to say, and actually have the other fully understand it. 

I’m sick of having to sit in front of my computer with Google Translate open, or having to say hold on, while I swipe out of the phone and into a browser so I can do the same thing.

I swear on my life that I will never put my kids in this situation that my parents put me in.  We will never have a language barrier between us, and I hope everyone out there who doesn’t have one with their parents know just how fucking lucky they are, especially those of immigrants, who ended up on the same page to have a common tongue between parents and children.

To top things off, is this rumbling of the blizzard of the century that’s supposedly about to bombard the east coast.  My dad’s official travel day to Georgia is coming up, and I’m going to go apoplectic if the weather comes into play and completely cockblocks everything.  It buys time for my dad to try to back out yet again, and frankly the waiting for moving day has been way too long as it is, and I just want it to be here, so I can get him settled and hopefully started on a better life where he’s closer to me, will be surrounded by other human beings, and perhaps get the mental stimulation that he’s sorely needed.

Of all the things I don’t need, is the weather to come into play and ruin our plans.*  But considering the general nature of bad luck, fortunate and everything else that has delayed things to this point, I feel like it’s kind of a lock to happen.

*actually came up with an adult idea and paid to moved up his arrival date as to avoid the proposed start time of the so called blizzard of the century

The point of all this rambling is that I may not talk about it a lot in my writing, or even in person, but I am going through a metric fuck ton of stuff right now.  My life is pretty overloaded with parenting, a really currently mid-feeling job that has me churning a lot, being the general hard carry of my home, and then I have all of my dad’s bullshit that I’m having to run point on because nobody else is willing or able to do so, and I’m in a pretty precarious state of being.

Once my dad is settled and hopefully on the right track of existence, I need a fucking break.**

**I put this in writing a few times a year, but it basically never actually happens

I also need everyone to respect my time.

I also need people to stop questioning everything I do.

I also need everyone to stop being so reliant on me.

I also need to not have to be the hard carry in every facet of my life.

Xaivian Lee’s parents must be so disappointed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: Xaivian Lee’s late three-pointer secure’s Florida’s upset against #10 Vanderbilt

In other news, I learned of Xaivian Lee’s existence and upon a cursory fact check, yes he is Korean.  Which means that there is a Korean hooper out there outside of Korea, that is actively playing for a North American D-I program.

Color me surprised and fascinated.

Granted, according to his wiki, boy is from Toronto, and is about as white-washed as I am, especially based on the fact that his name is “Xaivian,” and based on his general physical appearance and the fact that he cleared 6’0, I’d really be curious to what his 23 and Me looks like, but for all intents and purposes, he’s of enough Korean descent for this post to manifest.

My knee-jerk reaction to seeing that he had transferred out of Princeton to go to UF was that his parents must have been apoplectic at the notion of him leaving an Ivy to go to an SEC school, but I saw that he was at Princeton for four years, which leads to the assumption that he had to have graduated, which is the absolute bare minimum of acceptance for Korean parents.  I’d guess that they let him chase his dream of moar hooping contingent of graduation from an Ivy League school although they probably would have preferred if he went to Harvard or Yale instead of Princeton.

Initially, I was ready to make all the bad jokes in the world about own disappointed his parents must’ve been that he went from Princeton to Florida.  But the more I read and learn about his general bio, the more my thoughts and opinions alter, since I’m kind of writing this off the cuff and learning while I write as opposed to doing my research in advance and coming up with a general basis before writing out.

Seeing as how ol’ Xaivian finished his time at Princeton, and his numbers scream out, nowhere close to good enough for the NBA much less should he even want to go considering the absolute racist gate he would be inevitable to slam into, he’s a perfect case for the college player to bilk as much eligibility and NIL money as humanly possible, and a move to UF was probably a great idea. 

And therein lies some of the effects of the NIL pendulum swung so hard to the opposite end of the spectrum, where fringe and no-chance-at-pro caliber players are clinging to dear life at college eligibility and are looking like a bunch of Van Wilders staying at school at 24+ years of age.  But for every Asian athlete that literally has no shot at North American pros, there are probably like 3-4 non-Asians who might be, but know they can still bilk more from NIL versus being a practice squad or development prospect at the pro level, and these guys can eat dicks and gtfo out of the NCAA.

