Month: November 2023

Dad Brog (#123): I hate daylight savings so much

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whomever came up with the idea of daylight savings is an asshole. Google says the concept was originally credited to Benjamin Franklin, but the modern concept is “credited to George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand, who in 1895 ‘proposed a two-hour time shift so he’d have more after-work hours of sunshine to go bug hunting in the summer,’”

My knee-jerk reaction is to say that neither of these guys probably had any children, but to avoid being too reactionary, it turns out George Hudson had a daughter, and Ben Franklin had several kids, legitimate or not, it’s irrelevant to this discussion.  But Hudson existed around in the late 1800s where his wife was probably the one who had to do all of the parenting while this dork played with bugs all day and extra-day and into the night. 

And Ben Franklin had fucking slaves, who probably did all of the parenting for him, so it’s probably a safe bet that neither of these cocksuckers had to deal with the backlash that comes with fucking with clocks and messing up the routines of young children.

Today, my kids were up at like 6:20 am, and I had no milk ready for them, no breakfast ready for them, and we had company whom I didn’t properly brief on the morning routine, so my kids were either pissed and screaming about the lack of food waiting for them, and/or running amok around the house because everything was awry as a result of daylight fucking savings.

People who try to defend it because of a single extra hour of sleep, obviously have no children, or kids that are grown past the age where they’re on strict circadian rhythms.  Parents of my circumstances don’t get an extra hour of sleep and in fact probably lose a net of like 4-5 hours over the span of the next week as toddlers’ rhythms adjust to the dumbass rule, and come March when we lose the fucking hour back, we’re all fucked all over again, but ironically thinking about it, losing the hour probably is the one time in which parents are benefitting from their kids snoozing past their routines for a little bit in most cases but that’s not the point, which is daylight savings fucking blows.

In the few minutes of reprieve that came when getting some food on plates in front of the kids, I shot a quick text to my friends’ group chat, and stated that I would vote for the orange guy in charge if he swore he would get rid of daylight savings.  Because it’s such an archaic, bullshit mandate that modern civilization is still beholden to, and I’m baffled at why that is.

So some shithead in New Zealand wanted to chase bugs for an extra hour or two every day, why the fuck does this asshole get to dictate how the rest of the entire fucking planet should be conducting time?  So some farmers have to do some work in the dark, big fucking whoop, chalk it up to seasonal changes, and adjust according to the calendar, I can adjust to my fucking potatoes or corn being at a higher price point at certain times of the year if it means I don’t have to deal with the fucking that changing clocks entails.

The point is, daylight savings is fucking stupid, and I hate it so much.  Even before kids, I wasn’t really that keen on it, because by the time we’re all talking about how it’s happening, I’m already dreading the Saturday in March when we lose it, and knowing that I’m going to wake up on a Sunday morning feeling like a small hangover, worse if I actually were in a situation where I could end up with an actual one on top.  But now that I have kids, daylight savings is a fucking nightmare, and I feel like if I’m ever in a position to where I could visit the graves of Benjamin Franklin or the NZ bug dork, I’d piss all over them just to express my disdain for their stupid concept.

Never underestimate the Braves’ ability to Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unsurprising: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred already considering tweaking new playoff format, primarily reseeding the field prior to the divisional series rounds in response to all of the top teams getting bounced

It really comes as no shock that this is happening, considering the fact that the 100+ win Braves, Dodgers and Orioles all flamed out in spectacularly unspectacular fashion in the divisional round, and when the day is over, baseball is still a business and as satisfying as it may be to a sports purist that the #5 seed Rangers and #6 seed Diamondbacks play for the World Series, it is not really best for business that the teams with the best records in the game aren’t.

Frankly, I don’t think there needs to be any tweaking to the current format.  I do like that there are two more teams allowed in the field, because I don’t really know why it’s falling on its face so hard in baseball when just about every other sport that runs tournaments loves Cinderella stories of underdog teams overcoming the odds and climbing the mountain.

It’s aberrational that all three of the teams that won 100+ games all were bounced in the divisional series, but the fact of the matter is that all of them got dropped like Demon vs. Sting because their opponents all found the Pit Fighter power pill and got hot at the precise right moment, and rode that momentum all the way to paydirt.  And that’s just it when it comes to any sort of playoff format in any sport, prior records be damned, the most dangerous team in the field are the one(s) who get hot and ride the flames, regardless of whom their opponents might be.

