What car would you drive if you were FU rich?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Near the entrance to my subdivision is a curve, where it’s impossible to be able to tell for those leaving my hood if the next oncoming car is 250 ft away or 2,500 ft away; sometimes those leaving don’t as much time as they think they do, and oncoming traffic will just have to take it on the chin that an outgoing car is going to be slowing them down as they accelerate to the speed limit.

I was leaving my neighborhood one day, and within 10 seconds there was some douche in a red Ferrari right up on my bumper; obviously, I couldn’t see them coming and they couldn’t see me pulling out, but it was still clearly the inconvenience of a lifetime that I just had to spawn in front of his path of exceeding the posted speed limit, and I wasn’t about to be willing to do him the favor of flooring it on a cold engine, during school bus hours, while on a road that has had an above average uptick of deer sightings on the roads currently.

Naturally all I could think while this clown was parked on my bumper was, what a douche, and that even if this guy were anything but a douche, he’d still look like one, because he was parading himself around in a lame as Ferrari and the perception of all exorbitantly expensive supercars to pleebs like myself is that supercars = douchebags, and it got me thinking, what could a rich person drive around in that allows them to flaunt their wealth but not be immediately perceived to be a douchebag?

Ferrari? Douche.
Lamborghini? Douche.
Aston Martin? Douche.
Bugatti? Douche.
Porsche? Low-rent douche.
BMW? Depends on the model, but douche.
Viper, Corvette?  Right-wing douche.
Lexus, Benz, Tesla?  Most likely Asian who can’t drive; but otherwise douche.

The answer is basically, there is no luxury and/or high-end vehicle that a person could drive that doesn’t immediately make them out to be a douche.  It sucks, but it’s unfortunately irrefutably true.  Like, I recently saw some reel of Gordon Ramsey parking and getting out of his red Ferrari in London, and even though I like the guy, he looked like a douche.

I like to fantasize about what I would drive if I ever made it to the station in life where I could have whatever cars I wanted, and drive them around regularly.  Sure, I wouldn’t mind taking an actual supercar out for a spin, just to feel what it feels like, but the reality is that I probably wouldn’t want something like a Lambo or a Ferrari or an Aston Martin.

The ceiling of higher-end vehicles that I’ve considered wanting out of the box is probably like an Audi A3 or a Sport Quattro, but the latter is basically impossible as it’s been out of production for quite some time.

I think the reality is that when the day is over, I’d probably want a litany of project cars and Japanese sports cars, that more than likely, one that I’ve had a hand in customizing, if not putting in some of the wrench work myself, because that’s a talent that I wished I had, being able to work on cars.

Recently, I saw this 1974 Honda Civic build, that someone had restored and modified to where it had a more modern K20 motor from a Type-R Honda of some sort, but the end result is this gorgeous restoration with modern performance, and this is precisely the kind of aesthetic and want that I’d have for a car if I were stinking FU rich.

It’s up there with the RX-2 from Fastest Car as inspiration for the types of rides I want to have if I had the money, means and know-how on how to make happen.

Frankly, I don’t think there’s like any car after maybe 1998 that I’d want in a future garage of mine, because the aesthetic of cars in general changed to be too spaceship-py and I’m not a fan of the direction of modern automotive aesthetics in general.

If I had FU amounts of money, and I could get into collecting cars, I’d definitely want the following cars:

  • Nissan 180SX with a Silvia S13 Sil-Eighty conversion
  • Nissan Fairlady 240Z
  • Nissan R32 Skyline GT-R
  • That 1974 first-gen Honda Civic with any sort of modern swap
  • Honda Civic EK9 or Integra DC2, Type-R
  • Mazda Savannah RX-7 FC
  • Mitsubishi Evo IV
  • Subaru Justy with WRX swap

Basically chasing all of my boyhood car dreams, but few of these cars aren’t necessarily as capable of tripping the douche alarm, unless I was actively driving them like a ragey aggressive douche.  I prefer unsuspecting, sleeper-class cars that have performance, but can better blend in with the herd, because standing out has generally never been my desire.

But I suppose if you make it to the tax bracket and financial level where you can whatever the heck kind of car(s) you want, the opinions of the sheep no longer matter to you anymore, so you can just drive around looking like a douche without a care in the world if that is your cup of tea.