I saw some shit recently about how there were like over 3,000 players currently in the transfer portal currently; that’s almost like 60-70 entire teams’ worth of players.  This is what’s making college sports so crazy right now, is that the entire collegiate level is jam packed full of all these kids bouncing around all over the place trying to sniff out as much NIL money as they can.  And among them are all these 23+ year old graduates enrolling in patsy graduate programs in order to keep playing college sports against other Van Wilders or literal teenagers.

But I’m straying off topic here, the point of this post was to acknowledge the existence of Xaivian Lee, an actual Korean hooper playing for a noteworthy NCAA program, and being good enough to be hitting game winning threes and getting a little bit of spotlight from North American sport media.  He may have already graduated from Princeton and is doing a little bit of Van Wilder-ing because he knows he has no shot at the NBA, but there’s no doubt in my mind that his parents are probably still disappointed in him, even if he is pulling in a million bucks in NIL.  They probably think he could’ve already been making four times that had he traded up to Harvard or Yale and become a doctor or lawyer instead.

A microcosm of what’s wrong with the airline industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.  I’m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn’t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn’t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story™.

I don’t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.  Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.  Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment’s notice.  Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it’s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it’s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people greed.

The gate I’m sitting in is relatively deserted.  Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.  The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.  If I were still doing the standby thing, I’d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.

That said, there’s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.  There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.  I’d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.

I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I’d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.

A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.  My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that’s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol’ Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn’t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they’ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can’t afford in order to travel, they’re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.

I know that I’m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.  I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000’s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.

Ed doesn’t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they’re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.

And then Ed’s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that’s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.  There’s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.

This guy would make a killing in Atlanta, or be killed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Sun: Bay Area man, proclaiming to be a ‘squatter remover’ uses swords among other forceful tactics to help clients evict squatters

Back when I lived on the south side of town, there were a ton of homes that were foreclosed on in my neighborhood, resulting a tremendous amount of abandoned properties all through the subdivision.  It was harrowing going onto Zillow and seeing just how many red dots that were all over my entire community signifying all the available properties, where clicking on any of them made it pretty clear that almost all of them were available on account of foreclosures.

However, the problem became when the properties stopped being vacant, and people started moving into them – and in most cases, not legally.  Even one of the homes adjacent to me, suddenly had people I didn’t recognize going in and out of the home, at odd hours of the day, and one of the weirder behaviors I noticed was one guy sitting in the backyard with a laptop, and looking back at this if I had to guess was probably because the inside of the house had no power or air conditioning or something, or maybe they were trying to leech off of my wi-fi.

Squatters probably occupied more of the neighborhood than legitimate residents at one point, and was/is probably the primary reason why the entire neighborhood went to shit as rapidly as it did.  I remember doing some Zillow-hunting on the aforementioned adjacent property to mind, and found out that it was owned by a bank or some investment company, with an address not even close to being in Georgia, which made it fairly obvious that I had squatters living next door to me.

Ordinarily I really wouldn’t care if they were discreet and kept to themselves, but unfortunately there was no discretion from those who lived there, and they would have like four cars crammed into the driveway with another two parked on the street, and trash strewn all over the yard.  If not for the fact that our houses were on a hill, with me having the higher ground, their shit would have undoubtedly blew onto my property which would have been more problematic than they already were, but the point was that it sucked having squatters next door.

Cursory research will show that squatters have an extremely inordinate amount of rights and protections throughout the country as it pertains to legally removing them properties that they illegally began occupying in the first place.  It has nothing to do with being left or right leaning, for whatever reasons, squatters basically have some of the most ridiculously concrete iron-clad rights there are, and it’s fucked up that legal owners of properties have literally no other choice but to acquiesce to squatter rights lest they risk crossing legal lines and committing crimes, in spite of the fact that they’re just trying to solve situations cause by other people committing crimes.

