Month: September 2020

Make Em Say Ughhhh . . . on the crapper

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I grimace face’d: has been rapper Master P releases line of instant food with the intention of replacing Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, aptly called “Uncle P’s”

Lately, I’ve been in one of my writer’s ruts.  My janky ring finger that makes it occasionally difficult to type, combined with the fact that now that my brog is back up, I haven’t really found a good rhythm to write, and I’ve kind of lost touch with all the sites I used to hit up to seek out inspiration.  And then there’s that thing called “the baby” which commands the vast majority of all my days, and I sometimes struggle to find things to want to write about, or find the time to carve out in which to do some writing.

It’s times like these, when stories like Uncle P’s Louisiana Seasoned instant food line, kind of help trigger my brain into spurting out words again, and see if I can break some of the rust that’s forming on my writing chops before they go too dormant.

Honestly, my first thought when I read the headline and then saw the hero image was, is this for fucking real??

I haven’t heard Master P’s name since like, 2000 when he showed up on WCW to do a rap vs. country music storyline that ironically ended up with the heel country faction helmed by the late great Curt Hennig inadvertently getting super over, when it was obviously clear that the rap faction was the intended stars.

He also released this shitty song that somehow was always in the top-5 music videos on MTV that I used to watch the countdown after school because I literally didn’t know what else to watch and MTV seemed like it might be cool.  Coincidentally, the lyrics are what I would imagine the average Uncle P’s customer would be doing, while on the crapper after eating too much of Uncle P’s hackneyed instant food products.

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Blet Money

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last two months, whenever I’ve had any downtime, I’ve been doing online surveys for mostly pocket change.  Jokingly, I declared that all of the piddly change I’d make would eventually feed into a larger pot, and that the goal would be to get enough money to where I could get myself a new replica wrestling belt for my collection, and hopefully by then, the WWE Shop will get their heads out of their asses and release an NXT UK Tag Team Championship replica.

Well, as you can see above, I’ve done quite a lot of surveys, and the pot has filled up way faster than I would have ever imagined, and I’ve more or less got enough money socked away to where I could be ready to pull the trigger most any available belt out there.  Shocking nobody, the WWE has still yet to release the one belt that I really want, but I’m hoping that perhaps the re-launching of NXT UK in mid-September might jog someone’s memory that there’s still an active belt out there that still has no replica available.

The funny thing is that a long time ago, I used to do random surveys on pen and paper, when companies would send them to me, with pre-paid postage envelopes, which made it easier.  I remember the first time I got actual currency in an envelope, which inspired me to keep going with it for a little bit longer.  Jen on the other hand, got a free pack of toilet paper to sample and judge, which was always funny since I was getting cash for doing surveys.

Ironically, it was mythical wife who introduced me to 1Q (yes that is my referral link), as an app that provided digital surveys, and the payouts were immediate and through PayPal.  Sure, they were only quarters, but still, a bunch of quarters turns into a bunch of dollars over time, and every little bit helps, when there’s one pot all this change is getting dumped into.

I say ironically, because this clearly re-ignited this compulsion to do surveys for pocket change, because it lets me at least be making something, in my downtime, as opposed to making nothing when I’m bored and doing nothing, although that’s hardly the case this day and age, seeing as how there’s a baby in the equation.

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The cold equations of life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There was a sci-fi story I read in high school that I always remembered called The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin.  In short, it was the story about a guy who was piloting a supply ship through space, to deliver medical supplies to a mining colony on another planet.  However, unbeknownst to him, a young girl, hoping to hitch a ride to the colony where her brother was located, had stowed away and was discovered after the ship had launched and was already in route.  She thought the punishment for her discretion would merely be a fine, but quickly learned that the ship had only enough fuel to make it to the planet and did not account for the weight she had added to the ship. 

In other words, her stowing away jeopardized the lives of herself, the pilot and the colonists depending on the medical supplies because the ship didn’t have enough fuel to haul the extra weight and would fall short of its destination and crash.

Initially, the pilot was callously instructed by his superiors to jettison the girl off the ship and continue the journey, and naturally he showed tremendous reluctance at the thought of having to kill someone; but it was a matter of kill one person to save the many people who needed the medical supplies, or jettison the medical supplies in order to save the girl. 

Spoiler alert: they deliberate for so long that it doesn’t even matter; after jettisoning the medical supplies, it turns out that a little thing called physics had already come into play, and they’d been flying overweight for long enough to where the girl needed to be unloaded anyway, due to fuel constraints.  The pilot is mentally murdered by having to push the button on someone’s life, the colonists on the planet do not get the medical supplies, and he is arrested and imprisoned for insubordination. 