When it rains, it reigns

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just a week ago, I took my dad to a doctor’s appointment.  Nothing at all wrong, but a routine check-up.  Everything was good, there were no real concerns, and we left without incident, with a follow-up schedule six months from the date.

In the car ride to go find some lunch, we were lamenting on how smooth things have stabilized over the last few months, compared to his tumultuous arrival back in January where I wanted to blow my brains out on more than one occasion from his excessive neediness, anxiety and frequent phone calls; it was like I now had a third child, and this one was the most demanding of them all, and I felt terrible at how miserable I felt bringing my dad down to be closer to me.

But over the months, seemingly a combination of finally getting over the shock of relocating, settling into his new digs, falling into a sense of routine, but most importantly, getting a new team of doctors and specialists to see to his needs, all of them Korean-speaking, and getting his medications sorted, organized and properly handled, my dad began to calm down.

I had a brief crash out back in April, when a neurologist told me that I had to bring him back on five separate occasions for various tests, and I once again lamented on wtf I had gotten myself into, but the fact of the matter is that after the tests were all finally done, they didn’t necessarily find anything wrong or any new revelations, but they did put my dad on some antidepressants, and if there were ever anyone on the planet who could become the poster child for the benefits of antidepressants, it would be my dad.

And all through the year, I had been working with him on a checklist of things that needed to be handled in his transition, from the sale of his old house, the changing of all sorts of utilities and bills and address changes here and there.  Military pension from ROK, logging into Social Security, Medicare, etc.  Managing his finances and finding ways to put it to work.

One of the more trying side quests was the saga to get him Georgia identification, since long gone were the days of, if you had a license from any other US state, you basically could automatically get one in Georgia, pending like an eye test and a nominal fee.  But I guess in the Orange America we live in, constantly phishing out potential deportation targets, my dad now had to procure proof of citizenship, which cool, he has a passport, except he lost his passport, so now I had to get him a new passport first, so he could use that to get his Georgia license, and that who debacle took nearly four months to do, but it was done.

And the state ID, was basically the final thing on the list, and it was weird for us to realize that the laundry list was actually done at this point, and it was kind of cramping my visiting schedule, because frankly, I didn’t have any tasks to do with him, which was one of the things that we enjoyed doing together in prior visits, knocking shit out, and feeling accomplished.

Me going to Korea for the summer was the best thing to happen to him, since it forced him to really be on his own for an extended period of time, and I was happy to return back to the states and hear from my sister and the facility that there were no issues, he seemingly had been chill and even took part in some of the facility’s activities, and he had no list of gripes and complaints waiting for me upon return.

The thing, after this past week’s doctor’s visit, I had this surreal moment of reflection, with myself, as well as with my sister at a later conversation, about how everything was stable, and how nice it felt.  But nagging in the back of my head was the unfortunately pessimistic outlook I tend to have in life, that there’s no way that this calm could last, and it was like waiting for the other shoe to eventually drop.

And I think it’s safe to say that such a shoe did drop, since I’ve fallen back into another depression because I feel that nobody in my world gives a flying fuck about me, I’m taken for granted, nobody respects me, and my fuck-off aura continuously keeps people beyond arm’s reach at all times.

But then the one source of surprising stability, my dad, reaches out to me, to tell me that he’s not feeling that great, that his balance feels worse than ever, and he works himself up to where his home contacts emergency services, which at first I think seems excessive, but I’m glad that they did it, because it’s not for anyone to decide what’s an emergency or not if there’s potential for injury.

He passes initial stroke tests, and his BP is elevated, but not to emergency levels, and the paramedics leave, and recommend to me for him to go see his PCP.  Cool, I get him into his doc the next day, and following up with him, there’s nothing out of the ordinary, and I’m led to believe that perhaps he just had a bad day.  But then that evening he calls me again, stating his balance is really poor, and I can tell he’s nervous, but it’s well past the end of business, and I ask if he needs to contact emergency services again, and he tells me that he doesn’t think it’s necessary but if I could contact the doctor, which I say sure.

But I have no fucking idea which doctor to contact, because he just saw his PCP, and I’m leaning towards neurology, since they’ve been the ones working on his balance, and based on the difficulty in which it sounded like he was speaking, I’m not entirely sure if perhaps he didn’t actually have a stroke, and I just don’t really know what to do.