Really, the only (legal) options are grind out the legal process and eventually get the law to demand that they vacate the property, lest they be charged with criminal trespass, they leave on their own volition, but usually not before they trash the place to oblivion, or they are, coerced, to vacate the property, and the owner(s) or their proxies can secure it upon exit.

This is where the Bay Area squatter remover guy comes in – I have to say I love the story of this guy, and I wish more people like him existed and provided services all throughout the country, because squatting is something that I imagine is a very rampant problem across the nation and not just exclusively limited to major metropolitan areas like San Francisco or Atlanta.

And it’s just riotous that it’s apparent that his personal signature is the fact that he goes around with a real katana, and claims that it’s actually used in his line of work, and I like to imagine a guy who clearly has seen The Matrix five too many times confronting a squatter with live steel, brandishing and waving it around like a Mortal Kombat character, threatening some crooks to get the fuck out of the home they’re squatting in.

The guy boasts a 95% success rate, so it’s funny that he clearly manages to infiltrate these squatter homes, and by virtue of waving around his katana at people, he’s getting them to vacate the premises at a high clip and helping property owners reclaim their rightful properties.

I would’ve loved to have seen this guy in action in my old hood, and if the owners of the properties even cared about their investments, they would’ve just sent this guy on endless loops around the neighborhood, evicting deadbeat squatters left and right.  But at the same token, I’d imagine Atlanta to be a vastly more dangerous part of the country than the pussy Bay Area is, and he’d probably be up against way more heavily armed squatters, and willing to put up way more resistance.

As the subject says, katana guy would either make a real killing out in Atlanta, or just end straight up killed, but either way I love this guy’s idea and entrepreneurial spirit at putting in the work of evicting squatters on his own shoulders.

WTF is NJPW doing #082

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the other things that happened at Wrestle Kingdom 20 aside from Hiroshi Tanahashi’s final match everrrr, was IWGP Global champion Yota Tsuji defeating AEW’s Konosuke Takeshita for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship, thus creating a scenario where there is a unification of titles.

The thing is, it hasn’t been that long since the current winged design IWGP World Heavyweight championship came into fruition, barely five years prior, when Kota Ibushi won a winner-take-all match and decided to unify the WHC with the IWGP Intercontinental championship, and the winged blet was created, much to the dismay of fans and industry folk alike.

Sure, New Japan Pro Wrestling has been in a bit of churn over the last few years, with their rosters having been gutted a few times, a little bit of scandal, and just questionable management at times.  And chaos tends to lead to reactionary changes, but five years seems like a really short amount of time before the championship array of a promotion needs to come into play; it’s like late 1999 WCW and current AEW kind of scrambling if they’re deciding to start unifying off titles that have barely existed, in the grand spectrum of the industry.

To make matters more complicated, Tsuji exorcised his right as a new World champion by declaring the winged IWGP WHC now defunct, and immediately brought back the universally beloved V4 of the IWGP World title, to which then opened up the question on if he would be willing to break the unification, and allow for NJPW to reinstate the also-beloved IWGP Intercontinental championship.

Tsuji said no, and we’re left in this fuzzy situation where NJPW has a number of championships with questionable lineages and little direction on what lies ahead for the company as a whole.  I’m trying to wrap my brain around their title hierarchy, and writing all this shit down might help gain some clarity.

  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship (the ugly-ass winged blet) – Dead. Not merged with the IWGP Global championship.  Amalgamation of the old V4 and the IWGP Intercontinental championship.
  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship (the V4) – NJPW’s current World Championship, held by Yota Tsuji. Was deactivated in 2021 by Kota Ibushi when it was merged with the IWGP Intercontinental championship.
  • IWGP Intercontinental Championship – Dead. Yota Tsuji had the opportunity to bring the much beloved 1B title back, but declined to.
  • IWGP Global Championship – Active, also held by Yota Tsuji. The spiritual successor to the IWGP United States/United Kingdom championship, the theory is that this blet will be the de facto championship that is up for grabs whenever non-NJPW talent wants to challenge NJPW.  The company has been trying to really sell this as a true WHC equivalent, but much like AEW’s struggles with their litany of secondary blets, it’s just not catching.

