Day: May 3, 2020

New Father Brogging, #007

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t help but think that my life would be so much simpler if I were Goro from Mortal Kombat, or at least have four arms like Goro from Mortal Kombat.

So much of the time, I try to do anything at all, while carrying baby in one arm, and it turns out that I’m not very competent at doing a lot of things one-handed.  Making a cup of coffee.  Untying a knot.  Opening any sort of jar or bottle.

Having an extra arm, much less two extra arms would probably increase my general productivity tremendously, and I can only imagine the shit I could get done if two arms were spent placating a baby full-time, while still having two others arms in which I could do absolutely anything at all with.  And in the few instances where I can hold the baby in one arm and free up a third arm, then the world can gladly be my bitch in those few times.

I think what I’m really trying to say is that there’s often times in which I feel pretty overwhelmed with just how much stuff I have to do on a daily basis, on top of being a brand new dad.  Obviously, there is no set amount of attention and things I have to do with a newborn baby, but then there’s usually a cavalcade of chores and tasks that have to be done on a routine and/or daily basis on top of everything that makes me feel like I have no downtime, ever.

On the weekdays, I trudge out of bed after nights of interrupted sleep due to one or two mid-night feedings, and I hop on my work laptop and do my best to do, work.  Baby hangs out with me in the mornings, which isn’t really difficult considering she usually just sleeps in the Mamaroo next to me.  By the early afternoon, mythical wife tags in and takes over the majority of baby duty while I finish out my work day, but when my workday is over, I tag in to spell her from baby duty, but that kind of means I’m going directly from my workday into baby duty, and if I’m lucky, I can cumulatively have maybe an hour, possibly two hours in which I actually do stuff for myself.

And in that little time, I can’t really indulge in much; I don’t feel like I’ve got the time to binge stuff on Netflix, especially considering single episodes of the Korean shows I want to watch are all like 90 minutes each because Korea really loves longform and I can kind of see why I’m so long-winded now.  I can’t really start any video games, because I generally really like to have three, uninterrupted hours to really start any game, and no matter what, whether I somehow manage to have one or two hours to myself, seldom are they contiguous and without any sorts of interruptions.

Ironically, this has driven me to write more, because it’s an activity that’s easy to stop and start and be interrupted without worry about ruining the flow of a show or forgetting to what I was doing in a game. 

The fact of the matter is that I occasionally have days in which I feel like I don’t ever get any time for myself, and it’s a little deflating whenever those days occur.  Believe me, I know that I’m not in a position where my daughter isn’t ever going to not be first, but I always believe there’s importance in still getting some time for myself occasionally.

But if I were Goro, or at least had two extra arms like Goro, I could do so much shit at the same time as being hands-on with the baby, because she only needs two arms, and then I could accomplish so much else with the other two arms and maybe feel like I’m still getting some time for myself.

Oh, Atlanta #669

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny, when Bubba decided to reopen the state of Georgia, starting with a very auspicious cherry-picked selection of businesses, my first thought was that “hey, this seems like it could be kind of racist, opening up all these businesses that tend to lean towards having mostly black workers and patrons.”  I asked around several people if they thought my opinion possibly held any weight, and the majority of the responses were mostly not really, and that I was more likely the racist for thinking such thoughts.

However since then, the black community has been pretty up in arms about how racist coronavirus is, how it’s a global conspiracy, and other claims, some more outlandish than the others.  But as it pertains to Georgia, when the black community starts echoing the thoughts that I had about how Bubba’s choices of business to reopen the state with, then I feel a little bit validated.

Unfortunately, in spite of the claims of Bubba’s racism, there are plenty of people who are content to do their best to be statistics and perpetuate stereotypes, even if there’s monumental scientific evidence out there that we should all probably still be staying indoors. 

But when Nike releases some new Air Jordans, it’s apparent that even a global pandemic isn’t enough to prevent people from staying indoors, instead choosing to gather in tight crowds and really put each other in the line of fire, all for the sake of trying to get some fucking shoes.

Now before anyone else decides that I’m being racist for thinking that surely not every single person at this Air Jordan release day is black, read the article: Greenbriar Mall.  Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of Atlanta knows that Greenbriar Mall is basically 100% black, save for the few other minorities that have the gumption to open up businesses in a predominantly black mall, but as far as patrons go, it’s basically 100% black.  For context, this is a mall that used to house a Magic Johnson Theater, which were basically only in Los Angeles and a few other sparsely selected jurassic ghettos outside of California.

Either way, this is what we’d ironically classify as “a very Atlanta story” as even in the middle of a pandemic, people still can’t seem to stay away from gathering, as long as Air Jordans are on the line.  Naturally, the internet has had a field day with it, claiming all sorts of racist unflattering remarks, and pointing out why so many people are going out in public when, at the time of this going live was, the shoes were still readily available to purchase online; which then opened up a whole other can of racist remarks and memes.

To some degree, I hold Nike responsible for recklessly (or cerebrally) maintaining the course and releasing these shoes.  Surely they know the pandemonium the releases of Air Jordans tend to do to the sneakerhead community, much less urban, and it’s pretty poor optics that even when people are getting sick and dying out there, they’re content to give people reasons to leave their homes and gather, but that’s just me.

I guess Bubba will be very happy if the black voter base starts taking some more losses on account of them pursuing fucking shoes, but frankly that was probably the intent the entire time when he decided to reopen Georgia.