All I do know is that I’m going to go see him tomorrow and see what, if any, doctor I can get him in with, and hopefully, my visit does not end with him in a hospital.

Everything sucks, because things seemed to be going pretty stable and without incident, but as sure as the sun rises every day, the other shoe had to eventually drop, and when it did, it seemed to break everything it came into contact with on the way down.

Not that it matters as much as my dad concerns, but today I found out that my current boss was let go, which always feeds the narrative that nobody is ever really safe at my company, which shell shocked everyone similarly, and then the cherry on top is the Outlook global outage probably hack that really hampered our work progress today and probably means there will be deluge of emails that come roaring through if and when things get back up.

Fun times, things suddenly have become.

Pour a little bit of Fireball mixed with Creatine for this dying homey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ToNeToATL: LA Fitness Midtown Atlanta closing at the end of the year; no reason given by management

I saw this story come across, and I had to stop what I was doing so I could smirk, chuckle, and then give approximately three hearty laughs.  For those that have known me for some time might remember that this was the gym that I worked out in for roughly four-plus years of my life, when I was a middling state employee working in the heart of Midtown.

In those years in which I worked out at this gym, I did manage to keep up a modicum of shape while there, but most of the time I was there working out, I was also observing the wealth of fascinating characters that also descended onto the facility, as if I were a mid-athletic Korean Jane Goddall, studying the wildlife while tryna mind my own business.

Make no mistake, the vast majority of the people I witnessed there were awful; mostly on account of being either inconsiderate, (trying to be) intimidating, lazy, excessively meathead-y, vapid, or any combination of the above, with maybe a few all of the aboves sprinkled into the mix.

Off the top of my head, I can remember such GOATs like:

  • The worst guy at the gym
  • Two ellipticals at the same time guy
  • Naked MySpace tripod camera selfies guy
  • Practice runway walk (while naked) in the locker room
  • Bedazzled lifting belt guy
  • Fishnets gym gear guy
  • Used Nair in the men’s locker room guy

And I was always entertained by the random pro-wrestlers I ran into while there, seeing as how it’s an optimal place to get in a pump before hitting the arena for a show, even if they didn’t know that the place was really actually shitty.  But I did see guys like Brad Maddox and Erick Rowan there, and I was actually able to have a brief conversation and selfie with Wade Barrett.

Honestly though, looking back, there’s really only one dude there that I would probably say is the closest thing to a buddy I had in all the years I worked out there.  And in true Ron Swanson-ian fashion, I actually never knew or learned his name, as we only fraternized as recognized regulars, respect existing solely based on the frequency in which we saw each other and didn’t act like knuckleheads in the gym.

Man was built like a combination of Abobo from Double Dragon mixed with Michael Clarke Duncan, and was an absolute hulk in a gym that had its share of tryhard lifters and vanity projects.  But unlike most of the others, he was super chill, loved sports and a leisurely pace, and was easily my favorite person there.  To him, I hope he’s doing well, and finds a comfortable new home base to continue maintaining his imposing stature.

Everyone and everything else about the Midtown LA Fitness can go eat a bag of dicks or whatever sexual body parts that turns them off.  The place was a joke of a business, and it’s a Christmas miracle that they lasted as long as they did, as the entire area around them exploded in progress and development, as if a kid just learned the Sim City million dollar code and executed it successfully for the first time.

The world is their oyster on what they could put in its place, but knowing the history of Atlanta, there’s a very high chance that the location ends up being replaced by a CubeSmart, some place selling chicken tenders, a Duck Donuts, or perhaps in some revolutionary manner, a combination of all three.  Normally, I roll my eyes whenever I hear of anything in Atlanta closing down and being replaced by any one of the three, but if it’s at the expense of Midtown LA Fitness, then it would still be considered an upgrade.

Here we go again with the casinos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms wants the state to revisit decisions on whether or not casinos should be legalized in Georgia

The thing about human nature is that if there’s a topic that continuously keeps bubbling back up, regardless of how many times it has been rejected or shot down in the past, on a long enough timeline, it will eventually get a green light.  Sometimes, it’s on account of the landscape changing, the minds of the decision makers changing, or the decision makers themselves have changed.