And as if NJPW needed any more titles in spite of their proportionately small roster, they still have:

  • NEVER Openweight Championship
  • NJPW Television Championship
  • IWGP Tag Team Championship
  • IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship
  • IWGP Jr. Tag Team Championship
  • NEVER Six-Man Tag Openweight Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Tag Team Championship
  • IWGP Women’s Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Women’s Championship

So for those keeping count, NJPW has 18 titles in circulation, which is pretty high considering their roster is like, 25 full-timers, about as many in their dojo system, and heavy reliance on outside collaborations.

The bottom line is that it was a good thing that the Tanahashi farewell really took center stage at Wrestle Kingdom, and has all of the NJPW Universe occupied with tributes, because once all the emotion and sentiment have died down, the reality is that the company is kind of in this churning clusterfuck, and for blet buffs like myself, wondering just wtf they’re doing to do to justify all these blets and unifications and rebrands. 

They’ve clearly been taking notes from AEW on how to really devalue championships, and it sucks for a company as renown as NJPW, and all the history they have behind some of their own championships.

WTF is AEW doing #466

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I’m pretty critical of a lot of the things that AEW does, but I’ll be the first to admit that I kind of like the Continental Classic tournament they’ve been doing on an annual basis.  You have a lot of main event talent, intermixed with some talented guys from the mid card, and you have them wrestling in a bunch of matches that don’t really have any storyline behind them, and most importantly, have results that aren’t just the main eventers running roughshod over the mid card guys.

Speedball Mike Bailey picked up an impressive win over Kyle Fletcher, Jungle Boy Jack Perry got a win against Pac, and the most shocking outcome was when Kevin Knight picked up a clean win against Kazuchika Okada.  They really did a good job of selling that anyone could beat anyone, regardless of their standing in the company, and it led to a lot of pretty pure wrestling.

However, it wasn’t until the tournament concluded did I realize that there was an actual prize at the end of the whole thing; in previous years, AEW had a, surprise, title blet for the winner of the Continental Classic, which was the [don’t call me Intercontinental] Continental championship, which was originally won by of all people, Eddie Kingston.  He would then lose it to Okada, who would successfully defend the title by winning the 2025 Continental Classic, and continue to hold the title until it was merged in July 2025 with the International Championship in a completely nerfed version of Okada vs. Omega.

But for all intents and purposes, the Continental championship was deactivated, along with the International championship, and Okada began carting around a, surprise, new blet, christened the AEW Unified Championship, which they tried like hell to sell it as a World title equivalent, since Okada is very much a World title caliber performer, but unsurprisingly, it didn’t catch.

Getting back to the present, without any real explanation, going into the conclusion of the 2026 Continental Classic, the Unified Championship was already scrapped, and it was decided that the winner of the tournament would become the new Continental champion.  Conveniently, Okada would also advance to the finals, hoping to defend the title in the finals regardless of the fact that the title is up for grabs at any other point in the year, storylines notwithstanding.

Spoiler-alert, Jon Moxley won the tournament by defeating Kazuchika Okada, thus becoming the new Continental champion.

However, conveniently, Okada would still have a blet to cart around, because when they scrapped the Unified Championship after six historic months, they reactivated the International Championship, which was by default, Kazuchika Okada.

It should also be pointed out that when the Continental and International were merged into the Unified, it took one blet off the table, but AEW responded quickly by creating a, surprise, new blet, in the AEW National Championship, which was won by, and is currently held by Ricochet (which I’m actually okay with).