Everyone loses.

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When the day is over, you just have to do the shit yourself

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because my mental being can’t handle loose ends, I decided to take it upon myself to put back up my own fucking fence, so that it’s one less thing that I’ll have to dump money into when it comes time to (hopefully) finding someone competent to fix shit around my house.  As mentioned before, in the process, I fucked up my finger pretty bad, but fortunately it wasn’t in a state where I couldn’t just bandage it up, wear gloves and not be able to continue working.

To summarize, among the shit that the clown of a “handyman” I “hired” to fix my window did, was not just remove several fence panels,  but also damage the posts in in the process of fishing the $450 scissor lift rental I made on his request, off of my backyard, which also tore the shit out of my turf (photos below).  He claimed that he would take responsibility for the damages, but shocking nobody, he’s been as evasive and vague as an extreme cheapskate when the bill shows up, about when he’s actually coming to do anything, and frankly I don’t actually believe he’s going to do anything, and I’m going to light him up on the internet and hope it hurts his future business, because an asshole like this doesn’t need to be out there pretending to be a respectable handyman.

During the days of ghosting, I would step outside and just look at the unfinished job of the fence, and get madder and madder, and I realized that this was not good for my mental state.  Just because I didn’t want to do it didn’t mean that I wasn’t capable of doing it, and considering the sloppy nature of this guy in the first place, it would probably be in the best interest if I did it myself, to ensure that it would be done well.

So janky finger injury aside, I assessed where things stood, and came to the conclusion that this was one of those situations where I would just have to do this shit myself.

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New Father Brogging, #019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s days like today where I really realize that I can never be off.  I’m on paternity leave, but still managing to feel overwhelmed and like I have no time to myself, which I personally think is something that should be essential to all parents new and old.  By no means necessary am I holding it against my child for taking up so much of my time, the whole point of paternity leave is so we can spend all this time together.  But there are mornings in which she wakes up earlier than usual, and the day begins earlier than usual, and the day’s entire cycles are thrown off, and at some point in the day she’s going to be ready for bed earlier or screaming her head off because the schedule’s not lining up and then my blood pressure is probably spiking.

All throughout the day, I’m feeding her, trying to keep her entertained, as well as working on the development of certain physical milestones, such as being able to sit up on her own.  Some days she’s more tolerant of things than others, but then there are days in which she has no desire to lay on her back on her play mat, or no desire to be laying on her stomach working her little abdomen muscles, and is instead screaming her head off in dissatisfaction.  Times like this, the only thing that really placates her is being held, which I’m happy to do, but at the same time I’m wondering if I’m boring my child and wasting opportunities to be stimulating her somehow.  I can only read so many books, and mythical wife and I have agreed no screens for a while, so we’re definitely not going to be parents to plunk her in front of the television, but that limits the options for things to do.

It’s too fucking hot out still, so I’m reluctant to go out on long stroller walks with her, and I really wish that it were like October or something instead, so the weather would be drastically more pleasant to take her out in, for the both of us, and her awake windows aren’t necessarily long enough to really explore going to the pool without making her outright miserable.

So what really ends up happening is that there’s a lot of time spent doing the same things repeatedly, trying to chew up time, which makes me feel like shit that I’m sometimes counting down minutes until the next nap time so that I can get a brief reprieve to do whatever I want for at least 30 minutes, which is usually never anything particularly productive, because seldom do I do anything that feels remotely productive in the span of 30 minutes.

All this adds to my general feelings of anxiety as of late, and leading me to wonder about therapy as I had talked about in a prior post.  I want to be the greatest dad I can be, but there are times where I end up feeling like a selfish asshole for wanting time for myself, and when I get time for myself, sometimes I’ll just scroll through photos on my phone which are 95% of her, and wonder why I’m not having tremendous amounts of more fun with the real thing than wistfully staring at photographs.

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I’m confused

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Atlanta suburb dealing with a rash of anti-Semitic vandalism

Let’s focus on the defaced photo of the sign here: Most people who don’t live in Georgia probably don’t know who Karen Handel is, but she did make some national news a few years back when she was in a congressional race for Georgia’s 6th District against Jon Ossoff, which became hot news and drew tons of national attention.  She ultimately defeated Ossoff to retain her congressional seat, but in 2018, was defeated by newcomer Lucy McBath, who played an expert game of politics by appealing to moms and stayed far as fuck away from the T word as humanly possible.