In fact, I don’t want MLB to change the current format and do reseeding, because it’s never, ever going to change the fact that the Braves will always turn into the Barves once the NLDS starts, and in year like this one, it would just have put the Braves into a position for greater embarrassment, because they would have been dropped by the 84-win Diamondbacks instead of the 90-win Phillies, and short of being underdogs in future seasons, this is going to be the case until the end of time because I ain’t having any more kids and will be able to bless them with baby luck anymore.

If there should be any tweaks to the playoff format, it should be that the lower seeds are the ones whom should be given byes, seeing as how the only seemingly absolute trend in baseball is that teams that “enjoy” the “advantage” of being able to rest a few extra days, all get cold and soft and then get bounced by the lower seed teams who have had some time to warm up and get battle-tested.

Like, it seems absolutely asinine that the Braves, Dodgers and Orioles should have to play more games, but in a sport as sometimes bonkers as baseball, it probably would’ve guaranteed that we would’ve had an Eastbound & Down World Series against Atlanta and Baltimore.  They’d all be riding waves of momentum from the regular season, the Braves would’ve stomped the Diamondbacks, the Dodgers would have eaten the Marlins, the O’s would have trounced the Blue Jays, and then they would’ve gone into the division series where the #3 and #4 seeds would have had to have waited, and then the Braves would’ve for sure annihilated the Phillies instead, while the Dodgers would’ve made quick work of the Brewers and the O’s would’ve dropped the Rays.

Until MLB realizes that byes aren’t really as good in baseball as they are in other sports, the playoff systems they trot out, will all be problematic.  Except for the Braves, because no matter what kind of format they run, when the playoffs begin, absolutely nothing short of me having kids, seems capable of preventing them from becoming the Barves once they postseason begins.

Every now and then, China gets it right

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

America could use these: China employs a suction-cup device that sticks to cars that implements fines for poor parking, and increases the fine based on how long it takes to pay the fine, fully aware of the societal embarrassment to violators

As the subject says, every now and then, China does manage to get it right.  In this case, they actually created something somewhat original in concept, and is something that I think more places than just China would benefit from.

Obviously, there’s no shortage of shit drivers all over America whom on purpose, or just their insufficient skill levels, park in manners that leave it up for debate on evolution, and whether or not these shit parkers’ genetic lines have all of the same makeup that of those who actually know how to park a car correctly.

So I’d be over the moon at the thought of devices like this being employed in America, and am a little bit envious that China seems to have these first, with the hopes that they would actively deter people from parking like unskilled invalids, or those who park terribly on purpose because they think their Nissan Maxima was manufactured by Bugatti and need to take up four parking spaces.

There’s a lot of gray area on these devices, mainly how they are retrieved once a violator has paid their fine, or what the next steps are if a person is not deterred through public shaming and accepts the fact that they’re to drive around with this big ass digital barnacle on their vehicle until the end of time, but just my knee-jerk reaction of these things is resoundingly positive.

The source video appears to already be gone, and I don’t want to hunt and search for anything from Chinese internets, but if the thumbnails are any indication, and the device is slapped on for merely having the tires overlapping the boundary line by just a few centimeters, it appears that China’s expectations for parking ability are quite, Asian in the sense that it doesn’t seem like it requires a lot of infraction to warrant getting one of these slapped on your ride.

All the same, the intent is to make people better drivers in general, and I wouldn’t even say that I’d be impervious to getting one of these, because I’m no stranger for looking for imbalanced parking spaces that give me a slight advantage of space wherever I can, and at one of my old jobs, I used to always park way over the line, to maximize the distance of an adjacent car’s ability to park next to me, but it was far away, so I didn’t think I was inconveniencing anyone.

But I love the logic behind this from the Chinese, because it’s undoubtedly a cash-grab of a device, but also, it’s a device of public shaming, because it’s not like a boot that immobilizes a car, but it’s instead a boot that you can drive around with, and everyone can see that you’re a shit parker.  And it’s insinuated that Chinese and other Asian cultures seem more susceptible to embarrassment than other countries (America) and that this idea might not work as well in other countries (America) as they might in a place like China.