But for a promotion that has taken a lot of flack for its Oprah-like EVERYONE GETS A BLET number of titles, it’s just hilarious that they tried to pare down, couldn’t, and when they retconned one of their attempts to pare down, ultimately they end up with more blets in which they started with.  So to recap, AEW currently has:

  • AEW World Championship
  • AEW Women’s Championship
  • AEW Tag Team Championship
  • AEW Women’s Tag Team Championship
  • AEW TNT Championship
  • AEW TBS Championship
  • AEW Trios Championship
  • AEW Continental Championship
  • AEW International Championship
  • AEW National Championship

For those keeping count, that’s a total of 14 physical blets with the AEW name on them.  This doesn’t account for the revolving door of Ring of Honor, CMLL, RevPro, or any of the backyard promotions’ blets that Mercedes Moné is carting around.  Like, there have been literal shows where every single segment has had someone walking around carrying a blet.

There’s clearly no such thing as permanence in AEW.  Titles get merged, deactivated, retconned and then reactivated at a moment’s notice, without any genuine or logical explanations.  This isn’t even the first time that this has happened too, because it maybe hasn’t even been an entire calendar year since AEW merged their Trios with the ROH Six-Man titles, which resulted in at one point the Bang Bang Gang of Jay White, Austin and Colton Gunn carrying nine straps collectively, but then a few months later, Ring of Honor decided to just break off and crown new Six-Man champions without any real explanation.

Either way, the point remains, AEW still operates in head-scratching manners on the regular, and as much as I want to like them more than I do, I’m more often too busy scratching my head trying to piece together all of their weird operational decisions to figure out what the fuck is going on.

The year-end post, circa 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[Originally written on December 9th, but held off until end of year due to personal neuroticism]

Today, I took a half day off work.  I originally wanted to take a full day off on account of the fact that I’m sitting on nearly six days’ worth of PTO hours that I haven’t used, and my company has a use it or lose it policy, and I’m more than likely going to take an L on some hours.  But the way I see it, or at least the way I try to rationalize it to myself is that it’s a little bit of give and take on the sick hours, since there’s probably been several days in which I should’ve just taken the day, but I “worked from home” on those days but whatever, I took a half day off when I wanted to take a full day off, primarily because there was a big monthly meeting at 8 fucking AM that I felt that I needed to attend because I had several projects being shown and it was probably for the best that I be there.

So, as far as the rest of my day went, instead of punting and logging on from home after the 8 AM meeting, I decided to just head into the office since I tend to be more productive there.  And yes, I was pretty productive in the two hours that I was there, determined to hard stop at 11:45, but the dearth of work I’ve had throughout the year has been pretty mundane and often aggravating in nature, mostly because most all the work is like that at my company because of project management that can’t ever seem to stabilize due to rapid employee churn and turnover.

Plus, there were some concerning layoffs that happened a week prior, and naturally everyone at the office is on high-alert and on their best behavior, lest they become victims of another spontaneous workforce reduction initiative.

Anyway, I left the office and headed down toward the vicinity of the airport because I have to pick mythical wife up, and everyone knows just how much fun a trip to Atlanta Hartsfield Latoya Jackson Intergalactic Spaceport, Nail Salon and Hot Wing Express is, even for a pick-up job, but I saw it as an opportunity to at least treat myself to some Willy’s and loaf in the parking lot to do my daily Duolingo.

But by the time I get back from the airport, any chance at any sort of personal endeavors are pretty much gone, since my kids are just getting off school, and despite being off the clock, there’s another meeting that I felt that I should at least listen in on because again, tryna be indispensable.

So, I try to be productive with my day, since I’m a weird fuck who finds satisfaction in productivity, despite it being completely counter-culture to the notion of taking PTO in order to relax.  But since I’m off the clock, I take the time to set up some outdoor Christmas decorating that fell to the wayside because of all the babysitting I’ve had to do for my dad, being under the weather a week ago, and that I just generally never have any fucking time.

I get the lights set up, and then I come inside and set up the second Christmas tree, which sounds like a complete waste of time setting up a second one, but y’all need to understand that this is my tree, aptly called the jihad tree, because it is cheap and small, but it houses all of the tacky and fun and ridiculous and mostly broken and unwanted Christmas ornaments that I’ve been accumulating over the years.  I love this tree and what it represents, and it’s important to me that it goes up and gets its time to shine and display as much as the show tree does.