But at the end of the day, I wager that most of the time it has more to do with the general exasperation of the people tired of having to have the same argument again and again, and much like parents relenting to their children’s incessant whining, even lawmakers have a point in which they just seem to throw their hands up and just say, fuck it, fine, okay.

Off the top of my head, some examples I can think of repeatedly brought up issues that were rebuffed but eventually went through are:

  • NCAA player compensation
  • Washington Redskins/Cleveland Indians name changing
  • Abortion rights
  • AI implementation
  • Gambling laws in various other states

That’s where I think this is going to happen here in Georgia, eventually.  It may not be this go around, but I think it’s a safe bet that this topic will inevitably bubble back up again in a few years, probably justified by like North Carolina or Mississippi having some modicum of positive financial impact from the casinos they’ve erected in their states, and if not this time, but eventually Georgia will relent.  Eventually, someone will pose the question, of why should NC/MS/X state get money from our residents when we can be keeping that money here, and bam, casinos will start sprouting in Georgia, like snakehead fish or Asian murder hornets.

I mean, we’ve already got legalized slot machines in a number of Kroger grocery stores, and there are more than numerous gas stations scattered throughout the state who are pretty flagrantly running their own slot machine rooms, loosely adhering to the law, while still sucking down the dollars of addicts under different terminology.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the idea, but I also don’t think this is a winnable fight, seeing as how the whole topic of casinos in Georgia seems to sprout up every two years or so.  I just think it’s a matter of time before it’s going to go through, and resisting it seems like a futile exercise.

Fortunately, my gambling bug isn’t nearly what it used to be, and I like to think I’m more resilient to going back to wanting to gamble as much as I used to, which honestly wasn’t that bad considering I never lost my head at any point of my oft-going to Vegas days.  So even if and when casinos become a thing in Georgia, it’ll be pretty easy for me to resist.

Additionally, from what I’m gathering, is that it’s places more on the outskirts of civilization, like the mentioned Henry County which is 1-2 hours south of Atlanta city proper that want these things, and yeah, those flyover counties probably would benefit from an influx of cash to their sleepy chunks of land.  I just didn’t like the idea of a casino replacing Turner Field’s real estate, and having a gaudy casino right in the heart of the city, but out in those hill tribes, go for it.

Sure, they’ll look ridiculous and gaudy and completely out of place, like most off-the-highway casino resorts do, like they are in North Carolina, Mississippi and Washington, but I guess if the claims are at least close to being true, and some of this money brought in goes towards important infrastructure, it might not be the worst idea in the world.

It’s just sad though, that economies are so reliant on the cash flow provided by, gambling.  Because it’s just like that legendary quote from that Chinese kid’s yearbook: it’s not enough that I should succeed – others should fail.  Degenerate gamblers cash losses and probably their lives when they kill themselves rather than face the consequences of their addiction, lead to the economic flourish of the places in which these money traps lie.

What a world we live in.

Few things kill the vibe than ‘Made in the USA’

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Drive: Toyota revives the Scion sub-brand by introducing a US-made Kei truck

Few things on the road really make me look twice than seeing Kei-cars; obviously as they are not native to the United States, seeing them on the roads anywhere in America is always a novelty.  I know of at least two homes in my general neighborhood who have Kei-cars, and I know one person who has two.

Aside from the quirky aesthetic that Americans don’t get, and the weeb-y idea of having one, I too would really enjoy having a Kei-car if I had the means and the available disposable income to make it happen.  They’re efficient in so many different manners, from fuel economy, space consumption, cargo hauling, and I like how they’re noticeable and attention-grabbing without having to look like a douche in any sort of European supercar.

When Toyota introduced the KEI-01, I couldn’t help but feel like a sudden sucking of all the air of coolness and intrigue from actual J-spec Kei-cars.  It’s kind of like the Family Guy Effect, but instead of a show, it’s a large corporation that has acknowledged the intrigue and novelty of a very niche thing, and by slapping their name onto it and proclaiming the intention of building it in Indiana, it suddenly makes it nowhere nearly as cool as they used to be.

It doesn’t help that they’ve nerfed them into oblivion with their reported 25mph top speed, and automatic transmission, but the whole aesthetic of making them tin metal silver looks like they’ve never heard the expression that it doesn’t matter how much you polish a turd, it’s still a turd.  Because let’s face it, Kei-cars aren’t pretty, they kind of are turds on wheels, but all their positives outweighs the aesthetic, which is why they’re still so likeable.