But anyway, like most women named Karen, Karen Handel is not letting it go, and is gunning to get her seat back.  I should also mention that Karen Handel is also a devout Republican, and as long since pledged her allegiance to the baked potato, and it was in fact a little bit of rub from the baked potato which helped her retain her seat back in 2016.

Which is why it’s really perplexing to me why someone would bother vandalizing a Karen Handel sign, in the name of the baked potato?  Why would someone tag baked potato messaging onto a sign for a baked potato follower?

Maybe the sign(s) in question are just in very conspicuous locations, and were the only things to deface in order to get the most visibility?  Or maybe the idiot(s) doing the graffiti actually don’t know that Karen Handel is also a Republican, and is actually on the baked potato’s side of, everything?  I mean I’m willing to wager it’s more the latter than the former, but when the day is over, it just makes whomever is doing the tagging look like the biggest dumbass of all.

Not to mention their sheer sloppiness when it comes to tagging; I mean seriously, they have put some of the worst and lowest-effort swastikas I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and the general curliness to their spray pattern suggests some effeminate penmanship.  Honestly, the swastikas are so bad, they barely look like swastikas, but more like some weird pinwheel gang tag that would seem very apropos to the bougie East Cobb Mean Street Posse that’s likely doing this.  

If I had to guess it’s some spineless white teenager(s) who is so hopped up on adrenaline for thinking they’re pulling the coup of the century by tagging fences and public spaces, that they’re rushing so horribly at making rushed and poor quality tags, that it just makes them look stupid on top of all the sad that there already is in this situation.

I wonder if I need therapy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Easy set up aside, I’m not trying to be funny at the moment.  Over the last few days, and dealing with the clown of a handyman who has for the lack of better term, fucked me, I haven’t been dealing with the frustration over it very well, and it’s bleeding out in various capacities.  As detailed, I got my glasses broken from negligence, and there have been other instances where I’ve made some careless errors that were fortunately nothing too bad other than aggravation.

But yesterday, since I’ve decided to take it upon myself to fix the fuck ups of my shit handyman, I had an incident where I nicked my ring fingertip with my belt sander; no, it’s nothing severe, but some blood was drawn, and it was in a terribly inconvenient place that made typing competently near impossible until I procured some appropriate fingertip Band Aids, which is how I’m back at the keys writing this right now.  You never realize how much a single finger comes into play with an assortment of daily activities until it’s put on injured reserve.

In all honesty, the meme above, about the try not to cry, but then cry a lot?  That’s kind of how I’ve felt on and off throughout this past week, and I’m feeling very mentally vulnerable right now.  I’m not sure if this is just extremely poor stress management, perhaps this is quarantining cabin fever manifesting in emotional instability?  Maybe it’s the anxiety of knowing I feel like the first three weeks of my paternity leave has vanished in the blink of an eye and now I’m on the downward slope of going back to work sooner rather than later.  My dog is also acting a little strange, which isn’t helping, because I already feel like a shitty enough neglectful owner because baby comes ahead of everything, but at least he’s getting his meals and routine bathroom breaks and not locked in his crate eight hours a day like when I was in the office.

Or maybe it’s all of the above, and it’s an amalgamation of factors leading me to feeling like maybe I need some professional help to help me make sense of why I’m in such a mentally turrible state lately.

And no matter how much I talk to myself about how I really shouldn’t be in this much of a funk, here I am.  I have my health, I have a stable job, in spite of some recent angst about it, I have a beautiful and loving wife who supports everything about me, and I’ve got the most gorgeous and precious kid that I have the utmost luxury to be taking care of every single day right now.  Frankly, even I don’t think I should be feeling so volatile given these facts, but I just can’t shake it right now.

I’m hoping that once I get my property back in order, I’ll feel better about things, as the visual results of having been fucked will be behind me.  But if that doesn’t work, I think I may explore what my options are, and/or see if my insurance can be of any help at all in this.  Who really knows what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve never been one against the idea of therapy, but I’ve always felt like I just didn’t need it, but if things can’t seem to get better through all of the channels that I’ve been using throughout my life so far, perhaps some professional help might not be a bad idea.

I owe it to my wife, child and rest of my family and friends to be the best I can be, and not be so wrecked by stupid shit.  Maybe a good cry is what I really do need, like in Fight Club.  Would probably be a lot cheaper than therapy!