And then it’s time to get dinner prepped for the kids, and the point of all this is that despite the fact that I took a half day off, absolutely zero minutes of my entire day were really spent in any sort of blow off, fuck responsibility kind of way that PTO should be spent on, and such is kind of a snapshot of just about every day of my life, in 2025, as well as god knows how much longer since.

I had to actually stop and think about it, how I felt about how the year has gone, because I really don’t always have the time to stop and think about things unless they’re usually critical, but I think it’s safe to say that as a whole, 2025 really has stunk.  Yes, I know how curmudgeon and pessimistic that sounds, which is probably what most people think of my personal brand being, but when I stop and think about the general day-to-day and minutiae of living in 2025, and very little of it is notably good.

I’m stressed out and depressed more often than I’m not, and every single day I feel taken for granted, ignored, taken for granted, deprioritized and of course, taken for granted.  I always feel as I have to hard carry the vast majority of aspects of my life, nobody helps out, everyone takes but nobody gives.  I have to take care of everyone, and nobody ever seems to be available to take care of me.

A tremendous amount of angst stems from my financial position, and I genuinely can’t remember ever being in as much debt in my entire life as I am now.  Absolutely nothing I do can dig out of the holes that I’m falling deeper and deeper into, and just when I manage to feel like I get a win somewhere in my finances, something inevitably always shows up and I end up in a worse position than I was previously.  Again, nobody is helping me, and everyone around me is making things worse, and I know it sounds shitty to say, but families are fucking expensive, and I feel like nobody is willing to make any sacrifices or changes in my world except for me, and it shows, because I’m living paycheck to paycheck right now and not doing a very good job of keeping my head above water and this has a massive bearing to my general state of being.

In fact, it was just a few days ago in which I was having a completely normal day without incident, but then I got that ticket in the mail that was a $1,000 fine.  Something I didn’t do, but still something that I am responsible for rectifying.  And then to add insult to injury, there was a $6,500 expense that I was not expecting to show up, just the following day.

I’m not suicidal, but it was definitely one of those moments where I wanted to say that I wanted to just blow my head off, because this shit is fucking ridiculous.

But this really was the pivotal moment in which I realized, man, 2025 really has fucking blew.  And usually I end up writing my year-end post closer to the New Year, but honestly I don’t think three fucking weeks left in the month is going to change anything because I basically have had to cancel Christmas because of $7,500 out the window that I have no earthly idea how I’m going to pay it.

On top of feeling like one of the world’s biggest punching bags is the babysitting I’ve been doing for my dad, in trying to get him to move down to Georgia.  If it’s not clear, I live a tremendously high-stress life as it is, but adding him and all of his resistant to change bullshit and communication issues because he never learned any fucking English and my parents never pushed me to learn more Korean, has really done a number to my health this year.

I’m 43, but for the first time in my life, I’ve really felt old, with my hereditary blood pressure issues seemingly escalating, presumably from all the increases in stress, leading to signs of feeling old like deteriorating eyesight, increased bathroom usage, and tension headaches.  And again, I know what all my stressors are, but nobody in my world seems to give a fuck about remotely helping me, so I’m just left feeling like I’m on an island, getting worse on a daily basis.

Needless to say, I know how dismal and insufferable this post must come off, if any of my zero readers has managed to make it this far.  I know I’m not alone in the world in feeling depression, despair and a general dissatisfaction with life.  I love my family and my kids, and they still manage to bring occasional moments of peace and happiness, handfuls they can all be at times.  But on an overall aggregate state of being scorecard, I’ve been pretty miserable all throughout 2025, and what really sucks is that I’m not sure how much better things are really going to get in the ensuing year, because a lot of the things that are killing me now, probably aren’t going to be going away any time soon in the future either.

One day at a time, I guess.  Try and enjoy little things, and try to not drag too many people down with my actual sourness and hide it behind a mask and keep more of my true thinking to the brog that nobody fucking reads.

Good lord, man.  I just want everything to get better, but I just don’t know if, when or how that’s ever going to happen sometimes.