But I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t want to see it piloted here anyway.  I’d love to see Chinese meter maids trolloping around a place like Atlantic Station or the West Paces Ferry shopping center where the worst parkers on the planet all parked like the wild west, in order to minimize how much they had to walk to Starbucks or Willy’s.  Every Mercedes, Kia Optima or BMW that parks like a douche gets one of these giant suction cup yellow discs slapped onto their door, and is stuck with them until they’re paid.  Every Dodge RAM mobile-insurrection chariot that is oblivious to just how much their cab is sticking out or over the lines gets one of these slapped on their door.

They might not be as embarrassed as the Chinese might be to have one of these one, but they’d definitely be pissed that something as ugly and unsightly would be stuck to their rides, and if they not going to outright just try and remove them illegally, it might just actually succeed at making some terrible drivers, slightly more conscientious of their decision-making when they’re behind the wheel.

As much as I love to clown on the Chinese as much as anyone of Korean descent does, gotta give credit where it’s due; they had a great idea with these things, and I can only fantasize about things like these being deployed in ‘Murica.

An unprecedented level of ownage just went legendary

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The bar has been set: Marcus Jordan, son of Michael Jordan, wants dad to be his best man when he gets married . . . to Scottie Pippen’s ex-wife

About a year ago it came out that Scottie Pippen’s ex-wife was in a relationship with Marcus Jordan, the son of the greatest NBA player of all time, Michael Jordan.  I just figured ol’ Larsa was doing so a cerebrally petty means of attacking her ex, ol’ Stiffin’ Pippen, because they seemed to have had a fairly tumultuous and ugly public divorce. 

After all, there’s rebounding with a younger man, and then there’s rebounding with a younger man who also happens to be the son of your greatest frienemy/rival/man who overshadowed you your whole career/life, and considering all the nastiness that showed during their divorce, it didn’t seem like such a stretch that a gal like Larsa would do such a thing for no other reason.

Now whether it was a one-night stand gone wrong, a touching tale of true love to grow out of the pile of dog shit, or an orchestrated plot to try and make Scottie Pippen have sleep problems for the next decade, the relationship has evolved, and now Marcus and Larsa are apparently engaged and are planning to get married; and Marcus wants his dad, to the best man at his wedding.

Back when I found out about Marcus and Larsa’s relationship, I called it an unprecedented level of ownage, which still stands, but with them getting married, and the desire to have MJ as the best man, which he will more than likely do, that unprecedented level of ownage is about to become legendary.  A new lofty level of owange that will have a hard time ever being matched, much less surpassed.  One where even Patrick Ewing of all people would sit back and go, “damn, Scottie about to get owned.”

Not only did Larsa dump Scottie’s ass, she held onto his name because obviously she’s nothing without it, so that’s getting owned; she keeps the notoriety of being a Pippen without having to put up with Scottie’s bullshit and most likely the constant embarrassment of him being Stiffin’ Pippen whenever they went out to eat.  Then she hooks up with a younger man, and that younger man happens to be Marcus Jordan, the son of Michael Jordan, whom Scottie hasn’t been shy about turning full heel on over the last few years, and letting his true green-eyed monster rear its ugly head, so that’s getting owned to the unprecedented level.

But now they’re getting married, and if MJ has any semblance of knowledge of what it takes to be a good dad, he will undoubtedly be his best man, and when they undoubtedly and inevitably and have exorbitant wedding photos, it’s going to be Scottie’s ex-wife, with a younger man, AND Michael Jordan all looking at the camera and smiling, looking right back at Scottie.

It’s no secret how much MJ loves winning and owning others, and this undoubtedly counts as a severe and massive W for MJ, at the expense of Scottie.  And I’m not sure what would be sweeter, between all of this being basically payback for all of the bullshit Scottie had spouted in the media about MJ and their relationship, or the fact that throughout this whole journey, MJ really didn’t actually lift a finger the whole time, letting his son do all of the legwork, and being able to usurp the credit for the ownage solely by being Marcus’s dad.

Either way, at this point, I think it’s safe to say that Patrick Ewing can finally hand over the massively burdensome torch of being MJ’s biggest bitch over to Scottie Pippen, because I have no earthly idea on how this level of ownage can ever be surpassed.