Additionally, Toyota is intending on gatekeeping them even further by claiming that they’re only going to be commercial vehicles, intending on making them only available through commercial and fleet services, with the general idea that only farms, agriculture and factories will be the only one with access to them.  Cute idea, but people will be people, and if people wanted Lonzo Ball’s shitty shoes just to say they got them, them ordinary people will inevitably want and find ways to get KEI-01s for their own selfish private reasons.

Personally, if I were financially better off, and in a position to acquire a Kei-car, I’d still rather go the original route and get one imported over here; like an old Daihatsu, Suzuki or Honda, one with a manual transmission, and capable of getting to perhaps 55 mph.

I could very well change my mind in the future if circumstances change, the KEI-01 is allowed to go a little faster and is made more available to ordinary consumers, and it might be worth revisiting, but at a first blush, Toyota’s Scion KEI-01 has only really managed to accomplish sucking the fun and intrigue out of Kei-cars outright, in my opinion.  Fewer things kill the vibe faster of a fun little imported commodity than slapping a big American “Made in the USA” sticker on top of it.

Thoughts on College Football’s 24-team playoff plan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ESPN: College football will begin an expanded playoff of 24 teams starting in 2027, eliminating conference championships

At first blush, upon hearing about the news that the college football playoffs were expanding to 24 teams, up from the 12 team current format, my knee-jerk reaction was (unsurprisingly) whyyyyy?

The main issue I felt like was going to happen was just an extension of what we the fans have witnessed the last two years of the updated CFB 12-team playoff – there just aren’t really any credible contenders past maybe the top six, which are usually the same schools every year – 1-3 SEC schools, Ohio State, Oregon, Notre Dame, and maybe a school or two having a really good year on account of a perfect storm of beast upperclassmen with some hotshot true freshman QB.

But the teams typically ranked 7-12, the Arizona States, Tulanes, JMUs and SMUs, everyone and their mothers know that they’re just going to get rolled by the schools who maybe had two-losses and couldn’t outright win their conferences, like the Texases, Ole Misses, Penn States and whoever lost the SEC championship.

Adding twelve more teams to the mix meant we’re going to see a whole bunch of potential scrubs and/or 3+ loss teams squeak into the playoffs, and could be more of the same, where they get absolutely mauled by a power-4 school who has finally begun to gel and are figuring things out at the right moment.

Obviously, when the day is over, money is what is driving this whole thing to fruition, and win or lose, I’m going to assume that any and all participants in future 24-team playoff tournaments, will probably benefit greatly financially, be it directly from CFB, NCAA, BCS or whatever overarching organization is really in charge of college football these days.

However, I have to imagine that in the process of coming to this outcome of where 24-teams is going to happen, while conference championships are no longer going to be a thing, there are probably a lot of really upset cities, mainly the host cities for the power-4, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Charlotte and DFW.  I can’t speak for any of the cities other than Atlanta, but the SEC championship is about as on-par with most major sporting events as far as economic impact for the city goes, and I’d imagine the other host cities probably feel some ways about suddenly being told that they won’t be having these critical games and the economic impact they bring anymore after this season.

$1.7B is a whole lot of cheese, and over five years, that’s roughly $300M per, and that gets divided amongst god knows how many parties, and somewhere along the line, those slices of pie probably have to be larger than what the host cities, as well as all participants and contributors of college football are owed, in order for this to have any shot of financial viability.

But a funny thing happened today while I was thinking about this topic throughout the day.  Just based on the current AP rankings, if next year’s playoff format were to have started today, and if we were just hypothetically going the top-24 teams in the nation, there’s not nearly as many patsy schools in the lower half of the bracket that I imagined would be the case this time next season.

For example, currently between ranks 18-24 are schools like Oregon, Ole Miss, TOSU and LSU, among others, including South Carolina, who has been on a tear lately.  The SEC has been a relative bloodbath all season, where it seems like every team has upset a higher rank at some point, gaining rank, before getting upended by another SEC school.  These are all schools who would be capable of beating schools like Texas Tech, Wake Forest, Kentucky and Boise State.

It’s not the memories I’ve had of years past where the Top-25 was basically the top ten schools in the nation followed by whole bunch of 1-2 loss schools who really aren’t really a threat, to fill out the remaining 15 schools, and I feel like this season in particular was everything that the CFB committee has really been hoping the NIL era would do, where it’s begun to disperse talent more equitably across the landscape, and we’re climbing to a level or parity that hasn’t really been the case in a very, very long time.

Another thing I kind of like about the new format, is that with the dissolution of conference championship games, Notre Dame no longer has that advantage of not having to play a 13th game in the regular season, because frankly nobody is going to have to anymore.

So really, it’s too early to tell what’s going to happen next year; we may very well still have schools like Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame and other notoriously reputable programs who win it all again, but the chase for the championship could very well to be entertaining and not as pointless as I initially thought.

Initially, I didn’t feel like this was a great idea at first blush, but thinking about it, like actually really thinking about it, perhaps it’s not going to be that bad.  However, that being said, watch the 2027 revert back to a season where there are a bunch of 12-0 and 11-1 squads in the top-10, and the rest of the field is filled out by some Tulanes, JMUs, Arizona States and Oklahomas again, all prepared to get stomped by 30.

What is it about me that makes me unworthy of respect?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m having a moment right now, where I’m all sorts of sad, disappointed, feeling hurt, bitter and resentful all at the same time.

Normally, I try to put in more effort than I do with my children, but I’m just not feeling it right now, so I’m letting them watch television while I get this word vomit off my mind while the feelings are fresh and raw and as probably genuine as they’ll ever be.  But the wife and even the au pair are out at dinner with friends that I don’t know who’s doing the gatekeeping to where I’m not even considered for invitation, but the point is that I’m the one holding down the fort while everyone else gets to live some semblance of an adult, non-parenting life for a few hours.

No matter.  The love from my children is really the only thing that truly matters to me, and even as much as they drive me up the wall sometimes, at this stage of life, I’d rather be with them anyway above everyone else, as opposed to be the pity-fuck fill-in friend or invitee at some gathering where I’m going to end up spending a shitload of money that I don’t really have to burn.

However, this is a topic and scenario that bubbles up often, but normally I suppress it, or prioritize some other topic in my perpetual backlog of things that I want to write about, but this time is just hitting at just the right time and circumstances where fuck it, let it fly.

As the subject of this post states, what is it about me that makes me so unworthy of the respect of others?  From my own wife, my friends, and even my family, where I feel like I exist solely as someone for when someone needs something, and whenever I want to call anyone just to chat and catch up, nobody picks up their phones, and even when they do, it’s abundantly clear that they’re doing something else and I don’t have anyone’s primary attention.

I’m at a point where it feels like I have to be the initiator with everyone in my life, but nobody else can possibly be bothered to initiate anything with me, at all.  I liken such a reality to not having the respect of anyone to where such is the case, and I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life to where it’s so easy for everyone in my world to not respect me, or the things I do with my life and the choices I make.

Not long ago, thanks to The Algorithm, I’d seen content out there that pretty succinctly identifies my position in the world, that of being a fill-in friend, or a floater friend, someone that has no quarrel, beef or issues with any other people, someone who is capable of making a social situation or party or gathering better, but at the same time, viewed as someone wholly expendable, not necessary, and only worthy of invitation or inclusion when there’s usually a need or a quota.

The thing is, I feel as if I’m a fill-in floater for not just my friends, but my own household and my own family.  For whatever reason, I don’t seem to have to seem the respect of anyone in my household or my immediate family, and nothing I do, no matter how altruistic or others-first I approach things seems to change things.

I try to do good things, I try to make the right choices.  I follow the rules, and treat people how I want to be treated, which is respectfully and consideration, but it’s getting to the point where it almost never, feels reciprocal.

And right now, I’m fucking over it.  I’m tired of the disrespect, I’m tired of being taken granted for, I’m tired of feeling last in line by everyone in my life who matters the most.  I know that I try to be a resilient human being, and try to think everything through and give the most benefit of doubt.  But I do have my limits as well, and I’m just so tired of the sheer lack of reciprocal consideration from everyone around me right now, and I don’t know what I have to do in order for things to change, short of calling the fuck out of everyone and start making demands.